Callista : a Tale of the Third Century

by John Henry Newman

  It was indeed as Jucundus had hinted; a new policy, a new era was comingupon Christianity, together with the new emperor. Christians had hithertobeen for the most part the objects of popular fury rather than of imperialjealousy. Nero, indeed, from his very love of cruelty, had taken pleasurein torturing them: but statesmen and philosophers, though at timesperplexed and inconsistent, yet on the whole had despised them; and thesuperstition of priests and people, with their "Christianos ad leones,"had been the most formidable enemy of the faith. Accordingly, atrocious asthe persecution had been at times, it had been conducted on no plan, andhad been local and fitful. But even this trial had been suspended, withbut few interruptions, during the last thirty, nay, fifty years. Sofavourable a state of things had been more or less brought about by asuccession of emperors, who had shown an actual leaning to Christianity.While the vigorous rule of the five good emperors, as they are called, hadhad many passages in its history of an adverse character, those whofollowed after, being untaught in the traditions, and strangers to thespirit of old Rome, foreigners, or adventurers, or sensualists, wereprotectors of the new religion. The favourite mistress of Commodus is evensaid to have been a Christian; so is the nurse of Caracalla. The wretchedHeliogabalus, by his taste for Oriental superstitions, both weakened theinfluence of the established hierarchy, and encouraged the toleration of afaith which came from Palestine. The virtuous Alexander, who followed him,was a philosopher more than a statesman; and, in pursuance of thesyncretism which he had adopted, placed the images of Abraham and our Lordamong the objects of devotion which his private chapel contained. What istold us of the Emperor Philip is still more to the point: the gravestauthorities report that he was actually a Christian; and, since it cannotbe doubted that Christians were persuaded of the fact, the leaning of hisgovernment must have been emphatically in their favour to account for sucha belief. In consequence, Christians showed themselves without fear; theyemerged from the catacombs, and built churches in public view; and, thoughin certain localities, as in the instance of Africa, they had sufferedfrom the contact of the world, they spread far and wide, and faith becamethe instrument at least of political power, even where it was wanting incharity, or momentarily disowned by cowardice. In a word, though Celsus ahundred years before had pronounced "a man weak who should hope to unitethe three portions of the earth in a common religion," that commonCatholic faith had been found, and a principle of empire was created whichhad never before existed. The phenomenon could not be mistaken; and theRoman statesman saw he had to deal with a rival. Nor must we suppose,because on the surface of the history we read so much of the vicissitudesof imperial power, and of the profligacy of its possessors, that thefabric of government was not sustained by traditions of the strongesttemper, and by officials of the highest sagacity. It was the age oflawyers and politicians; and they saw more and more clearly that ifChristianity was not to revolutionize the empire, they must follow out theline of action which Trajan and Antoninus had pointed out.

  Decius then had scarcely assumed the purple, when he commenced that newpolicy against the Church which was reserved to Diocletian, fifty yearslater, to carry out to its own final refutation. He entered on his powerat the end of the year 249; and on the January 20th following, the day onwhich the Church still celebrates the event, St. Fabian, Bishop of Rome,obtained the crown of martyrdom. He had been pope for the unusually longspace of fourteen years, having been elected in consequence of one ofthose remarkable interpositions of Divine Providence of which we now andthen read in the first centuries of the Church. He had come up to Romefrom the country, in order to be present at the election of a successor toPope Anteros. A dove was seen to settle on his head, and the assembly roseup and forced him, to his surprise, upon the episcopal throne. Afterbringing back the relics of St. Pontian, his martyred predecessor, fromSardinia, and having become the apostle of great part of Gaul, he seemeddestined to end his history in the same happy quiet and obscurity in whichhe had lived; but it did not become a pope of that primitive time to dieupon his bed, and he was reserved at length to inaugurate in his ownperson, as chief pastor of the Church, a fresh company of martyrs.

  Suddenly an edict appeared for the extermination of the name and religionof Christ. It was addressed to the proconsuls and other governors ofprovinces; and alleged or implied that the emperors, Decius and his son,being determined to give peace to their subjects, found the Christiansalone an impediment to the fulfilment of their purpose; and that, byreason of the enmity which those sectaries entertained towards the gods ofRome,--an enmity which was bringing down upon the world multipliedmisfortunes. Desirous, then, above all things, of appeasing the divineanger, they made an irrevocable ordinance that every Christian, withoutexception of rank, sex, or age, should be obliged to sacrifice. Those whorefused were to be thrown into prison, and in the first instance submittedto moderate punishments. If they conformed to the established religion,they were to be rewarded; if not, they were to be drowned, burned alive,exposed to the beasts, hung upon the trees, or otherwise put to death.This edict was read in the camp of the praetorians, posted up in theCapitol, and sent over the empire by government couriers. The authoritiesin each province were themselves threatened with heavy penalties, if theydid not succeed in frightening or tormenting the Christians into theprofession of paganism.

  St. Fabian, as we have said, was the first-fruits of the persecution, andeighteen months passed before his successor could be appointed. In thecourse of the next two months St. Pionius was burned alive at Smyrna, andSt. Nestor crucified in Pamphylia. At Carthage some perplexity and delaywere occasioned by the absence of the proconsul. St. Cyprian, its bishop,took advantage of the delay, and retired into a place of concealment. Thepopulace had joined with the imperial government in seeking his life, andhad cried out furiously in the circus, demanding him "ad leonem," for thelion. A panic seized the Christian body, and for a while there were farmore persons found to compromise their faith than to confess it. It seemedas if Aristo's anticipation was justified, that Christianity was losingits hold upon the mind of its subjects, and that nothing more was neededfor those who had feared it, than to let it die a natural death. And atSicca the Roman officials, as far as ever they dared, seemed to act onthis view. Here Christians did no harm, they made no show, and there waslittle or nothing in the place to provoke the anger of the mob or tonecessitate the interference of the magistrate. The proconsul's absencefrom Carthage was both an encouragement and an excuse for delay; and henceit was that, though we are towards the middle of the year 250, and theedict was published at Rome at its commencement, the good people of Siccahad, as we have said, little knowledge of what was taking place in thepolitical world, and whispered about vague presages of an intendedmeasure, which had been in some places in operation for many months.Communication with the seat of government was not so very frequent orrapid in those days, and public curiosity had not been stimulated by thefacilities of gratifying it. And thus we must account for a phenomenon,which we uphold to be a fact in the instance of Sicca, in the early summerof A.D. 250, even though it prove unaccountable, and history has nothingto say about it, and in spite of the _Acta Diurna_.

  The case, indeed, is different now. In these times, newspapers, railroads,and magnetic telegraphs make us independent of government messengers. Theproceedings at Rome would have been generally and accurately known in afew seconds; and then, by way of urging forward the magistracy, a questionof course would have been asked in the parliament of Carthage by themember for Sicca, or Laribus, or Thugga, or by some one of the pagani, orcountry party, whether the popular report was true, that an edict had beenpromulgated at Rome against the Christians, and what steps had been takenby the local authorities throughout the proconsulate to carry out itsprovisions. And then the "Colonia Siccensis" would have presented somegood or bad reason for the delay: that it arose from the absence of theproconsul from the seat of government, or from the unaccountable loss ofthe despatch on its way from the coast; or, perhaps, on the other hand,the
under-secretary would have maintained, amid the cheers of hissupporters, that the edict had been promulgated and carried out at Siccato the full, that crowds of Christians had at once sacrificed, and that,in short, there was no one to punish; assertions which at that moment weretoo likely to be verified by the event.

  In truth, there were many reasons to make the magistrates, both Roman andnative, unwilling to proceed in the matter, till they were obliged. Nodoubt they one and all detested Christianity, and would have put it down,if they could; but the question was, when they came to the point, _what_they should put down. If, indeed, they could have got hold of theringleaders, the bishops of the Church, they would have tortured andsmashed them _con amore_, as you would kill a wasp; and with the greaterwarmth and satisfaction, just because it was so difficult to get at them.Those bishops were a set of fellows as mischievous as they were cowardly;they would not come out and be killed, but they skulked in the desert, andhid in masquerade. But why should gentlemen in office, opulent and happy,set about worrying a handful of idiots, old, or poor, or boys, or women,or obscure, or amiable and well-meaning men, who were but a remnant of aformer generation, and as little connected with the fanatics of Carthage,Alexandria, or Rome, as the English freemasons may seem to be with theirnamesakes on the continent? True, Christianity was a secret society, andan illegal religion; but would it cease to be so when those harmless orrespectable inhabitants of the place had been mounted on the rack or thegibbet?

  And then, too, it was a most dangerous thing to open the door to popularexcitement;--who would be able to shut it? Once rouse the populace, and itwas all over with the place. It could not be denied that the bigoted andignorant majority, not only of the common people, but of the betterclasses, was steeped in a bitter prejudice, and an intense, though latent,hatred of Christianity. Besides the antipathy which arose from theextremely different views of life and duty taken by pagans and Christians,which would give a natural impulse to persecution in the hearts of theformer, there were the many persons who wished to curry favour at Romewith the government, and had an eye to preferment or reward. There was thepagan interest, extended and powerful, of that numerous class which wasattached to the established religions by habit, position, interest, or theprospect of advantage. There were all the great institutions orestablishments of the place; the law courts, the schools of grammar andrhetoric, the philosophic _exedrae_ and lecture-rooms, the theatre, theamphitheatre, the market--all were, for one reason or another, opposed toChristianity; and who could tell where they would stop in their onwardcourse, if they were set in motion? "Quieta non movenda" was the motto ofthe local government, native and imperial, and that the more, because itwas an age of revolutions, and they might be most unpleasantly compromisedor embarrassed by the direction which the movement took. Besides, Deciuswas not immortal; in the last twelve years eight emperors had been cutoff, six of them in a few months; and who could tell but the successor ofthe present might revert to the policy of Philip, and feel no thanks tothose who had suddenly left it for a policy of blood.

  In this cautious course they would be powerfully supported by theinfluence of personal considerations. The Roman _officia_, the citymagistrates, the heads of the established religions, the lawyers, and thephilosophers, all would have punished the Christians, if they could; butthey could not agree whom to punish. They would have agreed with greatsatisfaction, as we have said, to inflict condign and capital punishmentupon the heads of the sect; and they would have had no objection, ifdriven to do something, to get hold of some strangers or slaves, who mightbe a sort of scapegoats for the rest; but it was impossible, when theyonce began to persecute, to make distinctions, and not a few of them hadrelations who were Christians, or at least were on that border-land whichthe mob might mistake for the domain of Christianity--Marcionites,Tertullianists, Montanists, or Gnostics. When once the cry of "the gods ofRome" was fairly up, it would apply to tolerated religions as well as toillicit, and an unhappy votary of Isis or Mithras might suffer, merelybecause there were few Christians forthcoming. A duumvir of the place hada daughter whom he had turned out of his house for receiving baptism, andwho had taken refuge at Vacca. Several of the decurions, the _tabularius_of the district, the _scriba_, one of the exactors, who lived in Sicca,various of the retired gentry, whom we spoke of in a former chapter, andvarious _attaches_ of the praetorium, were in not dissimilar circumstances.Nay, the priest of Esculapius had a wife, whom he was very fond of, who,though she promised to keep quiet, if things continued as they were,nevertheless had the madness to vow that, if there were any severeproceedings instituted against her people, she would at once come forward,confess herself a Christian, and throw water, instead of incense, upon thesacrificial flame. Not to speak of the venerable man's tenderness for her,such an exposure would seriously compromise his respectability, and, as hewas infirm and apoplectic, it was a question whether Esculapius himselfcould save him from the shock which would be the consequence.

  The same sort of feeling operated with our good friend Jucundus. He wasattached to his nephew; but, be it said without disrespect to him, he wasmore attached to his own reputation; and, while he would have beenseriously annoyed at seeing Agellius exposed to one of the panthers of theneighbouring forest, or hung up by the feet, with the blood streaming fromhis nose and mouth, as one of the dogs or kids of the market, he wouldhave disliked the _eclat_ of the thing still more. He felt both anger andalarm at the prospect; he was conscious he did not understand his nephew,or (to use a common phrase) know where to find him; he was aware that agreat deal of tact was necessary to manage him; and he had an instinctivefeeling that Juba was right in saying that it would not do to threaten himwith the utmost severity of the law. He considered Callista's hold on himwas the most promising quarter of the horizon; so he came to a resolutionto do as little as he could personally, but to hold Agellius's head, asfar as he could, steadily in the direction of that lady, and to see whatcame of it. As to Juba's assurance that Agellius was not a Christian atheart, it was too good news to be true; but still it might be only ananticipation of what would be, when the sun of Greece shone out upon him,and dispersed the remaining mists of Oriental superstition.

  In this state of mind the old gentleman determined one afternoon to leavehis shop to the care of a slave, and to walk down to his nephew, to judgefor himself of his state of mind; to bait his hook with Callista, and tosee if Agellius bit. There was no time to be lost, for the publication ofthe edict might be made any day; and then disasters might ensue which noskill could remedy.