BOOK V
THE JEW AND THE TALMUD
INTRODUCTORY
Among all the various evidential arguments adduced in support of the truth of Christianity, many of them of a most weighty character and capable of an almost indefinite expansion, the history of the Jewish people, their wonderful past and their present condition, their numbers, their books, their ever-growing influence in the world of the twentieth century, must be considered as the most striking and remarkable.
The Christianity of the first century was surely no new religion; it was closely knit to, bound up with, the great Hebrew tradition. The sacred Hebrew tradition was the first chapter--the preface, so to speak--of the Christian revelation.
The early or pre-Christian details of the Jewish story are well known and generally accepted. The Old Testament account of the Jewish race historically is rarely disputed.
Less known and comparatively little regarded is the subsequent history of the Chosen People; over the records of their fate, after the final and complete separation of Judaism and Christianity, an almost impenetrable mist settled, and the story of the fortunes of the remnant of the Jews who survived the terrible exterminating wars of Titus and Hadrian has been generally neglected by the historians of the great Empire.
Very few have even cared to ask what happened to that poor remnant of vanquished Jews: all that is commonly known is that a certain number survived the great catastrophes, and that their scattered descendants, in different lands, appear and reappear all through the Middle Ages--a wandering and despised folk, generally hated and hating.
But these are still with us, and among us; that they occupy in our day and time a peculiar, a unique position of power and influence which they have gradually acquired in all grades of modern society in many lands is now universally recognized.
This subsequent history of the fortunes of the Jewish people from the dates of their final separation from the Christian community, and the great catastrophes of the years of grace A.D. 70 and A.D. 135, constitutes a piece of supreme importance in the evidential history of the religion of Jesus; and yet, strange to say, it is, comparatively speaking, unknown and neglected.
It will be seen, as the pages of this wonderful story are turned over, how the guiding hand of the Lord, though in a different way, just as in the far-back days of the desert wanderings, has been ever visible in all the strange sad fortunes of the people, once the beloved of God.
The Jews of the twentieth century, numbering perhaps some ten or eleven millions, although scattered over many lands, constitute a distinct race, a separate people or nation. While during the Christian centuries _all_ other races--peoples--nations--without a single exception have become extinct, or have become fused and merged with other and newer races and peoples, they, the Jews, have _alone_ preserved their ancient nationality, their descent, their peculiar features, their individuality, their cherished traditions--_absolutely intact_.
* * * * *
It does not seem ever to have been remarked that the rise and influence of the great Rabbinic schools of Palestine and Babylonia, at Tiberias and Jamnia, at Sura and Pumbeditha--schools devoted to the study of the Torah (the Law) and the other books of the Old Testament, were coincident with the rise and influence of the Gnostic schools, schools in which the Old Testament was generally reviled and discredited. Is it too much to assume that echoes from the great Rabbinic teaching centres reached and sensibly influenced the Christian masters in their life and death contest with Gnosticism, a contest in which the Old Testament, its divine origin and its authority, was ever one of the principal questions at stake?
* * * * *
Nor is it an altogether baseless conception which sees that the reverence and love of at least a large proportion of earnest Christian folk for the Old Testament books, a reverence and a love that for more than eighteen hundred years has undergone no diminution or change, are in large measure due to the reverential handling, to the patient tireless studies of the great Rabbinical schools of the early Christian centuries--to the passionate, possibly exaggerated, love of the Jew for his precious book.
Though men guess it not, surely echoes from those strange Jewish schools of Tiberias and Sura, whose story we are about to relate, have reached the hearts of unnumbered Christians to whom the Jewish schools in question and their restless toil, all centering in the Holy Books in question, are but the shadow of a name?
I
THE HISTORY OF THE THREE WARS WHICH CLOSED THE CAREER OF JUDAISM AS A NATION
In the wonderful Jewish epic--so closely united to the Christian story--which stretches already over several thousand years, the history of the three last awful wars which led to their extinction as a nation, though not as a people, is merely a terrible episode in the many-coloured records of the wonderful race.
But these wars are specially important, for they were the earthly cause of the great change which passed over the fortunes of the Jews. Since the last of the three wars they have ceased to be a separate nation, and have become a wandering tribe scattered over the earth; but though wanderers, they are now more numerous, more influential in the world, than they had ever been even in the days of their greatest grandeur and magnificence.
The curious religious mania which seems to have possessed them, and which led them to revolt against the far-reaching power of the Roman Empire, is in some respects a mystery. We can only very briefly recount here the state of parties in Jerusalem, the centre of the nation, for a few years before the revolt which led to the first great war.
In the year B.C. 63 the Roman commander Pompey established the Roman rule over Judæa; from B.C. 6 the Jewish province, still preserving a partial independence, was governed by procurators sent from Rome, and by a native Herodian dynasty. The Palestinian Jews were roughly made up in this period of three parties:
(1) The _Sadducees and Herodians_, who occupied most of the high offices and the priesthood.
(2) The _Pharisees_. Strict Jews, loving with a devoted love the Torah or Mosaic Law; on the whole not favourable to the Roman and Herodian rule, but generally quiet and peace-loving. These included dreamers--men quietly longing for the promised Messiah, Essenes, and later, towards the end of the period we are speaking of, Christian Jews.
(3) _Zealots_--including adventurers, the Sicarii (or assassins), a wild turbulent clique (or sect), and a confused medley of disorderly folk, making up a formidable party of enthusiasts, expecting the early advent of a Messiah who should restore the past glories of the Jewish race; these were usually fierce revolutionaries, intensely dissatisfied with the state of things then prevailing; hating Rome and the Herodian dynasty favoured by Rome with a fierce hatred.
These Zealots had a very large, though disorderly, following among the people.
In A.D. 66 the revolt broke out in the Holy City. Florus, the Roman Procurator (or Governor), whose conduct during the early stages of the great revolt is inexplicable, left the city, leaving behind him only a small garrison; the revolt spread not only in Palestine and in parts of the neighbouring province of Syria, but far beyond--notably in the great city of Alexandria, where a large Jewish colony dwelt. Scenes of terrible violence were common, and fearful massacres are recorded to have taken place in various centres of population where Jews were numerous; the revolt became serious, and the Imperial Legate of Syria, Cestius Gallus, took the field against the insurgents. He seems to have been a thoroughly incompetent commander, and failed completely in his efforts to regain possession of Jerusalem, the headquarters of the revolutionary party. Gallus retreated, suffering great loss. The failure of Gallus inflicted a heavy blow upon Roman prestige.
To put an end to the serious and widespread revolt, in the year of grace 67 Vespasian, one of the ablest and most distinguished of the Roman generals, was appointed to the supreme command in Syria.
Gradually, as the result of a terrible campaign, Vespasian restored quiet in Palestine and the neighbouring region, and laid siege to the Holy City, where the Zealots had established what can only be termed a reign of terror.
In the following year, A.D. 68, the violent death of the Emperor Nero, and the state of confusion that followed his death throughout the Empire, determined Vespasian to pause in his operations, and for a short period Jerusalem was left in the hands of the Zealots. The brief reigns of the Emperors Galba, Otho, and Vitellius were followed by the sudden election of Vespasian to the Empire in the year 69, the electors being for the most part his own devoted and disciplined legions in Syria.
Vespasian soon after his election returned to Rome, and the Empire, now under his strong rule, was once more united and quiet. He left behind him in Palestine as supreme commander his eldest son Titus, a general of great power and ability.
The siege of the revolted Jerusalem was once more pressed on; an iron circle now encircled the doomed city, which, in addition to its wonderful memories of an historic past, was one of the strong fortresses of the world.
The history of the siege and the eventual fall and ruin of the famous Jewish capital, with all its nameless horrors, has been often told and retold; but the sad episode of the burning of the Temple, with all its eventful consequences, must be briefly touched on.
Why was this world-famous sanctuary--then standing in all its marvellous beauty, with its matchless treasures, some of them environed with an aureole of sanctity simply unequalled in the story of the nations in the sphere of Roman influence--ruthlessly destroyed, and its wondrous treasures swept out? This was not the usual policy of far-seeing Rome.
According to Josephus, the burning of the Temple was the result of accident, and was not owing to any premeditated plan or order issuing from the Roman commander-in-chief.
Modern scholars,[145] however, believe that a passage from the lost _Histories of Tacitus_ has been discovered which describes how a council of war was held by Titus after the capture of Jerusalem in which it was decided that the Temple ought to be destroyed, in order that the religion of the Jews and of the Christians might be more completely stamped out.
In the Talmud[146] the burning of the Temple is ascribed to the “impious Titus.”
The cruelties which are associated with the storming of Jerusalem--the loss of life and the subsequent fate of the prisoners captured by the victorious army of Titus--make up a tale of horror which perhaps is unequalled in the world’s history; there is, however, no doubt that the awful scenes of carnage and the fate of the defenders who survived the fall of the city were in large measure owing to the obstinate defence and irreconcilable hatred of the party of Jewish Zealots who provoked the war and for so long a time had been masters in the hapless city.
The result of the siege by Titus may be briefly summed up as follows. The Temple and the City of Jerusalem were absolutely razed to the ground, and may be said to have completely disappeared; only the mighty foundations of the magnificent Temple remained. These still are with us, and after nearly two thousand years bear their silent witness to the vastness and extent of the third Temple. It is no exaggeration which describes it as one of the most magnificent buildings of the Old World.
For some fifty-two years--that is, from A.D. 70 to A.D. 122--a vast heap of shapeless ruins was all that remained of the historic City of the Jews and its splendid Temple. In one corner of the ruins during this period of utter desolation the Tenth Legion (Fretensis) kept watch and ward over the pathetic scene of ruin.
In the year of grace 122, under the orders of the Emperor Hadrian, a new pagan city, known as Ælia Capitolina, slowly began to arise on the ancient site. This new city will be briefly described in due course.
The year following the awful catastrophe which befel the Jewish nation witnessed one of the most remarkable of the long series of “triumphs” which usually marked the close of the successful Roman wars.
In A.D. 71, Titus, with his father Vespasian and brother Domitian, with extraordinary pomp and a carefully arranged pictorial display, entered Rome. This triumph was adorned with a long train of captive Jews, some of whom were publicly put to death as part of the great show. Among the more precious spoils of the fallen city were conspicuously displayed some of the celebrated objects rescued by the victors out of the burning Temple,--such as the famous seven-branched sacred candlestick; the golden table of shewbread; the purple veil which hung before the Holy of Holies; and the precious Temple copy of the Torah--the sacred Law of Moses.
The story of the great triumph is still with us, graved upon the marble of the slowly crumbling Arch of Titus,--the traveller may still gaze upon the figure of the great general, crowned by Victory, in his triumphal car driven by the goddess Rome, and upon the same imperial figure borne to heaven[147] by an eagle. Still the carved representation of the sacred candlestick of the seven branches, and the golden table, are beheld by the Christian with mute awe; by the Jew with a mourning that refuses to be comforted. But the sacred things[148] themselves over which brood such ineffable memories are gone.
The fall of Jerusalem, the utter destruction of the Holy City, the burning of the Temple, really sealed the fate of the Jews as a separate nation. The centre of the chosen race existed no longer. The sacred rites, the daily sacrifice, and the offering ceased for ever. The great change in Judaism we are going to dwell upon must be dated from the year 70. But more terrible events had yet to happen before the Jew acknowledged his utter defeat, and recognized that a great change had passed over him and had finally altered the scene of his cherished hopes and glorious anticipations.
Two more bloody wars had to be fought out before the Jew settled down to his new life--the life to be lived by the Chosen People for a long series of centuries, the life he is living still, though more than 1800 years have come and gone since Titus brought the sacred Temple treasures from the ruined city to grace the proud Roman triumph.
Under Trajan in A.D. 116-7, and again under Hadrian in A.D. 133-4, the Zealot party of the defeated but still untamed people again rose up in arms against the mighty Empire in the heart of which they dwelt.
We will rapidly sketch these last disastrous revolts. The spirit of unrest and of hatred of the Roman power--the wild Messianic hopes which had inspired the party of Zealots in Jerusalem in the first war which had ended so disastrously--still lived in the great Jewish centres of population outside the Holy Land, in countries where the desolation which succeeded the events in 70 had not been acutely felt.
The Palestinian Jews for a time were apparently hopelessly crushed, but the Jews of Cyrene and Alexandria were still a powerful and dangerous group. It is impossible now to indicate the precise causes of the formidable rising of A.D. 116-7. The absence of Trajan and his great army in the more distant regions of Asia, and the news that the Roman arms had met with a serious check in that distant and dangerous campaign, seem to have given the signal for an almost simultaneous Jewish uprising in the Cyrene province, in the city of Alexandria, and in Cyprus.
We do not possess any very exact details here. The revolt was generally characterized by horrible cruelties on the part of the Jewish insurgents, and we read of fearful massacres perpetrated by the revolted Jews. The insurrection spread with alarming rapidity, and became a grave danger to the Empire. At first we only hear of several successes and victories. In the cities of Alexandria and Cyrene a reign of terror prevailed; but, as was ever the case when Rome in good earnest put forth her disciplined forces, the insurgents found themselves outnumbered and out-generalled. Two of the most distinguished of the imperial commanders, Marcius Turbo and Lucius Quietus, conducted the military operations. The war--for the Jewish revolt of A.D. 116-7 assumed the proportions of a grave war--lasted well-nigh two years; but the insurgents were in the end completely routed.
The numbers of slain in this wild and undisciplined outburst of Jewish fury, according to the records of the historians of the war, are so great that we are tempted to suspect them exaggerated. In Cyrene and the neighbouring districts the number who perished is given as twenty-two thousand; the loss of life in Alexandria, Egypt, and Cyprus seems to have been equally terrible. But even granted that the numbers of Jews who perished in this fanatical rebellion have been, from one cause or other, exaggerated, it is certain that the numbers of the slain were enormous, that the power and influence of the Chosen People suffered a terrible check as the result of this rising, and that in the great cities of Cyrene and Alexandria the Jewish population of these centres--large and flourishing communities, possessing great wealth and influence, distinguished for their high culture and learning--were almost annihilated. The results of the insane revolts of A.D. 116-7 were indeed disastrous to the fortunes of this extraordinary and wonderful people.
* * * * *
But the end was not yet. Another bloody war, with all its fearful consequences, had to be waged between the Jew and the Empire before the Chosen People finally resigned itself to the new life it was destined to live through the long centuries which followed. The old spirit of restlessness, of wild visionary hopes of some great one who should arise in their midst, still lived among the more ardent and fervid members of the now scattered and diminished people.
The exciting causes of the last great revolt have been variously stated. It is probable that the conduct of Hadrian in his latter years had become less tolerant, while a persecuting spirit more or less prevailed in his government. Among other irritating measures devised by Rome, the ancient rite of circumcision apparently was forbidden. But the immediate cause of the Jewish uprising no doubt was the steady progress made in the building of the new city, Ælia Capitolina, on the site of Jerusalem and the Temple.
That a pagan city, with its theatres, its baths, its statues, should replace the old home of David and Solomon; that a Temple of Jupiter should be built on the site of the glorious House of the Eternal of Hosts; that the very stones of old Jerusalem and her adored sanctuary should be used for the construction of the new city of idols--was indeed especially hateful to the proud and fanatic Jew. Sacrilege could go no further. Rapidly the insurrection which began in Southern Judæa spread. Once more the Holy Land, especially in the southern districts, became the scene of a fierce religious war; Bethia, a fortress some fifteen miles from Jerusalem, became the central place of arms of the fierce insurgents, but the revolt spread far beyond the districts of Palestine.
In one striking particular this third Jewish war differed from the first and second revolts. In the earlier uprisings it was the _hope_ of the appearance of a conquering Messiah which inspired the fanatical insurgents. In the third revolt a false Messiah actually presented himself, and gave a new colour and spirit to this dangerous insurrection.
The hero of the war--the pseudo-Messiah known as Bar-cochab (the son of a Star)--is a mysterious person; his name appears to have been a play upon his real appellation, and was assumed by him as representing the Star pictured in the famous prophecy of Balaam (Num. xxiv. 17): “I shall see him,” said the seer of Israel, “but not now.... There shall come a Star out of Jacob, and a Sceptre shall rise out of Israel.” Was this pseudo-Messiah simply an impostor, a charlatan, or did he really believe in his mission? The Talmud generally execrates his memory, but the principal doctor of that age, Rabbi Akiba, at a time when the Doctors of the Law had begun to exercise a paramount influence among the Jewish people, believed in him with an intense belief, and supported him in his Messianic pretensions.
Many, but by no means all, of the great Rabbis of the day seem to have supported this Bar-cochab, and the Talmud tells us that not a few of them endured martyrdom at the hands of the victorious Roman government. All contemporary history of this war is, however, confused,--the Talmud notices are especially so; the details are simply impossible to grasp.
Of the bravery of Bar-cochab there is no doubt; he perished before the end of the war, and some time after Rabbi Akiba, his most influential supporter, was put to an agonizing death by the victors.
Of Rabbi Akiba’s sincerity there are abundant proofs. His memory was ever held in the highest honour by his countrymen. He was reputed to be the most learned and eloquent of that famous generation of Jewish teachers. The strange mistake he made in recognizing the false Messiah Bar-cochab is hard to account for.
As in the case of the two first famous Jewish wars, the Roman power seems at first to have underrated this rebellion, which, however, soon assumed a most formidable character. The general commanding in the Syrian provinces proving incapable, the ablest of the imperial generals, Sextus Julius Severus, was summoned from his command in distant Britain to Judæa. The Roman tactics employed were generally similar to those adopted by Trajan’s generals in the second Jewish war of A.D. 116-7. Severus avoided any so-called pitched battle, but advanced gradually, attacking and besieging each of the rebel garrisons, thus gradually wearing out the impetuosity and ardour of the fanatical insurgents. The war lasted from two to three years. The devastation, the result of this war, was evidently very awful, and the numbers of the slain seem to have been enormous. We read of 50 armed places being stormed, 985 villages and towns being destroyed; 580,000 men were said to have been slain, besides many who perished through hunger and disease: the numbers of slain in another account are, however, only given as amounting to 180,000. One cannot help coming to the conclusion that all these numbers are considerably exaggerated. Judæa, however, there is no doubt, especially in the southern districts, became literally a desert; wolves and hyenas are stated to have roamed at pleasure over the ravaged country; the south of Palestine became a vast charnel-house, and the present barren appearance of the country indicates that some terrible catastrophe has at some distant period passed over the land.[149]
The sternest measures effectually to stamp out all traces of revolt on the part of the Jewish nation were adopted by the Roman government after the close of the campaign. Numbers of the fugitives were ruthlessly put to death. Many were sold into slavery. No Jew was ever allowed to approach the ruins of the Holy City. Once in the year, on “the day of weeping,” such of the hapless race who chose were suffered to come and mourn for a brief hour over the shapeless pile of stones which once had been a portion of their sacred Temple.
For a time a bitter persecution throughout the Empire punished this last formidable uprising; but these rigorous measures were very soon relaxed when all fear of another outbreak had passed away, and the Jews, or what remained of the people, were suffered to live as they pleased, to worship after their own fashion, and to pursue the study of their loved Law unmolested.
M. de Champagny (_Les Antonins_, livre iii. chap, iii.) estimates the number of Jews who perished in the three great wars of A.D. 70, of A.D. 116-7, and of A.D. 132-3-4 roughly as follows: Under _Titus_, about two millions; under _Trajan_, about two hundred thousand; under _Hadrian_, about one million.[150]
The third war was termed in the Babylonian Talmud “the War of Extermination.”
II
(_a_) RABBINISM
We have described the three fatal wars at some length, because the wonderful history of the Jewish race entered upon an entirely new phase after the disastrous termination of the third of these terrible revolts. From the year of our Lord 134-5 they ceased to be a nation and became wanderers over the earth.
Yet in numbers and influence they can scarcely be said to have diminished. They amalgamated with no nation; they remained a marked and separate people, and so they continue to this day, though well-nigh eighteen long and troubled centuries have passed since the great ruin.
To what earthly cause is this marvellous preservation of the Jews to be attributed? Unhesitatingly we reply, Not to the rise of Rabbinism,--it had long existed among the Chosen People,--but to the development and consolidation of Rabbinism and to the famous outcome of Rabbinism, the Talmud.
The traditional history of Rabbinism and the beginning of the marvellous Rabbinic book, the Talmud, is given in the Mishnah treatise “Pirke Aboth” (Sayings of the Fathers). It is as follows:--
Moses received the written Law (the Torah) on Mount Sinai. He also received from the Eternal a further Law, illustrative of the written Law. This second Law was known as the “Law upon the lip.” This was never committed to writing, but was handed down from generation to generation. Moses committed this oral Law to Joshua; Joshua committed it to the Elders; the Elders committed it to the Prophets; the Prophets handed on the sacred tradition of “the Words of the Eternal” to the Men of the Great Synagogue. These last are regarded as the fathers of “Rabbinism.” Maimonides tells us that these fathers of “Rabbinism” succeeded each other (to the number of 120), commencing with the prophet Haggai, B.C. 520, who in the Talmud is described as the Expounder of the oral Law. The last member of the “Great Synagogue” was Simon the Just, _circa_ B.C. 301.
After Simon the Just a succession of eminent teachers known as the “Couples” handed down the sacred traditions of the “Law upon the lip” to the time of Hillel and Shammai, when we approach to the Christian era. Hillel, according to the Talmudic tradition, is said to have lived 100 years before the destruction of Jerusalem, A.D. 70, and thus to have been a contemporary of Herod the Great.
Very little really is known of the “Men of the Great Synagogue,” or of the ten “Couples” who succeeded them; little more than their names has been preserved. It is scarcely probable that in each generation only a pair of specially distinguished scholars should have lived. Most likely just ten names were known, and they were formed into five pairs or couples of contemporaries, after the fashion of the last and most famous pair, Hillel and Shammai. But from the times of Hillel and Shammai we have abundant historical testimony as to the existence and labours of the Rabbinic schools. Well-nigh all that we have related in the above passage is purely traditionary. There is no doubt a basis of truth in the account we have given, but the contemporary history is too scanty for us to describe this relation in the treatise “Pirke Aboth,” which thus connects the Mishnah compilation in a direct chain with Moses, as anything more than a widely circulated legendary and traditional story.
We can, however, certainly assert that the foundations of the teaching of the school of Rabbinism which, after the great ruin of the year of Grace 70, began to exercise a paramount influence over the fortunes of the Jewish race, were laid at a very early period, several hundred years before the Christian era.
There is no doubt that Hillel and Shammai founded or, more accurately speaking, developed the existing Rabbinic schools and gathered into them large numbers of disciples. The great development of Rabbinism which is ascribed to the two famous teachers Hillel and Shammai was evidently owing to the complete absorption of Palestine by Rome, under the baleful influence of the royalty of Herod the Great; these causes were gradually undermining Judaism, not only in a political but also in its religious aspect. Hillel and Shammai were fervid and earnest Jews, and were determined to infuse a new religious spirit into the nation. Still, it is more than probable that all this early Rabbinism would scarcely have been more than a school of curious literary speculation, and perhaps would not have seriously and permanently influenced the life of the Jewish people, had it not been for the awful events of the year A.D. 70. When Jerusalem ceased to exist, and the Temple was finally destroyed, then Christianity emerged from the heart of Judaism, and gathered into its fold many of the Chosen People.
What happened in the year A.D. 70 had a tremendous effect on the life of the Jews,--far more than the ordinary historian usually assigns to it. It has been tersely but truly said that, “unparalleled as were the calamities which attended the fall of Jerusalem and the destruction of the Temple, by far the most terrible of all was the total collapse of Judaism as a Creed, owing to the annihilation of all the divinely instituted means of access to God. The religious pulse of the nation ceased to beat, as it were, with a suddenness most appalling. We hear nothing of the Sadducees in those days, ... they were swept away like chaff before the tempest never to appear any more; but the Pharisees, to whom the Rabbis and Scribes belonged, remained steadfast, and, collecting the poor remnant of the people around them, determined to infuse new life into them.”
Mosaism was irretrievably destroyed in the year of our Lord 70, but the foundations of Rabbinism had, as we have noticed, been laid long before. It was only necessary to consolidate it, to give it shape and form, and to claim for the words of its expounders a yet higher authority than had as yet been conceded even to the written Law (the Torah). And this was done, or more accurately speaking was commenced, in the last twenty or thirty years of the first century (the years immediately following the catastrophe of A.D. 70) by the disciples of Rabban Jochanan ben Zacchai, who were certainly the earliest elaborators of the Mishnah,[151] the first and oldest part of the famous Talmud.
III
(_b_) RABBINISM
WHAT RABBINISM AND ITS BOOK, THE TALMUD, DID FOR THE JEWISH PEOPLE
Historical summary of events leading up to the compilation and consolidation of the first part of the Talmud--the Mishnah.
After A.D. 70, when Jerusalem and the Temple were destroyed, an extraordinary group of Rabbis or teachers of “the Law” arose--men of rare gifts, far-seeing and possessing unusual powers of communicating their enthusiasm to other men. These teachers recognized the utter hopelessness of any further war with Rome; they abandoned all expectation of seeing the Temple rebuilt; they saw that the future of Israel lay not in any restoration of its nationality as a people--that was now hopeless. But Israel alone among the people of the world possessed a Divine Law, was the inheritor of a glorious promise, a promise which they maintained belonged alone to them; no earthly misfortune could rob the Jew of this: they were the people specially beloved of God, and only by neglecting the observance of the Divine Law could they forfeit the sure and blessed inheritance reserved for them. That same Law must be their sole guide in all the various details of life--in the smallest matters as in the more important. In the rigid keeping of it they would in the end receive their great reward, the reward reserved for them, and for them alone, as the peculiar people of God the Supreme, the Almighty.
For some five centuries, since the days of Ezra and the return of the remnant of the people from the Captivity, “the Mosaic Law,” as contained in the Pentateuch, essentially in the same form as we now have it, had been regarded by the Jew with an almost limitless reverence. The acknowledgment of its awful and binding precepts was the condition without which no one was a member of the Chosen People, or could have a share in the glorious promises reserved for them.
Their teachers insisted that the commands of “the Law” (the Torah) were in their entirety the commands of God. “He who says that Moses wrote even one verse of his own knowledge is a denier and despiser of the Word of God.” The whole Pentateuch thus came to be regarded as dictated by God. Even the last eight verses of Deuteronomy, in which the death of Moses is told, were asserted to have been written by means of a divine revelation. Some of the teachers even went further; they asserted that the complete book of the Law had been handed to Moses by God.[152]
As time went on, the other Books of the “Old Testament”--at first the writings of the older prophets and works on the pre-exilic period of Israel; then the body of the “prophets” and the other Old Testament writings, became also regarded as documents in which the will of God was revealed in a manner absolutely binding.
Round the Law (Torah) had gathered a vast number of explanatory directions, and a certain number of traditional additions known as “Haggadah.” The first of these, the directions or explanations, were known by the term “Halachah.”[153] It had become necessary, seeing that the Law of Moses was accepted as the divine code for the guidance of the Chosen People, to explain and enlarge it further, so as to apply its brief enactments to all the conditions of everyday life. Some few of these Halachah were traditionally derived from Moses himself. Others had probably been composed very early in the schools of the prophets; yet more were the work of the Scribes,[154] a numerous class of teachers which had arisen after the return from exile in the days of Ezra. These Halachah (we use the well-known expression in preference to the more accurate plural form Halachoth; the same course has been followed in that of the expression “Haggadah”) had been largely augmented in the half-century preceding the catastrophe of _A.D._ 70.
The group of eminent Rabbis who arose after the fall of the City and Temple, and who set themselves the task of reconstituting Israel on a new and purely religious basis, took these Halachah, studied them, meditated on them,--no doubt recast many of them to suit the new position of the people, now that the Temple and its complicated ritual of sacrifice and public prayer had disappeared, and framed them into an elaborate system of regulations, thus pointing out how the Law might be rigidly observed in all the relations of ordinary life.
This great and elaborate work is termed the Mishnah[155]--or “Repetition,”--the term originally derived from the method in which it was elaborated. It was not written down in the first instance, but was _repeated_ again and again by the more famous teachers and heads of schools to their pupils. The term “Mishnah” came in time to signify “the second Law,” but that was not the original meaning; it belonged to a period when the whole instruction was _oral_.
The period of the elaboration of these Halachah (rules) and Haggadah (tradition) lasted somewhere about a hundred years or a little more. The great teachers who busied themselves in this work are ordinarily termed the Mishnic Rabbis--the Talmud term for them being Tannaim.
In the last years of the second century the Mishnah or first part of the Talmud was virtually closed, and the great Rabbinic schools then busied themselves in further commenting upon and explaining the Halachah (rules) and Haggadah (traditions) of the Mishnah; these further comments and explanations are known as the Gemara.
This second part of the Talmud, known as “Gemara,”[155] the complement of the first or Mishnic portion, was the outcome of the labours of several hundred Doctors or Rabbis. Two famous schools of Rabbinical study carried on the great work of commenting on the Mishnah. The one, the Palestinian, had its headquarters in Tiberias. The chief centres of the other, the Babylonian, were Sura and Pumbeditha. In both these compilations the same Mishnah is the text on which the vast body of commentary is based. But the Gemara, or commentary, is in many cases different. The Palestinian Talmud in the form which now exists is much shorter than the Eastern or Babylonian work. The Palestinian Rabbis worked from about the year of our Lord 190; their work was closed in the middle of the fifth century. The labours of the Babylonian doctors may be dated from the last years of the second, and were closed in the middle or later years of the sixth century.
The Babylonian--the larger Talmud, containing the Mishnah and Gemara, which has come down to us fairly intact, fills some twelve large folio volumes, and covers no less than 2947 folio leaves in double columns; or in other words, 5894 pages written in Hebrew, Aramaic, or Rabbinic. The nature of these vast compilations is described more in detail in a later section of this Fifth Book.
The Talmudic term for the doctors of the Gemara is Amoraim.
* * * * *
The one purpose and object of the Talmud, followed out with a changeless and restless industry by the doctors of the Mishnah and the Gemara, from the year 70 to nearly the close of the sixth century--that is to say, for a period of some five hundred years--was the _Glorification of Israel_. Law and legend, rule and tradition, massed together with rare skill, all dwell on this. The Jews, and only the Jews, were the people chosen by God. If they would but honour Him and serve Him faithfully they would in the end win the exceeding great and promised reward. The way, and the only way, to know Him and to serve Him was pointed out with unerring lucidity and a marvellous wealth of detail in the mighty compilation of the Talmud. They were strictly warned against encouraging proselytes. The ineffable blessings belonged to the Jew and to the Jew alone. Again, the exceeding great reward belonged not to the successful Jewish soldier, but to the Jew who kept the stern Law handed down from Moses to prophet, and by prophet to scribe, and by scribe to the Rabbis who compiled the Mishnah and Gemara, which together make up the Talmud. The question of revolt against Rome found no place in the Talmud teaching.
After the three great wars--especially after the first, which closed with the destruction of the Temple--the Jew had no nationality, no country. He needed none. He had something far greater. He, and only he, was possessor of the blessed Divine Law; the solitary heir of its glorious promises.
The Talmud became the bond which linked together in one solid group the Jews of Cyrene and Alexandria, of Rome and Babylonia. Its power over the Jewish mind became boundless. It possessed indeed a wondrous fascination for every child of Israel. It impressed upon each member of the scattered race, in a way no teaching had ever previously done, the consciousness who he was, and what was the awful nature of his inheritance. Strong in this consciousness, he endured all the wrongs and persecutions, the cruel acts and yet more cruel words which have been, with rare interludes, his lot since A.D. 70. All through the subsequent ages he endured a bitter persecution, which even in our own day and time is still in many lands constantly ready to break out against him.
Strong in this consciousness he lives on, a willing wanderer and a stranger among the various nations of the earth, hated and hating,--feared but at the same time honoured; ever increasing in numbers, in wealth, and influence. His hand is in each group of statesmen, now publicly, more often hidden, but always there: he is yet greater in the exchanges and marts of the nations; the finance of every civilized country is more or less guided by him, more or less subject to his dictation and supervision.
Who now, men ask, is this ever-present changeless Jew? What is the secret of his power and ever-growing influence? The second great awakening--the awakening to the grandeur of his true position in the world’s story--when all seemed lost, when his Temple and City were destroyed, when he became at once homeless, landless, an outcast hated, even despised, as far as we can _see_, was the work of the Doctors and Rabbis of Tiberias in Galilee, and of Sura and other centres in Babylonia, in the years which followed the crushing ruin of A.D. 70. It was the work of the compilers and teachers of the Mishnah and Gemara which together made up the Talmud. We may now and again wonder at the curious and startling assertions of the Mishnah, and even smile at some of the marvellous extravagances of the Gemara; but when we ponder over the wonderful story of the Jew during the eighteen centuries which have passed since the desolation of A.D. 70, we dare not mock at the Talmud.
When we consider the whole question of what we have termed “the great awakening” of the Jewish people after the sudden and tremendous ruin of the City and Temple; the complete change in the heart of the Jew; the abandonment of the old dream of the restoration of the kingdom of Israel; the adoption of a spiritual kingdom in its place: when we remember the universal reverence for, the implicit obedience which very soon began to be paid to, the teaching of the Mishnah and Gemara--the Talmud--a reverence and an obedience which completely changed the life, the views, the hopes of the scattered race in all lands,--we ask the pressing question: _Whence_ came all this--the mighty change, the enthusiasm which has never paled or waned? The Mishnic Rabbis--the Gemara teachers, numerous, able, and devoted though they were, some few of them men of lofty genius and profound scholarship, do not account for this amazing result.
The “Talmud,” the outcome of these famous Rabbinic schools of the early Christian centuries, with its wild extravagances, its many beautiful thoughts, its peculiar and rigid system, touched the heart of the Jew, and bound together this people condemned to wander through the ages without a home, a country, a nationality, with a link no time, no human hate or scorn has been able to break or even to loose.
The strange weird Book was God’s mysterious instrument by which He has chosen to preserve intact the people He once loved--loves still--until the day, perhaps still far distant, dawns when the Jew, with eyes opened at last, shall look on Him whom they pierced.
IV
THE TALMUD
One[156] who loved with a love passionate, though not always discriminating, this vast wondrous compilation which has so marvellously affected the fortunes of the Chosen People, has written the following words: “The origin of the Talmud is coeval with the return from the Babylonish Captivity (some five centuries before Christ). One of the most mysterious and momentous periods in the history of humanity is that brief span of the Exile. What were the influences brought to bear upon the captives during that time we know not. But this we know, that from a reckless, lawless, godless populace they returned transformed into a band of Puritans.... The change is there, palpable, unmistakable--a change we may regard as almost miraculous. Scarcely aware before of the existence of their glorious national literature, the people now began to press round these brands plucked from the fire, the scanty records of their faith and history, with a fierce and passionate love, a love stronger than that of wife and child. These same documents, as they were gradually formed into a canon, became the immutable centre of their lives, their actions, their thoughts, their very dreams. From that time forth, with scarcely any intermission, the keenest as well as the most practical minds of the nation remained fixed upon them. _Turn it, and turn it again_, says the Talmud with regard to the Bible, _for everything is in it_.”
After the fall of the City and the burning of the Temple in A.D. 70 the wonderful records of the Jew and his Book (the Talmud) are all clear and definite. How it was composed, who compiled it, and why it was put out, all this belongs to history, and forms a most important though little known chapter in the annals of the Chosen People; in some respects also it is a most weighty piece of evidential history--perhaps the most weighty--possessed by Christianity.
But some of the materials out of which the great Book (the Talmud), which has so enormously influenced the fortunes of the Chosen People for so many centuries, was composed, existed before the catastrophe of A.D. 70. We will briefly examine what we know of the ancient materials of the Talmud; the examination will be of the highest interest.
* * * * *
It is certain that very early--no doubt in the far-back days of Moses--there must have existed, as we have already suggested, a number of explanatory laws which set forth in detail many of the laws and regulations broadly laid down in the original written code of the great lawgiver. Questions must have been asked again and again--To what cases in actual life the brief written precept applied, what consequences it in general entailed, and what was to be done that the commandments might be fairly, even rigidly observed. In a number of cases the original written Law gave no direct answer.
To supply this need a body of Halachah (the word Halachah, as we have stated, signifies rule, practice, custom) gathered round the written Law (the Torah). Some of these Halachah, tradition said, were given by Moses himself; others were said to have been devised by that primitive council of the desert wanderings, the elders, and by their successors, the later “judges within the gates,” referred to in the Pentateuch. As time went on the Halachah or authoritative oral Law of explanation no doubt formed an important branch of the studies pursued in those schools of the prophets founded by Samuel in the early days of the monarchy--schools of which we know so little, but which throughout the pre-exilic days evidently played a part in the life of the kingdoms of Israel and Judah.
On the return from the Captivity, some five centuries before the Christian era, the remnant of the nation who returned to their desolated land came back a changed people--“a band of Puritans” we have, with scarcely any exaggeration, termed them; while the Divine Law which once many, perhaps the majority, of the people neglected, the very existence of which they had ignored, almost forgotten, became the object of their passionate love.
During the period of exile, of which we know so little but in the course of which the great change to which we have been dimly alluding passed over the people, the memory of the oral Law, much of the ancient Halachah, the traditions, the sacred expositions which make up the Haggadah, were kept alive by teachers, in the first instance by the men who had been trained in the schools of the prophets. Then after the return from exile the study of all these treasured memories--some, as we have already suggested, possibly dating from the days of Moses--which surrounded the now precious Law, received a new development. The Law, the Halachah, the traditions generally known as Haggadah, were no longer the mere heritage of the scholars who composed the somewhat mysterious schools of the prophets we read of in the days of the kings, but were now regarded as the precious treasure of the whole nation.
As the Divine Law rose in public estimation its scientific study and exposition became a great and popular craft. Every individual of the nation was interested in knowing it and obeying it. A numerous and independent class or guild arose which made its investigation and study the chief business of life. These men were known as the Scribes; they became the recognised teachers of the nation. Some of them were men of independent means, but the majority practised some trade or business out of which they lived. They were tent-makers, sandal-makers, weavers, carpenters, tanners, bakers, etc., but the study of the Law was their loved occupation, and some of them attained great proficiency in their work. Such a class of men had never existed in any people before--has never made its appearance since in any nation.[157]
This study of the Law became a veritable science, a science that gradually assumed the very widest dimensions. The name given to it is “Midrash”--interpretation, and it included study, meditation, exposition, investigation, inquiry. The men of the “Return from Exile” who devoted themselves to this work took as the foundation of their labours, first the written Law of Moses, then gradually the records of the Prophets and the other writings subsequently included in the Old Testament canon; and to this material was added the oral Law, or such portion of it which had been preserved, including the sacred traditions which had been handed down from the days of Moses and his successors, and treasured up in the schools of the prophets. In this “Midrash”--for we will keep to the well-known term which generally included all this varied and comprehensive study of the Scribes who lived in the period between the Return from the Exile and the Christian era--two distinct currents can be distinguished. The first of these great currents may be termed Prose, the second Poetry. The first (the prose) is called Halachah (rules, customs); the second (the poetry), Haggadah (tradition and legend, including parable, allegory, lessons).[158]
The Halachah (rules) for a very long period were never written down, but were transmitted from teacher to teacher in an unbroken succession, orally, with many and various additions. The Haggadah (traditions) in many cases were, however, written down, and so transmitted.
Thus from the period of the Return from the Exile a vast bulk of teaching, largely unwritten, traditional, and legendary, all founded on and closely bearing on the Law (Torah), had been collected by the Scribes and their schools stretching over a period of about five centuries. Some thirty years before the Christian era Hillel, the great Rabbinic master of the period, endeavoured to reduce this great mass of teaching, oral and written, rule and tradition, Halachah and Haggadah, to some definite system and order. He did something in this direction, but died before his task was in any real way completed, and for many years nothing further was done in the way of codifying or arrangement.
Then came the great upheaval of A.D. 70, when the Holy City was razed to the ground; when it appeared as though the religion of the Jew was destroyed, now that the Temple round which all the cherished memories of the people were grouped had disappeared. Curiously enough, as it appears to men, the contrary was the case: a wonderful resurrection of religious life was the almost immediate outcome of the fall of the City and Temple.
A group of singularly able and devoted men, as we have already remarked, arose at this critical moment in Jewish history--when all seemed lost. Judaism in the year 70, when the long and bitter war with Rome was finally closed, was stripped of everything. It had lost for ever its position as a nation. Its Temple, the joy of the whole world, as their royal songman pictured it, was a heap of shapeless ruins. Its most sacred treasures were carried away to adorn an Italian triumph. The Holy City was literally razed to the ground. The promised land of their fathers was desolated. Thousands of the people were slain or reduced to slavery. Of the Jews who dwelt as strangers in Egypt, Syria, and Italy--the very name was hated and despised. Only one thing remained to the sad remnant of the Chosen People: the sacred Law of Moses, the Torah--the writings of their old prophets--their treasured Psalms--the undying records of their past glorious history.
And these precious writings, and the wonderful body of rule and tradition, oral and written, which had gathered round them, the Halachah and Haggadah of the Scribes, collected during the previous four or five centuries,--these were saved from the awful wreck, and a group of devoted Jews gathered them together, and with them at once proceeded to train up a new and a yet greater and more influential people than had ever before worshipped the Eternal of Hosts, even in the golden days of their mighty kings David and Solomon; but the foundation stories of the grandeur of the new Israel were not to be built with human materials. No army, no strong fortress, no stately city, not even a visible temple made with hands after the fashion of the glorious lost House of God, were for the future to rank among the proud and cherished possessions of the Jew. Only the Divine Law given him direct from God the One Supreme, the Everlasting, for the future was to represent to the Jew home and hearth, family and nation, City and Temple.
If the Jews--the scattered harassed remnant who survived the bloody Roman war of Titus--would with heart and soul keep the precepts of the Divine Law, what mattered insult and cruelty, human scorn and malice, suffering and misery for a little season; for eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, the beatitude which awaited the Jew who loved the Torah. This was the teaching of that group of fervid and devoted men who, so to speak, arose out of the ashes of the ruins of Jerusalem and the Temple. And the sad remnant of the people hearkened to this teaching, and with heart and soul revered the Law, the Torah of their God.
All this is no mere rhetoric, strange though it reads: it is plain unvarnished history.
Undismayed by the crushing ruin of A.D. 70, the chief Rabbinic leaders, when Jerusalem was destroyed, re-established their schools at Jamnia (Jabne), a town close to the sea, south of Joppa. They had little sympathy with the extreme party of Nationalists, the Zealots; for they saw that any serious conflict with Rome was utterly hopeless, so they diverted the thoughts and aspirations of the survivors of the great revolt into other channels. The cult of the Law henceforward must be the work of Israel. They were wonderfully successful, and soon infused into the heart of the Chosen People something of their burning zeal; for what they taught, they maintained, were the very words and commands of the Eternal of Hosts.
A great master, Jochanan ben Zacchai, soon made the new school of Jamnia a notable centre of the new work. We use the term “new”; for although Rabbinism and the scientific study of the Law had existed long before the events of A.D. 70, it received a fresh and striking impulse when the Temple and City existed no longer.
Round the chair of Jochanan gathered quickly a band of faithful disciples who shared in the quiet enthusiasm of the great master, and in the last twenty-five or thirty years of the fatal century which had witnessed the terrible victory of Titus, the real foundations of the Talmud, which united and bound together the Chosen People for centuries, which preserved them from disintegration and welded them once more into one great race, were laid.
Rome allowed this new spirit to grow up among the remnant of the people she had crushed, and made no effort to interfere with the Jamnia Rabbinic school. The statesmen of the Empire were quite content that the restless people, so long a danger to the State, should turn its attention to other matters unconnected with aspirations after independence. It was no doubt with some contempt that they witnessed the growth of the new spirit among the turbulent nation. It was nothing to Rome--this singular devotion to an old Law and a traditional revelation which the Jew considered divine. They little thought that the Jew and his ancient Law would outlive the mighty Empire of which they were so proud, and that the despised and crushed race and its cherished belief would influence in a marvellous way the civilized world for hundreds of years after Rome had become the mere shadow of a name.
The great Jewish revolt of A.D. 117 had little influence upon the fortunes and wonderful growth of the Rabbinic schools, the chief seat of which was in Palestine. The scenes of that rebellion and its ghastly punishment were far removed from Palestine, and what happened in Cyrene, Egypt, and Cyprus only slightly affected the dwellers in the old Land of Promise.
But the next revolt--the rebellion we have termed the third great Jewish war--had a different scene. Once more Palestine witnessed a dangerous and bloody war, when Bar-cochab, a mistaken enthusiast and patriot, raised again the standard of rebellion against Rome, and, asserting that he was the long-looked-for Messiah, gave this last formidable Jewish rising the character of a religious war.
As a rule the great masters of the new Rabbinic schools were out of sympathy with the Zealots who had risen against Rome in this last disastrous revolt; but one of their number, the famous Rabbi Akiba, curiously enough, had espoused their cause, and certain others of the more eminent Rabbinic teachers, no doubt owing to his influence, had rallied to the cause of Bar-cochab in the desperate and hopeless struggle.
Rabbi Akiba occupies among the early group of founders of the Talmud, who flourished from _circa_ A.D. 70 to _circa_ A.D. 190, perhaps the most prominent position. He was even termed the “second Moses,” so sought after were his teachings and expositions of the sacred Law, and its subsequent explanations and additions--the Halachah. He gathered round him not only a host of younger pupils, but among his disciples were numbered a group of Rabbis who became subsequently the chief teachers of their day and time. It has been often asked what induced this great Rabbinic scholar and teacher to throw in his lot with a wild enthusiast like Bar-cochab, and to support that impostor’s baseless claim to be recognized as the promised Messiah.
The answer perhaps is that Akiba, in common with others of the new school of Rabbinism, which aimed at restoring the fallen Judaism by means of an enthusiastic devotion to the Divine Law, recognised that in Christianity must be sought and found the most dangerous foe to the Rabbinic conception of the Chosen People. After the fall of the City and Temple, and the breaking up of every national and religious bond, there was grave danger that the Jewish people would become absorbed among the Gentile Christians. It is probable that already some of the Rabbis were secretly persuaded of the truth of the Gospel story. Rabbi Akiba was, however, one of the most energetic opponents of Christianity, and he welcomed the appearance of the pseudo-Messiah Bar-cochab as a rival to Jesus of Nazareth.
But great though the influence of Akiba was, for he persuaded some Jews, he evidently did not carry the bulk of the Rabbinic teachers with him, for the Talmud execrates the name of Bar-cochab, though it ever mentions the name of Akiba with the deepest and tenderest veneration. The great learning and the devoted behaviour of the loved teacher under the most excruciating tortures which accompanied his execution by the Roman government, saved his memory from the bitter reproaches with which the Talmud speaks of Bar-cochab and the authors of the last ill-fated and useless revolt.[159]
Akiba is ever remembered as one of the greatest of this wonderful group of Talmud founders, as well as a very noble martyr.
Rabbi Akiba’s work was not limited to exposition and explanation and elaborate discussions in the academies of the traditional Halachah or oral comments on the Law of Moses. He was virtually the first[160] who attempted to codify and arrange the vast accumulation of these Halachah and Haggadah, and to reduce them into something like order and arrangement. Some years after Akiba’s death, about the middle of the second century, his most famous disciple, the Rabbi Meir, who is known in the Talmud as the “Light of the Law,” took up his master Akiba’s work, and went on with arranging and codifying the Halachah, introducing, however, many more Halachah into his codification, and supplementing and illustrating his expositions with many interesting traditions (Haggadah)[161]; thus preparing the way for the more elaborate collection or recension of Rabbi Judah Ha-Nasi--the Holy--who is known in the Talmud as “Rabbi”--_the_ Rabbi _par excellence_. “Rabbi’s” great work of codification may be dated about the years A.D. 200-19, or thereabouts.
The work of “Rabbi,” somewhat enlarged and recast, is with us still. It represents fairly the Mishnah which was used as the text of the great Gemara[162] commentaries compiled in the schools of Palestine and Babylonia[163] between the end of the second century and the last years of the sixth century. The Mishnah of “Rabbi,” which was largely based upon the collections of Rabbi Akiba and his disciple Rabbi Meir, and the Gemaras of Palestine and Babylonia,[163] compiled in centuries three, four, five, and six, make up the Talmud.
There was a strict traditional interdiction which dated back at least to the centuries which followed the Return from the Exile, if not earlier, against ever committing the Halachah and the discussions of the Scribes upon the Halachah to _writing_. The latest Jewish scholars have decided that to a certain extent the interdiction was removed by “Rabbi” in the very early years of the third century, or at the close of the second century.
We may assume, then, with tolerable certainty that “Rabbi” in his old age reduced the great collection of Halachah to writing, transgressing, in a way, the ancient tradition which forbade this. He seems to have considered that the prohibition, if maintained in its ancient strictness, might endanger the preservation of the precious teaching.
“Rabbi” did not entirely abrogate the interdiction, for the oral method of instruction continued during the period of the Gemara discussions in Palestine and in Babylonia: the teacher alone using the _written_ Halachah, which made up the redaction of the Mishnah by “Rabbi” as a guide; the pupils, however, always repeating the lesson _orally_.
Before the fall of Jerusalem the great Sanhedrim was the ultimate resort for decisions in the law, though it is true that as a rule it accepted the Law as developed by the great teachers; but still, “from thence,” _i.e._ from the Sanhedrim, as the Mishnah says, “proceeded the Law for all Israel.” But after A.D. 70 the great Sanhedrim ceased to exist. This of course gave a very marked increase in prestige and power to the acknowledged leading Rabbis or Masters in the Rabbinic schools.
The principal task of these doctors was to teach the Law. The ideal was that every Israelite should have a knowledge of this Divine Law. Of course, this ideal was unattainable, but the famous Rabbis without doubt gathered round them great numbers who longed for special instruction in what had come to be looked on as the glory and hope of their race. “Bring up many scholars” was a famous ancient saying.
The instruction in the Palestinian schools of Jamnia and Lydda, and a little later more especially at Tiberias, and also in the famous Babylonian schools such as Sura,[164] Nehardea, and Pumbeditha, consisted in a continual exercise of the memory. The oral Law before the days of “Rabbi,” at the close of the second century, was never committed to writing, the teacher repeating his matter again and again. This invariable method of teaching in the Rabbinical schools was the origin of the term _Mishnah_ (repetition).[165]
The system of teaching was absolutely different from that of our modern colleges and universities. The masters of the various schools did not confine themselves to giving lectures which the pupils could take down. Here all was busy life, excitement, debate; question was met by question, and countless questions and answers were given, wrapped up in allegory, parable, and legend,--of course under the guidance and direction of the head of the academy.
A most interesting picture of the inner life and organization of the Rabbinical schools or academies in which the Talmud was slowly and deliberately composed is given in the vast and scholarly Jewish Encyclopædia (completed in the year 1906). A very brief précis of this is attempted here. The date of the picture in question is as late as the tenth century, and refers especially to a comparatively late period in the Rabbinical work; but much of it goes back to the time of the Amoraim, the earliest Rabbis of the Gemara, who were the teachers from the first part of the third century.
It may be taken as an account and general description of the method in which the two versions of the Talmud were composed, in Palestine as well as in Babylonia, in such academical centres of Rabbinism as Sura and Tiberias. The picture especially refers to the Babylonian academies of Pumbeditha and Sura, but without doubt a very similar procedure was followed in the Palestinian academy of Tiberias.
The students or disciples appear to have assembled twice every year, the discussion and instruction lasting four weeks.
In the month Elah at the close of the summer, and in the month Adar at the end of the winter, the disciples desiring instruction in the sacred Law journeyed to the academy, say of Sura, or of Pumbeditha, from their various abodes, having carefully studied and prepared during the previous five months the special treatise of the Mishnah announced at the academy at the close of the preceding session by the head of the Rabbinic school as the subject for discussion at the next session.
They at once presented themselves on arriving at Sura to the head of the academy, who proceeded to examine them on the treatise of the Mishnah fixed beforehand.
They sat in the following order or rank: seventy of the senior or principal pupils were placed nearest to the head, or president, of the school, the number seventy being a reminiscence of the great Sanhedrim.
Behind these seventy sat the other disciples and members of the academy.
The foremost row--the seventy--recited aloud the subject-matter of the discussion and of instruction which were to follow; they recited, too, any passage which seemed to require especial consideration, which they debated among themselves, the “head,” or president, all the while silently taking notes of the debate.
The “head” after this lectured generally on the treatise, the subject of the discussion, adding an exposition of those special passages which had given rise to the debate.
Sometimes in the course of his lecture the “head” asked a question as to how the disciples would explain a certain Halachah. The question had to be answered by the scholars he chose to name. After the answer or answers had been received the “head” added his own exposition of the Halachah in question.
Subsequently one of the “seventy” senior students gave an address, summing up the arguments which had arisen out of the theme--the Halachah--which they had been considering.
In the fourth week of the session the “seventy” and other of the students were examined individually by the “head” of the academy.
Questions received from various quarters were also discussed for final solution. The “head” listened, and finally formulated his decisions, which were written down. The results of the meeting of the academy during the month of session were finally signed by the “head” of the academy.
* * * * *
The details and comments contained in the foregoing sections of the Fifth Book (“The Jew and the Talmud”) are mainly confined to the great official work of Rabbinic Judaism known as the Talmud, made up of the Mishnah and its commentary, the Gemara.
But besides this vast compilation, it must be borne in mind that there exists an enormous mass of Rabbinic literature outside the Talmud, such as the non-canonical Mishnah, the Targumim, the Midrashim, the Kabbala, etc. Some of this dates from a very early period, and possesses a high authority among the recognized Jewish teachers.
Most of these extra-Talmudical writings are Haggadic in character.
V
THE TEXT OF THE SACRED BOOKS OF THE OLD TESTAMENT
All this mighty superstructure of “Mishnah and Gemara,” which occupied so many of the greatest and most earnest minds in Israel for several centuries, was built up on the foundations of a Law (Torah) recognised as given by God Himself. The Books containing this Law (Torah), the Pentateuch, were accepted as divine in the course of the five centuries which intervened between the return from exile and the Christian era. The Pentateuch at first constituted the canon of Jewish Scripture. Its acknowledgment, though, no doubt dates from a much older period--long before the days of the Exile. We do not, however, possess sufficient historical data to define accurately the position which the Law held in pre-exilic Israel. To the Pentateuch was subsequently added the writings of the Prophets and the sacred works belonging to the older pre-exilic history of Israel. The canon of Scripture was completed and acknowledged much in its present form certainly 200 years before the age of Jesus Christ.
But although the prophets and other writings belonging to the pre-exilic period had been subsequently added to the Torah (the Law of Moses), it is certain that they never were placed quite on a level with it.
THE MASSORAH
After the question--What constituted the canonical writings, the Divine Word?--was finally and authoritatively settled, the next step was to ensure the preservation of the sacred text which contained the Divine Revelation. The Scribes had determined what were the canonical books. The text of these books was handed over to another group of scholars known as the Massoretes. The precise chronology of these various steps is unknown.
The word “Massorah” comes from the Hebrew “Masar,” to give something into the hand of another so as to commit it to his trust. The work and duty of the Massoretes--the authoritative custodians of the sacred text--was to safeguard it, so as to protect it from any change. This they did effectually by “building a hedge round it.” To do this, they carefully registered all the phenomena in the ancient manuscripts, the reason for and meaning of many of which were not understood; but they were carefully noted and preserved. Some words were found which had been dotted over; some were spelt with large, some with smaller letters; some words and expressions were archaic, that is, belonging to a much earlier date in their history; some were suspended above the line; some sentences contained peculiar expressions: such-like phenomena and peculiarities in the ancient MSS. were diligently recorded by the Massoretes,--none were overlooked.
Other textual notes were carefully made, such as the number of verses in each sacred book. The middle verse and word of each great section in each book and even in the whole Bible were also recorded. All important words were noted; the number of times that each letter of the alphabet occurs in each division in each book and in the whole Bible were diligently written down. All this, and very much more of such curious statistical information, was registered by the Massoretes so as to lock and interlock every letter, word, and line into its place, that the original text of the ancient MSS. might be preserved and faithfully reproduced and handed down by any copyist who followed the direction of the Massorah.
That some of this curious elaborate work was done, that some of this vast hedge[166] round the Law was planted _before_ the fall of the City and Temple in A.D. 70, is fairly certain. But there is no doubt that the extremely complicated and exhaustive work of the Massoretes to ensure the preservation of the ancient text was really elaborated and completed in those centuries after the Christian era when the composition of the Mishnah and Gemara occupied the attention of the great Rabbinic academies which arose after the ruin of the City and Temple, in Palestine and in Babylonia.
This very brief sketch of the Massorah will give some idea of how exceedingly precious in the eyes of the Jew for many centuries has been the text of his loved Scriptures.
We possess no MSS. of the Hebrew Bible older than the first half of the ninth century. The reason of the non-existence of any very ancient MSS. is probably owing to the fact of the Jews being in the habit of burying old and worn-out copies of the Scriptures lest the worn material, the valuable parchment or papyrus, should be employed for any secular purpose. The text we now possess is, however, certainly that which was current in the seventh and eighth centuries of the Christian era, and there is little doubt that it accurately represents a much older text.
The Massoretic notes, something of the general purport of which is described above, are written above and below the three columns into which usually each page of the MS. of the Scriptures is divided. These notes are termed the “Massorah Magna”; while on the margin and between the columns are more Massoretic notes. These are termed the “Massorah Parva.”
The composition of these notes, which included every phenomenon of the text, as well as a vast number of interesting statistical facts bearing on the text, went on for well-nigh a thousand years, and eventually they amounted to an enormous bulk of material. It became in time absolutely impossible to write down anything approaching to the whole of the Massorah in any single MS. Hence, whenever a new copy of the Scriptures was ordered by an individual or a community, the Massoretic scribes were in the habit of transcribing only so much of the Massorah as they deemed of especial importance and interest, or as much of the Massorah as they considered a fair equivalent for the price paid for the MS. Thus it has come about that there is no single MS. of the Old Testament which contains the whole or anything approximating to the whole Massorah. The present scholarly editor of the Massorah (Dr. Ginsberg) has some seventy-two ancient MSS. of the Old Testament collected in the British Museum, from which he is gathering the different Massoretic notes for the monumental work on which he is engaged.
The mass of material put together by successive generations of scribes is so enormous that much of it has been even gathered into separate treatises; it having been found in old time simply impossible to find space for it in any codex, although all manner of abbreviations and signs to compress the notes into a smaller compass have been devised by the ancient scribes.
* * * * *
Such was the Massorah, that marvellous and unique apparatus devised by the Rabbis for the preservation of the ancient text of the Scriptures. A brief sketch showing the estimation in which these Scriptures, or at all events the Law proper, the Pentateuch, was held by the great Rabbinical schools, is indispensable to this little study on the Talmud.
VI
CONCLUDING MEMORANDA
THE TALMUDICAL VIEW OF THE INSPIRATION OF THE SCRIPTURE
We read in the Mishnah such statements as the following: “He who asserts that the Torah is not from heaven has no part in the world to come.” (Sanhedrim, x. 7.)
As time went on this view of inspiration was held with increasing strictness. At first the commands of “the Law” were all that was signified in such a saying as the one just quoted, but gradually the whole Pentateuch was included in this assertion of the direct Divine authority; in the Mishnah we read startling sayings, such as we have already given, viz.: “He who says that Moses wrote even one word of his own knowledge is a denier and despiser of the Word of God.” (Sanhedrim, 99.) Even the last verses of Deuteronomy which tell of the death of Moses were affirmed to have been written by Moses himself,--having been dictated to him by Divine revelation.
The only point in dispute was whether the whole Torah was given to Moses by God complete at once, or handed to him by volumes. (Gittin 60_a_.)
In course of time Divine inspiration was taught as belonging to the Prophets and the Hagiographa, to the Mishnah, the Talmud, and even to the Haggadah.
A very singular _anticipatory_ revelation was believed to have been made on Sinai to the prophets. In “Shemoth Rabba” we read: “What the prophets were about to prophesy in every generation they receive from Mount Sinai.” The revelation was apparently made to the souls of those about to be created. And so Isaiah is represented as saying: “From the day that the Torah was given on Mount Sinai, there I was and received this prophecy,--and now the Lord God and His Spirit have sent me.”[167]
The Talmud conta ins a somewhat similar curious teaching as regards “Miracles”--the course of creation was not disturbed by them, _they were all primarily existing, as well as pre-ordained_. They were “created” at the end of all things, in the gloaming of the sixth day. Creation, together with these so-called exceptions, once established, nothing could be altered in it. The laws of nature went on by their own immutable force, however much evil might spring therefrom.
THE TALMUD--ITS STORY THROUGH THE AGES
The wonderful Jewish book--the Talmud--cannot complain of neglect or of oblivion. Never has any writing in the whole human history been so hated and hunted down. It has been proscribed and burnt again and again. Before the marvellous compilation was fully completed the Emperor Justinian, in A.D. 553, condemned it by name. Then for more than a thousand years anathemas, edicts of the sternest condemnation, were issued against the Jewish sacred volume which has done so much for the Chosen People.
Emperors, kings, and Popes in all lands and in every age have warred against it in each succeeding century. It was forbidden, cursed, often publicly burnt.
To give an average example of the spirit with which it was universally condemned by Christians, we would refer to a letter of Pope Honorius IV to the Archbishop of Canterbury (A.D. 1286), in which he speaks of the Talmud as “that damnable Book,” desiring him “to see that it is read by no one, since all evils flow out of it.”
At last, after it had been put out about 1000 years, in the dawn of the Reformation a great Christian scholar arose who defended it. Reuchlin, the most eminent Hellenist and Hebraist of his time, remonstrated against the wild and ignorant prejudice with which Christian men regarded this wonderful compilation. Long and bitter was the controversy, but the patient scholar, although formally condemned for his noble advocacy of the great Jewish book, in the end triumphed, and the Talmud this time was not burned but printed, and since Reuchlin’s time has been allowed to live on unmolested. In our day and time it has come to be regarded as one of the great works of the world, although among Christian folk its contents are comparatively unknown; while its surpassing influence in the past is acknowledged in the scholar community, which recognizes neither land nor race.
* * * * *
It has been curiously suggested that the Talmud contains many of the divine sayings of our Lord recorded in the Gospels. The fact really is, that while some few of the beautiful words of Christ are without doubt to be found in the Talmud, it is only such sayings as are common to other great teachers and thinkers, such as Seneca and the Emperor Marcus Antoninus. However, it is more than probable that the Child Jesus was conversant with some of the more striking maxims of the early Rabbis and teachers, such as Hillel and the elder Gamaliel, and that occasionally sayings of theirs are repeated in the Gospel teaching. But it is beyond all doubt that the general spirit of Rabbinism which lives through the pages of the Talmud--in the Mishnah and Gemara--was absolutely at variance with the spirit of Jesus Christ and His disciples.
To take two notable examples--the position of women and the exclusive position of Israel. The Gospel teaching is completely different on the position of women from what we find in the authoritative teaching of the Talmud treatises. With our Lord the woman was the equal in all respects of the man, in this world and in the world to come.[168] The striking inferiority of women in Israel is brought forward again and again in the sayings of the great Rabbis. We would quote a very few of their authoritative Talmudical teachings here:--
R. Meir--second century (Mishnah): “A man is bound to repeat three benedictions every day.” One of these was, “Blessed art Thou, Lord our God, who hast not made me a woman.”
And again: “Are not slaves and women in the same category? The slave is more degraded.”
“Blessed is the man whose children are sons, but luckless is he whose children are daughters.” (Baba-Bathra.)
“The testimony of one hundred women is only equal to the evidence of one man.” (Yevamoth.)
The stern exclusiveness of Israel is pressed constantly in the Talmud. This is diametrically opposed to the New Testament teaching so conclusively formulated by S. Peter (Acts x. 34, 35): “Of a truth I perceive that God is no respecter of persons, but in every nation he that feareth Him and worketh righteousness is accepted with Him.”
While in the Talmud we read--
“Almsgiving exalteth a nation [that is, Israel], ... but benevolence is a sin to nations,”--that is to say, for the Gentiles to exercise charity and benevolence is sin. (Compare Baba-Bathra, fol. 10, col. 2.)
And again: “All Israelites have a portion in the world to come.” (Sanhedrim, fol. 90, col. 1.) “The world was created only for Israel; none are called the children of God but Israel, none are beloved before God but Israel.” (Gèrim.)
“Three things did Moses ask of God”:--1. “He asked that the Shekinah (the glory of God) might rest upon Israel.” 2. “That the Shekinah might rest upon none but Israel.” 3. “That God’s ways might be made known unto him: and all these requests were granted.” (Cf. Berachotk, fol. 7, col. 1.)
Such teachings as these from the Talmud might be multiplied indefinitely.
THE AUTHORITY AND INFLUENCE OF THE TALMUD ON JUDAISM
The influence of the Talmud on Judaism has been measureless.
In the second, third, fourth, fifth, and part of the sixth centuries which followed the destruction of Jerusalem and the Temple, the Rabbinic schools of Palestine and Babylonia, where “the great book” was thought out and compiled, became for the scattered people new centres, where the old sacred learning was not only carried on, but made to shine with a yet greater splendour--a splendour never possessed in any of the ages of its long story.
And when the Book (the Talmud) was finally completed in the sixth century it was recognized throughout the scattered Jewish people as having put new life and new meaning into the sacred writings, which to a certain extent, especially in the case of the Ritual Law, naturally, after the fall of the Temple and the Holy City, had lost much of their power and special application.
Then, as time went on, “the Book” became the strongest bond of union between the exiles of the West and East; between the Jews of Rome and Constantinople, of Alexandria and the distant East. And later, when the old Empire of Rome was dissolved and the Teutonic tribes had become masters of the Western world, the Talmud was still the bond of union between all the Jews of “the Dispersion” through the Middle Ages.
Thus the Talmud has for centuries been the link which has welded into one great people all the scattered Jewish race. For every professing Jew has felt that the great compilation embodied all the ancient cherished traditions of the people, and was persuaded that the Talmud in some respects was equal to the Bible, especially as a source of instruction and decision in the problems of religion.
It has preserved and fostered for some fifteen hundred years in the “Dispersion” that spirit of deep religion and strict morality which has kept the Jewish people separate and intact; and be it remembered under the most unfavourable external conditions, for, with certain rare exceptions, since the days of the Emperor Constantine and the victory of Christianity the Jew has been generally hated, despised, persecuted, an exile and a wanderer over the face of the earth.
In the Jewish race the study of the Talmud has awakened and stimulated intellectual activity in an extraordinary degree. Its study has given to the world of letters a vast number of scholars, men of the loftiest character, belonging to the first rank of philosophers and writers, whose works, limited though they mostly are by the Rabbinic area of thought and speculation, have been of high service to civilization.
Among these great ones issuing from the Jews of no one land, and who form a numerous band, it is difficult in this brief study to particularize even the most distinguished, but the following names will at once occur to any competent scholar as prominent examples of famous men of the Rabbinic school, whose works have shed real light on the so-called dark mediæval period:--
Raschi A.D. _circa_ 1040-1105
Maimonides " " 1135-1204
D. Kimchi " " 1158-1235
The names, however, of distinguished scholars and writers of the Rabbinic school who have arisen during the last fifteen centuries in different lands might be multiplied almost indefinitely.
And this people is with us still, more influential, probably more numerous, than at any period of its immemorial history. The numbers at the present day are variously computed as amounting to from seven to eleven millions.
THE INFLUENCE OF THE TALMUD ON CHRISTIANITY
But not only among the Jewish peoples of the “Dispersion” has this strange and wonderful book exercised a surpassing influence, but even among the Christian nations of the world has its spirit percolated, and in a remarkable way has influenced and coloured certain important phases of religious thought and belief.
Among Christian peoples the Talmud is virtually unknown; to well-nigh every individual in the Christian nations it is but the shadow of a name, to the great majority scarcely even that; and yet the profound, the awful reverence for the Old Testament Scriptures which lives among all Christian folk, a reverence that often shades into a passionate love, though they guess it not, springs largely out of the teachings of that great Rabbinic book the _Talmud_, the very name of which so many have scarcely heard.
For the Mishnah and Gemara which make up the Talmud, the thousand treatises which have been written by learned Rabbis at different periods during the last sixteen hundred years of the Jewish Dispersion, are simply all comments upon, explanations and developments of traditions and history bearing upon the Old Testament Scriptures, the one precious heritage of the Jew handed down from generation to generation of the Chosen People from time immemorial.
This story of the changeless love of the Hebrew race for their ancient writings and records, which the Jew is never weary of reiterating, came to him direct from God Almighty, and has found an echo in unnumbered Christian hearts, and so it has come to pass that the Old Testament Scriptures--the Torah (the Law) of Moses, the Prophets, and the other sacred books--are received to this day with a deep reverential love as the expression of the will of the Eternal of Hosts, alike in Christian Churches as in the Jewish Synagogues.[169]
VII
(_A_) AN APPENDIX ON THE “HAGGADAH”
Before closing this little sketch of the Talmud and of the very early Rabbinical writings, it will be well to give a somewhat more detailed explanation of one of its more important features, which we have already somewhat lightly touched upon--the “Haggadah.”
It is not too much to say that the widespread, the lasting popularity of the mighty book--the Talmud--is largely owing to this special kind of exposition, which includes the Historical, the Legendary, the Homiletical, and the Comforting. It is absolutely peculiar to the Talmud; there is nothing resembling it in the official or acknowledged writings belonging to any other religious system.
In the Exile and in the lengthened period which directly followed the Exile, _i.e._ in the five centuries which intervened between the “Return from the Exile” and the Christian era, the Chosen People had learned, as we have noticed, to love their Scriptures with a great love, a love that may be termed a passion. It was then that the sacred books became, and for long centuries remained, the centre of their lives. The study of these books, the study which included research, investigation, exposition, application to every event in their lives, to every possible contingency which might happen to them, is known as _Midrash_.
Legendary history which clustered round the events related in the sacred books, details not chronicled in the text of the books, but carefully treasured up, preserved and handed down, circumstances more or less interesting and important connected with the lives of the principal Biblical personages, were gradually gathered together, were carefully sifted out and discussed by the scribes and doctors of the law, and if finally received as authentic by the great Jewish teachers, were written down[170] and handed on from generation to generation.
This work and study especially connected with the non-legal portions of the Scriptures known as “Haggadah,” certainly received a mighty impulse in the times of the Scribes before the Christian era, and reached its highest development in the famous Academies of Palestine and Babylonia which arose after the events of A.D. 70. We may roughly compute this great period of the development of the “Haggadah” as reaching from A.D. 72-100 to A.D. 500 or 550. The _creative_ Haggadic activity may be said to have ceased after this last date.
Although “Haggadic” notices or comments appear not unfrequently in the exclusively legal section of the Pentateuch, they belong more especially to those Scriptures which treat of history, narrative, and teaching--including, of course, the prophetic writings. In the first instance the “Haggadic” Midrash confined itself to the simple exposition of the Scripture text, but it very soon developed into comments of a very varied nature, not unfrequently into homilies inculcating religious truths and moral maxims, into disquisitions on the past and future glories of Israel; roughly speaking, the “Haggadah” on a passage or section of the canonical Scriptures endeavoured, by penetrating beneath the mere literal sense, to arrive at the spirit of the Scripture in question. In the Talmud (Sanhedrim Treatise) it has been well compared to a hammer which awakens the slumbering sparks of a rock.
Legendary additions, of course, form an important part of the Haggadah, but these ancient traditions or legends by no means, as some suppose, constitute the bulk of this vast and wonderful commentary on the canonical or acknowledged Scriptures.
Among the sources where we find this curious Biblical literature which has been a very important link in the Talmud chain which has been the great bond of union of the scattered Jewish race for so many centuries, of course primarily must be reckoned the Mishnah and the two Gemaras, the Palestinian and the Babylonian, which constitute the Talmud. Here are found many of those “Haggadic” comments which naturally are regarded with the deepest reverence, as they have received the seal of approval of the doctors of the great Academies of Sura, Pumbaditha, and Tiberias, who flourished in the early centuries of the Christian era.
But there are “Haggadic” notices of great antiquity and in still larger numbers preserved in writings which form the non-canonical Mishnah, works subsidiary and auxiliary to the Mishnah proper, some of which even date from the second and third century or even earlier, and have ever possessed among the learned Jews a very high authority. For example, in the Targums (Targumim) are very many pieces of an “Haggadic” nature, not a few evidently of a remote antiquity and of the highest interest.
It is, of course, impossible in the limits of such a brief sketch of so vast a subject to give any adequate illustration of this vast collection of Haggadah; we will simply quote two or three examples taken from the Palestine Targum on the Torah on the Book of Deuteronomy, where the original text is expanded by words of tradition or legend, by homiletics, by words of teaching, of comfort and encouragement.
* * * * *
From the Palestine Targum on the Torah (Deuteronomy chap, xxxiii.). “And he (Moses) said: The Lord was revealed at Sinai to give the law unto His people of Beth Israel, and the splendour of the glory of His Shekinah arose from Gebal to give itself to the sons of Esau; but they received it not. It shined forth in majesty and glory from Mount Pharan, to give itself to the sons of Ishmael; but they received it not. It returned and revealed itself in holiness unto His people of Israel, and with Him ten thousand times ten thousand holy angels. He wrote with His own right hand, and gave them His law and His commandments, out of the flaming fire.”
* * * * *
“And he saw at the beginning that a place had been prepared there for a sepulchre, a place strewn with precious stones and pearls, where Mosheh the prophet, the scribe of Israel, was to be hidden, (who) as he went in and out at the head of the people in this world, so will he go in and out in the world to come; because he wrought righteousness before the Lord, and taught the orders of the judgments to the sons of Israel.”
* * * * *
“There is no God like the God of Israel, whose Shekinah and Chariot dwell in the heavens. He will be your helper. He sitteth on His glorious throne in His majesty, in the expanse of the heavens above. The habitation of Eloha is from eternity; by the arm of His power beneath the world is upborne. He will scatter your adversaries before you, and will say by His Word, Destroy them. And Israel shall dwell safely as of old according to the benediction with which Jakob their father did bless them, for whose righteousness’ sake He will cause them to inherit the good land that yieldeth corn and wine; the heavens also above them will drop with the dews of blessing and the rains of loving-kindness. Happy are you, O Israel: who of all the nations are like you, a people saved in the Name of the Word of the Lord? He is the shield of your help, and His sword, the strength of your excellency.”
* * * * *
From Deuteronomy chap. xxxiv. “Blessed be the Name of the Lord of the world, who hath taught us His righteous way. He hath taught us to clothe the naked, as He clothed Adam and Hava (Eve); He hath taught us to unite the bridegroom and the bride in marriage, as He united Hava (Eve) to Adam. He hath taught us to visit the sick, as He revealed Himself to Abraham when he was ill from being circumcised; He hath taught us to console the mourners, as He revealed Himself again to Jakob when returning from Padan in the place where his mother had died. He hath taught us to feed the poor, as He sent Israel bread from heaven; He hath taught us to bury the dead by (what He did for) Mosheh; for He revealed Himself in His Word, and with Him the companies of ministering angels: Michael and Gabriel spread forth the golden bed, fastened with chrysolites, gems, and beryls, adorned with hangings of purple silk, and satin, and white linens. Metatron, Jophiel, and Uriel, and Jephephya, the wise sages, laid him upon it, and by His Word conducted him four miles, and buried him in the valley opposite Beth Peor;--that Israel, as oft as they look up to Peor, may have the memory of their sin; and at the sight of the burying-place of Mosheh may be humbled; but no man knoweth his sepulchre unto this day.”
VIII
(_B_) ON THE “HALACHAH” AND “HAGGADAH”
We would add a few words further explanatory of the Halachah. The Halachic Midrash (or exegesis and development of the passages of the Law) dealt with the exact purport of the various Divine commands contained in the Torah, or Law of Moses. It explained in detail how these precepts were to be carried out in common life. It professed to be nothing more than an exposition of the original Law; but in reality it contained vast additions to what was written in the Books of Moses, and claimed to possess an equal authority with the original charges contained in the Pentateuch.
Roughly, these so-called Halachic developments were divided into three classes or categories--
1. Halachah or commands traced back to Moses.
2. A great mass of Halachah--containing _traditional_ ordinances professedly based on the original Mosaic commands, but in reality connected with the Mosaic ordinances by the very slightest of ties.
3. A number of enactments really only emanating from the schools of the Scribes, but which were taught to be equally binding with the original Pentateuch ordinances. These Halachah largely dated from the years which preceded the Christian era; they were, in the last half of the first century and during the second century, codified and arranged in the Mishnah.
The general purport of the Halachic Midrash, which contains the rule of Israelitic life and which so long occupied the Scribes and their schools, was very largely connected in the first place with the elaborate network of sacrifice, and the usages which followed and preceded the many and complicated various offerings. The Halachah might fairly be called The Law and Rule of Jewish Ritual. Its subject-matter has been well and tersely summed up as follows: The Halachic Midrash sought to establish, by laws which were absolutely binding on every true Jew, the manner in which God desires to be honoured; what sacrifices are to be offered to Him, what feasts and fasts are to be kept in His honour, and generally what religious rites are to be observed by the people. Other questions are, however, discussed and resolved in the Halachah, but these other points fill after all a comparatively small space in the great legal commentary or ritual which occupies so important a place in the vast Talmud compilation.
HAGGADAH
The writer of the foregoing “study” feels that a sadly incomplete picture of the “Haggadah,” the popular division of the Talmud, has been painted. A few more remarks on this singular and important portion of the Talmud are given by way of further elucidation of this strange form of exegesis (Midrash) of the Holy Scriptures.
We have already stated that broadly the “Halachic” Midrash or exegesis belongs especially to the Books of the Pentateuch, and the “Haggadic” Midrash rather to the other Books of the Old Testament writings.
But even in the Pentateuch, _narrative and history_ occupy a wide space, and in the Pentateuch Midrash we find too a mass of Haggadic commentary on the narrative and historic portions of the five Books of Moses.
Here the “Book of Jubilees” (century 1) may be quoted as a striking instance of early Haggadic Midrash or exegesis of Scripture. It reproduces the Book of Genesis, and curiously amplifies and largely supplements the original text.
Dwelling on the history of Creation, the Haggadic scribe tells us how “in the twilight on the evening before the first Sabbath, ten things were created--(1) The chasm in the earth, in which Korah and his company were swallowed up. (2) The opening of Miriam’s well. (3) The mouth of Balaam’s ass. (4) The Rainbow. (5) The Manna of the Wilderness. (6) The famous Shamir, the worm which splits stones, traditionally used in the making of the Tabernacle and its furniture. (7) The Rod of Moses. (8) Alphabetic writing. (9) The writing of the Tables of the Law. (10) The stone tables on which the Ten Commandments were written.”
The devout student of the Old Testament will read with deep interest the above-quoted reference to the purely Haggadic passage taken from the “Book of Jubilees,” in which an allusion is made to the ass who reproved Balaam.
This is one of the recitals in the Old Testament Scriptures which has ever, for various reasons, been a difficulty, when regarded as a piece of actual history. Its appearance in the “Book of Jubilees” among other evidently Haggadic or purely legendary amplifications of the original text, suggests that even in the Pentateuch the inspired compiler has occasionally introduced in his narrative details which in the opinion of the very early Scribes belonged evidently to the realm of Haggadah or legend.
In the Haggadah of the Pentateuch a vast cycle of legends accompanies the original Genesis account of famous heroes of Israelitic history, such as Adam, Enoch, Abraham, Moses, and Aaron.
A good specimen of Haggadic legendary amplification is given above in the extract from the Jerusalem Targum on Deut. xxxiv., where the death of Moses and the circumstances attending his burial are related. Again, one of the canonical writings of the Old Testament, the Book of Chronicles, is a fair example of the less fanciful Haggadic historical Midrash. Here the compiler of the book in question adds to the original record of the Jewish kings a number of details not found in the Books of Kings and in the older histories of Israel.
The Haggadah specially enlarges at great length, and with much detail, the passages which even remotely refer to the future, to the angels, and to the heavenly world; it amplifies all the mystic sections which deal with the glory of the Eternal, such as the “chariot” of Ezekiel, that wonderful introductory vision of his great prophecy.
Even in the New Testament Epistles and in the “Acts,” Haggadic influence is noticeable in several well-known passages; for instance, in S. Paul’s 2nd Epistle to Timothy iii. 8, the names of the Egyptian magicians Jannes and Jambres, which do not appear in the Genesis history, are given. A still more remarkable example of Haggadic influence is the singular legendary account of the Rock in 1 Cor. x. 4, where the rock from which, at Moses’ bidding, the water gushed forth is represented as positively accompanying the Israelites during their desert wanderings. Again, in Acts vii. 53, Gal. iii. 19, Heb. ii. 2, the Law is represented, not as given to Moses by God Himself, as related in the Pentateuch, but as reaching him through the medium of angels.
IX
WOMEN’S DISABILITIES
Among the disabilities of the women[171] of Israel nothing is more remarkable than the position they occupied in the public services of the congregation. The Inner Court of the Temple, within which the whole of the official worship was celebrated, was divided by a wall into two divisions--a Western and an Eastern. The latter (the Eastern)--the more remote from the Temple proper--was called “the Court of the Women,” not however because none but women were admitted to it, but because women as well as men were allowed to enter it.
The _Western_ division was reserved exclusively for men; in this division stood the Temple proper, including the Holy Place and the Holy of Holies.
In front of the Temple, to the West, stood the great altar of burnt-offering, at which, except in the matter of incense-burning, every act of sacrifice had to be performed. In this Western division of the Inner Court the victims were slaughtered. The Temple itself with the great altar of burnt-offering was again surrounded by an enclosure, within which as a rule none but priests might enter. This enclosure was sometimes called the Court of the Priests.
The men of Israel, however, being admitted into the Western division of the Inner Court, were spectators of and so assisted at the sacrifices offered on the great altar, from which they were only separated by the enclosure--into which, however, in certain circumstances, they were admitted.
But the women were never allowed to enter the Western division of the Inner Court--never might pass the wall of separation--never as it were assist at the sacrifices and the solemn ritual of the great altar which stood at the Western entrance of the Temple.
INDEX
“Aboth,” treatise, 358 _n._ 1
Acilii Glabriones family, Crypt of, 265, 267, 268-9, 270-1; was Pudens a member of?, 270
Acilius Glabrio, Consul, martyrdom of, 41-2, 230-1, 269
_Acta Sincera_, of Ruinart, on Martyrdom of Theban legion, 148 _n._ 1
_Acts of the Apostles_, Haggadic influence seen in, 379; model of, 72; on Christian assemblies, 107; on S. Paul’s prison life at Rome, 22; on status of women, 367 _n._ 1
_Acts of S. Cecilia_, in the light of catacomb discoveries, 289 _et seq._
_Acts of S. Hermes_, 274
_Acts of Martyrdom_, or _Acts and Passions of the Martyrs_, archæological and literary corroboration of, 81, 82, 94 & _n._ 1 Critical estimates of, 81 & _nn._, 82, 258 Few in early days, 33, 35, 48, 53 Pagan contempt shewn in, 158 Value of, in exploring Catacombs, 226 on Numbers of Christians, 104 on Persecutions, 163
_Acts of the Martyred Slaves_, 136
_Acts of the Passion of S. Felicitas_, 299; authenticity of, 300, 304
_Acts of Pastor and Timotheus_, tradition in, on Pudens and his family, 263-5
_Acts of S. Valentinus_, 276
Ælia Capitolina, site of, 77; insults at, to Christians, 78; results of building, 332, 335-6 _et seq._
Ælius Verus, adopted by Hadrian, 83
Æneas, piety of, 87
Æneid, teaching of, 88
Africa (_see_ Carthage, _see also_ Egypt), Christian congregations in, mid-second century, 36
Agaunum (S. Maurice), Martyrdom legend concerning, 148 _n._ 1
Agrippa, builder of Pantheon portico, 280
Akiba, Rabbi, eminence of, and of his pupils, 337, 354-6 Fate of, 355 _& n._ 1 Supporter of Bar-cochab, 78, 336-7 on Massorah, 362 _n._ 1
Alcuin, 278
Aldus Manutius, supporting Pliny’s letter, 46
Alemanni, death of, 283
Alexander, son of S. Felicitas, tomb of, 259
Alexandria, Jewish revolts in, 330, 334-5, 346; literary support from, of Petrine tradition, 10, 13; plague of, 155 _n._ 2
Alexandrian-Jewish influences in Revelation of S. John, 72
Allard, --, on Acilius Glabrio, 269; on Archæology as rehabilitating legend, 289; on Jewish fecundity, first century, in Rome, 5 _n._ 1; on the Jews in the Augustan age, 4; on Nero’s persecution and popular disgust, 42 _n._ 2; on the Martyrdom of the Theban legion, 148 _n._ 1; on Pliny’s letter, 46; on S. Peter’s arrival in Rome, 19 _n._ 1; on Trajan’s personality, 48 Translation by, of the Epitaph of Pope Damasus, 215 _n._ 1
Almsgiving, in the early Church, 113, 119-22, 123, 130 _et seq._, 138, 139
America, Civil War of, cause of, 135 _n._ 1
Amoraim, the, 345, 358 _n._ 1, 359
Amphitheatre games, horrors of, 50; Martyrdoms in, 110, 172, 175-6; training of Christians for, 198
Ampliatus, Chapel or Crypt of, Domitilla Cemetery, 240 Tomb of, identification of, 241-2
Anacletus, Pope, cemetery of, 287; discoveries in, seventeenth century, 280 _et seq._ Memoriæ erected by, over tombs of SS. Peter and Paul, 233, 237, 281 _et seq._
Ananias and Sapphira, gift of, voluntary, 120 _n._ 1
Anchor, as Christian Emblem, 310
Angels, Haggadic references to, 378, 379
Animals, wild, in amphitheatre games, exposure to, of Christians, &c., 175-6, 178, 183, 185, 187, 191, 203, 204, 269
Anniversaries of Martyrs, first celebrated, 35
Antioch (_see also_ Ignatius), literary support from, of Petrine tradition, 9, 13
Antipas, martyr, 169
Antonines, the (_see also_ Antoninus Pius _and_ Marcus Aurelius), reigns of, 63; characteristics of, 84 _et seq._; table of succession of, 83
_Antonins, Les_, by De Champagny, on Hadrian’s character, 77 _n._ 1; on the number of Jews slain in the last wars, 338 & _n._ 2
Antoninus Pius, 186, 277; adopted by, and successor to, Hadrian, 83; family and character of, 83, 84, 85 Attitude of, to Christians, 158; ignorance of their faith, 77 Coinage of, 87, 90 Persecutions by, and reasons for, 33, 80, 81, 84, 91-3, 95, 137, 163 _n._ 2, 194, 207 Relations of, with Hadrian, 83, 85
_Apocalypse_ of S. John, 72; place of, in early Christian thought, 156-7; references in, to Persecution, 37, 157, 165, 167-70
_Apologies, The_, of Justin Martyr, 128, 184 on Assemblies, 108, 113-4 on Persecution, 185-6
_Apology_ of Aristides, on Burial of the dead by Christians, 132, 133; on Christian charity, 124 & _n._ 1, 126, 130, 138; on Christians as civil judges, 148; on Hospitality, 128; on Slavery, 135
_Apology_, or _Embassy_, of Athenagoras, on Persecution, 188-9
_Apology_ of Tertullian, and the _Octavius_ of Minucius Felix, 186
Apostasy, encouraged by Roman rulers, 195, 197; Hermas on, 181; results of, 197, 203; some causes, 201
_Apostolical Constitutions, The_, on Almsgiving, 122; on Hospitality, 128
Apostolic Fathers, writings of, cast in Letter form, 73
_Apostolic Fathers_, by Lightfoot, _cited_ on Pliny’s Letters, 46 _n._ 1; on S. Hippolytus, 251
Apostolic remains, authors and form of, 73; characteristics and special value of, _ib._, meant for publication, 74 _& n._ 1
Apronienus, catacomb of, 248
Aquila and Priscilla, associations of, with S. Paul, and with Pudens, 265-6; burial-place of, 262, 266; church founded by, 262
Arch of Titus, witness of, 333 _& n._ 1
Archæological Relics of S. Peter, Chair, and place of baptism, 12
Archæology, witness of, to literature and tradition (_see also_ Catacombs), 17, 19 _n._ 1, 81, 82, 108, 147, 152 _n._ 1, 209 _et seq._, 289, 295, 298, 304 to Pagan and Christian views on Death, 154-5 to Social Status of many early Christians, 111-2
Arenaria, in Jordani catacomb, 260
Aristides, _see Apology_ of, _supra_
Aristotle, works of, 146
Arles, Church of S. Hippolytus at, 255
Armellini, Prof., on Inscription concerning S. Agnes, 256-7; Ubaldi’s memoranda published by, 281; work of, in Catacomb exploration, 239
Army, Christians in, 148 _& n._ 1
Arnold, Matthew, on the Good Shepherd with the Kid, 320
Arsacius, Letter to, from Emperor Julian, on Christian characteristics, 123 _n._ 1, 128, 131
Arval Brotherhood, College of, 236; M. Aurelius a member, 95 _n._ 1
Asia, Christian congregations in, mid-second century, 36
Asia Minor (_see also_ Antioch, &c.), 71 Christianity in (_see also_ Pliny’s Letter), founder, and effects on Paganism, and spread of, 51, 107 S. John’s prominence in, 9
Assemblies, Christian, composition of, 110-12, 113, 114, 240, 242 Importance of, 101; evidenced in literary references, 107-9 Joy in, 155 Places where held (_see also_ Catacombs), 139 Proceedings at, various writers _cited_, 113 _et seq._ References to, in N.T. and later writers, Christian and Pagan, 107 _et seq._ Sunday, 108; observance of, Justin Martyr on, 113-4 Teaching, doctrines and ritual at, 101, 113 _et seq._, 124, 126, 128-30, 131-3, 138, 139
Astolphus, 293
Athenagoras, 319 _n._ 1; on Persecutions, 188-9
Attire, Rigourist teaching on, 153-4
Aubé, on the Acts of S. Felicitas, 300; on Domitian’s persecution, 42 _n._ 2; on Trajan’s Rescript, 49
Augustus Cæsar, 91, 280; attitude of, to Imperial cultus, 42; favour shown by, to the Jews, 3; and the source of Rome’s greatness, 88, 89
Ausonius, poems of, 64
Autolycus, letters or books to, from Theophilus of Antioch, 108-9, 189
Auvergne, 66
Aventine Hill, church on, 262; house, &c., of Pudens on, 12, 15
Avitus, made Emperor, 65
Baba-Bathra treatise, in the Talmud, 343 _n._ 1
Babylon, mystic name for Rome, 8, 10, 14
Babylonia (_see also_ Exile), Jews in, 346 Rabbinic Schools of, 326, 362-3, 368, 373 Chief, 358 _n._ 1 Mode of teaching in, 357, 358-60 Work of, 344, 345, 346, 372
Babylonian Gemara, the, 356 _& n._ 4 Talmud, the, 345, Haggadic notices in, 358 _n._ 1
Baiæ, death at, of Hadrian, 83
Balaam and his ass, Haggadah on, 377, 378
Balbina, tomb of, 247
Baptisteries (_see also_ Wells) in Catacombs of Pontianus, and S. Priscilla, 236
Baptistery of S. Peter, site of, identified by Marucchi, 12, 257, 267, 271-3
Barberini (Pope Urban VIII), epigram on, 280
Bar-cochab, false Messiah, cause of last war of the Jews, 336-7; his Rabbinical supporters, 78, 336-7, 354, 355
Barnabas, Epistle of, _see_ Epistles
Barnes, --, _cited_ on Neronic burning of Christians, 285-6; on S. Peter’s tomb, 281 _& n. et seq._
Baronius, Cardinal, 263; present at finding of S. Cecilia’s body, 294 _& n._ 1, 297; on S. Petronilla, 277
Basil of Cappadocian Cæsarea, 138
Basilicas:-- of S. Lawrence “ad Corpus,” Popes buried in, 250 Domitilla, 278 Prætextatus, 247 SS. Hermes and Basilissa, 274-5 in Cœmeterium Majus, subterranean, 258 in Rome, third century number and appointments of, 112 Ruined, crypts beneath, 228 of S. Agnes, 256-7 of S. Cecilia, 292, 293 _et seq._ of S. Felicitas, 302 of S. Hippolytus, 251, 254 of S. Laurence, 250, 254 of S. Sylvester, burials in, 266 _& n._ 1, 272 When and why erected, 272
Benson, Archbishop, on S. Cyprian, 122 & _n._ 1, 127 _n._ 1
Bernini, Baldacchino by, in S. Peter’s, discoveries on erection of, 233 _n._ 1, 280 _et seq._
Bethel, the old prophet of, 321
Bethia, Zealot headquarters, 336
“Billicum confessionis,” nature of, that of S. Peter, 237, 282
Bishops and Popes of Rome (_see under_ Names), claim to be successors of S. Peter, undisputed, 16 Catalogues of, on date of Linus’s accession, 14; to Eleutherius, 15 Early, buried around S. Peter, _see_ Papal Crypt
Bithynia and Pontus, 57, 58, 62 Christians in (_see also_ Pliny’s letter), 27, 32, 35 _n._ 1, 45 _et seq._, 50, 71, 75, 77, 103 _& n._ 2, 110, 177
Bliss, instant, after Death, Christian hope of, 156
“Book of Jubilees,” subject-matter of, 377, 378
Borghesi, Cardinal, 300; re-interment by, of S. Sebastian, 244
Bosio, --, pioneer of Catacomb exploration, 223-4; present at discovery of S. Cecilia’s body, 294 _& n._ 1, 297
Bourges, mention at, of S. Petronilla as S. Peter’s daughter, 278
Brescia, relics of S. Hippolytus at, 255
Brotherhood character of early Christianity, 38, 122-3, 270
Builders, of Basilicas, &c., injury done by, to Catacombs, 250, 257
Burial customs, Jewish, Christian, and Pagan, 4, 5, 131-3, 264
Bury St. Edmunds, cult of S. Petronilla in, 278
Cæcilian family, the, Christians and martyrs of, burial-place of, 245, 291, 296-7 _& n._ 1
Cæcilius, pagan interlocutor in _Octavius_ of Minucius Felix, 146, 186; arguments of, source of, 145; contempt of, for Christians, 158; on Christian love, 119, 129
C. Aurelius, Censor, 233
Caius, Bishop or Pope of Rome, burial-place of, identified, 231; martyred relations of, 259 _n._ 1
Caius, Presbyter, 282; on the Memoriæ of the Apostles in Rome, 11
Caligula, Emperor, and the Imperial cultus, 42 _n._ 1
Callistus, Bishop or Pope of Rome, and martyr, once a slave, 136 _n._ 1 Cemetery or Catacomb of, 234, 236-7, 239, 240, 242, 244-6, 251, 261 Inscription of Damasus once in, on numbers of martyrs, 215 _& n._ 1 Papal burial-place (_q.v._), 231, 245-6, 273
Callistus group of Catacombs, 212
Carthage, Church of (_see also_ S. Cyprian), aid from, to other Churches, 131 Literary support from, of Petrine tradition, 10-11, 13 Plague at, charity of S. Cyprian and his flock during, 123 _n._ 1, 127
“Catacombas, ad,” _see_ S. Sebastian
Catacombs or Cemeteries, _see also under_ Names of Saints, _&c., and under_ Via, _and see_ Inscriptions, Itineraries, and Translation Decorations of, deductions from, 133, 147, 219, 220, 221 Exploration of-- beginning, 223 _& n._ 1 progress, 224 _et seq._ results, 219, 220-1, 224, 225, 230 _et seq._ Workers, _see_ Bosio, De Rossi, Marchi, Marucchi Extent and content of, 133 _et seq._, 220, 233 _et seq._ Jewish burials in, 4 Literature bearing on, 209-14, 226-8 Number of, De Rossi on, 232 Origin of, in general, 38 Rediscovery of, 223 _& n._ 1, 244 Restorations of, by Pope Damasus, 152 _n._ 1 Teaching in, _passim_; on Death, 309-11 Three oldest, 266 Tombs in, _passim_ Uses of, 133, 139, 220 _et alibi_; for worship, 118, 253, 258 Witness of, to _Acts of Martyrs_, 81, 82 to Christ, 308, 310, 311, 316-20 _& nn._ to Early Christian history and tradition, 105, 111-2, 133, 163 _n._ 1, 209 _et seq._, 219-21
Catalogues of Roman Bishops on date of Linus’s accession, 14
Celestinus, Pope, burial-place of, 272
Cemeteries (_see also_ Catacombs), Christian names for, 155
Cerinthian heresy, 23 _n._ 1
Chair of S. Peter, long shown, 12
Charity among Jews in Rome, 4
Charlemagne, 278
Christ, Sayings of, 366 Teaching of, contrasted with Talmudic, 366-8 With a Kid, Tertullian on, 319; M. Arnold’s verses on, 320 Witness to, of the Catacombs, 308, 310, 311, 316-20 _& nn._
_Christian Institutions_, by Dean Stanley, on the Good Shepherd, 318 _& n._ 1, 319 _n._ 1
Christian, name treated as crime, 39, 189, 191 Relatives of Emperors, 110, 112, 148, 240, 241 Religion, powerful factor in spread of, 102-3 Testimony to spread of Christianity, in the New Testament and after, 107-9 Unity, its double bond of Doctrine and Love, 118-9 Writers, early, on Numbers of Christians, 101, 208; words _cited_, 103-6 on Persecutions, &c., 36, 37, 81, 82, 163-5, 166-7, 177-91, 208; words _cited_, 103-6
Christianity, _see also_ Martyrs, Persecutions, _&c._ Early, connection of, with Judaism, 325 Growth of, 37 _et seq._, 107, 150 _& n._ 1, 151 Importance to, of history of the Jews after the last Wars, 326 _et seq._ of the Talmud, 326, 327, 348, 370 _& n._ 1 Influence on, of Rabbinical studies, 326-7 Menace of, to Judaism after the Dispersion, 355 Roman view of, after Jewish War of Extermination, 78, 79, 80
Christians, _see_ Pliny’s Letter, _see also_ Idol-worship, Incense, _and_ Persecutions Accused of burning Rome, 27; and burned by Nero, 28-9 Classes composing, 101, 110-12, 148, 240, 241, 291, 296-7 _& n._ 1, 299, 307-8 Discriminated from Jews, 27, 30, 92, 164, 341 Expelled from Rome by Claudius, 25 Fanatics among, 97 Guerdon of the faith of, 154 _et seq._ Jewish opposition to, in Rome, 18 Life of, in early days, 33-7, 101 _et seq._, 78-81, 140 _et seq._ Numbers of, and of Martyrs (_q.v._), 28, 46 _n._ 1, 53, 215; witnesses to, 82 _& n._ 1, 101, 103-6 Schools of teaching among, two, 101
Christology of the Catacombs, 220; of S. Paul, 23-4
_Chronicles_, Book of, Haggadic expansion of, 378
Church calendars, Martyrs first mentioned in, 208
_Church, The, in the Empire_, _cited, see under_ Ramsay
Church of the Propaganda, S. Hyacinthus’s remains in, 275
Church of Rome (_see also_ Rome, Christians in, _&c._), early importance of, 16, 17
Cicero, the first great letter-writer, epistolary style of, 67, 71; fashion set by, 56-7, 58, 64; period of, 56; popularity of, 69 on the Jews in Rome, 3; on Slaves, 134
Circumcision forbidden to Jews in Rome, 335
Civil service, Christians in, 144, 145, 148-9
Civil War, U.S.A., causes of, 135 _n._ 1
Claudian, poems of, 64
Claudius, Emperor, 235; expulsion by, of Jews, from Rome, 8, 18, 25; S. Peter at Rome during reign of, 11, 12, 14
Claudius Gothicus, Emperor, martyrs in reign of, 262, 276
Clement of Alexandria, 179; teaching of, 138; writings by, _see Pædagogus_; _cited_ in support of Petrine tradition, 10, 13; on Christians living in the world, 146; on Christians of wealth, 111 _& n._ 1
Clement VIII, Pope, and the finding of S. Cecilia’s body, 294, 297; and S. Peter’s tomb, 282
Clermont, Sidonius Apollinaris, bishop of, 66
Clitumnus fountain, Pliny’s description of, 60
“Clivium Cucumeris, ad,” Catacomb so called, 275
Codex Sinaiticus, _The Shepherd_ of Hermas included in, 179-80
Cœlian Hill, church on, Saints buried in, 249
“Cœmeterium Majus,” chief interest of, and other names of, 255, 257-8; subterranean church in, 258
Cœmeterium Ostrianum, 255, 257, 271
“Cognitiones,” the, 43, 50
Cologne, relics of S. Laurence at, 255
Colosseum, the, martyrdoms in, 172
Column of the Passion, at S. Zeno’s chapel, 263
_Commentaries_ on the Gospels, &c., by Theophilus of Antioch, 189
Commodilla, catacomb of, 236, 238
Commodus, Emperor, 333 _n._ 2; _Apology_ of Athenagoras addressed to, 188 Attitude of, to Christians, 97, 147, 164, 208
Communion of Saints, early Christian view on, 307 _et seq._
Communism and the early Church, 120 _& n._ 1, 130
Constantine the Great (_see also_ Peace of the Church), 197, 369 Basilicas built by, to S. Agnes, 256-7 S. Paul, 237, 238 S. Peter, 233, 237-8, 273, 279-80, 282-3 Edict of Milan issued by, 150 Memoria built by, to S. Laurence, 250
Corinth, Epistles to, of S. Clement, S. Ignatius, S. Paul, and Pope Soter, _see under_ Epistles Literary support from, of Petrine tradition, 10, 13 SS. Peter and Paul at, 10
Cornelius, Bishop or Pope, of Rome, and martyr, tomb of, 243; discovery of, 246 on Almsgiving by the Roman Church, 105, 120; on the number of the Christians at Rome, 105, 106
Council, the, of Jerusalem, 8
“Couples,” the, and the oral Law, 339, 340
Crassus, Consul, 56
Creation legends in “Book of Jubilees,” 377-8
Cremation, not practised by Jews, 4
Crescentius, martyr, tomb of, 266
Cross on S. Peter’s sarcophagus, 282-3
Cruelty, Pagan and Christian, Rutilius on, 159
Crusaders, Itineraries for, 210, 227
Crypts, famous, _see_ Acilii Glabriones Lucina, Papal, Platonia, Prætextatus, SS. Cecilia, Januarius, Priscilla, Silanus, _&c._ Age of, how determined, 267 Identification of, by De Rossi, 225, 230 _& n._ 1, 242 Local indications of presence of, 228-9
Cureton, Canon, and the Ignatian Epistles, 173 _n._ 1
Cyprus, Zealot revolt in, 334-5
Cyrene, Jews of, 346; revolt of, 334-5
Cyrinus, martyr, tomb of, 243
Damasus, Pope, 263, 272, 301 Epistle of, honouring S. Felicitas, 259 Inscriptions of, aid of, to Catacomb explorers, 229-30; one _cited_ on many martyrs buried together, 215 _& n._ 1 and the Martyrs at tomb of SS. Chrysanthus and Daria, 261 Work of, in the Catacombs, decoration, inscriptions, and epitaphs, 152 _n._ 1, 215 _& n._ 1, 229-30, 249, 252, 275, 291-2, 296 _n._ 1, 297, 302, 305
Daniel, the prophet, and Idol-worship, 149 Book of, _cited_ on Almsgiving, 121
David, King, 352
Dead, burying of, by Early Christians, 120, 131-3, 264
Death, Christian attitude to, 154-5, 309, 311 Pagan attitude to, 59 _n._ 1, 83, 313-4
De Boissier, --, on Pliny’s letter, 46; on the School for Martyrdom, 198 _n._ 1
De Broglie, --, on Toleration shown by early Christian teachers, 142-3
De Champagny, --, on Hadrian’s character, 77 _n._ 1; on number of Jews destroyed in the last wars, 338 _& n._ 2
Decius Aurelius, Emperor, persecutions under, 40, 97, 163 _n._ 2, 250, 254; martyrs in, 236; reason for, 194
Decoration of Catacombs, evidence from, and teaching of, 225, 267, 268, 269, 292, 301-2, 308 _et seq._; portraits among, 296; value of, to explorers, 229
Deissmann, Prof., on the Epistles, as written for publication, 71
Deities associated with Rome, 87, 89
De Rossi, G., Archæological work of, 209, 239, 246, 260, 261, 267 Excavations and discoveries by, 12, 42, 224, 246, 247, 254, 266 _n._ 1, 274 Results, 225, 230 _et seq._ Value to, of Itineraries, 226 _et seq._, 242, 243, 246, 247 on Acilius Glabrio, 269; on the _Acts of S. Felicitas_, 300; on Cœmeterium Majus as S. Peter’s Baptistery, 257; on Common tombs of martyrs, 215 _n._ 1; on Crypt of Lucina, 245; on Epitaphs in the Catacombs, 310; on the “Ostrian” Cemetery, 255, 257; on the place of martyrdom of S. Chrysanthus, 260; on Pudens, 265, 270; on S. Cecilia’s burial-place, 289, 291, 292, 293 _n._ 1, 295-7, 298; on scenes of S. Peter’s work, 12, 257, 267, 271; on S. Petronilla, 277; on S. Priscilla’s Catacomb, 261-2; on the Tomb of Ampliatus, 241-2; on the Tombs of Sons of S. Felicitas, 301-2
Despots, the malady of, 26, 82
Deuteronomy, Rabbinic claim for last verses of, 343, 364
“Devising new things,” a crime under Domitian, 269
_Dialogue with the Jew Trypho_, by Justin Martyr, 184; on Persecution, 185-6
Diana, worship of, 195
_Didaché_, the, teachings of, 138; on Almsgiving, 121, 123; on Assemblies, 108; on Hospitality, 128; on Slaves and Masters, 135
Dill, Prof., _cited_ on Roman wish for posthumous remembrance, 59 _n._ 1
Diocletian, Emperor, 75 Baths of, 302 Christian relations of, 148 Christians at Court of, 147 Persecutions under, 97, 163 _n._ 2, 236, 244, 246, 249, 266 Martyrs in, 234, 239, 259 _n._ 1, 260, 276; official records of Roman martyrdoms destroyed in his reign, 225 Protracted, light on, from Catacombs, 231 Reasons for, 42 _& n._ 1, 194 Severity of, reaction after, 151
Diognetus, Letter to, by unknown writer, on Persecution, 177-8; suggested date, 178 _& n._ 1
Dion Cassius, 75, 269; on Domitian’s executions, 41; on the last wars of the Jews, 338 _n._ 1; on Nerva’s treatment of Christians, 171
Dionysius, Bishop of Alexandria, on Christians at Court, 147; on Roman generosity to other Churches, 131
Dionysius of Corinth, _cited_ on Alms to other Churches from Rome, 130-1; in support of Petrine tradition, 10, 13
Dionysius, Pope, martyr, tomb of, 243
Docetic teaching, heresy of, 23 _n._ 1
“Domine quo vadis,” Church, and legend of, 239
Domitian, Emperor, Arch of Titus finished by, 333 _n._ 1 Christian relatives of, 110, 112; burial-place of, 240, 241 Emperor-worship enforced by, 170 Fate of, 42 _& n._ 2, 43, 48, 171 Persecutions under, 32, 171, 172, 173, 174, 207, 255, 269; reasons for, and severity of, 40-2, 194 Triumph of, 333
Domitilla, catacomb of, 261 Age, grandeur, and size of, 240, 266 Basilica in, 278 Builder of, 112 Discovery of, 230; and discoveries in, 239, 240-2 Flavian tombs in, 277 S. Petronilla buried in, 279
Domitilla, two Princesses so named, martyred by Domitian, 41, 230
Doulcet,--, ref. to, 300
Dove, in Christian symbolism, 310
Drei, Benedetto, plan by, of Vatican Cemetery (ancient), 287-8
Dryden, John, poem by on S. Cecilia, 294 _n._ 1
Duchesne,--, on Christianity as equivalent to Martyrdom, 37; on _The Shepherd_ of Hermas, 179 _& n._ 1, 181; on S. Cecilia’s burial-places, 293 _n._ 1; term used by, for Church of Rome, 16 _& n._ 1
Eadburg, Queen, 279
Early Christian writers and teaching on Slavery, 135, 136-7
Ebert and others on relative dates of Tertullian and Minucius Felix, 186
Edict against Christians issued by Nero, 32, 54; of Milan, 150
Education, difficulties concerning, of Early Christians, 141-2
_Église, L’, Chrétienne_, ref. by Renan, on Hermas’s _Shepherd_, 180
_Église, L’, et l’Empire Romain_, by De Broglie, on early Christian toleration, 142-3
Egypt, _see_ Alexandria
Einsiedeln, Itinerary of, _cited_, 212; date, 227 “Syllogæ” at, 230
Elders and Judges, and the Law, 339, 349
_Elements of the Faith_, by Theophilus of Antioch, 189
Eleutherius, Bishop or Pope of Rome, burial-place of, 287; list of predecessors of, 15
Elisha, prophet, on Ceremonial idolatry, 149
Emblems used in the Catacombs, 310 _et alibi_
Emperor-worship, 42 _& n._ 1, 169, 170, 181, 194, 195
England, crusade of, against Slavery, Lecky on, 135 _n._ 1
Ephesians, Epistles to, _see_ Epistles
Ephesus, the “highway of martyrs,” 173
Epistles or Letters, anonymous, _see_ Diognetus, Hebrews, Polycarp Apostolic, 73-4; on Persecution, 165, 166-7 of New Testament writers, 70-2 Catholic, 71, 72 Pastoral, 72 Patristic, on Persecution, 165, 170-6 by Various writers, Christian and Pagan; _see also_ S. Cyprian Barnabas, 74 on Assemblies, 108; on Christ’s atonement, 116-7 tradition on, 73 Cicero, 56-7, 58, 64, 67, 69, 71 Dionysius of Corinth to the Roman Church, 130-1 Fronto, to M. Aurelius, 63-4 _& n._ 1, 85, 86-7 Horace, 69 _n._ 1 Julian, Emperor, to Arsacius, 123 _n._ 1, 128, 131 Ovid, 69 _n._ 1 Pliny the younger (_q.v._), 57, 59-62 Polycarp, 73, 125 S. Clement of Rome, to the Corinthians, 73 First, 37, 104 _& n._ 2, 126, 128, 165, 170-2; teaching of, 138; _cited_ in support of Petrine tradition, 9 Second, so called, 104 _n._ 2, 121 _& n._ 1 S. Ignatius of Antioch, 73 Authenticity of, 165, 172-3 _& n._ 1 to Corinth, 108, 172-6 to Ephesus, 173 to Magnesians, 174 to Polycarp, 108 to Rome, 9, 37, 154, 173, 174-5, 199, 204-5 to Tralles, 173 S. James, meant for publication, 71; on Assemblies, 107; on wealthy Christians, 110; on “pure religion,” 126 S. John, First, meant for publication, 71, 72 Third, on Hospitality, 129 S. Jude, meant for publication, 71, 72 S. Paul, two classes of, 70-2 to Colossians, 23-4, 70 to Corinthians, 21 First, 134-5; Haggadic influence in, 379 Second, 71 to Ephesians, nature of, 23, 70 to Galatians, 21, 135, 379 to Philemon, 71, 134 to Philippians, 23, 70, 154 to Romans, 17, 19 _& n._ 1, 21, 24, 107, 129; Linus mentioned in, 283 to Thessalonians, 21 to Timothy, First and Second, 72, 379 to Titus, 72, 135 on the Church at Jerusalem, and its poverty, 120 _n._ 1, 130 S. Paulinus of Nola to Sulpicius Severus, on his slave, 136-7 S. Peter, First, 71, 129; date and place of writing, 8 _& n._ 1, 16, 18, 19, 51, 107, 135, 165, 166 _n._ 1, 167; to whom addressed, 107 Seneca, 57, 69, 71; to Lucilius, 29 Sidonius Apollinaris, 64, 66-7 Soter, to Corinth, 104 Theophilus of Antioch, to Autolycus, 108-9, 189
Epitaphs (_see also_ Inscriptions) in the Catacombs, Characteristics of, Christian, 154-5, 307-9; Pagan, 154-5, 313-4
Equality without democracy among Early Christians, 38
Eschatologic trend of the Haggadah, 378
Esquiline Hill, church on, 262
Essenes, the, 330
Europe, Christian congregations in mid-second century, 36
Eusebian catalogue of Roman Bishops, value of, in support of Petrine tradition, 14, 15, Armenian version of above, _ib. ib._
Eusebius, Bishop or Pope of Rome, 128, 147, 187-8; attempted exculpation by, of Trajan, 49; burial-place of, 243; identified, 243 _cited_ in support of Petrine tradition, 10, 11-12, 14; on Almsgiving, 120, 127; on high offices filled by Christians, 149; on the Plague, and on Christian charity, 127; on Pliny’s correspondence with Trajan, 45; on Theophilus of Antioch, 189
Evander, home of, 87
_Évangiles, Les_, by Renan, _cited_ on Pliny’s letter, 46 _n._ 1; on Trajan as persecutor, 49
Evaristus, Bishop or Pope of Rome, burial-place of, 287
_Exhortatio ad Martyrum_, by Origen, 199
Exile of the Jews, in Babylonia, Effect of, on their character, 348, 361, 371 Return from, Rise of the Scribes on, 343, 356 Talmud, origin of, coeval with, 348
Ezra, 342, 343
Fabius, Bishop of Antioch, 105
Faith, in Early Christian Church, 39
Fame, posthumous, Roman yearning for, 59 _& n._ 1, 65
Family life, early Christian difficulties in, 140-1
Fasting, early Church, 124 _& n._ 1; Rigourist teaching on, 153
Filocalus, Furius Dionysius, inscriptions cut by, 230; fame of, 301
Fire of Rome, the great, 25; attributed to Nero, 26-7, 28, 31, 285; consequence of, to Christians and to Jews, 27-30 Martyrdom by, 28-30, 256; unusual, 275
Fish, mystic, explained, 310, 316-7 _& n._ 1
Flaccus, 3
Flavian Emperors, the (_see also_ Domitian, Titus, _and_ Vespasian), persecutions under, and reasons for, 39-42, 163 _n._ 1, 172, 173, 174; tombs of, 277
Flavianus, Pope, martyr, tomb of, 243
Flavius Clemens, Consul, martyred by Domitian, 41
Florus, Procurator of Judea, 330
Forgiveness of Sin, consciousness of, joy from, 155-6
Formula for reply, of possible Martyrs, 199
Fortitude under Torture, Justin Martyr on, 185; moral effect of, Lecky on, 193-4; Roman view, 193, 205
Forum, the, 86, 89
Freedmen, in Rome, 137
Freeman, Prof., on S. Petronilla’s altar, at Gloucester, 279
Friedländer,--, views of, on Trajan’s Rescript, 49
Fronto, 95, 145; contempt of, for Christians, 158; correspondence with Marcus Aurelius and his colleague, 63-4; letters of, on Antoninus Pius, 85, 86-7
Galatians, Epistle to, _see_ Epistles
Galba, Emperor, 39, 331
Gallerius, Emperor, and the cemeteries, 237
Gallus, Cestius, siege by, of Jerusalem, 330
Gamaliel, the elder, 366
Gaul (_see also_ Lyons, Vienne, _&c._), Visigoth invasion of, 66
_Gemara_, the, 344-5 _& n._ 1, 346, 362, 370; basis of, 358 _n._ 1, 360, 361; exclusive spirit in, 366-8; extravagances of, 347; Rabbis of, 358, _n._ 1, 359; study of, 362-3; two versions of, 356 _& n._ 4
Generosa, catacomb of, 235, 236
_Genesis_, Book of, Haggadic commentary on, 377-8
Gentle School of Christian teaching, 101, 157
Gieseler,--, views of, on Trajan’s Rescript, 49
Ginsberg, Dr., work of, on Massoretic notes, 363-4
Gloucester Abbey, altar and chapel of S. Petronella at, 279
Gnosticism, rise of, concurrent with Rabbinism, 326 Teachers of, classes addressed by, 112 _n._ 1
_Golden Age, The, of the Church_ (by author), _cited_, on Saints’ power over Animals, 176 _n._ 1
Good Shepherd, the, paintings of, in Catacombs, 248, 301, 308, 310, 317-20 _& nn._
Gospel, the, at Rome, problem of its beginnings, tradition as to founder, 7; literary quotations sustaining, 8, 9 _et seq._
Gospels (_see also under_ Names), Canonical, in circulation _temp._ Antonines, 96; form of, 72; power of, 103; woman’s position in, 367 _& n._ 1
Government service, Christians in, difficulties of, 141, 144, 145, 147, 148-9
Graffiti in the Catacombs, 248, 251, 259
Great Synagogue, the Men of, 339, 340
Greece (_see also_ Corinth), S. Paul’s missionary success in, 107
Gregory the Great, additions by, to Basilica of S. Paul, 238; and the Monza labels, 214, 228, 303-4; homily by, on S. Felicitas, 305; prayer of, for Trajan, 49; on the _Acts_ of S. Felicitas, 300; on reverence for tombs of great Saints, 283
Gregory IV, Pope, 275
Hadrian, Emperor, 104, 164, 182, 274; accession and reign of, authorities on, 75; buildings by, at Jerusalem, 77-8, 332, 335-6 _et seq._; character of, 75, 85; cities founded by, 76 _n._ 1; death, last days, and insanity of, 82-3, 84, 335 Persecutions by, and attitude towards Christianity, 77, 81-3, 163 _n._ 2, 247; reason for, 194 Rescript of, 80; effect of, 180 Villa of, 82 Wars of, 325 Zealot revolt under, 334
Haggadah, the, 343 _& n._ 2, 344; detailed explanation of, 371 _et seq._, 377-9; Divine inspiration claimed for, 365; edited by R. Akiba, 356; in the Exile, and after, 349-50, 351 _& n._ 1, 371 _et seq._; Talmud popularity largely due to, 371; sources of, 372-3
Haggadic notices, nature of, 373; where met with, 358 _n._ 1, 372, 373
Haggai, the prophet, and the oral Law, 339
Hagiographa, Divine inspiration ascribed to, 365
Halachah, the, 343 _& n._ 2, 344, 349, 350; developments of, 376-7; discussions on, 360; editions of, by R. Akiba, 354-6, by “Rabbi,” 358 _n._ 1; reduced to writing by “Rabbi,” 372 _& n._ 1
Harnack, A., on authorship of _2nd Epistle_ of Clement of Rome, 104 _n._ 2; on _The Shepherd_ of Hermas, its date, 179 _& n._ 1; and various classes in the Church, 124-5; on the Martyrdom of Theban legion, 148 _n._ 1; on numbers of early Christians, inference from size of Catacombs, 105-6 _& n._ 1; on the _Pædagogus_ of Clement of Alexandria, 111 _n._ 1
Hebrews, Epistle to the, 71, 72; Haggadic influence seen in, 379; on Christian Assemblies, 107; on Charity, 130; on Hospitality, 128-9; on Persecution, 165, 166
Hegesippus, list by, of Roman Bishops, 15
Heracleon, Gnostic teacher, 112 _n._ 1
Heresies and Heretics, first century, at Rome, 22, 23 _& n._ 1
Heretical teachers, second century, successful contentions of Christians with, 37
Hermas, author of _The Shepherd_ (Pastor) (_q.v._), 136 _n._ 1, 178; teaching of, 138, 179, 182-3
Herod Antipas, and S. Peter, 19 _n._ 1
Herod family, 3, 329
Herod the Great, 340
Herodians, 329
Hilary of Poitiers, on persecuting Roman Emperors, 40 _& n._ 3
Hillel, 356; attempt of, to edit Mishnah material, 351; codification work of, 356 _n._ 1; and Shammai, 339, debt to, of Rabbinism, 340
_Histoire Ancienne de l’Église_, by Duchesne, _cited_, 16 _& n._ 1, 179 _& n._ 1, 181, 293 _n._ 1
_Histoire des Persécutions_, by Allard (_q.v._), _cited_, 19 _n._ 1, 42 _n._ 1, 48
_Histoire des Persécutions_, by Aubé, _cited_, on Domitian, 42 _n._ 2
_Historia Monasterii S. Petri Gloucestriæ_, on Royal burials near S. Petronilla’s altar, 279
_Histories of Tacitus_ (_q.v._), the Lost, passage from (alleged) on destruction of the Temple, 331 _& n._ 1, 332
_History of European Morals_, by Lecky, on Christian charity, 137-8; on Christian fortitude and its effects, 193-4; on Christianity, causes of its spread, 150 _& n._ 2; on Slavery, 134, 135 _& n._ 1, 136 _n._ 1
Honorius, Emperor, 56, 252-3; and the Basilica of S. Paul, 238
Honorius I, Pope, 276; and the Basilica of S. Pancras, 235
Honorius III, Pope, additions by, to S. Paul’s Basilica, 238; and the Basilicas to S. Laurence, 250
Honorius IV, Pope, the Talmud condemned by, 366
Hope, Christian, for the joy of the Future Life, 156-8, 311; evidence of Catacombs on, 268
Horace, poetic epistles of, 69 _n._ 1
Horatius and the bridge, 87
Hospitality, in the early Church, 128-9; in provision of graves, 38
Hyginus, Pope, burial-place of, 287
Ichthus, meaning of, 310, 316-7 _& n._ 1
Idol-worship (_see also_ Incense), Ceremonial, attitude to, of Rigourist and opposite schools, 144-5, 147, 148; Old Testament attitude to, 149; Tertullian on, 203
_Ignatius and Polycarp_, by Lightfoot, _cited_, 40 _n._ 3
Immortality, Christian ideas on, 156-8
Imperial cultus, _see_ Emperor-worship Families, Christian members of, 110, 112, 148, 240, 241 Household, Christians in, 147
Incense, offering of (_see also_ Idol-worship), test for Christians, 52, 53, 181, 194-6
Insanity of despots, _see_ Hadrian _and_ Nero
Inscriptions in the Catacombs (_see also_ Damasus), 237, 251, 267, 268, 271, 285, 296-7, 301 Greek, 256-7; age witnessed by, 267, 268 “Graffiti,” later, 229 Teaching of, 219, 220, 225, 307 Value of, to explorers, 229
Inspiration, claimed for Haggadah, 365; of Jewish Scriptures, Talmud view on, 364-5; of New Testament writings, 70; voice of, cessation of, 73
Invocation of Saints, not generally taught in Catacombs, 312
Irenæus, teacher of S. Hippolytus, 14, 138, 170, 251, 315, 319 _n._ 1; list of Roman Bishops by, 15; writings addressed by, to cultured classes, 111 _n._ 1 _cited_ in support of Petrine tradition, 10, 14 on Christians at Court, 147; on the founding of the Roman Church by SS. Peter and Paul and on Linus, 15; on numbers of Christians at Rome, 104, 106, 107; on Polycarp and his memories of S. John, 73
Isaiah, the prophet, 365; book of, 53rd chapter of, use made of, by early Christian writers, 117 _& n._ 1 _cited_ on Forgiveness of Sins, 155
Israel, Glorification of, the object of the Talmud, 345
Itineraries, Pilgrim (_see also_ Names), value of, to explorers of Catacombs, &c., 209 _et seq._, 227-8, 242, 243, 246, 247
Jamnia, Rabbinic School at, 326, 353, 357, 358 _n._ 1
Jannes and Jambres, source of names of, 379
Jerusalem, Ælia Capitolina built on site of, 332, 335-6; result, 336-8; Hadrian’s insults at, to Christianity, 77-8 Apostolic Council at, S. Peter at, 8 Communism in the Church at, results of, 120 _n._ 1, 130 Fall and destruction of, effect on Jewish nation, 22, 39, 340, 342, 346-8, 351, 353, 355, 357, 362, 368 Parties in, before first great war, 329-30 Sieges of, in order of date, by Gallus, 330; Vespasian, 331; Titus, 331-3; Severus, 337 Taken by Pompey, 3
JESUS CHRIST (_see also_ Christ), Godhead of, importance of the testimony of Apostolic Fathers in regard to, 74
Jew, the, and the Talmud (Book V.), 325 _et seq._
_Jewish Encyclopædia_, _cited_ on the life of Rabbinic schools, 359
Jewish heroes, Haggadic legends of, 378 Learning, stimulus to, of Talmudic study, 369 National ideals as affected by War of Extermination, 78-9 Scriptures, Canonical, 361; inspiration of, 364-5 Women, disabilities of, 367 _& n._ 1, 380
Jews, attitude of, to the Gospel, reasons for, 7 Discrimination of, from Christians by Romans, progress of, 27, 30, 78, 79, 80, 92, 164 of the Dispersion, influence on, of Rabbinism, 339-41; and of the Talmud, 339 _et seq._, 368-9 Fate of, after last wars, 325-6 History of, in Old Testament and after, 325-6; evidential importance of, to Christianity, 325, 326 Persecutions of, and martyrs of, 336, 337, 338 Preservation of, as distinct race, 326; cause of, 339, 345-7 in Rome, 3-6, 346; expulsion of, 8, 18, 25; Roman attitude to beliefs of, 3, 39; rulers favourable to, 3 Twentieth Century, distinct, still, as race, 326; influence of, 346; numbers of, 369 Wars of, the three last, story of, and of consequences, 77, 78-9, 80, 325, 329 _et seq._, 354
Jochanan ben Zacchai, Rabbi, and his school of disciples, work of, on the Mishna, 341, 353; teaching of, 358
John, the Abbot, 228
John, the Deacon, 49
John, King, desired burial-place of, 321
John, the Presbyter, _cited_ on S. Mark, 9-10
Jordani, catacomb of, 258, 260; tombs in, of sons of S. Felicitas, 259, 303
Joseph of Arimathea, 110
Joseph the patriarch, and idol-worship, 149
Josephus, on the burning of the Temple, 331
Joshua, and the oral Law, 339
Judæa, Roman rule over, 329; and revolts against (_see also_ Jews, Wars of, _and_ Zealots), 329 _et seq._
Judaism, Authority and Influence of the Talmud on, 368-9
Julia Sabina, wife of Hadrian, 75
Julian, Emperor, 75 Letter from, to Arsacius, on Christian characteristics, 131; on Christian brotherliness, 123 _n._ 1, 128
Julianus, Pope, martyr, tomb of, 243
Julius Cæsar, 56; favour shewn by, to Jews, 3
Julius I, Pope, 276
Jupiter, worship of, test for Christians, 194, 195
Justin Martyr, 319 _n._ 1; compared with Theophilus of Antioch, 189; martyrdom of, 94, 104, 184; teaching of, 138 on Aid to Prisoners, 130; on Almsgiving, 113-4, 119, 129; on Assemblies, 108, 113-4; on Care of the Sick, 127; on Christian fortitude, 185; on Christ’s atonement, 117; on highly-placed Christians, 111; on Hospitality, 113-4, 128, 129; on the numbers of Christians, 104, 106, 107; on Persecutions, 37, 184-6; on progress of Christianity, 107
Justinian, Emperor, dedication of a church by, to a slave-saint, 136 _n._ 1; Talmud condemned by, 365
Justus, and S. Nicomedes, 255-6
Juvenal, on Domitian’s unpopularity, 42 _& n._ 2; on the ideal Roman, 88; on Roman Society, 58
Kabbala, the, 360, 362 _n._ 1
Kimchi, D., famous Rabbinist, 369
Kyneburg, Abbess of Gloucester, 279
Lactantius, on Almsgiving, 122; on Care for widows and orphans, 126-7; on Christian virtues, and burial of the dead, 131-2, 133; on Persecutions, 32
Lanciani,--, 236, _cited_ on Basilica of S. Paul, 238
Languages, of Christian Epitaphs in Catacombs, 308
Lateran Museum, Christian sarcophagi in, sculptures on, 19 _n._ 1
Latin language, debt of, to Cicero, 58
_Latin Literature_, by Dr. Mackail, _cited_ on Marcus Aurelius’s letters, 63 _n._ 1
Law, Mosaic (_see_ Torah _and_ Midrash), Commentaries on, _see_ Haggadah, Halachah, Midrash, Talmud, Targumim, &c. Roman, on treatment of Christians, 32, 49
“Law upon the Lip,” tradition on, 339
Le Blant,--, on the School for Martyrdom, 198 _n._ 1
Lecky, W. H., _cited, see History of European Morals_
Leland’s Itinerary, on cult of S. Petronilla (Petronell), 278-9
Leo III, Pope, translation of S. Felicitas and Silanus by, 259, 302
Leo IV, Pope, saints translated by, 249; on tombs of Priscilla and Aquila, 262
Letter-form, of Apostolic “remains,” 73; in Literature, reason of popularity, 70-1; sole O.T. instance of, 69
Letters (_see also_ Epistles), by Classical writers and others, in Roman literature, 56 _et seq._ meant for publication, 56, 61-2, 65, 66, 67, 68; not so meant, 63 others, by Christians modelled on these lines, 69 _et seq._
_Letters relating the Martyrdom of Polycarp_, genuine, 81 _n._ 1
_Liber Pontificalis_, antiquity of, 15; value of, to Catacomb explorers, 226-7 _cited_ on Basilica of Constantine the Great at S. Peter’s tomb, 282; on S. Cecilia’s tomb, 262, 293 _n._ 1, 296; on Novatus, 264; on S. Priscilla’s catacomb, burials in, 266; on S. Pudentiana and her sister, 264, 265 _n._ 1
Liberian or Philocalian catalogue, _cited_ in support of Petrine tradition, 14, 15; on burials in S. Priscilla’s cemetery, 266; on the tomb of S. Felicitas and her sons, 301, 302-3, 304
Liberius, Pope, 301; burial-place of, 272
Licinius, 29
Lightfoot, Bp., 121 _n._ 1; on the _Acts_ of the Passion of S. Felicitas, 300; on the Antonine persecutions, 94 _& n._ 2; on the authorship of the _2nd Epistle of Clement of Rome_, 104 _n._ 1; on Caius, 11; on the date of the _Epistle to Diognetus_, 178 _n._ 1; on the date of _Octavius_, 186; on _Epistolary_ form as usual with the Apostles, 74 _n._ 1; on genuineness of Pliny’s letter, &c., 46 _& n._ 1; on Hilary’s reference to Vespasian’spersecutions, 40 _& n._ 3; on Ignatius, 73; authenticity of his (so-called) Epistles, 172-3; his letter to the Roman Church, 9; his yearning for martyrdom, 175; on _The Shepherd_, of Hermas, 180; on its date and author, 179 _n._ 1; on S. Hippolytus, 11, 251-2; on S. Laurence, 254; on S. Paul’s _Epistle to the Romans_ and S. Peter’s first coming to Rome, 19 _n._ 1; on S. Peter (and S. Mark) in Rome, 10, 18; on S. Petronilla, 277
Linus, Pope, first Bishop of Rome after S. Peter, 12, 15; burial-place of, 283, 287; Jerome on, 14; “Memoria” chapel of, Papal burial-place in church on site of, 273
Lister, Jane, epitaph of, 309
Literary witness to Martyrs’ histories rehabilitated by De Rossi’s excavations, 225, 230-1 to Numerousness of Martyrs, 209 _et seq._ to Persecution, A.D. 64-80, 163 _et seq._
Lombards, the, 293, 297
Lorium, country home of Antoninus Pius, 86, 87
Love as bond of Christians, 118-9
Lucilius, Seneca’s letters to, 29
Lucina, Catacomb or Cemetery of, in a garden, 234, 236, 238, 239; S. Paul’s burial-place, 236; S. Sebastian’s burial-place, 244 Crypt of, identification of, 245
Lucius Quietus, Roman general, 335
Lucius Verus, Fronto’s correspondence with, 63
“Luminaria,” in the Catacombs, 296 _& n._ 1; indication from, of crypt below, 229
Lydda, Rabbinic school of, 357, 358 _n._ 1
Lyons, birthplace of Sidonius Apollinaris, 65 Literary support from, of Petrine tradition, 9, 13 Martyrdoms at, 94, 201, 208; genuine accounts of, 81 _n._ 1 Pliny’s letters read to an audience, 61
Maccabean dynasty, agreements made by, with Rome, 3
Maccabees, story in, like that of S. Felicitas, 258, 298
Mackail, Dr., on letters of Marcus Aurelius, 63 _& n._ 1
Madaurian persecutions, 94
Maderno, Stefano, architect, 259 _n._ 1; statue of S. Cecilia by, 294; replicas of, _ib._ _n._ 1
Magnesia, Epistle to, of Ignatius, 173, 174
Mahommedanism, spread of, compared with that of Christianity, 102
Maimonides, famous Rabbinist, 369; on the fathers of Rabbinism, 339
Manuals of Martyrdom, 199
_Marc-Aurèle_, by Renan, _cited_, 146 _n._ 1
Marcellinus, Pope and martyr, burial-place of, 266; identified, 231
Marcellus, Pope and martyr, burial-place of, 266, 272
Marchi, Father, archæological work of, 209, 224
Marcia, patronage by, of Christians, 147
Marcion, 189
Marcius Turbo, Roman general, 335
Marcomanni, war with, 95
Marcus, burial-place identified, 231
Marcus Aurelius Antoninus adopted by Antoninus Pius and successor to him, 83, 145, 245, 292; attitude of, to Christians, 33, 64, 80, 158 Character of, 84 _et seq._, 189 Correspondence of, with Fronto, 63-4 Death of, 164 “Meditations” by, 85-6, 96-7; on Antoninus Pius, 85-6; Christian pages of, 147; on his religious ideas, 96-7 its one reference to Christians, 96-7 Persecutions by, 80-1, 163 _n._ 2, 164, 188-9, 190, 207, 208 _n._ 1, and reasons for, 81, 91-7, 137, 194; martyrs in, 184, 258-9, 264, 266, 289, 290, 291, 298 _et seq._, 305 Melito’s discourse on, written to, 187-8 Table of succession of, 83
Marriage, Rigourist teaching on, 153
Mars, 195
Martial, poet, 59 _n._ 1; attitude of, to the old Roman virtue, 88
Martyrdom, aspiration to, checked by the Church, 154 Attraction of (_see_ Ignatius), 37, 153 _et seq._ Schools of training for, 33, 36, 145 Methods of, writers on, 197, 198 _& n._ 1 _et seq._ Physical training for, 198, 201-3 Spiritual training, 198-201 Results, 203-5 Spirit in which faced, 205 _et prævi_
_Martyres, Ad_, by Tertullian, 199; on Physical training, 202
_Martyrii, De Laudi_, 199; on Christian fortitude in torture, 193
Martyrologies, literary sources of, in many instances rehabilitated by De Rossi’s catacomb excavations, 225, 230-1; on Confessors buried in Catacomb of Commodilla, 239
_Martyrology of S. Jerome_, value of, to Catacomb explorers, 226
_Martyrs_, Apocalyptic references to, 37, 157, 167-70 Burial and burial-places of (_see_ Catacombs, Cemeteries, _and_ Itineraries), 285-6; burial near, desired, 312 _& n._ 1, 321-2 Formula for, of reply to judge, 199 Hermas on, 181 Hymns on, by Prudentius and others, 151-2 _& n._ 1 under Nero (_q.v._), 267-8, 285-6 Numbers of, emphasized, 33; “small” theory refuted by archæology and literature, 82 _& n._ 1, 207 _et seq._, 209 _et seq._ Christian and Pagan witness to, 208 Second-century, rarity of Festivals of, 208 Seed of the Church, 196, 203 Slaves, famous, 136 Tombs of, 300 _et passim_ Traces of, in S. Peter’s Memoria, 284-5 Translation of, 227, 235, 236, 266 _& n._ 1, 267, 272, 273-4, 292
_Martyrum, De Gloriâ_, by S. Gregory of Tours, _cited_ on tragedy at tomb of SS. Chrysanthus and Daria, 261
_Martyrum, De Locis SS._, _cited_ 210-11, 303; on numbers of martyrs, 212, 213, 214
Marucchi,--, archæological researches and work of, 12, 42, 234, 239, 263, 301; identification by, of S. Peter’s baptistery, 12, 257 on Acilius Glabrio, 269 on Catacomb of S. Priscilla as associated with S. Peter, &c., 257, 267, 268, 270, 271, 273; on its immensity and regularity, 271 on the Domitilla Cemetery, 240 on Excavations, results of, attained and anticipated, 231-2 on Nicomedes’ cemetery, reservoir in, 256 on Papal burial-places, 273 on S. Cecilia’s burial-places and tradition, 293 _n._ 1, 298 on S. Felicitas’s tomb, and those of her sons, 302, 303 on the Thrason Catacomb, 260 on the veneration paid to S. Laurence, 250
Massorah, the, 361 _et seq._; Temple Torah readings preserved in, 333 _n._ 2
Massoretes, the, duties of, 361-2
Massoretic notes on the sacred Jewish texts, 362-4
Mauritanian martyrdoms, 208
Maximian, Emperor, 148 _& n._ 1
Maximin, Emperor, Persecution under, 163 _n._ 2
Meir, Rabbi, codification of Talmud by, 356; maxims of, on Women, 367
Melito, Bishop of Sardis, on Hospitality, 128; on Persecution, 32, 187-8; silent as to Vespasian, 40 _n._ 3
Memoriæ or Chapel-Tombs of Apostles, at Rome, locale of, 11, 233, 281 _et seq._; testimony of, to Petrine tradition, 17
Mental guerdons of Christianity, 154-9
Messiah, hopes of, revolts due to, 330, 334 pseudo, revolts caused by, 336 _et seq._, 354-5
Midoth, treatise, 358 _n._ 1
_Midrash_, definition of, 371 Explained, two currents in, 350, 351 Subject-matter of, 376-7
Midrashim, the, 360
Milan, Edict of, effect of, on spread of Christianity, 150 _& n._ 1
Milman, Dean, on the style of the _Octavius_ of Minucius Felix, 186-7
Minucius Felix (_see Octavius_ by), 158
Miracles, Talmudic teaching on, 365
Mishnah (_see also_ Haggadah, Halachah, _and_ Talmud); basis of, 361; chief object of study, Rabbinic schools, 358 _n._ 1; how studied, 359-60, 362-3; curiosities of, 346-7; Divine inspiration claimed for, 365; evolution of, 341, 342-4; exclusive spirit in, 366-8; meaning of name, and nature of work, 341 _& n._ 1, 344 _& n._ 1, 356 _& n._ 3, 358 _& n._ 1, 365, 370; oral at first, 344; in the two Talmuds, 344-5; on Akiba’s martyrdom, 355 _& n._ 1; on the history of the Talmud, 339-40
Mishnah, the non-canonical, 360, 373
Mishnaic Rabbis, work of, on Halachah and Haggadah, 341, 344-5, 347, 351, 352, 358 _& n._ 1
_Mission and Expansion of Christianity_, by Harnack, 106 _n._ 1, 124-5
Mommsen,--, 331 _n._ 1, on Pagan Rome personified in Apocalypse, 169 _n._ 1; on Pliny’s letter, 46
Monza Catalogue and Labels, story of, evidence of, on numerousness of martyrs, 214-5, 228; reference in to S. Felicitas and her sons, 303-4; use of, to catacomb explorers, 228
Mosaic work, oldest, in Roman church, 263
Mosaism, destruction of, 341
Moses, 348, 349; and the Law, 339 Rabbinical teaching in, 343 _& n._ 1, and on, 364, 373-4, 378
Mucius Scævola, torture of, 187
Muratorian Canon, on date of _The Shepherd_ of Hermas, 178-9
Music, association with, of S. Cecilia, 294 _n._ 1
Mutual aid between Christian Churches, inculcated, 130-1
Myers, F. W., verse by, on the Atonement, 115 _n._ 1
Naaman, the Syrian, and Idol-worship, 149
Nævius, the augur, 87
Naples, memorial at, of S. Agnes, 256-7
Nehardea, Rabbinic school at, 357, 358 _n._ 1
Nero, Emperor, 39, 40, 41, 42 _n._ 2, 182, 183, 197, 232, 245, 269 Death of, 207, 331 Edict of, against Christians, 32, 54 Fire at Rome attributed to, 26-7, 28, 31, 285 Insanity of, 26 Jews in Rome in reign of, 5 Persecutions by, 10, 28, 30, 46 _n._ 1, 62, 104, 164, 167, 172, 190, 197; burnings under, 28-30; numbers involved, 28, 46 _n._ 1; S. Peter martyred during, 267, 285-6; Tacitus’s references to, 62
New Testament, the, writers of, and writings, _see also under_ names of Authors, and of Books, _and see_ Epistles Assemblies mentioned in, 101 Haggadic influences seen in, 378-9 Inspiration of, 70 Publication intended, Deissmann on, 71 References in, to Persecution, 165, 166-70 Teaching of, on Hospitality, 128-9; and on Slavery, 134-5 Witness of, to spread of Christianity, 107
Nicholas, Pope, 226
Nicodemus and other persons of position among Early Christians, 110-12
Nicolaitan heresy, 23 _n._ 1
Nicomedia, Court of, Christians at, 147-8
Nîmes, birthplace of Antoninus Pius, 83
Nomeseus, martyr, 211
Northcote, Dr., on Early Christian faith as shown in Catacomb inscriptions, 310
“Notices” on the founding of the Roman Church, as bearing on tradition of S. Peter, 8, 9 _et seq._
Novatus, Baths of, 264, 265
Numerian, Emperor, persecution under, 260
_OCTAVIUS_, Dialogue by Minucius Felix, 138, 145-6, 186-7; on Christian love, 119, 129; on Christians in high place, 111; on persecution, 186-7
Octodurum, Martyrdom legend of, 148 _n._ 1
Old Testament, Books of, text of, Jewish care of, and commentaries on, 342 _et seq._, 370, 371-9 Christian reverence for, influence on, of the Talmud, and of Rabbinism, 327, 370 _& n._ 1 Earliest Hebrew MSS. of, 363 History in, value of, 325 Letter in, the one, 69 Teaching of, on Almsgiving, 121
Onesimus, and S. Paul, 134
Oral teaching in Rabbinic Schools, 357-60
Oratory, Church of, London, replica in of Maderno’s S. Cecilia effigy, 294 _n._ 1
Origen, modified Rigourism of, 146; teaching of, 139; identification by, of Hermas, 178; veneration of, for _The Shepherd_, by Hermas, 179; writings by, on Martyrdom, 199
Osric, King of Northumbria, burial-place of, 279
Ostia, 145, 186-7, 235, 236
Ostian Way, Memoria of Apostle on, 11
Ostrian Cemetery, other names of, 255, 257, 271
Otho, Emperor, 39, 331
Overbach,--, views of, on Trajan’s Rescript, 49
Ovid, poetic epistles of, 69 _n._ 1
Ozanam on Slaves in Roman Empire, first and second centuries, 135 _n._ 2
_PÆDAGOGUS_, by Clement of Alexandria, addressed to a cultured community, 111 _n._ 1; on Christians in the world, 146
Pagan attitude to Christianity, and its basis (_see also_ Persecutions), 28, 30-4, 35, 36, 51, 77, 137, 142-3, 158-9, 164-5, 194, 196-7 Attitude to death, 134, 313-4 Ideas on Christian misery, 158-9 Neglect to bury the dead, 132 Neglect of the poor, 128 Writings, witnessing to Persecutions (_see_ Pliny’s letter to Trajan), 36; and to spread of Christianity, 107
Paganism (_passim_), at core of Roman Empire, De Broglie on, 142-3; displaced by Christianity, when, and why, 150, 151
Pain, unfelt by Martyrs, testimony to, 200
Palaces, Christians in, 110-11, 147, 149
Palatine Hill, palace on, of the Emperors, 86, 89; graffito of crucifix on, deduction from, 147 _& n._ 1
Palestine (_see also_ Gemara _and_ Talmud), Rabbinic Schools of, 326, 344, 362-3, 373; the chief, 353, 356 _& n._ 4, 358 _n._ 1; mode of teaching at, 357-60 Roman occupations of, and Rabbinism, 340 Traces of the last “War” still seen in, 338-9
Palestinian Talmud, the, 345
Pallanteum, rebuilt by Antoninus, 87
Palm, as Christian Emblem, 310
Pantheon, portico of, robbed for Pope Urban’s baldachino, 280
Papal burial-places, 243, 245, 246, 250, 266 _& n._ 1, 272-4, 283-5, 286-7, 291 Crypt, named after Pope Callistus (_see also_ Papal burial-places), 234, 236-7, 242, 244 _et seq._, 273, 287, 296, 297
Papias of Hierapolis, _cited_ in support of Petrine tradition, 9, 10, 13, 14
Paschal I, Pope, 227, 273, 276, body of S. Cecilia found by, 292-4; and translated, 294, 297; Church of S. Cecilia built by, 292; translation by, of Martyrs’ remains, 235, 262, 263, 295 Vision of, 293 on Forgotten Martyrs, 215 _n._ 1
_Passions of the Martyrs_, oft-repeated answer given in, 199 _of S, Perpetua_, on Insensibility of Martyrs to Pain, 200
Pastor (not _The Shepherd_, _q.v._), 264
Patristic views of _The Shepherd_ of Hermas, 179
Paul, the Deacon, 49
Paul I, Pope, 227, 273; translation by, of Martyrs’ ashes, 235; especially of S. Hippolytus, 254
Paul V, Pope, 257, discoveries made by, in Vatican cemetery, 280-1 _et seq._, 287; work of, on S. Peter’s at Rome, 279-80
“Pax Romana,” the, 58
Peace of the Church, the, 29-30, 203, 215, 228, 259, 263, 266, 272, 276, 302, 309 Pilgrimages to Rome after, 209, 216, 228, 251
Pentateuch (_see also_ Halachah), as canon of Jewish Scripture, post-exilian days, 361; reverence felt for, 342, 343, 361; Talmudic view of its inspiration, 364-5
People, the, faith of, shown by Catacombs, 315, 319 _n._ 1; how voiced by poets and Popes, 152 _& n._ 1
Pepin, King, translation by, of S. Petronilla, 279
Pergamos, Church of, message of Apocalypse to, 168, 169-70
_Peri-Stephanôn_, by Prudentius, poems, subjects of, 151-2 _& n._ 1, _cited_ on forgotten Martyrs, 287; on S. Hippolytus, 252-4
Persecutions of Christians, _see also_ Tacitus on Active or latent, period of, 163 _& n._ 2 Evidence on, 163 _& nn._ 1 & 2, 164 _et seq._ Beginning, 27-9, 103, 104 Continuity, 29 _et seq._, 80, 207; and increasing intensity, 80, 81-3 End, 29 Reasons for, 28, 30, 31, 32, 39 _et seq._ Reference to, in _The Shepherd_ of Hermas, 180 _et seq._ Silence of writers as to, reasons for, 35 _& n._ 1, 36-7 Under the Antonines, 80, 81, 94 Decius Aurelius, 97 Diocletian, 97; severity of, 151 Flavian emperors, 39 _et seq._ Hadrian and his successors, 79, 80, severity of, 81, 82 _& n._ 1, 83; reasons, 91-7 Nero, 10, 28, 30, 46 _n._ 1, 62, 104, 164, 167, 172, 190, 197, 285-6 of Jews, 346
Petro or Petros, as basis of name Petronilla, 277
Petro, T. Flavius, founder of Flavian family, 277
Pharisees, 329-30; after the Dispersion, 341
Philemon, S. Paul’s Epistle to, 71, 134
Philip, Emperor, lenient to Christians, 97
Philip of Side, on Athenagoras’s conversion, 188 _& n._ 1
Philip, son of S. Felicitas, tomb of, 259
Philippians, Epistle to, _see_ Epistles
Phœbe of Cenchrea, 110
Physical preparation for Martyrdom (_see also_ Schools of Martyrdom), 198, 201-3
Pilgrim Guides (_see also_ Itineraries), witness of, to numerousness of Martyrs, 210
Pilgrims, visits of, to Rome, 209, 216, 226, 228, 251; favourite tombs of, 244, 260, 275, 294, 296, 297; traces of, in Catacombs, 248, 251
Pirke Aboth (Sayings of the Fathers), 339, 340, 362, 365 _n._ 1
“Pittacia,” the, references in, to S. Felicitas and her sons, 303, 304
Pius I, Bishop of Rome, or Pope, 264, 265 _n._ 1; burial-place of, 287; slave origin of, 136 _n._ 1
Pius IX, Pope, and the rediscovery of the Callistus Catacomb, 246
Placidia, and the Basilica of S. Paul, 238
Plato, works of, 146
Platonia Chamber or Crypt, Cemetery of S. Sebastian, temporary tomb of SS. Peter and Paul, 237, 243; tomb of S. Sebastian near, 244
Plautius, 245
Pliny the Elder, 57
Pliny the Younger, family career and character of, 57-9 Letters of, in general, described and discussed, 59-62; features of, 71; value of, 57 to Tacitus, 62 to Trajan, and information in, on Christianity, 27, 32, 33, 35 _n._ 1, 36, 45 _et seq._, 50, 53-5, 56-7, 60 _n._ 1, 62, 75-8, 103 _& n._ 2, 106, 107, 110, 177 Publication of, 60 _n._ 1 Summary of, 67 Trajan’s Rescript in reply, 53-4 Literary followers of, 64-8 Style of, 60, Renan on, 46 _& n._ 1, 60 Roman appreciation of, as writer, 63, 65 Rules of, for letter-writers, 67 Villa of, 60 on joys of simple living, 88-9; on social status of Asiatic Christians, 110
Plotina, Empress, and Hadrian, 75
Plumbatæ, torture of, 295, 300 _n._ 1
Poems, by Early Christian writers, topics of, 151, 152 _& n._ 1 Pagan, referring to Christianity, 158 _n._ 1
Political reasons for Roman attitude to Christianity (_see also_ Paganism), 28, 30, 31-4, 39 _et seq._
Polycarp, Bishop of Smyrna, 251; scholar of S. John Evangelist, 73; letters of, _see_ Epistles; letters to, of Ignatius, 108, 172; Martyrdom of, letters on, genuine, 81 _n._ 1; on Christian charity, 125
Pompey, Consul, 56; first Roman ruler of Judea, 329; Jerusalem taken by, 3
Pomponia Græcina, identified with Lucina of the Crypt, 245
Pontianus, catacomb of, 211, 235 Baptistery in, 236
Pontianus, Bishop of Rome, or Pope, martyr, tomb of, 252
Pontius, on Christian Charity at Carthage, 127
Pontus, Christians in (_see also_ Bithynia), 45, 50
Pope,----, his ode on S. Cecilia, 294 _n._ 1
Popes (or Bishops) of Rome (_see under individual_ Names, _see also_ Papal burial-places), martyred, tombs of, with other Martyrs, 243
Poppæa, Empress, friendly to Jews, 27
Porsenna, 87
Portraits in the Catacombs, 296, 302
Portus, Bishop of, _see_ S. Hippolytus Port of Rome, 235
Prayers of the Dead, besought by Early Christians, 309-10, 311-2 S. Augustine on, 311, 312 _n._ 1, 321-2 S. Cyprian on, 312
Prætextatus, catacomb of, 242, 246-8, 259, 262, 295; grave (alleged) of S. Cecilia in, 293 _n._ 1; tomb of S. Januarius in, discovery of, 301-2; S. Zeno buried in, 276
Priests as converts, 110
Priscilla (and Aquila), 110, 265-6 Catacomb of, 213; discovery of, 230
Prisoners, Christian aid to, 130
Prophets, the, 339; books of, 361; inspiration of, Talmud on, 365; Schools of, 343, 349
Prudentius, poems of, 151, 152 _& n._ 1
Publius, Prefect of Rome, and the martyrdom of S. Felicitas, 299
Pudens, burial-place of, 264, 265, 266; house, &c., of, on the Aventine, legends connecting with S. Peter, 12, 15, 263; and with S. Paul, 265, 269; question of his family, 270; tradition, on him and his daughter, 263-5, 270
Pumbeditha, Rabbinic School at, 326, 354, 357, 358 _n._ 1, 359, 373
“Quatuor Coronati,” Saints, burial-places of, 249; church of, _ib._, relics in, of S. Hippolytus, 255
Quintilian, the earliest Ciceronian, 58
_Quo vadis_ legend, locality associated with, 273, 274
“Rab,” Rabbinic School founded by, 357 _n._ 1
“Rabbi” (Judah Ha-Nasi), famous pupil of, 357 _n._ 1; Talmud codification by, 356-7; work of, on Halachah, 358 _n._ 1, 372 _n._ 1
Rabbinic Dicta, on Inspiration, 364-5 _& n._ 1 Literature (extra-Talmudic), 360 Schools (_see also_ Babylonian, _and_ Palestinian), 326, 353, 354-5, 362-3, 368, 372, 373; chief study of, 358 _n._ 1; foundation of, 326, 340, 341; influence of, on Christian belief, 327; and on Christian love of Old Testament, 327; method of teaching, 357-60; work of, on the Gemara, 344-5
Rabbinism, famous scholars of (_see_ Akiba, Gamaliel, Hillel, Meir, “Rab,” Rabbi, Shammai, &c.), nature of, and influence of, on Christianity, 326-7; and on the Jews of the Dispersion, 339; new school of, aims of, 353, 355; spirit of, adverse to Christianity, 366 _et seq._; traditional history of, 339-40
Rabbis, authority of, as successors to the Sanhedrim, 357; supporting Bar-cochab, 78, 336, 354, 355
Rabbis of the Dispersion, and the Law, 341, 342-3; books evolved by, 343-5
Raffaelle, painting by, of S. Cecilia, 294 _n._ 1
Ramsay, Professor, on the date of the 1st Epistle of S. Peter, 8 _n._ 1, 166 _n._ 1; on the date of S. Peter’s death, 166 _n._ 1; on Epistles of Ignatius as showing contemporary conditions of Christianity, 173, 174; on Persecution of Christians as a police measure, by Rome, 31, 32; on Pliny’s letter, 46; on Roman Emperor as “beast” of Apocalypse, 169 _& n._ 2; on Roman references in the Apocalypse, 169 _n._ 2
Raschi, famous Rabbinist, 369
Ravenna, 303; church of S. Vitale at, 136 _n._ 1
Regulus, tortures of, 187
Relic-hunting in the Catacombs, results of, 224
Religious faith of Jews in Rome, first century, 4-6
Renan, E., on the destruction of the Temple, 331 _n._ 1; on large numbers of Christian martyrs, 82 _n._ 1; on _Octavius_ by Minucius Felix, 145, 146; on persecutions between A.D. 134 and 180, 82 _n._ 1; on Pliny’s letter, 46 _& n._ 1; and on his literary style, _ib._, 60; on _The Shepherd_, of Hermas, 180; on Talmudic influence on Christianity, 370 _n._ 1; on Trajan as persecutor, 49
Reservoirs or wells, in Catacombs and Chapels (_see also_ Baptisteries), 256, 263, 264, 267, 270, 271-2
Reuchlin,--, advocate of the Talmud, 366
Rhea Sylvia, 87
Rigourist School of Christian teaching, 101, 144-5, 150-2, 153-4
Rimmon-worship, Naaman’s dispensation concerning, 149
“Rock, the spiritual, that followed them,” origin of reference, 379
Roman attitude to Christianity, 39 _et seq._
Roman attitude to Slaves, and to Freedmen, 134, 137; craving for posthumous remembrance, 59 _n._ 1, 65 Christians, saluted in S. Paul’s Epistle to Romans, 17, 21 Church, the, in early days, classes composing, 182, 269-70 Early importance of, 16, 17, 21 Founders of (_see also_ S. Paul _and_ S. Peter), 7 _et seq._, 16-19, 22, 23, 24, 70 Generosity of, to other Churches, 131 Heresies menacing, first century, 23 _& n._ 1 Inner life of, information on, from the Catacombs, 219 _et seq._ Letter to, of Ignatius, 9 S. Paul’s praise of, 21 Emperors, divine honours paid to, 42 _& n._ 1, 169, 170 Empire, numbers of Early Christians in great centres of, 106 of Slaves in, first and second centuries, 135 _n._ 2 Paganism (_q.v._), interwoven in, 142-3 Literature, dearth of, second to fourth century, 63, 67 Epistolary forms, nature of, after Cicero, 56-7 Letters in, question of influence on N.T. writers, 69-72 Renaissance, in fourth and fifth centuries, 64 _et seq._ Myths depicted on coins of Antoninus Pius, 87, 90 Society, Dill’s book on, _cited_, 59 _n._ 1; first and second century, Pliny on, 58-60; fourth century, Symmachus on, 65; fifth century, Sidonius on, 67 Tribute to Christian fortitude, 193
Rome, _see also_ Popes _under_ Names Archæological investigators of, _see_ De Rossi, Marchi, Marucchi, _&c._ Basilicas in, third century, 112 Chief arena of Martyrdom, 175 Christians in, 16; Assemblies of, 113 _et seq._ Behaviour of, in trial, 180-1 Estimate of, in third century, 105 Life of, 101 _et seq._ Some of high social status, 110-12, 147, 149 Church of, _see_ Roman Church Churches in, the most ancient, 263 Those holding relics of S. Hippolytus, 255 Dead, Roman and Christian treatment of (_see also_ Catacombs), 131-3 Devotion to, of the Antonines, 89-90 Earliest founder of, 87 Fire of, under Nero, 25-6; consequences to Jews and Christians, 27-30 Gospel first brought to, tradition on, and literary support of the same, 7, 8, 9 _et seq._ Hadrian’s works in, 76 Jewish agreements with, under Maccabees, 3 Colonists in, and the Rabbinic School, 353 Sabbath observed in, 3 Jews in, 3-6, 346; expulsion of, 8, 18, 25; Roman attitude to beliefs of, 3, 39; rulers favourable to, 3 Literary support from, of Petrine tradition, 9, 13 Memoriæ of the Apostles in, 11 Pagan, Apocalyptic reference to, Ramsay on, 169 _& n._ 1, 170 Attitude of, to Christianity, 39 _et seq._; reasons for, 89, 91-7 Religion of, support to, of best emperors, 87 _et seq._ Rule of, over Judæa, 329, 340; revolts against (_see_ Wars), 329 _et seq._, 342, 345, 353 S. Paul’s stay in, 17, 21-24; and Martyrdom at, 9 S. Peter’s visits to, probable dates of, and events during, 16, 18, 19 _& n._ 1, 24; and Martyrdom at, 8; burial-place in, _see_ Vatican Hill Slavery in, 134 Temple treasures from Jerusalem at, 333 _& n._ 2
Rome proper, burial-place in, of S. Paul, 236; Catacombs in, Itineraries on, 211-4
_Rome Souteraine_, by Allard, _cited_ on numerousness of martyrs, 215 _n._ 1
Romulus and Remus, 87
Ruinart,--, on the Martyrdom of the Theban legion, 148 _n._ 1
Rusticus, Roman prefect, 94, 104
Rutilius Namatianus, poem of, on Christian misery, 158 _& n._ 1
Sabbath, the, non-Jewish observance of, Rome, 3
Sabinilla, burial of S. Valentinus by, 276
_Sacramentum_, of Pliny, 52
Sadducees, 329; last heard of, 341
S. Abdon, burial-place of, 235, 236
S. Achilles, martyr, burial-place and tomb of, 211, 240, 241, 278; story confirmed by excavations, 230
S. Adauctus, burial-place of, 239; shrine of, 211
S. Agapetus, deacon and martyr, 301 _& n._ 1, 302; History of, 247; tomb of, 243, 247
S. Agatha, 294 _n._ 1
S. Agatopus or Agapetus (_q.v._), martyr named in tomb of S. Januarius, 301 _& n._ 1, 302
S. Agnes, 136, 294 _n._ 1; basilica of, Catacombs around, 212-3, 255; burial-place of, identified, 231; martyrdom and story of, 256; other martyrs buried with, 214-5; urn of, 258; recently seen, 257
S. Alexander, burial-place of, 303
S. Anastasia, 294 _n._ 1
S. Athanasius, veneration of, for Hermas’s _Shepherd_, 179
S. Augustine, on asking the prayers of the Saints, 311, 312 _n._ 1, 322; on Burial near the Saints, 322; on S. Laurence, 254
S. Balbinus, Catacomb of, 239
S. Barnabas, Apostle, 110
S. Basilissa, _see_ (_infra_) S. Hermes and
S. Blandina, slave and martyr, 136; pain unfelt by, 200
S. Calepodius, catacomb of, 234
S. Callistus, later, Pope, custodian of cemeteries, 245, 291 Catacomb of, 242, 244-6; Crypt of S. Cecilia in, 290-1, 293 _n._ 1; discovery of, 246; Lucina area of, antiquity of, 266; Papal burial-place or Crypt in (_q.v._), 287, 291; why chosen, 273
S. Castulus, martyr, catacomb of, 249
S. Cecilia, church of, Rome, 292 _et seq._; her body in, 294, 297 Crypt or burial-place of, 211, 246 _& n._ 1, 290 _et seq._; discovery of, 231; other martyrs buried in, 214, 243; rediscovery of, 289 _et seq._ Martyr relatives of, 247 Story of, 290 _et seq._ Translation of, 294, 297
S. Chrysanthus and S. Daria, Basilica of, sons of S. Felicitas laid near, 303; site of their martyrdom, 260; tragedy at, 261
S. Chrysostom, on Almsgiving, 122
S. Clement of Rome, Pope, 104, 179 _& n._ 1, 315 Book on, by Bishop Lightfoot, 19 _n._ 1, 121 _n._ 1; _cited_ on Petrine tradition, 10 Epistles of, _see under_ Epistles Ordination of, by S. Peter, tradition on, 11 Tradition on his Apostolic teachers, 73 on Almsgiving, 121 _& n._ 1, 124, 126; on Assemblies, 108; on care for widows and orphans, 126; on Christians accused of firing Rome, 27; on Christ’s Atonement, 115; on the deaths of S. Peter and of S. Paul, 171; on early persecutions, 37, 165, 170-2; on hospitality, 128; on numbers of Christians, 104 _& n._ 1, at Rome, 106; on progress of Christianity, 107; on S. Peter’s martyrdom, 9
S. Constantia, church of, origin of, 263
S. Cornelius, other martyrs buried with, 214-5
S. Cyprian, Bishop of Carthage, and martyr, 149, 193, 315, 319 _n._ 1; and his congregation, charity of, 123, 127 Death of, 146 Flight of, 147 Letter of, _ad Thibaritanos_, a martyrs’ manual, 199 Teaching of, 139 Writers on, _cited, see_ Benson, _and_ Pontius on Almsgiving, 121-2; on Carthaginian generosity to other Churches, 131; on the Dead as concerned for the Living, 312; on Death, 155; on Hospitality, 128; on insensibility of Martyrs to pain, 200; on Martyrs’ training, 198; on Persecutions (third century), 37
S. Cyriaca, burial-place of, 212, 250
S. Daria, once a Vestal, site of her martyrdom, 260, 303
S. Denis, Abbey of, ashes of S. Hippolytus at, 255
S. Domitilla, Basilica of, 257
S. Emerentiana, slave and martyr, 136; burial-place of, 255, 257; identified, 231 Catacomb of, 255 Urn of, 258; recently seen, 257
S. Epimachus, catacomb of, 249
S. Felicissimus, martyr, 301, 302; history of, 247; tomb of, 243, 247
S. Felicitas, slave and martyr, 136, 206, 272, 294 _n._ 1 Catacomb of, her tomb in a basilica over, 213, 259; discovered, 260, 302 Martyr sons of, and their tombs, 213, 248; discovered by De Rossi, 231 _& n._ 1 Story of, 258; confirmed by archæology, 259-60, 298 _et seq._ Translation of, 259, 302 on Insensibility to pain, 200
S. Felix (and S. Adauctus), burial-place of, 239
S. Felix, cemetery of, 211, 235-6
S. Felix, son of S. Felicitas, tomb of, 259, 266, 272, 274, 302-3
S. Felix, other martyrs buried with, 214-5
S. Felix of Nola, martyr, church of, at Nola, 321; poems on, 152 _n._ 1
S. Flavian, Vision of, _cited_, on Martyrs’ insensibility to pain, 200
S. Gall, “sylloge” in library of, 230
S. Genesius, martyr, once an actor, tomb of, 251
S. Gordianus, catacomb of, 249
S. Gregory Nazianzen, on unity of martyrs, 285
S. Gregory of Tours, on the group-martyrdom at tomb of SS. Chrysanthus and Daria, 261
S. Helena, Empress, cross of, laid on S. Peter’s sarcophagus, 282; tomb of, 249
S. Hermes, translation of, 275 and S. Basilissa, catacomb of, 274-5
S. Hippolytus (of Portus), 11, 151; catacomb and basilica of, 250-5, 262; discovery of, by De Rossi, 251, 254 Churches dedicated to, or connected with, 254-5 Lightfoot _cited_ on, 251-2 Pupil of Irenæus, 251 Relics of, 255 Statue of, 252 Tomb of, 251; Prudentius on, 252-4 Translation of, 254
S. Hyacinthus, martyr, tomb of, 275
S. Ignatius of Antioch, Bishop and martyr, 315; Epistle of, _see_ Epistles; Martyrdom desired by, 37, 110, 154, 204-5; date of, 73 _cited_ in support of Petrine tradition, 9, 13; on Assemblies, 108; on Christ’s Atonement, 115; on his yearning for Martyrdom, 204-5; on influential Christians at Rome, 110; on persecutions, 37, 165, 172-6; on progress of Christianity, 107; on Roman generosity, 131
S. James, Epistle of, _see under_ Epistles
S. Januarius, 298 _n._ 1, 304; martyrdom of, 300 _n._ 1; burial-place and tomb of, 243, 248 _& n._ 1, 301-2; discovery of, 231; veneration of, 259
S. Jerome, Catalogue of Roman Bishops by, 14, 15 on S. Agnes, 256; on S. Peter’s date of arrival in Rome, 14; on _The Shepherd_, of Hermas, 179
S. John, Evangelist, 62, 251 Apocalypse of, 37, 156-7, 165, 167-70 Death of, 103, 114, 118, 165 Epistles of, _see under_ Epistles Martyrdom of, 11 Polycarp’s anecdotes of, 73 Prominence of, in Asia Minor, 9
S. Justus, martyr, tomb of, 250
S. Laurence, 254; basilica and tomb of, 250, 257; martyrs buried under, 212 Churches dedicated to, 250, 254
S. Lucia, 294 _n._ 1
S. Marcellinus, _see_ S. Peter and, _infra_
S. Marcus, catacomb of, 239
S. Mark, Gospel of, source and place of origin, 10, 14 Relations of, with S. Peter, 9, 10, 14, 22
S. Martialis, son of S. Felicitas, tomb of, 259, 303
S. Martin of Tours, 136
S. Martinianus, _see_ (_infra_) S. Processus and
S. Matthew, Gospel of, 10, as Martyrs’ Manual, 200 _& n._ 1, 201
S. Maurice and the Theban Legion, legend of martyrdom of, 148 _n._ 1
S. Maximus, Roman officer and martyr, 290; basilica of, and history of, 247; catacomb of, 259; tomb of, 242, 293 _n._ 1, 295
S. Nereus, martyr, burial-place of, 211, 240, 241, 278; story confirmed by excavations, 230
S. Nicomedes, catacomb of, special features of, 255-6
S. Oswald and S. Wulfstan, 321
S. Pamphilus, martyr, catacomb of, 274
S. Pancratius or Pancras, catacomb of, 234, 235 Churches of, Rome, &c., 235
S. Parnel, Petronell, or Petronilla (_q.v._), British churches dedicated to, 278-9
S. Paul, 239, 269, 273; association with, of Pudens, 265, _and see_ 270 Basilica of, 11, 17, 18, 238 Christology of, 23-4 Cultural status of, 110 Epistles of, _see under_ Epistles Haggadic influences in writings of, 379 Hermas named by, the Hermas of _The Shepherd_?, 178 at Rome as prisoner, 21-2; secondary place accorded by tradition and literature, 9, 11, 13-14, 17; share in founding Roman Church, 17, 22, 23, 24, 70, 104; trial of, 25; and martyrdom, 9, 10, 11, 151, 152, 170, 171; burial-places of, 211, 236, 237, 242, 243, 283; sarcophagus of, slabs of, inscription on, and other features, 237-8; sepulchre of, 242, 243 Teaching of, keynote of, where found, 23-4; locale of, 107 Tomb of freedman friend of, among royal graves, 241-2 Translation of, 237 on Almsgiving to Christian Churches, 120 _n._ 1, 130; on Assemblies, 107; on Athletic training, 198; on Charity, 122, 130; on Death, 154; on Enduring hardness, 202-3; on Hospitality, 129; on the Roman Church, 17, 21; on Slavery, 134-5; on Spread of Christianity, 107
S. Paulinus of Nola, 158; letter of, to Sulpicius Severus, on his slave, 136-7; poems of, 152 _n._ 1; question of, to S. Augustine, 312 _n._ 1, 321-2
S. Perpetua and her companions, 294 _n._ 1; martyrdoms of, 200, 208; genuine accounts of, 81 _n._ 1; pain unfelt by, 200
S. Peter, Apostle and Martyr, First Bishop of Rome (_see also_ S. Petronilla), 226, 269 Associations of, with Catacomb of S. Priscilla, 257, 263, 267, 271-4 with S. Mark, 9, 10, 14, 22 with Pudens, 12, 15, 263, 265, _and see_ 269-70 Baptistery of, site of, 12, 257, 267, 273 Book on by Barnes, _cited_, 281 _n._ 1 _et seq._ Catacomb of, and of S. Marcellinus, 249 Founder of Church in Bithynia, 51 Founder of Church at Rome, tradition, archæological, and literary support to the belief, 7 _et seq._, 16, 19, 22, 70, 104 in Rome, 18, 24; date of arrival discussed, 8, 11, 13 _et seq._, 16; martyrdom of, 8, 10, 16, 18, 19, 151, 153, 170, 171, 233, 234; date and site of, 166 _n._ 1, 267; burial-places, and tomb of, 49, 273; Bishops of Rome buried around, 16, 23, 233 _& n._ 1, 279-88; sarcophagus of, adorned by Constantine, 237, 282-3; traditional notices of, legendary with historical basis and other, 15, 16; translation of, 237 _Quo vadis_ legend on, 239, 273, 274 Teaching of, catholicity of, 367 on hospitality, 129; on locale of Asiatic converts, 107; on persecution, 165, 166-7; on slavery, 135; on spread of the faith, 107
S. Peter and S. Marcellinus, catacomb of, 249
S. Peter Chrysologus, laudation by, of S. Felicitas, 305
S. Peter’s (Basilica), Rome, 8, 233, 238; martyrs buried beneath, 210, 285; origin of, and former representatives of, 233, 238 Reason of its position, 11; site of, associations of, 28; veneration shown to, 17, 18
S. Petronilla (_see also_ S. Parnel), daughter of S. Peter, 240, 241; hypotheses on, discussed, 277-8 Basilica of, 241, 278 Burial-place of, 211, 240-1, 277 Translation of, 279
S. Philip, burial-place of, 266, 272, 274, 302-3
S. Philippus (S. Philip), other martyrs buried with, 214-5
S. Prassedis (_see also_ S. Pudentiana), burial-place of, 263, 264-5, 266, 268 Catacomb founded by, 270 Church of, 262; Zeno chapel in, mosaics of, 276; relics in, 262-3; well in, 263
S. Priscilla, mother of Pudens, Catacomb of, 8, 258, 261 _et seq._, 266; antiquity, size, and importance of, 236, 240, 257, 261; associations of, with S. Peter, 12, 257, 263, 267, 271-3; baptistery in, 236; Basilica of S. Sylvester over, 257, 273; called “ad Nymphas,” and why, 272; chief glory of, 257; De Rossi on, 262; evidence of discoveries in, on tradition of S. Peter as founder of Roman Church, 8, 15, 16, 42, 267, 268, 271; founders of, 270; galleries and other features of, 267 _et seq._; inscriptions in, 267, 268, 271; notable interments in, 266, 302 Church of, 262 Original tomb of, 268
S. Processus and S. Martinianus, catacomb of, 234; story of, 234
S. Protus, martyr, tomb of, 275
S. Pudentiana (_see also supra_, S. Prassedis), burial-place of, 263, 264, 266, 268; sarcophagus of, 263 Church of, 262; antiquity and interest of, 263 _et seq._ Part founder of S. Priscilla’s catacomb, 270
S. Quirinus, Crypt of, 247; history of, _ib._
S. Riquier, “syllogæ” in library of, 230
S. Sebastian (ad Catacombas), catacomb of, 237, 242, 243-4; memories of SS. Peter and Paul connected with, 273; story of, 244; translation of, 244
S. Sennen, burial-place of, 235, 236
S. Silanus, burial-places of, 259, 302; body once stolen, 304; translation of, 302
S. Silvester in Capite, Church, body of S. Hippolytus translated to, 254
S. Simferosa, tomb of, 250
S. Soteris, virgin, martyr, catacomb of, 239, 242, 243, 246
S. Stephen, protomartyr, 110; and S. Laurence, parallel positions of, 234
S. Suzanna, church of, 302; final resting-place of S. Felicitas, 259 _& n._ 1
S. Sylvester, Pope, Basilica erected by, 266 _& n._ 1; notoriety of, 272; Popes buried in, 272-4; saintly remains in, 213, 266 _& n._ 1, 272, 302-3; site of, 257, 266 _& n._ 1, 270, 272, 273 Burial-place of, 272
S. Symphorosa, burial-place of, 212
S. Tertullinus, catacomb of, 249
S. Thekla, catacomb of, 236, 239
S. Thomas Aquinas, 319 _n._ 1
S. Tiburtius, martyr, Basilica of, 247; relation of, to S. Cecilia, 290; tomb of, 293 _n._ 1, 295
S. Urban, martyr, tomb of, 242-3
S. Urbanus, Bishop (not of Rome), and S. Cecilia, 290, 296
S. Valentinus, martyr, 262; catacomb of, 214, 275-6; basilica in, 276
S. Valerianus, husband of S. Cecilia, martyr, 290, 292, 294 _n._ 1; tomb of, 242, 247, 293 _n._ 1, 295
S. Vitale, a slave-martyr, Church of, Ravenna, 136 _n._ 1
S. Vitalis, son of S. Felicitas, tomb of, 259, 303
S. Zeno, Basilica of, 247; burial-place of, 262, 276; Chapel of, 276; treasures in, 262-3
Saintly persons, power of, over wild creatures, 176 _& n._ 1
Saints, Communion of, Early Christian view on, 307, 309-10 Dead, invocation of, and prayers of, besought, Early Christian attitude as to, 309-10, 311, 312 _& n._ 1, 321-2 Desire for burial near, S. Augustine on, 312 _n._ 1, 321-2
Salii, College of, M. Aurelius, a member, 95
Salzburg Itinerary _cited_, 211, 212, 214, 242-3, 302, 303; date of, 227
Samuel, prophet, and the Schools of the Prophets, 349
Sanhedrim, the Great, authority of, successors in, after Dispersion, 357, 360
Sanhedrim treatise, in Talmud, 343 _n._ 1
Sarcophagi, Christian, Lateran Museum, and S. Peter’s escape from Prison, 19 _n._ 1
Sardinia, exiles and martyrs in, 252
Sardis, 187
Saturninus, catacomb of, 258, 260
Schools of Martyrdom, 145; methods of, 197, 198 _& n._ 1 _et seq._; writers on, 198 _et seq._ of the Prophets, 349 of Teaching, Early Christian Practical, and Gentle, 101, 145-50 Rigourist, 101, 144-5, 150-2
Scillitan martyrdoms, 94, 208; _Acts_ of martyrs genuine, 81 _n._ 1
_Scorpiace_, by Tertullian, 121 _n._ 1, a martyrs’ manual, 199; S. Paul cited in, on Martyrdom, 202, 203 _& n._ 1
Scribes, the, and their duties, 341, 343 _& n._ 3, 350, 351, 361
Second Century, congregations of Christians in, locales of, 36
Seligenstadt, SS. Peter and Marcellinus’ bodies at, 249
Selinus, death at, of Trajan, 87
Senate, the, decadence of, 64-5
Seneca, letters by, _see under_ Epistles Possible reference by, to Nero’s burning of Christians, 29
Sentius Augurinus, a lengthy recital by, 61
Sepphoris, Rabbinic school at, 358 _n._ 1
Serenus Granianus, Rescript to, of Hadrian, on Christians, 77
Sergius Paulus, 110
Severus,--, Emperor, persecution under, reason for, 194
Severus, Alexander, Emperor, 234, 252; and the Jews, 333 _n._ 1; leniency of, to Christians, 97; and supposed Christianity of, 147 Septimius (historian), on Nero’s anti-Christian Edict, 32 Sextus Julius (General), operations of, in Judea, 337 Sulpicius, letter to, of Paulinus of Nola, on his slave, 136-7 on destruction of the Temple, 331 _& n._ 1, 332; on Titus’s speech against Jewish and Christian religions, 39-40
Sfondrati, Cardinal, finder of the bodies of S. Cecilia, 294 _& n._ 1, 297; and of her husband, &c., 295
Shammai, a Rabbi, 366
Shema invocation, 355 _n._ 1
Shemoth Rabba, treatise, _cited_, 365
_Shepherd (Pastor), The_, of Hermas, 136 _n._ 1; discussed, 178-9 _& n._ 1, 180; reasons of its popularity, 183 _n._ 1; theology of, 138, 179, 182-3; on care of widows, &c., 126; on Christ’s Atonement, 116; on Christian charity, 124 _& n._ 1, 125; on hospitality, 128; on the martyrs and the recusants, 36, 37; on numbers of Christians, 104; on persecutions, 180-4; on progress of Christianity, 107; on rich Christians, 111
Sicarii, the, 330
Sick, the, care of, by Early Church, 126-7
Side, 188 _& n._ 1
Sidonius, Apollinaris, family, career, and writings of, 64, 65-7, 68
Simon the Just, 339
Simon Magus in Rome, 11
Sinai, 365
Siricius, Pope, Basilicas built and adorned by, &c., 235, 241, 263, 278; burial-place of, 272
Sixtus I, Pope and martyr, 247; burial-place of, 243, 287
Sixtus II, Pope, deacons of, martyred, 302; and S. Laurence, 250, 254
Sixtus III, Basilica built by, to S. Laurence, 250; work of, at S. Cecilia’s crypt, 292
Sixtus V, Pope, Church of S. Suzanna built for, 259 _n._ 1
Slavery, England’s crusade against, Lecky on, 135 _n._ 1
Slaves, Christian, freed by advice of Pope Pius I, 264; position and condition of, 134 _et seq._
Slaves, numbers of, Roman Empire, first two centuries, Ozanam on, 135 _n._ 2
Smyrna, 173
Social life and pleasures, difficulties in, of Early Christians, 141 Status of Early Christians, literary testimony to its range, 110-12
Solomon, King, 352
Soter, Bishop or Pope of Rome, 10, 131; on numbers of Christians at Rome, 104 _& n._ 2, 106, 107
Spartianus, historian, 75
Stanley, Dean, on a child’s Epitaph in the Abbey, 309; on early Christianity, 318 _n._ 2, 319 _& n._ 1; on the witness of the Catacombs to the life of the Early Church, 219-20
Statius, 59 _n._ 1
Stephen, Bishop or Pope of Rome, 131
Suetonius, history by, 60, 62, 63, 269; on Christians accused of firing Rome, 27; on Domitian’s persecutions, 41; on Jewish expulsion from Rome, and its cause, 18; on Neronic persecution, 62; on Vespasian’s attitude to Christians, 40
Sura, Rabbinic School at, 326, 327, 344, 346, 358 _n._ 1, 359, 373; founder of, 357 _& n._ 1
“Syllogæ” of Early Christian Inscriptions, where found, 230
_Sylloge Palestina_, the, 215
Symmachus, Memmius, and his father’s Letters, 65
Symmachus, Pope, 60 _n._ 1; Council held by, 262
Symmachus, Q. Aurelius, career of, and writings (Letters) of, 64-5, 66
Syria, Vespasian’s legions in, 331
Tacitus, History of, 60, 61, 62 Lost Book of, on Titus’s destruction of the Temple, 39, 331 _& n._ 1, 332 Period of, 63 Pliny’s letter to, 92 on Christianity, progress of, 107; on Christians accused of firing Rome, 27; on Christians of high station, 110; on conversion of Pomponia Græcina, 245; on numbers of Christians, 103, 107 on Jewish fecundity, 5 _n._ 1; on the persecutions, 36, 46 _n._ 1, 62, 103, 177, 208; on Roman simplicity, 88
Talmud, the, _see also_ Mishnah _and_ Gemara Akiba’s work on, 354-6 and the Jew (Book V.), 325 _et seq._ Authority of, 368-9 Codification of, workers on, 356-7 Divine inspiration claimed for, 365 History of, traditional, 339-40 Influence of, on Christianity, 326, 327, 348, 370 _& n._ 1 on the Jews of the Dispersion, 339, 340, 346-7, 353, 368, 372-3 Jewish devotion to, 326, 327, 347, 350, 368-9 Materials, origin and founders of, 348 _et seq._, 358 _n._ 1, 360 Meaning of term, 358 _n._ 1 Object of, 345 Popularity of, cause of, 371 Power of, 346-7 Recensions of, 344, 345, 359, 373 Story of, 365-6 Teaching of, differences in, from that of Christ, 366-8 Method of, 357-60 Spirituality of, 345, 352 on Inspiration of Pentateuch and of the Prophets, 364-5 on Miracles, 365 on Bar-cochab, 336-7; and on Rabbi Akiba, 355; on the last war of the Jews, 98, 338 _& n._ 1; and on destruction of the Temple, 332
Tannaim, the, 344, 358 _n._ 1
Targumim, the, 360; Haggadic pieces in, 373; excerpts from, 373-5
Tarquinius Priscus, 87
Taylor, Dr., on Rabbinic dicta, 365 _n._ 1
Teaching and doctrine, Early Christian Assemblies, 113-4; groundwork of, 115-9; as met with in the Catacombs, 220, 309 _et seq._, 312 _& n._ 1, 315, 316 _et seq._
Telesphorus, Pope, burial-place of, 287
Temple, the, of Jerusalem, destruction of, 22, 331-4, 340 _et seq._, 355, 362, 368; the end of Mosaism, 341 Stones of Wailing all that is left of, 338 Treasures from, in Rome, 333 _& n._ 2, 351 Women’s Court in, 380 of Peace, Rome, 333 _n._ 2
Tenth Legion, at Jerusalem, 332
Tertullian, 151, 204, 315 Rigourism of, 146, 151, 153-4, 179, 182 Silent as to Vespasian, 40 _n._ 3 Teaching of, 138 Writings of:-- _ad Uxor_, on Hospitality, 128 _Apology of_, resemblances between, and _Octavius_ of Minucius Felix, 186 Martyrs’ Manuals, 199 _Scorpiace_, 121 _n._ 1; S. Paul _cited_ in, 202, 203 _& n._ 1 Treatise on Idolatry, 144 _n._ 1; on training for Martyrdom, 203 cited in support of Petrine tradition, 10-11, 13, 14; on aid to prisoners, 130; on almsgiving, 120; on burying the poor, 132, 133; on Christ with the Kid, 319, 320; on Christian love, 119; on highly-placed Christians, 111, 147, 149; on idol-worship, 144 _n._ 1; on insensibility of martyrs to pain, 200; on numbers of Christians in the second century, 104, 105; on penalty of being a Christian, 197 _& n._ 1; and on enduring hardness, 153-4; on persecutions, 32, 36, 37, 190-1; on physical training for martyrdom, 198, 202-3; on Pliny’s correspondence with Trajan, 45, 46; and on inconsistencies in Trajan’s Rescript, 55
_Testaments of the XII Patriarchs_, on Almsgiving, 121
Theban Legion, martyrdom of, legend of, 148 _n._ 1
Theodelinda, and the Monza Catalogue (_q.v._), 214-5, 228, 304
Theodosius, Emperor, 253; and the Basilica of S. Paul, 238; Latin writers of his period, 64
Theophitus, Bishop of Antioch, on assemblies, 108-9; on persecution, 189-90
_Thibaritanos, Ad_, letter by S. Cyprian, 198 _n._ 2, 199
Thirty-nine Articles, the, 319 _n._ 1
Thrason, Catacombs of, 258, 260
Tiber, the, Catacombs beside, Itineraries on, 210-14; S. Peter’s baptisms in, 11, 14
Tiberias, Rabbinic School at, 326, 327; method, study, and work at, 344, 346, 357, 358 _n._ 1
Tibur, Hadrian’s Villa near, 82
Tiburtius, martyr, tomb of, 242
Tigellinus, evil counsel of, to Nero, 27
Tillemont,--, 289; on the _Acts_ of S. Felicitas, 300; on the martyrdom of the Theban Legion, 148 _n._ 1
Titus, Bishop of Crete, Epistle of S. Paul to, on slavery, 135
Titus, Emperor, 85, 325; persecution under, 172, 173, 174, _and see_ 207 Siege by, of Jerusalem and triumph after, 331-4, 351, 352 Views of, on Jewish and Christian religions, 39
Toleration, advocated by some Early Christians, De Broglie on, 142-3
Torah, the, 330, 341, 351, 352, 370; additions, directions, explanations made to (_see also under_ Names), 343 _& nn._ 1 _&_ 2 _et seq._ Haggadic notices on, from Palestinian Targum, 373-5 Halachic developments of, 376-7 History of, 339 Inspiration claimed for, 343, 364 Mishnah and Gemara built up on, 361 Post-exilic reverence for, 342 _et seq._ Schools devoted to study of (_see also_ Rabbinic Schools), 326 Temple copy of, in Rome, 333 _& n._ 2
Torre Pignatara, tomb of S. Helena at, 249
Trade, difficulties in, of Early Christians, 141
Tradition, rehabilitated by Archæology, 105, 225-6, 230-1, 239-40, 241, 289, 293, 298, 304 on S. Peter as founder of Roman Christianity, 7, 8; literary and archaeological support to, 8, 9 _et seq._
Trajan, Emperor, 110, 164, 171, 172, 182; attitude to, of Christian historians, 48-9 Characteristics of, 49-50, 55, 85 Death of, and successor, 75 Pliny’s letter to, 27, 32, 35 _n._ 1, 43, 45 _et seq._, 56, 103 _& n._ 2, 177 Pope Gregory the Great’s prayer for, 49 Principles of, as to Christians, 78, 97 Rescript of, in reply to Pliny, 45 _et seq._, 56, 57, 177; effect of, 180; provisions of, 49-50; publication of, 60 _n._ 1; Tertullian’s criticisms on, 55; views of scholars _cited_ on, 49 Social life of his time, 89 Zealot revolt under, 334
Translation of remains of Martyrs and Saints, 235, 236, 262, 263, 266 _& n._ 1, 267, 272, 273-4, 292, 298
Trastevere Quarter, Catacombs in, Itineraries on, 210-11
Tridentine Catechism, the, 319 _n._ 1
Trinity, Blessed, references to, in Catacombs, 316
Triumvirate, proscription of, 56
“Tropæum,” the, probable identification of, 282
Ubaldi, Canon of S. Peter’s, on discoveries during erection of Bernini’s baldachino, 281 _& n._ 1 _et seq._
Uhlhorn,--, views of, on Trajan’s Rescript, 49
Urban VIII, Pope, and the discovery of S. Peter’s sarcophagus, 233 _n._ 1, 280 _et seq._; epigram on, 280
Urbanus, Bishop (not of Rome), and S. Cecilia, 290
Urbanus, Bishop of Rome, 290
_Uxor, Ad_, by Tertullian, 128
Valentinian II, Emperor, and the Basilica of S. Paul, 238
Valentinus, the Gnostic, 112 _n._ 1
Valerian, Emperor, favour shown by, to Christians, 147; persecution under, 243, 247, 256, 275
Vatican Basilica, the, 293 Hill, Cemetery on, 243, 272-3; beginning of, 280, 285, 286; “Itinerary” on, 210; rediscovery of, 280 Papal tombs and Crypt of, 234, 236-7, 242, 244, 245 _et seq._; Popes buried in, 16, 233, 273, 283, 284, 286-7 S. Peter’s tomb in, 16, 232, 233, 237 Gardens on, martyrdoms in, 28, 29, 30, 32; site of S. Peter’s death, 267
Vatican Hill, “Memoriæ” of Apostles on, 11, 233
Vergil, poems by, 87, 88, 91; teaching of, 88, 95
Verus, son of Ælius Verus, adopted by Antoninus Pius, 83
Vespasian, Emperor, 33; attitude of, to Christianity, 39-40 _& nn._, 207; difficulties with the Jews, 92 Persecution under, 172, 173, 174 Roman characteristics of, 85 Siege by, of Jerusalem, 330-1 Temple of Peace built by, 333 _n._ 2 Triumph of, 333
Vestibule of Domitilla Cemetery, 240
Via Appia, catacombs of, 211-12, 234, 237, 242 _et seq._, 301 Ardeatina, catacombs of, 211, 239-42; excavations in, value of, to history, 239-40 Aurelia or Aurelia Vetus, catacombs along, 210-11, 233-5 Flaminia, catacomb of, 214, 275-6 Labicana, catacombs of, 212, 249 Latina, catacombs of, 212, 248-9 Nomentana, catacombs of, 212-3, 255-8 Ostiensis, catacombs on, 211, 236-9, 243 Portuensis, catacombs on, 211, 235-6 Salaria, catacombs of, rediscovery of, 223 _& n._ 1 Cemetery of S. Priscilla on, 12 Salaria Nova, catacombs of, 213, 258 _et seq._, 302, 303 Salaria Vetus, catacombs of, 213, 274-5 Tiburtina, catacombs of, 212, 250-5 Vaticana, catacombs of, 210
Victor, Pope, burial-place of, 287
Vienne, martyrdoms at, 201, 208; persecution at, by M. Aurelius, 94
Vigilius, Pope, burial-place of, 272
Viminal Hill, church on, 262
Vision of S. Flavian, on Insensibility of Martyrs to Pain, 200
_Vision, The, of Perpetua_, 199
Vitellius, Emperor, 39, 331
“War of Extermination,” the, 338
Wars of the Jews, the three last, 77, 78-9, 80, 325, 329 _et seq._, 338, 354
Westcott, Bishop, on date of letter to “Diognetus,” 178 _n._ 1
Westminster Abbey, epitaph of Jane Lister in, 309
Westminster Confession, 319 _n._ 1
Whepstead, church of S. Parnel at, 278
Widows and orphans, care of Early Church for, 124, 126
William of Malmesbury, Itinerary of, on Roman Catacombs, 210, 211, 213 Authority of, 210, 213, 227 Date of, 227 on S. Cecilia’s tomb, 293; on S. Felicitas and her sons and their tombs, 303
Wiseman, Cardinal, 263
Women, Christ’s teaching on, and the Talmudic contrasted, 367 _& n._ 1; Court of, in the Temple, 380
Worcester, two Saints of, 321
Wordsworth, W., poem of, on S. Cecilia, 294 _n._ 1
Worship (_see also_ Assemblies, Idol-worship, Incense), in Christian Assemblies, Justin Martyr on, 113-4
Wulphere, King of the Mercians, 279
Xiphilin or Xiphilinus, on Domitian, 41; on Hadrian, 75
Zealots, Rabbinic masters unsympathetic to, 342, 353, 354; revolts of, and results, 330-1, 332, 334-5
Zephyrinus, Pope, martyr, 11; tomb of, 243, 245, 273, 291
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FOOTNOTES:
[1] These are quoted on pp. 13-20 of Book I.
[2] A singular and interesting passage of Allard here deserves to be quoted verbatim: “Dans Rome où le celibat est devenu une plaie sociale, où la population diminue, où la stérilité regne au foyer domestique, où l’avortement l’infanticide sont fréquents et à peine reprimés, les Juifs seuls ont beaucoup d’enfants--Tacite a défini d’un mot ce trait de leur race; ‘generandi amor,’ dit-il en énumerant les principaux charactères du peuple Juif. Tous les témoignages anciens parlent de leur grand nombre; ‘augmenter était une de leurs préoccupations,’ _‘augendæ multitudini consulitur_’ dit encore Tacite.” See Tacitus, _Hist._ v. 5; Allard, i. p. 12.
[3] Professor Ramsay in his book, _The Church in the Roman Empire_, prefers a later date for the composition of the First Epistle of St. Peter than that usually given, A.D. 64-5. He believes it was impregnated with Roman thought and was certainly written from Rome, but not before A.D. 80. This would give a long period of Roman work to the apostle; still--able as are Professor Ramsay’s arguments--the later date and all that it involves are absolutely at variance with the universal tradition.
[4] See the detailed account of this catacomb, Book IV. 261 and following pages.
[5] On these memories which belong to the house of Pudens and his family see pp. 262-270.
[6] _Histoire ancienne de l’Église_, vol. i. p. 61 (4th edition, 1908).
[7] It will be noticed that an interesting hypothesis dwelt on by Allard (_Histoire des Persécutions_, vol. i.) and by other writers has not been quoted among the foregoing testimonies. It is curious and deserving of notice, but it is at best only an ingenious supposition.
These scholars suggest that when S. Peter, after his deliverance through the interference of an angel guide, escaped from the prison of Herod Antipas and went to another place (Acts xii. 17), that the “other place” so mysteriously and strangely alluded to by the writer of the “Acts” signified Rome.
A Roman tradition handed down to us through the medium of early Christian art, curiously seems to connect the angelic deliverance of the Apostle S. Peter with _Rome_. On some twenty of the early Christian sarcophagi preserved in the Lateran Museum, the arrest and imprisonment of S. Peter by the soldiers of Herod Antipas form the subject of the sculpture. Why, pertinently ask these writers, was this special scene in the life of S. Peter selected as the subject graved on so many of these ancient coffins of the Roman Christian dead? They reply--The connexion which traditionally existed between this imprisonment and the angelic deliverance with the first coming of the apostle to Rome.
* * * * *
Bishop Lightfoot somewhat strangely remarks (_Clement of Rome_, vol. ii. p. 491): “S. Paul could not have written as he writes to the Romans (i. 11, xv. 20-24) if they had received even a short visit from an apostle, more especially if that apostle were S. Peter.”
It is difficult to see how he makes this deduction from S. Paul’s words in the passages in question. In the first passage (Rom. i. 11), S. Paul, after addressing the Roman Christians, and thanking God that their faith is spoken of throughout the whole world, adds that he longs to see these Christians, that he may impart to them some spiritual gift to the end that they may be established. Then he explains or, as it were, recalls what he has said, that he might not seem to think them insufficiently instructed or established in the faith, and therefore in the words which follow closely, “that I may be comforted together with you by the mutual faith both of you and me,” turns the end of his coming to them to their mutual rejoicing in one another’s faith, when he and they shall come to know one another.
In the second passage (Rom. xv. 20-24), S. Paul plainly states that his work had been to preach the gospel “not where Christ was named, lest he should build upon another man’s foundation”--that is, not where Christ was preached by another before me.
Then he adds, that he considered the preaching of Christ where he had not been named the most needful work; he therefore declined going to Rome, where was a Church already planted; but now, having no more Churches to plant in the regions where he was sojourning, he signifies his resolution of visiting the Roman Church.
Any deduction that could be drawn from these two passages in S. Paul’s Epistle to the Romans, would seem to be exactly the contrary to that suggested by Lightfoot.
[8] See above, pp. 7-12, where the question of the foundation of the Church in Rome is fully discussed.
[9] Such as the heresies of the Nicolaitans and Cerinthians, and certain of the false Docetic teachings.
[10] _The Church in the Roman Empire_, xi. 6.
[11] This comment cannot be pressed too strongly.
[12] It is this which makes the vivid picture which the younger Pliny, in his Letter to Trajan, paints of Christian life and influence in a great province so valuable.
[13] See Ramsay, _The Church in the Roman Empire_, xii. 2.
[14] See Hilary (Poitiers), _Contra Arianos_, 3.
[15] Bishop Lightfoot discusses at some length the great probability of the accuracy of this definite statement of S. Hilary of Poitiers, and decides that the absence of any mention of Vespasian among the persecutors in Melito and Tertullian by no means invalidates Hilary’s mention; no systematic record was kept of the persecutions; the knowledge possessed by each individual writer was accidental and fragmentary. Lightfoot, _Ignatius and Polycarp_, vol. i. pp. 15, 16.
[16] “Domitian loved to be identified with Jupiter, and to be idolized as the Divine Providence in human form; and it is recorded that Caligula, Domitian, and Diocletian were the three Emperors who delighted to be styled _dominus et deus_.”
[17] He struck (says the Roman poet), without exciting popular indignation, at the illustrious citizen:
“Tempora sævitiæ, claras quibus abstulit Urbi Illustresque animas impune, et vindice nullo.”
But when his rage touched the people--he fell:
“Sed periit, postquam cerdonibus esse timendus cœperat” ... (Juvenal, iv. 151-4).
The word _cerdones_ included the poorest and humblest artisans. The word is commonly translated “cobblers”--French _savetiers_; it is usually applied to the slave class, or to those engaged in the poorest industries.
Allard (_Histoire des Persécutions_, i. 11, chap. iv.) considers that the disgust and pity of the populace when they saw the horrible cruelties practised in the celebrated games of Nero in A.D. 64, were partly owing to the indignation of the people when they perceived that so many of their own class were among the tormented Christians in that horrible massacre.
Aubé, too, in his _Histoire des Persécutions_, calls special attention to these lines of Juvenal. He connects the murder of Domitian closely with the indignation aroused among the people by this bitter persecution, and suggests that the plot which resulted in the assassination of the tyrant originated in a Christian centre. This is, however, in the highest degree improbable.
[18] The full official title of Pliny the Younger in this governorship was “Legatus proprætore provinciæ Ponti et Bithyniæ consulari potestate.” That eminent statesman was entrusted with this province mainly on account of its needing special attention at that time.
[19] Tertullian, _Apologeticum_, 2; Eusebius, _H. E._ III.[xxxii. 33.]
[20] Lightfoot well observes (_Apostolic Fathers_, part ii. vol. i., S. Ignatius, pp. 54-6) that these two famous letters cannot be separated from the collection of Pliny’s Letters in which they appear. Renan in _Les Évangiles_ writes: “On ne croira jamais qu’un faussaire Chrétien eut pu si admirablement imiter la langue précieuse et raffinée de Pline.”
Lightfoot further asks, what Christian writer, if bent on forgery, would have confessed that crowds of his fellow-believers had denied their faith ... that the persecution was already refilling the heathen temples which before were nearly empty, and that there was good hope, if the same policy of persecution was pursued, of a general apostasy from Christianity ensuing? Several, too, of the statements concerning the practices of Christians betray only a very imperfect knowledge of the practices referred to.
The passage which, however, has excited the greatest suspicion and animosity is that which relates to the great _numbers_ of the Christians; but it must be remembered that Tacitus had already spoken of “a vast multitude” as suffering at Rome in the persecution of the Emperor Nero.
[21] “Sed nihil aliud inveni, quam superstitionem pravam et immodicam.” Pliny, _Ep._ x. 96.
[22] There is a striking passage, based on Pliny’s reflexions, in Professor Dill’s _Roman Society from Nero to Marcus Aurelius_, on this longing to be remembered after death, so common to the Roman (pagan) mind.
“The secret of immortality, the one chance of escaping oblivion, is to have your thought embalmed in choice and distinguished literary form, which coming ages will not willingly let die (Plin. _Ep._ ii. 10. 4, iii. 7. 14).... This longing to be remembered was the most ardent passion of the Roman mind in all ages and in all ranks ... of that immense literary ambition which Pliny represented, and which he considered it his duty to foster, only a small part has reached its goal.... The great mass of these eager littérateurs have altogether vanished, or remain to us as mere shadowy names in Martial, or Statius, or Pliny.” Book ii. chap. i.
[23] It seems most probable that the first nine Books of Pliny’s Letters were put out in “book form” for public use at different periods--and subsequently collected in one volume. The “official” correspondence between Pliny and Trajan was apparently “published” somewhat later. But it is evident that in the days of Symmachus (end of fourth century) the whole had been placed together, and thus made up the ten Books we now possess.
[24] Dr. Mackail, _Latin Literature_, iii. v.
[25] The purely Christian writings, mainly theological, are not included in this brief summary--able and brilliant as some of these undoubtedly were; other causes, apart from their literary merits, have largely contributed to their preservation.
[26] We might also cite here the well-known “poetic” epistles of Ovid and Horace.
[27] The Epistles of Paul to the Romans and to the Galatians are not quoted, but they are conspicuous examples of great doctrinal teaching embodied in the letter form. In a lesser degree the same remark is applicable to the two Letters to the Thessalonians and the First Epistle to the Corinthians.
[28] The words which occur in “the address” of the Letters of Ignatius to the Christian congregation in the city of Tralles are remarkable. “The holy Church which is in Tralles of Asia I salute ... after the manner of the apostle (ἐν ἀποστολικῷ χαρακτῆρι).” This Bishop Lightfoot explains as a reference of Ignatius to the _Epistolary_ form of his communication, that being a _usual form_ adopted by the apostles.
[29] Hermas, whose writings are usually classed with the works of the “Apostolic Fathers,” does not fall into this category.
(_a_) There is some doubt as to whether Hermas can be rightly considered an “Apostolic Father.”
(_b_) His writings are not cast in the Epistolary form, but are purely theological treatises or pamphlets.
They are partially examined below (see pp. 178-84) with reference to their date, authorship, and contents generally.
[30] Seventeen of these cities so named are commemorated on extant coins and medals; and this number is largely increased by some writers. These cities of Hadrian bearing his name were situated in various districts of the Roman world, notably in Asia Minor, North Africa, Spain, Syria, Pannonia.
[31] De Champagny, _Les Antonins_, iii. 1, tersely and well sums up his character: “Il a tous les dons, et toutes les faiblesses, toutes les grandeurs, et toutes les puérilitées, toutes les ambitions.”
[32] Cf. Jerome, _Ep._ 58, _Ad Paulin._, 3; Euseb. _De vitâ Constant._ iii. 26; Sozomen, i. 1; St. Paulin, _Ep._ 31 (ii.) _ad Severum_; Rufin. _H. E._ i. 8; Sulp. Severus, ii. 25, 45; Ambrose, _Psalm_ 43; and in modern historians, cf. De Vogüé’s _Églises de la terre sainte_, iii.; De Champagny, _Les Antonins_, livre iii. c. iii.
[33] A certain number of them, however, are by all responsible critics received as absolutely genuine, such as: The Letters relating the Martyrdom of Polycarp; the recital of the sufferings and death of the martyrs of Lyons; the Acts of the Scillitan Martyrs; and a few years later the passion of S. Perpetua and of her companions in suffering.
[34] Extracts from them are given on pp. 177-191.
[35] No scholar is more definite here than Renan, who certainly cannot be regarded as one who would be likely to dwell with emphasis on testimony which makes for the ardent faith of the Christians of the first days. And yet this great scholar brushes aside all the theories which maintain that the Christian martyrs of this period were few and insignificant in number; no modern writer is more positive on the awful character of the persecutions between A.D. 135 and A.D. 180.
[36] _Æneid_, Book viii.
[37] See pp. 189-90 and 200.
[38] Bishop Lightfoot has been referred to in this brief summary of the position of Christians during these two great reigns. This careful and exact scholar is most definite in his conclusions here, and his views exactly correspond with the views taken in this chapter.
[39] This especially refers to the ancient song of the Arval Brotherhood, of which college Marcus was also a member.
[40] Tacitus, _Annals_, xv. 44.
[41] Further details of Pliny’s report to the Emperor Trajan upon the numbers of Christians in his province will be found above, Book I. pp. 49-62.
[42] Pliny, _Epist. ad Trajan_, 96.
[43] Clement of Rome, _Epist. ad Cor._ vi.
[44] The quotation referred to is from the so-called _2nd Epistle_ of Clement of Rome (section 2), which Harnack attributes to Soter, bishop of Rome. Lightfoot, however, places the Epistle even earlier (_circa_ A.D. 140), and considers it the work of an anonymous writer.
[45] Irenæus, _adv. Hær._, book iii. 2.
[46] Tertullian, _Apologeticus_, 1.
[47] _Ibid._ 42.
[48] Quoted in Eusebius, _H. E._, book vi. chap. 43.
[49] See below, p. 120.
[50] Professor Harnack, _Mission and Expansion of Christianity_, book iv. chap. iii. sec. 14.
[51] _Didaché_, iv. 2.
[52] Clement of Rome, _Ep. ad Cor._ 34.
[53] Ignatius, _ad Eph._ 13.
[54] _Ad Polyc._ 4.
[55] Barnabas, _Ep._ 4.
[56] See for detailed account of Justin Martyr’s description, p. 113.
[57] _Theophilus to Autolycus_, xiv.
[58] Harnack well observes that among Clement of Alexandria’s writings, the _Pædagogus_ evidently assumes that the Church for which its teaching was designed embraced a large number of cultured people.
The same conclusion must be arrived at in respect of many of Irenæus’ writings. Irenæus wrote in the last quarter of the second century.
[59] The more eminent of the Gnostic teachers who in the first instance separated themselves from the Christian congregations, as far as we can judge from the comparatively rare fragments which we possess of their writings, evidently had in view highly cultured readers and listeners. We allude especially to Valentinus and his famous pupil Heracleon. These Gnostic writers taught and wrote in the second half of the second century. The period of activity of the second of these, Heracleon, is generally given as _circa_ A.D. 170-80. Valentinus was somewhat earlier.
[60] This is strikingly put by F. W. Myers in his poem “S. Paul”:
“This hath he done and shall we not adore Him? This shall He do and can we still despair? Come let us quickly fling ourselves before Him, Cast at His feet the burden of our care.”
[61] The more notable of the _Atonement_ prophecy passages in Isaiah were:
“Surely He hath borne our griefs, and carried our sorrows.... He was wounded for our transgressions, He was bruised for our iniquities: the chastening of our peace was upon Him; and with His stripes we are healed.... He shall see of the travail of His soul, and be satisfied: by His knowledge shall my righteous Servant justify many; for He shall bear their iniquities” (Isa. liii.).
[62] See above, pp. 113, 114.
[63] If the experiment of “communism” in the early Christian Church was ever tried, it was in the congregation of Jerusalem, and there it is clear that the results were simply disastrous; very soon the Church of Jerusalem was reduced to the direst straits. There are very many allusions to this state of things in S. Paul’s Epistles, where collections for the “poor saints in Jerusalem” are constantly mentioned; yet even in that Church, where apparently some attempt at a community of goods was evidently made, entire renunciation was evidently, as we see in the case of Ananias and Sapphira, never obligatory, but was ever purely voluntary.
[64] The writer here evidently means “atones for a multitude of our own sins”; so Tertullian, _Scorpiace_, 6 (see Bishop Lightfoot, _Clement of Rome_, part i. vol. ii. p. 232).
[65] See note (p. 104) on authorship and date of _2nd Epistle_ of Clement of Rome.
[66] See Archbishop Benson, _Cyprian_, vi. 1.
[67] The Emperor Julian’s well-known Letter to Arsacius is a good example. It is clear that charity did not restrict itself to the “Household of Faith.” Cyprian and his congregation’s action in the Great Plague of Carthage is a good example of this. See below, p. 127.
[68] The last clause is a very important one. It tells us that to the collections made in the assembly for the poor and needy, even the poorest artisan and slave contributed, and positively fasted for two or three days that they might save the necessary few coins to help those poorer and more sorrowful than themselves.
On this beautiful act of Christian charity, see, too, such passages as Hermas _Shepherd_, Simil. iii.
[69] Archbishop Benson happily paraphrases Cyprian’s words thus: _Noblesse oblige_. _S. Cyprian_, vi. 1, 2.
[70] Lecky, _European Morals_, chap. ii., “The Pagan Empire.”
[71] Slavery was not authoritatively condemned until the year of grace 1807. Lecky characterizes the action of Christian England here in the following eloquent words: “The unwearied, unostentatious, and inglorious crusade of England against slavery may probably be regarded as among the three or four perfectly virtuous acts recorded in the history of nations” (_History of Morals_, chap. i.). And even after 1807 it lived on an acknowledged and recognized institute of several countries. The terrible war which led to the slave abolition in the United States is still unforgotten even by this generation.
[72] Ozanam estimates the numbers of slaves in the first and second centuries of our era as amounting to half the population of the Empire. The estimate is no doubt exaggerated, but the numbers of the slave population in that period were undoubtedly very great.
[73] Lecky, _History of European Morals_, vol. ii. chap. iv.
[74] Hermas, the author of the famous _Shepherd_, belonged to the slave class. The Roman Bishop Pius, A.D. 142-157, was the brother of Hermas. The celebrated Bishop of Rome, Callistus, A.D. 218-222, had been a slave.
“The first and grandest edifice of Byzantine architecture in Italy--the Church of S. Vitale at Ravenna--was dedicated by Justinian to the memory of a martyred slave.”--Lecky, _History of European Morals_, vol. ii. chap. iv.
[75] S. Paulinus of Nola to Sulpicius Severus, _Ep._ xxiii.
[76] De Broglie, _Revue des deux mondes_, 1st Nov. 1852, reproduced in his _L’Église et l’Empire Romain_, vol. i., Avertissement, ii-iii.
[77] See, for instance, Tert. _De Idolat._ viii., where the various trades connected with idols and temples are enumerated.
[78] On these “Schools of Martyrdom,” see below, p. 198 foll.
[79] See Renan, _Marc-Aurèle_, chap. xxii.
[80] Some put this graffito a little later, perhaps in the days of Alexander Severus, A.D. 222-35.
[81] The well-known recital of the martyrdom of S. Maurice and of the Theban Legion, whether it be accepted as absolutely genuine or not, is an admirable instance of the ever-present dangers and difficulties of a Christian soldier of the Empire. The scene of the terrible and wholesale martyrdom was Agaunum (S. Maurice), some nine miles distant from Octodurus (Martigny) in the Canton of Valais, and the date was _circa_ A.D. 292-6. Maximian was then reigning as colleague of Diocletian. The authenticity of the story is maintained by Ruinart, who includes it in his _Acta Sincera_; by Tillemont, and in our days by Allard, who, however, cuts down the Legion to a cohort. Harnack, on the other hand, and others doubt its authenticity.
[82] The edicts favourable to Christianity were quietly received, even approved, in many places warmly welcomed; and vast and ever increasing numbers of the population, hitherto pagans, joined the Christian communities.
The enormous and seemingly sudden increase in the number of Christians in the Roman Empire in the latter years of the third and in the fourth centuries, is a problem which even now is something of a mystery to some historians.
[83] See Lecky, _Hist. of Morals_, chap. iii.
[84] Prudentius does not stand alone as voicing the opinions of the people. A contemporary of his--Paulinus of Nola--although far behind Prudentius in genius, was a poet of considerable power. This Paulinus, a person of high dignity and of great wealth, when still comparatively young, withdrew from the world and devoted himself to religion; he has left behind him a collection of poems, which he wrote annually on the occasion of the Festival of S. Felix, a martyr in whose honour he erected a basilica. His poems, of which some 5000 lines have been preserved, contain many vivid pictures illustrative of the popular aspect of Christianity in the latter years of the fourth century. He loves to dwell on the intense devotion of the people to the memory of the martyr whom he loved, S. Felix of Nola, and tells us of the crowds of pilgrims visiting his shrine.
Damasus, bishop of Rome, A.D. 366-84, whose many and elaborate works of restoration of the Roman catacombs are dwelt on in the section of this work treating of the great City of the Dead, beneath the suburbs of Rome, bears a similar testimony to the widespread devotion of the people to the memory of the martyrs of the days of persecution. His elaborate works in the catacombs were all designed for the convenience of the vast crowds of pilgrims, in the second half of the fourth century, from many lands to the shrines where the remains of the more famous martyrs had been deposited.
[85] Tertullian, _On Fasting_, 12.
[86] Tertullian, _To his Wife_, 5.
[87] Tertullian, _On Female Dress_, xi. 13.
[88] Examples of these are given below; see p. 313 of this work.
[89] Some of the more remarkable of these are quoted in Book IV. pt. iii. (pp. 309-312).
[90] On “the Mortality,” _i.e._ the plague of Alexandria, 20-24.
[91] This Rutilius was a Gallic gentleman of high position who had filled important offices at Rome, and had become a Senator. His undisguised opinion of the Christian sect appears in a graceful poem descriptive of a sea-trip from Rome (Ostia probably) to South Gaul. The work in question was composed _circa_ A.D. 416.
[92] The testimony of the Roman catacombs here is also very weighty. See Book III. part iii., where the numbers of martyrs and confessors buried in the catacombs are especially dwelt on.
[93] In this Third Book, where the question of the persecutions to which the early Christian Church was subjected is discussed, the period especially alluded to stretches from _circa_ A.D. 64 to A.D. 180, including the reigns of the Flavian Emperors, of Hadrian and the Antonines.
But the conditions under which the Christians in the Roman Empire lived during the century and a quarter which followed the period above referred to, in very many respects differed but little from those that prevailed in the earlier years--only in the later period there were more years of comparative immunity from active persecution, while, on the ether hand, when the comparatively “still” years came to an end, the cruelties inflicted upon the Christians were more marked, and the severity of the punishments meted out by the dominant pagan party in the State were greater and more far-reaching than in the earlier days--notably in the reigns of Maximin, Decius and Diocletian.
[94] This early and usually accepted date, _circa_ 65-7, seems the more probably correct. It is the traditional date, and generally fits in with the life and work of S. Peter as given in the ancient authorities. Prof. Ramsay, however, _The Church in the Empire_, puts it some fourteen or fifteen years later, and concludes that the Apostle’s martyrdom took place after A.D. 80. If, however, this later date be adopted, the references to the continual persecution would be even _more_ striking than if the earlier and traditional date be accepted.
[95] The reference here is to pagan Rome, as “the woman drunken with blood”; so Mommsen quoted by Ramsay, who dwells on the fact that the death of the saints springs directly from their acknowledgment of their religion, and _not_ for conviction for specific crimes.
[96] “The mind of the writer is practically restricted to the Roman world.... He thinks like a Roman that ‘genus humanum’ is the Roman world. The nations which did not worship the Roman Emperor were never present to his mind” (Ramsay, _The Church in the Empire_).
[97] So called from the position it holds between the _longer_ recension of the “ten Letters,” three of which are put aside as later compilations, and the _shorter_ recension of three Letters which Canon Cureton found in the Syrian MS. and published, believing that these “three” were the only genuine Epistles of the martyr-bishop.
[98] Prof. Ramsay, _The Church in the Roman Empire_, chap. xiii.
[99] See Part I. section 1, chap. iii. in the author’s work, _The Golden Age of the Church_, entitled, “The Monks and the Animal World,” where this interesting question has been discussed at some length, and various examples are given.
[100] The history, contents, and authenticity of this most weighty reference has been already discussed in all its bearings (see above, pp. 45-62).
[101] The well-known reference of Tacitus to the persecution of Nero has been referred to (see p. 103).
[102] The date _circa_ A.D. 117 is suggested by Bishop Westcott, and Bishop Lightfoot generally agrees in placing the writing about this time. Some would even place its composition in the very early years of the second century. The last two chapters, xi.-xii., are fragmentary, and apparently were written a little--but very little--later.
[103] So Harnack; Duchesne, in his _Histoire ancienne de l’Église_, vol. i. p. 225 (published 1908), generally adopts Harnack’s conclusions respecting the early date. Lightfoot (vol. i. p. 360, _Clement of Rome_) also leans to the conclusion that the Clement of the _Shepherd_ is the illustrious Bishop of Rome. This would postulate the earlier date for parts of the work.
[104] What Hermas wrote specially of Rome, no doubt in a very large degree was the state of things in the provinces of the Empire. This is clear from the great and _general_ popularity enjoyed by the _Shepherd_ in the first two centuries. The picture of Christian life in Rome was recognized as an accurate picture of their own life, by the citizens of Corinth and Alexandria, by the dwellers in Ephesus and Antioch.
[105] A more detailed description of the famous _Dialogue_ of Minucius Felix will be found on pp. 145-6.
[106] Side was a maritime town of Pamphylia. Philip wrote in the early part of the fifth century.
[107] Lecky, _History of European Morals_, chap, iii., “The Persecutions,” pp. 497-8.
[108] “It is not lawful to be you,” but it is impossible to render in English the full force of this epigrammatic saying of Tertullian.
[109] De Boissier, the Academician, specially calls attention to it as a somewhat novel piece of very early ecclesiastical history, and he refers his readers to a comparatively little known study on this subject by M. Le Blant, a well-known scholar in early Christian lore; of this “Study” of Le Blant, De Boissier speaks with the highest praise.
[110] S. Cyprian, Epist. lxvi. _ad Thibaritanos_.
[111] A very ancient and probably an authoritative reading. When in the text the language of didactic calmness passes suddenly into the language of emotion: “How strait is the gate,” etc.--S. Matt. vii. 13, 14.
[112] Tertullian, _Ad Martyres_, 3.
[113] Quoted in the _Scorpiace_ of Tertullian, and much more from S. Paul to the same point.
[114] Although the usual date given for this last attack on Christianity is a few months after the death of the Emperor Marcus. There is no doubt that they belong to the policy of persecution carried out by Marcus, and that the reaction in favour of Christianity noticeable in the reign of Commodus, his successor, had not had time to make itself felt.
[115] Compare the quotations taken from these writings given above.
[116] A short account of the principal of these Itineraries is given on pp. 227-8.
[117] See pp. 227-8.
[118] Allard translates these lines: “Si vous voulez savoir, ici reposent amoncelés les ossements d’un grand nombre des saints; ces vénérables tombeaux gardent les corps des élus dont le royaume des cieux a tiré à lui les âmes sublimes.” “Des polyandres, ou tombes consacrées à des centaines, peut-être à des milliers de corps, s’ouvraient en plusieurs parties des catacombes. Ces tombes étaient toujours anonymes, remplies de martyrs--‘quorum nomina scit Omnipotens’ selon l’expression du Pope Pascal.” ... “M. De Rossi croit reconnaître dans une fosse profonde qui s’ouvre sous la niche profonde à gauche de l’autel dans la chapelle Papale ... le polyandre célèbre où reposaient, selon d’anciens documents, une multitude innombrable de martyrs enterrés ‘ad sanctam Cæciliam.’” (See Allard, _Rome Souteraine_ (Northcote & Brownlow), _Cimetière de Calliste_, 216-18; and see too note on p. 218.)
[119] Dean Stanley of Westminster.
[120] It was in the year of grace 1578 that some workmen digging out sand in a vineyard about a mile from Rome on the Via Salaria came upon the gallery of a subterranean cemetery, with dim paintings and many ancient inscriptions upon the walls.
This striking discovery excited much curiosity at the time, and the world of Rome, recalling to mind the long-forgotten story of the Catacombs, became suddenly conscious that beneath its suburbs lay a vast unexplored City of the Dead.
[121] Refer here to pp. 289-297, “Crypt of S. Cecilia.”
[122] Several additional discoveries of historic crypts have been made since this computation was made.
[123] Other tombs of the famous martyr-sons of Felicitas have since been identified, and much knowledge of this incident in early Christian history has been brought to light.
[124] The tomb of S. Peter and its surroundings will be described at length in Appendix II., which follows the section treating of the “Catacombs,” where is related the thrilling story of what was discovered when the excavations required for the support of the great bronze canopy of Bernini over the tomb of S. Peter were made in A.D. 1626, in the pontificate of Urban VIII. (Appendix II., S. Peter, pp. 279-88.)
[125] Marucchi, _Itinéraire des Catacombes_, A.D. 1903.
[126] The story of the tomb of S. Cecilia and her crypt is told in detail in the section immediately succeeding this general sketch of the catacombs, pp. 289-97.
[127] Further details respecting S. Zeno will be found below, p. 276.
[128] Further details respecting the identification of this once famous shrine will be found below on pp. 301-2.
[129] The Church of S. Suzanna has a striking history. It was rebuilt by Maderno for Sixtus V, on the site of an ancient church or oratory erected by Pope Caius, A.D. 283, in the house of his brother, who suffered martyrdom with his daughter, Suzanna, because she refused to break her vow of perpetual virginity by a marriage with the adopted son of the Emperor Diocletian. The bodies of these two martyrs still rest beneath the high altar.
[130] In two of the MSS. of the second edition or Recension of the _Liber Pontificalis_ under the account of Pope Pius I (A.D. 142-57), we find the following note, which contains much of the substance of the above extract from the “Acts” of SS. Pudentianæ et Praxedis above quoted: “Hic (Pius) ex rogatu beate Praxedis dedicavit ecclesiam thermas Novati, in vico Patricii, in honore sororis sue sanctæ Potentianæ (Pudentianæ), ubi et multa dona obtulit; ubi sepius sacrificium Domino offerens ministrabat. Immo et fontem baptismi construi fecit, manus suas benedixit et consecravit, et multos venientes ad fidem baptizavit in nomine Trinitatis.”
[131] See on p. 272, where details are given of the translation of these confessors and of certain of the bishops of Rome originally interred in the Cemetery of S. Priscilla, into the basilica of S. Sylvester, erected over the Priscilla Catacomb by Pope Sylvester, and named after both. The basilica in question was discovered by De Rossi in A.D. 1889, in the course of his investigations at S. Priscilla.
[132] The important and interesting details which follow here have been largely taken from the chapter which treats of Ubaldi’s _Memoir_ by Mr. Barnes in his admirable and massive work entitled _S. Peter at Rome_ (1st edit. 1900). The writer of this book can hardly find terms to express his deep admiration for the learning and information contained in Mr. Barnes’ work on the subject. It is by far the most exhaustive and scholarly work on the subject in our language.
[133] The text of the _Liber Pontificalis_ mentions the Cemetery of Prætextatus as the site of the lost tomb. It was there where her husband Valerian and his brother and the officer Maximus had been buried. Duchesne, the learned editor of the _Liber Pontificalis_, suggests that the body of S. Cecilia had been removed from its original resting-place in the Crypt of S. Callistus, and had been secretly placed for safety’s sake in the Cemetery of Prætextatus. De Rossi, however, and later Marucchi, believe that the Cemetery of Prætextatus, through an error in the _Liber Pontificalis_, had been written for “Cemetery of Callistus.”
[134] The writer of this book simply tells the story as it has been handed down and often repeated. From the clear testimony of the responsible and eminent witnesses above referred to--such men as Baronius, Bosio, and Maderno--there seems little doubt but that they had looked upon the hallowed remains resting as Maderno in his marble portrait has depicted her. De Rossi and others seem to represent the state of the body as though it had been miraculously preserved; the truth probably is that the body of Cecilia had been carefully and skilfully embalmed owing to the loving care of her friends, and laid in the peculiar position in which she breathed her last. The high rank and great wealth of her family, and the usual gentle and humane practice of the Roman Government in the case of those who had been judicially put to death, would bear out this explanation. No expense would have been deemed too great by the powerful family of Cecilia to do honour to her precious remains.
Of the enduring “popularity”--to use a commonplace expression--of S. Cecilia, the fact of Cecilia being one of the few chosen female saints daily commemorated in the canon of the Mass, may be fairly adduced. She is classed with Felicitas, Perpetua, Agatha, Lucia, Anastasia, and Agnes.
It is often asked why she is looked on as the patroness of music. Nothing but pure tradition can be alleged here, but the tradition is a very ancient one. Wordsworth writes of her as
“rapt Cecilia, seraph-haunted queen of harmony.”
Compare too references in Dryden, “Alexander’s Feast,” and Pope, “Ode on S. Cecilia.” Raffaelle paints her as wrapped in ecstasy and surrounded by instruments of music.
The tradition is that when Valerian, her husband, returned from baptism, he found her singing hymns of thanksgiving for his conversion. Angels, it is said, descended from heaven to listen to her sweet voice.
No allusion, however, to her musical power is made in the Antiphone sung at her Festival. A verse of the appointed anthem runs thus:
“While the instruments of music were playing, Cecilia sang unto the Lord and said, ‘Let my heart be undefiled, that I may never be confounded.’”
In one of the chapels of the great Church of the Oratory in London there is a beautiful replica of the dead Cecilia of Maderno.
There is another replica of Maderno’s figure now placed in the niche of the recently-discovered crypt of S. Cecilia, where the sarcophagus which contains the body of the saint originally was placed.
[135] A “luminare” (plural “luminaria”) was a shaft communicating with the surface of the ground which admitted light and air. Many of these were constructed by Pope Damasus in the fourth century for the sake of pilgrims visiting the historic crypts.
[136] In support of this conclusion, above ground, over this area of the great “Callistus” Cemetery, important Columbaria have been found belonging to the “gens Cæcilia.” Thus long before S. Cecilia’s time the spot had been evidently the burying-place of the illustrious house to which she belonged.
[137] The eldest of the “seven” was the well-known S. Januarius.
[138] The manner of death of this illustrious family of Christian martyrs was as follows, as far as we can gather from the concise notices in the “Acts”:
Januarius, the eldest, was beaten to death by whips loaded with lead.
The second and third brothers apparently met with the same doom.
The fourth was thrown down from a height, and so died.
The three remaining brothers and their mother Felicitas were dealt with more mercifully and were decapitated.
[139] Agapitus is so spelt in the rough graffite here referred to.
[140] S. Augustine in the first quarter of the fifth century, _circa_ A.D. 421, in reply to a question addressed to him by S. Paulinus of Nola, discusses the question whether or not is it advantageous to be buried close to the grave of a saint? The little work of Augustine, however, broadens out into points connected with the doctrine of “Invocation of Saints.” A résumé of some of S. Augustine’s thoughts and arguments will be found in a short Appendix to this chapter.
[141] The initial letters of the Redeemer’s names and principal titles (in Greek) made up the word ἰχθύς or fish. Thus:
=Ι=ΗϹΟΥϹ = Jesus. =Χ=ΡΙϹΤΟϹ = Christ. =Θ=ΕΟΥ = of God. =Υ=ΙΟϹ = Son. =Ϲ=ΩΤΗΡ = Saviour.
[142] See especially Heb. xiii. 20; 1 Pet. ii. 25-v. 4; S. Luke, xv. 4, 7, and above all S. John x. 11, 16.
[143] Dean Stanley of Westminster, _Christian Institutions_, chaps. xiii., xiv.
[144] Dean Stanley (_Christian Institutions_) calls attention to the curious fact that the popular religion of the first two centuries, as shown in the catacomb witnesses, ran, in some particulars, in different channels from the contemporary writers whose reliquiæ have been preserved, and also from the paintings and writers of a later period; for instance, the “Good Shepherd” is very little alluded to even by the writers of the second and third and fourth centuries; _e.g._ Irenæus and Justin, Athanasius and Cyprian. If we come down much later, scarcely any notices of the “Shepherd” occur in the _Summa_ of Thomas Aquinas; none in the Tridentine Catechism; none in the Anglican Thirty-nine Articles; none in the Westminster Confession.
[145] Mommsen, Renan, and Ramsay without hesitation ascribe the statement quoted here as taken by Sulpicius Severus (fourth century) from the lost portion of the _Histories of Tacitus_.
[146] Talmud (Bab.), treatise “Gittin,” 56A.
[147] The arch was completed by Domitian after the death of Titus.
[148] The golden relics were deposited in the Temple of Peace, which Vespasian built opposite the Palatine; it was dedicated A.D. 75. The temple in question was destroyed completely by fire in the reign of Commodus. The temple copy of the Torah was taken to the imperial palace. The Emperor Severus, who built a synagogue for the Roman Jews, handed over this precious MS. to the Jewish community in Rome. The MS. has disappeared, but a list of some of the readings of this venerable codex has been preserved in the Massorah, and is still available for use.
[149] The authorities for the details of this terrible and protracted war are Dion Cassius and the notices in the Talmud, especially in the treatise “Gittin.”
[150] But these numbers, as we have stated, although derived from contemporary authorities, are evidently very much exaggerated.
[151] What the Mishnah was will be explained below (p. 358), where a general description of the Talmud is given.
[152] These singular assertions will be found in the Mishnah, in the Talmudic treatises of the Sanhedrim and the Baba-Bathra.
[153] Halachah signifies literally custom, practice, rule. The term is further explained and illustrated in the following chapter on the “Contents of the Talmud.” Haggadah, which generally signifies Tradition, is also explained and illustrated (see Appendix).
[154] These Scribes, their position and means of livelihood, are discussed more fully below on p. 350.
[155] The Mishnah and the Gemara are explained in detail below on p. 358.
[156] Dr. Emanuel Deutsch.
[157] The period here referred to extended from the return from the Captivity--the days of Ezra--roughly until the Christian era.
[158] At the close of this Fifth Book is a short general description of “Haggadah.” See, too, in the Appendix for a further description of Haggadah and Halachah.
[159] Of Akiba, the Mishnah tells us, as he was in his last agonies, while his flesh was being torn with combs of iron, he kept repeating the words of the “Shema” invocation, “Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God is One.” He lingered over the word _One_, and expired as he uttered the word “One.” The ministering angels then said before the Holy One, “Such is Torah (the Law), and such is its reward.” Bath Qol (the heavenly voice) went forth and said. “Happy art thou, Rabbi Akiba, that thou art invited to the life of the world to come....”
Such was the end of Akiba, the most exalted, most romantic, and most heroic character perhaps in that vast gallery of the learned of his time. The most remarkable period of his career may be dated about A.D. 110-35.
[160] The preliminary work of Hillel in this direction of arranging and codifying seems not to have been carried on.
[161] “Haggadah,” as the better-known word, is substituted for the more accurate plural form “Haggadoth.”
[162] For a full definition of these two famous terms _Mishnah_ and _Gemara_, see below, p. 358, where the terms in question are explained at some length.
[163] The Palestinian Gemara was closed nearly a century and a half before the Babylonian Gemara was completed.
[164] The Rabbinic school of Sura was founded by Rab, one of the most important pupils of R. Judah Ha-Nasi (Rabbi).
[165] _Mishnah._--A noun formed from the verb “shanah,” to repeat. In post-Biblical Hebrew the verb “shanah” acquired the special meaning of “to teach” and “to learn” that which was not transmitted in writing, but only _orally_. Evidently the idea of _frequent recitation_ underlies the word.
Mishnah signifies “Instruction”--the teaching and learning the tradition. It is the Law which is transmitted _orally_, in contrast to the term Mikra, which signifies the Law which is written and read.
The Halachah, finally redacted by Judah Ha-Nasi the Holy (Rabbi), _circa_ A.D. 200-19, were designated the Mishnah, and were adopted by the Rabbis of the Gemara as the text upon which they worked. This Mishnah of R. Judah the Holy was adopted simultaneously by the Rabbis and Doctors of the Law in the academies of Palestine and Babylonia.
Although the Mishnah may be said to consist chiefly of Halachah, it contains several entire treatises of an Haggadic nature--_e.g._ “Aboth,” “Middoth,” etc.--and numerous Haggadic pieces are scattered here and there among the Halachah. In both the Talmudim (the Palestinian and Babylonian) there are thousands of Haggadic notices interspersed among the Halachah.
The Rabbis of the Mishnah were termed Tannaim; the earlier Rabbis of the Gemara were termed Amoraim.
The Rabbinical headquarters of Palestine and Babylonia alike regarded the study of the Mishnah as their chief task. In Palestine the principal academies were Jamnia (Jabne), Lydda, and subsequently Tiberias. In Babylonia the principal seats of the academies were Sepphoris, Nehardea, Pumbeditha, and especially Sura.
_Gemara._--The word signifies “that which has been learned,” the learning transmitted to scholars by tradition; and in a more restricted sense it came to denote “the traditional exposition of the Mishnah.”
_Talmud_ primarily means “teaching,” though it denotes also “learning”; practically it is a mere amplification of the Mishnah, the Talmud being made up of the Mishnah and Gemara.
Like the Mishnah, the Talmud was not the work of one author, or of several authors, but was the result of the collective labours of many successive generations, whose task finally resulted in the great and complex book known as the Talmud.
The Palestinian Talmud received its present form in the academy of Tiberias; the Babylonian Talmud, largely in the academy of Sura.
[166] R. Akiba (early second century) in the Mishnah treatise “Pirke Aboth” used to say, “Massorah is a fence to the Torah.” This has been generally understood as a reference to the Massorah of which we are speaking here. But many scholars now consider that R. Akiba was referring in this saying to “tradition” generally, and they understand the word Massorah as correlative to “Kabbala” (tradition in general), such as is embodied in the Mishnah.
[167] “It is evident that some of the ‘dicta’ of the Rabbis, such as, for instance, the above-quoted passages, are not intended to be taken literally, but are the paradoxes of idealists, which leave us in some doubt as to how much they supposed to have been revealed explicitly to Moses.”--_Pirke Aboth_ (Sayings of the Fathers), note by Dr. Taylor, Master of S. John’s, Cambridge, p. 122.
Dr. Taylor, however, adds that “such statements have to be taken into account in estimating the ancient Rabbis’ views of revelation.”
[168] “For when they shall rise from the dead [men and women are both alluded to] ... they are as the angels which are in heaven” (S. Mark xii. 25). The prominent position of women in the early Church is asserted in the “Gospels” and “Acts”; they never are alluded to as occupying an inferior place. See below, p. 380, for a further note on the position of women.
[169] Renan recognizes the service rendered by the Talmudical Rabbis to Christianity, but while acknowledging this, curiously limits it to the preservation of the Hebrew text of the Old Testament Scriptures, which he thinks would probably have been lost but for the labours of the Rabbis of the Talmud--he characterizes this as “un service du 1^{er} ordre.” To him the Hebrew Old Testament is an incomparable monument of history, archæology, and philology. The deeper signification of these sacred records, which in the hearts of earnest Christians constitutes their exceeding preciousness, finds little place, alas, in the cheerless conception of the brilliant French scholar.
[170] While it is generally acknowledged that the decisions arrived at in connection with the Law of Moses termed “Halachah” were transmitted _orally_, certainly until the time of R. Judah the Holy, known as Rabbi (end of second century), the “Haggadic” decisions here alluded to were committed to writing at a much earlier date.
[171] See on page 367 for further details on the position held by women in Israel.
Transcriber’s Notes:
1. Obvious printers’, spelling and punctuation errors have been silently corrected.
2. Where appropriate, original spelling has been retained.
3. Superscripts are represented using the caret character, e.g. D^r. and X^{xx}.
4. Both the spelling of Sulpitius (p.32) and Sulpicius (p. 73) are correct.
5. In a few instances the page numbers in the index were incorrect. these have been silently corrected.
6. Italics are shown as _xxx_, bold print is shown as =xxx=.