CHAPTER I. EARLY PERSECUTIONS
In an endeavour to trace the Inquisition to its source it is not necessary to go as far back into antiquity as went Paramo; nor yet is it possible to agree with him that God Himself was the first inquisitor, that the first “Act of Faith” was executed upon Adam and Eve, and that their expulsion from Eden is a proper precedent for the confiscation of the property of heretics.*
[* Paramo, “De Origine et Progressu Sanctae Inquisitionis,” .]
Nevertheless, it is necessary to go very far back indeed; for it is in the very dawn of Christianity that the beginnings of this organization are to be discovered.
There is no more lamentable lesson to be culled from history than that contained in her inability to furnish a single instance of a religion accepted with unquestioning sincerity and fervour which did not, out of those very qualities, beget intolerance. It would seem that only when a faith has been diluted by certain general elements of doubt, that only when a certain degree of indifference has crept into the observance of a prevailing cult, does it become possible for the members of that cult to bear themselves complacently towards the members of another. Until this comes to pass, intolerance is the very breath of religion, and — when the power is present — this intolerance never fails to express itself in persecution.
Deplorable as this is in all religions, in none is it so utterly anomalous as in Christianity, which is established upon tenets of charity, patience, and forbearance, and which has for cardinal guidance its Founder’s sublime admonition— “Love one another!”
From the earliest days of its history, persecution has unfailingly signalized the spread of Christianity, until to the thoughtful observer Christianity must afford the grimmest, the saddest — indeed, the most tragic — of all the paradoxes that go to make up the history of civilized man.
Its benign gospel of love has been thundered forth in malign hatred; its divine lesson of patience and forbearance has been taught in murderous impatience and bloodthirsty intolerance; its mild tenets of mercy and compassion have been ferociously expounded with fire and sword and rack; its precepts of humility have been inculcated with a pride and arrogance as harsh as any that the world has known.
It is impossible to deny that at almost any time in the history of Christianity the enlightened pagan of the second century would have been justified of his stinging gibe— “Behold how these Christians love one another!”
It may even be said of the earliest Christians that it was largely through their own intolerance of the opinions and beliefs of others that they brought upon themselves the persecutions to which through three centuries they were intermittently subjected. Certain it is that they were the first to disturb the toleration which in polytheistic Rome was accorded to all religions. They might have pursued their cult unmolested so long as they accorded the same liberty to others. But by the vehemence with which they denounced false all creeds but their own, they offended the zealous worshippers of other gods, and so disturbed the peace of the community; by denying obedience to the state in which they dwelt, by refusing to bear arms for the Empire on the plea of “Nolo militare; militia mea est ad Dominum!” they provoked the resentment of the law. When driven, by the beginnings of persecution, to assemble and celebrate their rites in secret, this very secrecy became the cause of further and sharper proceedings against them. Their mysteriousness evoked suspicion, and surmise sprang up to explain it. Very soon there was levelled against them the charge from which hardly any cult that celebrates in secret has been exempt. It was put abroad that they practised abominations, and that they engaged in the ritual murder of infants. Public opinion, ever credulous where evil is the subject, was still further inflamed against them, and fresh and greater disorders were the result. Thus they came to be denounced for atheism, insubordination, and subversion of public order.
The severity dealt out to them by a state hitherto indifferent — through the agnosticism prevalent in the ruling classes — to the religious opinions of its citizens, was dictated by the desire to suppress an element that had become socially perturbative, rather than by any vindictiveness or intolerance towards this new cult out of Syria.
Under Claudius we see the Nazarenes expelled from Rome as disturbers of the public peace; under Nero and Domitian we see them, denounced as hostes publici, suffering their first great persecution. But that persecution on purely religious grounds was repugnant to the Roman is shown by the conduct of Nerva, who forbade delations and oppressions on the score of belief, and recalled the Christians who had been banished. His successor, the just and wise Trajan, provoked perhaps by the fierce insurrection of the Jews which occurred in his reign, moved against the Nazarenes at first, but later on afforded them complete toleration. Similarly were they unmolested by the accomplished Adrian, who, indeed, so far approved of their creed as to have notions of including Christ in the Roman Pantheon; and they were left in peace by his successor Antoninus, notwithstanding that the last was so attached to the faith of his country and to the service of the gods as to have earned for himself the surname of Pius.
With the accession of the philosopher-emperor Marcus Aurelius, who was rendered hostile to the new doctrine not only by his own stoical convictions, but also because politically he viewed the Christians with disfavour, came the next great persecution; and persecution was their portion thereafter for some sixty years, under four reigns, until the accession of Alexander Severus in the third decade of the third century of the Christian era.
Alexander’s mother, Julia Mannea, is believed to have been instructed in the new doctrine by Origen, the Alexandrian, although her conversion to Christianity and her ideas upon it do not appear to be greatly in advance of those of Adrian, for she is said to have included an image of Christ in the group of beneficent deities set up in her lararium.*
[* Possibly the images of the Saviour prevalent in the third century may have contributed to the apparent fitness of this. For at this epoch — and for some three hundred years after — these images embodied the Greek ideas of divinity; they represented Christ as a youth of superb grace and beauty, and they appear largely to have been founded upon the conceptions of Orpheus. Indeed, in one representation which has survived, we see Him as a beardless adolescent, seated upon a mountain, grasping an instrument with whose music he has charmed the wild beasts assembled below. Another picture in the catacombs (included in the illustrations of Didron’s “Iconographie Chrétienne”), representing Him as the Good Shepherd, depicts a vigorous youth, beardless and with short hair, in a tunic descending to the knees; His left hand supporting a lamb which is placed across His shoulders, His right holding a shepherd’s pipe.
That such pictures were not accepted as portraits by the fathers, but merely as idealistic representations, is clear from the disputes which arose in the second century (and were still alive in the eighteenth) on the subject of Christ’s personal appearance. St. Justin argued that to render His sacrifice more touching He must have put on the most abject of human shapes; and St. Cyril, also holding this view, uncompromisingly pronounced Him “the ugliest of the sons of men.” But others, imbued with the old Greek notions that beauty was in itself a mark of divinity, protested: “If He is not beautiful, then He is not God.”
St. Augustine formally states that no knowledge existed in his day (the fourth century) of the features of either the Saviour or His Mother: “Nam et ipsius Dominicse facies carnis, innumerabilium cogitationum diversitate vatiatur et fingitur, quae tamen una erat, quaecumque erat...Neque enim novimus faciem Virginis Mariae. Nee novimus omnino, nee credimus” (“De Trinitate,” lib. viii. ca).
It is clear, therefore, that the two miraculous portraits were not known in St. Augustine’s time — i.e. the Veronica, or the Holy Face (which is preserved at St. Peter’s, Rome), and another portrait of similar origin, which it was alleged Christ had, Himself, impressed upon a cloth and sent to Abgarus, Prince of Edessa (as related by St. John of Damascus, in the eighth century). To preserv
e it, Abgarus glued the cloth upon wood, and thus it came later to Constantinople and thence to Rome, where it is still believed to be treasured in the Church of St. Sylvester in Capite.
These portraits, and still more a letter purporting to have been written to the Roman Senate by Lentulus (who was pro-consul in Judea before Herod) and believed to have been forged to combat the generally repugnant theory that Christ was ugly and deformed (“sine decore et specie “), supply the materials for the representations with which we are to-day familiar. That letter contained the following description:
“At this time there appeared a man who is still living and who is gifted with great power. His name is Jesus Christ. His disciples call him the Son of God; others consider him a mighty prophet...He is tall of stature and his countenance is severe and full of power, so that to look upon him is to love and to fear him. The hair of his head is of the colour of wine; as far as the roots of the ears it is dull and straight, but from the ears to the shoulders it is curled and glossy; from the shoulders it falls over the back, divided into two parts, after the manner of the Nazarenes. His brow is pure and level; his countenance is without blemish and delicately tinted; his expression is gentle and gracious; his nose and mouth are of perfect beauty; his beard is copious, of the colour of his hair, and forked. His eyes are blue and extremely bright. His face is of marvellous grace and majesty. None has ever seen him laugh, but rather weeping. Erect of body, he has long, straight hands and beautiful arms. In speech he is grave and weighty, and sparing of words. He is the most beautiful of the sons of men (Pulcherrimus vultu inter homines satos).”
It is clear, however, that there was no knowledge either of this description or of the miraculous portraits mentioned as late as the fourth and fifth centuries, during which Christ continued to be represented as the lithe, beardless adolescent. And it is no doubt by these representations that Michelangelo was inspired to present Christ in “The Last Judgment” in a manner so unusual and startling to modern eyes.
Similarly there were no portraits of the Virgin Mary, and it is fairly established that none came into existence until after the Council of Ephesus, and that some seven pictures attributed to St. Luke — four of which are in Rome — are the work of an eleventh-century Florentine painter named Luca.
Whilst on the subject it may be added that the crucifix, as the emblem of Christianity, was not introduced until the seventh century, when it was established by the Quinisexte Council at Constantinople. Its nature rendered its earlier adoption dangerous, if not impossible; since — as the familiar Roman gallows — it was liable to provoke the scorn and derision of the people.
For further information on this subject see Emeric-David, “Histoire de la Peinture,” A. N. Didron, “Iconographie Chrétienne,” and Marangoni, “Istoria della Capella di Sancta Sanctorum.”]
For twenty years the Christians now knew peace and enjoyed the fullest liberty. Upon that followed a period of severe oppression, initiated by Decius, continued by Valerian and Aurelian, and reaching something of a climax under Diocletian, in the dawn of the fourth century, when the Christians endured the cruellest and most ferocious of all these persecutions. But the end of their sufferings was at hand, and with the accession of Constantine in 312 a new era began for Christianity. Constantine, upheld by the Christians as their saviour, in admitting the inevitable predominance which the new religion had obtained in rather less than three hundred years, was compelled to recognize the rights of its votaries not only to existence but to authority.
Legends surround the history of this emperor. The most popular relates how, when he was marching against Maxentius, his rival for the throne, desponding in the consciousness of his own inferior force, there appeared at sunset a fiery cross in the heavens with the inscription EN TOTTO NIKA — IN THIS SIGN YOU CONQUER. And it is claimed that as a consequence of this portent, whose injunction he obeyed, he sought instruction in Christianity, was baptized and made public avowal of that faith. Others maintain that he was reared in Christianity by his mother, St. Helena — she who made an expedition to the Holy Land to recover the true cross, and who is said to have built the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem; whilst others still assert that Constantine did not receive baptism until at the point of death, and that throughout his life, whilst undoubtedly favouring Christians, he continued in the pagan religion in which he had been educated by his father.
The truth probably lies midway. During the early years of his reign Constantine not only pursued a middle course, according religious liberty to all sects, but, himself, whilst leaning strongly towards Christianity, retained his imperial dignity of High-priest of the polytheistic Roman cult, and the title “Pontifex Maximus,” which later — together with so much else of pagan origin — was appropriated by the Christians and bestowed upon their chief bishop. But in 313-14 he refused to celebrate the ludi seculares, and in 330 he issued an edict forbidding temple-worship, whilst the Christian Council of Nicaea, in 325, was held undoubtedly under his auspices.
From the very moment that the new religion found itself recognized and invested not only with civil rights but actually with power, from the very moment that the Christian could rear his head and go openly and unafraid abroad, from that very moment do we find him engaging in persecutions against the votaries of other cults — against pagan, Jew, and heretic. For although Christianity was but in the beginning of the fourth century of its existence, not only had it spread irresistibly and mightily in spite of the repressive measures against it, but it was already beginning to know dismemberment and divisions in its own body. Indeed, it has been computed that the number of schisms in the fourth century amounted to no less than ninety.
Of these the most famous is that of Arius, a priest of Alexandria, who denied that Christ was God Incarnate, accounting Him no more than divinely inspired, the first and the highest of the sons of men. Although already denounced by the Synod that met at Alexandria in 321, so great had been the spread of this doctrine that the Oecumenical Council of Niceea was convoked especially to deal with it. It was then condemned as heretical, and the Articles of Faith were defined and set down in the Nicene Creed, which is recited to this day.
Other famous heresies were the Manichsean, the Gnostic, the Adamite, the Severist, and the Donatist; and to these were soon to be added, amongst others, the Pelagian and the Priscilliantist.
Perhaps the Manichaeans’ chief claim to celebrity lies in the fact that the great St. Augustine of Tagaste, when he abandoned the disorders of his youth, entered Christianity through this sect, which professed a form of it vitiated by Sun-worship and Buddhism.
The other heresies — with the exception of the Pelagian — were, in the main, equally fantastic. The Gnostic heresy, with its many subdivisions, was made up of mysticism and magic, and founded upon Zoroastrian notions of dualism, of the two powers of good and evil, light and darkness. To the power of evil it attributed all creation save man, whose soul was accounted of divine substance. The Adamites claimed to be in the state of original innocency of Adam before the fall; they demanded purity in their followers, rejected marriage, which they urged could never have come into existence but for sin, and they expelled from their Church all sinners against their tenets, even as Adam and Eve had been expelled from Eden. The Severists denied the resurrection of the flesh, would not accept the acts of the apostles, and carried purity to fantastic lengths. The Soldiers of Florinus denied the Last Judgment, and held it as an undeniable truth that the resurrection of the flesh lay entirely in reproduction.
The Pelagians were the followers of Pelagius, a British monk who settled in Rome towards the year 400, and his heresy at least was founded upon rational grounds. He denied the doctrine of original sin, maintained that every human being was born in a state of innocency, and that his perseverance in virtue depended upon himself. He found numerous followers, and for twenty years the conflict raged between Pelagians and the Church, until Pope Zosimus declared against them and banished Pelagius from Rome
.
From Constantine onwards Christianity steadily maintains her ascendancy, and her earliest assertion of her power is to bare the sword of persecution, oblivious of the lofty protests against it which she, herself, had uttered, the broad and noble advocacy of tolerance which she had urged in the days of her own affliction. We find Optatus urging the massacre of the Donatists — who claimed that theirs was the true Church — and Constantine threatening with the stake any Jew who should affront a Christian and any Christian who should become a Jew. We find him demolishing the churches of the Arians and Donatists, banishing their priests and forbidding under pain of death the propagation of their doctrines.
The power of Christianity suffered one slight check thereafter, under the tolerant rule of Julian the Apostate, who reopened the pagan temples and restored the cult of the old gods; but it rose again to be finally and firmly established under Theodosius in 380.
Now we see the pagan temples not only closed, but razed to the ground, the images broken and swept away, their worship, and even private sacrifice, forbidden under pain of death. From Libanius we may gather something of the desolation which this spread among the pagan peasant-folk. Residing at a distance from the great centres where doctrines were being expounded, they found themselves bereft of the old gods and without knowledge of the new. Their plight is a far more pathetic one than that of the Arians, Manichseans, Donatists, and all other heretics against whom there was a similar enactment.
It is now, at this early date, that for the first time we come across the title “Inquisitor of the Faith,” in the first law* promulgated to render death the penalty of heresy. It is now that we find the great Augustine of Tagaste — the mightiest genius that the Church has brought forth — denouncing religious liberty with the question, “Quid est enim pejor, mors animae quam libertas erroris?”* * and strenuously urging the death of heretics on the ground that it is a merciful measure, since it must result in the saving of others from the damnation consequent upon their being led into error. Similarly he applauded those decrees of death against any one pursuing the polytheism that but a few generations earlier had been the official religion of the Roman Empire.
Collected Works of Rafael Sabatini Page 621
