Part 4

These sufferings were something frightful. Such refinements of cruelty had never been seen. Almost all those arrested were of the _humiliores_ (the poorest classes). The sentence of these unfortunates, when it concerned high treason or sacrilege, was to be thrown to the beasts, or to be burned alive in the amphitheatre. One of the most hideous traits of Roman manners was that of making a _fête_, a public amusement, of these tortures. The amphitheatres had become places of execution: the tribunals furnished the victims. The condemned of the entire world were forwarded to Rome for the provisionment of the circus and the amusement of the people. At this time derision was added to the barbarism of these tortures. The victims were kept for a feast day, to which was given, without doubt, an expiatory character. "The morning spectacle," consecrated to the combats of animals, presented an appearance hitherto unknown. The condemned, covered with the tawny skins of beasts, were hurried into the arena, where they were torn by dogs. Some were crucified: others, reclothed with tunics steeped in oil, wax, or resin, were bound to posts, and reserved to light up the evening _fêtes_. When the day lowered, these living torches were ignited. For this spectacle, Nero offered his magnificent gardens beyond the Tiber, which occupied the site of the present Borgo, the Square, and the Church of St. Peter. Near by was a circus commenced by Caligula, in which the middle of the _Spina_ was marked by an obelisk brought from Heliopolis (the same one which in our day stands in the centre of the Square of St. Peter). This place had already been the scene of massacres by the light of torches. Caligula, in one of his walks, decapitated a certain number of consular personages, senators, and Roman ladies, by the light of torches. The idea of replacing lanterns by human bodies impregnated with inflammable substances had occurred to the ingenious Nero. Burning alive was not a new mode of suffering; it was the ordinary penance of incendiaries: but it had never been made a system of illumination. By the light of these hideous torches, Nero, who had established the custom of evening entertainments, showed himself in the arena, sometimes mingling with the people in the dress of a charioteer, sometimes conducting his chariot and seeking applause. Women and young girls were involved in these horrible games: a _fête_ was made of the nameless indignities which they suffered. Under Nero, the custom was established of compelling the condemned to play in the amphitheatre some mythological part entailing the death of the actor. These hideous operas, where mechanical science attained to prodigious effects, were very popular. The miserable wretch was introduced into the arena, richly costumed as god or hero devoted to death. He then represented by his suffering some tragic scene of the fables consecrated by sculptors and poets. Sometimes it was the furious Hercules burned on Mount [OE]ta, tearing the waxed tunic from his skin; sometimes Orpheus torn in pieces by a bear; Dædalus thrown from heaven, and devoured by beasts; Pasiphæ struggling in the embraces of the bull; Attys murdered. Sometimes there were horrible masquerades, in which the men were dressed like priests of Saturn with a red cloak, the women as priestesses of Ceres with fillets on the brow; finally, at other times, some dramatic work of the time, in which the hero was really condemned to death as Laureolus; or the representations were those of such tragic acts as that of Mucius Scævola. At the end of these hideous spectacles, Mercury, with a red-hot iron wand, touched each corpse to see if it moved. Some masked valets, dressed like Pluto or Orcus, dragged away the dead by the feet, killing with hammers all who still breathed. The Christian ladies of the highest respectability even suffered these monstrosities. Some played the _rôle_ of the Danaïdes, others that of Dirce. It is difficult to say what fable furnishes a more bloody picture than that of the Danaïdes. The suffering which all mythological tradition attributes to these guilty women was not cruel enough to suffice for the pleasure of Nero and the _habitués_ of his amphitheatre. Sometimes they were led out bearing urns, and received the fatal blow from an actor figuring as Lynceus. Sometimes these unhappy beings went through the series of the sufferings of Tartarus before the spectators, and only died after hours of torments. The representations of Hell were quite _à la mode_. Some years previous (the year 41), some Egyptians and Nubians came to Rome, and made a great success in giving evening performances, in which they displayed in order the horrors of the subterranean world, conforming to the paintings of the burial-places of Thebes, notably those of the tomb of Seti I.

As for the sufferings of the Dirces, there was no doubt about them. People know the colossal group now in the Museum of Naples, called the _Toro Farnese_,--Amphion and Zethus attaching Dirce to the horns of an unmanageable bull, which is to drag her over the rocks and briers of Cithæron. This mediocre Rhodian marble, brought to Rome in the time of Augustus, was the object of universal admiration. How could there be a finer subject for the hideous art which the cruelty of the time had made in vogue, and which consisted in reproducing the celebrated statues in living tableaux? An inscription and a fresco of Pompeii seem to prove that this terrible scene was frequently repeated in the arenas, when a woman was the sufferer. Naked, attached by the hair to the horns of a furious bull, these poor wretches glutted the eyes of a ferocious people. Some of the Christians immolated in this way were feeble in body: their courage was superhuman. But the infamous crowd had eyes alone for their torn bowels and lacerated bosoms.

After the day when Jesus expired in Golgotha, the _fête_ day in the Gardens of Nero (it may be fixed about the first of August, 64) was the most solemn in the history of Christianity. The solidity of any construction is in proportion to the sum of virtue, of sacrifices, and of devotion which has been laid down at its base. Only fanatics lay foundations. Judaism endures still on account of the intense frenzy of its zealots; Christianity, on account of its first witnesses. The orgy of Nero was the grand baptism of blood which set Rome apart as the city of martyrs in order to play a distinct _rôle_ in the history of Christianity and to be the second Holy City. It was the taking possession of the Vatican Hill by conquerors hitherto unknown there. The odious, hair-brained man who governed the world did not perceive that he was the founder of a new order, and that he signed a charter for the future, the effects of which would be claimed after eighteen hundred years.

IV.

As we have said, it is allowable, without improbability, to connect the deaths of the apostles Peter and Paul with the account which we have just given. The only historical incident known, by which the martyrdom of Peter can be explained, is the episode recounted by Tacitus. Some solid reasons also lead us to believe that Paul suffered the death of a martyr at Rome. It is then natural to suppose that he also died in the massacre of July and August, 64. As to the manner of death of the two apostles, we know with certainty that Peter was crucified. According to some ancient writings, his wife was executed with him, and he saw her led to the sacrifice. One accepted account of the third century says, that, too humble to equal Jesus, he suffered with his head down. The characteristic trait of the butchery of 64 having been the search for odious rarities in torture, it is possible that in truth Peter was shown to the crowd in this hideous attitude. Seneca mentions some cases in which tyrants have been known to turn the heads of the crucified towards the earth. Christian piety has seen a mystical refinement in that which was indeed an odd caprice of the executioner. Perhaps this extract from the Fourth Gospel--"Thou shalt stretch forth thy hands, and another shall gird thee, and carry thee whither thou wouldest not"--includes some allusion to a peculiarity in the suffering of Peter. Paul, in his quality of _honestior_, had his head cut off. It is also probable that he was judged regularly, and that he was not included in the summary condemnations of the victims in the _fête_ of Nero. All that, I repeat, is doubtful, and of little importance. True or not, the legend is believed. At the commencement of the third century, near Rome, there were already seen two monuments bearing the names of Peter and Paul. One was situated at the foot of the Vatican Hill, that of St. Peter: the other, in the way to Ostia, was that of St. Paul. They were called in oratorial style the trophies of the apostles. In the fourth century two basilicas were raised above these trophies. One of them is the present basilica of St. Peter: the other, St. Paul-without-the-Walls, has retained its essential features until our own century.

Did the trophies which the Christians venerated about the year 200 designate the spots upon which these apostles suffered? It is possible. It is not unlikely that Paul, toward the end of his life, dwelt in the suburb which extended beyond the Lavernal gate as far as the pine of the Salvian springs in the way to Ostia. The shade of Peter, on the other hand, wanders always, according to the Christian legend, towards the turpentine-tree of the Vatican, not far from the gardens of the Circus of Nero, and especially about the obelisk. It may be that the ancient place of the obelisk in the sacristy of St. Peter, now indicated by an inscription, is nearer to the place where St. Peter upon the cross of his frightful agony surfeited the eyes of a populace greedy to see him suffer. However, that is a secondary question. If the basilica of the Vatican does not really cover the tomb of St. Peter, it points out not the less for our remembrance one of the spots most truly hallowed by Christianity. The place which the seventeenth century surrounded with a theatrical colonnade was a second Calvary; and, even supposing that Peter was not crucified there, at least we cannot doubt the sufferings of the Danaïdes and the Dirces.

* * * * *

We shall show in our next assembly how tradition disposes of all these doubts, and how the Church consummates reconciliation between Peter and Paul, which death perhaps began. This was the price of success. The Judæan-Christianity of Peter and the Hellenism of Paul, apparently irreconcilable, were equally necessary to the success of the future work. The Judæan-Christianity represented the conservative spirit without which nothing is solid; Hellenism, advance and progress, without which nothing truly exists. Life is the result of a conflict between two contrary forces. The absence of all revolutionary spirit is as fatal as the excess of revolution.

THIRD CONFERENCE,

London, April 13, 1880.

ROME, THE CENTRE OF THE FORMATION OF ECCLESIASTICAL AUTHORITY.

THIRD CONFERENCE.

ROME THE CENTRE OF THE FORMATION OF ECCLESIASTICAL AUTHORITY.

I.

Almost always the nations created to play a part in universal civilization, like Judæa, Greece, and the Italy of the renaissance, exercise their full action upon the world, only after becoming victims to their own grandeur. They must first die; then the world lives on them, assimilates to itself that which they have created at the price of their fever and their sufferings. Nations ought to choose in fact between the long, tranquil, obscure destiny of that which lives for itself, and the troubled, stormy career of that which lives for humanity. The nation which works out social and religious problems in its own bosom is almost always weak politically. Every country which dreams of a kingdom of God, which lives for general ideas, which pursues a work of universal interest, sacrifices through the same its individual destiny, enfeebles and destroys its _rôle_ as a terrestrial country. One can never set himself on fire with impunity. Since Judæa made the religious conquest of the world, it was necessary that she should disappear as a nation. A revolution of extreme violence broke out in this country in the year 66. During four years, this strange race, which seemed created to defy equally that which blessed and that which cursed it, was in a convulsion before which the historian should pause with respect as he would before all mystery.

The causes of this crisis were very old, and the crisis itself was inevitable. The Mosaic law, a work of exalted Utopians possessed of a powerful socialist ideal,--the least politic of men,--was, like the Islam, exclusive of a civil society parallel with a religious society. This law, which appears to have been drawn up, as we now read it, in the seventh century before Jesus Christ, would have been the means of destroying the little kingdom of the descendants of David, even without the Assyrian conquest. Since the preponderance assumed by the prophetic element, the kingdom of Judah--embroiled with all its neighbors, seized with a permanent rage against Tyre, hating Edom, Moab, and Ammon--could no longer survive. I repeat, a nation which devotes itself to social and religious problems neglects its politics. The day in which Israel became "a peculiar people of God, a kingdom of priests, a holy nation," it was written that she should no longer be a nation as other nations. Contrary destinies cannot be united: an exaltation is always expiated by an abasement.

The Achemenidean kingdom gave Israel little repose. This grand feudality, tolerant towards all provincial differences, almost analogous to the Califat of Bagdad and to the Ottoman Empire, was the rule under which the Jews found themselves most at ease. The Ptolemaic rule in the third century before Jesus Christ seemed equally sympathetic to them: there were even no Seleucidæ. Antioch had become an active centre of Hellenic propagandism. Antiochus Epiphanus felt it necessary to set up everywhere the image of Jupiter Olympus as the sign of his power. Then broke out the first great Jewish revolt against profane civilization. Israel had patiently supported the disappearance of its political existence since Nebuchadnezzar. It retained no measure in which it saw a danger to its religious institutions. A race, in general not military, was seized with an access of heroism; without a regular army, without generals, without tactics, it conquered the Seleucidæ, maintained its revealed rights, and created a second period of autonomy. The Asmonean royalty, nevertheless, was always distracted by profound interior vices. It endured but one century. The destiny of the Jewish people was not to constitute a separate nationality. That people dreamed always of something international. Its ideal was not the city, it was the synagogue, the free congregation. The same is true of the Islam, which has created an immense empire, but has destroyed all nationality, in the sense in which we understand it, among the peoples which it has subjugated, and leaves them no other country than the mosque and the _Zaouia_.

The name of theocracy is often applied to such a social condition, and rightly so, if we mean by it that the profound idea of the Semitic religions, and of the empires which came out from them, is the kingdom of God considered as the master of the world, and universal suzerain. But theocracy with these nations was not synonymous with the domination of priests. The priest, properly speaking, plays an unimportant _rôle_ in the history of Judaism and Islamism. The power belongs to the representative of God,--to him whom God inspires, to the prophet, to the holy man, to him who has received his mission from Heaven, and who proves his mission by a miracle, that is to say, by success. In default of a prophet, the power belongs to the author of apocalypses, and of apocryphal books attributed to the ancient prophets, or, better, to the doctor who interprets the divine law, to the head of the synagogue, and, still more, to the head of the family who guards the depository of the law, and transmits it to his children. A civil power, a royalty, has little to do with such social organization. This organization never works better than among spread-out peoples, under the rights of tolerated foreigners, in a grand empire where uniformity does not rule. It is the nature of Judaism to be politically subordinate, since it cannot draw from its own bosom a principle of military power. Its _animus_ has been to form communities with their own laws and their own magistrates in the midst of other states, until modern liberalism introduced the principle of the equality of all before the law.

The Roman rule, established in Judæa sixty-three years before Christ by the armies of Pompey, seemed at first to realize some of the conditions of Jewish life. Rome at this epoch did not pursue the policy of assimilating the countries which she annexed to her vast empire. She robbed them of the right of peace and war, and arrogated to herself only the arbitration in great political questions.

Under the degenerated remains of the Asmonean dynasty and under the Herods, the Jewish nation preserved a half independence, in which its religious state was respected. But the interior feeling of the people was too strong. Beyond a certain degree of religious fanaticism, man is ungovernable. It should be said that Rome strove without ceasing to render her power in the East more effective. The little vassal kingdoms which she had at first preserved, disappeared day by day, and the provinces made returns to the empire pure and simple. The administrative customs of the Romans, even in their most reasonable aspects, were odious to the Jews. In general, the Romans showed the greatest condescension to the fastidious scruples of the nation; but that was not sufficient: things had come to a point where nothing could be done without touching upon a canonical question. These absolute religions, like Islamism and Judaism, allow no participation: if they do not reign, they call themselves persecuted. If they feel themselves protected, they become exacting, and seek to render life impossible to other worships about them.

I should depart from my plan if I recounted to you that strange struggle of which Josephus tells us,--the terror in Jerusalem, Simon Bar-Gioras, commandant in the city, John of Giscala with his assassins, master of the temple. Fanatical movements are far from excluding hate, jealousy, and defiance, from those who take part in them. Very decided and passionate men associated together ordinarily suspect each other, and in this there is a force; for reciprocal suspicion establishes terror among them, binds them as with an iron chain, hinders defections and moments of weakness. Interest creates the _coterie_. Absolute principles create division, and inspire the temptation to decimate, to expel, to kill enemies. Those who judge human affairs superficially believe that a revolution is quelled when the revolutionists "eat one another," as it is expressed. It is, on the contrary, a proof that the revolution has all its energy, that an impersonal ardor presides over it. This is nowhere more clearly seen than in the terrible drama at Jerusalem. The actors seem to have entered into the compact of death like some infernal rounds, in which, according to the belief of the middle ages, Satan was seen forming a chain to draw into a fantastic gulf numbers of men, dancing, and holding each other by the hand. So revolution allows no one to escape from the dance which it leads. Terror is behind the lukewarm. Turn by turn, exalting some, and exalted by others, they rush into the abyss. None can recede; for behind each one is a concealed sword, which, at the moment that he wishes to draw back, forces him to advance.

The strangest thing of all is that these madmen were not wholly wrong. The fanatics of Jerusalem, who affirmed that Jerusalem was eternal even while it was burning, were nearer the truth than those who regarded them as mere assassins. They deceived themselves upon the military question, but not upon the distant religious result. These troubled days point out, in fact, the moment when Jerusalem became the spiritual capital of the world. The Apocalypse, a burning expression of the love which she inspired, has taken its place among the religious writings of humanity, and has there consecrated the image of the beloved city. Ah, how important it is never to predict the future of a saint or a villain, a fool or a sage! Jerusalem, a city of common people, would have pursued indefinitely its uninteresting history. It is because it had the incomparable honor of being the cradle of Christianity, that it was the victim of the Johns of Giscala, of the Bar-Gioras,--in appearance the scourges of their country, in reality the instruments of its apotheosis. These zealots, whom Josephus treats as brigands and assassins, were politicians of the highest order, but unskilful soldiers: still they lost heroically a country which could not be saved. They lost a material city: they established the spiritual reign of Jerusalem, sitting in her desolation far more glorious than she was in the days of Herod and of Solomon. What did these conservatives, these Sadducees, really desire? They wished something mean,--the continuation of a city of priests like Emesa, Tyane, Comane. Assuredly they did not deceive themselves when they declared that the surging enthusiasm was the ruin of the nation. Revolution and Messianism destroyed the national existence of the Jewish people; but revolution and Messianism were the true vocation of this people,--that by which they contributed to the universal civilization.

II.

The victory of Rome was complete. A captain of our race, of our blood, a man like us, at the head of legions in whose roll, if we could read it, we should meet many of our ancestors, had come to crush the fortress of Semitism, to inflict upon the revealed, accepted law the greatest injury which it had received. It was the triumph of Roman right, or rather rational right, a creation utterly philosophical, presupposing no revelation, above the Jewish Thora, the fruit of a revelation. This right, whose roots were partly Greek, but in which the practical genius of the Latins made so fine a part, was the excellent gift which Rome brought to the vanquished in return for their independence. Each victory for Rome was a victory for right. Rome bore into the world a better principle in several respects than that of the Jews: I mean the profane state, reposing on a purely civil conception of society.

The triumph of Titus was then legitimate in many ways, and still there never was a more useless triumph. The deplorable religious nothingness of Rome rendered its victory unfruitful. This victory did not retard the progress of Judaism a single day: it did not give the religion of the empire an added chance to struggle against this redoubtable rival. The national existence of the Jewish people was lost forever; but that was a blessing. The true glory of Judaism was Christianity, about to be born. The ruin of Jerusalem and the temple was an unequalled good for Christianity.