The martyrdom of Polycarp himself is described in an epistle addressed by the Church of Smyrna, of which he was bishop, to the Church of Philomelium, a city of the neighboring province of Phrygia. There are probably some interpolations; but, excepting these, the document can hardly be of much later date than the death of the martyr. There are several reasons for this conclusion.

In the first place, the general tenor shows that it is intended to give information of events which had recently happened; secondly, a postscript states that a copy of it belonged to Irenaeus, a disciple of Polycarp; and thirdly, a large part of it is transcribed by Eusebius, who treats it as an authentic document.

The date of the death of Polycarp is well ascertained to be A.D. 167, in the reign of Marcus Aurelius. For some time previously there had been a cruel persecution of the Christians at Smyrna, in which both the Gentile and Jewish inhabitants took part. Against Polycarp especially, as the chief minister of the Christian Church, their hostility was directed. After several Christians had been tortured and thrown to the lions, the multitude clamored for the death of the bishop.

Yielding to the urgent entreaties of those around him Polycarp quitted the city; but he was pursued and brought back. The proconsul, who had reluctantly allowed him to be arrested, was anxious to save him.

"When he was led forward, a great tumult arose among those that heard he was taken. At length, as he advanced, the proconsul asked him whether he was Polycarp, and, he answering that he was, he urged him to deny Christ, saying, 'Have a regard for your age,' and adding similar expressions such as are usual for them to employ.

"'Swear,' he said, 'by the genius of Caesar. Repent. Say, "Away with those that deny the gods."'

"But Polycarp, with a countenance grave and serious, and contemplating the whole multitude that were collected in the stadium, beckoned with his hand to them, and with a sigh looked up to heaven and said, 'Away with the atheists.'

"The governor continued to urge him again, saying: 'Swear, and I will dismiss you. Revile Christ.'

"'Revile Christ!' Polycarp replied. 'Eighty-and-six years have I served him and he never did me wrong; and how can I now blaspheme my King who has saved me?'"

The governor continued to urge him, and in vain threatened him with the wild beasts. At length a herald was ordered to proclaim in the midst of the stadium that "Polycarp confesses he is a Christian." Thereupon the multitude cried out, "This is that teacher of Asia, the father of the Christians, the destroyer of our gods," and demanded that he should be burned alive; and the governor gave sentence accordingly.

According to the horrid custom of the times the executioners were about to fasten his hands to the stake by spikes, when he begged that he might be bound merely, saying that He who gave him strength to bear the flames would also give him strength to remain unmoved on the pyre.

This last request was granted; and being bound to the stake, he uttered this beautiful prayer:

"Father of thy well-beloved and blessed Son, Jesus Christ, through whom we have received the knowledge of thee, the God of angels and powers and all creation, and of all the family of the righteous that live before thee, I bless thee that thou hast thought me worthy of the present day and hour, to have a share in the number of the martyrs and in the cross of Christ unto the resurrection of eternal life, both of the soul and body, in the incorruptible felicity of the Holy Spirit, among whom may I be received in thy sight this day as a rich and acceptable sacrifice, as thou, the faithful and true God, hast prepared, hast revealed, and fulfilled. Wherefore, on this account and for all things, I praise thee, I bless thee, I glorify thee through the eternal High Priest, Jesus Christ, thy well-beloved Son, through whom glory be to thee with him in the Holy Ghost, both now and evermore. Amen."

The flames did not immediately seize upon his body; so one of the executioners—in mercy perhaps—plunged a sword into his body, and so ended his sufferings. The centurion then placed the body in the midst of the fire and burned it, "according to the custom of the Gentiles."

"Thus at last, taking up his bones, valued more than precious stones, more tried than gold, we deposited them where they should be. There also, as far as we can, the Lord will grant us to celebrate the natal day of his martyrdom in joy and gladness, both in commemoration of those who finished their contest before, and to prepare those that shall be hereafter."

There is something wonderfully touching in this reference to the "natal day of his martyrdom." Those who wrote it thought that the day on which Polycarp was pierced by the sword was not the day of his death, but the birthday of a new and happier life.

* * * * *

Justin, who from the manner of his death is often called Justin Martyr, was a native of Samaria. He was of Roman parentage, and was born early in the second century, and therefore must have been contemporary with many persons who had seen some of the apostles.

Justin, who was addicted to philosophical pursuits, has given in one of his works a very curious account of his studies and search after religious truth. First, he thought to find it in the Stoic philosophy:

"I surrendered myself to a certain Stoic, and, having spent a considerable time with him, when I had not acquired any further knowledge of God—for he did not know it himself, and said such instruction was unnecessary—I left him and betook myself to another, who was called a Peripatetic, and, as he fancied, shrewd. And this man, after having entertained me for a few days, requested me to settle the fee, in order that our intercourse might not be unprofitable. Him, too, for this reason I abandoned, believing him to be no philosopher at all."

Disgusted with the mercenary spirit of the Peripatetic, the inquirer next determined to make a trial of Pythagorean philosophy. But the celebrated Pythagorean teacher whom he consulted wished him to learn music, astronomy, and geometry. Those kinds of knowledge, however, were not what Justin wanted, and besides he thought that they would take up too much time. So he next resolved to make a trial of Platonism; and this time he was more successful.

"In my helpless condition it occurred to me to have a meeting with the Platonists, for their fame was great. I thereupon spent as much of my time as possible with one who had lately settled in our city—a sagacious man holding a high position among the Platonists—and I progressed and made the greatest improvements daily. And the perception of immaterial things quite overpowered me, and the contemplation of ideas furnished my mind with wings, so that in a little while I supposed that I had become wise; and such was my folly that I expected forthwith to look upon God, for this is the end of Plato's philosophy."

Justin then proceeds to give a remarkably interesting and graphic account of his conversion to Christianity:

"And while I was thus disposed, when I wished to be filled with great quietness and to shun the path of men, I used to go into a certain field not far from the sea. And when I was near that spot one day where I purposed to be by myself, a certain old man of dignified appearance, exhibiting meek and venerable manners, followed me at a little distance. And when I turned around on him, having halted, I fixed my eyes rather keenly upon him."

Justin gets into conversation with the old man and says that he delights in solitary spots, where his attention is not distracted and where his converse with himself is uninterrupted, and proceeds to a fervid laudation of philosophy.

"'Does philosophy, then, make happiness?' said he, interrupting. 'Assuredly,' said I, 'and it alone.' 'What, then, is philosophy?' he said, 'and what is happiness? Pray tell me, unless something hinders you from saying.'

"'Philosophy,' said I, 'is a knowledge of that which really exists and a clear perception of truth, and happiness is the reward of such knowledge and wisdom.' 'But what do you call God?' said he. 'That which always maintains the same nature and is the cause of all other things—that, indeed, is God.' So I answered him, and he listened with pleasure."

The conversation, which is too long to be fully transcribed, turns on the attributes of the soul. Justin discourses on that topic after the manner of the Platonists. The old man, on the other hand, urges him to study the prophets of the Old Testament, for they predicted the coming of Christ, and their prophecies have been fulfilled. "'They,' said he, 'both glorified the Creator, the God and Father of all, and proclaimed his Son the Christ sent by him. But,' he added, 'pray that, above all things, the gates of light may be opened to you, for these things cannot be perceived or understood by all, but only by him to whom God and his Christ have imparted wisdom.'

"When he had spoken these and many other things which there is no time for mentioning at present, he went away, bidding me attend to them, and I have not seen him since. But straightway a flame was kindled in my soul, and a love of the prophets and of those men who are friends of Christ possessed me; and whilst revolving his words in my mind I found this philosophy alone to be safe and profitable. Thus and for this reason I am a philosopher. Moreover, I would that all, making a resolution similar to my own, would regard the words of the Saviour, for they possess a terrible power in themselves, and are sufficient to inspire those who turn aside from the path of rectitude with awe, while the sweetest rest is afforded to those who diligently observe them."

The Dialogue from which these passages are taken is a real or imaginary disputation with Trypho, a learned Jew at Ephesus, respecting the principles of Christianity, and contains an elaborate demonstration that Christ is the Messiah of the Old Testament. The controversy is carried on with courtesy on both sides, and each disputant is equally earnest in his attempt to convert the other.

Justin was a very copious writer. The two most important of his writings now remaining are the two Apologies. These are certainly the two earliest of the numerous ancient pleas for toleration of Christianity now extant. The first Apologia is addressed to the emperor Antoninus Pius and the Roman senate and the "whole people of the Romans"; and the purport of it may be inferred from the commencement, in which Justin says that he presents this "address and petition in behalf of all nations who are unjustly hated and wantonly abused, myself being one of them."

The second Apologia was addressed to the Roman senate, probably in the reign of Antoninus Marcus Aurelius, and successor of Antoninus Pius. In this work Justin appeals indignantly to the Roman senate against the unjust conduct of one Urbicus, who at Rome had condemned several persons to death simply because they professed to be Christians. This Urbicus seems to have held the office of prefect of the city—a magistrate from whom there was no appeal except to the prince himself, or, as this Apologia would suggest, to the senate.

The two Apologies contain the most vehement invectives against the whole system of heathen idolatry, and accuse Jupiter and the other gods whom the Romans revered of ineffable vices.

Of course the man who could thus tell the Roman senate and people that all that they held sacred was unspeakably and hideously wicked could expect but one fate. Justin threw down the gauntlet, and the constituted authorities very quietly took it up, with a result which, as the human power was all with them, it was not difficult to foresee.

Some time in the reign of Aurelius, but in what year is not known, Justin and several other Christians were accused before Rusticus, prefect of Rome, of disobedience to certain decrees then in force, by which Christians who refused to sacrifice to the gods were liable to be put to death. It is difficult to reconcile the passing of these decrees with the known character of Aurelius, who is universally described as a humane, as a benevolent king. The probable explanation is that, like his predecessor Trajan, he was actuated by motives of state policy, and regarded Christianity as rebellion against the authority of the State.

Eusebius has given an account of the martyrdom of Justin upon the authority of Tatian, who was a disciple of the martyr. This account substantially agrees with the very ancient Martyrdom of Justin, which concludes thus:

"The prefect says to Justin: 'Hearken, you who are called learned and think that you know true doctrines: if you are scourged and beheaded, do you believe that you will ascend into heaven?'

"Justin said, 'I hope that if I endure these things I shall have this gift, for I know that to all who have thus lived there abides the divine favor until the completion of the world.'

"Rusticus, the prefect, said, 'Do you suppose that you will ascend into heaven to receive such a recompense?' Justin said, 'I do not suppose it, but I know and am fully persuaded of it.'

"Thus also said the other Christians, 'Do what you will, for we are Christians and do not sacrifice to idols.'

"Rusticus, the prefect, pronounced sentence, saying, 'Let those who have refused to sacrifice to the gods and to yield to the command of the Emperor be scourged and led away to suffer decapitation according to the law.'

"The holy martyrs, having glorified God and having gone forth to the accustomed place, were beheaded, and perfected their testimony in the confession of the Saviour. And some of the faithful, having secretly removed their bodies, laid them in a suitable place, the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ having wrought along with them, to whom be glory forever and ever. Amen."

THE EPISTLE OF POLYCARP TO THE PHILIPPIANS

Polycarp, and the presbyters that are with him, to the Church of God which is at Philippi: mercy unto you and peace from God Almighty and the Lord Jesus Christ, our Saviour, be multiplied. I rejoiced greatly with you in our Lord Jesus Christ, that ye received the images of a true love, and accompanied, as it is behooved you, those who were in bonds, becoming saints; which are the crowns of such as are truly chosen by God and our Lord: as also that the root of the faith which was preached from ancient times remains firm in you to this day; and brings forth fruit to our Lord Jesus Christ, who suffered himself to be brought even to the death for our sins. Whom God hath raised up, having loosed the pains of death; whom, having not seen, ye love; in whom, though now ye see him not, yet believing, ye rejoice with joy unspeakable and full of glory.

Into which many desire to enter; knowing that by grace ye are saved; not by works, but by the will of God through Jesus Christ. Wherefore girding up the loins of your minds, serve the Lord with fear and in truth; laying aside all empty and vain speech, and the error of many; believing in him that raised up our Lord Jesus Christ from the dead, and hath given him glory and a throne at his right hand. To whom all things are made subject, both that are in heaven and that are in earth; whom every living creature shall worship; who shall come to be the judge of the quick and dead: whose blood God shall require of them that believe in him.

But he that raised up Christ from the dead shall also raise up us in like manner, if we do his will and walk according to his commandments; and love those things which he loved; abstaining from all unrighteousness, inordinate affection, and love of money; from evil speaking; false witness; not rendering evil for evil, or railing for railing, or striking for striking, or cursing for cursing. But remembering what the Lord has taught us, saying, Judge not, and ye shall not be judged; forgive and ye shall be forgiven; be merciful, and ye shall obtain mercy; for with the same measure that ye mete withal, it shall be measured to you again. And again, that blessed are the poor and they that are persecuted for righteousness' sake; for theirs is the kingdom of God.

These things, my brethren, I took not the liberty of myself to write unto you concerning righteousness, but you yourselves before encouraged me to it. For neither can I, nor any other such as I am, come up to the wisdom of the blessed and renowned Paul: who, being himself in person with those who then lived, did with all exactness and soundness teach the word of truth; and being gone from you wrote an epistle to you. Into which, if you look, you will be able to edify yourselves in the faith that has been delivered unto you; which is the mother of us all; being followed with hope, and led on by a general love, both toward God and toward Christ and toward our neighbor.

For if any man has these things he has fulfilled the law of righteousness: for he that has charity is far from all sin. But the love of money is the root of all evil. Knowing therefore that as we brought nothing into this world, so neither may we carry anything out; let us arm ourselves with the armor of righteousness. And teach ourselves first to walk according to the commandments of the Lord; and then your wives to walk likewise according to the faith that is given to them; in charity, and in purity; loving their own husbands with all sincerity, and all others alike with all temperance; and to bring up their children in the instruction and fear of the Lord. The widows likewise teach that they be sober as to what concerns the faith of the Lord: praying always for all men; being far from all detraction, evil speaking, false witness; from covetousness, and from all evil. Knowing that they are the altars of God, who sees all blemishes, and from whom nothing is hid; who searches out the very reasonings, and thoughts, and secrets of our hearts.

Knowing, therefore, that God is not mocked, we ought to walk worthy both of his command and of his glory. Also the deacons must be blameless before him, as the ministers of God in Christ, and not of men. Not false accusers; not double-tongued; not lovers of money; but moderate in all things, compassionate, careful; walking according to the truth of the Lord, who was the servant of all. Whom if we please in this present world we shall also be made partakers of that which is to come, according as he has promised to us, that he will raise us from the dead; and that if we shall walk worthy of him, we shall also reign together with him, if we believe.

In like manner the younger men must be unblamable in all things; above all, taking care of their purity, and to restrain themselves from all evil. For it is good to be cut off from the lusts that are in the world, because every such lust warreth against the Spirit; and neither fornicators, nor effeminate, nor abusers of themselves with mankind, shall inherit the kingdom of God; nor they who do such things as are foolish and unreasonable. Wherefore ye must needs abstain from all these things, being subject to the priests and deacons, as unto God and Christ. The virgins admonish to walk in a spotless and pure conscience. And let the elders be compassionate and merciful toward all; turning them from their errors; seeking out those that are weak; not forgetting the widows, the fatherless, and the poor; but always providing what is good both in the sight of God and man. Abstaining from all wrath, respect of persons, and unrighteous judgment; and especially being free from all covetousness. Not easy to believe anything against any; not severe in judgment; knowing that we are all debtors in point of sin.

If, therefore, we pray to the Lord that he would forgive us, we ought also to forgive others; for we are all in the sight of our Lord and God; and must all stand before the judgment seat of Christ; and shall every one give an account of himself. Let us, therefore, serve him in fear, and with all reverence as both himself hath commanded, and as the apostles who have preached the gospel unto us, and the prophets who have foretold the coming of our Lord have taught us. Being zealous of what is good; abstaining from all offence, and from false brethren; and from those who bear the name of Christ in hypocrisy; who deceive vain men.

For whosoever does not confess that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh, he is antichrist; and whoever does not confess his suffering upon the cross is from the devil. And whosoever perverts the oracles of the Lord to his own lusts, and says that there shall neither be any resurrection, nor judgment, he is the first-born of Satan. Wherefore, leaving the vanity of many and their false doctrines, let us return to the word that was delivered to us from the beginning. Watching unto prayer, and persevering in fasting. With supplication beseeching the all-seeing God not to lead us into temptation; as the Lord hath said, The spirit is truly willing, but the flesh is weak. Let us, therefore, without ceasing hold steadfastly to him who is our hope, and the earnest of our righteousness, even Jesus Christ; who his own self bare our sins in his own body on the tree; who did no sin, neither was guile found in his mouth. But suffered all for us that we might live through him. Let us, therefore, imitate his patience; and if we suffer for his name, let us glorify him; for this example he has given us by himself, and so have we believed.

Wherefore I exhort all of you that ye obey the word of righteousness, and exercise all patience; which ye have seen set forth before our eyes, not only in the blessed Ignatius and Zosimus and Rufus, but in others among ourselves; and in Paul himself, and the rest of the apostles. Being confident of this, that all these have not run in vain, but in faith and righteousness, and are gone to the place that was due to them from the Lord, with whom they also suffered; for they loved not this present world, but him who died, and was raised again by God for us. Stand, therefore, in these things and follow the example of the Lord; being firm and immutable in the faith, lovers of the brotherhood, lovers of one another, companions together in the truth, being kind and gentle toward each other, despising none. When it is in your power to do good, defer it not, for charity delivered from death. Be all of you subject one to another, having your conversation honest among the Gentiles; that by your good works both ye yourselves may receive praise and the Lord may not be blasphemed through you. But woe be to him by whom the name of the Lord is blasphemed. Therefore teach all men sobriety; in which do ye also exercise yourselves.

I am greatly afflicted for Valens, who was once a presbyter among you; that he should so little understand the place that was given to him in the Church. Wherefore I admonish you that ye abstain from covetousness, and that ye be chaste, and true of speech. Keep yourselves from all evil; for he that in these things cannot govern himself, how shall he be able to prescribe them to another? If a man does not keep himself from covetousness he shall be polluted with idolatry and be judged as if he were a Gentile. But who of you are ignorant of the judgment of God? Do we not know that the saints shall judge the world, as Paul teaches? But I have neither perceived nor heard anything of this kind in you, among whom the blessed Paul labored, and who are named in the beginning of his epistle. For he glories of you in all the churches who then only knew God; for we did not then know him. Wherefore, my brethren, I am exceedingly sorry both for him and for his wife; to whom God grant a true repentance.

And be ye also moderate upon this occasion, and look not upon such as enemies, but call them back as suffering and erring members, that ye may save your whole body; for by so doing ye shall edify your own selves. For I trust that ye are well exercised in the Holy Scriptures, and that nothing is hid from you; but at present it is not granted unto me to practise that which is written, Be angry and sin not; and again, Let not the sun go down upon your wrath. Blessed be he that believeth and remembereth these things, which also I trust you do.

Now the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, and he himself who is our everlasting high-priest, the Son of God, even Jesus Christ, build you up in faith and in truth and in all meekness and lenity; in patience and long-suffering, in forbearance and chastity. And grant unto you a lot and portion among his saints; and us with you, and to all that are under the heavens, who shall believe in our Lord Jesus Christ, and in his Father who raised him from the dead. Pray for all the saints; pray also for kings, and all that are in authority; and for those who persecute you, and hate you, and for the enemies of the cross; that your fruit may be manifest in all, and that ye may be perfect in Christ. Ye wrote to me, both ye and also Ignatius, that if anyone went from hence into Syria he should bring your letters with him, which also I will take care of, as soon as I shall have a convenient opportunity, either by myself or him whom I shall send upon your account. The Epistles of Ignatius, which he wrote unto us, together with what others of his have come to our hands, we have sent to you, according to your order, which are subjoined to this epistle. By which we may be greatly profited; for they treat of faith and patience, and of all things that pertain to edification in the Lord Jesus. What you know certainly of Ignatius and those that are with him signify to us.

These things have I written unto you by Crescens, whom by this present epistle I have recommended to you, and do now again commend. For he has had his conversation without blame among us, and I suppose also with you. Ye will also have regard unto his sister when she shall come unto you. Be ye safe in the Lord Jesus Christ, and in favor with all yours. Amen.



PERSECUTION OF THE CHRISTIANS IN GAUL

A.D. 177

FRANCOIS P. G. GUIZOT

That the persecutions of Christians under the Roman Empire should have been inaugurated by a Nero is not a subject of wonder in view of that Emperor's character as depicted in history through all ages since his own. But it is difficult to understand how an emperor like Trajan—an enlightened and humane ruler—if he was powerless to prevent, could have brought himself to give countenance to a policy at once so intolerant and cruel, and in the end to prove so short-sighted. A great cause prospers by persecution. The martyr-spirit is strengthened by blows and fagots. History has well proved the truth of that saying of the Church Fathers, tersely given by St. Jerome: Est sanguis martyrium seminarium Ecclesiarum ("The blood of the martyrs is the seed of the Church").

Still more incomprehensible to modern students is the fact that Marcus Aurelius, the imperial philosopher and benevolent man, should also be stained with the infamy of the persecutions. The charges brought against him as a cruel persecutor of the Christians have given rise to much dispute among historical scholars. Among modern Christian writers of favorable disposition toward Marcus, F. W. Farrar has perhaps as clearly as any set forth the views that explain his conduct and vindicate his reputation for humanity: "That he shared the profound dislike with which Christians were regarded is very probable. That he was a cold-blooded and virulent persecutor is utterly unlike his whole character. The deep calamities in which during his whole reign the empire was involved caused widespread distress, and roused into peculiar fury the feelings of the provincials against men whose atheism (for such they considered it to be) had kindled the anger of the gods. Marcus, when appealed to, simply let the existing law take its course." In like manner the purely official or legal view of human affairs often leads the most kindly and conscientious of men to pursue or acquiesce in policies against which, in different situations, their moral nature would rebel.

There were many reasons which led the populace to hate Christians, whom, first of all, they regarded as being unpatriotic. While among Romans it was considered the highest honor to possess the privileges of Roman citizenship, the Christians announced that they were citizens of heaven. They shrank from public office and military service.

Again, the ancient religion of Rome was an adjunct of state dignity and ceremonial. It was hallowed by a thousand traditional and patriotic associations. The Christians regarded its rites and its popular assemblies with contempt and abhorrence. The Romans viewed the secret meetings of the Christians with suspicion, and accused them of abominable excesses and crime. They were known to have representatives in every important city of Gaul, Spain, Italy, and Asia; and the more their communities grew, the more the Roman populace raged against them. Only such considerations appear to mitigate the historical judgments against Aurelius for marring the splendor of his reign by persecutions. The tragedies enacted in the churches of Lyons and Vienne, as described in the following pages, form one of the most melancholy records of history.

When Christianity began to penetrate into Gaul, it encountered there two religions very different one from the other, and infinitely more different from the Christian religion; these were Druidism and paganism—hostile one to the other, but with a hostility political only, and unconnected with those really religious questions that Christianity was coming to raise.

Druidism, considered as a religion, was a mass of confusion, wherein the instinctive notions of the human race concerning the origin and destiny of the world and of mankind were mingled with the oriental dreams of metempsychosis—that pretended transmigration, at successive periods, of immortal souls into divers creatures. This confusion was worse confounded by traditions borrowed from the mythologies of the East and the North, by shadowy remnants of a symbolical worship paid to the material forces of nature, and by barbaric practices, such as human sacrifices, in honor of the gods or of the dead.

People who are without the scientific development of language and the art of writing do not attain to systematic and productive religious creeds. There is nothing to show that, from the first appearance of the Gauls in history to their struggle with victorious Rome, the religious influence of Druidism had caused any notable progress to be made in Gallic manners and civilization. A general and strong, but vague and incoherent, belief in the immortality of the soul was its noblest characteristic. But with the religious elements, at the same time coarse and mystical, were united two facts of importance: the Druids formed a veritable ecclesiastical corporation, which had, throughout Gallic society, fixed attributes, special manners and customs, an existence at the same time distinct and national; and in the wars with Rome this corporation became the most faithful representatives and the most persistent defenders of Gallic independence and nationality.

The Druids were far more a clergy than Druidism was a religion; but it was an organized and a patriotic clergy. It was especially on this account that they exercised in Gaul an influence which was still existent, particularly in Northwestern Gaul, at the time when Christianity reached the Gallic provinces of the South and Centre.

The Graeco-Roman paganism was, at this time, far more powerful than Druidism in Gaul, and yet more lukewarm and destitute of all religious vitality. It was the religion of the conquerors and of the State, and was invested, in that quality, with real power; but, beyond that, it had but the power derived from popular customs and superstitions. As a religious creed, the Latin paganism was at bottom empty, indifferent, and inclined to tolerate all religions in the State, provided only that they, in their turn, were indifferent at any rate toward itself, and that they did not come troubling the State, either by disobeying her rulers or by attacking her old deities, dead and buried beneath their own still standing altars.

Such were the two religions with which in Gaul nascent Christianity had to contend. Compared with them it was, to all appearance, very small and very weak; but it was provided with the most efficient weapons for fighting and beating them, for it had exactly the moral forces which they lacked. Christianity, instead of being, like Druidism, a religion exclusively national and hostile to all that was foreign, proclaimed a universal religion, free from all local and national partiality, addressing itself to all men in the name of the same God, and offering to all the same salvation. It is one of the strangest and most significant facts in history that the religion most universally human, most dissociated from every consideration but that of the rights and well-being of the human race in its entirety—that such a religion, be it repeated, should have come forth from the womb of the most exclusive, most rigorously and obstinately national religion that ever appeared in the world, that is, Judaism. Such, nevertheless, was the birth of Christianity; and this wonderful contrast between the essence and the earthly origin of Christianity was without doubt one of its most powerful attractions and most efficacious means of success.

Against paganism Christianity was armed with moral forces not a whit less great. Confronting mythological traditions and poetical or philosophical allegories, appeared a religion truly religious, concerned solely with the relations of mankind to God and with their eternal future. To the pagan indifference of the Roman world the Christians opposed the profound conviction of their faith, and not only their firmness in defending it against all powers and all dangers, but also their ardent passion for propagating it without any motive but the yearning to make their fellows share in its benefits and its hopes. They confronted, nay, they welcomed martyrdom, at one time to maintain their own Christianity, at another to make others Christians around them; propagandism was for them a duty almost as imperative as fidelity.

And it was not in memory of old and obsolete mythologies, but in the name of recent deeds and persons, in obedience to laws proceeding from God, One and Universal, in fulfilment and continuation of a contemporary and superhuman history—that of Jesus Christ, the Son of God and Son of Man—that the Christians of the first two centuries labored to convert to their faith the whole Roman world. Marcus Aurelius was contemptuously astonished at what he called the obstinacy of the Christians; he knew not from what source these nameless heroes drew a strength superior to his own, though he was at the same time emperor and sage. It is impossible to assign with exactness the date of the first footprints and first labors of Christianity in Gaul. It was not, however, from Italy, nor in the Latin tongue and through Latin writers, but from the East and through the Greeks, that it first came and began to spread. Marseilles and the different Greek colonies, originally from Asia Minor and settled upon the shores of the Mediterranean or along the Rhone, mark the route and were the places whither the first Christian missionaries carried their teaching: on this point the letters of the apostles and the writings of the first two generations of their disciples are clear and abiding proof.

In the West of the empire, especially in Italy, the Christians at their first appearance were confounded with the Jews, and comprehended under the same name. "The emperor Claudius," says Suetonius, "drove from Rome (A.D. 52) the Jews who, at the instigation of Christus, were in continual commotion." After the destruction of Jerusalem by Titus (A.D. 70), the Jews, Christian or not, dispersed throughout the empire; but the Christians were not slow to signalize themselves by their religious fervor, and to come forward everywhere under their own true name.

Lyons became the chief centre of Christian preaching and association in Gaul. As early as the first half of the second century there existed there a Christian congregation, regularly organized as a church, and already sufficiently important to be in intimate and frequent communication with the Christian churches of the East and West. There is a tradition, generally admitted, that St. Pothinus, the first bishop of Lyons, was sent thither from the East by the bishop of Smyrna, St. Polycarp, himself a disciple of St. John. One thing is certain, that the Christian Church of Lyons produced Gaul's first martyrs, among whom was the bishop, St. Pothinus.

It was under Marcus Aurelius, the most philosophical and most conscientious of the emperors, that there was enacted for the first time in Gaul, against nascent Christianity, that scene of tyranny and barbarity which was to be renewed so often and during so many centuries in the midst of Christendom itself. In the eastern provinces of the empire and in Italy the Christians had already been several times persecuted, now with cold-blooded cruelty, now with some slight hesitation and irresolution. Nero had caused them to be burned in the streets of Rome, accusing them of the conflagration himself had kindled, and, a few months before his fall, St. Peter and St. Paul had undergone martyrdom at Rome. Domitian had persecuted and put to death Christians even in his own family, and though invested with the honors of the consulate.

Righteous Trajan, when consulted by Pliny the Younger on the conduct he should adopt in Bithynia toward the Christians, had answered: "It is impossible, in this sort of matter, to establish any certain general rule; there must be no quest set on foot against them, and no unsigned indictment must be accepted; but if they be accused and convicted, they must be punished." To be punished, it sufficed that they were convicted of being Christians; and it was Trajan himself who condemned St. Ignatius, bishop of Antioch, to be brought to Rome and thrown to the beasts, for the simple reason that he was highly Christian. Marcus Aurelius, not only by virtue of his philosophical conscientiousness, but by reason of an incident in his history, seemed bound to be further than any other from persecuting the Christians.

During one of his campaigns on the Danube, A.D. 174, his army was suffering cruelly from fatigue and thirst; and at the very moment when they were on the point of engaging in a great battle against the barbarians, the rain fell in abundance, refreshed the Roman soldiers, and conduced to their victory. There was in the Roman army a legion, the Twelfth, called the Melitine or the Thundering, which bore on its roll many Christian soldiers. They gave thanks for the rain and the victory to the one omnipotent God who had heard their prayers, while the pagans rendered like honor to Jupiter, the Rain-giver and the Thunderer. The report about these Christians got spread abroad and gained credit in the empire, so much so that there was attributed to Marcus Aurelius a letter, in which by reason, no doubt, of this incident, he forbade persecution of the Christians.

Tertullian, a contemporary witness, speaks of this letter in perfect confidence; and the Christian writers of the following century did not hesitate to regard it as authentic. Nowadays, a strict examination of its existing text does not allow such a character to be attributed to it. At any rate the persecutions of the Christians were not forbidden, for in the year 177, that is, only three years after the victory of Marcus Aurelius over the Germans, there took place, undoubtedly by his orders, the persecution which caused at Lyons the first Gallic martyrdom. This was the fourth, or, according to others, the fifth great imperial persecution of the Christians.

Most tales of the martyrs were written long after the event, and came to be nothing more than legends laden with details often utterly puerile or devoid of proof. The martyrs of Lyons in the second century wrote, so to speak, their own history; for it was their comrades, eye-witnesses of their sufferings and their virtue, who gave an account of them in a long letter addressed to their friends in Asia Minor, and written with passionate sympathy and pious prolixity, but bearing all the characteristics of truth. It seems desirable to submit for perusal that document, which has been preserved almost entire in the Ecclesiastical History of Eusebius, bishop of Caesarea in the third century, and which will exhibit, better than any modern representations, the state of facts and of souls in the midst of the imperial persecutions, and the mighty faith, devotion, and courage with which the early Christians faced the most cruel trials:

"The servants of Christ, dwelling at Vienne and Lyons in Gaul, to the brethren settled in Asia and Phrygia, who have the same faith and hope of redemption that we have, peace, grace, and glory from God the Father and Jesus Christ our Lord!

"None can tell to you in speech or fully set forth to you in writing the weight of our misery, the madness and rage of the Gentiles against the saints, and all that hath been suffered by the blessed martyrs. Our enemy doth rush upon us with all the fury of his powers, and already giveth us a foretaste and the first-fruits of all the license with which he doth intend to set upon us. He hath omitted nothing for the training of his agents against us, and he doth exercise them in a sort of preparatory work against the servants of the Lord. Not only are we driven from the public buildings, from the baths, and from the Forum, but it is forbidden to all our people to appear publicly in any place whatsoever.

"The grace of God hath striven for us against the devil: at the same time that it hath sustained the weak, it hath opposed to the Evil One, as it were, pillars of strength—men strong and valiant, ready to draw on themselves all his attacks. They have had to bear all manner of insult; they have deemed but a small matter that which others find hard and terrible; and they have thought only of going to Christ, proving by their example that the sufferings of this world are not worthy to be put in the balance with the glory which is to be manifested in us. They have endured, in the first place, all the outrages that could be heaped upon them by the multitude, outcries, blows, thefts, spoliation, stoning, imprisonment, all that the fury of the people could devise against hated enemies. Then, dragged to the Forum by the military tribune and the magistrates of the city, they have been questioned before the people and cast into prison until the coming of the governor. He, from the moment our people appeared before him, committed all manner of violence against them.

"Then stood forth one of our brethren, Vettius Epagathus, full of love toward God and his neighbor, living a life so pure and strict that, young as he was, men held him to be the equal of the aged Zacharias. He could not bear that judgment so unjust should go forth against us, and, moved with indignation, he asked leave to defend his brethren, and to prove that there was in them no kind of irreligion or impiety. Those present at the tribunal, among whom he was known and celebrated, cried out against him, and the governor himself, enraged at so just a demand, asked him no more than this question, 'Art thou a Christian?' Straightway with a loud voice he declared himself a Christian, and was placed among the number of the martyrs.

"Afterward, the rest began to be examined and classed. The first, firm and well prepared, made hearty and solemn confession of their faith. Others, ill prepared and with little firmness, showed that they lacked strength for such a fight. About ten of them fell away, which caused us incredible pain and mourning. Their example broke down the courage of others, who, not being yet in bonds, though they had already had much to suffer, kept close to the martyrs, and withdrew not out of their sight. Then were we all stricken with dread for the issue of the trial: not that we had great fear of the torments inflicted, but because, prophesying the result according to the degree of courage of the accused, we feared much falling away. They took, day by day, those of our brethren who were worthy to replace the weak; so that all the best of the two churches, those whose care and zeal had founded them, were taken and confined.

"They took, likewise, some of our slaves, for the governor had ordered that they should be all summoned to attend in public; and they, fearing the torments they saw the saints undergo, and instigated by the soldiers, accused us falsely of odious deeds, such as the banquet of Thyestes, the incest of Oedipus, and other crimes which must not be named or even thought of, and which we cannot bring ourselves to believe that men were ever guilty of. These reports having once spread among the people, even those persons who had hitherto by reason, perhaps, of relationship, shown moderation toward us, burst forth into bitter indignation against our people. Thus was fulfilled that which had been prophesied by the Lord: 'The time cometh when whosoever shall kill you shall think that he doeth God service.' Since that day the holy martyrs have suffered tortures that no words can express.

"The fury of the multitude, of the governor, and of the soldiers fell chiefly upon Sanctus, a deacon of Vienne; upon Maturus, a neophyte still, but already a valiant champion of Christ; upon Attalus also, born at Pergamus, but who hath ever been one of the pillars of our Church; upon Blandina, lastly, in whom Christ hath made it appear that persons who seem vile and despised of men are just those whom God holds in the highest honor by reason of the excellent love they bear him, which is manifested in their firm virtue and not in vain show. All of us, and even Blandina's mistress here below, who fought valiantly with the other martyrs, feared that this poor slave, so weak of body, would not be in a condition to freely confess her faith; but she was sustained by such vigor of soul that the executioners, who from morn till eve put her to all manner of torture, failed in their efforts, and declared themselves beaten, not knowing what further punishment to inflict, and marvelling that she still lived, with her body pierced through and through, and torn piecemeal by so many tortures, of which a single one should have sufficed to kill her. But that blessed saint, like a valiant athlete, took fresh courage and strength from the confession of her faith; all feeling of pain vanished, and ease returned to her at the mere utterance of the words, 'I am a Christian, and no evil is wrought among us.'

"As for Sanctus, the executioners hoped that in the midst of the tortures inflicted upon him—the most atrocious which man could devise—they would hear him say something unseemly or unlawful; but so firmly did he resist them, that, without even saying his name, or that of his nation or city, or whether he was bond or free, he only replied in the Roman tongue, to all questions, 'I am a Christian.' Therein was, for him, his name, his country, his condition, his whole being; and never could the Gentiles wrest from him another word. The fury of the governor and the executioners was redoubled against him; and, not knowing how to torment him further, they applied to his most tender members bars of red-hot iron. His members burned; but he, upright and immovable, persisted in his profession of faith, as if living waters from the bosom of Christ flowed over him and refreshed him. Some days after, these infidels began again to torture him, believing that if they inflicted upon his blistering wounds the same agonies, they would triumph over him, who seemed unable to bear the mere touch of their hands; and they hoped, also, that the sight of his torturing alive would terrify his comrades. But, contrary to general expectation, the body of Sanctus, rising suddenly up, stood erect and firm amid these repeated torments, and recovered its old appearance and the use of its members, as if, by divine grace, this second laceration of his flesh had caused healing rather than suffering.

"When the tyrants had thus expended and exhausted their tortures against the firmness of the martyrs sustained by Christ, the devil devised other contrivances. They were cast into the darkest and most unendurable place in their prison; their feet were dragged out and compressed to the utmost tension of the muscles; the jailers, as if instigated by a demon, tried every sort of torture, insomuch that several of them, for whom God willed such an end, died of suffocation in prison. Others, who had been tortured in such a manner that it was thought impossible they should long survive, deprived as they were of every remedy and aid from men, but supported nevertheless by the grace of God, remained sound and strong in body as in soul, and comforted and reanimated their brethren.

"The blessed Pothinus, who held at that time the bishopric of Lyons, being upward of ninety, and so weak in body that he could hardly breathe, was himself brought before the tribunal, so worn with old age and sickness that he seemed nigh to extinction; but he still possessed his soul, wherewith to subserve the triumph of Christ. Being brought by the soldiers before the tribunal, whither he was accompanied by all the magistrates of the city and the whole populace, that pursued him with hootings, he offered, as if he had been the very Christ, the most glorious testimony. At a question from the governor, who asked what the God of the Christians was, he answered, 'If thou be worthy, thou shalt know.' He was immediately raised up, without any respect or humanity, and blows were showered upon him; those who happened to be nearest to him assaulted him grievously with foot and fist, without the slightest regard for his age; those who were farther off cast at him whatever was to their hand; they would all have thought themselves guilty of the greatest default if they had not done their best, each on his own score, to insult him brutally. They believed they were avenging the wrongs of their gods. Pothinus, still breathing, was cast again into prison, and two days after yielded up his spirit.

"Then were manifested a singular dispensation of God and the immeasurable compassion of Jesus Christ: an example rare among brethren, but in accord with the intentions and the justice of the Lord. All those who, at their first arrest, had denied their faith, were themselves cast into prison and given over to the same sufferings as the other martyrs, for their denial did not serve them at all. Those who had made profession of being what they really were—that is, Christians—were imprisoned without being accused of other crimes. The former, on the contrary, were confined as homicides and wretches, thus suffering double punishment. The one sort found repose in the honorable joys of martyrdom, in the hope of promised blessedness, in the love of Christ, and in the spirit of God the Father; the other were a prey to the reproaches of conscience. It was easy to distinguish the one from the other by their looks. The one walked joyously, bearing on their faces a majesty mingled with sweetness, and their very bonds seemed unto them an ornament, even as the broidery that decks a bride; the other, with downcast eyes and humble and dejected air, were an object of contempt to the Gentiles themselves, who regarded them as cowards who had forfeited the glorious and saving name of Christians. And so they who were present at this double spectacle were thereby signally strengthened, and whoever among them chanced to be arrested confessed the faith without doubt or hesitation.

"Things having come to this pass, different kinds of death were inflicted on the martyrs, and they offered to God a crown of divers flowers. It was but right that the most valiant champions, those who had sustained a double assault and gained a signal victory, should receive a splendid crown of immortality. The neophyte Maturus and the deacon Sanctus, Blandina and Attalus, then, were led into the amphitheatre, and thrown to the beasts, as a sight to please the inhumanity of the Gentiles. Maturus and Sanctus there underwent all kinds of tortures, as if they had hitherto suffered nothing; or, rather, like athletes who had already been several times victorious, and were contending for the crown of crowns, they braved the stripes with which they were beaten, the bites of the beasts that dragged them to and fro, and all that was demanded by the outcries of an insensate mob, so much the more furious because it could by no means overcome the firmness of the martyrs or extort from Sanctus any other speech than that which, on the first day, he had uttered—'I am a Christian.' After this fearful contest, as life was not extinct, their throats were at last cut, when they alone had thus been offered as a spectacle to the public instead of the variety displayed in the combat of gladiators.

"Blandina, in her turn, tied to a stake, was given to the beasts; she was seen hanging, as it were, on a sort of cross, calling upon God with trustful fervor, and the brethren present were reminded, in the person of a sister, of Him who had been crucified for their salvation. As none of the beasts would touch the body of Blandina, she was released from the stake, taken back to prison, and reserved for another occasion.

"Attalus, whose execution, seeing that he was a man of mark, was furiously demanded by the people, came forward ready to brave everything, as a man deriving confidence from the memory of his life, for he had courageously trained himself to discipline, and had always among us borne witness for the truth. He was led all round the Amphitheatre, preceded by a board bearing this inscription in Latin: 'This is Attalus the Christian.' The people pursued him with the most furious hootings; but the governor, having learned that he was a Roman citizen, had him taken back to prison with the rest. Having subsequently written to Caesar, he waited for his decision as to those who were thus detained.

"This delay was neither useless nor unprofitable, for then shone forth the boundless compassion of Christ. Those of the brethren who had been but dead members of the Church were recalled to life by the pains and help of the living; the martyrs obtained grace for those who had fallen away; and great was the joy in the Church, at the same time virgin and mother, for she once more found living those whom she had given up for dead. Thus revived and strengthened by the goodness of God, who willeth not the death of the sinner, but rather inviteth him to repentance, they presented themselves before the tribunal, to be questioned afresh by the governor. Caesar had replied that they who confessed themselves to be Christians should be put to the sword, and they who denied sent away safe and sound. When the time for the great market had fully come, there assembled a numerous multitude from every nation and every province. The governor had the blessed martyrs brought up before his judgment-seat, showing them before the people with all the pomp of a theatre. He questioned them afresh; and those who were discovered to be Roman citizens were beheaded, the rest were thrown to the beasts.

"Great glory was gained for Christ by means of those who had at first denied their faith, and who now confessed it contrary to the expectation of the Gentiles. Those who, having been privately questioned, declared themselves Christians were added to the number of the martyrs. Those in whom appeared no vestige of faith and no fear of God, remained without the pale of the Church. When they were dealing with those who had been reunited to it, one Alexander, a Phrygian by nation, a physician by profession, who had for many years been dwelling in Gaul, a man well known to all for his love of God and open preaching of the faith, took his place in the hall of judgment, exhorting by signs all who filled it to confess their faith, even as if he had been called in to deliver them of it. The multitude, enraged to see that those who had at first denied turned round and proclaimed their faith, cried out against Alexander, whom they accused of the conversion.

"The governor forthwith asked him what he was, and at the answer, 'I am a Christian,' condemned him to the beasts. On the morrow Alexander was again brought up, together with Attalus, whom the governor, to please the people, had once more condemned to the beasts. After they had both suffered in the Amphitheatre all the torments that could be devised, they were put to the sword. Alexander uttered not a complaint, not a word; he had the air of one who was talking inwardly with God. Attalus, seated on an iron seat, and waiting for the fire to consume his body, said, in Latin, to the people: 'See what ye are doing; it is in truth devouring men; as for us, we devour not men, and we do no evil at all.' He was asked what was the name of God: 'God,' said he, 'is not like us mortals; he hath no name.'

"After all these martyrs, on the last day of the shows, Blandina was again brought up, together with a young lad, named Ponticus, about fifteen years old. They had been brought up every day before that they might see the tortures of their brethren. When they were called upon to swear by the altars of the Gentiles, they remained firm in their faith, making no account of those pretended gods, and so great was the fury of the multitude against them that no pity was shown for the age of the child or the sex of the woman. Tortures were heaped upon them; they were made to pass through every kind of torment, but the desired end was not gained.

"Supported by the exhortations of his sister, who was seen and heard by the Gentiles, Ponticus, after having endured all magnanimously, gave up the ghost. Blandina, last of all—like a noble mother that hath roused the courage of her sons for the fight, and sent them forth to conquer for their king—passed once more through all the tortures they had suffered, anxious to go and rejoin them, and rejoicing at each step toward death. At length, after she had undergone fire, the talons of beasts, and agonizing aspersion, she was wrapped in a network and thrown to a bull that tossed her in the air; she was already unconscious of all that befell her, and seemed altogether taken up with watching for the blessings that Christ had in store for her. Even the Gentiles allowed that never a woman had suffered so much or so long.

"Still their fury and their cruelty toward the saints were not appeased. They devised another way of raging against them; they cast to the dogs the bodies of those who had died of suffocation in prison, and watched night and day that none of our brethren might come and bury them. As for what remained of the martyrs' half-mangled or devoured corpses, they left them exposed under a guard of soldiers, coming to look on them with insulting eyes, and saying: 'Where is now their God? Of what use to them was this religion for which they laid down their lives?' We were overcome with grief that we were not able to bury these poor corpses; nor the darkness of night, nor gold, nor prayers could help us to succeed therein. After being thus exposed for six days in the open air, given over to all manner of outrage, the corpses of the martyrs were at last burned, reduced to ashes, and cast hither and thither by the infidels upon the waters of the Rhone, that there might be left no trace of them on earth. They acted as if they had been more mighty than God, and could rob our brethren of their resurrection: ''Tis in that hope,' said they, 'that these folk bring among us a new and strange religion, that they set at naught the most painful torments, and that they go joyfully to face death: let us see if they will rise again, if their God will come to their aid and will be able to tear them from our hands.'"

It is not without a painful effort that, even after so many centuries, we can resign ourselves to be witnesses, in imagination only, of such a spectacle. We can scarce believe that among men of the same period and the same city so much ferocity could be displayed in opposition to so much courage, the passion for barbarity against the passion for virtue. Nevertheless, such is history; and it should be represented as it really was: first of all, for truth's sake; then for the due appreciation of virtue and all it costs of effort and sacrifice; and, lastly, for the purpose of showing what obstacles have to be surmounted, what struggles endured, and what sufferings borne, when the question is the accomplishment of great moral and social reforms. Marcus Aurelius was, without any doubt, a virtuous ruler, and one who had it in his heart to be just and humane; but he was an absolute ruler, that is to say, one fed entirely on his own ideas, very ill-informed about the facts on which he had to decide, and without a free public to warn him of the errors of his ideas or the practical results of his decrees. He ordered the persecution of the Christians without knowing what the Christians were or what the persecution would be, and this conscientious philosopher let loose at Lyons, against the most conscientious of subjects, the zealous servility of his agents, and the atrocious passions of the mob.

The persecution of the Christians did not stop at Lyons or with Marcus Aurelius; it became, during the third century, the common practice of the emperors in all parts of the empire: from A.D. 202 to 312, under the reigns of Septimius Severus, Maximinus the First, Decius, Valerian, Aurelian, Diocletian, Maximian, and Galerius, there are reckoned six great general persecutions, without counting others more circumscribed or less severe. The emperors Alexander Severus, Philip the Arabian, and Constantius Chlorus were almost the only exceptions to this cruel system; and nearly always, wherever it was in force, the pagan mob, in its brutality or fanatical superstition, added to imperial rigor its own atrocious and cynical excesses.

But Christian zeal was superior in perseverance and efficacy to pagan persecution. St. Pothinus the Martyr was succeeded as bishop at Lyons by St. Irenaeus, the most learned, most judicious, and most illustrious of the early heads of the Church in Gaul. Originally from Asia Minor, probably from Smyrna, he had migrated to Gaul, at what particular date is not known, and had settled as a simple priest in the diocese of Lyons, where it was not long before he exercised vast influence, as well on the spot as also during certain missions intrusted to him, and among them one, they say, to the pope, St. Eleutherius, at Rome.

While bishop of Lyons, from A.D. 177 to 202, he employed the five-and-twenty years in propagating the Christian faith in Gaul, and in defending, by his writings, the Christian doctrines against the discord to which they had already been subjected in the East, and which was beginning to penetrate the West.

In 202, during the persecution instituted by Septimius Severus, St. Irenaeus crowned by martyrdom his active and influential life. It was in his episcopate that there began what may be called the swarm of Christian missionaries who, toward the end of the second and during the third century, spread over the whole of Gaul, preaching the faith and forming churches. Some went from Lyons at the instigation of St. Irenaeus; others from Rome, especially under the pontificate of Pope St. Fabian, himself martyred in 249; St. Felix and St. Fortunatus to Valence, St. Ferreol to Besancon, St. Marcellus to Chalons-sur-Saone, St. Benignus to Dijon, St. Trophimus to Arles, St. Paul to Narbonne, St. Saturninus to Toulouse, St. Martial to Limoges, St. Andeol and St. Privatus to the Cevennes, St. Austremoine to Clermont-Ferrand, St. Galian to Tours, St. Denis to Paris, and so many others that their names are scarcely known beyond the pages of erudite historians, or the very spots where they preached, struggled, and conquered, often at the price of their lives.

Such were the founders of the faith and of the Christian Church in France. At the commencement of the fourth century their work was, if not accomplished, at any rate triumphant; and when, A.D. 312, Constantine declared himself a Christian, he confirmed the fact of the conquest of the Roman world, and of Gaul in particular, by Christianity. No doubt the majority of the inhabitants were not as yet Christians; but it was clear that the Christians were in the ascendant and had command of the future.

Of the two grand elements which were to meet together on the ruins of Roman society, for the formation of modern society, the moral element, the Christian religion, had already taken possession of souls; the devastated territory awaited the coming of new peoples, known to history under the general name of Germans, whom the Romans called the Barbarians.



BEGINNING OF ROME'S DECLINE: COMMODUS

A.D. 180

EDWARD GIBBON

That a ruler of such noble character as the Roman philosopher Marcus Aurelius should have had for his son and successor a man like Commodus is one of the strange contrasts of history. The succession of Commodus, marking as it does the beginning of the decline of the great empire, may be regarded as one of the most critical moments in the existence of Rome. How folly and cruelty, shameless vice and unbridled ferocity, may be associated in the same character has often been illustrated in the careers of the world's rulers, and nowhere more conspicuously than in some of the Roman emperors; and in the case of Commodus the combination of these qualities led to acts which involved not only the Emperor himself, but also the empire over which he ruled, in fatal consequences.

This vast empire, composed of many different peoples, was under the rule and subject to the caprice of one man. The form of the government imposed practically no checks on his power. With such able emperors as Nerva, Trajan, Hadrian, and Marcus Aurelius the State was safe; but the wise men of Rome had foreseen that a tyrant or weak and inexperienced ruler, under this system, might plunge the empire into confusion and ruin. Yet they had made no provision against such a contingency. In the death of such a ruler and the accession of an abler and juster one lay their only hope of amelioration.

The course of events during the bloody reign of the degenerate Commodus was such as surely to forecast the decline of Roman power and supremacy. In the next hundred years there were twenty-three emperors, thirteen of whom were murdered by their own soldiers or servants—a tragic period of cruelty, licentiousness, and decay.

If a man were called to fix the period in the history of the world during which the condition of the human race was most happy and prosperous, he would, without hesitation, name that which elapsed from the death of Domitian to the accession of Commodus. The vast extent of the Roman Empire was governed by absolute power, under the guidance of virtue and wisdom. The armies were restrained by the firm but gentle hand of four successive emperors, whose characters and authority commanded involuntary respect. The forms of the civil administration were carefully preserved by Nerva, Trajan, Hadrian, and the Antonines, who delighted in the image of liberty, and were pleased with considering themselves as the accountable ministers of the laws. Such princes deserved the honor of restoring the republic, had the Romans of their days been capable of enjoying a rational freedom.

The labors of these monarchs were overpaid by the immense reward that inseparably waited on their success, by the honest pride of virtue, and by the exquisite delight of beholding the general happiness of which they were the authors. A just but melancholy reflection imbittered, however, the noblest of human enjoyments. They must often have recollected the instability of a happiness which depended on the character of a single man. The fatal moment was perhaps approaching when some licentious youth or some jealous tyrant would abuse, to the destruction, that absolute power which they had exerted for the benefit of their people. The ideal restraints of the senate and the laws might serve to display the virtues, but could never correct the vices, of the emperor. The military force was a blind and irresistible instrument of oppression, and the corruption of Roman manners would always supply flatterers eager to applaud, and ministers prepared to serve, the fear or the avarice, the lust or the cruelty, of their masters.

These gloomy apprehensions had been already justified by the experience of the Romans. The annals of the emperors exhibit a strong and various picture of human nature, which we should vainly seek among the mixed and doubtful characters of modern history. In the conduct of those monarchs we may trace the utmost lines of vice and virtue; the most exalted perfection, and the meanest degeneracy of our own species.

The mildness of Marcus Aurelius, which the rigid discipline of the Stoics was unable to eradicate, formed, at the same time, the most amiable, and the only defective, part of his character. His excellent understanding was often deceived by the unsuspecting goodness of his heart. Artful men, who study the passions of princes, and conceal their own, approached his person in the disguise of philosophic sanctity, and acquired riches and honors by affecting to despise them. His excessive indulgence to his brother,[46] his wife, and his son exceeded the bounds of private virtue, and became a public injury, by the example and consequences of their vices.

Faustina, the daughter of Pius and the wife of Marcus, has been as much celebrated for her gallantries as for her beauty. The grave simplicity of the philosopher was ill-calculated to engage her wanton levity, or to fix that unbounded passion for variety which often discovered personal merit in the meanest of mankind. The Cupid of the ancients was, in general, a very sensual deity; and the amours of an empress, as they exact on her side the plainest advances, are seldom susceptible of much sentimental delicacy. Marcus was the only man in the empire who seemed ignorant or insensible of the irregularities of Faustina, which, according to the prejudices of every age, reflected some disgrace on the injured husband. He promoted several of her lovers to posts of honor and profit, and, during a connection of thirty years, invariably gave her proofs of the most tender confidence and of a respect which ended not with her life. In his Meditations he thanks the gods, who had bestowed on him a wife so faithful, so gentle, and of such a wonderful simplicity of manners. The obsequious senate, at his earnest request, declared her a goddess. She was represented in her temples with the attributes of Juno, Venus, and Ceres; and it was decreed that, on the day of their nuptials, the youth of either sex should pay their vows before the altar of their chaste patroness.

The monstrous vices of the son have cast a shade on the purity of the father's virtues. It has been objected to Marcus that he sacrificed the happiness of millions to a fond partiality for a worthless boy; and that he chose a successor in his own family rather than in the empire. Nothing, however, was neglected by the anxious father, and by the men of virtue and learning whom he summoned to his assistance, to expand the narrow mind of young Commodus, to correct his growing vices, and to render him worthy of the throne for which he was designed. But the power of instruction is seldom of much efficacy, except in those happy dispositions where it is almost superfluous. The distasteful lesson of a grave philosopher was, in a moment, obliterated by the whisper of a profligate favorite; and Marcus himself blasted the fruits of this labored education by admitting his son, at the age of fourteen or fifteen, to a full participation of the imperial power. He lived but four years afterward; but he lived long enough to repent a rash measure which raised the impetuous youth above the restraint of reason and authority.

Most of the crimes which disturb the internal peace of society are produced by the restraints which the necessary but unequal laws of property have imposed on the appetites of mankind by confining to a few the possession of those objects that are coveted by many. Of all our passions and appetites the love of power is of the most imperious and unsociable nature, since the pride of one man requires the submission of the multitude. In the tumult of civil discord, the laws of society lose their force, and their place is seldom supplied by those of humanity. The ardor of contention, the pride of victory, the despair of success, the memory of past injuries, and the fear of future dangers all contribute to inflame the mind and to silence the voice of pity. From such motives almost every page of history has been stained with civil blood; but these motives will not account for the unprovoked cruelties of Commodus, who had nothing to wish and everything to enjoy.

The beloved son of Marcus succeeded to his father, amid the acclamations of the senate and armies; and when he ascended the throne the happy youth saw round him neither competitor to remove nor enemies to punish. In this calm, elevated station it was surely natural that he should prefer the love of mankind to their detestation, the mild glories of his five predecessors to the ignominious fate of Nero and Domitian.

Yet Commodus was not, as he has been represented, a tiger born with an insatiate thirst of human blood, and capable, from his infancy, of the most inhuman actions. Nature had formed him of a weak rather than a wicked disposition. His simplicity and timidity rendered him the slave of his attendants, who gradually corrupted his mind. His cruelty, which at first obeyed the dictates of others, degenerated into habit, and at length became the ruling passion of his soul.

Upon the death of his father, Commodus found himself embarrassed with the command of a great army, and the conduct of a difficult war against the Quadi and Marcomanni. The servile and profligate youths whom Marcus had banished soon regained their station and influence about the new Emperor. They exaggerated the hardships and dangers of a campaign in the wild countries beyond the Danube; and they assured the indolent prince that the terror of his name and the arms of his lieutenants would be sufficient to complete the conquest of the dismayed barbarians, or to impose such conditions as were more advantageous than any conquest. By a dexterous application to his sensual appetites they compared the tranquillity, the splendor, the refined pleasures of Rome with the tumult of a Pannonian camp, which afforded neither leisure nor materials for luxury. Commodus listened to the pleasing advice, but while he hesitated between his own inclination and the awe which he still retained for his father's counsellors, the summer insensibly elapsed, and his triumphal entry into the capital was deferred till the autumn. His graceful person, popular address, and imagined virtues attracted the public favor; the honorable peace which he had recently granted to the barbarians diffused a universal joy; his impatience to revisit Rome was fondly ascribed to the love of his country; and his dissolute course of amusements was faintly condemned in a prince of nineteen years of age.

During the three first years of his reign the forms, and even the spirit, of the old administration were maintained by those faithful counsellors to whom Marcus had recommended his son, and for whose wisdom and integrity Commodus still entertained a reluctant esteem. The young prince and his profligate favorites revelled in all the license of sovereign power; but his hands were yet unstained with blood; and he had even displayed a generosity of sentiment which might perhaps have ripened into solid virtue.[47] A fatal incident decided his fluctuating character.

One evening, as the Emperor was returning to the palace through a dark and narrow portico in the Amphitheatre, an assassin, who waited his passage, rushed upon him with a drawn sword, loudly exclaiming, "The senate sends you this." The menace prevented the deed; the assassin was seized by the guards, and immediately revealed the authors of the conspiracy. It had been formed, not in the state, but within the walls of the palace. Lucilla, the Emperor's sister, and widow of Lucius Verus, impatient of the second rank, and jealous of the reigning empress, had armed the murderer against her brother's life. She had not ventured to communicate the black design to her second husband, Claudius Pompeianus, a senator of distinguished merit and unshaken loyalty; but among the crowd of her lovers—for she imitated the manners of Faustina—she found men of desperate fortunes and wild ambition, who were prepared to serve her more violent as well as her tender passions. The conspirators experienced the rigor of justice, and the abandoned princess was punished, first with exile, and afterward with death.

But the words of the assassin sunk deep into the mind of Commodus, and left an indelible impression of fear and hatred against the whole body of the senate. Those whom he had dreaded as importunate ministers he now suspected as secret enemies. The delators, a race of men discouraged and almost extinguished under the former reigns, again became formidable, as soon as they discovered that the Emperor was desirous of finding disaffection and treason in the senate. That assembly, whom Marcus had ever considered as the great council of the nation, was composed of the most distinguished of the Romans; and distinction of every kind soon became criminal. The possession of wealth stimulated the diligence of the informers; rigid virtue implied a tacit censure of the irregularities of Commodus; important services implied a dangerous superiority of merit; and the friendship of the father always insured the aversion of the son. Suspicion was equivalent to proof; trial to condemnation. The execution of a considerable senator was attended with the death of all who might lament or revenge his fate, and when Commodus had once tasted human blood he became incapable of pity or remorse.

Of these innocent victims of tyranny none died more lamented than the two brothers of the Quintilian family, Maximus and Condianus, whose fraternal love has saved their names from oblivion and endeared their memory to posterity. Their studies and their occupations, their pursuits and their pleasures, were still the same. In the enjoyment of a great estate they never admitted the idea of a separate interest: some fragments are now extant of a treatise which they composed in common; and in every action of life it was observed that their two bodies were animated by one soul. The Antonines, who valued their virtues and delighted in their union, raised them, in the same year, to the consulship; and Marcus afterward intrusted to their joint care the civil administration of Greece, and a great military command, in which they obtained a signal victory over the Germans. The kind cruelty of Commodus united them in death.

The tyrant's rage, after having shed the noblest blood of the senate, at length recoiled on the principal instrument of his cruelty. While Commodus was immersed in blood and luxury, he devolved the detail of the public business on Perennis, a servile and ambitious minister, who had obtained his post by the murder of his predecessor, but who possessed a considerable share of vigor and ability. By acts of extortion and the forfeited estates of the nobles sacrificed to his avarice he had accumulated an immense treasure. The praetorian guards were under his immediate command; and his son, who already discovered a military genius, was at the head of the Illyrian legions. Perennis aspired to the empire; or what, in the eyes of Commodus, amounted to the same crime, he was capable of aspiring to it, had he not been prevented, surprised, and put to death.

The fall of a minister is a very trifling incident in the general history of the empire; but it was hastened by an extraordinary circumstance, which proved how much the nerves of discipline were already relaxed. The legions of Britain, discontented with the administration of Perennis, formed a deputation of fifteen hundred select men, with instructions to march to Rome and lay their complaints before the Emperor. These military petitioners, by their own determined behavior, by inflaming the divisions of the guards, by exaggerating the strength of the British army, and by alarming the fears of Commodus, exacted and obtained the minister's death, as the only redress of their grievances. This presumption of a distant army, and their discovery of the weakness of government, were a sure presage of the most dreadful convulsions.

The negligence of the public administration was betrayed, soon afterward, by a new disorder, which arose from the smallest beginnings. A spirit of desertion began to prevail among the troops; and the deserters, instead of seeking their safety in flight or concealment, infested the highways. Maternus, a private soldier, of a daring boldness above his station, collected those bands of robbers into a little army, set open the prisons, invited the slaves to assert their freedom, and plundered with impunity the rich and defenceless cities of Gaul and Spain. The governors of the provinces, who had long been the spectators, and perhaps the partners, of his depredations, were at length roused from their supine indolence by the threatening commands of the Emperor. Maternus found that he was encompassed, and foresaw that he must be overpowered. A great effort of despair was his last resource. He ordered his followers to disperse, to pass the Alps in small parties and various disguises, and to assemble at Rome, during the licentious tumult of the festival of Cybele. To murder Commodus, and to ascend the vacant throne, were the ambition of no vulgar robber. His measures were so ably concerted that his concealed troops already filled the streets of Rome. The envy of an accomplice discovered and ruined this singular enterprise in the moment when it was ripe for execution.

Suspicious princes often promote the last of mankind from a vain persuasion that those who have no dependence, except on their favor, will have no attachment, except to the person of their benefactor. Cleander, the successor of Perennis, was a Phrygian by birth; of a nation over whose stubborn but servile temper blows only could prevail. He had been sent from his native country to Rome, in the capacity of a slave. As a slave he entered the imperial palace, rendered himself useful to his master's passions, and rapidly ascended to the most exalted station which a subject could enjoy. His influence over the mind of Commodus was much greater than that of his predecessor; for Cleander was devoid of any ability or virtue which could inspire the Emperor with envy or distrust.

Avarice was the reigning passion of his soul and the great principle of his administration. The rank of consul, of patrician, of senator, was exposed to public sale; and it would have been considered as disaffection if anyone had refused to purchase these empty and disgraceful honors, with the greatest part of his fortune. In the lucrative provincial employments the minister shared with the governor the spoils of the people. The execution of the laws was venal and arbitrary. A wealthy criminal might obtain not only the reversal of the sentence by which he was justly condemned, but might likewise inflict whatever punishment he pleased on the accuser, the witnesses, and the judge.

By these means Cleander, in the space of three years, had accumulated more wealth than had ever yet been possessed by any freedman. Commodus was perfectly satisfied with the magnificent presents which the artful courtier laid at his feet in the most seasonable moments. To divert the public envy, Cleander, under the Emperor's name, erected baths, porticoes, and places of exercise for the use of the people. He flattered himself that the Romans, dazzled and amused by this apparent liberality, would be less affected by the bloody scenes which were daily exhibited; that they would forget the death of Byrrhus, a senator to whose superior merit the late Emperor had granted one of his daughters; and that they would forgive the execution of Arrius Antoninus, the last representative of the name and virtues of the Antonines. The former, with more integrity than prudence, had attempted to disclose, to his brother-in-law, the true character of Cleander. An equitable sentence pronounced by the latter, when proconsul of Asia, against a worthless creature of the favorite proved fatal to him. After the fall of Perennis, the terrors of Commodus had for a short time assumed the appearance of a return to virtue. He repealed the most odious of his acts, loaded his memory with the public execration, and ascribed to the pernicious counsels of that wicked minister all the errors of his inexperienced youth. But his repentance lasted only thirty days; and, under Cleander's tyranny, the administration of Perennis was often regretted.

Pestilence and famine contributed to fill up the measure of the calamities of Rome. The first could be only imputed to the just indignation of the gods; but a monopoly of corn, supported by the riches and power of the minister, was considered as the immediate cause of the second. The popular discontent, after it had long circulated in whispers, broke out in the assembled Circus. The people quitted their favorite amusements for the more delicious pleasure of revenge, rushed in crowds toward a palace in the suburbs, one of the Emperor's retirements, and demanded, with angry clamors, the head of the public enemy. Cleander, who commanded the praetorian guards, ordered a body of cavalry to sally forth and disperse the seditious multitude. The multitude fled with precipitation toward the city; several were slain, and many more were trampled to death; but when the cavalry entered the streets their pursuit was checked by a shower of stones and darts from the roofs and windows of the houses.

The foot-guards, who had been long jealous of the prerogatives and insolence of the praetorian cavalry, embraced the party of the people. The tumult became a regular engagement, and threatened a general massacre. The praetorians at length gave way, oppressed with numbers; and the tide of popular fury returned with redoubled violence against the gates of the palace, where Commodus lay, dissolved in luxury, and alone unconscious of the civil war. It was death to approach his person with the unwelcome news. He would have perished in this supine security had not two women, his eldest sister Fadilla, and Marcia, the most favored of his concubines, ventured to break into his presence. Bathed in tears, and with dishevelled hair, they threw themselves at his feet, and, with all the pressing eloquence of fear, discovered to the affrighted Emperor the crimes of the minister, the rage of the people, and the impending ruin which, in a few minutes, would burst over his palace and person. Commodus started from his dream of pleasure and commanded that the head of Cleander should be thrown out to the people. The desired spectacle instantly appeased the tumult; and the son of Marcus might even yet have regained the affection and confidence of his subjects.

But every sentiment of virtue and humanity was extinct in the mind of Commodus. While he thus abandoned the reins of empire to these unworthy favorites, he valued nothing in sovereign power except the unbounded license of indulging his sensual appetites. The influence of a polite age and the labor of an attentive education had never been able to infuse into his rude and brutish mind the least tincture of learning; and he was the first of the Roman emperors totally devoid of taste for the pleasures of the understanding. Nero himself excelled, or affected to excel, in the elegant arts of music and poetry; nor should we despise his pursuits, had he not converted the pleasing relaxation of a leisure hour into the serious business and ambition of his life. But Commodus, from his earliest infancy, discovered an aversion to whatever was rational or liberal, and a fond attachment to the amusements of the populace; the sports of the Circus and Amphitheatre, the combats of gladiators, and the hunting of wild beasts. The masters in every branch of learning, whom Marcus provided for his son, were heard with inattention and disgust, while the Moors and Parthians, who taught him to dart the javelin and to shoot with the bow, found a disciple who delighted in his application, and soon equalled the most skilful of his instructors in the steadiness of the eye and the dexterity of the hand.

The servile crowd, whose fortune depended on their master's vices, applauded these ignoble pursuits. The perfidious voice of flattery reminded him that by exploits of the same nature, by the defeat of the Nemaean lion, and the slaughter of the wild boar of Erymanthus, the Grecian Hercules had acquired a place among the gods and an immortal memory among men. They only forgot to observe that in the first ages of society, when the fiercer animals often dispute with man the possession of an unsettled country, a successful war against those savages is one of the most innocent and beneficial labors of heroism. In the civilized state of the Roman Empire the wild beasts had long since retired from the face of man and the neighborhood of populous cities. To surprise them in their solitary haunts and to transport them to Rome that they might be slain in pomp by the hand of an emperor was an enterprise equally ridiculous for the prince and oppressive for the people.

Ignorant of these distinctions, Commodus eagerly embraced the glorious resemblance and styled himself (as we still read on his medals) the Roman Hercules. The club and the lion's hide were placed by the side of the throne, among the ensigns of sovereignty, and statues were erected in which Commodus was represented in the character and with the attributes of the god whose valor and dexterity he endeavored to emulate in the daily course of his ferocious amusements.

Elated with these praises, which gradually extinguished the innate sense of shame, Commodus resolved to exhibit before the eyes of the Roman people those exercises which till then he had decently confined within the walls of his palace and to the presence of a few favorites. On the appointed day the various motives of flattery, fear, and curiosity attracted to the Amphitheatre an innumerable multitude of spectators; and some degree of applause was deservedly bestowed on the uncommon skill of the imperial performer. Whether he aimed at the head or heart of the animal, the wound was alike certain and mortal. With arrows whose point was shaped into the form of a crescent Commodus often intercepted the rapid career and cut asunder the long, bony neck of the ostrich.

A panther was let loose, and the archer waited till he had leaped upon a trembling malefactor. In the same instant the shaft flew, the beast dropped dead, and the man remained unhurt. The dens of the Amphitheatre disgorged at once a hundred lions: a hundred darts from the unerring hand of Commodus laid them dead as they ran raging round the arena. Neither the huge bulk of the elephant nor the scaly hide of the rhinoceros could defend them from his stroke. AEthiopia and India yielded their most extraordinary productions; and several animals were slain in the Amphitheatre which had been seen only in the representations of art or perhaps of fancy. In all these exhibitions the securest precautions were used to protect the person of the Roman Hercules from the desperate spring of any savage, who might possibly disregard the dignity of the Emperor and the sanctity of the god.

But the meanest of the populace were affected with shame and indignation when they beheld their sovereign enter the lists as a gladiator, and glory in a profession which the laws and manners of the Romans had branded with the justest note of infamy.[48] He chose the habit and arms of the secutor, whose combat with the retiarius formed one of the most lively scenes in the bloody sports of the Amphitheatre. The secutor was armed with a helmet, sword, and buckler; his naked antagonist had only a large net and a trident; with the one he endeavored to entangle, with the other to despatch his enemy. If he missed the first throw, he was obliged to fly from the pursuit of the secutor till he had prepared his net for a second cast.