VII The Ascetic and the More Practical Schools of Teaching
The members of the Christian Brotherhood were not left without guidance as to their behaviour in the world of Rome. There were two schools among the Christian teachers of authority in the primitive Church.
The one which we will term the school of “Rigourists” or “ascetics” found a brilliant and able exponent in the stern African Father, Tertullian, who taught and wrote in the latter years of the second and the earlier years of the third centuries. From the burning and impassioned words of this famous African teacher we can form a generally accurate idea of what was taught and pressed home in the school of “Rigourists.”
No compromise was ever suggested by these hard, stern teachers—no “via media” was even hinted at.
The artisan must forsake his calling if it even was connected in the most remote degree with idol-worship,77 with the games loved of the people, with anything which appeared antagonistic to any of the Master’s commands. These words must be understood in their strict literal sense, and must be obeyed.
The soldier must abandon his colours, the civil servant his profession. The slave must at all risks refuse his obedience when that obedience involved acquiescence in any form of idolatry. The Christian wife, the son or daughter in a pagan family, must gently but firmly decline to share even in the formal ancestral worship, or to be present at the public games of the arena, or the performances in the theatre. In their dress and ornaments, in their very language, in their hours of play and work, they must hold themselves aloof. We may picture to ourselves how in many a pagan household, in the Forum, in the army and civil service, gentle, pitying men and women would be found who would shield and shelter these seemingly fanatical and earnest adherents of a despised religion; but in many cases there would be no loving, pitying ones who would strive to throw a kindly veil over what seemed to them such strange, such unpatriotic and even disloyal conduct. Then would assuredly follow arrest—imprisonment—exile—the deadly mines, where the condemned toiled in a hopeless, dreary captivity. Not unfrequently torture and death would be the guerdon of the devoted Christian under circumstances of awful pain and mortal agony.
It is out of this class that the martyrs mostly came. It was to embolden and encourage these that the little known “Schools of Martyrdom” were formed, where very earnest Christians were trained to endure all and suffer for the Name’s sake.78
The ascetics, however, were in the minority. There was another school in the primitive Church, strict certainly in its instructions, but more ready to make allowances; less uncompromising in its views of the everyday Christian life; less literal in its interpretation of the Divine Master’s words.
This gentler and more practical school is well represented in the works still preserved to us of several of the great teachers of early Christianity. A very conspicuous example of this school of teaching is the famous Dialogue put together by the North African Latin writer, Minucius Felix. The generally received date of the writing is circa A.D. 160, in the reign of the Emperor Marcus Antoninus. It is a work of peculiar charm. One scholar terms it “a golden Book”; another (Renan) styles it “the pearl of Apologetic literature.”
It is cast in the form of a dialogue held by three persons on the then beautiful seashore of Ostia. The speakers are real historic characters of some rank and position in the Roman world in the middle years of the second century. The arguments adduced by the pagan Cæcilius are supposed to be a reproduction of a lost work of Fronto, the tutor and friend of the Emperor Marcus. The refutation of Octavius the wealthy Christian merchant, which follows and which convinced Cæcilius of the truth of the new faith, is the principal piece in the work and the part to which reference is specially made here, and it admirably voices many of the views of the second and gentler school of early Christianity. The criticism of Renan on the view of Christianity taken by Octavius is striking, and fairly accurate. It is, he says, “the conception of the new religion of amiable advocates wishful to enrol in the Christian ranks, men of culture and position. Such men as the Octavius of the Dialogue would never have written the Gospels or the Apocalypse; but, on the other hand, without such liberal interpreters, the Gospels, the Apocalypse, and the Epistles of Paul would have never penetrated beyond the circle of a narrow sect, and in the long run the sect of Christians would have disappeared.” “Minucius Felix,” the great French writer, goes on to say, “represented in those early years the preacher of Nôtre Dâme (in Paris) in our own time, addressing men of the world.”79
Christianity, in the eloquent presentment of Octavius, by no means requires the believer to put aside the philosophers and pagan writers whose works he admired. In the argument of Octavius, Christian teaching lives in the pages of Aristotle and Plato. He points out with rare skill and ingenuity that the new religion makes no claim on men to give up their callings and professions; for instance, advocates like Minucius, the author of “the Dialogue,” never dream, save in times of vacation, of leaving the Forum the scene of their life-work. Christians, like other men, busy themselves with the same occupations; so society may surely accept them without any scruples. The cultivation of Art—the study of Letters—are by no means incompatible with the profession of Christianity. The religion of Jesus uses all these things, and using them sanctifies them.
Eminent teachers, such as Clement of Alexandria at the close of the second century in his Pædagogus, give directions to believers to enable them to live a Christian life in the world. Origen, in many respects a “Rigourist,” is far from emulating Tertullian in his stern denunciations and warnings; and even such men as the saintly Cyprian, who closed his beautiful life by a voluntary martyrdom, shows by his own example that there were even times and seasons when a Christian by flight might rightly avoid arrest and suffering for the Name’s sake.
In this gentler, more accommodating school it was clear that heathen art was not forbidden. The decoration of even the earlier sepulchral chambers in the Roman catacombs plainly indicates this freedom.
That this policy of the gentler school of early teaching, which countenanced, perhaps suggested, many allowances, especially in matters of purely ceremonial idolatry, was adopted by the majority of believers, is clear from the numbers of Christians who we know lived in the imperial court, served in the army, and occupied positions in the civil service.
For instance, in the imperial court, in the days of S. Paul, we meet with salutations from Christians in Cæsar’s household (Phil. iv. 22).
The well-known “graffito” on the Palatine, of the caricature of a crucifix, is an indication that there were Christians among the imperial pages in the reign of Marcus,80 A.D. 161–80.
Irenæus (iv. 30) in the last quarter of the second century expressly writes as follows: “And what of those who in the royal palace are believers?”
Marcia, the favourite of Commodus, if not a Christian, was more than kind to the Christian sect; that many Christians were in her circle is certain. Even Tertullian testifies (Apol. xxxvi.) to the fact that there were Christians in the palace of the Emperor Septimius Severus, A.D. 193–212.
In the court of Alexander Severus (A.D. 222–35) were many Christians; and it has been supposed, not without some reason, that the Emperor himself was secretly a believer.
Dionysius, bishop of Alexandria (quoted in Euseb. H. E. vii. 10), writing of the favourable disposition of the Emperor Valerian towards Christians in the earlier part of his reign, A.D. 253, says: “All his house (court) was filled with pious persons; it was indeed a congregation of the Lord.”
In the first part of Diocletian’s reign, A.D. 284–96, the court of Nicomedia was in great measure composed of Christians; the wife and daughter of the Emperor were believers.
From this chain of references to the presence of Christians in the imperial court from the days of S. Paul to the latter years of the third century, we are compelled to conclude that large allowances on the part of the Emperor were not unfrequently made to the sect, and even that not a few concessions outwardly to take part in the ceremonies of official paganism must have been allowed to the Christian courtier all through the period when Christianity was an unlawful and forbidden religion.
In the army a similar spirit of mutual allowance and concession must have been often shown. It is clear that from the very first there were not a few Christian soldiers in the Legions. There must have been many cases in which the superior officers connived at the scruples of Christian soldiers; while, on the other hand, the Christian Legionary must have consented generally to share in the more public and official ceremonies in which the old worship of the gods was inextricably mixed up. Nowhere were the difficulties, however, for believers more acute than in the army, and the slightest ill-will or pagan bigotry on the part of the superior officer made the position of a Christian soldier absolutely untenable even when the soldier belonged to what we have termed the gentler and more accommodating school of Christian teaching. Martyrs in the army, it has been noticed, were relatively more numerous than in the civil callings.81
The civil service contained undoubtedly many Christians in the early centuries of the era; see Aristides (Apol. xv.), who, writing of Christians, says: “Where they are judges they judge righteously.” Tertullian refers to the presence of Christians in all ranks, and states how “they could be found in the palace, in the Senate, and in the Forum” (Ad. Nat. i. 1 and Apol. i.). Cyprian, Ep. lxxx. 1, and other early authorities could be quoted here. Eus. H. E. viii. 1, specially mentions how provinces were occasionally ruled by Christian governors, and calls attention to a Phrygian city whose whole population including officials were Christians. He was writing of the last years of the third century. Such Christian officials must have had great allowances made to them, and they must have often availed themselves of the licence permitted to believers on the occasion of purely State ceremonials, which were literally permeated with references to the old State religion.
Instances and examples from the Old Testament books were adduced by the teachers of the gentler school of Christian life in support of the allowances made to believers to retain their court appointments and civil service offices, and to carry on their professions in spite of the idolatrous associations connected with these offices and callings.
Great saints such as Daniel—revered patriarchs such as Joseph—had been ministers of mighty idol-worshipping sovereigns, and must have been present at and given a certain countenance to official pagan ceremonies. Naaman, the eminent servant of the King of Syria, after he had accepted the worship of the God of Israel, even asked the great prophet Elisha permission to accompany his royal master into the temple of the god Rimmon, and to pay obeisance to the Syrian idol on State occasions; and asked that he might be forgiven for this apparent act of idolatry. In reply, Elisha simply bade him “go in peace” (2 Kings v. 18–19).
But in spite of these kindly allowances, these gentler rules and directions, the condition of Christians, even for those, and they certainly were in the majority, who followed the teaching of the more kindly and lenient school, was very hard and difficult. In the family life—in public life, the searchings of heart of a true believer must have been often very acute and distressing, and their position most precarious; and in those times when a wave of pagan fanaticism swept over the imperial court, the province, or the city, no maxims of earthly prudence and caution, however carefully followed out, would have been able to save them from prosecution; and prosecution was invariably followed by the breaking up of their homes, by rigorous imprisonment, confiscation of their property, loss of rank and position, too often by torture and death.
To turn once more to the sterner and smaller school of “Rigourists,” for these, after all, were “les âmes d’élite” of the Christians in the first three centuries; in later times such men and women possibly were termed fanatics, they have been often branded as wild and unpractical persons; but it was to these heroic souls after all that in great measure Christianity owed its final victory.
The wonderful and rapid spread of Christianity noticeable after the Milan toleration Edict of Constantine, A.D. 313, has often been commented upon with surprise. From being a persecuted and despised cult, Christianity became, long before the fourth century had run its course, the religion of the Empire; it had previously gained evidently the hearts of the people in well-nigh all the provinces of the mighty Empire.
Now no imperial edicts—no mere favour and patronage of the Emperor and his court, could ever have won for Christianity that widespread and general acceptance among the people so noticeable within fifty years of the Milan proclamation of Constantine.82 Something more was needed. For a little over two hundred years the Christians had been sowing the seeds of a new and nobler view of life—“it had gradually taught the supreme sanctity of love—it had presented an ideal destined for centuries to draw around it all that was greatest as well as all that was noblest on earth; and one great cause of its success was that it produced more heroic actions and formed more upright men than any other creed.... Noble lives crowned by heroic deaths were the best arguments of the infant Church.”83
There is no doubt but that a deep impression had been gradually made upon the masses (i.e. the people generally of the Empire) by the undaunted behaviour under suffering, of the confessors in the two centuries which followed the death of Peter and Paul; and this impression was deepened by the events connected with the last terrible persecution of Diocletian. The extent of this last onslaught, the awful severity of its edicts, the fearful thoroughness with which these edicts were carried out, the numbers, the constancy and brave patience of the confessors, went home to the hearts of the indifferent; it affected even the enemies of the Church, and brought about a complete revulsion of feeling towards the once hated and despised sect.
And it must be remembered that the examples of the marvellous endurance of suffering, the constancy, the brave patience, the heroic deaths, were drawn in a vast majority of conspicuous cases from the school of Rigourists, from that company of men and women of intense, perhaps of exaggerated earnestness, who listened to and obeyed the burning words of a Tertullian or an Hippolytus, rather than to the gentler counsels of a Minucius Felix and the teachers who pointed out to Christians a way of living in the world which only rarely required such tremendous sacrifices as home and family, career and profession, even life itself—things very dear to men.
Surely no just historian would dare to speak slightingly of these splendid lives of utter sacrifice of self, when he reflects on the power which such lives have exercised over their fellow-men. The debt which Christianity owes to this stern school of Rigourists is simply measureless.
In the last half of the third century there arose a Christian poet—the first great songman who had appeared since the famous singers of the Augustan age had passed away. The popularity of Prudentius has been enduring; for centuries in many lands his striking and original poems have been read and re-read. Among his poems the most eagerly sought after have been the hymns descriptive of and in praise of the martyrs for the “Name’s” sake. These loved poems are known as “Peri-Stephanôn”—the Book of the (Martyrs’) Crowns.
It is the halo of glory surrounding these martyrs or confessors that especially strikes the historian. We see in these popular poems what a profound, what a lasting impression the sufferings of the martyrs had made on the peoples of the Roman Empire. The saint-sufferers, men or women, became soon an object of something more than reverence.
The heroic personages of Prudentius belong to no one land, to no solitary nationality. Nowhere was the truth of the well-known saying that “the blood of the martyr was the seed of the Church” more conspicuously exemplified than in the songs of Prudentius. It has been remarked with great force and truth that in the burning lilts of this great Spanish poet of the later years of the fourth century, we must perforce recognize something more than the inspiration of a solitary individual. We seem to hear in his impassioned words the echoes of the voice of the people.84