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 Lectures on the influence of the institu 
 
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THE HIBBERT LECTURES, 
 
 1880. 
 
W'V 
 
 'Kir Ptiiii 
 TUB HIBBERT LECTURES, 1880. 
 
 LECTURES 
 
 ON THE INFLUENCE OF 
 
 THE INSTITUTIONS, THOUGHT AND CULTUEE 
 
 OF 
 
 ROME, 
 
 ON 
 
 CHRISTIANITY AND THE DEVELOPMENT OF 
 THE CATHOLIC CHURCH. 
 
 BY 
 
 Of the French Academy. 
 
 Translated by CHAELES BEAED, B.A. 
 
 WILLIAMS AND JSTOEGATE, 
 
 14, HENRIETTA STREET, COVENT GARDEN, LONDON; 
 And 20, SOUTH FREDERICK STREET, EDINBURGH. 
 
 18S0. 
 
LONDOK : 
 PRIHIKD BY 0. GRjaEN AMD SON, 178, STRANH. 
 
PEE FACE. 
 
 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 Eeligion. It is in this 
 connection that M. Max Miiller has treated of the general 
 development of religion in India, that M. Le Page Eenouf 
 has spoken of the religious function of Egypt. They form 
 in some sort a Chair of the Comparative History of Eeli- 
 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 PKJEFACE. 
 
 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. 
 
 E. E. 
 
 Paris, June, 1880. 
 
TABLE OF CONTENTS. 
 
 LECTURE I. 
 
 PACIE 
 
 In what Sense is Christianity the Work of Eome? 1 
 
 LECTUEE II. 
 The Legend of the Eoman Church : Peter and Paul 39 
 
 LECTUEE III. 
 
 EoME, THE Centre op Growing Ecclesiastical Autho- 
 rity ...... 101 
 
 LECTUEE IV. 
 EoME, THE Capital of Catholicism . . .145 
 
 Dr. Martineau's Address .... 207 
 
LECTURE I. 
 
 IN WHAT SENSE IS CHEISTIANITY 
 THE WOEK OF EOME ? 
 
LECTUEE I. 
 
 IN WHAT SENSE IS CHEISTIANITY 
 THE WOKK OF ROME? 
 
 It gave me both pride and pleasure to receive 
 from tlie 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 
 Miiller, 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 Eobert 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 
 
 b2 
 
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 ia theology, when it is accepted 
 by all in the domaia 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 ^aomething 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 
 
 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 dogmatism, 
 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 W WHAT SENSE IS CHRISTIANITT 
 
 energy he lias put fortli 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 suflferings 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 attaia 
 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, ia 
 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, 
 
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^ 
 
 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 ! Tou 
 have asked me to explain to you the part of Eome. 
 There is a sense in which, in point of time, the 
 action of Eome 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 Eome exercised a 
 decisive influence on the Church of Jesus. 
 
 In one sense, Eome has propagated religion in the 
 
10 m WHAT SENSE IS CHRISTIANITY 
 
 ■world, as it lias 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 Eome 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 Eome 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 Eoman, as in the 
 majority of the old Italian cults, prayer is a magic 
 
 J 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 {cula). 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 
 
12 IN WHAT SENSE IS CHRISTIANITY 
 
 Genius of the Custom-house/ and above all (mark — 
 this is in truth the great God of Kome), the Safety 
 of the Eoman 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 Eome. 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 Eoman religion was, that it always remained 
 aristocratic. A man became pontiff as he became 
 prsetor 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 bravely in this or that battle. There 
 was no sacerdotal spirit : these civil pontiffs con- 
 
 1 Or rather, of Indirect Taxes, GEJSTIO POETOEII PU- 
 ELICI. Ann. de I'Inst. Arch, de Rcmie, 1868, pp. 8, 9. 
 
THE WORK OF ROME? 1'3 
 
 tinued to be what they liad 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 Eome was the reverse 
 of a theocracy. The Civil Law regulates actions ; it 
 does not occupy itself with ideas ; and so one result 
 of Eoman religion was, that Eome 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 j it implies a dangerous 
 exaltation in the popular mind. Calm, order, regu- 
 larity — this is what is wanted. Anything beyond 
 this is excess (sujperstttio). Cato absolutely forbids 
 that slaves should be allowed to entertain any sen- 
 timent of piety. " Enow," 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. super stitio which the true Eoman abhorred 
 as much as he abhorred impiety. 
 
14 IN WHAT SENSE IS CHRISTIANITY 
 
 Could there be, I ask you, a religion less capable 
 than tbis of becoming tbe religion of tbe buman 
 race? Not only was entrance to tbe priesthood 
 forbidden to plebeians; tbey were sbut out from 
 public worship. In that long struggle for civil 
 equality which fills Eoman history, religion is the 
 great argument alleged against the friends of revo- 
 lution. "How could you possibly become prsetor 
 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 Eoman 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 EOME ? 15 
 
 exist ; but Augustus, who was even more a reli- 
 gious organizer than a great politician, gave uni- 
 versal currency to the Eoman idea by instituting 
 the worship of Eome. The altars of Eome and of 
 Augustus became the centre of an hierarchical orga- 
 nization of flamens and Augustal sevirs,^ 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 Eoman 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. 
 
 ^ That is, colleges of priests, consisting of six members. 
 
16 IN "WHAT SENSE IS CHEISTIANITY 
 
 The moment this was perceived, it was plain that a 
 battle would have to be fought between the Eoman 
 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 Eome 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 Eome has unconsciously propa- 
 gated, and that with such vigour, as, after a certain 
 time has elapsed, to make Eomanism 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 Eoman Empire. With 
 exception of some small portions of the territory, 
 subject to the Arsacidae, 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- 
 sanidee. This fact, of capital importance, was deter- 
 mined by two great causes, the Mediterranean Sea 
 and the Eoman Empire. 
 
18 IN WHAT SENSE IS CHEISTIANITT 
 
 For a thousand years the Mediterranean had been 
 the great high-way where all civilizations and all 
 ideas had met and mingled. The Eomans, 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 thetroads 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 Eomans 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 Eoman 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. Ev.ery province conquered by 
 the Eoman Empire was a province conquered for 
 Christianity. Think of the Apostles in face of au 
 
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 bow 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 Eoman, 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 Eome, 
 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, Eome laid down 
 2 
 
20 m WHAT SENSE IS CHRISTIANITY 
 
 the material condition of tte 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.^ The King Archon 
 
 1 Study the character of Euthyphron in Plato. 
 
THE WORK OF EOKE ? 21 
 
 was the Inquisitor : the Eoyal Porch, the Holy 
 OjBS.ce 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 aU bu:t 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 AttaH, the Ptolemies, who 
 first gave thinkers the freedom which none of the 
 old repubhcs had accorded to them. The Eoman 
 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 
 Eoman laws before Constantino, for any enactment 
 aimed at free thought, or in the history of the Em- 
 perors for a prosecution of abstract doctriae. Not a 
 , single savant was disturbed. Men whom the Middle 
 i 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 Eoman 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 Eoman authority, 
 would have been strong enough to stifle it. It was 
 the Eoman magistrates who prevented the Pharisees 
 from killing Christianity, 
 
THE WOEK or HOME? 23 
 
 Large conceptiona 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.^ The 
 wealth of the community was great, and, in spite 
 of the imperfectness of current economical doctrines, 
 ease and comfort were wide-spread. PubKc morals 
 were not what they are often supposed to have been. 
 In Eome, 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.^ Is there anywhere an ideal of family life, 
 
 1 Virgil, Eel. ir. Seneca, Medea, 375 et seq. 
 
 ^ The epitaphs of -wonien contain the most touching expres- 
 sions. " Mater omnium hominum, parens omnibus subveniens,"' 
 in Renier, Inscr. de VAlgerie, ISTo. 1987. Comp. ibid. 'So.. 
 2756. Mommsen, /nscr. 5.iV. 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 ! Chseronea was evidently not the only 
 spot where life was so pure and so innocent. 
 
 The habits of the people, even elsewhere than at 
 Eome, had still some taint of cruelty — either a rem- 
 nant of ancient manners, which were everywhere 
 sanguinary, or a special result of Eoman 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 Yirgil or of TibuUus? 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 Mem. de la Soc. de Gonstantine, 
 1865, p. 158. "Affectiords plena erga omnes homines:" Le 
 Blant, Inscr. Ohr. de la Gaule, pp. 172, 173. "Ob egregiam 
 ad omnes homines mansuetudinem." See the inscr. of UrbaniUa, 
 in Gu^rin, Voy. Archeol. dans la reg. de Tunis, i. 289 ; and the 
 delicious inscription, Orelli, No. 4618. 
 
THE work: of eome? 25 
 
 ism. Woman was becoming more and more mistress 
 of herself: humaner methods of treating slaves came 
 into vogue :^ Seneca took his meals with his.^ 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 Fonder^ wgoia. excellent princi- 
 ples. Neroin troduced into the system of taxation, 
 whi ch up to that time had been barbarous and unjust, 
 
 1 Tacit. Ann. xiy. 42 et seq. Sueton. Glavdvus, 25. Dio 
 Qasdus, Ix. 29. Plin. Epist. viii. 16. Inscript. of Lanuvium, 
 col. 2, lines 1 — 4 (ia Monimsen, De Coll. et Sodal. Rom.). 
 Seneca Eliet. Oontrov. iii. 21, viii. 6. Seneca Phil. Epist. xlvii. 
 De Benef. iii. 18 et seq. Columella, De re rusticd, i. 8. Plutarch, 
 Cato the Elder, 5 ; De Ird, 11. 
 
 ^ Epist. xlvii. 13. ' Tacit. Ann. vi. 17; conf. iv. 6. 
 
26 IN WHAT SENSE IS CHRISTIANITY 
 
 improvements wMch. shame even our own age.^ 
 The progress of legislation was not iaconsiderable, 
 although capital punishment was still stupidly fre- 
 quent. Almsgiving, the love of the poor, universal 
 sympathy, came to be looked upon as virtues.^ 
 
 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 
 
 ^ Tacit. Ann. xiii. 50, 51. Sueton. Nero, 10. 
 
 * Epitaph of the Jeweller Evhodus (hominis toni, misericordis, 
 amantis pauperes): Corpus Inscr. Lot. No. 1027. Inscription 
 of the age of Augustus. (Conf. Egger, Mem. d'Hist. ana. et 
 dephil. 351 et seq.). Perrot, Hxpl. de la Galatie, &c. 118, 119 
 {xTwxov's cjiLXeovTo). Euneral oration of Matidia by Hadrian : 
 Mem. of the Acad. ofBerlm,1863, p. 489. Mommsen, Inscr. Regni 
 Neap. Nos. 1431, 2868, 4880. Seneca Rhet. Controv. i. 1, iii. 19, 
 It. 27, viii. 6. Seneca Phil. Be Clem. ii. 5, 6 ; De Bene/. I 1, 
 ii. 11, iv. 14, vii. 31. Conf. Le Blant, Insc7: Chr. de la Gaule, 
 ii. 23 et seq. OreUi, No. 4657. Fea, Framm. de' Fasti Consol. 
 p. 90. E. Garrucci, Oimitero degli ant. Ehrei, p. 44. 
 
THE "WORK OP ROME? 27 
 
 belo-w. 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 a-woke 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 Yirgil -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 bom 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. Eemembrances, 
 usages, legends, misfortunes, hopes, common regrets 
 — these are the soul ; the soU, the race, the language, 
 the mountains, the rivers, the characteristic produc-- 
 
28 IN WHA.T 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 Eome is to them matter of in- 
 difference. The countries in which Christianity first 
 established itself — Syria, Cyprus, Asia Minor — no 
 longer r&coUected a time at which they had been 
 free. Greece and Eome still cherished a strong 
 feeling of nationality. But in Eome, 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 Csesar, 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 WOKK OF ROME ? 29 
 
 The oldest capitals of Christianity — Antiocli, Ephe- 
 sus, Thessalonica, Corinth., Eome — 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 bom at a time when cities and citizens 
 had alike ceased to exist, and which the old, strong, 
 rigid republics of Greece and of Eome would most 
 certainly have cast out as a poison that would slay 
 the State ! 
 
30 m WHAT SENSE IS CHRISTIANITY 
 
 And this was one of tlie 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 Thermopylse. 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 or 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 Koman 
 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 Eome believed to be eternal ? 
 Surely, hardly any. All these ancient worships, 
 while very different in their origin, had one feature 
 in common — an equal inabihty 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 
 Eoman 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, wlio 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 faU 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.^ The 
 
 1 Tacit. Ann. iv. 55, 56. Conf. Valer. Max. prol. 
 
THE WOEK 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 smUe 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, havitig its origin in an ancient 
 social 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 CHEISTIANITY 
 
 drew tte populations of tlie ancient world to the 
 religions of the East. These religions had something 
 deeper in them, than those of Greece and Eome : 
 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 aa the friends of Catullus and Tibullus.i 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,^ A Mithraic 
 
 ^ See Boissier, Belig. Rom. pp. 374 et seq. 
 ^ 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 Eoman Catacombs is as edifying, 
 and presents as elevated a mysticism, as the Chris- 
 tian tombs.^ There were Mithraic devotees who, 
 even after the triumph of Christianity, bravely de- 
 fended the sincerity of their faith.* 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'Archeol Chret. des P. P. 
 Martin et Cahier : Paris, 1856. 
 
 s Inscription ra. De Eossi, Bullettino di Arch. Grist. 1867, 
 p. 76. Henzen, in the Bidletin de Cm-resp. ArcJi. AprO, 1868. 
 
THE -WORK OF ROME? 37 
 
 religion was silently growing in Judea. What could 
 have more astonished the most sagacious of the 
 Eomans, 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 II. 
 
 THE LEGEND OF THE EOMAN CHUECH: 
 PETEE AND PAUL. 
 
LECTUEE II. 
 
 THE LEGEND OF THE EOMAN CHURCH : 
 PETER AND PAUL. 
 
 In our last Lecture we attempted to describe tlie 
 difficult situation in regard to all religious questions 
 in which, the Eoman 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 tbeir way, bumble and without distinction, 
 but disgusted with the spectacle offered to the 
 world by the Eoman aristocracy, and full of horror 
 at those hideous performances of the amphitheatre 
 in which Eonie 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 recomponce. Men wanted 
 
PETER AND PAUL. 43 
 
 a future of righteousness, in wticli 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 
 
 ^ See tiie fine words of tlie 2nd Epistle attriliuted to Peter, 
 lli. 13 ; Kaivovs ovpavovs Kai yrjv Kaivrjv TrpocrSoKWjJitv iv ois 
 SiKaioa-vvrj KaTOiKti. 
 
44 THE LEGEND OF THE EOMAN CHURCH: 
 
 expectations of that eternity wliicli makes resigna- 
 tion so easy to tlie 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. 
 
PETEE AND PAUL. 45 
 
 Tke establishment of the Jews in Eome dates from 
 about sixty years B.C. They multiplied rapidly. 
 Cicero represents resistance to them as an act of 
 courage.^ Csesar 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.^ The word of Zecha- 
 riah^ was verified to the letter; the world laid hold 
 
 1 Pro Flaceo, 28. ^ j^^, ^^t. vi. 546 et seq. 
 
 ' 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 ;^ 
 that is to say, in the poorest and dirtiest part of the 
 city,^ probably not far from what is now the Porta 
 Portesefi There, then as now, was the port of Eome, 
 the place where the merchandize brought from Ostia 
 
 ^ Philo, Leg. ad Caium, § 23. Martial, i. xlii. (xxxv.) 3. The 
 Jews continued to iahabit the Trastevere until the IStli and 16th 
 century (Bosio, Rom. 8ott. 1. ii. ch. xxii. ; conf. Corp. Inscr. Gr. 
 ISo. 9907). It is at the same time certain that under the Emperors 
 they inhabited many other quarters of the city, and particularly 
 the Campus Martins {Corp. JSTos. 9905, 9906; OreUi, 2522; 
 Garrucci, Dissert. Arch. ii. 163), outside the Porta Capena (Juv. 
 Sat. iii. 1 1 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. ISo. 6447). 
 
 2 Martial, i. xlii. 3, vi. xcui. 4. Juv. Sat. xiv. 201 et seq. 
 
 ^ The principal Jewish cemetery of Eome was found in this 
 neighbourhood by Bosio in 1602. Bosio, op. cit. ii. xxii. 
 Aringhi, Roma Sott. i. ii. 23. Conf. Corp. Inscr. Or. 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 ia 
 vaia. Two other Jewish catacombs have since been found at 
 Eome, on the Via Appia, near St. Sebastian. Garrucci, Cimitero 
 degli antichi Ebrei, (Eoma, 1862); Dissert. Arch. ii. (Eoma, 1866), 
 150 et seq. De Eossi, 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.^ The first nucleus of the Jewish population 
 of Kome consisted of freedmen,^ 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 
 Eoman synagogues with Jerusalem was constant.^ 
 The first colony had been reinforced by numerous 
 emigrants.* These poor people landed by hundreds 
 
 ^ Provinc. cons. 6. 
 
 ^ Philo, I.e. Tacit. Ann. ii. 85. The inscriptions confirm 
 this. Levy, op. cit. p. 287. Conf. Mommsen, Iriscr. Regni 
 Neap. No. 6467 {Gapttva is doubtful). De Eossi, Bull. 1864, 
 70, 92, 93. Conf. Acts vi. 9. 
 
 2 Cicero, Pro Flacco, 28. 
 
 * 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 ia Eome at least four synagogues, two 
 of which hore the names of Augustus and Agrippa (Herod 
 
48 THE LEGEND OF THE ROMAN CHUECH : 
 
 on the Eipa, and lived together in the Trastevere 
 liard 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.^ A Eoman 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.^ 
 So the poor creatures lived quietly enough in this 
 forgotten comer, in the midst of bales of merchandize, 
 of low public-houses, of the litter-carriers (Syri) who 
 
 Agrippa?). Corp. Inscr. Or. 6447, 9902, 9903, 9904, 9905, 
 9906,9907,9909. Orelli, 2522. Garrucci, CmiYera, pp. 38— 40 ; 
 Dissert. Arch, ii 161, 162, 163, 185. De Eossi, Bvll. 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. Ivii. 13, 14. Statius, 
 Silvce, i. vi. 72 — 74. The Jemsli burial-places at Eome showed 
 signs of great poverty. Bosio, Roma Sott. pp. 190 et seq. L^vy, 
 Epigraph. Beitrdge zur Gesch. der Juden, 283. 
 
 2 JSTarduii, Eoma antica, iii. 328—330 (4th ed.). Martial, 
 vi. xciii. 4. 
 
PETER AND PAUL. 49 
 
 had their head-quarters there.^ The police never 
 came near them, unless their quarrels took place too 
 often or ended in bloodshed. Few quarters of Eome 
 ■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.^ 
 
 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 : ^ nowhere was the ritual 
 and ceremonial part of the Law more scrupulously 
 observed.* The synagogues were more completely 
 
 ^ Oastra lecticariorum, in the treatises De regionibus urhis 
 Eomce, regio xiv. ; Caniaa, Roma antica, pp. 553, 554. Conf. 
 Forcellini, s. v. lecticarius. The Synis of the Latin, comedies is 
 usually a lecticarius. 
 
 ^ Josephus, Ant. xiv. x. 8; Acts xxviii. 31. 
 
 8 Conf. Corp. Inscr. Gr. No. 9908. Garrucci, Cimitero, pp. 
 57, 58. 
 
 * Conf. Hor. Sat. i. ix. 69 et seq. Sueton. Augustus, Y6. 
 Seneca, Epist. xcv. 47. Persius, v. 179 et seq. Juvenal, xiv. 
 96 et seq. Martial, iv. iv. 6. The Jewish epigraphy of Eome 
 hears witness to a population of a very precise ritual observance. 
 
 E 
 
50 THE LEGEND OE THE ROMAN CHURCH: 
 
 organized than any others wHcli we know.^ The 
 titles "father and mother of the synagogue" were 
 held in high esteem.^ Eich 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.^ The poor Jew, 
 as he asked an alms with trembling voice, found the 
 opportunity of insinuating into the ear of the great 
 
 L^vy, Epig. Beit. pp. 285 et seq. Ifote the epithet <^ikivToXoi 
 {Corp. ]Sro. 9904; Garrucci, Dissert, ii. 180, 185, 191, 192), 
 answering to Ps. cxix. 48, and similar passages. Conf. Mommsen, 
 Inscr. Regni Neap. No. 6467 (notwithstanding Garraeci, Cim. 
 pp. 24, 25). The Jews carefiilly 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 Baise.) 
 
 1 Corp. Ifos. 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. E^nier, Inscr. de 
 I'Algerie, No. 3340). Orelli, No. 2522 (conf. Gruter, p. 323, 3). 
 Garrucci, Cim. pp. 52, 53. 
 
 3 Orelli, 2522, 2523. Levy, pp. 285, 311, 313. Garrucci, 
 Dissert. Arch. ii. 166. Graetz, Gesch. der Juden, iv. 123, 506, 
 507. 
 
PETER AND PAUL. 61 
 
 Eoman lady a word or two of tlie Law, and often 
 gained tlie matron, wlio opened to Mm a hand full 
 of small coin.^ 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.^ 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. ^ Hor. Sat. i. ix. 71, 72. 
 
 ' Corp. Inscr. Gr. 9904 et seq. Garruoci, CimiterOjipTp. 31 etseq., 
 67 et seq., especially p. 68. Dissert, ii. 153 et seq. Notice par- 
 ticularly the beautiful expressions, (f>LXo7r€vr]s (Garrucci, Dissert. 
 ii. 185 ; conf. Les Ap6tres, p. 320, note 4), (juXoXaoi (Gorp. 
 Ifo. 9904. Garrucci, Dissert, p. 185; conf. 2 Mace. xv. 14), 
 conoresconius, 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 Eome cannot have greatly changed. 
 
 E 2 
 
52 THE LEGEND OF THE ROMAN CHURCH : 
 
 sucli as Tiberius Alexander, "wlio attained the greatest 
 honours which the Empire had to give, more than 
 once exercised a very important influence upon 
 public aflfairs, and even, to the great annoyance of 
 the Eomans, had his statue in the Forum.^ But 
 such as he were no longer good Jews. The Herods, 
 too, although ostentatiously observing their national 
 rites at Eome,^ 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. Eenier thinks that it is to Tiberius Alexander that 
 Juvenal refers, i. 129 — 131, araharches for alabarches. Mem. de 
 I' Acad, des Inscr. Vol. xxvi. Pt. i. 294 et seq. 
 
 I Persius, v. 179 et seq. The allusion is to the Mnucca. 
 
PETER AND PAUL. 53 
 
 tumult of a city as large as London and Paris. ^ 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.^ 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.* 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 tlie agger of Servius 
 TuUins prove an almost incredibly large population. 
 
 2 Conf. Tacit. Hist. v. 5. 
 
 ^ Orosius, vi. 18, 20. Tlie lesser Christian Martyrology (ed. 
 Eosweide), July 9. Vid. Forcellini, s. v. meritorius. 
 
 * According to Eoman tradition, the Church of St. Maria 
 in Trastevere has succeeded the Taberna. Vid. JS'ardini, Roma 
 antica, iii 336, 337. Platner and Bunsen, iii. Pt. iii. 659, 660. 
 
54 THE LEGEND OF THE ROMAN CHURCH : 
 
 iniikeepers contending for the possession of a locality 
 which, had formerly been public, and which that 
 excellent Emperor adjudged to the Christians.^ "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 iadifference of the age to good 
 diseipKne 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 aU time 
 to come. 
 
 It was natural that the capital should have 
 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. Eome was 
 
 1 Lampiidius, Vita Alex. Sever. 49. Conf. Anastasius Bibl. 
 Vitce Fontif. Rom. xvii. (ed. BiancMni), taking note of the 
 observations of Platner. 
 
PETER AND PAUL. 65 
 
 the meeting-place of all Oriental worsMps, 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 Koman 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 Eome 
 
 that day suspected that the founder of a second 
 Empire, another EomuluSj^ 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 : ^ these ancestors of 
 Eoman prelates were poor, dirty j)rolefaires, without 
 
 ^ Foetentes Judsei.. Amm. Marc. xxii. 5. 
 
56 THE LEGEND OF THE ROMAN CHTJRCH : 
 
 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.^ 
 "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 PriscUla his 
 wife. Driven from Eome, 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 oldes t members of the 
 Church of Eome known to us. There they are 
 hardly remembered.^ Legend, always unjust, be- 
 cause always moulded by reasonsof~poli(3y, has tiSr 
 peJled-^*©fla-fche"6hristia3rPantKeon these two obscure 
 
 1 Juvenal, iii. 14. Mart. iv. iy. 7. 
 
 ^ Tlie attribution of the ancient " title of St. Prisca" on the 
 Aventine to Priscilla, wife of Aquila, is the result of a mistake. 
 Vid. De Eossi (Bull, di Arch. Crist. 1867, 44 at seq.), -who is 
 unable to trace the identification further back than the eighth 
 century. 
 
PETBE AND PAUL. 67 
 
 artizans, to award tlie honour of founding tlie Church 
 
 of Eome to a name more fully answering to its proud 
 preteffsions. We, however, may discern the true 
 starting-point of Western Christianity, not in the 
 pompous basilica which has been dedicated to StJ 
 Peter, but in the ancient ghetto of the Porta Portesej 
 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 Eome 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 Eome 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 CHTJBCH : 
 
 itself directly to tlie Churoli of Jerusalem.^ In it, 
 Paul will never be on Hs own ground : lie will feel 
 the presence in tHs great Church of many weak- 
 nesses, which he will treat with indulgence, but 
 which wiU offend his lofty idealism.^ Given to cir- 
 cumcision and to external observances;^ Ebionite* 
 both in its love of abstinences^ and in its doctriae; 
 more Jewish than Christian in its conception of the 
 person and death of Jesus ; ^ strongly attached to 
 millenarianism,^ — the Eoman Church displays from 
 
 ^ Acts XTiii. 2. Commentary (of the deacon Hilary) on tie 
 Epp. of St. Paul, at the end of the Works of St. Amhrose, 
 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 Eoman Church. 
 
 ° Eom. xiv. XV. 1 — 13, 
 
 ^ Eom. xiv. XV. 8. Conf. Tacit. Hist. v. 5. 
 
 * Epiphan. Hmr. xxx. 18. Conf. xxx. 2, 15, 16, 17. 
 
 * Eom. xiv. Pseudo-Clem. Hom. xiv. 1. 
 
 * Commentary of Hilary, cited above, ibid. Conf. the asser- 
 tion of Artemo in Eusebius, H. E. v. 28. Pseudo-Clem. Hom. 
 (a work of Eoman origin) xvi. 14 et seq. 
 
 "^ This is the reason why the Judeo-Chiistian and mUlenarian 
 literature has been more fully preserved ia Latin than iu Greek 
 (4th Book of Esdras, Leptogenesis, Assumption of Moses). The 
 Greek fathers of the 4th and 5th centuries were very hostile to 
 
PETER AND PATJE. 59 
 
 the beginning the essential characteristics -which 
 distinguished it throughout its long and marvellous 
 history. The legitimate daughter of Jerusalem, the 
 Koman 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 Eome 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 
 
 tliis literature, even to the Apocalypse. The Greek Clmrcli 
 depends more directly upon Paul than the Latin : in the East, 
 Paul actual ly 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 Eome. TertulUan, Adv. Prax. 1. St. Hippolytus (?) 
 Philosophum. is. 7, 12, 13 et seq. Especially vid. in Eiisebius, 
 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 Eome had been altered 
 after the time of Zephyrinust 
 
60 THE LEGEND OE THE EOMAN CHTJECH : 
 
 her, tlie only satisfactory evidence of an apostolical 
 mission wiU be to show a letter signed by apostles, 
 and to produce a certificate of orthodoxy.^ The good 
 and the evil which the Church of Jerusalem did to a 
 nascent Christianity, the Church of Kome 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, fo urteen 
 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 Eome, 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 
 Eome was an event in his life almost as decisive as 
 
 1 Vid. the Pseudo-Clementine Homilies (a Eoman work), par- 
 ticularly Hom. xvii. 
 
PETEE AND PAUL. 61 
 
 his conversion. In it he believed himself to have 
 attaiaed 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 Eome." ^ 
 
 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- 
 
 ^ Acts xix. 21, xxiii. 11. 
 
62 THE LEGEND OF THE ROMAN CHXJKCH : 
 
 fill. However strange it may appear, it is certain 
 that tlie 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.^ Did Peter 
 also come to Eome ? 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 ia the sixteenth cen- 
 tury roused half Europe against the court of Eome, 
 men gradually elevated the denial of Peter's resi- 
 dence at Eome into a kind of dogma. The Bishop 
 of Eome 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 Tubingen 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 
 
 lies, and as such the head of Christendom. What 
 more e£B.cacious way of refuting this reasoning than 
 by maintaining that Peter never set foot in Eome ? 
 For ourselves, "we may approach the question vith 
 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- 1 
 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 Eome, 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 CHURCH: 
 
 looked upon in the same sombre ligM as did all 
 other Jews. If there is any thing jnthg w orld vMch 
 Jesus_dK|._nqt in^titute^ 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 Eome 
 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 Eome 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 Eome 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 recoUect that 
 the persecution which Peter suffered at Jerusalem 
 at the hands of Herod Agrippa I. took place ia the 
 
PETER AND PAUL. 6o 
 
 very year in "which that monarch died, namely, in 
 44.^ It woiild 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 afS&rm that Peter had not yet arrived 
 in Eome when Paul was brought there, that is to 
 say, in the year 61. The Epistle of Paul to the 
 Eo'mans, 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 Eome, 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 Eome when Paul came 
 there. We may take it, then, as absolutely certain/ 
 that Pete r did not come to Eome before Paul, that is 
 to say, before the year 61, as nearly as we can fix it. 
 But did he come to Eome after Paul ? This is 
 
 1 Acts xii. Jos. Ant. xix. viii. 2. 
 
66 THE LEGEND OP 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 Eome, 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 Eome, of the fragment which is called the 
 Canon of Muratori, of Dionysius of Corinth, of Caius, 
 of TertulHan, leaves no room for doubt.^ Even if 
 
 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. Canon of 
 Muratori, 1. 36, 37. Clem. Eom. Ad. Cor. i. ch. 5. Dionysius 
 of Coriuth and Caius, priest of Eome, quoted by Eusebius, H. E. 
 ii. 25. Tertull. Prcesc. 36; Adv. Marc. iv. 5; Scorpiace, 15. 
 Luke xxii. 32, 33, compared with the passage ia the Canon of 
 Muratori previously quoted, and with John xiii. 36—38, furnishes 
 much matter for reflection. Conf. Macarius Magnes, bk. iv. § 4 
 (stiU unedited). Eev. xviii. 20 is also strongly on the side of 
 the text. 
 
PETER AND VAVU 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 Eome. I ndeed, it was only in 
 Eome that th e persecution of Nero was violent . The 
 martvrdoni of Peter at Jerusalem or at Antioch is 
 
 much less expli cable. 
 
 2. Our second argument is drawn from the first 
 Epistle attributed to Peter, v. 13. Babylon in 
 this passage is plainly Eome. 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 
 
 f2 
 
68 THE LEGEND OE THE ROMAN CHURCH: 
 
 ■wliat he knew, and -with what men at that time 
 helieved that they knew, of the life of Peter. If, 
 in such a frame of mind, he has dated the letter 
 from Eome, it means that, when it was written, the 
 received opinion was that Peter had lived at Eome. 
 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. Lipsius^ 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 Eome in order 
 that he may overcome Simon Paul at the very centre 
 
 1 Romische Petrussage, pp. 13 et seq., especially pp. 16, 18, 
 41, 42. Conf. Reeogn. i. 74, iii. 65. Apocryphal letter of Cle- 
 ment to James at tlie beginning of the Homilies, oh. 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 
 Eome 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 Eome, 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 Eome 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 tlie mystery wMch. 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 i s that 
 both disappeared in the great massacre of the Chris- 
 tians which was ordered by !N"ero. 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 Eome.^ It began 
 near the Porta Capena, in the part of the Circus 
 
 1 Tacitus, Ann. xv. 38—44, 52. Sueton. JSfero, 31, 38, 39 ; 
 Vesp. 8. Dio Cassius, Ixii, 16—18. Plin. Hist. Nat. xYii. 1 (1). 
 Euseb. Ghron. ad ann. 65. Orelli, Inaor. JSTo. 736, whicli appears 
 quite authentic. Sulpicius Severus (ii. 29) copies Tacitus almost 
 word for word. Orosius (vii. 7) for the inost part follows Sue- 
 tonius. 
 
PETER AND PATJL. 71 
 
 Maximus contiguous to the Palatine and the Coelian 
 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 Yelabrum, the Forum, the Carinae, 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. 
 Eome 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 LE6ENB OF THE ROMAN CHTTRCH : 
 
 from tlie flames. The imperial palaces of the Pala- 
 tine, the " domus transitoria" itself, with its depen- 
 dencies, all the surrounding quarter, were over- 
 whelmed. I^ero 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, iu the pathetic metre of the ancient elegy, the 
 ruin of Ilium. ^ 
 
 ^ The account of Tacitus {Ann. xv. 39) does not mention this 
 circumstance. Tacitus, it is true, speaks of a report that Nero, 
 durrag the fire, sang the ruin of Troy " ia his private theatre." 
 If this vas so. it could odIy be at A ntium, which would he tott 
 avkvard. It is plaia 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 N"ero composed and read in public the year after the 
 fire, and which could be understood in a double sense, like the 
 poem of Lucan, " Calacausvius Iliaeus,'' written about the same 
 time. Dio. Cass. Lcii. 29. Servius ad Virg. Georg. iii. 36. JEn. y. 
 370. Persius, i. 123. Stat. *S«7j;. ii. vii. 58— 61. Juvenal, viii. 221. 
 Petron. p. 105 (ed. Biicheler). 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- 
 
PETEE 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 
 fixe to buildiags 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 
 
 patricB ridnis is in Tacit. Ann. xv. 42.) This phrase heoame an 
 anecdote ; and as legend is usually horn of an apt word, a true 
 sentiment, changed into a reality by help of violence done to 
 time and space, the poem Troiaa 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 a"necdote to Eome, 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. 
 
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.^ 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.^ Men thought that his 
 object had been to prepare the site of this new 
 
 1 It is possible that these were malefactors, iacreasing 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 Eome 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 Eome, 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- 
 long ed to the ance stral JRoiflg,ji j ^rship, 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 Eoman 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 OP THE ROMAN CHURCH: 
 
 Evander, this, by Servius TuUius : tlie sacred en- 
 closure of Jupiter Stator, tlie palace of Numa : tliese 
 penates of the Eoman 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 
 Eome 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 Eomans, rendered it a plausible 
 idea that they had been the authors of a fire, one 
 eiFect 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. Eome 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,^ 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 Sibyllvia, 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 Eome, to wMch 
 in all probability tbe event of 64 will furnisb more 
 than one circumstance. The destruction of Eome 
 \ by fire was indeed a dream of botb 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.^ 
 
 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 
 imprisonment^ which was itself a severe punishment.^ 
 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.* The majority of 
 the accused appear to have been proselytes, who 
 observed the precepts and agreements of the treaty 
 
 1 Eev. xviii. 
 
 ^ txvvrjOpola-Orj, Clem. Eom. Ad Cor. i. 6. 
 
 ^ Shepherd of Hermas, i. vis. iii. 2. 
 
 * Multitudo ingens, Tacit. Ann. xv. 44. iro\v ttXtjOo^ eKXeKrZv, 
 Clem. Eom. Ad Our. i. 6. o;(Aos ttoAw, Eev. vii. 9, 14. 
 
PETER AND -PAUL. 79 
 
 of Jerusalem.^ 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 
 race. However convinced that the conflagration 
 was the work of Nero, many grave Eomans saw in 
 this cast of the police net a means of freeing the city 
 from a deadly pest. Tacitus, notwithst anding some 
 glea m of pity, is of this opinion. ^ 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.^ 
 
 The punishments were frightful. Such refine- 
 ments of cruelty had never before been seen. Almost 
 
 ^ Eev. xii. 17, ■which appears to be an allusion to the atro- 
 cities of the year 64. 
 
 2 Ann. XV. 44. ^ Nero, 16. 
 
80 THE LEGEND OF THE KOMAK 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,^ 
 with the addition of cruel scourgings.^ One of the 
 most hideous features of Eoman manners was to 
 make a festival of public executions, a spectacle of 
 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 objicituitur vel 
 vivi exuruntur : honestiores capite punimitui.'' Ulpian, Digest. 
 1. 6, pr., ad legem Jidiam peculatus (xlviii. 13). Conf. Oearpi.- 
 fo/xevot, Heb. X. 33; Jos. B.J. vii. iii. 1. Letter of the churclies 
 of Vienne and. Lyons in Euseb. H.E. t. 1. Mart. Polyc. 2, 3, 4, 
 11 — 13. TertuU. Apol. 12, 40. Lactant. De mortibus Persecut. 
 13, 21. Death in the circus was the punishment of criminal 
 slaves. Petron. pp. 145, 146 (ed. Biicheler). 
 
 2 Herm. Pastor, i. vis. iii. 2. Conf. the Acts of the Martyrs 
 of Lyons (Eus. ZT. X v. 1 , 3 6) and of Africa, § 1 8 (Euinart, p. 1 00), 
 
 5 Philo, In Flaccum, § 10. Jos. B.J. viii. iii. 1. Sueton. 
 Nero, 12. 
 
 ^ The amphitheatres of this age were of wood. Their cons truc- 
 tion in stone dates fr om the Fl avian Empernrs Sueton. Vesp. 9. 
 
PETEE AND PAUL. 8] 
 
 brought to Eome for the supply of the circus and 
 the amusement of the people.^' 
 
 To the cruelty of punishment, on this occasion 
 "was added derision. The victims were reserved for 
 a festival, to which, beyond doubt, an expiatory 
 character was given. The ludus matutinus, conse- 
 crated to the combats of wild animals,^ 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 f 
 others, clad in garments saturated with oil or pitch 
 or resiu, were fastened to gibbets and reserved to 
 illuminate the festival of the night. When the day 
 declined, these living flambeaux were lighted. IN'ero 
 lent for the show his magnificent gardens beyond the 
 
 ^ Martyrium S. Ignatii, 2, ew ripipiv rov Sijiiov. 
 
 ^ Seneca, Epist. 7. Sueton. Claud. 34. Martial, x. xxv. xiii. 
 xcv. Tertull. Apol. 15. Conf. Ovid, Metam. xi. 26. Yirgil 
 {redeunt spedacuJa mane). Orelli, Nos. 2553, 2554. Tlie mar- 
 tjTS of Carthage (§ 17) took their last meal at night. 
 
 ^ The reading aut flammandi atque gives room for doubt (vid. 
 Bernays, Ueher die Ghronih 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. 
 
82 THE LEGEin) OF THE ROMAN CHURCH ". 
 
 Tiber, on the site of what is now the Borgo, the Piazza 
 and Basilica of St. Peter.^ 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.^ 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 Eoman 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 "pr6 Noiron" of the middle ages. 
 
 2 Sueton. Clavd. 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, 
 Beschreibuhg der'Stadt Rom. ii. i. 39. The oheHsk was removed 
 by Sixtus V. It was formerly in the Sacristy of St. Peter's. 
 
 2 Senec. De Ira, iii. 18. 
 
 * Juvenal, Sat. i. 155, 156, viii. 233—235. Martial, Epl^. 
 X. XXV. 5. Conf. Seneca, De Ira, iii. 3. ]Srotice the uri of the 
 gladiators' engagement. Hor. Sat. ii. vii. 58. Petron. p. 149 
 (ed. Biicheler). Seneca, E;pist. 37. 
 
PETEE AND PAXIL. 83 
 
 penalty of arson : but it had never before been made 
 a metbod of artificial illumination. By the light 
 of these hideous torches, Nero, who had brought 
 night races into fashion,^ 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 
 
 ^ Sueton. Nero, 35. 
 
 ^ Tacit. Ann. xv. 44. Sueton. Nero, 16. Clem. Eom. Ad Cor. 
 1. 6. Tertull. Apol. 5 (he appeals to th.e official cominentarii) ; 
 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 
 
 g2 
 
84 THE LEGEND OT THE EOMAN CHURCH : 
 
 "Women, virgins, were involved in these horrible 
 games.^ 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,^ 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 
 
 Eev. 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 etseq.; Herm. Pastor, i. vis. iii. c. 2; Garm. Sibyll. It. 136, 
 V. 136 et seq., 385 et seq.; possibly in Matt. xxiv. 9 (dXlfis). 
 We shall shov presently that the Apocalypse directIy _aTi;i|^g f"t 
 of the persecution of !N"ero. The inscription relating to this per- 
 secution (OreUi, JSTo. 730) is a forgery. 
 
 ^ Ciem. Eom. Ad Cor. i. 6. Ala fiyXoi/ Sitox^deLcrai ywatxes 
 AavatSes Kal AipKai, atKUTfiara Seivci Kal dvotria 7rad6v<rai €7ri Tov 
 Trj's TTicTTews fH^aiov Spofwv KaTTjVTTjaav, kol 'i\a/3ov yepas yevvaiov 
 at dtrdeveis T§ (rw/iart. 
 
 2 Martial, S-pectac. xxi. 
 
PETER AND PAUL. 85 
 
 consecrated by sculptors and by poets.^ Sometimes 
 it was Hercules Furens, burning upon Mount (Eta, 
 and tearing from bis skin tbe sbirt of burning pitcb ; 
 sometimes, Orpbeus torn in pieces by a bear, Daeda- 
 lus falling from beaven and devoured by wild beasts, 
 Pasipbad suffering tbe embraces of tbe bull, Attys 
 mutilated ; ^ sometimes tbere were borrible masque- 
 rades, in wbicb tbe men were accoutred as priests of 
 Saturn, witb tbe red cloak upon their backs — tbe 
 women, as priestesses of Ceres, wearing fillets on 
 tbeir forebeads ; ® and again, dramatic pieces, in tbe 
 course of wbicb tbe bero was actually put to deatb, 
 as, for instance, Laureolus, or representations of 
 tragic actions, sucb as tbat of Mucius Scsevola.^ At 
 tbe conclusion. Mercury, witb a rod of iron reddened 
 
 ''■ Martial, Spedac. v. (conf. Sueton. Nero, 1 2 ; Apuleius, Me- 
 tam. i. 10), viii. (conf. Sueton. I.e.), xxi. Tertullian, Apol. 15 
 (conf. 9). Ad nationes, i. 10. The tunica molesta usually implied 
 the representation of Hercules upon Mount QEta (Juven. viii. 235; 
 Martial, x. xxv. 5). 
 
 2 Perhaps he was confounded with Adonis, kUled hy the wild 
 hoar. 
 
 2 Acts of the Martyrs of Africa, § 18. 
 
 * Martial, Epigr. viii. xxx., x. xxv. 
 
86 THE LEGEND OF THE ROMAN CHXTECH : 
 
 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 hy 
 the feet, killing with mallets those that still quivered.^ 
 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.^ It is 
 diflO-Cult 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 ia the endurance of 
 which they were exhibited,^ 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. Eom. Ad Cor. i. 6. Vid. the notes of Hefele. 
 
 5 Pausanias, x. xxxi. 9, 11. Museo Pio-Clem. iv. plate 36. 
 
 * Museo Pio-Clem. ii. 2. Guigniaut, Rel. de I'Ant. pi, ISTo. 606 a. 
 Conf. Bulletino dell. Inst, di corr. Arch. 1848, 119 — 123. 
 
 « Schol. on Euripides, Hecuba, 886. Conf Servius ad Yirg. 
 JEn. X. 497. 
 
PETER AND PATJl. 87 
 
 was exhibited as pursued by a satyr, and violated 
 by Neptune.^ 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. Eepresentations of hell were 
 the fashion. Some years earlier, certain Egyptians 
 and Nubians had been very successful in Eome in 
 giving exhibitions by night, in which were shown 
 in due order the horrors of the under- world, ^ 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 Birce 
 to the horns of an untamed bull, which is about to 
 drag her over the rocks and the briars of Cithseron.^ 
 
 1 Hygin. Fabulce, 169. Conf, for what follows, 179. 
 ^ Sueton. Cuius, 57. 
 
 3 Real Museo Borbonico, xiv. pi. iv. t. Guignaut, Eel. de I' Ant. 
 pi. 728, 728a. Gargiulo, i. E"os. 1—3, iii. No. 23. Conf. Me- 
 morie della R. Aecademia Ercolanese, iii. 386 et seq., iv. Pt. i., 
 vii. 1 et seq. Eaoul-Eochette, Choix de Feint, de Pompei, pi. 
 xxiii. 277 — 288. Ann. de Tlnstitut de eorr. Arch. xi. (1839), 
 
88 THE LEGEND OF THE ROMAN CHURCH: 
 
 This indifferent work of Ehodian sculpture, trans- 
 ported to Eome about the time of Augustus, was 
 the object of universal admiration.^ What finer 
 subject for that hideous kind of art, which the 
 crnelty 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,^ 
 this terrible scene was often represented in the 
 arena. Naked and bound by the hair^ to the horns 
 of a furious bull,* the miserable creatures glutted 
 
 287,292. 'S.BMg,Wandgemalde,'Eos.ll5\,\l52,l\^Z. Jahn, 
 ArdKSol. Zeitung, 1853, Nos. 36 et seq. 
 
 1 Pliny, xxxvi. t. (4). Vid. Brunn, quoted above, p. 129, 
 note 3. 
 
 2 " Videt, . . memorandi speetaculi scenam non tauro sed asino 
 dependentem Dircen aniculam." Apul. Metam. vi. 127 (ed. 
 Oudendorp, 435, 436). Conf. Luoian, Lucius, 23 (read ypavv 
 AipKTjv ovK eK Tavpov dAA' €^ ovov). Especially vid. Memorie 
 della R. Accademia Ercolanese, vii. plate in the first Memoir, 
 where the punishment seems to he represented as a spectacle 
 (observation of M. MinejTani). 
 
 ^ " Dircen ad taurum criiiibu.s religatam necant. " Hygin. 
 FabulcB, Feb. 8. . . 
 
 * Compare the punishment pi St. Blandina, exposed in a net 
 to a bull ; and that of St. Perpetua and St. Felicita, also exposed 
 
PETER AND PAUL. 89 
 
 the lustful gaze of a savage people. Some of th.e 
 Christian women thus immolated were feeble in 
 body : ^ 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 Eome, 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 Yatican 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. Eom. Ad Cor. i. 6. 
 
90 THE LEGEND 01" THE ROMAN CHXJRCH : 
 
 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. 
 
 TV. 
 
 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.^ Solid reasons lead us to believe that Paul 
 also suffered martyrdom at Eome.^ It is, then, 
 
 ^ Ann. XV. 44. Eead attentively Clem. Eom. Ad Cor. i. § 5, 6, 
 in the edition of Hilgenfeld. The ttoXv Tr\rj6o? IkA«ktwv, the 
 Danaids and the Dirces certainly suffered at Eome ; now these 
 martyrs are, as it were, mingled up and confounded with the 
 apostles Peter and Paul (a-vvrjOpoia-drj). 
 
 2 The words of Clement of Eome, /xapTvpija-as (ttI twv riyov- 
 fiiviav oiiTfO's ajnyAXayij tov K6crij,ov, do not necessarily imply a 
 violent death (conf. Acts xxiii. 11), but the whole of the passage, 
 especially eios Oavdro [y rjXdov], in part conjectural, does proha- 
 bly imply it, and the parallel with the /j,apTvpr)(rti.'s of Peter also 
 
PETER AND PAUL. 91 
 
 natural to refer his death, also to the episode of 
 July — August, 64.^ As to the manner in which 
 
 indicates it. Dionysius of Corinth, Cains, priest of Home, and 
 Tertullian (I.e. note 1), believe that Paul suifered martyrdom. 
 , In the same way, the author of the Epistle of Ignatius to the 
 Ephesians, § 1 2 (passage wanting in the Syriac). Conf. Commod. 
 Gar men, 821. 
 
 ^ The strongest evidence of this is found in Clem. Eom. 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 7roA.-i) TrXrjOoi IkAektwv, that of the Danaids and the Dirces, 
 by the expression toijtois rots avSpdcriv (rvvqOpoia-O-q — implying 
 a whole batch of irregular arrests — and, above all, by the common 
 cause to which all these deaths are attributed, namely, "jealousy.'' 
 'Sow it is clear that the ttoXv ttXiJ^os eKXiKrav, 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 Eome about the same time (Kara tov 
 avTov Kaipov) ; 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. Prmscr. 36 ; Adv. Marc. iv. 5 ; and Commod. 
 Carmen, 821, also associate the two apostles in their death. Conf. 
 Iren. Adv. Hcer. iii. i. 1, iii. 3. Euseb. H.E. ii. 22, 25, iii. 1. 
 Chron. 13thyearof JSTero: Lactant. De Mortilus 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.^ According to some ancient 
 
 monum. vet. Ecd. Gr. p. 532. Sulpic. Sever. Hist. Sacra, ii. 29. 
 Bede, Derat. temp. 303 (ed. Giles). All the Eoman tradition 
 (Caius, in Euseb. H. E. ii. 25). lAher Pontificalis, ed. Bianchiui, 
 articles Peter and Cornelius ; but note the contradictions. Acts 
 of Peter and Paul attributed to St. Linus, Bihl. Max. -patr. ii. 
 Pt. i. p. 69 0. 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) iu territorio triumphaU"), that is, precisely in the place 
 which was the scene of the atrocities of August, 64. (Vid. Plat- 
 ner and Bunsen, ii. L 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 estabhshed 
 itself at Eome, though not without dissent. (Council of Eome 
 under Gelasius, Labbe, Condi, 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. Jferonis 13) and Jerome (I.e.) 
 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. 1 3. 'La.xid, Anecd. Syr. i. 116. 
 1 John xxi. 18, 19 (conf. John xii. 32, 33, xiii. 36). Tertull. 
 Adv. Marc. iv. 5. Prcescr. 36. Scorpiaoe, 15. Euseb. H.K ii. 25. 
 Lactant. De Mortibus Persecut. 2. Orosius, vii. 7. Note that 
 Tacitus, Ann. xv. 44, counts erueihus affixi among those who 
 suffered. It is true that alterations proposed in the text of this 
 
PETEE AND PAUL. 93 
 
 texts, his wife died with him, and he saw her led 
 out to execution.^ 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.^ 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 
 
 passage (Bernays, 165, note 2) would strike out of the catalogue 
 tliose 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 (a-Tavpovi) among the punishments. 
 
 1 Clem. Alex. Strom, vii. 11. 
 
 ^ Acta Petri et PauK, c. 81 (conf. Pseudo-Linus, 69, 70). 
 Euseb. H. E. iii. 1 (after Origen). Euseb. Dem. JEv. iii. 5. Jerome, 
 De Viris ill. 1. 
 
 3 Gonsol. ad Mardam, 20 (written under Claudius). 
 
 * Eufin. transl. of Euseb. H.E. I.e. 
 
94 THE LEGEND OF THE ROMAN CHUECH : 
 
 the peculiarity of Peter's ptinishment : ^ " 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 (hones tior), 
 had his head cut off.^ It is possible also that he 
 suffered after a regular process of trial, ^ and was 
 not involyed in the summary condemnation of the 
 victims of Nero's festival. 
 
 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 Eome, 
 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 Yatican 
 Hill ; the other, that of St. Paul, on the way to 
 
 1 The girding of tlie loins Tvith 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. Prmscr. 36. Scorp. 15. Euseb. H.E. ii. 25. Lac- 
 tant. De Mortibus Persecut. 2. Orosius, vii. 7. Euthalius in 
 Zaccagni, 427, 522, 531—537. Conf Paul, Sentmt. xxix. 1. 
 
 ^ Clem. Eom. Ad Cor. L 5, jjuxprvp-qa-a^ kirl rlav ■^yovfj.evwv. 
 
PETEK ANB PAUL. 95 
 
 Ostia. They were called, in oratorical phrase, the 
 "trophies" of the apostles.^ They were probably 
 cellce or memories dedicated to the two Saints. Simi- 
 lar monuments existed and were publicly recognized 
 before the time of Constantine ;^ 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 
 Aquse Salvise which was, according to one tradition, 
 the centre of all recollections of Paul.^ At a later 
 period, these "trophies" became the tombs of the 
 apostles. About the middle of the' third century, 
 
 ^ Caius, quoted by Euseb. H. E. ii. 25. All tbat relates to tlie 
 construction of tbe memoricB of St. Peter at the Vatican by Anen- 
 cletus {Liber Pontificalis, art. Anendetus) is legendary. Vid. 
 Lipsius, Ghronol. der Rom. Bischofe, p. 269 et sec[., comparing 
 witb it the text of Bianchini 
 
 2 Euseb. Vita Const, ii. 40. Conf. De Eossi, Roma Sott. 209, 
 210. The publicity of the Christian cemeteries is a fact beyond 
 doubt. 
 
 3 Ada Petri et Pauli, 80 (text of the MSS. of Paris, Tischen- 
 dorf, p. 35 note). Nevertheless, the AquEe Sal viae 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, wMcli tiniversal veneration holds to be 
 tbose of tbe apostles, '^ actually make tbeir appear- 
 
 ^ Kalendarium liberianum, 3 Kal. Jim. (Ahh. der Kon. Sachs. 
 Ges. phil-hist. Class, i. 632). Inscription of Damasus, Gmter, 
 ii. 1163. Liber Pontificalis (text of Bianchini and Lipsius (arts. 
 Peter, Cornelius, Damasus, and all the articles from Linus to 
 Victor, except two. Tlie Liber Pontificalis contradicts itself. 
 ISTothing 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 Eandanini 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 (Kara tumbas) 
 Marchi, Monum. delle arti Cristiane primitive, 199 — 220), are 
 thus explained. Vid. Ldber Pontificalis, arts. Qornelius, Damor 
 sus, Adrian L, Nicholas L 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 Eossi, Roma Sott. i. 236 et seq., 240, 242. Gatal. 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.^ In the fourth century, those bodies 
 repose where the two "trophies" stood.^ Above 
 
 in Eoncalli. Vetustiora Lat. Saript. 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 QueUen der Rom. Petrussage, 99. Mabil- 
 lon, Liturgia Gallicana, 159. Conf. Gregory the Great, Epist. 
 iv. XXX. (Opera, ii. col. 710, ed. Benedict.). Acts of Mar Scher-- 
 hU, in Cureton, Ancient. Syr. Docum. 61 et seq. (trans.). 
 
 ^ Two are known to exist, at a distance of 200 or 300 metres, 
 one to the north, the other to the south of tha place {ad Gata- 
 cumbas), whence, according to the tradition, the bodies of Peter 
 and Paul were taken. De Eossi, Bull. 1867, pp. 3, 16. This 
 is a strong reason for believing that the spot called Kara Tv/x/3as, 
 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 Eossi, Roma Soft. "Vol. ii. passim. 
 
 2 Euseb. H.JE. ii. 25. l^ote that the meaning of KoiixrjTripiov 
 is tomb. Eusebius admits that by rpoTraia Caius means tombs. 
 The Eoman 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. 
 
 H 
 
98 THE LEGEND OF THE ROMAN CHUECH : 
 
 the tropHes are tlien raised two basilicas ; one of 
 wMch. lias 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. Liter 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 tinder 
 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. Euthahus in Zaccagni, 522, 523. 
 
 1 Conf. Kalmdarium Lib. I.e. 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 Tpoiraiov of Caius. It is at a comparatively modem 
 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 cdle 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 iN'ero, 
 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,^ and that the former place of the obe- 
 lisk, now marked by an inscription, ia 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. (0pp. iL col. 1273, ed. Benedict.). Acta Petri et 
 PauK, 80 (according to some MSS., Tischendorf, 35, note). Acta 
 SS. Junii, V. 43, 
 
 ^ Bosio, Roma Sott. 74 et seq. Lipsius, Rom. Pdrussage, 102 
 et seq. 
 
 2 The claims of S. Pietro in Montorio in regard to this matter 
 are unsupported by evidence. 
 
 H 2 
 

 100 THE LEGEND OF THE ROMAN OHTJECH. 
 
 apostle Peter, it not the less points out to our recol- 
 lection one of tlie 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 
 e qually by excess or absence of the breath of revo- 
 lution. 
 
LECTURE III. 
 
 KOME, THE CENTEE OF GEOWING 
 ECCLESIASTICAL AUTHOEITT. 
 
LECTUEE III. 
 
 EOME, THE CENTEE OF GROWING 
 ECCLESIASTICAL AUTHORITY. 
 
 I. 
 
 Almost all the nations designed to play the part 
 of ciyilizers on the great scale — as, for instance, 
 Judea, Greece, the Italy of the Eenaissance — exer- 
 cise their full influence on the world only after they 
 have fallen yictims 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 religioiis 
 
104 ROME, THE CENTRE OF 
 
 questions strive for solution, is almost always poli- 
 tically weak. Every country wHch dreams of a 
 kingdom of God, wMch. lives for general ideas, 
 wMch 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. Tor 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 AUTHOEITY. 105 
 
 to haye taken the form in wHcli 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,"^ 
 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 Achsemenidse 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 
 
 ^ Exod. xix. 5, 6. 
 
106 ROME, THE CENTRE OP 
 
 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 Seleucidse. Under 
 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 
 Seleucidse, 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- 
 
GEO WING 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 
 saouia. 
 
 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. 
 
108 EOMB, THE CENTRE OE 
 
 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. Eoyalty, 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 Eoman 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 Eome to assimilate 
 to herself the peoples which phe annexed, one after 
 
GEOWU^G ECCLESIASTICAL AUTHORITr. 109 
 
 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. TJnder 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 Eome 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 
 gentiine patriotism and piety. The administrative 
 habits of the Eomans, even on their most reasonable 
 
110 EOME, THE CENTRE OF 
 
 side, were hateful to the Jews. Generally speaking, 
 the Eomans 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 excludiQg 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 AUTHOEITT. Ill 
 
 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 
 
112 
 
 ROME, THE CENTRE OF 
 
 very moment when lie 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 
 
 saye. 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. 
 
 Eevolution and Messianism destroyed the national 
 
 existence of the Jewish people ; but Eevolution 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 Eome was complete. A captain 
 
 of our race, of our blood, a man like ourselves,^ at 
 
 ^ The Flavii liad 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 
 
114 
 
 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 Eoman 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 Eome, in exchange for their independence, 
 made to the nations whom she conquered. Every 
 victory of Eome was a victory of reason. She offered 
 \to the world a principle, preferable in many respects 
 jto that of the Jews — I me an the principle of the 
 secular state, resting upon a purely civil co nception 
 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 
 Eome rendered his victory unfruitful. It did not 
 
GROWING ECCLESIASTICAL ATJTHOKITY. 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/ 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 Eomans 
 
 ^ M. Jacob Bernays ( Ueber die Ghronilt 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 Juhanus, one of the 
 officers of the Council of "War, wrote under the title De Judads 
 (Minutius Felix, Odav. 33. THlemont, 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 
 
116 ROME, THE CENTRE OP 
 
 thougM 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 remai ned. 
 Christianity would certainly have been arrested in 
 its dey elopment. 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.! ^ centre of infallible authority, a 
 patriarchate, residing in a kind of College of Car- 
 
 ^ See the letters at the head of the Pseudo-Clementine 
 Homilies. 
 
GEO WING 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,^ 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 imposr 
 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 
 
 ^ 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 frora Jews of the 
 whole world. Beggars on their hehaK go about all the East, and 
 even the rich Israehtes of Europe conceive themselves obUged to 
 assist their needs. On the other side, the decisions of the Great 
 Eabbi 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. 
 
118 
 
 EOME, THE CENTEE OE 
 
 existence of a new being. The motlier 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 :^ 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 wUl 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. 
 
 ^ " Ecclesia Dei jam per totum orbem uberrime germinante, 
 hoc (templum) tanquam effoetum ac vacuum nuUique usui bono 
 commodum arbitrio Dei auferendum fuit.'' Orosius, vii. 9. 
 
GEO WING ECCLESIASTICAL AUTHORITY. 119 
 
 These kinsmen of Jesus were pious people, quiet, 
 mild, modest, labouring with, their hands,^ faithful 
 to the severest principles of Jesus in regard to 
 poverty,^ but at the same time yery 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 Secnroa-wqi. Prom 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. 
 
 ^ Gospel of the Hebrews, ed. Hilgenfeld, 16, 17, 25. Reeognit. 
 iL 29. 
 
 ^ Of this St. James furnished the ideal. See the Epistle 
 attributed to him. 
 
120 EOME, 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 Ah 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 kinsmon 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 I^azarenes 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." ^ 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 Kome 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 Eome becomes more and more the 
 
 1 Luke xi. 28. 
 
122 ROME, THE CENTEE OP 
 
 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 adyan- 
 tage at Eome. 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; Eome is about, to take up the 
 part of James. We are to have the Pope, of Eome ; 
 without Titus we should have had the Pope of 
 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 Eome 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 Eoman 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 :^ 
 
 ^ St. Clement of Some : loith an Appendix containing the 
 newly-recovered portions ; witli Introductions, Notes and Translar 
 
GROWING ECCLESIASTICAL AXTTHOEITY. 123 
 
 I mean Clement of Eome. In tlie talf shadow in 
 which he remaius, enveloped and as it were lost in 
 the luminous dvist 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 
 Eome, of one of those Palestinian families which 
 for one or more generations had inhabited the capi- 
 tal of the world.^ His knowledge of cosmography ^ 
 
 tions : London, 1877. The system of tlie scliool of Tiibingen 
 in regard to Clement is deeply impressed ■with a character of 
 subtlety and exaggeration. 
 
 ^ Ifote especially, in his letter, the expression, o Trarij/j -qfiSv 
 'IaK0)/3 (ch. 4), and what he says of the temple of Jerusalem 
 (ch. 40, 41). 
 
 ^ Ch. 40, 41. The author of the latter speaks of the temple 
 as standing, although he knew it only from hooks. 
 
 ' See especially ch. 20, and in particular the passage upon 
 " the worlds lyiug behind the ocean." Note the comparison of 
 the Phoenix, ch. 29. 
 
124 ROME, THE CENTRE OF 
 
 and secular history^ 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.^ 
 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. 
 
 ? Irenseus, I. e. Irenaeus requires tlie reality of these relations 
 to support Lis thesis as to the apostolical tradition. Tertull. 
 PrcBser. 32. Origen, De Prine. ii. 6. Eufinus, De adult, lihr. 
 Orig. p. 50 (Delarue, Vol. iv. app.), 
 
 ^ Pseudo-Hermas, vis. ii. 4. 
 
GROWING ECCLESIASTICAL ATJTHOEITY. 125 
 
 legend makes more lofty still, was, after that of 
 Peter, the holiest figure of primitive Christian Eome. 
 Succeeding ages looked upon his venerable face as 
 that of a mild and grave legislator, a perpetual 
 homily of submission and respect. 
 
 Abeady 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 believed^ — had 
 been accorded to Peter by the other disciples. Thus 
 a bond which gradually grew closer was established 
 between Peter and Eome. Grave dissensions tore ia 
 pieces the Church of Corinth.^ The Eoman 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 OP 
 
 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 fhepresht/teri, 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 illimiinated was to cast 
 it into th^ shade and to assume its office : some pres- 
 hyteri were actually deprived.^ 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 Clem. Eom. Ad Gor. i. c. 44. 
 
GROWING ECCIiESIASTICAL AIITHOEITY. 127 
 
 exalted chastity to th.e point of depreciating mar- 
 riage.^ It was, as we see, the heresy of iadividual 
 mysticism, maintaining the rights of the spirit against 
 authority, and, on the strength of direct relations 
 with the Deity, clairmng superiority over common 
 mortals and the ordinary clergy. 
 
 The Eoman 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.^ Its letter 
 to the Corinthians is the first manifesto of the prin- 
 ciple of authority made within the Christian Church.^ 
 
 1 Clem. Eom. Ad Cor. i. ch. 38, 48. Conf. ch. 1, 21. 
 
 5 Clem. Eom. Ad Cor. i. ch. 38, 48. 
 
 ^ 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. Hcer. iii. iii. 3). Clem. Alex. (Strom, i. 7, iv. 17 — 19, 
 V. 12, vi. 8). Origen (De Princ. ii. 6. Seleeta in Ezech. viii. 3. 
 0pp. Vol. iii. 422. In Johann. i. 28. 0pp. Vol. vi. 36, iv. 153). 
 Euseb. (H.K iii. xvi. xxxviii. 1, vi. xiii. 6). Down to a recent 
 date, the work was known only by the celebrated Codex Alexan- 
 drinus va. the British Museum. In this copy there were two 
 pages wanting. In 1879, PhUotheus Bryennius, Metropolitan 
 of Serrse, pubhshed 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 
 
128 ROME, THE CENTRE OP 
 
 Some years ago, a great outcry was raised against 
 a Frencli Archbisliop, tlieii a senator, wh.0 said from 
 tlie tribune, " My clergy is my regiment." Clement 
 had said the same tliiiig long before. Order and 
 obedience — this is tbe supreme law of tbe family and 
 of tbe cburcb. "Let us consider tbe soldiers wbo 
 serve imder our sovereigns,^ witb wbat order, wbat 
 punctuality, wbat submission, tbey execute tbe com- 
 
 Harnack (Leipzig, 1876), of Lightfoot (London, 1877). Li 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 ia the same volumes, 
 and complete only in the second, is not by Clement. lienseus 
 (I.e.); Clem. Alex. (Strom, v. 12), Origen, speak of only one 
 letter of Clement's to the Coriathians. Conf. Euseb. H. E. 
 iii. 38. Jerome, De Vir. ill. 16. Photius, cxii. cxiii. The so- 
 caUed 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. Hcer. xxii. 6, xxx. 15. HUgenfeld, 
 N.T. extra Can. Bee. i. 61, 74—76. Conf. Zeitsch. fur Kir- 
 chengesehichte, i. 272 et seq., 329 et seq. 
 
 ^ Ch. 37. It has been proposed to read Tofs rj-yoviievoK ovriov.. 
 But the two MSS. have rj/jilov. Besides, the passage in ch. 61, 
 wanting in the Cod. Alex., in agreement with the Syriac, tow 
 re apxova-i Kal riyovfievoii rjimv, fuUy justifies the reading of ch. 
 37. Vid. Journal des Savants, Jan. 1877, pp. 8, 9. 
 
GEO WING ECCLESIASTICAL AUTHORITY. 129 
 
 mands given to them. All are not prefects, or tri- 
 bunes, or centurions, but eacb in Ms 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 preshy- 
 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 preshyteri was an 
 
130 ROME, THE CENTEE OF 
 
 accomplislied fact before tlie end of the first. In the 
 Epistle of Clement of Eome, it is not the episcopate, 
 but the presbyteral body, which is in question,^ We 
 find no trace as yet of a preshyteros 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 thinkiag 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 
 
 ^ CL 39. The words Trpca-fivTepoi, lirto-Koirot (ch. 43, 44) are 
 synonymous in our Epistle, as in Phil. i. 1 ; Acts xx. 17 et seq., 
 28. The words rjyovfievoi, Trporjyovfj,evoi have the same meaning. 
 Conf. Heh. xiii. 7, 17, 24. 
 
 2 Ch. 44. 
 
GROWING ECCLESIASTICAL AUTHORITY. 131 
 
 people ? the clergy ? the inspired soul ?" The ques- 
 tion had been already asked ia Paul's time, and 
 he had solved the problem in the only true way, 
 namely, by mutual charity. Our Epistle solves it U^ 
 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 Eome, for it was v 
 the Eoman Church that first iormulated 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 stiU. 
 understood it to be,^ 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 Matt, xviii. 20. 2 2 Cor. i. 21. 
 
 K 2 
 
132 
 
 ROME, THE CENTRE OF 
 
 lY. 
 
 I look upon tlie Gospel of Luke as having been 
 written at Eome at no great distance from the social 
 circle of wHch. 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 Kome.^ Borne had two churches, 
 one descending from Peter, the other from Paul. To 
 
 ■ .i.^—— y Ill—I — ^— — ^-^ ^jj^^.^^^^^ ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ M ■li mn I ■ — .^.-..^.^Mj^ 
 
 the numerous converts who came to Jesus, these by 
 the channel of the school of Peter, those by the 
 
 ^ Legend makes him sometimes the disciple of Peter, some- 
 times of Paul. 
 
 ^ Note in Luke the Latin words, rpla-reyoi, a-ovSdpia, trijii- 
 KivBia. 
 
GROWING ECCLESIASTICAL AIJTHOEITY. 133 
 
 cliamiel of tlie scliool of Paul, and wko were equally 
 tempted to cry, " What, are there then two Christs ?" 
 it was necessary to be able to say, " IN'o ; 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.^ 
 Accordiag 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. Priends and 
 enemies ahke 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 Eome, 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,^ 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.^ 
 And the true Church was that of Jerusalem, with 
 James, the brother of the Lord, at its head. "No 
 
 1 Vid. Lipsius, Romische Petrussage, already quoted. 
 
 2 Yid. Homilies, ii. 17, 22 etseq., xri. 15, 16, xvii. 17, 18, 19 
 (conf. Gal. ii. 11). It is beyond doubt, whatever the critics of 
 the Tubingen school may say, that Simon of Gitton was a real 
 person, and that he often figures on his own accoimt in the 
 Pseudo-Clementine romance, as we have it. But the passages 
 above quoted cannot refer exclusively to him. 
 
GROWING ECCLESIASTICAL AITTHORITT. 135 
 
 apostlesMp was wortli anything unless it could sh.o-w 
 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.^ 
 With what force, then, did Peter lay bare his im- 
 postures, his lying stories of personal rcYclations, 
 his ascent iato the third heaven,^ 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 F 
 At Antioch, above all, the triximph of Peter was 
 complete. Simon had succeeded in turning away 
 the people of that city from the truth. By a series 
 of clever manoeuvres, 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 etseq. EpipL Har. xxx. 16, seems to imply 
 Ebionite writings in -whicli Paul was referred to by name. 
 
 ^ Recogn. ii. 65. Conf. 2 Cor. xi. 14 with Recogn. ii. 18 ; the 
 a-Kevos iKXoyrjs of Recogn. iii. 49 with Acts ix. 15, &c. iJote 
 also Ada Petri et Pauli, ch. 63 — 66. 
 
 ^ 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."^ Naturally, all Antioch 
 returns to Peter, and curses his rival. 
 
 These eccentricities of ignorant sectaries would 
 have passed away without result anywhere but at 
 Eome ; but ia 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 iateresting 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 ia 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.^ Little by little, the force of circum- 
 stances made itself felt : all sensible men saw that 
 
 ^ Homilies, xx. 12 — 23. ^ Cvntestatio Jae. 5. 
 
GROWING ECCLESIASTICAL AUTHORITY. 137 
 
 the only salvation for the work of Jesus lay in 
 completely reconciling the two chiefs of Christian 
 preachiag. Even so late as the fifth century, Paul 
 stiU had implacable enemies in. the Nazarenes ; 
 and iu 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, f uUy recognized the right of others 
 to caU 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.^ 
 
 It is difiB.cult 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 
 
 ^ Epiph. Hcer. xxx. 16. 
 
138 EOME, THE CENTRE OE 
 
 of Christians repudiated Paul. But concessions are 
 usually made by tlie 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 ia Syria, the Jewish Christians were, as 
 it were, drowned in the flood of new converts. The 
 Paulitie 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 origia admired, imitated, made 
 their own. Before long it came to this, that so far 
 as the most eminent personages of the Chiirch of 
 Eome were concerned, no distinction could be made. 
 The mild and conciliatory spirit which had once 
 been represented by Clement of Eome and St. Luke, 
 prevailed. The treaty of peace was sealed. It was 
 agreed, ia conformity with the system of the author 
 
GROWING ECCLESIASTICAL AUTHORITY. 139 
 
 of tte Acts,^ that Peter had converted tlie first fruits 
 of th.e Gentiles, and had taken the lead in freeing 
 them from the yoke of the Law.^ It was admitted 
 that Peter and Paul had been the two chiefs, the two 
 founders of the Church of Borne. 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 
 Eome they had lived Kke two brothers : the Church 
 of Eome had been their common work.^ The supre- 
 macy of that Church was ia this way established for 
 ages to come.* 
 
 Prom the reconciliation of parties and the lulling 
 to rest of primitive dissensions, there resulted a grand 
 unity — the Catholic Churchy the Church at once of 
 Peter and of Paul, ignorant of the rivalries which 
 had marked the first centiiry of Christianity. The 
 churches of Paul had manifested most of the spirit 
 
 ^ Acts X. XV. 7. ^ Acts XT. 7 et seq. 
 
 3 Acta Petri et PauK, 5, 23, 26, 60, 72. Conf. 2 Peter ii. 9. 
 
 ^ Irenseus, Adv. Ear. iii. iii. 2. 
 
140 HOME, THE CENTRE OF 
 
 of conciliation, and it was they who triumplied. 
 The obstinate Ebionites remained in Judaism, and 
 shared its immobility. Eome 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 d, priori. 
 It was maintained that Christ had announced the 
 martyrdom of Peter, as he had predicted the death 
 of the sons of Zebedee,^ 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 aU 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; Markx. 38, 39. 
 
GROWING ECCLESIASTICAL AUTHORITY. 141 
 
 which, were beKeyed to have heen sanctified, by this 
 bloody drama were early fixed upon, and consecrated 
 by memorice. In cases of this kind, what the people 
 wishes always prevails in tbe end. Legend retro- 
 spectively makes history what it ought to have been, 
 but what it never really is. Only recently, thiere 
 was no place of popular resort in Italy where the 
 portraits of Yictor Emmanuel and Pius IX, were 
 not to be seen side by sidej and the general belief 
 would have it tbat these two men — ^th.e representa- 
 tive of the priaciples wbose reconciLiation an almost 
 universal feeling thinks necessary to Italy — were at 
 the bottom on very good terms. If ia our age sucb 
 views were allowed to impress themselves upon 
 history, we should read some day, ia documents 
 making a serious claim, upon our belief, that Yictor 
 Emmanuel, Pius IX. — and Garibaldi would pro- 
 bably make tbe third — saw one another secretly, 
 understood one another, loved one another. The 
 association of Yoltaire with Eousseau 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 EOMB, THE CENTRE OF 
 
 of fhe Dominicans and tlie Franciscans, that the 
 foimders 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.^ 
 
 In all that concerns Peter and Paul, the work of 
 legend was rich and rapid. Eome, with aU its 
 suburbs — and especially the road to Ostia — was fuU 
 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 Aquse Salvise, PlautiUa 
 sending the kerchief with which her hair was tied 
 to biad the eyes of Paul — aU 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 
 
 ^ Dante, Farad, xi. 28 et seq. Wadding, Ann. i. 293 et seq., 
 iii. 380 et seq. Ada SS. Maii, ii. 827 et seq. Aug. i. 442, 484 
 et seq., 960, 976. Oct. ii. 869 et seq., 876 et seq. 
 
GEOWING ECCLESIASTICAL AUTHORITY. 143 
 
 exhausted: the serenity of the author of the Acta 
 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) : theEoman 
 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 Eome, or, 
 if you have already been there, will return once 
 more. Well, if you retaiu any recollection of these 
 Lectures, go, in memory of me, to the Aquae Salvise, 
 alle Tre Fontane, beyond St. Paul without the Walls. 
 It is one of the most beautiful spots in the Eoman 
 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. Pever is in 
 the air we breathe, the humidity of the grave. There 
 
144 GROWING ECCLESIASTICAL AUTHORITY. 
 
 the monks of La Trappe have estabKshed 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 hstened 
 so courteously and with so kind an attention. 
 
LECTURE IV. 
 
 EOME, THE CAPITAL OF CATHOLICISM. 
 
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 
 aU others. To have succeeded in establishing this 
 belief was the masterpiece, of that cleverness which 
 characterized the Church of Eome. By the time 
 
 L 2 
 
148 ROME, THE CAPITAL OF 
 
 of Antoninus Pius, almost everybody had come to 
 believe tbat Peter and Paul had, in perfect agree- 
 ment, founded Christianity at Rome, and had sealed 
 ^the work with their blood. The ecclesiastical destiny 
 of Eome was thenceforth fixed. Whei 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 ! 
 
 Eome, under Antoninus Pius and Marcus Aure- 
 lius, was at the epoch of her highest greatness •} 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 Eossi, Piante ieonografiche e prospettiche di Roma 
 (Eome, 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 mimerous than it had ever been. The insinu- 
 ating gr<Bculus, 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 Eomewas 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 Eome : 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. ISo Gnostic school had its origin in Eome, 
 but almost all came thither to fail. Valentinus was 
 the first who tried the adventure. 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 innoyator from the Christian 
 pulpit. From that time forward the Eoman Church 
 gave tokens of the purely practical tendency which 
 was ever afterwards to distinguish her, and showed 
 herseK ready to sacrifice, without regret, knowledge 
 and ability to edification. 
 
 The centre of a future Catholic orthodoxy was 
 plainly here. Pius, who succeeded Hygiaus, showed 
 the same firmness in defending the purity of the 
 faith. Cerdo, Marcion, Valentinus, MarcelHnus, are 
 removed from the Church by the sentence of Pius. 
 In the reign of Antoninus, the germ of the Papacy 
 alread y exists ia a y^ry dftfim' te form. The Church 
 of Eome 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 Eome. 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 abeady 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 Kome. Every ecclesia sup- 
 poses a little hierarchy, a committee, as we say now, 
 a president, assessors, and a small staff of servants. 
 Democratic cluhs 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 subordiuate 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 
 Chnxch woidd no douht have failed to fulfil its 
 destiay. If men had continued to look upon eccle- 
 siastical powers as emanating from the Church itself/ 
 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 wiU 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 
 
 ^ 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 maimer as to leave neither the members nor even 
 the elders any deliberative voice, any influence, any 
 control of funds, and to enable the President to say, 
 "I alone am the club." The preslyteri (elders) or 
 episcopi (superintending officers) very quickly became 
 the only representatives of the Church, while, almost 
 immediately afterwards, another still more important 
 revolution was effected. Among the preslyteri 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 preshyteros 
 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.^ 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 liae, became a seat of honour, the token 
 of primacy.^ Each church has thenceforward only 
 
 ^ Letter of Irenseus to Victor, in Euseb. H.E. v. xxiv. 17. 
 2 Ep. Petri ad .Tac. 1. Ep. Clem, ad Jac. 2, 3, 6, 12, 16, 
 17, 19. Ignat. ad PhUad. 3. 
 
154 ROME, THE CAPITAL OF 
 
 one cMef preshyteros, who, to the exclusion of the 
 rest, takes the name of episcopos}- By the side of 
 this bishop we see deacons, widows, a council of 
 presbyters i^ 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.^ The bishops of the different churches 
 will afterwards enter iato communication with one 
 another, and will shape the universal Church iato a 
 species of oligarchy, which wiU hold meeting's, will 
 censure its own members, will decide questions of 
 
 ^ Conf. 1 Tim, iii. 1 et seq., v. 17 — 19, and especially Tit. i. 
 5, 6, 7. Conf. Phil. i. 1. In Clement of Eome (ch. 42) we 
 have only priests and deacons. 
 
 ^ TLoXvKafyiro'S Koi ol dvv avri} Tp£(r/3vTipoi. Suhscription of 
 the Ep. of Polycarp. 
 
 ^ II/30crTaT?;s . . . iF/jO(^:^Tiys, 6i,a<Tdp)(rjS, ^waywyevs Kal Travra 
 judvos avTos (Sv. Lucian, Peregr. 11. 
 
 * cTTiOecTK Tiav -f^eiplav, which has nothing to do with x^ipoTovla,. 
 
 ^ 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 preshyteri. 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 haK of the second century, made his toux 
 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.^ 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.^ 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 instrimient in the hands 
 of those who direct it; and these directors derive 
 their power, not from the community, but from a 
 
 3 la Euseb. H.E. iv. xxii. 1—3. 
 
 HpunoKaOe^plrai (Hermas, Shepherd, vis. iii. 9). IrenEeus 
 (in Euseb. H.E. v. xxiv. 14) stUls calls the bishops of Eome 
 presbyteri {pi irpea-^vrepoi, ot Trpoa-Tavres Trj^ eKKA-jjcrias). 
 
156 EOME, THE CAPITAL OF 
 
 spiritual heredity, ^ a succession claiming to go back 
 to the apostles ki 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 origiaally 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 ia the approaohiag 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 iato anarchy. 
 Freedom of prophecy, charismata, speakiag 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- 
 
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.^ 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 aU 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. 
 
158 ROME, THE CAPITAL OF 
 
 been up to that time eminently creative. It was 
 plain that ecclesiastical forms were ahout 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 seK- 
 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 OP 
 
 apostles and their immediate delegates had undis- 
 puted power over tlie Church.. iN'ow, the episcopate 
 was held to be the heir of apostolic powers.^ 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 aU 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 sufr 
 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, ^ that is to say, 
 the secret employment of electoral manoeuvres, ex-. 
 
 » Clem. Eom. Ep. i. c. 42, 44. 
 
 ^ Clem. Alex. Quis dives sdlvetur, 42. 
 
CATHOLICISM. 161 
 
 disable 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 diviae right which was supposed to belong to the 
 apostles and their immediate disciples,^ the elders 
 chose their president from among themselves, and 
 offered him to the acclamations of the people.^ 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 coromunity.* The 
 election of deacons was in like manner a double 
 
 1 Tit. i. 5j 1 Tim, v. 22. Clem. Alex. Quis dives salve- 
 tur, 42. 
 
 ^ Clem. Eom. Ep. i. ch. 44. 
 
 ^ XiipoTovia. In Acts xiv. 23, and 2 Cor. viii. 19, as indeed 
 in many passages of Greek classical authors, xetpoToveiv has, by- 
 extension, the sense of " to choose," -without implying the actual 
 assemblage and sho-w of hands. Conf. Const Apost. vii. 31. 
 
 * Matt, xviii. 17—20. 
 
162 ROME, THE CAPITAL OP 
 
 process. The nomination was made by the bishop, 
 but the approbation of the community was necessary 
 to the validity of the choice.^ 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 famish 
 arguments of a still more decisive kind, three short 
 letters, supposed to be written by Paul to his disci- 
 
 ^ Const. A^ost. iii. 15, vii. 31. 
 
CATHOLICISM, 163 
 
 pies Timotliy 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,^ and was 
 unacquaiated with their details. As yery 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 Eome,^ 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.^ He must therefore be blameless 
 
 ^ I have shown this in my St. Paul, Introd. pp. xxiii — lii. 
 ^ Vid. St. Paul, Introd. pp. 11, lii. 
 
 * "In ordinatione ecolesiasticse disciplinse sanctificatse sunt," 
 Canon of Muratori, L 61, 62. 
 
 * 1 Tim. iii. ; Tit. i. The bishop is called 6tov oiKov6j/,os, 
 Tit. i. 7. 
 
 » 1 Tim. iv. 12; Tit. ii. 7, 8. 
 
 M 2 
 
164 ROME, THE CAPITAL OF 
 
 in the eyes both, of tlie 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 Eome, the religion of 
 Jesus thus acquired a certain solidity and consis- 
 tency. The great danger of Gnosticism, which 
 threatened to divide Christendom iato innumerable 
 sects, was averted. The phrase *' Catholic Church"^ 
 breaks upon us from all sides at once, as the name 
 of the great communion which is destined thence- 
 
 •^ €KKXr](r(a KaOoXiK-j. Letter of the Church of Smyrna on 
 the martyrdom of Polycarp, title, § 8, 16. Celsus, in Origen, 
 V. 59, rj fieydX.r] kKKX-qcria. Conf. Canon of Muratori, 1. 55, 57, 
 61, 62, 66, 69. 
 
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 dL5erent Gnostic schools, 
 are more and more repelled from the bosom of the 
 general Church. There is, then, something which 
 is neither Montanism, nor Marcionism, noy 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. Tlie 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,^ Quod 
 semper quod uhique 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, ia so imperious a way, drew out this method 
 of refutation, himself died a heretic. 
 
 1 Iren. iii. iv. 1. Tertull. Prascr. S6. 
 
CATHOLICISM. 167 
 
 Correspondence between churches soon became 
 customary.^ 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 wUl 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.^ The Eoman 
 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, 
 
 ^ We may recal the discussion on the subject of Montanism, 
 the observance of Easter, &c. Above all, see Euseb. H.E. v. 25. 
 
 ^ Justin. Apol. i. 67. 
 
168 ROME, THE CAPITAL OF 
 
 witli an episcopos; tlie small town remains in eccle- 
 siastical dependence upon the great one.^ 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 ■ 
 dioc ese^ was thus the original unit of the Christian 
 organization. As to the ecclesiastical province, it 
 answered in general to the Eoman province ; the 
 divisions set up by the worship of Eome and of 
 Augustus, were here the secret law which deter- 
 mined all. The towns which had a flamen, or 
 arcJdereus, are those which at a later time had an 
 archbishop ; the flamen cwitatts, 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 Jlamen, in a word, occupied in 
 the city the same rank as the bishop afterwards did 
 
 ^ Council of Ancyra (315). 
 
 ^ Tlie word TrapoiKia 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 j xxiii. 2; vi. xi. 1. 
 
 ^ In the Acts of the Martyrs, the flamen is often the persecutor. 
 
CATHOLICISM. 169 
 
 in the diocese.^ TLus 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 emtates, 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 Eoman 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 AureUus, the episcopate is com- 
 pletely ripe : the Papacy exists in germ. Ecume- 
 nical CouncUs were not yet possible; only the 
 
 1 Eenier and Allmer, Revive Epigr. No, 4, p. 62. 
 
170 ROME, THE CAPITAL OP 
 
 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,^ 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 very command- 
 ment of God. Let no one. do anything ia 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. 
 
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 agapd ; 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."^ "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- 
 
 ^ 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.i It was thus that, b y pushing to an ex- 
 treme the principles of Paul, men arrived at idea ft- 
 which would have revolted Paul. Would he, who 
 "was unwilling to list^ for a moment to salvation 
 by works, ever have admitted that a man could be 
 saved by simple submission to his superiors ? 
 
 II. 
 
 Eome 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.^ 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, IZ; ad Trail. 2, 3, 12 j ad Philad. 1—4, 7, 8; ad 
 Bniyrn. 8, 9 ; ad Polyc. 6. 
 
 2 Iren. iii. iii. Tertull. Pnesar. 21, 36. Cyprian, Ep. 52, 55 
 (eoclesiam principalenj unde unitas sacerdotum exorta est), 67, 
 71, 75 (Fixmilian). 
 
CATHOLICISM. 173 
 
 science came to Eome 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 Eome had succeeded in giving 
 itself the name of the Church of Paul also. A new 
 and equally mythical duality replaced that of Eomu- 
 lus and Eemus. The Bishop of Eome became the 
 Bishop of bishops, he who admonished all others. 
 Eome proclaims hef right^-a dangerous right — of 
 excommunicatiag 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 Eome was of one mind with them.^ From 
 that time forth, the Church of Eome put herself 
 above history. At the end of the second century 
 we can abeady 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- 
 tpri formed a part, and which was produced at Eome 
 about the year 180 A.D., shows us Eome already- 
 defining the canon of Scripture, alleging the martyr- 
 dom of Peter as the foundation of Catholicity, repu- 
 diating Montanism and Gnosticism alike. Irenseus 
 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."^ 
 
 A material cause greatly contributed to the pre- 
 emiaence which all the churches recognized as 
 belonging to the Church of Eome. 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 Eome.^ There, in some sort, was the 
 
 ^ Irenseus, iii. iii 2. 
 
 * Dionys. of Corinth, in Euseb. H.E. br. 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 
 Eome, 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 speciJation, Eome 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 
 coimcils of the Church of Eome. The vein of apo- 
 cryphal literature was constantly worked ; writ- 
 ings published under the guarantee of Eome, 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 Eome only 
 became more marked in the third century. The 
 
176 ROME, THE CAPITAL OF 
 
 Bishops of Eome stowed a rare ability, in avoiding 
 theological questions, wliile they kept themselves to 
 the front in all matters of organization and adminis- 
 tration. The tradition of the Eoman Church passes 
 for the most ancient of all.^ Cornelius takes the first 
 place in the affair of Novatianism : we see him, in 
 especial, depriving Italian bishops and nominating 
 their successors. ^ Eome was also the central autho- 
 rity of the African churches.^ 
 
 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 Msan, 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 
 
 ^ euf a/*evos t^v dp)(a,iOTdTr]v 'Pu>/ji,aC<ov iKKXi](Tiav tSeiv. On- 
 gen, in Euseb. H.K vi. xiv. 10. 
 
 * Letter of Cornelius, in Euseb. H.E. vi. xliii. 8, 10. 
 
 3 TerfculL Prcescr. 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 Eesurrection. 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 Eesurrection of Jesus, which in 
 any case my^t 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 Eome 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 EOME, 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 Eome 
 which Polycarp undertook about the year 154, in 
 the papacy of Anicetus, The meeting between Poly- 
 carp and Anicetus was rery 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 Eome. 
 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 Eome, to 
 pronounce for him, and in his presence, the words 
 of eueharistic consecration.^ These zealous men 
 
 ^ Irenaeus, letter to Victor, loc. cit. The verb ■irapex'^pw^, 
 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 Eome 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.^ The churches 
 of Asia persisted in their old practice : Eome, always 
 eager for unity, desired to assimilate it to her own. 
 On the invitation of Pope Yictor,^ 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 stem letter 
 to Victor and the Church of Eome.^ The incredible 
 design which the rather severe terms of this epistle 
 
 ^ Euseb. H.E. v. xxiii. xxiv. xxv. Jerome, Chron. Schoene, 
 pp. 174, 177. De viris ill. cli. 35, 43 — 45. Anatolius, in 
 Buoherius, De Cyel. pp. 443 et seq. Labbe's Councils, i. 600. 
 Photius, ch. 120. 
 
 ^ Polycrates, in Euseb. H.E. v. xxiv. 8. 
 
 ^ Euseb. H.E. v. xxiv. 2 et seq. Conf. iii. xxxi. 3. 
 
 N 2 
 
180 ROME, THE CAPITAL OF 
 
 suggested to the mind of Yietor, 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 Eoman 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 Yietor to charity.^ Irenseus 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 Yietor 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 
 
 (TTij XiTevei Sia ypa/t^aTCDV, d/cotvwv^TOVS avaKfjpvTTbiv. 
 2 Eusebius liacj their letters in his possession. 
 
CATHOLICISM. 181 
 
 good sense prevented the schism of East and "West 
 from taking place in the second century. Irenaeus 
 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,^ — 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 
 
 ^ Thus the Bishop of Csesarea took precedence of the Bishop 
 of Jerusalem. 
 
182 HOME, THE CAPITAL OP 
 
 vie-w of finding precedents as to questions of the 
 presidency of synods, and of ecclesiastical hierarcliy 
 in general. Among all cliurclies, that of Eome 
 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.! 
 
 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 Eome 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 
 
 ^ Euseb. H. E. V. xxiv. 10 : TrXrjKTiKiaripov KpfiwKToiiivmv 
 Tov BiKTopos, 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,^ attending continually upon this 
 very thing." ^ 
 
 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 
 
 ^ AuTovpyol Oeov. ^ Eom. xiii. 1 — 7; conf. Tit. iii. 1. 
 
184 ROME, THE CAPITAL OF 
 
 him for tlie punishment of evil-doers, and for the 
 praise of them that do well." ^ In the same way, 
 Clement is a subject of the Eoman 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 I^ero'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 : ^ 
 " It is Thou, Master Supreme, who by Thy great and 
 unspeakable power hast given to our sovereigns, 
 and to those who rule 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, Lord, health, peace, 
 concord, stability, that they may exercise without 
 
 ^ 1 Pet. ii, 13 et seq. ^ Clem. Eom. Ad Cor. ct, 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 Eome — 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 
 Eomans 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.^ He never utters a word that could be 
 offensive to the civil magistrate. He loves to show 
 how the Eoman functionaries were favourable to the 
 new sect, and sometimes even joined it f how equit- 
 able Eoman justice is, and how superior to the 
 
 1 Acts xxiv. 7, 17, XXV. 9, 16, 25, xxviii. 17, 18. 
 ^ The centurion Cornelius, tlie proconsul Paulus. 
 
186 ROME, THE CAPITAL OF 
 
 passions of merely local auth.opities.^ He insists 
 upon the advantage which Paul derived from his 
 Eoman citizenship.^ If he closes his narrative with 
 the arrival of Paul in Eome, 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 arriere pensee, 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 Eoman 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 
 
 ^ 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. 
 
 I Acts xvi. 37 et seq., xxii. 26 et seq. 
 
CAOBOLICISM. 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 stiU more 
 marked. Not a single Christian was found to take 
 part in that attempt of a bHnd 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.^ 
 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 Eoman. In his 
 treatise on Truth, preserved in a Syriac version,^ 
 MeHto expresses himself as a Bishop of the fourth 
 century might do, explaining to one Theodoras that 
 
 1 Justin Martyr, Apol. ii. 14. 
 
 ^ Cnreton, Spicil. Syr. pp. 48 et seq. 
 
188 EOME, 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 yirtue of new edicts.^. 
 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 Eoman power grew into 
 something great and splendid, of which thou, with 
 thy son,^ 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 aU has wonderfully succeeded with you. Nero 
 
 ^ 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,^ who ia 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 stUl 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 maia- 
 tained by TertuUian,^ 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 Eome 
 had together grown great and prospered. Their 
 interests, their sufferings, their fortune, their future, 
 all were in common.^ The Apologists were advo- 
 
 ^ Hadrian and Antoninus Pius. 
 
 2 TertuU. 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, 
 hut 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 Tertull. Ajiol. 5. 
 
192 ROME, THE CAPITAL OF 
 
 The decided preference stown 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. TertulUan and his genera- 
 tion will say the same kind of thing of Marcus 
 Aurelius.^ TertuUian, it is true, will have his doubts 
 as to whether it is possible to be Caesar 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 TertuU. Apol. 5. 
 
CATHOLICISM. 193 
 
 true Emperor, " There have never been among us," 
 says TertuUian, " partizans of Cassius, partizans of 
 Albinus, partizans of Niger."! A slight illusion ! 
 Certainly the revolt of Avidius Cassius against 
 Marcus AureKus 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 TertuU. Ad Scap. 3. 
 
 
194 
 
 seen in tlie aflfair of Paul of Samosata, Bishop of 
 Antioch. tinder Aurelian.^ 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 ? AureHan, 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 Eome 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 
 
 2 
 
196 ROME, THE CAPITAL OE 
 
 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 Eoman 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 Eoman 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 ApoUonius : possibly they 
 may have had secret aflSnities with Christianity in 
 more directions than one. It is true that HeKoga- 
 balus was a madman; yet, nevertheless, his wild 
 dream of a central monotheistic worship established 
 at Eome, 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 
 Eoman 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 Koman Empire, while still 
 keeping within the narrow round of Eoman ideas. 
 The Church triumphed in its martyrs : the Eoman 
 pride gave way : Constantino 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 Constantino, 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 Nicsea 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, ■w:ho 
 in the large towns directed public opinion. Con- 
 stantitie 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 Constantino was not only natural, but compelled 
 by circumstance. 
 
 Strange to say, it was from this policy that the 
 city of Eome received the heaviest blow that ever 
 fell upon it. Christianity succeeded with Constan- 
 tine, but it was Eastern Christianity. In building 
 a new Eome on the Bosporus, Constantino reduced 
 old Eome 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 Eome, compelled the 
 ancient metropolis of the world to play a narrow, 
 often a humble part. That Eoman primacy, which 
 is so brilliant a fact in the second and third century, 
 ceases to exist as soon as the East has a separate 
 1 existence and a separate capital. Constantine is the 
 
CATHOLICISM. 199 
 
 true author of the scliism between the Latin and the 
 Eastern Church. 
 
 Eome's first revenge is taken in the gravity and 
 depth of her organizing spirit. What men are St. 
 Sylvester, St. Damasus, St. Gregory the Great ! 
 With admirable courage, Eome 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 CaroUngian house, and the bold stroke by which 
 she revived in that family the Empire which had 
 been dead for 300 years. The Church of Kome 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 liistory -will have its own 
 charm and its own lesson. That of which I have 
 told you the tale is fuU 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 ia 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 
 
 Eecal to your memories the judicious and discreet 
 advice of th,e Northumbrian cMef to the assembly 
 which was debating the adoption of the doctrine 
 brought by the Eoman missionaries : 
 
 " I will tell you, Kiag, what methiaks man's 
 hfe is Hke. Sometimes, when your hall is Kt up 
 for 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 nothitig. If the strange teacher can 
 tell us, by aU means let him be heard." ^ 
 
 Alas ! the missionaries of Kome 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 
 
 * Bede, Hist. Ecdes. ii. 12. Translation given by Canon 
 Bright, "Chapters of early English Church Histor:^^a.-n« 
 
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 luU it to 
 rest. One thing alone is certaia : 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 docUity is followed 
 by sympathetic adhesion. The metaphor of the regi- 
 ment, which Clement of Eome 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, stiU 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 tlie 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 ponr 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. 
 
 Tour 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 a"nd 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 aU 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 imagiue that we shall be overreached in the 
 bargain. Fo ; 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. 
 
DK. MAETINEAU'S ADDEESS. 
 
DR. MARTINEAU'S ADDRESS. 
 
 At the close of the Lectures, the thanks of the 
 Trustees were conveyed to M. Eenan in the follow- 
 ing Address by Dr. James Martineau : 
 
 M. Eenan: I sincerely wish that the Hibbert 
 Trustees had selected as the organ of their final 
 thants 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 
 
210 DE. 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. Eenan 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 soTerance of the higher 
 culture from the stUl recognized religion, are surely 
 phenomena largely repeated in the modem 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 confiicts, and even 
 behind the levities, of contemporary thought. The 
 introduction of foreign gods into Eoman 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 Eow as our Pan- 
 theon. During the ancient suspense of faith, the 
 
DR. MAETINEAU'S ADDEESS. 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 loth; 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 
 modem tendencies, and expect the emergence of 
 some faith remote ahke from mediaeval 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 iUusory 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 
 Eeligion is a permanent and powerful element in 
 human life ; that it involves beliefs about the rela- 
 
212 DE. MAETINEATJ'S ADDRESS. 
 
 tions between finite tilings 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 discca-dance 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 esstence. Their opposite errors 
 will thus cancel one another; and what is obsolete, 
 what is partial, what is false in all, will withdrav?' 
 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. MAETINEAtr'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 Eome, 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. Eenan among her 
 foremost scholars and most brilliant litterateurs. 
 
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