Member of the French Academy.
page | |
INTRODUCTION | i-xvi |
CHAPTER I. | |
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PAUL CAPTIVE AT ROME | 1 |
CHAPTER II. | |
PETER AT ROME | 13 |
CHAPTER III. | |
CONDITION OF THE CHURCH OF JUDEA—DEATH OF JAMES | 22 |
CHAPTER IV. | |
FINAL ACTIVITY OF PAUL | 35 |
CHAPTER V. | |
THE APPROACH OF THE CRISIS | 53 |
CHAPTER VI. | |
THE BURNING OF ROME | 60 |
CHAPTER VII. | |
MASSACRE OF THE CHRISTIANS—THE ÆSTHETICS OF NERO | 76 |
CHAPTER VIII. | |
DEATH OF ST PETER AND ST PAUL | 91 |
THE DAY AFTER THE CRISIS | 98 |
CHAPTER X. | |
THE REVOLUTION IN JUDEA | 111 |
CHAPTER XI. | |
MASSACRES IN SYRIA AND IN EGYPT | 125 |
CHAPTER XII. | |
VESPASIAN IN GALILEE—THE TERROR AT JERUSALEM—FLIGHT OF THE CHRISTIANS |
134 |
CHAPTER XIII. | |
THE DEATH OF NERO | 154 |
CHAPTER XIV. | |
PLAGUES AND PROGNOSTICS | 165 |
CHAPTER XV. | |
THE APOSTLES IN ASIA | 174 |
CHAPTER XVI. | |
THE APOCALYPSE | 193 |
CHAPTER XVII. | |
THE FORTUNE OF THE BOOK | 229 |
CHAPTER XVIII. | |
THE ACCESSION OF THE FLAVII | 244 |
CHAPTER XIX. | |
DESTRUCTION OF JERUSALEM | 255 |
APPENDIX | 282 |
After the three or four years of the public life of Jesus, the period which the present volume embraces wise the moat extraordinary the whole development of Christianity. We shall see by a strange play of that grand unconscious artist who seems to preside over the apparent caprices of history, Jesus and Nero, the Christ and the Antichrist, opposed and facing each other, if I dare say it, like Heaven and Hell. The Christian conscience is complete. Up till now it has scarcely known to do ought but love; the persecutions of the Jews, although bitter enough, have been unable to change the bond of affection and recognition which the budding church keeps within its heart for its mother the synagogue, from which she is scarcely separated. Now the Christian has somewhat to hate. In front of Jesus there appears a monster who is the ideal of evil even as Jesus is the ideal of good. Reserved like Enoch or like Elias to play a part in the final tragedy the universe, Nero completes the Christian mythology, inspires the first sacred book of the new canon, founds, by a hideous massacre, the primacy of of the Roman Church, and prepares the revolution which shall make Rome a Holy City, a second Jerusalem. At the same time, by one of those mysterious coincidences which are not rare in the moments of the great crises of humanity, Jerusalem is destroyed, the temple disappears, Christianity, disembarrassed from what has been irksome to it, emancipates itself more and more, and follows outside of conquered Judaism its own destinies.
The last epistles of St. Paul, the Epistle to the Hebrews, the epistles attributed to Peter and James, and the Apocalypse among the canonical writings the principal documents of this history. The first epistle of Clemens Romanus, Tacitus and Josephus furnish us also with valuable indications. On a large umber of points, notably on the death of the Apostles and the relations of John with Asia, our picture will remain in semi-obscurity; upon others we shall be able to concentrate real rays of light. The material facts of the Christian origins are almost all obscure; what is clear is the ardent enthusiasm, the superhuman boldness, the sublime contempt for reality which makes this movement the most powerful effort towards the ideal whose memory has been preserved to us.
In the introduction to our St. Paul we have discussed the authenticity of all
the epistles which have been attributed to the Great Apostle. The four epistles
which are connected with this volume, the epistles to the Philippians,
Colossians, Philemon and the Ephesians are those which suggest certain doubts.
The objections raised against the epistle to the Philippians are of such little
value that we need scarcely dwell upon them. We have seen and we shall see in
what follows that the
What we are about to say of the Epistle to the Colossians, and especially of the
Epistle to the Ephesians, must be said with stronger reason of the first epistle
attributed to St. Peter and the epistles attributed to James and Jude. The second epistle, attributed to Peter,
is certainly apocryphal. We recognise at the first glance an artificial
composition, an imitation composed of scraps of apostolic writings, especially from
the Epistle of Jude. We do not dwell upon this point, for
The first
As to the eclectic and conciliatory tendencies which we observe in the Epistle of Peter, they only constitute an objection for those who, with Christian Baur and his pupils, represent the diversity between Peter and Paul as an absolute opposition. If the hatred between the two parties in primitive Christianity had been as deep as this school believes, the reconciliation would never have been made. Peter was not an obstinate Jew like James. It is not necessary in writing this history to consider only the pseudo-Clementine Homilies and the Epistle to the Galatians. It is necessary to take take account of the Acts of the Apostles. The art of the historian should consist in presenting things in a manner which should in nothing lessen the divisions of parties (these divisions were deeper than we can imagine), and which, nevertheless, permits of explaining how such divisions have been able to weld themselves into a fine unity.
The Epistle of James presents itself to criticism very nearly under the same
conditions as the Epistle of Peter. The difficulties of detail which can be
opposed to that have not much importance. What is serious is that general
objection drawn from the facility of the suppositions of
A consideration which I have found favourable to these writings (the 1st Epistle of Peter, the Epistles of James and Jude), very rigorously excluded by a certain criticism, is the fashion in which they are adapted to an organically received recital. While the 2nd Epistle attributed to Peter; the pretended Epistles of Paul to Timothy and Titus, are excluded from the limits of a logical history, the three epistles which we have named enter these, so to speak, of themselves. The features of circumstances which one meets there seem anticipative of facts known through evidence from without, and are embraced in it. The Epistle of Peter answers well to what we know, especially through Tacitus, as to the situation of the Christians at Rome about the year 63 or 64. The Epistle of James, on the other hand, is the perfect picture of the state of the Ebionim, at Jerusalem in the years which preceded the revolt. Josephus gives us some statements of the some kind. The hypothesis which attributes the Epistle of James to a James different from the Lord’s brother has no advantage. This epistle, it is true, was not admitted in the first centuries in a manner as unanimous as that of Peter; but the motives for these hesitations appear to have been rather dogmatic than critical; the small taste of the Greek fathers for the Judeo-Christian writings was the principal cause of it.
A remark that at least applies with clearness to the small apostolic writings of
which we speak is that they had been composed before the fall of Jerusalem. That
event introduced into the situation of Judaism and Christianity such changes
that one can easily discern a writing subsequent to the catastrophe of the year
70, from a writing contemporaneous with the third temple. Pictures evidently
relating to the anterior struggles among the different classes of Jerusalem
society, like that which the Epistle of James presents to us (
As to the author himself, his ruling feature is a perpetual use of the Scriptures, a subtle and allegorical exegesis, a most copious Greek style, very classical, a little dry, but at least as natural as that of most of the apostolic writings. He has a medium acquaintance with the worship which is practised at Jerusalem, and yet this cult inspires him with much pre-possession. He only uses the Alexandrian version of the Bible, and he founds some arguments upon the errors of Greek copyists. He is not a Jerusalem Jew; he is a Hellenist in sympathy with Paul’s school. The author, in short, does not give himself out for an immediate hearer of Jesus, but for a hearer of those who had seen Jesus—for a spectator of the apostolic miracles, and the first manifestations of the Holy Spirit. He no less holds an elevated rank in the Church; he speaks with authority; he is much respected by the brethren to whom he writes. Timothy appears to be subordinate to him. The single fact of addressing an epistle to a great Church indicates an important man, one of those personages who figure in the apostolic history, and whose name is celebrated.
All this, nevertheless, is not sufficient for us to pronounce with certainty
as to the author of our epistle. It has been attributed, with more or less likelihood, to Barnabas, Luke, Silas, Apollo, and to
The determination of the Church addressed may be made with as much likelihood.
The circumstances which we have enumerated scarcely permit of any choice but
between the Church of Rome and that of Jerusalem. The title Πρὸς Ἐβραίους makes
us think at once of the Church at Jerusalem, but it is impossible to be stopped
by each a thought. Some passages—such as
A single
difficulty remains to be solved: Why the title of the epistle Πρὸς Ἐβραίους?
Let us recall the fact that these titles are not always of apostolic origin,
that they have sometimes been inserted later and falsely, as we have seen in the
epistle called Πρὸς Ἐφεσίους. The epistle called to the Hebrews was written
under the blow of persecution to the Church which was the most persecuted. In
many passages (for example,
From whet city was the Epistle to the Hebrews written? It is more difficult to
say. The expression Οἱ ἀπὸ τῆς Ἰταλίας shows that the author was out of Italy.
One thing again, certainly, is that the town from which the epistle was written
was a great city where there was a colony of Christians from Italy closely
allied with those of Rome. These Christians of Italy were probably believers who
escaped in the persecution of the year 64. We shall see that the current of
Christian emigration fleeing from these terrors of Nero was directed towards
Ephesus. The Church of Ephesus, besides, had had for the nucleus of its
primitive formation two Jews come from Rome, Aquila and Priscilla; it remained
always in direct relation with Rome. We are, therefore, led to believe that the
epistle in question was written from Ephesus.
Let us discuss first this second hypothesis, for it is the easier to dispose of.
The John who speaks, or who is reputed to speak in the Apocalypse, expresses
himself with such vigour, supposes so clearly that he will be known, and that
people will have no difficulty in distinguishing him from any of his namesakes;
he knows so well the secrets of the Churches, he enters into them with such a
resolute air, that they can scarcely refuse to see in him an apostle or an
ecclesiastical dignitary all along the line. Now, John the Apostle had not in
the second half of the first century any namesake who approached him in rank.
Although M. Hitzig speaks of John Mark, he has really no place here, and was
never on relations so intimate with the Churches of Asia that he should dare to
address them in this tone. There remains a doubtful personage, that Presbyteros
Johannes, a sort of likeness of the Apostle, who troubles like a spectre all the
history of the Church of Ephesus, and causes critics so much embarrassment.
Although the existence of this personage has been denied, and although we cannot
peremptorily refute the hypothesis of those who see in him a shade of the
Apostle John taken for a reality, we incline to believe that Presbyteros
Johannes had, in fact, a separate identity; but that he had written the Apocalypse in 68
or 69, as M. Ewald still maintains, we absolutely deny. Such a personage would be
known otherwise than by an obscure passage of Papias and an apologetic thesis of Dionysius of Alexandria. We should find his name in the Gospels, in the
Acts, or in some epistle. We should we
If the ἐγὼ Ἰωάννης of the first chapter of the Apocalypse is sincere, the
Apocalypse is then most assuredly by the Apostle John. But the essence of
apocalypses is to be pseudonymous. The authors of the Apocalypses of Daniel, Enoch, Baruch, and Esdras
represent themselves as being Daniel, Enoch, Baruch, and Esdras in person. The Church of the second century
admitted upon the same footing as the Apocalypse of John an Apocalypse of Peter,
which was decidedly apocryphal. If, in the Apocalypse which has remained
canonical, the author gives his true name, there is there a surprising exception
to rules of the kind. Well, that exception we believe must be admitted. An
essential difference, indeed, separates the canonical Apocalypse from the other
analogous writings which have been preserved to us. The greater number of the
apocalypses are attributed to authors who have flourished, or have been reputed
to flourish five or six hundred years—sometimes thousands of years back. In the second century they attributed apocalypses
to the men of the apostolic century. The Shepherd and the pseudo-Clementine
writings are 50 or 60 years later than the personages to whom they are
attributed. The Apocalypse of Peter was probably in the same position; at
least, nothing proves that it had anything special, topical, or personal. The
canonical Apocalypse, on the contrary, if it is pseudonymous, would have been
attributed to the Apostle John, in his lifetime, or a very short time after his death. Were it not for first three chapters, that would be barely possible;
The critical examination of the book, far from weakening this hypothesis,
strongly maintains it. John the Apostle appears to have been after James the
most ardent of the Judeo-Christians; the Apocalypse, on its side, breathes out
a terrible hatred against Paul, and against those who were relaxed in their
observance of the Jewish law. The book answers wonderfully to the violent
fanatical character which seems to have been that of John. It is indeed the work
of the “son of thunder” the terrible Boanerges, of him who wished that the name
of his master might be used only by those who belonged to the circle of the most
strict of the disciples; of him who, if he could, would have made fire and
brimstone to rain on the inhospitable Samaritans. The description of the heavenly
court, with its quite material pomp of thrones and crowns, is indeed that of him
who, when young, had set his ambition on being seated, with his brother, on
thrones to the right and left of the Messiah. The two grand prepossessions of
the author of the Apocalypse are Rome (
The language of the Apocalypse is likewise a reason for attributing the book to a member of the Church of Jerusalem. That language is quite apart from the other writing. of the New Testament. There is no doubt that the work has been written in Greek; but it is a Greek thought out in Hebrew, and which could be only understood and appreciated by people who knew Hebrew. The author has fed upon prophecies and apocalypses prior to his own to a degree which is astonishing; he evidently knows them by heart. He is familiar with the Greek version of the Sacred Books; but it is in the Hebrew texts the Biblical passages present themselves to him. What a difference from the style of Paul, Luke, or the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews, or even the synoptical Gospels! A man having passed some years at Jerusalem in the schools which surrounded the Temple could alone be impregnated to that extent with the Bible, or participate thus in a lively manner in the passions of the revolutionary people, and in its hopes and its hatred against the Romans.
Lastly, a circumstance which must not be neglected is that the Apocalypse
presents some features which are in sympathy with the fourth Gospel and with the
epistles attributed to John. Thus the expression ὁ λόγος τοῦ θεοῦ so
characteristic of the fourth Gospel is found, for the first time, in the
Apocalypse. The image of “living waters” is common to the two works. The
expression Lamb of God in the fourth Gospel recalls the expression of the Lamb
which is common in the Apocalypse as designating Christ. The two books apply to the Messiah, the
passage in
This persistent protestation, which constitutes a fact so important in
ecclesiastical history, is it really of considerable weight in the eyes of
independent critics! We cannot tell. Certainly Dionysius of Alexandria is right
when he establishes that the same man could not have written the fourth Gospel
and the Apocalypse. But, placed in this dilemma, modern criticism has replied
quite otherwise than the criticism of the third century. The authenticity of the
Apocalypse has appeared to it more admissible than that of the Gospel, and if in
the Johannine work it were necessary to give a share to this problematical presbyteros, it is indeed less the Apocalypse than the Gospel and the epistles
which might properly be attributed to him. What motive could these adversaries
of Montanism in the third and fourth centuries, those Christians educated in the
Hebrew schools of Alexandria, Cesarea, and Antioch, have to deny that the author
of the Apocalypse was the Apostle John? A tradition, a souvenir preserved in the
churches? In no degree. Their motives were motives of theology, a priori. At first
the attribution of the Apocalypse to the Apostle made it nearly impossible for
an educated and sensible man to admit the authenticity of the fourth gospel, and they would have believed
that they were giving up Christianity if they doubted the authenticity of this
latter document. Besides, the vision attributed to John would appear an
unceasing source of renewed errors; it went forth in perpetual recrudensces of
Judeo-Christianity, of intemperate prophecy, of audacious millenarianism? What
reply could one make to the Montanists and mystics of the same kind, disciples
quite consistent with the Apocalypse, and to those troops of enthusiasts who ran
to martyrdom, intoxicated as they were by the strange poetry of the old book
The reasons which led to the attribution of the Apocalypse to the Apostle John
remain therefore very strong, and I believe that the person who shall read our
statement will be struck with the manner in which everything, in this
hypothesis, is explained and connected. But, in a world where the ideas of
literary ownership were so different from those of our days, a work could belong
to an author in many ways. Did the Apostle John himself write the manifesto
of the year 69? We may certainly doubt that. It is sufficient for our argument
that he had cognizance of it, and that having approved it, he had seen it,
without displeasure, passing from hand to hand under his name. The
If we admit the hypothesis of which we have spoken, and according to which John rather accepted the Apocalypse as his, than written it with his own hand, we obtain another advantage, that is, of explaining how the book was so little known during the three-quarters of a century which followed its composition. It is probable that the author, after the year 70, seeing Jerusalem taken, the Flavii solemnly established, the Roman Empire reconstituted, and the world determined to last, in spite of the term of three years and a-half he had assigned to it, himself arrested the publicity of his work. The Apocalypse, in fact, only attained its complete importance in the middle of the second century, when millenarianism became a subject of discord in the Churches, and especially when the persecution gave some meaning and reference to the invectives pronounced against the Beast. The future of the Apocalypse was then attached to the alternatives of peace and trials which passed over the Church. Every persecution gave it a fresh popularity; it was when the persecutions were over that the book ran through real dangers, and we see it on the point of being expelled from the canons as a lying and seditious pamphlet.
Two traditions whose plausibility I have admitted in this volume,
viz., the coming of Peter to Rome and the residence of John at Ephesus, having
given cause for great controversies, I have made them the subject of an appendix
at the end of the volume. I have specially discussed the recent memoir of M.
Scholten the sojourn of the apostles in Asia as carefully as all the writings of the eminent Dutch critic deserve. The
conclusions at which I have arrived, and which I only hold, besides, as
probable, will certainly call forth, as did the use I have made of the fourth
Gospel in writing the Life of Jesus, the disdain of a young presumptuous
school, in whose eyes every statement is proved if it is negative, and which
treats peremptorily as ignorant those who do not admit its exaggerations at first
sight. I beg the serious reader to believe that I respect him enough to neglect
nothing which can serve to the discovery of the truth in the order of studies
which I undertake. But I hold, as a principle, that history and dissertation
should be distinct from each other. History ought not to be written until after scholarship has
In regard to this volume, as in regard to the preceding, I owe much to the ever-ready scholarship and to the inexhaustible kindness of my learned confreres and friends, MM. Egger, Léon Renier, Derenbourg, Waddington, Bossier, de Longpérier, de Witte, Le Blant, Dulaurier, who have been quite willing that I should consult them constantly upon points connected with their special studies. M. Neubauer has reviewed the Talmudic portion. In spite of his labours in the Chamber M. Noel Parfait has been desirous not to discontinue his labours as an accomplished corrector. Lastly, I ought to express my extreme gratitude to MM. Amari, Pietro Rosa, Fabio Gori, Fiorelli, Minervini, and de Luca, who, during a journey in Italy which I made last year, were the most invaluable of guides to me.
We shall see how this journey will connect itself on many sides with the subject
of the present volume. Although I had already known Italy, I was longing to
salute once more that land of great memories, the learned mother of all
Renaissance. According to a Rabbinical legend, there was at Rome during that
long mourning of beauty which is called the middle ages an antique statue
preserved in a secret place, and so beautiful that the Romans came by night to kiss it by stealth. The
I should not conceal that the taste for history, the incomparable delight which
one feels in seeing the spectacle of humanity unrolled, has especially
enthralled me in this volume. I have had too much pleasure preparing it to ask for any other reward than that of having done so. Often
I have reproached myself with so much enjoyment of it in my study while poor country is consuming itself
in a prostrated agony, but I have had a tranquil conscience. At the time of the
elections of 1869, I offered myself to the suffrages of my fellow citizens; all my addresses bore
in large letters: “No Revolution; no War; a war will be as fatal as a revolution.” In the month of September, 1870, I implored the enlightened spirits
of Germany and Europe to think of the frightful misfortunes which were threatening
civilization. During the siege in Paris, in the month in November, 1870, I
exposed myself to much unpopularity by counselling the calling together of an Assembly having powers to
treat for peace. At the the elections of 1871 I replied to the overtures which were made to
me: “Such a mandate can be neither sought for nor refused.” After the re-establishment of order I applied as much attention as I could
to the reforms which I considered the most urgent to save our country. I have therefore done what
I could. We owe our country to be sincere with here; we are not obliged to apply charlatanism to make her accept
our services or agree with our ideas. Yet perhaps this volume, although addressed above all
to the curious and the artistic, will contain much instruction. We shalt see crime pushed
to its height, and the protest of the saints raised in the most sublime accents—such
a spectacle shall not be without religious fruit. I never believed so thoroughly that
religion is not a subjective duping of our nature, that it responds to an
exterior reality, and that he who shall have followed its inspirations will have been the best inspired. To simplify religion is not to shake, it
is often to fortify it. The little Protestant sects of our own day, like budding
Christianity, are there to prove it. The great error of Catholicism is to
believe that it can struggle against the progress of materialism with a
complicated dogmatism, encumbering itself every day with a fresh addition of the
marvellous. People cannot longer bear a religion founded on miracles; but such a
religion might be very living still if it took a part of the dose of positivism
which has entered into the intellectual temperament of the working classes. The
people who have charge of souls should reduce dogma as much as possible, and make out of worship a means of moral education, of beneficent
association. Beyond the family and outside of the State man has need of the
Church. The United States of America could not have made their wonderful
democracy last but through their innumerable sects. If, as one might suppose,
Ultramontane Catholicism cannot succeed longer in the great cities in drawing
people to its temples, there needs only the individual initiative created by the
little centres where the weak find lessons, moral succour, patronage, and
sometimes material assistance. Civil society, whether it calls itself a commune,
a canton or a province, a State or father land, has many duties towards the improvement of
the individual; but what it does is necessarily limited. The family ought to do
much more, but often it is insufficient; some tunes it is wanting altogether.
The association created in the name of moral principle can alone give to every man coming into this world a
THE ANTICHIRIST.
The times were strange, and perhaps the human race had never passed through a more extraordinary crisis. Nero was in his twenty-fourth year. The head of this wretched young man, placed by a wicked mother at the age of seventeen at the head of the world, finished by losing itself. For a long time some indications had disquieted those who knew him. His was a terribly declamatory mind, a bad, hypocritical, light, and vain nature; an incredible compound of false intelligence, deep wickedness, atrocious and cunning egotism, with unheard of refinements of subtlety; to make of him that monster who has no equal in history, and whose analogue is only found in the pathological annals of the scaffold, special circumstances were necessary. The school of crime in which he had grown up, the execrable influence of his mother, the obligation by which that abominable woman made him nearly begin life as a parricide, caused him soon to look on the world as a horrible comedy in which he was the principal actor. At the time we have reached, he has completely withdrawn himself from the philosophers his masters; he has killed nearly all his relations, and set the most shameful follies in the fashion; a portion of Roman society, by his example, has gone down to the last degree of depravity. The ancient harshness had reached its height; the reaction of popular and just instincts began. At the time when Paul entered Rome, the story of the day was this:—
Pedanius Secundus, prefect of Rome, a consular
Perhaps among these four hundred innocents, destroyed in virtue of an odious
law, there had been more than one Christian. Men had touched the bottom of the
abyss of evil; they could only re-ascend. Certain moral facts of a singular kind
took place even in the most elevated ranks of society. Four years before this
there had been much talk of an illustrious lady, Pomponia Græcina, wife of
Aulius Plautius, the first conqueror of Britain. They accused her of “foreign
superstition.” She always dressed in black, and never ceased her austerity. They
attributed this melancholy to some horrible recollections, especially to the
death of Julia, daughter of Drusus, her intimate friend, whom Messalina had put
to death; one of her sons appears also to have been the victim of one of Nero’s
most monstrous enormities. But it was evident that Pomponia Græcina bore in her
heart a deeper sorrow, and perhaps some mysterious hopes. She was remitted
according to the ancient custom to her husband’s judgment. Plautius assembled
the relatives, examined the affair in a family council, and declared his wife
innocent. That noble lady lived a long time afterwards tranquil under the
protection of her husband, always sad—much respected. She appears to have told
her secret to no one. Who knows if the appearances which superficial observers took for
This extraordinary situation, if it exposed the Church of Rome to the opposing influence of politics, gave it on the other hand an importance of the first order, although it was not numerous. Rome under Nero in no way resembled the provinces. Whoever aspired to a great action must go there. Paul had in this point of view a sort of deep instinct which guided him. His arrival at Rome was an event in his life nearly as decisive as his conversion. He believed that he had attained to the summit of his apostolic career, and doubtless recalled to mind the dream in which after one of his days of struggle Christ appeared to him and said, “Courage! as thou hast borne witness of me in Jerusalem, thou shall also bear witness of me at Rome.”
From the time when he approached the walls of the eternal city, the Centurion
Julius conducted his prisoners to the Castra prætoriana, built by Sejan, near
the Nomentan way, and handed them over to the prefect of the prætorium. The
appellants to the Emperor were, on entering Rome, regarded as prisoners of the
Emperor, and as such were entrusted to the imperial guard. The prefects of the
prætorium were ordinarily two in number, but at this moment there was only one.
This high office had been since the year 51 A.D., in the hands of the noble
Afranius Burrhus, who a year afterwards, by a most miserable death, expiated the
crime of having wished to do good by reckoning with evil. Paul had doubtless no
direct communication with him. Perhaps, however, the humane fashion in which the apostle would appear to
The relations of Paul to the believers in Rome had begun, we have seen, during
the last stay of the apostle at Corinth. Three days after his arrival he wished,
as was his habit, to put himself in communication with the principal hakamim; it
was not in the bosom of the synagogue that the Christianity of Rome was formed;
it was believers disembarking at Ostia or Puzzoli who, grouping themselves
together, had constituted the first church of the capital of the world; this
church had scarcely any affinities with the different synagogues of the same
city. The immense size of Rome, and the mass of strangers who met there, were
the reasons why they knew little of each other there, and why some very contrary
ideas could be produced side by side without actual contact. Paul was thus led
to follow the rule, which he had adopted from his first and second mission in
the towns to which he brought the germ of the faith. He begged some of the heads
of the synagogue to come to see him. He represented his situation to them in the
most favourable light and protested that he had done nothing, and wished to do
nothing against his nation—that he was actuated by the hope of Israel’s faith in
the resurrection. The
They did not encounter at first any great obstacle. The Campagna and the towns
at the foot of Vesuvius received, perhaps from the Church of Puzzoli, the germs
of Christianity which found there the conditions in which it was accustomed to
increase, I mean with a first Jewish soil to receive it. Some strange conquests
were made. The chastity of the believers was a powerful attraction. It was
through this virtue that many noble Roman ladies were drawn to Christianity;
the good families preserved still as to women an unbroken tradition of modesty
and honour. The new sect had some adherents in the household of Nero, perhaps
among the Jews, who were numerous in the lower ranks of the service, among those
slaves and freed men, banded in guilds, whose condition bordered upon what had
been basest and most elevated, the most brilliant and most miserable. Some vague
indications would lead us to believe that Paul had certain relations with
members of the Annœa family. A thing beyond doubt in any case, is that from
this time the most sharp distinction between Jews and Christians was made at
Rome among well informed persons. Christianity appeared a distinct
“superstition” arising from Judaism, an enemy of its mother, and hated by its
mother. Nero especially was sufficiently acquainted with what was going on, and
took account of it with a certain animosity. Perhaps already some of the
Jewish intriguers who surrounded him had inflamed his imagination from the
Oriental point of view, and he had had promised to him that kingdom of
Jerusalem, which was the dream of his last hours, his latest hallucination. We
do not know with any certainty the names of any of the members of this Church of
Rome at the time of Nero. A document of doubtful value enumerates as friends of Paul and
Everything appeared to go on in the best manner; but the implacable school, which had assumed as its task opposition to the ends of the world to the apostleship of Paul was not dormant. We have seen the emissaries of those ardent conservatives follow in a manner upon his track, and the Apostle of the Gentiles leaving behind him in the seas through which he passed a long streak of hatred. Paul, pictured as a baneful man, who teaches to eat meat sacrificed to idols, to fornicate with Pagans, is announced before in advance and marked for the vengeance of all. We scarcely believe it, but we cannot wholly doubt it, since it is Paul himself who states it. Even at this solemn and decisive moment, he found still in front of him some mean passions. Certain adversaries, members of that Judæo-Christian school which ten years previous he found everywhere in his footsteps, undertook to raise against him a species of counter-preaching to the gospel. Envious and bitter disputers, they sought occasions to contradict him, to aggravate his position as a prisoner, to enflame the Jews against him, and to lower the merit of his chains. The goodwill, the love, the respect which others manifested towards him, their loudly proclaimed conviction, that the chains of the apostle were the glory and best defence of the gospel, comforted him in all these vexations. “What does it matter, besides,” wrote he about this time—
Provided that Christ be preached, whether the preacher be sincere, or the preaching be a pretext for him, I rejoice. I will always rejoice. As for me, I have the firm hope that, even at this time things will turn to my great benefit, to the liberty of the Church, and that my body, whether I live, or whether I die, shall be used to the glory of Christ. On the one hand, Christ is my life, and to die for me is an advantage;
on the other hand, if I live, I shall see my work bring forth fruit; thus I know not which to choose. I am pressed by two opposing desires; on the one hand, to quit this world and to go to re-join Christ; on the other to remain with you. The first would be better for me, but the second would be better for you.
This greatness of soul gave him a marvellous assurance, gaiety, and strength. “If my blood,” wrote he in one of his gospels, “is the libation by which the sacrifice of your faith must be watered, so much the better—so much the better. And you also say ‘so much the better’ with me.” He, nevertheless, believed very willingly in his acquittal, and even in a prompt acquittal: he saw in that the triumph of the gospel, and he dated from that new projects. It is true that we no more see any of his thoughts directed to the West. It is to the Philippians and Colossians that he dreams of withdrawing himself until the day of the coming of the Lord. Perhaps had he acquired a more accurate knowledge of the Latin world, and had he seen beyond Rome and the Campagna countries becoming by Syrian immigration very analogous to Greece and Asia Minor, he would have met, had it only been because of the language, with great difficulties. Perhaps he knew a little Latin; but not enough for a fruitful preaching. Jewish and Christian proselytism in the first century was little exercised in the really Latin towns; it was confined to such towns as Rome and Puzzoli, where, in consequence of constant arrivals of Orientals, Greek had become wide-spread. Paul’s programme was sufficiently full; the Gospel had been preached in the two worlds, it had attained, according to the wide pictures of the prophetic language, to the extremity of the earth, to all the nations which are under heaven. What Paul now dreamed of doing was to preach freely in Rome and then to return to his churches of Macedonia and Asia, and to wait patiently with them in prayer and extasy the advent of Christ.
In short, few years in the life of the Apostle were more happy than these. Immense consolations came from time to time to him; he had nothing to fear from the malevolence of the Jews. The poor lodging of the prisoner was a centre of marvellous activity. The follies of profane Rome, its spectacles, its scandals, its crimes, the disgraceful acts of Tigellinus, the courage of Thraseas, the horrible fate of the virtuous Octavia, and the death of Pallas, little moved our enlightened pietists. “The fashion of this world passeth away,” they said. The great picture of a divine future made them shut their eyes to the blood-soaked soil in which their feet were plunged. Certainly the prophecy of Jesus had been accomplished. In the midst of outer darkness where Satan reigns; in the midst of tears and gnashing of teeth the little paradise of the elect is founded.
They were there in their secluded world, clothed internally with light and a clear sky in the kingdom of God their father, but without them what a hell!!! Oh, God, how frightful it is to remain in this kingdom of the Beast, where the worm never dies and the fire is never extinguished!
One of the greatest joys which Paul experienced at this period of his life was
the arrival of a message from his dear Church of the Philippians, the first
which he had founded in Europe and in which he had left so many devoted
admirers. The rich Lydia whom he calls “his true spouse,” did not forget him.
Epaphroditus sent by the church brings him a sum of money, of which the apostle
must have had great need, considering the expenses of his new condition. Paul,
who had always made an exception of the Philippian Church and received from her
what he did not wish to owe to any other, accepted it again with happiness. The
news as to the church was excellent. A few quarrels which had occurred between
the two deaconesses Euodia and Syntyche had come to trouble the peace. Some
scandals awakened by evil-disposed persons
He felicitated them not only on having believed in Christ, but on having suffered for him. Those among them who were in prison ought to be proud of enduring the treatment which they had seen before inflicted upon their apostle, and which they knew he had actually endured. They are like a little chosen group of the children of God, in the midst of a corrupted and perverse race—light in the midst of a dark world. He warned them against the example of less perfect Christians, that is to say, of those who were not released from all Jewish prejudices. The apostles of the circumcision are treated with the greatest hardness.
Beware of dogs, evil workers, of all these circumcised! It is we who are the true circumcised, we who worship according to the Spirit of God, who place our glory and confidence in Christ Jesus, not in the flesh. If I wished to exalt myself by these carnal distinctions, I should have a better right than anyone; I, circumcised the eighth day, of the pure race of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew
and son of the Hebrews, formerly a Pharisee, formerly a persecutor, formerly a jealous observer of legal righteousness. Ah, well; all these advantages, I hold them from the point of view of Christ as inferiorities, as dust, since I have apprehended what is transcendent in the knowledge of Christ Jesus. To gain Christ I have lost all the rest, I have exchanged my own righteousness, arising from the observation of the law, against the true righteousness according to God, which comes from the faith in Christ, in order that I may participate in his resurrection and to rise again, I also, among the dead, as I have participated in his sufferings, and as I have taken upon me the image of his death. I am far from having attained this goal, but I pursue it. Forgetting what is behind, always reaching forth to that which is before, I aspire, like the racer, for the prize of the victory, placed at the extremity of the course. Such is the feeling of the perfect.
And he adds:—
Our country is in heaven, from whence we look for the Saviour, the Lord Jesus Christ, who shall transform our wretched body and make it like his glorious body, by the extension of his power, and thanks to the divine decree, which has submitted every thing to him. Behold, brethren whom I love and regret to see no longer, you, my joy and crown, this is the doctrine which should be held, my dearly beloved.
He especially exhorts them to concord and obedience. The form of life which he has given them, the manner in which they ought to practice Christianity, is good; but, after all, each believer has his revelation, his personal inspiration, which also comes from God. He prays “his true spouse” (Lydia) to reconcile Euodia and Syntyche, to go to help them and second them in their duties as servants of the poor. He wished that they should rejoice; “The Lord is at hand.” His thanks for the sending of money on the part of the rich ladies of the Philippians, is a model of good grace and lively piety:
I have experienced a great joy in the Lord in connection with this late flourishing of your friendship, which has at last made you think of me: you thought well in that: but you had not an occasion. I do not say this to dwell upon my poverty. I have taught myself to be content with what I have. I know what it is to be in penury, and to have
abundance. I am accustomed to everything, to be full and to suffer hunger, to have an overplus, and to want even what is necessary. I can do all things in Him who strengthens me. But you—you have done well to contribute so as to relieve my distress. It is not to the gift I look, but to the profit which will result from it to you. I have everything which is needful: I even abound, since I have received by Epaphroditus your offering, a sacrifice of a good odour, an offering most welcome, agreeable to God!
He recommends humility which makes us look on others as our superiors, charity which makes us think of others more than ourselves, according to the example of Jesus. Jesus had in Him all divinity and power; He could have, during His terrestrial life, shown himself in His divine splendour, but the economy of redemption would then have been reversed. Thus does He strip Himself of His natural distinction, to take the appearance of a slave. The world has seen Him like a man; looked at from without He would have been taken for a man. “He humbled Himself, making Himself obedient even to death, and that the death of the cross. Wherefore God has exalted Him and given Him a name above every other, willing that at the name of Jesus every knee shall bend in heaven, on the earth and under the earth, and in hell, and that every tongue shall confess the Lord Jesus Christ, to the glory of God the Father.”
Jesus, we see, grew hour by hour greater in the consciousness of Paul. If Paul does not admit yet his full equality with God the Father, he believes in his divinity, and represents all His earthly life as the execution of a divine plan. Prison produced on him the effect which it usually produces on strong minds. It elevated him, and incited in his ideas some lively and deep resolutions. A little after having sent the letter to the Philippians, he sends Timothy to inform him of their condition, and to bear some new instructions to them. Timothy would return promptly enough. Luke would appear also at this time to have made an absence of short duration.
Paul’s chain, his entrance into Rome, quite triumphal according to Christian ideas, the advantages which his residence in the capital of the world gave him, did not allow of any repose for the party at Jerusalem. Paul was for that party a sort of stimulant, an active rival, against whom they murmured, and whom, nevertheless, they sought to imitate. Peter, in a remarkable degree, always hesitated, towards his audacious brother, between a lively personal admiration and the position his surroundings imposed on him; Peter (I say) passed his life, full also of numerous trials, in copying Paul, in following him at a distance in his course, in finding after him those strong positions which could assure the success of the common work. It was probably from the example of Paul that he settled, about the year 54, at Antioch. The report spreading into Judea and Syria in the second half of the year 61, of the arrival of Paul at Rome, was of itself enough to inspire him with the idea of a journey to the West.
It appears that he came with quite an apostolic company. First, his interpreter,
John Mark, whom he called “his son,” followed him usually. The apostle John, we
have more than once observed, appeared likewise generally to have accompanied
Peter. Some indications even lead us to believe that Barnabas was of the party.
Lastly, it is not improbable that Simon of Gitton on his part might be drawn to
the capital of the world, attracted by the kind of charm which that city
exercised over all leaders of sects,
What were the relations of the two apostles at Rome? Certain indications would lead us to believe that they were good enough. We shall soon see Mark, Peter’s secretary, charged with a mission from his master, to go to Asia with a recommendation from Paul; besides, the epistle, attributed to Peter, a writing of a very tenable authenticity, presents numerous borrowings made from Paul’s epistles. Two truths must be maintained in this whole history; the first is that deep divisions (deeper indeed than those which were in the after history of the Church the ground of any schism) existed between the founders of Christianity, and that the form of the polemics, according to the usages of such people, was singularly bitter; the second is that a higher thought united them, even during their life, those brother-enemies, while wanting the great reconciliation which the Church should, of its own accord, make between them after their death, that is often seen in religious movements. There must also, in appreciating these debates, be great account taken of the Jewish character, quick and susceptible, given to violent language. In these little pious coteries, people quarrel and are reconciled continually; they have bitter words and, notwithstanding, love each other. A party of Peter, a party of Paul—these divisions did not possess more importance than those which in our day separate the different fractions of the Puritan Church. Paul had an excellent motto on this matter: “Let each one remain in the type of instruction which he has received,” an admirable rule which the Roman Church did not much follow later on. The adherence to Jesus was sufficient; the confessional divisions, if one may so describe them, were a simple question of origin independent of the personal merits of the believer.
One fact, however, which is important, and which would lead us to believe that
good relations had not been re-established between the two apostles is that,
The moral, social, and political situation became graver day by day. People
spoke only of signs and misfortunes; the Christians were more affected by these
than any; the idea that Satan is the god of this world rooted itself among them
more and more. The spectacles appeared to them devilish. They never went
This little disguised antipathy for a world which they did not understand became the characteristic feature of the Christians. “Hatred of the human race” passed as the résumé of their doctrine. Their apparent melancholy was an injury to the “happiness of the age;” their belief in the end of the world went against the official optimism, according to which everything renewed its youth. The signs of repulsion which they made while passing before the temples gave the idea that they only thought of burning them. These old sanctuaries of the Roman religion were extremely dear to patriots; to insult them was to insult Evander, Numa, and the ancestors of the Roman people, and the trophies of its victories. They charged the Christians with all misdeeds; their worship passed for a gloomy superstition, fatal to the empire, a thousand atrocious or shameful stories circulated about them; the most enlightened men believed them, and looked on those who were thus pointed out to their hatred as capable of all crimes.
The new sectaries gained scarcely any adherents except among the lower classes;
well educated people avoided pronouncing their name, or, when they were obliged
to do so, always excused themselves; but among the people the progress was extraordinary: they
As to the malevolent populace, it dreamed of impossible crimes to attribute to the Christians. They were rendered responsible for all public evils. They accused them of preaching rebellion against the emperor, and seeking to excite the slaves to insurrection. The Christian came to be looked on like the Jew of the middle ages, the scapegoat of all calamities, the man who only thinks of evil, the poisoner of wells, the child-eater, the incendiary when a crime was committed; the slightest indication was sufficient for the arrest of a Christian, and for putting him to the torture. Often the simple name of a Christian was sufficient to lead to arrest. When they were seen keeping back from heathen sacrifices they were blamed. The era of persecutions was really opened; it will continue with short intervals until Constantine. In the thirty years which had rolled away since the first Christian preaching, the Jews alone had persecuted the work of Jesus: the Romans had protected the Christians against the Jews: now the Romans became persecutors in their turn. From the capital, these terrors and hatreds spread into the provinces, and provoked the most clamant injustices. Many atrocious pleasantries mingled with him; the walls of the places where the Christians met were covered with caricatures and hateful and obscene inscriptions against the brothers and sisters. The habit of representing Jesus under the form of a man with the head of an ass was perhaps already established.
No one doubts at this day that these accusations of crimes and infamy were
calumnious; a thousand reasons lead us even to believe that the directors of the
Christian Church did not give the least pretext for the ill-will which soon
produced such cruel violence against them. All the heads of the parties which
divided the Christian society were agreed as to the attitude that should be
taken against the Roman functionaries. They might well at heart hold the
magistrates as emissaries of Satan, since they protected idolatry, and were the
supports of a world given up to Satan; but in public the brothers were full of
respect for them. The Ebionite faction alone showed the enthusiastic feelings of
the zealots and other fanatics of Judea. In politics, again, the apostles were
essentially legitimist and conservative. Far from encouraging the slave to
revolt, they desired the slave to be submissive to his master, even if he was
most harsh and unjust, as if he personally were serving Jesus Christ, and that
not of necessity, to escape punishment, but for conscience, and because God
would have it so. Behind the master was God Himself. Slavery was so far from
seeming to be against nature, that the Christians had slaves, and Christian
slaves. We have seen Paul repressing the tendency to political revolutions which
was manifested about the year 57, preaching to the faithful of Rome, and
doubtless of other countries, submission to the powers that be, whatever their
origin, establishing in principle that the police is a minister of God, and that
it is only the wicked who resist him. Peter, on his side, was the most peaceable
of men; we shall soon find the doctrine of submission to the powers taught
under his name, nearly in the same terms as by St. Paul. The school which
connected itself later with John shared the same feelings on the divine origin
of sovereignty. One of the greatest fears of the leaders was to see the faithful compromised in evil matters,
All kinds of intrigues, which the insufficiency of documents do not permit us to
disentangle, aggravated the position of the Christians. The Jews were very
powerful about the emperor and Poppea. The “mathematicians,” that is, the
soothsayers, among others a certain Balbillus, of Ephesus, surrounded the
emperor, and, under pretext of exercising that portion of their art which
consisted in turning away plagues and evil omens, gave him atrocious advices.
Has the legend which has mixed with all this world of sorcerers the name of
Simon the magician any foundation? That doubtless may be so; but the reverse may
be also the case. The author of the Apocalypse is much pre-occupied about a “false prophet,” whom he represents as an agent of Nero, as a thaumaturgist
making fire fall from heaven, giving life and speech to statues, marking men
with the stamp of the Beast. It is perhaps of Balbillus he speaks: we must
however observe that the prodigies attributed to the False Prophet by the
Apocalypse resemble much the juggling peculiarities which the legend attributes
to Simon. The emblem of a lamb-dragon, under which the False Prophet is pointed
out in the same book, agrees better likewise with a false Messiah such as Simon
of Gitton was than a simple sorcerer. On the
Never, besides, has the Christian conscience been more oppressed, more out of breath, than at that moment. They believed in a provisional condition very short in duration. Each day they expected the solemn appearance. “He comes! Yet an hour longer! He is at hand!” were the words they said every moment. The spirit of martyrdom which thought that the martyr glorifies Christ by his death and that this death is a victory, was universally spread. For the heathen, on the other hand, the Christian became a body naturally devoted to punishment. A drama which about this time had much success was that of Laureolus, where the principal actor, a sort of rascal Tartuffe, was crucified on the stage amid the applause of the audience, and eaten by bears. This drama was prior to the introduction of Christianity to Rome; we find it represented in the year 41; but it appears as if at least they made an application of it to the Christian martyrs, the diminutive of Laureolus answering to Stephanos might suggest these allusions.
The ill-will of which the Christian Church was the object at Rome, perhaps even
in Asia Minor and Greece, made itself felt even in Judea; but the persecution
there had other causes. There were rich Sadducees, the aristocracy of the
Temple, who showed themselves enraged against the honest poor and blasphemed the
name of “Christian.” About the time we have reached there was circulated a
letter of James, “servant of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ,” addressed to “the twelve tribes of the Dispersion.” It is one of the finest pieces of early
Christian literature, recalling sometimes the Gospel, and at other times the
sweet and restful wisdom of Ecclesiastes. The authenticity of such writings,
seeing the number of false apostolic letters which circulated, is always
doubtful. Perhaps the Judeo-Christian party, accustomed to use to its own taste
the authority of James, attributed to him this manifesto in which the desire to
oppose the innovators made itself felt. Certainly, if James had some share in
it, he was not its editor. It is doubtful if James knew Greek; his language was
Syriac; now the epistle of James is much the best written work in the New
Testament, its Greek is pure and almost classical. As to this, the writing
agrees perfectly with the character of James. The author is a Jewish Rabbi, he
holds strongly by the Law; to express the meeting of the faithful, he makes use
of the word “synagogue”; he is Paul’s adversary; the tone of his epistle
resembles the synoptical gospel which we shall see later on came from the
Christian family of which James was the head. Nevertheless, the
James, or the Jewish moralist who desired to cover himself with his authority, introduces us all at once into a little conventicle of the persecuted. Trials are a good thing, for in putting faith through the crucible, they produce patience; now patience is the perfection of virtue; the man who is tempted receives the crown of life. But what preoccupies our doctor especially is the difference between the rich and the poor. He must have produced in the community some rivalry between the favoured brothers of fortune and those who were not. Those complain of the harshness of the rich and their pride, while they groaned under them:
Let the brother of low degree rejoice in that he is exalted; but the rich, in that he is made low, because as the flower of the grass he shall pass away. . . . My brethren, have not the faith of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Lord of Glory, with respect of persons. For if there come into your assembly a man with a gold ring, in goodly apparel, and there come in also a poor man in vile raiment, and ye have respect to him that weareth the gay clothing, and say unto him, Sit thou here in a good place, and say to the poor, Stand thou there, or sit here under my footstool. Are ye not then partial in yourselves, and are become judges of evil thoughts? Hearken, my beloved brethren, hath not God chosen the poor of this world rich in faith, and heirs of the Kingdom which He hath promised to them that love Him? But ye have despised the poor. Do not rich men oppress you, and draw you before the judgment seats? Do not they blaspheme that worthy name by the which ye are called?
Pride, corruption, brutality, and the luxury of the rich Sadducees had indeed
arrived at their height. The women bought the high priesthood from Agrippa II.
with gold. Martha, daughter of Boethus, one of those Simonists, who went to see
her husband officiate, made them stretch carpets from the gate of her house to
the Sanctuary. The high-priesthood was thus fearfully
There was open war between these opulent priests, friends of the Romans, taking these lucrative appointments to themselves and their families, and the poor priests maintained by the people. Every day there were bloody brawls. The impudence and audacity of the high-priestly families went so far as to send their servants to the threshing-floors to collect the tithes which belonged to the high clergy, and they beat those who refused; the poor priests were in a wretched state. Fancy the feelings of the pious man, the democratic Jew, rich in the promises of all the prophets, maltreated in the Temple (his own house) by the insolent lackeys of unbelieving and epicurean priests. The Christians grouped around James made common cause with those oppressed ones who probably were like themselves, holy people (hasidim) favourites with the public. Mendicity appears to have become a virtue and the mark of patriotism. The rich classes were friends of the Romans, and could scarcely become that except by a sort of apostacy and treason. To hate the rich was thus a mark of piety. Obliged, so as not to die of hunger, to work in those constructions of the Herodians, in which they saw nothing but an ostentatious vanity, the hasidim looked on themselves as victims of the unbelieving. “Poor” passed as the synonym of “Saint.”
“Now weep, ye rich, howl for your miseries that shall come upon you. Your riches are corrupted and your garments are moth-eaten. Your gold and silver is cankered and the rust of them shall be a witness against you, and shall eat your flesh as if it were fire. Ye have heaped treasures together for the last days. Behold the hire of the labourers who have reaped down your fields, which is of you kept back by fraud crieth, and the cries of them which have reaped are entered into the ears of the Lord of Sabaoth. Ye have lived in pleasure on the earth and been wanton. Ye have nourished your hearts as in a day of slaughter. Ye have condemned and killed the just; and he doth not resist you.”
We feel in these pages that there is already fermenting the spirit of those
social revolutions which some
“And now you others who say: To-day or to-morrow we will go into such a city, and continue there a year, and buy and sell and get gain. Whereas ye know not what shall be on the morrow. For what is your life. It is even a vapour, that appeareth for a little time, and then vanisheth away. For that ye ought to say, if the Lord will we shall live, and do this or that.”
When he speaks of humility, patience, mercy, the exaltation of the humble, and
of the joy which is below tears, James seems to have kept in memory the very
words of Jesus. We feel, nevertheless, that he holds much by the law. Quite a
paragraph of his Epistle is dedicated to warn the faithful against Paul’s
doctrine on the uselessness of works and salvation by faith. A phrase of James
(
A spirit of lofty piety and touching charity animated this Church of the Saints. “Pure religion and undefiled before God and the Father is this, to visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction,” said James.
The power of curing diseases, especially by anointing with oil, was considered as of common right among believers: indeed the unbelievers saw in this healing a gift peculiar to the Christians. The elders were reputed to enjoy it in a high degree, and became thus a band of spiritual physicians. James attaches to those practices of supernatural medicine the greatest importance. The germ of nearly all the Catholic Sacraments was laid here. Confession of sins, for a long time practised by the Jews, was looked on as an excellent means of pardon and healing, two ideas inseparable in the beliefs of the age.
“Is any among you afflicted? Let him pray. Is any merry? Let him sing. Is any sick among you? Let him call for the elders of the Church, and let them pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord. And the prayer of faith shall save the sick, and the Lord shall raise him up, and if he have committed sins they shall be forgiven him. Confess your faults one to another and pray one for another that ye may be healed. The prayer of a righteous man is strong when it is made with a fixed object.”
The apocryphal apocalypses where the religious passions of the people expressed
themselves with so much fire, were greedily collected in this little group of
enthusiastic Jews, or rather were born alongside of it, almost in its bosom, so
much so that the tissue of these singular writings and that of the writings of
the New Testament are often hard to disentangle from each other. They really
took these pamphlets, born of yesterday, for the words of Enoch, Baruch and
Moses. The strangest beliefs as to hell, the rebel angels, the wicked giants
who brought on the flood, were spread about, and had as their principal source
the books of Enoch. There were in all these fables some lively allusions to
contemporaneous events. That foreseeing Noah, that pious Enoch, who did not
cease to predict the Deluge to those heedless ones who, during this whole
period, ate, drank, married, and enriched
The work par excellence of the Christian conscience was, nevertheless,
accomplished in silence in Judea or the adjacent countries. The Synoptical
Gospels were created part by part, as a living organism is completed little by
little, and attained, under the action of a deep mysterious reason, to perfect
unity. At the date we have reached, was there already some text written on the
acts and words of Jesus? Has the Apostle Matthew, if it is he who is in
question, written in Hebrew the discourses of the Lord? Has Mark, or he who
takes his name, entrusted to paper his notes on the life of Jesus? We may doubt
it. Paul, in particular had certainly in his hands no writing as to the words
of Jesus. Did he at least possess an oral tradition, mnemonic in some degree, of
these words? We observe such a tradition for the account of the Supper, perhaps
for that of the Passion, and up to a certain point for that of the Resurrection,
but not for the
What seems to result from this is that certain accounts, such as that of the Supper, of the Passion, and the Resurrection, were known by heart, in terms which admitted of little variety. The plan of the Synoptical Gospels was already probably agreed on: but while the Apostles lived, books which would have pretended to fix the tradition of which they believed themselves the sole depositories would not have had any chance of being accepted. Why, besides, write the life of Jesus? He is coming back. A world on the eve of closing has no need of new books. It is when the witnesses shall be dead that it will be important to render durable by the Scripture a representation which is effacing itself every day. In this point of view the Churches of Judea and the neighbouring countries had a great superiority. The knowledge of the discourses of Jesus was much more exact and extended than elsewhere. We remark under this connection a certain difference between the Epistle of James and the Epistle of Paul. The little writing of James is quite impregnated by a sort of evangelical perfume. We hear these sometimes like an echo of the word of Jesus; the sentiment of the life of Galilee is found there still with vivid power.
We know nothing historical as to the missions sent directly by the Church of
Jerusalem. That Church, according to its own principles, ought scarcely to be
looked on as a propaganda. In general there were few Ebionite and
Judeo-Christian Missions. The strict spirit of the Ebionim only admitted of
circumcised missionaries. According to the picture which is traced
Had Edessa heard of the name of Jesus in the first century? Was there at that time beside Osrhoene a Syriac-speaking Christianity? The fables by which the Church has surrounded its cradle do not permit us to express ourselves with certainty on that point. Yet it is very probable that the strong relations which Judaism had on this side were used for the propagation of Christianity. Samosata and Comagena had at an early period educated persons forming part of the Church or at least very favourable to Jesus. It was from Antioch in any case that this region of the Euphrates received the seed of the faith.
The clouds which were gathering over the East disturbed these pacific preachings. The good administration of Festus could do nothing against the evils which Judea carried in her bosom. Brigands, zealots, assassins, and impostors of all kinds overran the country. A magician presented himself, among twenty others, promising the people salvation and the end of evil, if they would accompany him to the desert. Those who followed him were massacred by the Roman soldiers; but no one was undeceived as to the false prophets. Festus died in Judea about the beginning of the year 62. Nero appointed Albinus as his successor. About the same time, Herod Agrippa II. took the high priesthood from Joseph Cabi to give it to Hanan, son of the celebrated Hanan or Annas, who had contributed more than anyone to the death of Jesus. He was the fifth of Annas’ eons who occupied that dignity.
Hanan the younger was a haughty, harsh and audacious man. He was the flower of
Sadduceeism, the complete expression of that cruel and inhuman sect, always
ready to render the exercise of authority odious and insupportable. James, the
brother of the Lord, was known in all Jerusalem as a bitter defender of the
poor, as a prophet in the old style, inveighing against the rich and powerful.
Hanan resolved on his death, and taking advantage of the absence of Agrippa, and of the
The death of this saintly personage had the worst effect on the city. The
Pharisee devotees and the strict observers of the law were very discontented.
James was universally esteemed; he was considered one of those men whose prayers
were most efficacious. It is asserted that a Rechabite (probably an Essene), or
according to others, Simeon son of Clopas, nephew of Jesus, cried while they
stoned him, “Stop, what are you doing? What! you kill the just who prays for
you?” They applied to him the passage in
The enthusiasm, indeed, assumed at Jerusalem great proportions. Anarchy was at its height. The zealots although decimated by punishment, were masters of everything. Albinus in no way resembled Festus; he only thought of making money by connivance with the brigands. On all sides, one saw prognostications of some unheard-of event. It was at the end of the year 62 that one named Jesus, son of Hanan, a sort of risen Jeremiah, began to run night and day through the streets of Jerusalem, crying, “A voice from the East! a voice from the West! a voice from the four winds a voice against Jerusalem and the temple! a voice against the bridegrooms and the brides! a voice against all the people!” They scourged him; but he repeated the same cry. They beat him with rods till his bones were seen; at each blow he repeated in a lamentable voice, “Woe to Jerusalem! woe to Jerusalem!” He was never seen to speak to anyone. He went along repeating, “Woe! woe to Jerusalem!” without reproaching those who beat him, and thanking those who gave him alms. He went on thus until the siege, his voice never appearing to grow weaker.
If this Jesus, son of Hanan, was not a disciple of Jesus, his weird cry was at
least the true expression of what was at the core of the Christian conscience.
Jerusalem had filled up its measure. That city which slew the prophets and
stoned those who were sent to it, beating some, crucifying others, was
henceforth the city of anathemas. About the time at which we have arrived were
formed those little apocalypses which some attributed to Enoch, others to Jesus,
and which offered the greatest analogies to the exclamations of Jesus, son of
Hanan. These writings extend later into the framework of the synoptical gospels; they were represented as discourses, which Jesus had given in his last days.
Perhaps already the mot d’ordre was given to leave Judea and flee to the
mountains. The synoptical gospels always bear deeply the mark of these sorrows; they keep it
The situation was so precarious, and they felt so plainly that they were on the eve of a catastrophe that an immediate successor was given to James in the presiding of the Church of Jerusalem. The other “brethren of the Lord,” such as Jude, Simon, son of Clopas, continued to be the principal authorities in the community. After the war, we shall see them serving as a rallying point to all the faithful of Judea. Jerusalem had no more than eight years to live, and indeed, even before the fatal hour, the eruption of the volcano, will thrust to a distance the little group of pious Jews who are bound to one another by the memory of Jesus.
Paul, nevertheless, was subjected in prison to the gentleness of an administration half distracted by the extravagance of the sovereign and his evil surroundings. Timothy, Luke, Aristarchus, and according to certain traditions, Titus, were with him. A certain Jesus, surnamed Justus, who was circumcised, one Demetrius, or Demas, an uncircumcised proselyte, who was, it appears, from Thessalonica, a doubtful personage of the name of Crescens, still were seen around him and served him as coadjutors. Mark, who according to our hypothesis had come to Rome in company with Peter, was reconciled, it appears, with him with whom he had shared the first apostolical activity, and from whom he had rudely separated: he served probably as an intermediary between Peter and the apostle of the Gentiles. In any case Paul, about this time, was very discontented with the Christians of the circumcision: he considered them as not very favourable to him, and declared that he did not find good fellow-workers among them.
Some important modifications, introduced probably by the new relations which he had in the capital of the empire, the centre and confluence of
all ideas, were carried out about the time we are speaking of now in Paul’s mind, and made the writings of that period of his life sensibly different from those
he composed during his second and third mission. The informal development of the Christian doctrine worked rapidly. In some months of these fertile years,
theology marched much faster than it did afterwards in some centuries. The new dogma sought its equilibrium and created props
The fire of a devouring activity had never till now allowed Paul leisure to
measure the time, nor to consider that Jesus delayed his reappearance very long:
but these long months of prison forced him to consider. Old age, besides, began
to tell upon him; a sort of gloomy maturity succeeded to the ardour of his
passion; reflection brought light, and obliged him to fill up his ideas, to
reduce them to theory. He became mystical, theological, speculative, from being
practical as he was. The impetuosity of a blind conviction, absolutely incapable
of going backward, could not prevent him from being sometimes astonished that
heaven did not open more quickly, and that the final trumpet did not sound
sooner. The faith of Paul was not shaken, but it sought other points of support.
His idea of Christ became modified. His dream henceforth is less the Son of Man
appearing in the clouds, and presiding at the general resurrection, as a Christ
established as divinity, incorporated with it, acting in it and with it. The
resurrection for him is not in the future: it seems to have already taken
place—When we change once, we change always; we may be at the same time the
most impassioned and yet mobile of men. That which is certain is that the grand
pictures of the final apocalypse and of the resurrection which were formerly so
familiar to Paul, which present themselves in some way at every page of the
letters of the second and third mission, and even in the Epistle to the
Philippians, have a secondary place in the last writings of his captivity. They
are then replaced by a theory of Christ, conceived like a sort of divine person,
a theory very analogous to that of the Logos which, later on,
The same change is remarkable in his style. The language of the epistles of the captivity has more fulness: but it has lost a little of its force. The thought is advanced with less vigour. The dictionary differs very much from the first vocabulary of Paul. The favourite terms of the Johannine school, “light,” “darkness,” “life,” “love,” &c., become dominant. The syncretic philosophy of Gnosticism made itself already felt. The question of justification by Jesus is no longer so lively; the war between faith and works seems appeased in the bosom of the unity of the Christian life, made up of knowledge and grace. Christ, become the central being of the universe, conciliates in his person (thus become divine) the antinomianism of the two Christianities. Certainly it is not without reason that the authenticity of such writings has been suspected: there are for them, however, such strong proofs that we like better to attribute the differences of style and thought of which we speak to a natural progress in Paul’s method. The earlier and undoubtedly authentic writings of Paul contain the germ of this new language. “Christ” and “God” are interchanged almost like synonyms; Christ exercises there divine functions; they invoke him as God, he is the necessary mediator with God. The ardour with which these were connected with Jesus made them connect with him all the theories which had been in vogue in some part or other of the Jewish world. Let us suppose that a man replying to aspirations so different from the democracy should arise in our days. His partisans would say to some, “You are for the organisation of work,” it is he who is the organisation of the work; to others, “You are for independent morality,” he is the independent morality; to others again, “You are for co-operation,” it is he who is the co-operation; and yet others, “You are for solidarity,” it is he who is the solidarity.
The new theory of Paul can be summed up nearly as follows:—
This kingdom is the reign of darkness, that is to say of Satan and his infernal hierarchy who fill the world. The reign of the Saints on the contrary shall be the reign of light. Now the saints are what they are not by their own merit (before Christ all are enemies of God), but by the application which God makes to them of the merits of Jesus Christ the son of his love. It is the blood of this son, shed upon the cross, which blots out sins and reconciles every creature to God, making peace to reign in Heaven and earth. The Son is the image of the invisible God, the first-born of creatures; all has been created in him, by him and for him, things celestial and terrestrial, visible, and invisible, thrones, powers, and dominions. He was before all things and by him all things consist. The church and he form only one body, of which he is the head. As in everything he has always held the first rank, he shall also hold it in the resurrection. His resurrection is the commencement of the universal resurrection. The fulness of the Godhead dwells in him bodily. Jesus is thus the God of man, a sort of prime minister of the creation, placed between God and man. Everything that monotheism says of the relations between man and God may according to the then present theory of Paul, be said of the relations between man and Jesus. The veneration for Jesus, which with James does not exceed the cult of doulia or hyperdoulia, attains with Paul to the proportions of a true worship a latria such as no Jew had over yet vowed to a son of woman.
This mystery which God prepared from all eternity, the fulness of the times
being come, he has revealed to his saints in these last days. The moment has
come when each must complete for his part the work of Christ. Now the work of
Christ is completed by suffering; suffering is therefore a good thing in which we should
Such doctrines were not entirely original. They were in part those of the Jewish
school in Egypt and notably those of Philo. This Christ became a divine
hypostasis, is the Logos of the Jewish Alexandrian philosophy, the Memera of the
Chaldean paraphrases, prototype of everything, by which everything has been
created. These powers of the air to which the empire of the world has been
given, these bizarre hierarchies, celestial and infernal, are those of the
Jewish cabbala and of Gnosticism. This mysterious pleroma, the final goal of the
work of Christ, much resembles the divine pleroma which the gnosis places at the
summit of the universal ladder, the Gnostic and cabbalistic theosophy which may
be regarded as the mythology of monotheism, and which we believe we have seen
weighing with Simon of Gitton, is represented from the first century with its
principal features. To reject systematically in the second century all the
documents in which are found traces of such a spirit is very rash. That spirit
was in germ, in Philo, and in primitive Christianity. The theosophic conception
of Christ would arise necessarily from the Messianic conception of the Son of
Man, when it would be distinctly proved after a long waiting that the Son of Man
had not come. In the most incontestably authentic epistles of Paul there are
certain features which remain a little in advance of the exaggerations which are
presented by the epistles written in prison. The epistle to the Hebrews dating
before the year 70, shows the same tendency to place Jesus in the world of
metaphysical abstractions. All this will become in the highest degree plain when
we speak of the Johannine writings. According to Paul, who had not known Jesus,
this metamorphosis in the idea of Christ was in some sort inevitable. While the
school which possessed the living tradition of the master created the Jesus of
the synoptical gospels, the enthusiastic man, who had only seen Jesus in his
dreams, transformed him more and more into a superhuman
This transformation besides did not operate only on the ideas of Paul. The
Churches raised by him advanced in the same views. Those of Asia Minor
especially were impelled by a sort of a secret work to the most exaggerated
ideas as to the divinity of Jesus. This might be imagined. To the fraction of
Christianity which had sprung from the familiar conversations by the lake of
Tiberias Jesus must always remain the beloved Son of God, who had been seen
moving among men with that charming manner and that gentle smile; but when they
preached Jesus to the people of some province hidden away in Phrygia, when the
preacher declared that he had never seen him, and affected to know scarcely
anything of His earthly life, what could these good and artless hearers think of
him who was preached to them? How would they picture him to themselves? As a
sage? As a master full of charm? It is not thus that Paul presents the rôle of
Jesus. Paul was ignorant of, or pretended to be ignorant of, the historic Jesus.
As the Messiah, as the Son of Man coming to appear in the clouds in the great
day of the Lord? These ideas were strange to the Gentiles and supposed a
knowledge of the Jewish books. Evidently the picture which would most often he
presented to these good country people would be that of an incarnation, of a God
clothed with a human form and walking upon the earth. This idea was very
familiar in Asia Minor; Apollonius of Tyana was soon to ventilate it for his own
prophet. To reconcile such a style of view with worn theism only one thing
remained, to conceive Jesus as a divine hypostasis become incarnate, as a sort
of reduplication of the one God, having taken the human form for the
accomplishment of a divine plan. It must be remembered that we are no longer in
Syria. Christianity has passed from the Semitic world into the hands of races
intoxicated with imagination
In the second century this need of syncretism shall take an extreme importance
and shall complete the full development of the Gnostic sects. We shall see at
the end of the first century some analogous tendencies filling the Church of
Ephesus with troubles and agitation. Corinth and the author of the fourth gospel
shared at bottom this identical principle from the idea that the conscience of
Jesus was a heavenly being distinct from his terrestrial appearance. In the year
60 Colosse was already touched by the same disease—a theosophy made up of
indigenous beliefs, Ebionitism, Judaism, philosophy and material borrowed from
the new preaching found there already some skilful interpreters. A worship of
uncreated æons, a largely developed theory of angels and devils, Gnosticism in
short with its arbitrary practices, its realized abstractions, commenced to be
produced, and by its sweet deceit threatened the Christian faith in its most
lively and essential parts. There mingled here some renunciations against
nature, a false taste for humiliation, a pretended austerity refusing to the
flesh its rights, in a word all the aberrations of moral sense which would
produce the Phyrigian heresies of the second century (Montanists Pepuzians, and
Cata-Phrygians) which connected
Paul wishing to keep Epaphras near him (whose activity he thought of utilizing)
resolved to reply from the deputation to the Colossians by sending to them
Tychicus of Ephesus, whom he charged at the same time with commissions for the
churches of Asia. Tychicus was to make a journey into the valley of the Meander
to visit the communities, to give them some news of Paul, to transmit to them
with a living voice a knowledge as to the condition of the Apostle in regard to
the Roman authorities—some details which he did not think it prudent to entrust
to paper, in short to convey to each of the churches separate letters which Paul
had addressed to them. He also recommended those churches who were nearest each
other to communicate their letters reciprocally and to read them in turn in
their meetings. Tychicus might besides be the bearer of a kind of Encyclical,
traced upon the plan of the epistle to the Colossians and reserved for the
churches to which Paul had nothing special to say. The apostle appeared to have
left to his disciples or secretaries the care of editing this circular upon the
plan which he gave them or after the system which he showed them. The epistle
addressed in these circumstances to the Colossians has not been preserved to us.
Paul dictated it to Timothy, signed it, and added in his own writing, remember
my chains. As to the circular epistle which Tychicus took on his way to the
churches which were not named by letter, it would appear that we have it in
This epistle called ‘to the Ephesians,’ forms, along with the epistle to the Colossians, the best statement of Paul’s theories about the close of his career. The epistles to the Colossians and the Ephesians have, for the last period in the life of the apostle, the same value as the epistle to the Romans has to the period of his great apostleship. The idea of the founder of Christian theology here reached the highest degree of clearness. We feel this last work of spiritualization to which great souls about to depart subject their thought, and after which there is nothing but death.
Certainly Paul was right when fighting this dangerous disease of Gnosticism, which was soon to threaten human reason, this chimerical religion of angels, to which he opposes his Christ as superior to all that is not God. We know there is still to come the last assault which he delivers against circumcision, vain works and Jewish prejudices. The morality which he draws from his transcendent conception of Christ is admirable from many points of view. But how much excess, great God! How does this disdain of all reason, this brilliant eulogy of madness, this burst of paradox, prepare us on the other hand for the perfect wisdom which shuns all extremes! That “old man,” whom Paul attacks so harshly, is again brought forward. He will show that it does not deserve so many anathemas. All that past, condemned by an unjust sentence, will rediscover a principle of “new birth” for the world, carried by Christianity to the most exhaustive point. Paul shall be in that sense one of the most dangerous enemies of civilization. The recrudescences of Paul’s mind shall be so many defeats for the human mind. Paul will die when the human mind shall triumph. What shall be the triumph of Jesus will be the death of Paul.
The apostle closes his epistle to the Colossians by sending to them compliments
and good wishes of their holy and devoted catechist Epaphras. He begs them at
the same time to make an exchange of letters with the Church at Laodicea. To
Tychicus, who carries the correspondence, he joins as messenger a certain
Onesimus, whom he calls “a faithful dear brother.” Nothing is more touching than
the history of this Onesimus. He had been the slave of Philemon, one of the
heads of the Colossian Church; he fled from his master and sought to hide
himself at Rome. There he entered into relations, with Paul, perhaps through the
medium of Epaphras his compatriot. Paul converted him and persuaded him to
return to his master, making
“Paul, the prisoner of Jesus Christ, and brother Timothy, and Philemon, our well beloved and our fellow-worker, and sister Appia, our companion in works, and to the Church which is in thy house. Grace to you and peace from God our Father, and the Lord Jesus Christ, I thank my God, making mention of thee always in my prayers; hearing of thy love and faith which thou hast toward the Lord Jesus, and toward all saints. May the communication of thy own faith become effectual by the acknowledging of every good thing which is in you in Christ Jesus. For we have great joy and consolation in thy love because the bowels of the saints are refreshed by thee, brother. Wherefore, though I might be much bold in Christ to enjoin thee that which is convenient; yet for love’s sake I rather beseech thee, being such an one as Paul the aged, and now also a prisoner of Jesus Christ—I beseech thee for my son Onesimus, whom I have begotten in my bonds, which in time past was to thee unprofitable, but now profitable to thee and to me, whom I have sent again, thou therefore receive him that is mine own bowels; whom I would have retained with me that in thy stead he might have ministered unto me in the bonds of the gospel. But without thy mind would I do nothing, that thy benefit should be as it were of necessity, but willingly. For perhaps he therefore departed for a season that thou shouldest receive him for ever. Not now as a servant, but above a servant, a brother beloved, specially to me, but how much more unto thee, both in the flesh and in the Lord. If thou count me therefore a partner receive him as myself. If he hath wronged thee, or oweth thee ought put that on mine account.”
Paul then took his pen, and to give his letter the value of a true credibility he added these words:
“I Paul, I have written it with mine own hand, I will repay it, albeit I do not say to thee how thou owest unto me, even thine own self besides. Yea, brother, let me have joy of thee in the Lord, refresh my bowels in the Lord.”
Then he resumed his dictation:
“Trusting in thy obedience, I have written to thee, knowing that thou wilt do more than I say, prepare thyself also to receive me for I hope that, because of your prayers I shall be given back to you. Epaphras, my prison companion in Jesus Christ, Marcus, Aristarchus, Demas, Luke, my fellow labourers, salute thee. The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with your spirit!”
We have seen that Paul had some singular illusions. He believed himself on the
eve of deliverance, he formed new plans of travel, and saw himself in the centre
of Asia Minor, in the midst of the Churches which revered him as their apostle
without ever having met with him. John Mark likewise was preparing to visit
Asia, no doubt in Peter’s name. Already the Churches of Asia had been informed
of the approaching arrival of this brother. In the letter to the Colossians Paul
inserted a new recommendation to his subject. The tone of this recommendation is
cold enough. Paul feared that the disagreement he had had with John Mark and
more still the sympathy of Mark with the Jerusalem party would place his friends
in Asia in embarrassment, and that they would hesitate to receive a man whom
they had up till then only known to be opposed. Paul was beforehand with these
Churches and enjoined them to communicate with Mark, when he should pass through
their country. Mark was cousin to Barnabas, whose name, dear to the Galatians,
would not be unknown to the people of Phrygia. We do not know the result of the
incidents. A frightful earthquake shook the whole valley of the Lycus. Opulent
Laodicea was rebuilt by its own resources: but Colosse could not recover itself
Paul was comforted by his apostolic activity for the sad news which came from all parts. He said that be suffered for his dear Churches; he pictured himself as the victim who was opening to the Gentiles the gates of the family of Israel. About the last months of his imprisonment, he yet knew discouragement and desertion. Already writing to the Philippians he says, when opposing the conduct of his dear and faithful Timothy to that of others:
“Every one seeks his own interest, not that of Jesus Christ.” Timothy alone appears never to have excited any complaint in this matter, severe, gruff,—difficult to please. It is not admissible to say that Aristarchus, Epaphras, Jesus called Justus had deserted him, but many among them were found absent occasionally. Titus was on a mission; others who owed everything to him, among whom may be quoted Phygellus and Hermogenes, ceased to visit him. He, once so surrounded, saw himself isolated. The Christians of the circumcision shunned him. Luke, at certain periods, was alone with him. His character, which had always been a little morose, exasperated him; people could scarcely live in his company. Paul had from that time a cruel feeling of the ingratitude of men. Every word which one reads of his about this time is full of discontent and bitterness. The Church of Rome, closely affiliated to that of Jerusalem, was for the most part Judeo-Christian. Orthodox Judaism, very strong at Rome, had fought roughly with him. The old Apostle; with a broken heart, called for death.
If the matter had concerned one of another nature and another race we might try
to picture Paul, in these last days, arriving at the conviction that he had used
his life in a dream, repudiating all the sacred prophets
Did Paul appear before Nero, or, to put it better, before the council to which his appeal would be laid? That is almost certain. Some indications, of doubtful value it is true, tell us of a “first defence,” where no one assisted him, and in which, thanks to the grace which sustained him, he acquitted himself to his own advantage, so much so that he compares himself to a man who has been saved from the teeth of a lion. It is very probable that his affair terminated at the close of two years of prison at Rome (beginning of the year 63) by an acquittal. We do not see what interest the Roman authority would have had in condemning him for a sect-quarrel, which concerned it little. Some substantial indications, moreover, prove that Paul, before his death, carried out a series of apostolic travels and preachings, but not in the countries of Greece or Asia, which he had evangelized already.
Five years before, a month previous to his arrest, Paul writing from Corinth to
the faithful at Rome, announced to them his intention to visit Spain. He did not
wish, he said, to exercise his ministry among them; it was only in passing that
he reckoned on seeing them
The general idea of the faithful was that before the appearing of Christ, the kingdom of God should have been preached everywhere. According to the apostles’ manner of speech it was enough that it had been preached in a city for it to have been preached in a country; and it was sufficient that it had been preached to a dozen people, for everyone in the city to have heard it.
If Paul made this journey, he no doubt made it by sea. It is not absolutely impossible that some port in the south of France received the imprint of the apostle’s foot. In any case, there remained of this problematical visit to the West no appreciable result.
At the close of Paul’s captivity, the Acts of the Apostles and the Epistles fail us. We fall into a profound night, which contrasts singularly with the historical clearness of the preceding ten years. No doubt not to be obliged to recount facts in which the Roman authority played an odious part, the author of the Acts, always respectful to that authority, and desirous of showing that it has been sometimes favourable to the Christians, stops all at once. That fatal silence casts a great uncertainty over the events which we should like so much to know. Fortunately Tacitus and the Apocalypse introduce a ray of living light into this deep night. The moment has come when Christianity, up till now held in secret by insignificant people to whom it was a joy, was about to break into history with a thunderclap, whose reverberation should be long.
We have seen that the Apostles did not neglect any effort to recall to
moderation their brethren exasperated by the iniquities of which they were the
victims. They did not always succeed in that. Different condemnations had been
pronounced against some Christians, and people had been able to represent these
sentences as the repression of crimes or evils. With an admirable correctness of
meaning the Apostles drew out the code of martyrdom. Was one condemned for the
name of “Christian,” he must rejoice. We see it recalled that Jesus had said:
“Ye shall be hated by all because of My name.” But, to have the right to be
proud of that hatred, one must be irreproachable. It was partly to calm some
inopportune effervescences, to prevent acts
Mark had returned from his journey in Asia Minor, which he had undertaken at
Peter’s order, and with recommendations from Paul, a journey which probably was
the sign of the reconciliation of the two Apostles. This journey had put Peter
in relations with the Churches of Asia and authorised him to address to them a
doctrinal instruction. Mark, according to his habit, served as secretary and
interpreter to Peter for the editing of the Epistle. It is doubtful if Peter
could speak Greek or Latin: his language was Syriac. Mark was at the same time
in relations with Peter and Paul, and perhaps it is that which explains a
singular fact which the Epistle of Peter presents, I mean some borrowings which
the author of that Epistle makes from the writings of St. Paul. It is
The difference of the points of view in which Peter and Paul habitually placed
themselves betrays itself, besides, from the first line of that writing: “Peter, an apostle of Jesus Christ, to the elect banished by the dispersion
through Pontus, Galatia, &c.” Such expressions are thoroughly final. The family of Israel,
The Epistle of Peter, in spite of its bad style, although more analagous to that of Paul than to that of James or Jude, is an affecting morceau where the state of the Christian conscience about the end of Nero’s reign is reflected. A sweet sadness, a resigned confidence, fills it. The last times were at hand. These must be preceded by trials, from which the elect would come forth purified as by fire. Jesus, whom the faithful love without having seen him, in whom they believe without seeing him, will soon reappear, to their joy. Foreseen by God from all eternity, the mystery of the redemption is accomplished by the death and resurrection of Jesus. The elect, called to be born again in the blood of Jesus, are a people of saints, a spiritual temple, a royal priesthood, offering spiritual sacrifices.
“My dearly beloved, I pray you to comfort yourselves among the Gentiles who seek
to represent you as evil-doers, as strangers and expatriated, so that they may
by your good works, which they shall behold, glorify God in the day of
visitation. Submit yourselves to every ordinance of man for the Lord’s sake,
whether it be to the king as supreme, or unto governors, as unto them that are
sent by him for the punishment of evil-doers and for the praise of them that do
well. For so is the will of God, that with well doing ye may put to silence the
ignorance of foolish men. As free and not using your liberty for a cloke of
maliciousness, but as the servants of God. Honour all men. Love the brotherhood.
Fear God. Honour the king.
The ideal of the Passion, that touching picture of Jesus suffering without a word, exercised already, we have seen, a decisive influence on the Christian conscience. We may doubt if the account of it was yet written; that account was increased every day by new circumstances; but the essential features, fixed in the memory of the faithful, were to them perpetual exhortations to patience. One of the principal Christian positions was that “the Messiah ought to suffer.” Jesus and the true Christian are more and more represented to the imagination under the form of a silent lamb in the hands of the butcher. They embraced Him in Spirit, this gentle lamb slain young by sinners; they dwelt lovingly on the features of affectionate pity and amorous tenderness of a Magdalen at the tomb. This innocent victim, with the knife plunged in his side, drew tears from all those who had known him. The expression “Lamb of God,” to describe Jesus, was already coined; there mingled with it the idea of the paschal lamb; one of the most essential symbols of Christian art was in germ in these figures. Such an imagination, which struck Francis d’Assisi so greatly and made him weep, came from that beautiful passage where the second Isaiah, describing the ideal of the prophet of Israel (the man of sorrows) shows Him as a sheep which is led to death, and which does not open its mouth before its shearer.
This model of submission and humility Peter made the law of all classes of Christian society. The elders ought to rule their flock with deference, avoiding the appearance of commanding—the young ought to submit to the elder; the women, especially, without being preachers, ought to be, by the discreet charm of their piety, the great missionaries of the faith.
“And you, wives, likewise be in subjection to your own husbands, that if any obey not the word, they also may without the word be won by the conversation of the wives, while they behold your chaste conversation coupled with fear. Whose adorning let it not be that outward adorning of plaiting the hair, and of wearing of gold, or of putting on of apparel. But let it be the hidden man of the heart in that which is not corruptible, even the ornament of a meek and quiet spirit, which is in the sight of God of great price. For after this manner in the old time the holy women also, who trusted in God, adorned themselves, being in subjection unto their own husbands. Even as Sarah obeyed Abraham, calling him lord. Likewise, ye husbands, dwell with them according to knowledge, giving honour unto the wife as unto the weaker vessel, and as being heirs together of the grace of life. Finally, be ye all of one mind, having compassion one of another. Love as brethren, be pitiful, be courteous, not rendering evil for evil or railing for railing, but contrariwise blessing. And who is he that will harm you if ye be followers of that which is good? And if ye suffer anything for righteousness, happy are ye! “
The hope of the kingdom of trod held by the Christians gave room for some misunderstandings. The heathens imagined they spoke of a political revolution on the point of being carried out.
“Have a reason always ready for those who ask explanations from you as to your
hopes, but make that answer with gentleness and meekness, strong in your own
good conscience, so that those who caluminate the honest life in Christ you lead
may be ashamed of their injuries; for it is better to suffer for doing good (if
such is the will of God) than for doing evil. You have long enough done the will
of the heathen, living in lust, evil desires, drunkenness, revelries, feastings,
and the most abominable idolatrous worship. They are astonished now at your
keeping from throwing yourselves with them into this excess of crime, and they
If this epistle, as we readily believe, is truly Peter’s, it does much credit to
his good sense, to his right feeling, and his simplicity. He does not arrogate
any authority to himself. Speaking to the elders, ho represents himself as one
among themselves; he does not boast because he has been a witness of the
sufferings of Christ, and hopes to be a participator in the glory that is so
soon to be revealed. The letter was conveyed to Asia by a certain Silvanus,
who could not have been distinct from the Silvanus, or Silas, who was Paul’s
companion. Peter would thus have chosen him as known to the faithful of Asia
Minor, through the visit he had made to them with Paul. Peter sends the
salutations of Mark to these distant churches in a way which supposes, moreover,
that he was, likewise, not unknown to them. The letter is closed by the usual
greetings. The Church of Rome is there described in
The furious madness of Nero had arrived at its paroxysm. It was the most
horrible adventure the world had ever passed through. The absolute necessity of
the times had delivered up everything to one alone, to the inheritor of the
great legendary name of Cæsar: another Government was impossible and the
provinces usually found it well enough; but it concealed a terrible danger.
When the Cæsar lost his mind, when all the arteries of his poor head, disturbed
by an unheard of power shivered at the same moment, then there were madnesses
without name! People were delivered up to a monster with no means of ridding
themselves of him; his guard, made up of Germans who had everything to lose if
he fell, were desperate around his person; the beast driven to bay acted like a
wild boar and defended itself with fury. As for Nero, there was at the same time
something frightful and grotesque, grand and absurd, about him. As Cæsar was
well educated, his madness was chiefly literary. The dreams of all the ages, all
the poems, all the legends, Bacchus and Sardanapalus, Ninus and Priam, Troy and
Babylon, Homer, and the insipid poetry of the time, shook about in the poor
brain of a mediocre, but very satisfied, artist to whom chance had entrusted the
power of realising all his chimeras. We figure to ourselves a
These ridiculous things appeared at first very offensive to Nero; the ape
sometimes was circumspect and watched the position that had been taken towards
him. Cruelty did not show itself till after Agrippina’s death; soon it took
complete possession of him. Every year, henceforth, is marked by his crimes;
Burrhus is no
By his example all the world seemed struck with vertigo. He had formed a company of odious fellows who were called “the chevaliers of Augustus,” having as their occupation to applaud the follies of the Cæsar, and to invent for him some amusements as prowlers in the night. We shall soon see an emperor coming forth from that school. A flood of fancies, bad tastes, platitudes, expressions claiming to be comic, a nauseous slang, analogous to the wit of the smallest journals, entered Rome and became the fashion. Caligula had already created this sort of wretched imperial actorship. Nero took him for his perfect model. It was not enough for him to drive chariots in the circus, to wrestle in public, or to make singing excursions in the country; people saw him fishing with golden nets which he drew with purple cords, arranging his claqueurs himself, and obtaining false triumphs, decreeing to himself all the crowns of ancient Greece, organising unheard-of fêtes, and playing at the theatres in nameless parts.
The cause of these aberrations was the bad taste of the century, and the
misplaced importance they yielded to a declamatory art, looking at the
enormous, dreaming only of monstrosities. In fact, what ruled him was the want
of sincerity, an insipid taste like that of the tragedies of Seneca, a skill in
painting unfelt sentiments, the art of speaking like a virtuous man without
being one. The gigantic passed for great; the æsthetic was nowhere seen; it
was the day of colossal statues, of that material theatrical and falsely
pathetic art whose chef d’œuvre is the Laocoon, certainly an admirable statue,
but the pose being that of a first
It became necessary to pass laws to prevent senators and knights from descending
into the arena, from fighting the gladiators, or pitting themselves against the
beasts. The circus had become the centre of life; the rest of the world seemed
only made for the pleasures of Rome. There were unceasingly new inventions, each
stranger than the other, conceived and ordered by the choragic sovereign. The
people went from fête to fête,
One cannot exactly say that this wretched man was wanting in heart, or all
sentiment of the good and beautiful. Far from being incapable of friendship, he
often showed himself to be a good companion, and it was that very fact which
made him cruel; he wished to be loved and admired for himself, and was
irritated against all who had not those feelings towards him. His nature was
jealous and susceptible, and petty treasons put him beside himself. Nearly all
his revenges were exercised on persons whom he had admitted to his intimate
circle (Lucain, Vestinus), but who abused the familiarity he encouraged to wound
him with their jests; for he felt his weaknesses and feared their being
detected. The chief cause of his hatred to Thraseas was that he despaired of
obtaining his affection. The absurd quotation of the bad hemistitch, Sub terris
tonuisse putes, destroyed Lucain. Without putting aside the services of a Galvia
Crispinilla, he really loved some women; and these women, Poppea and Actea,
loved him. After the death of Poppea, accomplished by his brutality, he had a
sort of repentance of feeling, which was almost touching; he was for a long time
possessed by a tender sentiment, sought out everyone who resembled her, and
pursued after the most absurd substitutions; Poppea on her side had for him
feelings which a woman so distinguished would not have confessed for a common
man. A courtesan of the great world, clever in increasing, by the charms of
pretended modesty, the attractions of a
The devout and voluptuous Poppea retained him by analogous feelings. The
conjugal reconciliation which led to her death supposes that in her most
intimate relations with Nero she had never abandoned that hauteur which she
affected at the outset of their connection. As to Actea, if she was not a
Christian, as it has been thought she was, she could not have so much of this.
She was a slave originally from Asia, that is to say, from a country with which
the Christians of Rome had daily correspondence. We have often remarked. that
the beautiful freed women who had the most adorers were much given to the
oriental religions. Actea always kept her simple tastes, and never completely
separated herself from her little society of slaves. She belonged first to the
family of Annæa, about whom we have seen the Christians moving and grouping
themselves; it was asserted by Seneca that she played in the most monstrous and
tragical circumstances, a part which, seeing her servile condition, cannot
perhaps be described as honourable This poor girl, humble, gentle, and whom many
occasions show
And we must say that singular as this should appear, we can quite imagine that in spite of everything, women loved him. He was a monster, an absurd creature, badly formed, an incongruous product of nature; but he was not a common monster. It has been said that fate, by a strange caprice, wished to realize in him the hircocerf of logicians, a hybrid bizarre, and incoherent being, most frequently detestable, but whom yet at times people could not refrain from pitying. The feeling of women resting more upon sympathy and personal taste than the vigorous appreciation of ethics, a little beauty or moral kindness, even terribly warped, is sufficient for their indignation to melt into pity. They are especially indulgent to the artist, misguided by the intoxication of his art, for a Byron, the victim of his chimera, and pushing artlessness so far as to translate his inoffensive poetry into acts. The day on which Actea laid the bleeding corpse of Nero in the sepulchre of Domitius she no doubt wept over the profanation of natural gifts known to her alone; that same day, we can believe more than one Christian woman prayed for him
Although of mediocre talent, he had some parts of an artist’s soul; he painted
and sculptured well, his verses were good, notwithstanding a certain scholarly
pomposity, and, in spite of all that can be said, he made them himself;
Suetonius saw his autograph drafts covered with erasures. He was the first to
appreciate the admirable landscape of Subiaco, and made a delicious summer
residence there. His mind, in the observation of natural things, was just and curious: he
His desire in everything to be the head of fashion was certainly absurd. Yet it
must be said that there was more policy in that than one would think. The first
duty of the Cæsar (seeing the baseness of the times) was to occupy the people.
The sovereign was above all a grand organizer of fêtes; the amuser-in-chief
must be made to expose his own person to danger. Many of the enormities with
which they reproached Nero had their gravity only from the point of view of
Roman manners, and the severe attitude to which people had been accustomed till
then. This manly society was revolted by seeing the emperor give an audience to
the senate in an embroidered dressing gown, and conducting his reviews in an
intolerable négligé, without a belt, with a
sort of scarf round his neck to preserve his voice. The true Romans were rightly
indignant at the introduction
It must be recollected, moreover, that madness was in the air. If we except the
excellent nucleus of aristocratic society which shall arrive at power with Nerva
and Trajan, a general want of the serious made the most considerable men play in
some sort with life. The personage who represented and summed up the time, “the
honest man” of this reign of transcendent immorality, was, Petronius. He gave
the day to sleep, the night to business and amusements. He was not one of those
dissipated men who ruin themselves by grosser debaucheries, he was a voluptuary,
profoundly versed in the science of pleasure. The natural ease and abandon of
his speech and actions gave him an air of simplicity which charmed. While he was
pro-consul in Bithynia and later on consul, he shewed himself capable of great
management. Coming back to vice or the boasting of vice, he was admitted into
the inner court of Nero, and become the judge of good taste in everything;
nothing was gallant or delightful Petronius did not approve. The horrible
Tigellinus, who ruled by his baseness and wickedness, feared a rival whom he saw
surpassing him in the science of pleasures; he determined to destroy him.
Petronius respected himself too much to fight with this miserable man. He did
not wish however to quit life rudely. After having opened his veins he closed
them again, then he opened them anew, conversing on trifles with his friends,
hearing them talk, not upon the immortality of the soul and the opinions of
It cannot be denied that the taste for art was not lively and sincere among the
men of that age. They could scarcely produce any beautiful things, but they
sought greedily for the beautiful things of the past ages This same Petronius an
hour before his death made them break his myrrh vase so that Nero should not
have it. Objects of art rose to a fabulous price. Nero was passionately fond of
them. Fascinated by the idea of the great, but joining to that as little good
sense as was possible, he dreamed fantastical palaces, of towns like Babylon,
Thebes, and Memphis. The imperial dwelling on the Palatine (the ancient house of
Tiberius), had been modest enough and of a thoroughly private character until
Caligula’s reign. This emperor, whom we must consider in everything as the
creator of the school of government, in which it can be readily believed that
Nero was not the master, considerably enlarged the house of Tiberius. Nero
affected to find himself straitened there, and had not jests enough for his
predecessors, who were content with so little. He made the first draught in
provisional materials of a residence which equalled the palaces of China and
Assyria. This house which he called “transitory,” and which he meditated soon
making real, was quite a world. With its porticos three miles long, its parks
where great flocks fed, its interior solitudes, its lakes surrounded
Rome for a century back had been the wonder of the world; she equalled in grandeur the ancient capitals of Asia. Her buildings were beautiful, strong, and solid, but the streets appeared mean to the people of fashion, who every day went more and more in the direction of vulgar and decorative constructions; they aspired to those effects of harmony which make the delight of cockneys; they sought for frivolities unknown to the ancient Greeks. Nero was the head of the movement. The Rome which he imagined would have been something like the Paris of our day, or one of those artificial cities built by superior order on the plan which one has especially seen win the admiration of country people and foreigners. The irrational youth was intoxicated by these unwholesome plans. He desired also to see something strange, some grandiose spectacle worthy of an artist; he wished for an event which should mark a date in his reign. “Until me,” said he “people did not know the extent that was permitted to a prince.” All these inner suggestions of a disordered fancy appeared to take shape in a bizarre event which had for the subject which occupies us the most important consequences.
The incendiary mania being contagious and often complicated by hallucination,
it is very dangerous to awake it in weak heads where it sleeps. One of the
When I am dead, the earth and the fire can mingle together;
“Oh, no,” said he, “But while I am living!” The tradition according to which Nero burned Rome, only to have a repetition of the burning of Troy, is certainly exaggerated, since, as we shall show, Nero was absent from the city when the fire shewed itself. Yet this story is not destitute of all truth. The demon of perverse dramas who had taken possession of him was, as among wicked people of another age, one of the essential actors in the horrible crime.
On the 19th of July, 64, Rome took fire with a fear-fill violence. The
conflagration began near the Capena gate, in the portion of the Grand Circus
contiguous to the Palatine hill and Mons Cœlius. That quarter contained many
shops, full of inflammable material, where the fire spread with a prodigious
rapidity. From that point it made the tour of the Palatine, ravaged the Velabra,
the Forum, the Cannes, and mounted the hills, greatly damaged the Palatine, went
down again to the valleys, consuming during six days and nights some districts
which were compact and full of tortuous streets. An enormous abatis of houses
which had been built at the foot of the Esquiline arrested it for some time;
then it flamed up again and lasted three days more. The number of deaths was considerable. Of fourteen
Nero was at Antium when the fire broke out. He only entered the city at the moment the flames approached his “transitory” house. It was impossible for anything to resist the flames. The imperial mansions of the Palatine, the “transitory” house itself, with its dependencies, and the whole surrounding quarter, were destroyed. Nero evidently did not care much whether his residence could be saved or not. The sublime horror of the spectacle fascinated him. It was afterwards said that, mounted on a tower, he had contemplated the fire, and that there, in a theatrical dress, with a lyre in his hand, he had sung, to the touching rhythm of the ancient elegy, the ruin of Troy.
There was here a legend, a fruit of the age and of successive exaggerations; but
one point upon which universal opinion pronounced itself was this, that the fire
was ordered by Nero, or at least revived by him when it was about to go out. It
was believed that members of his household were recognized setting fire to it
at different points. In certain directions, the fire was kindled, it was said,
by men feigning drunkenness. The conflagration had the appearance of having been
raised simultaneously at many points at the same time. It is said that, during
the fire, there had been seen the soldiers and the watchmen charged with
extinguishing it, stirring it up, and hindering the efforts which were made to
circumscribe it, and that with an air of threatening and in the style of people
who executed official orders. Some large constructions of stone, in the
neighbourhood of the imperial residence, and whose site he coveted, were turned
over as in a siege. When the fire began again, it commenced in some buildings
which belonged to Tigellinus. What confirmed these suspicions
Everything leads us to believe that there was no calumny in that. The truth, so
far as it concerns Nero, can scarcely be probable. It may be said that with his
power he had more simple means than fire to procure the lands he desired. The
power of the emperor, without bounds in one sense, soon found on another side
its limit in the customs and prejudices of a people conservative in the highest
degree of its religious monuments. Rome was full of temples, of holy places, of
areæ, of buildings which no law of expropriation could cause to disappear. Cæsar
and many other emperors had seen their designs of public utility, especially in
what concerns the rectification of the course of the Tiber, met by this
obstacle. To execute his irrational plans, Nero had but really one means—fire.
The situation resembled that of Constantinople and in the great Mussulman
cities, whose renovation is prevented by the mosques and the ouakouf. In the
East, fire is only a weak expedient; for, after the fire, the ground, considered
as a sort of inalienable patrimony of the faithful, remains sacred. At Rome, where
All honest men who were in the city were enraged. The most precious antiquities of Rome, the houses of the ancient leaders decorated yet with triumphal spoils, the most sacred objects, the trophies, the ex-voto antiques, the most esteemed temples—all the material of the old worship of the Romans had disappeared. It was like the funeral of the reminiscences and legends of the fatherland. Nero had in vain taken on himself the expense of assuaging the misery he had caused; it was stated in vain that everything was limited in the last analysis to an operation of clearing up and rendering wholesome; that the new city would be very superior to the old; no true Roman would believe it; all those for whom a city is anything more than a mass of stones were wounded to the heart; the conscience of the country was hurt. This temple built by Evander, that other erected by Servius Tullius, of the sacred enceinte of Jupiter Stator, the palace of Numa, those penates of the Roman people, those monuments of so many victories, those triumphs of Grecian art, how could the loss be repaired? What value compared with that was there is sumptuousness of parades, vast monumental perspective, and endless straight lines? They conducted expiatory ceremonies, they consulted the Sibyl’s books, and the ladies especially celebrated divers piacula. But there remained the secret feeling of a crime, an infamy; Nero began to feel that he had gone a little too far.
An infernal idea then came into his mind. He asked himself if there were not in
the world some wretches still more detested than he by the Roman citizens, on
whom he had brought down the odium of the fire. He thought of the Christians.
The honor which those last showed for the temples and the buildings most
venerated by the Romans rendered acceptable enough the idea that they were the
authors of a fire, the effect of which had been to destroy those sanctuaries.
Their gloomy air before the monuments appeared an insult to the country. Rome
was a very religious city, and one person protesting against the national cults
was very quickly observed. It must be remembered that certain rigorous Jews went
even so far as not to touch a coin bearing an effigy, and saw as great a crime
in the fact of looking at or carrying about an image, as in that of carving it.
Others refused to pass through a gate of the city surmounted by a statue. All
this provoked the jests and the bad will of the people. Perhaps the talk of the
Christians upon the grand final conflagration, their sinister prophecies, their
affectation in repeating that the world was soon to finish, and to finish by
fire, contributed to make them be taken for incendiaries. It is not even
inadmissable that many believers had committed imprudences and that men had had
some pretexts to accuse them for having wished, by preluding the heavenly
flames, to justify their oracles at any price. What piaculum, in any case, could
be more efficacious than the punishment of those enemies of the
Let us put far from us the idea that the pious disciples of Jesus had been culpable to any degree of the crime of which they were accused: let us only say that many indications might mislead opinion. This fire it may be they had not lit, but surely they rejoiced at it. The Christians desired the end of society and predicted it. In the Apocalypse, it is the secret prayers of the saints which burn the earth and make it tremble. During the disaster, the attitude of the faithful would appear equivocal: some no doubt were wanting in showing respect and regret before the consumed temples, or even did not conceal a certain satisfaction. One could imagine such a conventicle at the base of the Transtevere, where it might be said: “is this not what we foretold?” Often it is dangerous to show oneself too prophetic. “If we wished to revenge ourselves,” said Tertullian, “a single night and some torches would be sufficient” The accusation of incendiarism was very common against the Jews, because of their separate life. This very crime was one of these flagitia cohærentia nomini which made up the definition of a Christian.
Without having at all contributed to the catastrophe of the 19th July, the Christians could therefore be held, if one could so express it, incendiaries at heart. In four years and a half the Apocalypse will present a song on the burning of Rome, to which the event of 64 probably furnished more than one feature. The destruction of Rome by flames was indeed a Jewish and Christian dream; but it was nothing but a dream the pious secretaries were certainly contented to see in spirit the saints and angels applauding from high heaven what they regarded as a just expiation.
One can scarcely believe that the idea of accusing the Christians of the fire of
the month of July should come of itself to Nero. Certainly, if Cæsar had known
the good brothers closely, he would have strangely hated them. The Christians
naturally could not comprehend the merit which lay in posing as an actor on the
stage of the society of his age: now what exasperated Nero was when people
misunderstood his talent as an artist and head of entertainments. Yet Nero could
not but hear them speak of the Christians; he never found himself in personal
relations with them. By whom was the atrocious expedient on which he acted
suggested? It is probable besides that on many sides in the city some
suspicions were entertained. The sect, at that time, was well known in the
official world. We have seen that Paul had certain relations with some person
attached to the service of the imperial palace. One thing very extraordinary is
that among the promises which certain people had made to Nero, in case he should
come to be deprived of the empire, was that of the government of the east and
particularly of the kingdom of Jerusalem. The Messianic ideas among the Jews at
Rome often took the form of vague hopes of a Roman oriental empire; Vespasian
profited at a later date by those fancies. From the accession of Caligula up
till the death of Nero, the Jewish cabals at Rome did not cease. The Jews had
contributed greatly to the accession and to the support of the family of
Germanicus. Whether through the Herods or other intriguers, they besieged the
palace, too often to have their enemies destroyed. Agrippa II. had been very
powerful under Caligula and Claudius; when he resided at Rome he played the part
of an influential person. Tiberius Alexander on the other hand, occupied the
loftiest functions. Josephus indeed shows himself to be very favourable to Nero;
he says they have caluminated him, and lays all his crimes upon his evil
surroundings. As to Poppea, he makes her out to be a
Is all this enough on which to found a plausible hypothesis? Is it allowable to
attribute to the hatred of the Jews against the Christians the cruel caprice
which exposed the most inoffensive of men to the most monstrous punishments? It
was surely a pity that the Jews had this secret interview with Nero and Poppea
at the moment when the emperor conceived such a hateful thought against the
disciples of Jesus. Tiberius Alexander especially was then in his full favour,
and such a man would detest the saints. The Romans usually confounded the Jews
and the Christians. Why was the distinction so clearly made on this occasion?
Why were the Jews, against whom the Romans had the same moral antipathy and the
same religious grievances as against the Christians, not meddled with at this
time? The sufferings of some Jews would have been a piacalum quite as
effectual. Clemens Romanus, or the author (certainly a Roman) of the
At first a certain number of persons suspected of forming part of the new sect
were arrested, and they were put together in a prison, which was already a
punishment in itself. They confessed their faith, which was considered an avowal
of the crime which was judged inseparable from it. These first arrests led to a
great number of others. The larger portion of the accused appear to have been
proselytes, observing the precepts and the rules of the pact of Jerusalem. It is
not to be admitted that any true Christians had denounced their brethren; but
some papers might be seized; some neophytes scarcely initiated might yield to
the torture. People were surprised at the multitudes of adherents who had
accepted these gloomy doctrines; they
These punishments were something frightful. Such refinements of cruelty had never been seen. Nearly all the Christians arrested were of the humiliores, people of no position. The punishment of those unfortunates, when it was a matter of lese-majesty or sacrilege, consisted in being delivered to the beasts or burned alive in the amphitheatre, with accompaniments of cruel scourgings. One of the most hideous features of Roman manners was to have made of punishment a fête, and the witnessing of slaughter a public game. Persia, in its moments of fanaticism and terror had known frightful exhibitions of torture; more than once it has tasted there a sort of gloomy pleasure; but never before the Roman domination had there been this looking at these horrors as a public diversion, a subject for laughter and applause. The amphitheatres had become the places of execution; the tribunals furnished the arena. The condemned of the whole world were led to Rome for the supply of the circus and the amusement of the people. Let us join to that an atrocious exaggeration in the penalty which caused simple offences to be punished by death; let us add numerous judicial blunders, resulting from a defective criminal procedure, and we shall conceive that all the ideas were perverted. The punished were considered very soon to be as much unfortunate as criminal; as a whole, they were looked on as nearly innocent, innoxia corpora.
To the barbarity of the punishments, this time they added insult. The victims
were kept for a fête, to which no doubt an expiratory character was given. Rome
reckoned few days so extraordinary. The ludus matutinus, dedicated to the
fights with animals, made an extraordinary exhibition. The condemned, covered
with the skins of wild beasts, were thrust into the arena, where they were torn
by the dogs; others were crucified, others again, clothed in tunics steeped in
oil, pitch, or resin, were fastened to stakes and kept to light up the fête at
night. As the dusk came on they lit those living flambeaux. Nero gave for the
spectacle the magnificent gardens he possessed across the Tiber, and which
occupied the present site of the Borgo and the piazza and church of St. Peter.
He had found there a circus, commenced by Caligula, continued by Claudius, and
of which an obelisk brought from Hierapolis (that which at the present day marks
the centre of the piazza of St. Peter) was the boundary. This place had already
seen massacres by torchlight. Caligula caused to be beheaded there by the light
of flambeaux a certain number of consular personages, senators, and Roman
ladies. The idea of replacing those lights by human bodies impregnated by
inflammable substances may appear ingenious. This punishment, this fashion of
burning alive was not new; it was the ordinary penalty for incendiaries, what
was termed the tunica molesta; but a system of illumination had never been made
out of it. By the light of these hideous torches Nero, who had put evening races
in fashion, showed himself in the arena, sometimes mingling with the people in
the dress of a jockey, sometimes driving his chariot and seeking for their
applause. But yet there were some signs of compassion. Even those who believed
the Christians culpable and who confessed that they had deserved the last
punishment, were horrified by these cruel pleasures. Wise men wished that they would do only what public
Some women, some maidens, were mixed up with these horrible games. A fête was made out of the nameless indignities they suffered. The custom was established under Nero of making the condemned in the amphitheatre play certain mythological parts, involving the death of the actor. Those hideous operas, where the science of machinery attained prodigious results, were a new thing; Greece would have been surprised if they had suggested to it a similar attempt to apply ferocity to æsthetics, to produce art by torture. The unfortunate was introduced into the arena richly dressed as a god or a hero doomed to death, then represented by his punishment some tragic scene of fables consecrated by sculptors and poets. Sometimes it was the furious Hercules, burned upon mount Œta, drawing over his skin the lit tunic of pitch; sometimes it was Orpheus torn in pieces by a bear; Dedalus thrown from the sky and devoured by beasts; Pasipháe submitting to the embrace of the bull, or Attys murdered; at other times, there were horrible masquerades, where the men were dressed as priests of Saturn, with a red mantle on their backs; the women as priestesses of Ceres, with fillets on their foreheads; and lastly some dramatic pieces, in the course of which the hero was really put to death, like Laureolus, or representations of tragical acts like that of Mucius Scævola. At the close, Mercury, with a rod of red hot iron, touched every corpse to see if it moved; some masked servants, representing Pluto or the Orcus, drew away the dead by the feet, killing with mallets all who still breathed.
The most respectable Christian ladies bore their part in these monstrosities.
Some played the part of the Danaïdes, others those of Dircé. It is difficult to say
As to the sufferings of the Dircés there can be no doubt, We know the colossal group known by the name of the Farnese Bull, now in the museum at Naples. Amphion and Zethus fasten Dirce to the horns of an untamed bull which would draw her across the rocks and precipices of Cithero. This mediocre Rhodian marble, brought to Rome in the time of Augustus, was the object of universal admiration. What finer subject for this hideous art which the cruelty of the age had put in vogue and which consisted in making tableaux vivants of famous statues? A text and a fresco from Pompeii appear to prove that this temple scene was often represented in the arena, when the person to be punished was a woman. Bound naked by the hair to the horns of a furious bull, the unfortunates satiated the lustful glances of the cruel people. Some of the Christian women thus sacrificed were weak in body; their courage was superhuman: but the infamous crowd had no eyes save for their opened entrails and their torn bosoms.
Nero was doubtless present at these spectacles. As he was short-sighted he had the habit of wearing in his eye, when he followed the gladiatorial fights, a concave emerald which he used as a lorgnon. He loved to parade his knowledge of sculpture; it is asserted that he made odious remarks over the corpse of his mother, praising this and disparaging that. Flesh palpitating under the teeth of the beasts, a poor timid girl veiling her nudity by a modest gesture, then tossed by a bull, and torn in pieces on the pebbles of the arena, would present some plastic forms and colours worthy of a connaisseur like him. He was there in the first rank upon the podium, mingling with the vestals and the curule magistrates, with his bad figure, his mean face, his blue eyes, his chestnut hair twisted in rows of curls, his cruel lips, his wicked and beastly air; at once the figure of a big ugly baby, happy, puffed up with vanity, while a brassy music vibrated in the air, waving through a stream of blood. He doubtless dwelt like an artist upon the modest attitude of these new Dirces, and found, I imagine, that a certain air of resignation gave to these poor women about to be torn in pieces a charm which he had never known till then.
For a long time that hideous scene was remembered, and even under Domitian when an actor was put to death in his part, especially one Loreolius, who really died upon the cross, they thought of the piacula of the year 64 and imagined him to represent an incendiary of the city of Rome. The names of sarmentitii or sarmentarii (people preparing the fagots) semaxii (the stakes) the popular cry of “The Christians to the lions” appeared also to date from that time. Nero, with a sort of clever art, had struck budding Christianity with an indelible impress; the bloody nœvus inscribed on the forehead of the martyr church shall never be effaced.
Those of the brethren who were not tortured had in some sort their part in the
sufferings of the others by
Thus opened this strange poem of martyrdom, this epopee of the amphitheatre, which was to last for 250 years, and from which would come forth the ennoblement of women, the rehabitation of the slaves by such episodes as these: Blandina on the cross turning her eyes upon her companions, who saw in the gentle and pale slave the image of Jesus crucified: Potanugina protected from outrage by the young officer who was leading her to punishment. The crowd was seized with horror when it perceived the humid breasts of Felicita; Perpetua in the arena pinning up her hair trampled by the beasts not to appear disconsolate. Legend tells that one of these saints proceeding to punishment met a young man who, touched by her beauty, gave her a look of pity. Wishing to leave him a souvenir she took the kerchief which covered her bosom and gave it to him; intoxicated by this gage of love the young man ran a moment later to martyrdom. Such was in fact the dangerous charm of those bloody dramas of Rome, Lyons, and Carthage. The joy of the sufferers in the amphitheatre became contagious as under the Terror the resignation of the “Victims.” The Christians presented themselves above all to the imagination of the times as a race determined to suffer. The desire for death was henceforward their mark. To arrest the too deep desire for martyrdom the most terrible threatenings became necessary—the stamp of heresy, expulsion from the church.
The fault which the educated classes of the empire committed in provoking this
feverish enthusiasm cannot be blamed enough. To suffer for his belief is a thing
so sweet to man that this attraction is alone sufficient to
What happened once may happen again. Tacitus would have turned away with indignation if he had been shewn the future of those Christians whom he treated as wretches. The honest people of Rome would have cried out if any observer endowed with a prophetic spirit had dared to say to them: “These incendiaries will be the salvation of the world.” Hence an eternal objection against the dogmatism of conservative parties, an irremediable warping of conscience, and a secret perversion of judgment. Some wretches despised by all fashionable people have become saints. It would not be good if madnesses of this kind were frequent. The safety of society demands that its sentences shall not be too frequently reformed. Since the condemnation of Jesus, since the martyrs have been found to have had success for their cause in their revolt against the law, there had always been in the matter of social crimes as a secret appeal from the thing judged. Not one of the condemned but could say: “Jesus was smitten thus. The martyrs were held to be dangerous men of whom society must be purged, and yet the following centuries have shewn that this was right.” A heavy blow this to those clumsy assertions by which a society seeks to represent to itself that its enemies are wanting in all reason and morality.
After the day when Jesus expired on Golgotha, the day of the festivals of the gardens of Nero (one can fix it about the 1st of August in the year 64) was the most solemn in the history of Christianity. The solidity of a construction is in proportion to the sum of virtues, sacrifices and devotion which are laid as its foundations. Fanatics alone found anything. Judaism endures still by reason of the intense frenzy of its prophets and zealots; Christianity, because of the courage of its first witnesses. The orgy of Nero was the grand baptism of blood, which marked out Rome as the city of the martyrs to play a part in the history of Christianity, and to be the second holy city. It was the taking possession of the Vatican hill by these conquerors of a kind unknown till then.
The odious madcap who governed the world did not perceive that he was the
founder of a new order, and that he signed for the future a character written
with cinnebar, whose effects would be reclaimed at the end of eighteen hundred
years. Rome, made responsible for all the bloodshed, became, like Babylon, a
sort of sacramental and symbolic city. Nero took in any case that day a place of
the first order in the history of Christianity. This miracle of horror, this
prodigy of perversity, was an evident sign to all. A hundred and fifty years
after Tertullian writes: “Yes, we are proud that our position outside of the
law has been inaugurated by such a man. When one has come to know him he
understands that he who was condemned by Nero could not but be great and good.”
Already the idea had spread that the coining of the true Christ would be
preceded by the coming of a sort of an infernal Christ who should be in
everything the contrary of Jesus. That could not longer be doubted; the
Antichrist, the Christ of evil, existed. The Antichrist was this monster with a
human face made up of ferocity, hypocrisy, immodesty, pride, who paraded before
the world as an absurd hero, celebrated his triumph as a chariot driver with torches of human flesh,
That day was likewise the one upon which was created by a strange autithesis,
the charming ambiguity on which humanity has lived for centuries and partly
lives still. This was an hour reckoned in Heaven as that in which Christian
chastity, until then so carefully concealed, should appear in the full light
before fifty thousand spectators, and placed, as in the studio of a sculptor, in
the attitude of a virgin about to die. Revelations of a secret which antiquity
does not know! Brilliant proclamation of this principle that modesty is a joy
and a beauty itself alone! Already we have seen the great magician who is
called fancy, and who modifies from century to century the ideal of woman,
working incessantly to place above the perfection of the form the attraction of
modesty (Poppea only ruled by putting that on) and of a resigned humility (in
that was the triumph of the good Actea). Accustomed to march always at the head
of his age in the paths of the unknown, Nero was, it appears, the introducer of
this sentiment, and discovered in his artistic
We do not know with certainty the names of any of the Christians who perished at
Rome, in the horrible events of August, 64. The arrested persons had been lately
converted and their names were scarcely known. Those holy women who had
astonished the church by their constancy were not known by names. They had been
styled in Roman history as “The Danaïdes and the Dirces.” Yet the images of the
places remained lively and deep. The circus or naumachy, the two boundaries, the
obelisk, and a turpentine tree which served as a rallying point for the
reminiscences of the first Christian generations, became the fundamental
elements of a whole ecclesiastical topography whose result was the consecration
of the Vatican and the pointing out of that hill for a religious destiny of the
first order. Although the affair had been special to the city of Rome and as it
was necessary to appease the public opinion of the Romans, irritated by the
fire, the atrocity ordered by Nero must have had some counterpart in the
provinces and excited there a renewal of persecution. The churches of Asia Minor
were heavily tried; the heathen population of these countries were prompt to
fanaticism. There had been some imprisonments at Syrmna. Pergamos had a martyr
who is known to us by the name of Antipas, who appears to have suffered near the
temple of Esculapius, probably in a wooden theatre not far from the temple in
connection with some festival. Pergamos was, with Cyzicus, the only town of Asia
Minor which had a regular organization for gladiatorial shows. We know
It is allowable without unlikelihood to connect with the event of which we have
given an account the deaths of the apostles Peter and Paul. A fate truly strange
has decreed that the disappearance of these two extraordinary men should be
enveloped in mystery. A certain thing is, that Peter died a martyr. Now it can
scarcely be conceived that he had been a martyr elsewhere than at Rome, and at
Rome the only historical incident known by which one could explain his death is
the episode recorded by Tacitus. As to Paul, some solid reasons lead us also to
believe that he died a martyr and died at Rome. It is therefore natural to
connect his death likewise with the episode of July-August, 64. Thus was
cemented by suffering the reconciliation of those two souls, the one so strong,
the other so good; thus was established by legendary authority (that is to say,
divine) this touching brotherhood of two men whose parties opposed each other,
but who, we may believe, were superior to parties and always loved each other.
The great legend of Peter and Paul parallel to that of Romulus and Remus
founding by a sort of collaboration the grandeur of Rome—a legend which in a sense
As to the nature of the death of the two Apostles, we know with certainty that Peter was crucified. According to ancient texts his wife was executed with him, and he saw her led to punishment. A story, accepted since the third century, says that, too humble to suffer like Jesus, he asked to be crucified with his head downwards. The characteristic feature of the butchery of 64 having been the search for odious rarities in the way of tortures, it is possible that Peter in fact had been offered to the crowd in this hideous attitude. Seneca mentions some cases where tyrants have been known to cause the heads of the crucified to be turned to the earth. Their Christian piety would have seen a mystic refinement in what was only a bazarre caprice of the executioners. Perhaps the passage in the fourth gospel: ‘Thou shalt stretch forth thine hands and another shall gird thee, and shall lead thee whither thou would’st not,” includes some allusion to a speciality in Peter’s suffering. Paul in his capacity as honestior had his head cut off. It is probable besides that there had been in regard to him a regular decision, and that he was not included in the summary condemnation of the victims of Nero’s fêtes. Timothy was, according to certain appearances, arrested with his master and kept in prison.
At the beginning of the 3rd century two monuments were already seen at Rome
connected with the names of the Apostles Peter and Paul. One was situated at the
foot of the Vatican hill: it was that of St. Peter; the other on the way to
Ostia: it was that of St. Paul. They were called in oratorical style, “the
trophies” of the Apostles. These were probably some cellæ or some
Did the “trophies” which the Christians venerated about the year 200 really
mark the places where the two Apostles suffered? That may be. It is not
unlikely that Paul at the end of his life resided in the outskirts which stretch
beyond the Lavernal gate upon the way from Ostia. The shadow of Peter, upon the
other hand always wanders in the Christian legend towards the foot of the
Vatican, the gardens and the circus of Nero especially about the obelisk. This
arises, it will be seen, from the fact that the circus spoken of preserved the
souvenir of the martyrs of 64, with whom, failing precise indications, Christian
tradition would connect Peter; we like better to believe, notwithstanding, that
there was mixed with that some indication, and that the old place of the obelisk
of the sacristy of St. Peter, marked at the present day by an inscription,
points out somewhat nearly the spot where Peter on the cross satiated by his
If, as we may be allowed to believe, John accompanied Peter to Rome, we can find
a plausible foundation for the old tradition according to which John would have been plunged in the boiling oil, in the
A jealous fate has willed that on so many points which greatly excite our
curiosity, we should never escape from the penumbra where legend dwells. Let us
repeat it once more; the questions relating to the death of the Apostles Peter
and Paul present nothing but likely hypotheses. The death of Paul especially is
wrapped in deep mystery. Certain expressions in the Apocalypse, composed at the
end of 68 or the beginning of 69, would incline us to think that the author of
this book believed Paul to be alive when he wrote. It is in no way impossible
that the end of the great Apostle had been altogether unknown. In the career
that certain texts attributed to him from the Western side, a shipwreck, a
sickness, or some accident might carry him off. As he had not at that moment his
brilliant crown of disciples around him the details of his death would remain
We shall show in the following book how the church consummated a reconciliation between Peter and Paul which, perhaps, death had sketched. Success was the reward. Apparently inalienable, the Judeo-Christianity of Peter and the Hellenism of Paul were equally necessary to the success of the future work. Judeo-Christianity represented the conservative spirit, without which it possessed nothing substantial; Hellenism, advance and progress, without which nothing really exists. Life is the result of a conflict between opposing forces. People die as well from the absence of all revolutionary feeling as from excess of revolution.
The conscience of a society of men is like that of an individual. Every impression going beyond a certain degree of violence leaves in the sensorium of the patient a trace which is equivalent to a lesion, and puts it for a long time, if not for ever, under the power of hallucination, or a fixed idea. The bloody episode of August, 64, had equalled in horror the most hideous dreams which a sick brain could conceive. For many years to come the Christian consciousness shall be as if possessed. It is a prey to a sort of vertigo; monstrous thoughts torment. A cruel death appears to be the lot reserved for all believers in Jesus. But is not itself the most certain sign of the nearness of the Great day?
. . . The souls of the victims of the Beast were conceived if as waiting the sacred hour under the divine altar and crying for vengeance. The angel of God calms them, tells them to keep themselves in peace, and wait yet a little while; the moment is not far off when their brethren, destined for immolation, shall be killed in their turn. Nero shall charge himself with that. Nero is this infernal personage to whom God will abandon for a little his power on the eve of the catastrophe; it is this hellish monster who should appear like a frightful meteor in the horizon of the evening of the last days.
The air was everywhere as if impregnated with the spirit of martyrdom. The
surroundings of Nero appeared animated against morality by a sort of
disinterested hatred; there was from one end to the other of the Mediterranean,
a struggle to the death between good and evil. That harsh Roman society had
declared war against piety in all its forms; piety saw itself driven,
The uselessness of the massacres was seen, besides, clearly in this
circumstance. An aristocratic movement, peculiar to a small number of people, is
stopped by a few executions; but it is not the same with a popular movement,
for such a movement has neither need of leaders nor of learned teachers. A
garden where the flowers have no root can exist no longer: a park mowed becomes
better than before. Thus Christianity, far from being arrested by the lugubrious
caprice of Nero, multiplied more vigorously than ever; an increase of anger took
possession of the survivors’ hearts; it would become more than a dream, they
would become masters of the heathen ruling them, as they deserved, with a rod of
iron. An incendiary, although another than he whom they accused of having lit
this fire, shall devour this impious city, become the temple of Satan. The
doctrine of the final conflagration
The greater part of the Christians at Rome who escaped the ferocity of Nero, doubtless quitted the city. During six or twelve years, the Roman Church found itself in extreme disorder, a large door was opened to legend. Yet there was not a complete interruption in the existence of the community. The Seer of the Apocalypse in December, 68, or January, 69, gives orders to his people to quit Rome. Even by making that passage a prophetic fiction, it is difficult not to conclude that the Church of Rome quickly resumed its importance. The chiefs alone definitively abandoned a city where their Apostolate for the moment could not bear fruit. The point in the Roman world where life was most supportable for the Jews was at that time the province of Asia. There was between the Jewish community at Rome, and that at Ephesus, increasing communication. It was to that side that the fugitives directed themselves. Ephesus was the point where resentment for the events of the year 64 shall be most lively. All the hatreds of Rome were concentrated there; thence shall come forth in four years a furious invective, by which the Christian conscience shall reply to the atrocities of Nero.
There is no unlikelihood in placing among the Christian notables who came from
Rome, the Apostle whom we have seen follow in everything Peter’s fortunes. If
the accounts relative to the incident, which was placed later on at the Latin
Gate, have any truth, we may be permitted to suppose that the Apostle John,
escaping punishment as by miracle, should have quitted the city without delay,
and afterwards it was natural that he should take refuge in Asia. Like nearly
all the data relating to the life of the Apostles, the traditions as to the
residence of John at Ephesus are
The Church at Ephesus was mixed; one party owned Paul’s faith, another was Judeo-Christian. This latter fraction would preponderate through the arrival of the Roman colony, especially if that colony brought with it a companion of Jesus, a Jerusalem doctor, one of those illustrious masters before even whom Paul himself bowed. John was, after the death of Peter and James, the only apostle of the first order who still lived; he had become the chief of all the Judeo-Christian Churches; an extreme respect attached to him; we are led to believe (and no doubt the apostle himself says it), that Jesus had for him a special affection. A thousand stories were founded already upon these data. Ephesus became for a time the centre of Christianity, Rome and Jerusalem being, in consequence of the violence of the times, residences nearly forbidden to the new religion.
The struggle was soon lively between the Judeo-Christian community, headed by the intimate friend of Jesus and the families of the proselytes made by Paul. This struggle reached to all the churches of Asia. There were nothing but bitter declamations against this Balaam, who had sown scandal among the sons of Israel, who had taught them that they could without sin intermarry with heathens. John, on the contrary, was more and more considered like a Jewish high priest. Like James, he bore the petalon, that is to say, the plate of gold upon his forehead. He was the doctor par excellence; they were even accustomed, perhaps because of the incident of the boiling oil, to give him the title of martyr.
It appears that among the number of fugitives who came from Rome to Ephesus was
Barnabas. Timothy was imprisoned about the same time; we do not know in what
place, perhaps in Corinth. At the end of some
It is the circumstances concerning him that, according to our view, connect the
work which bears the title difficult to understand of the epistle to the
Hebrews. This writing would appear to have been composed at Ephesus by Barnabas,
and addressed to the Church of Rome in the name of the little community of
Italian Christians who had taken refuge in the capital of Asia. By his position,
in some degree intermediate at the point of meeting of many ideas hitherto never
associated, the epistle to the Hebrews comes by right to the conciliatory man,
who so many times prevented the different tendencies in the bosom of the young
community from reaching an open rupture. The opposition of the Jewish Churches
to the Gentile Churches appears, when one reads this little treatise, a question
settled, or rather lost in an overflowing flood of transcendental metaphysics
and peaceful charity. As we have said, the taste for the midraschim or little
treatises of religious exegesis under an epistolary form had made great
progress. Paul was set forth quite fully as to his doctrine in his Epistle to
the Romans; later on, the Epistle to the Ephesians had been his most
God, after having formally communicated His will by the ministry of the
prophets, has used in these last days the instrumentality of the Son by whom He
had created the world, and who maintains everything by his power. This Son, the
reflex of the Father’s glory and the imprint of his essence, whom the Father has
been pleased to appoint heir of the universe, has expiated sin by his appearance
in this world; then he has gone to sit down in the celestial regions at the
right hand of the majesty, with a title superior to that of the angels. The
Mosaic law had been announced by the angels; it contains only the shadow of the
good things to come; ours has been announced first by the Lord, then it has been
transmitted to us in a sure manner by those who heard it from him, God bearing
them witness by signs, prodigies, and all sorts of
This order is much superior to the Levitical priesthood, and has totally abrogated it; Jesus is priest throughout eternity.
“For such an high priest became us who is holy, harmless, and separate from sinners, and raised higher than the heavens, who does not need each day like the other priests to offer sacrifices, first for his own sins and then for those of the people. The old law made high priests of men who were liable to fall: the new law has constituted the Son to all eternity. We have such a high priest, who is seated on the right hand of the throne of the Majesty, as the minister of the true sanctuary and of the true tabernacle which the Lord hath built. Christ is the high priest of good things to come. For if the blood of bulls and goats and the ashes of an heifer sprinkle those who are unclean, gives carnal purity: how much more shall the blood of Christ, who has offered himself to God, a spotless victim, purify our conscience from dead works? It is thus He is the Mediator of the New Testament; for to have a testament it is necessary that the death of the testator should be proved, as a testament has no effect while the testator lives. The first covenant, also, was inaugurated with blood. It is by means of blood that everything is legally purged, and without shedding of blood there is no pardon.”
We are, therefore, sanctified once for all by the sacrifice of the body of Jesus Christ, who shall appear a second time to those who wait for him. The old sacrifices never attained their end since they were renewed unceasingly. If the expiatory sacrifice recurred every year on a fixed day, is that not a proof that the blood of the victims was powerless? In place of those perpetual holocausts Jesus has offered his single sacrifice, which renders the other useless. Consequently there is no longer need of a sacrifice for sin.
The feeling of the dangers which surrounded the Church fills the author’s mind.
He has before his eyes
” For it is impossible for those who were once enlightened, and have tasted of the heavenly gift, and were made partakers of the Holy Ghost, and have tasted the good word of God and the powers of the world to come, if they shall fall away, to renew them again into repentance; seeing they crucify to themselves the Son of God afresh and put him to an open shame. For the earth, which drinketh in the rain that cometh oft upon it, and bringeth forth herbs meet for them by whom it is dressed, receiveth blessing from God. But that which beareth thorns and briers is rejected, and is nigh unto cursing, whose end is to be burned. But beloved, we are persuaded better things of you, and things that accompany salvation, though we thus speak. For God is not unrighteous to forget your work and labour of love, which ye have showed towards His name in that ye have ministered to the saints and do minister. And we desire that every one of you do show the same diligence to the full assurance of hope unto the end. That ye be not slothful, but followers of them who through faith and patience inherit the promises.”
Some believers already had shown themselves neglectful of attendance upon the gatherings in the church. The apostle declares that these gatherings are the essence of Christianity, that it is there we exhort, animate, and watch each other, and that it is necessary to be all the more assiduous in that as the great day of final appearance approaches.
For if we sin wilfully after that we have received the
knowledge of the truth, there remains no more sacrifice for sins, but a certain fearful looking for of judgment,
and fiery indignation which shall devour the adversaries. . . . . . . . It is a fearful
thing to fall into the hands of the living God. But call to remembrance the former days, in which, after ye were
illuminated, ye endured a great fight of afflictions. Partly while ye were made a gazing-stock, both by reproaches
and afflictions; and partly whilst ye became companions of them that were
so used. For ye had compassion of me in my bonds, and
Faith sums up the attitude of the Christian. Faith is the steady waiting for that which is promised, the certainty of what is not yet seen. It is faith which made the great men of the ancient law, who died without having obtained the things promised, having only seen them and hailed them from afar, confessing themselves strangers and pilgrims upon this earth, always searching for a better country which they have not found, the heavenly. The author quotes on this subject the examples of Abel, Enoch, Noah, Abraham, Sarah, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, Moses, and Rahab the harlot.
What more shall I say, for the time would fail me to tell of Gideon, and of
Barak, and of Samson, and of Jepthah, of David also, and Samuel and of the
prophets. Who through faith subdued kingdoms, wrought righteousness, obtained
promises, stopped the mouths of lions, quenched the violence of fire, escaped
the edge of the sword, out of weakness were made strong, waxed valiant in fight,
turned to flight the armies of the aliens. Women received their dead raised to
life again, and others were tortured, not accepting deliverance, that they might
obtain a better resurrection. And others had trials of cruel mockings and
scourgings, yea, moreover, of bonds and imprisonment. They were stoned, they
were sawn asunder, were tempted, were slain with the sword, they wandered about
in sheep skins and goat skins, being destitute, afflicted, tormented. Of whom
the world was not worthy. They wandered in deserts, and in mountains, and in
dens, and in caves of the earth. And these, all having obtained a good report
through faith, received not the promise. God having provided some better thing
for us, that they without us should not be made perfect. Wherefore, seeing we
also are compassed about with so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside
every weight, and the sin which doth so easily
The author then explains to the confessors that the sufferings which they endure are no punishments, but that they ought to be taken as paternal corrections such as a father administers to his son, and which are a pledge of his tenderness. He invitee them to hold themselves in readiness against light minds which, after the manner of Esau, give their spiritual patrimony in exchange for a worldly and momentary advantage. For the third time the author turns back upon his favourite thought that after a fall which has put one outside of Christianity, there is no return. Esau also sought to regain the paternal benediction, but his tears and regrets were useless. We know that there had been, in the persecution of 64, some renegades through weakness, who, after their apostacy, desired to re-enter the Church. Our doctor demands that they should be repulsed. What blindness, indeed, equals that of the Christian who hesitates or denies “after having come to the holy mountain of Sion, and the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem and myriads of angels in their choir, the Church of the firstborn written in heaven, and of God the universal Judge, of the spirits of the just made perfect, and Jesus the Mediator of the new covenant, after having been purified by the blood of propitiation which speaks better things than that of Abel . . .?”
The apostle closes by recalling to his readers the members of the Church who
were still in the dungeons of the Roman authorities, and especially the memory
of their spiritual leaders who were no more—those
A singular thing! the death of Jesus in Paul’s school takes a larger importance
than his life. The precepts of the Lake of Gennesareth little interested this
school, and appear to have been scarcely known to them; what they saw as the
first plan was the sacrifice of the Son of God giving himself up for the
expiation of the sins of the world. Absurd ideas which, restated later on by
Calvinism, caused the Christian theology
But what was wonderful in the beginnings of Christianity was that those who draw
the car in the contrary way most obstinately were those who worked best to make
it advance. The Epistles to the Hebrews, marked definitively in the history of
the religious evolution of humanity, the disappearance of sacrifice, that is to
say of what up till then had constituted the essence of religion. To primitive
man God is an all-powerful Being who must be appeased or bribed. Sacrifice
comes either from fear or interest. To gain God’s favour we offer him a present
capable of touching him, a fine piece of meat of the fattest kind, a cup of
cocoa or wine. Plagues and diseases were considered as the blows of an offended
God; and it was thought that by substituting another person for the persons
threatened, the anger of the Supreme Being could be averted; perhaps indeed, it
was said, God will be pleased with an animal, if the beast be good, useful, or
innocent. God was thus judged after the pattern of men, and in fact in our day
in certain parts of the East and of Africa, the aborigenes hope to gain a
stranger’s favour by killing at his feet a sheep, whose blood runs over his
boots, and whose flesh will serve him for food; in the same way they imagine
that the Supernatural Being will be sensible of the offering of an object,
especially if by that offering he who presents the sacrifice deprives himself of
something. Up till the great transformation of prophecy in the eighth century,
B.C., the idea of sacrifice was not much more elevated among the Israelites than
among other nations. A new era commences with Isaiah, crying in the name of
Jehovah: “Your sacrifices disgust me, what are your
The state of enthusiasm which held possession of the Christian imagination was soon complicated by the events which passed in Judea. These events appeared to give reason to the visions of the most frenzied brains. A fit of fever which cannot be compared with anything but that which seized France during the revolution, and Paris in 1871, took hold of the entire Jewish nation. Those “divine diseases” before which the ancient medical skill declared itself powerless, appeared to have become the ordinary temperament of the Jewish people. We should have that, determined in extremes it would have gone on to the end of humanity. For four years the strange race, which appears created alike to defy him who blesses it and him who curses it, was in a convulsion, before which the historian, divided between wonder and horror, must halt with respect, as before all that is mysterious.
The causes of this crisis were old, and the crisis itself was inevitable. The
Mosaic law, the work of enthusiastic Utopians, possessed by a powerful
Socialistic idea, the least political of men, was, like Islam, exclusive of a
civil, parallel to the religious, society. That law which appears to have
arrived at a condition of being re-edited when we read of it in the twelfth
century B.C. would have even independently of the Assyrian conquest, made the
little kingdom of the descendants of David fly to pieces. Since the
preponderance created by the prophetic element the kingdom of Judah, at enmity
with all its neighbours, moved by a continuous rage against
The Achemenidian empire put Israel a little at rest. That grand feudality,
tolerant to all provincial diversities, was analogous to the caliphate of
Bagdad, and the Ottoman empire, was the condition in which the Jews found
themselves most pleasantly situated. The Ptolemaic domination in the third
century B.C., appears likewise to have been sympathetic enough with them. It was
the same with the Seleucidæ. Antioch had became a centre of active Hellenistic
propaganda; Antiochus Epiphanes believed himself obliged to install everywhere,
as a mark of his power, the image of Jupiter Olimpus. Then burst forth the first
great Jewish revolt against profane civilization. Israel had borne patiently the
disappearance of its political existence since Nebuchadnezzar; it could not keep
any longer within bounds when it realized a danger for its religious
institutions. A race, in general little military, was seized with a fit of
heroism; without a regular army, without generals, without tactics, it
conquered the Seleucidæ, maintained its revealed right, and created for itself
a second period of autonomy. The Asmonean royalty nevertheless was always
pervaded by deep interior vices; it did not last more than a century. The
destiny of the Jewish people was not to be constituted a separate nationality;
this people dreamed always of something international, its ideal was not the
city, it was the synagogues; it is the free congregation. It is the same with
Islam, which has created an immense empire, but which has destroyed all
nationality among the peoples it has subjected, and has left them no other
fatherland than the mosque and
Certainly we would not believe, in this experience of an age which made the
Romans and Jews live together, and which resulted in such a terrible disruption,
It would be unjust to reproach the Romans in the first century, for not having
acted in this manner.
One circumstance contributed much to maintain Judea in a condition of permanent
hostility against the empire: it was that the Jews took no part in military
service. Everywhere else the legions were formed from the people of the country,
and it was thus with armies numerically feeble, the Romans held immense regions.
The soldiers of the Romans and the inhabitants of the country were compatriots. It was not so in
It was certain, moreover, that the sentiments of the different fractions of the Jewish world should be the same in regard to the Romans. If we except some worldlings like Tiberias Alexander, become indifferent to their old faith and regarded by their co-religionists as renegades, everyone bore ill-will to the foreign rulers, but still were far from inciting to rebellion. We can distinguish four or five parties in Jerusalem:
1st. The Sadducean and Herodian party, the remainder of the house of Herod and his clientele, the great families of Hanan and of Boëthus in possession of the priesthood. A society of Epicureans and voluptuous unbelievers, hated by the people because of its pride, for its little devotion and for its riches; this party, essentially conservative, found a guarantee for its privileges in the Roman occupation, and, without loving the Romans, were strongly opposed to all revolution.
2nd. The party of Pharisean middle-class, an honest party composed of people sensible, settled, quiet, steady, loving their religion, observing it punctiliously, devoted, but without imagination; well educated, knowing the foreign world, and clearly seeing that a revolt could not end in anything but the destruction of the nation and the temple; Josephus is the type of that class of persons whose fate was that which appears always reserved to moderate parties in times of revolution, powerlessness, versatility, and the supreme disagreeableness of passing for traitors in the eyes of most people.
3rd. The enthusiasts of every kind, zealots, robbers, assassins, a strange mass
of fanatical beggars reduced to the last wretchedness by the injustice and the violence
4th. Brigands, people without vagrants, adventurers, dangerous scoundrels, the result of the complete social disorganization of the country; these people for the most part of Idmuean or Nabatean were little concerned about the question of religion; but they were creators of disorder, and they had a quite natural alliance with the enthusiastic party.
5th. Pious dreamers, Essenes, Christians, Ebionim, waiting peacefully for the kingdom of God, devoted persons grouped around the temple praying and weeping. The disciples of Jesus were of that number; they were still so small a body in the eyes of the public that Josephus does not reckon them among the elements of the struggle. We see all at once that in the day of danger these holy people knew only how to escape.
The mind of Jesus, full of a divine efficacy for drawing man away from the world, and consoling him, could not inspire the strict patriotism which created assassins and heroes.
The arbiters of the situation would naturally be the enthusiasts. The democratic
and revolutionary side of Judaism showed itself in them in a terrible manner.
They were persuaded, with Judas the Gaulonite, that all power came from the evil
one, that royalty is a work of Satan (a theory which some sovereigns, such as
Caligula and Nero, true demons incarnate, only justified too much) and they
suffered themselves to be cut in pieces sooner than give to another than God the
name of master; imitators of Matthias, the first of the zealots who, seeing a
Jew sacrificing to idols, killed him; they avenged God by blows of the dagger. The mere fact of
Minds were under the influence of a permanent hallucination; some terrifying reports came from all directions. People only dreamed of omens; the apocalyptic colour of the Jewish imagination tinged everything with an aureole of blood. Comets, swords in heaven, battles in the clouds, a spontaneous light shining at night at the foundation of the temple, victims giving birth to unnatural productions at the moment of sacrifice, were what were spoken of in terror. One day, it was the enormous brazen gates of the temple which opened of themselves and refused to allow themselves to be shut. At the Passover of 65, about three hours after midnight the temple was for half-an-hour perfectly light as in the full day; it was believed that it was consuming inside. Another time, on the day of Pentecost, the priests heard the sound of many people making preparations in the interior of the sanctuary as if for removal, and saying to one another, “Let us go out from here! let us go out from here!” All this came only too late; but the deep trouble of souls was the best sign that something extraordinary was preparing.
It was the Messianic prophecies especially which excited in the people an
unconquerable need of agitation. People would not resign themselves to a mediocre destiny
Gersius Florus, of Clazomenes, had succeeded Albinus as procurator of Judea about the end of 64, or the beginning of 65. He was, as it would appear, a very bad man; he owed the position he occupied to the influence of his wife, Cleopatra, who was the friend of Poppea. The hatred between him and the Jews now grew to the last degree of exasperation. The Jews had become unbearable by their susceptibility, their habit of complaining about trifles, and the little respect they showed to the civil and military authorities; but it would appear that, on his side, he took a pleasure in defying them and making a parade of it. On the 16th and 17th May, of the year 66, a collision took place between his troops and the Jerusalemites on some absurd grounds. Florus retired to Cesarea, only leaving a cohort in the Antonian tower. There was here a very blameable act. An armed power owes it to a city it occupies, when a popular revolt shows itself, not to abandon it to its own passions until it has exhausted all its means of resistance. If Florus had remained in the city, it is not probable that the Jerusalemites would have forced it, and all the misfortunes which followed would have been avoided. Florus once gone, it was written that the Roman army should not re-enter Jerusalem except through fire and death.
The retreat of Florus was, nevertheless, far from creating an open rupture
between the city and the Roman authority. Agrippa II. and Berenice were at this moment in Jerusalem. Agrippa made some conscientious
There was here an act of definite hostility. In Jerusalem the fight became daily
more vigorous between the party of peace and that of war. The first of those two
parties was composed of the rich, who had everything to lose in a revolution.
The second, besides the sincere enthusiasts, comprehended that mass of the
populace to whom a state of national crisis, fully putting to an end the
ordinary conditions of life, derives most benefit. The moderate people depended
upon the little Roman garrison lodged in the Antonian town. The high priest was
an obscure man, Matthias, son of Theophilus. Since the deprivation of Hanan the
Young, who caused the death of St. James, it seems there was a system of no
longer taking the high priest from the powerful sacerdotal families, the Hanans,
the Cantheras, and the Boëthuses. But the true head of the sacerdotal party was
the old high priest Ananias, son of Nabedeus, a rich and energetic man, little
popular because of the pitiless vigour with which he enforced his rights, hated
especially for the impertinence and rapacity of his servants. By a peculiarity
which is not rare in times of revolution, the chief of the party of action was at this
The morning after this success the insurgents attacked the Antonian tower; they took it in two days, and set it on fire. They beseiged then the upper palace and took it (6th September). Agrippa’s horsemen were allowed to go out. As to the Romans, they shut themselves up in the three towers named after Hippicus, Phasaël, and Mariamne. Ananias and his brother were killed. According to the rule in popular movements discord soon broke out among the leaders of the popular party. Menahem made himself intolerable by his pride as a democratic parvenu. Eleazar, son of Ananias, irritated beyond doubt by the murder of his father, pursued him and killed him. The remnant of Menahem’s party retired to Massada, which was to be until the end of the war the bulwark of the most enthusiastic party of the zealots.
The Romans defended themselves a long time in the towers: reduced to extremity,
they only asked that their lives should be spared. This was promised them, but
when they had surrendered their arms, Eleazar put them all to death, with the
exception of Metilius, primipilus of the cohort, who promised that he would be
circumcised. Thus Jerusalem was lost by the Romans about the end of September
A.D. 66, a little more than a hundred years after its capture by Pompey. The
Roman garrison of the castle of Machero, fearing to be seen retreating,
surrendered. The castle of Kypros, which overlooks Jericho, fell also into the
hands of the insurgents. It is probable that Herodium was occupied by the rebels
about the same time. The weakness which the Romans shewed in all these mutinies
is something singular, and gives a certain likelihood to the opinion of
Josephus, according to which the plan of Floras would have been to push
everything to the extremes. It is true that the
In five months the insurrection had succeeded in establishing itself in a formidable manner. Not only was it mistress of the city of Jerusalem, but by the desert of Judea it obtained communication with the region of the Dead Sea, all of whose fortresses it held; from thence it came in contact with the Arabs, the Nabateans, more or less the enemies of Rome. Judea Ideamea, Perea, and Galilee were with rebels. At Rome during this time a hateful sovereign had handed over the functions of the empire to the most ignoble and incapable. If the Jews had been able to group around them all the malcontents of the East there would have been an end of Roman rule in these quarters. Unhappily for them, the effect was quite the opposite; the revolt inspired in the populations of Syria a redoubled fidelity to the empire. The hatred which they had inspired in their neighbours sufficed during the kind of torpor of the Roman power to excite against them some enemies not less dangerous than the legions.
A sort of general mot d’ordre in fact appeared at this time to have run through
the East, inciting everywhere to great massacres of the Jews. The
incompatibility of the Jewish life with the Greco-Roman life became more and
more apparent. Each of the two races wishing to exterminate the other, it was
evident that there would be no mercy between them. To conceive of these
struggles it is necessary to understand to what extent Judaism had penetrated
all the Oriental portion of the Roman empire. “They have spread over all the
cities,” says Strabo, “and it is not easy to mention a place in the world which
has not received this people, or rather which has not been occupied by them.
Egypt and Cyrenia have adopted their manners, observing scrupulously their
precepts and deriving great profit from the adoption which they have made of
their national laws. In Egypt they are admitted to dwell legally, and a great
part of the city of Alexandria is assigned to them; they have their Ethnarc,
who administers their affairs, exercises justice and watches over the execution
of contracts and wills, as if he were the president of an independent state”.
This contact of two elements as opposed to one another as water and fire,
could not fail to produce the most terrible outbursts. It is not necessary to
suspect the Roman government of being implicated in this. The same massacres had
taken place among the Parthians, whose situation and interest were quite
otherwise than those of the West. It is one of the glories of Rome to have founded its empire upon peace; on
The Jew has rendered to the world so many good and so many bad services, that people can never be just to him. We owe him too much, and at the same time we see too well his defects not to be impatient at the sight of him. That eternal Jeremiah, “that man of sorrows,” is always complaining, presenting his back to blows with a patience which annoys us. This creature, foreign to all our instincts of religion and honour, boldness, glory and refinement of art; this person so little a soldier, so little chivalrous, who loves neither Greece nor Rome nor Germany, and to whom nevertheless we owe our religion, so much so that the Jew has a right to say to the Christian, “Thou art a Jew with a little alloy,” this being has been set as the object of contradiction and antipathy; a fertile antipathy which has been one of the conditions of the progress of humanity!
In the first century of our era it appears that the world had a dim
consciousness of what had passed, it saw its master in this strange, awkward,
susceptible, timid stranger without any exterior nobility; but honest, moral,
industrious; just in his business, endowed with modest virtues; not military,
but a good trader a cheerful and steady worker. This Jewish family illumined by
hope, this synagogue—the life commonly was full of charm—created envy. Too much
humility, such a calm acceptance of persecution and insult and outrage; such a
resigned manner of consoling himself for not being of the great world because he
has a compensation in his family and his church, a gentle gaiety like that which
in our days distinguishes the rayah in the east and makes him find his good
fortune in his inferiority itself. In that little world where he has
The storm commenced to growl at Cesarea nearly at the same moment as when the
revolution had succeeded in making itself mistress of Jerusalem. Cesarea was the
city where the situation with the Jews and non-Jews (those were comprised under
the general name of Syrians) presented the greatest difficulties. The Jews
composed in the mixed villages of Syria the rich portion of the population; but
this wealth, as we have said, came partly through injustice, and from exemption
from military service. The Greeks and the Syrians, from among whom the legions
were recruited, were hurt by seeing themselves oppressed by people exempt from
the dues of the state, and who took advantage of the tolerance which they had
for them. There were perpetual riots, and endless claims presented to the Roman
magistrates. Orientals usually make religion a pretext for rascalities; Use
less religious of men become singularly so when it becomes a question of
annoying one’s neighbour; in our days the Turkish functionaries are tormented by
grievances of this kind. From about the year 60 the battle was without truce
between the two halves of the population of Cesarea. Nero solved the questions
pending against the Jews; hatred had only envenomed them; some miserable
follies, or perhaps inadvertances on the part of the Syrians became crimes and
injuries on the side of the Jews. The young people threatened and struck each
other, grave men complained to the Roman authority, who usually caused the
bastinado to be administered to both parties. Gessius Floras used more humanity.
He began by making them pay on both sides, then mocked those who claimed. A
synagogue, which had a partition wall, a pitcher and some slain poultry which
were found at the door of the synagogue, and which the Jews wished to pass off as the
These horrors lasted for a month. In the north, they were stopped at Tyre; for beyond that the Jews were not considerable enough to give umbrage to the indigenous populations. The cause of the evil indeed was more social than religious. In every city where Judaism came to dominate, life became impossible for pagans. It is understood that the success obtained by the Jewish revolution during the summer of 66, had caused a moment of fear to all the mixed towns which bordered on Palestine and Galilee. We have insisted often on this singular character which makes the simple Jewish people include in their own bosom the extremes, and if we may say so, the fight between good and evil. Nothing in fact in wickedness equals Jewish wickedness; and yet we have drawn from her bosom the ideal of goodness, sacrifice, and love. The best of men have been Jews; the most malicious of men have also been Jews. A strange race—truly marked by the seal of God, who has produced in a parallel manner and like two buds on the same branch the nascent church and the fierce fanaticism of the Jerusalem revolutionaries, Jesus and John of Gischala, the apostles and the assassin zealots, the Gospel and the Talmud; ought one to be astonished if this mysterious birth was accompanied by mysteries, delirium, and a fever such as never had been seen before?
The Christians were no doubt implicated in more than one direction in the massacres of September, 66. It is nevertheless probable that the gentleness of these worthy sectaries and their inoffensive character often preserved them. The larger number of the Christians of the Syrian towns were what were called “Judaizers,” that is to say, people of converted countries, not Jews by race. They were looked on with hatred; but people did not dare to kill them; they were considered a species of mongrels—strangers from their own country. As to them, while passing through that terrible month, they had their eyes on heaven, believing that they saw in every episode of the frightful storm the signs of the time fixed for the catastrophe: “Take the comparison of the fig-tree; when its branches become tender and its leaves bud, ye conclude that summer is nigh: likewise, when ye see those things come to pass, know that He is near, that He is even at the door?”
The Roman authority was prepared meanwhile to re-enter by force the city it had
so imprudently abandoned. The imperial legate of Syria, Cestius Gallus, marched
from Antioch towards the south with a considerable army. Agrippa joined him as
guide to the expedition; the towns furnished him with auxiliary troops, in whom
an inveterate hatred of the Jews supplied what was wanting in the matter of
military education. Cestius reduced Galilee and the coast without much
difficulty; and on the 24th of October he arrived at Gabaon, ten miles from
Jerusalem. With astonishing boldness, the insurgents went out to attack him in
that position, and caused him to suffer a check. Such a fact would be
inconceivable if the Jerusalem army should be represented as a mass of devotees;
fanatical beggars and brigands. It possessed certain elements more solid and
really military, the two princes of the royal family of Adiabenes, Monobazus and
Cenedeus; one Silas from Babylon, a lieutenant of Agrippa II., who was among the national party; Niger
Josephus declares that if Cestius Gallus had been willing to make the assault at
this moment, the war would have been ended. The Jewish historian explains the
inaction of the Roman general by intrigues in which the principal material was
the money of Florus. It appears that they had seen on the wall some members of
the aristocratic party, led by one of the Hanans, who called to Cestius,
offering to open the gates to him. No doubt the legate feared some ambush. For
five days he vainly tried to break through the wall. On the sixth day (5th
November) he at length attacked the enceinte of the temple from the north. The
fight was fearful under the porticoes; discouragement took hold of the rebels;
the party of peace were making ready to admit Cestius, when he suddenly caused the retreat to be
The incapacity which Cestius showed in this campaign is truly surprising. The bad government of Nero must have indeed debased all the services of the state for such events to have been possible. Cestius only survived his defeat a short time; many attributed his death to chagrin. It is not known what became of Florus.
While the Roman empire in the East was suffering this most terrible insult,
Nero, passing from crime to crime, from one madness to another, was completely
taken up by his chimeras as a pretentious artist. Every-thing which could be
called taste, tact or politeness, bad disappeared around hint with Petronius. A
colossal self-love gave him an ardent thirst to absorb the glory of the whole
world; his enmity was fierce against those who occupied public attention; for a
man to succeed in anything was a state crime. It is said that he wished to stop
the sale of Lucan’s works. He aspired to unheard-of fame; he turned in his brain
some magnificent projects, such as piercing the isthmus of Corinth, a canal from
Baia to Ostia, and the discovery of the sources of the Nile. A voyage to Greece
had been his dream for a long time, not for any desire he had to see the
chefs-d’-œuvre of an incomparable art, but through the grotesque ambition he
had to present himself in the courses founded in the different towns, and take
the prize. These courses were literally innumerable: the founding of such games
had been one of the forms of Greek liberality. Every citizen at all rich
considered these, as in the foundation of our academical prizes, a sure method
of transmitting his name to the future. The noble exercises which contributed so
powerfully to the strength and beauty of the ancient race, and was the school of Greek art, had
His mania as a singer reached its height of folly. One of the reasons of
Thrasea’s death was that he never sacrificed to the “heavenly voice” of the
emperor. Before the King of the Parthians, his guest, he wished only to show his
talent in the chariot races. There were some lyrical dramas put on the stage
where he had the principal part, and where the gods and goddesses, the heroes
and heroines were masqued and draped like him, or like the woman he loved. He
thus played Œdipus, Thyeste, Hercules, Alcmeon, Orestes, and Canace; he was
seen on the stage chained (with chains of gold) led like one blind, imitating a
madman, feigning the appearance of a woman who is being confined. One of his
last projects was to appear in the theatre, naked, as Hercules, crushing a lion
in his arms, or killing it with a blow of his club. The lion was, it was said,
already chosen and prepared when the emperor died. To quit one’s place while he
sang was so great a crime that the most ridiculous precautions were taken to do
so unseen. In the competitions he disparaged his rivals, and sought to
discountenance them; so much so that the unfortunates sang false in order to
escape the danger of being compared to him. The judges encouraged him, and
praised his bashfulness. If this grotesque spectacle made shame mount to
anyone’s forehead or gloom to his face he said that the impartiality of some people was suspected
The much desired departure took place in November 66. Nero had been some days in
Achaia when the news of the defeat of Cestius was brought to him. He felt that
this war required a leader of experience and courage; but he wished above all
some one whom he did not fear. These conditions seemed to meet in Titus Flavius
Vespasianus, a solid military man, aged sixty, who had always had much good
fortune and whose obscure birth had only inspired him with great designs.
Vespasian was at this time in disgrace with Nero, because he did not show
sufficient admiration for his fine voice, when messengers came to announce to
him that he was to have the command of the expedition to Palestine, he believed
they had come with his death warrant. His son Titus soon joined him. About the
same time Mucianus succeeded Cestius in the office of imperial legate of Syria. The three men who, in two years, will
The complete victory which the rebels had gained over a Roman army, commanded by an imperial legate, raised their audacity to the highest point. The most intelligent and educated people in Jerusalem were sad; they saw with clearness that the advantage in the end could only be with the Romans; the ruin of the temple and nation appeared to them inevitable; and emigration began. All the Herodians, all the people attached to Agrippa’s service, retired to the Romans. A great number of Pharisees, on the other hand, entirely pre-occupied by the observance of the law and the peaceful future they predicted for Israel, were of opinion that they ought to submit to the Romans, as they had submitted to the kings of Persia and the Ptolemies. They cared little for national independence: Rabbi Johanan ben Zaka, the most celebrated Pharisee of the time, lived quite apart from politics. Many doctors retired probably from that time to Jamnia, and there founded those Talmudic schools which soon obtained a great celebrity.
The massacres, moreover, began again and extended to some parts of Syria which up till now had been safe from the bloody epidemic. At Damas all the Jews were killed. The greater number of the women in Damas professed the Jewish religion, and there would certainly be some Christians among the number; precautions were taken that the massacre should be a surprise and quite unknown to them.
The party of resistance showed a wonderful activity. Even the slow were carried
away. A council was held in the temple to form a national government, composed
of the elite of the nation. The moderate group at this period were far from
having abdicated. Whether they hoped to direct the movement, or that they had
some secret hope against all the suggestions of reason by which one is lulled asleep easily in hours of
The ardour at Jerusalem was extreme. The town was like a camp, a manufactory of
arms; on all sides were heard the cries of the young people exercising. The
Jews in places remote from the East, especially in the Parthian kingdom,
hastened thither, persuaded that the Roman Empire had had its day. They felt
that Nero was approaching his end, and were convinced that the empire would
disappear with him. This last representative of the title of Cæsar, lowering
himself in shame and disgrace, appeared to be a pius omen. By placing
themselves at this point of view
Hanan became more and more the chief of the moderate party. He hoped still to
lead the mass of the people to peace; he sought under hand to stay the
manufacture of arms, to paralyse resistance by giving himself the appearance of
organising it. This is the most formidable game in a time of revolution: Hanan
was called a traitor by the revolutionaries. He had in the eyes of the enthusiasts the fault of seeing clearly;
Vespasian prepared himself for the difficult campaign which had been entrusted
to him. His plan was to attack the insurrection from the north, to crush it
first in Galilee, then in Judea, to throw himself in some sort upon Jerusalem;
and when he should have moved everything towards this central point, where
fatigue, famine and factions, could not fail to produce fearful scenes; to wait,
or if that were not enough, to strike a heavy blow. He went first to Antioch
where Agrippa came to join him with all his forces. Antioch had not till now had
its massacre of Jews, doubtless because it had in its midst a large number of
Greeks who had embraced the Jewish religion (most frequently under the Christian
form) which moderated their hatred. Even at this moment the storm broke; the
absurd accusation of having fired the city led to butcheries,
The expedition set off in March, 67, and. following the ordinary route along the sea-shore, established its head-quarters at Ptolemais (Acre). The first shock fell on Galilee. The population was heroic. The little town of Jondifat, or Jotapata, recently fortified, made a tremendous resistance; not one of its defenders would survive; shut up in a position without issue, they killed each other. “Gallilean” became from that time the synonym for fanatic sectaries, seeking death as their part, taking it with a sort of stubbornness. Tiberias, Taricheus, and Gamala were not taken until after perfect butcheries; there have been in history few examples of an entire race thus broken. The waves of the quiet lake where Jesus had dreamed of the kingdom of Heaven were actually tinged with blood. The river was covered with putrefied corpses, the air was pestiferous, crowds of Jews took refuge on the coasts. Vespasian caused them to be killed or drowned. The rest of the population was sold. Six thousand captives were sent to Nero, in Achaia, to execute the most difficult work of piercing the Isthmus of Corinth; the old men were slaughtered. There was nothing but desertion. Josephus, whose nature had little depth, and who, besides, was always in doubt of the issue of this war, surrendered to the Romans, and was soon in the good graces of Vespasian and Titus. All his cleverness in writing had not succeeded in washing such a conduct from a certain varnish of cowardice.
The main part of the year 67 was employed in this war of
extermination. Galilee had never recovered; the Christians who were found there
took refuge beyond the lake. Henceforth there shall be nothing spoken of the country of Jesus in the
history of Christianity. Gischala, which was taken last, fell in November
The great weakness of provisional governments organised for national defence is not being able to support defeat. In all cases, undermined by advanced parties, they fall on the day when they do not give to the superficial crowd what they have proclaimed—victory. John of Gischala and the fugitives from Galilee arriving each day at Jerusalem with rage in their hearts, still raised the diapason of fury in which the revolutionary party lived. Their breathing was hot and quick—“We are not conquered,” they said, “but we seek better posts; why exhaust oneself is Gischala and these hovels when we have the mother city to defend?” “I have seen,” said John of Gischala, “the machines of the Romans flying in pieces against the walls of the Gallilean villages; and, as they have not wings, they cannot break the ramparts of Jerusalem.”
All the young people were for open war. Some troops of volunteers turned readily
to pillage; bands of fanatics, either religious or political, always resemble
brigands. It is necessary to live, and freebooters cannot live without vexing
the people. That is why brigand and hero in times of national crisis are merely
synonymous. A war party is always tyrannical; moderation has never saved a
country, for the first principle of moderation is to yield to circumstances, and
heroism consists generally in not listening to reason. Josephus, the man of
order par excellence, is probably in the right when he represents the
resolution not to retire as having been the deed of a small number of energetic
people, drawing by force after them some tranquil citizens who would have asked
nothing better than to submit. It is more often thus; people obtain a great sacrifice from a nation without a
Before this intense fever, increasing every day, the position of the moderate
party was not tenable. The bands of pillagers, after having ravaged the
country, fell back upon Jerusalem, those who fled from the Roman armies came in
their turn to huddle up in the town and to starve. There was no effective
authority; the zealots ruled; all those who were even suspected of
“moderantism” were massacred without mercy. Up to the present the war and its
excesses were arrested by the barriers at the temple. Now the zealots and
brigands dwelt pell-mell in the holy house; all the rules of legal purity were
forgotten, the precincts were soiled with blood, men walked with their feet wet
with it. In the eyes of the priest this was no doubt a most horrible state of
affairs; to many devotees the “abomination” foretold by Daniel as installing
himself in the holy place just before the last days. The zealots, like all
military fanatics, made little of rights and subordinated them to the sacred
work par excellence—the fight. They committed a fault not less grave in changing
the order of the high priesthood. Without having regard to the privilege of the
families from whom it had been the custom to take the high priests, they chose a
branch little considered in the sacerdotal race, and they had recourse to the
entirely democratic plan of the lot. The lot naturally gave absurd results. It
fell upon a rustic whom it was necessary to bring to Jerusalem and clothe in
spite of himself with the sacred garments, the high priesthood saw itself
profaned by scenes of carnival. All the staid people, Pharisees, Sadducees, the Simeons,
So much excess at last decided the aristocratic Sadducean party to attempt a reaction. With much skill and courage Hanan sought to reunite the honest middle-class and all those who were reasonable, to over-turn this monstrous alliance between fanaticism and impiety. The zealots were arranged near, and obliged to shut themselves in the temple, which had become an ambulance for the wounded. To save the revolution they had recourse to a supreme effort; it was to call into the city the Idumeans—that is to say, troops of bandits accustomed to all manner of violence which raged around Jerusalem. The entrance of the Idumeans was marked by a massacre. All the members of the sacerdotal caste whom they could find were killed. Hanan and Jesus, son of Gamala, suffered fearful insults. Their bodies were deprived of sepulture, an outrage unheard-of among the Jews.
Thus perished the son of the principal author of the death of Jesus. The
Beni-Hanan remained faithful up to the end of their part, and, if I might say
so, to their duty. Like the larger number of those who seek to put a stop to the
extravagances of sects and fanaticism, they were hot-headed, but they perished
nobly. The last Hanan appears to have been a man of great capacity; he struggled
nearly two years against anarchy. He was a true aristocrat, hard sometimes, but
grave, and penetrated by a real feeling on public subjects, highly respected,
liberal in the sense that he wished the government of the nation to be by its
nobility, and not by violent factions. Josephus did not doubt that if he had
lived he would have succeeded in making an honourable arrangement between the
Romans and the Jews, and he regarded the day of his death as the moment when the
city of Jerusalem and the republic of the Jews were definitely lost. It was at
least the end of the Sadducean party, a party often
With Hanan (in the first days of 68) perished the old Jewish priesthood,
entailed in the great Sadducean families who had made such a strong opposition
to budding Christianity. Deep was the impression, people, those highly respected
aristocrats, whom they had so lately seen clothed in superb priestly robes,
presiding over pompous ceremonies, and regarded with veneration by the numerous
pilgrims who came to Jerusalem from the whole world, thrown naked outside of the
city, given up to the dogs and jackals, It was a world which disappeared. The
democratic high-priesthood which was inaugurated by the revolution was
ephemeral. The Christians at first believed to raise two or three personages by
ornamenting their foreheads with the priestly petalon. All this had no result.
The priesthood, no more than the temple on which it depended, was not destined to be the principal
Nor the temple neither. Those zealots who, to the great scandal of the priests who were friends of the Romans, made the holy place a fortress and a hospital, were not so far as would appear at first sight from the sentiment of Jesus. What mattered those stones? The mind is the only thing which is reckoned, and that which defends the mind of Israel, the revolution, has a right to defile the stones. Since the day when Isaiah said: “What are your sacrifices tome? they disgust me; it is the righteousness of the heart I wish,” material worship was an old-fashioned routine which must disappear.
The opposition between the priesthood and the national party, at bottom
democratic, which admitted no other nobility than piety and observance of the
law, is felt from the time of Nehemiah, who was already a Pharisee. The true
Aaron, in the mind of wise men, is the good man. The Asmoneans, at once priests
and kings, only inspired aversion among pious men. Sadduceeism, each day more
unpopular and ravenous, was only saved by the distinction which people made
between religion and its ministers. No kings—no priests—such was at bottom the
Pharisaic ideal. Incapable of forming a State of its own, Judaism must have
arrived at the point at which we see it through eighteen centuries, that is to
say, to live like a parasite in the republics of others. It was likewise
destined to become a religion without a temple and without a priest. The
But it was clear that, deprived of all conservative ballast, delivered to a
frantic management, the vessel would go to frightful perdition. After the
massacre of the Sadducees terror reigned in Jerusalem without any restraining
counterpois. The oppression was so great that no one dared openly to weep nor
inter their dead. Compassion became a crime. The number of suspects of
distinguished condition who perished through the cruelty of these madmen was
about 12,000. Doubtless it is necessary here to consider the statements of
Josephus. The history of that historian as to the domination of the zealots has
something absurd in it; some impious and wretched people would not have had to
be killed as they were. As well might one one seek to explain the French
Revolution by the going out from the prison of some thousands of galley slaves.
Pure wickedness has never done anything in the world; the truth is that these
popular movements being the work of an obscure conscience and not of reason, are
compromised by their very victory. According to the rule of all movements of the
same kind the revolution of Jerusalem was only occupied in decapitating itself.
The best patriots, those who had most contributed to the success of the year 66,
Guion, Niger, the Perea, were put to death. All the people in comfortable
circumstances perished. We are specially struck by the death of a certain
Zacharias, son of Barak, the most honest man of Jerusalem and greatly beloved by
all good people. They introduced him before a traditional jury who acquitted him
unanimously. The zealots murdered him in the middle of the temple. Thus
Zacharias, the son of Barak, would be a friend of the Christians, for we believe
that we can trace an allusion to him in the prophetic
The extraordinary events of which Jerusalem was the theatre struck indeed the
Christians in the highest degree. The peaceable disciples of Jesus, deprived of
their leader, James the brother of the Lord continued at first to lead in the
holy city their ascetic life, and waited about the temple to see the great
reappearance. They had with them the other survivors of the family of Jesus, the
sons of Clopas, regarded with the greatest veneration even by the Jews. All that
occurred would appear to them an evident confirmation of the words of Jesus.
What could these convulsions be if not the beginning of what was called the
sufferings of Messiah, the preludes of the Messianic Incarnation? They were
persuaded that the triumphant arrival of Christ would be preceded by the entry
upon the scene of a great number of false prophets. In the eyes of the
presidents of the Christian community, these false prophets were the leaders of
the zealots. People applied to the present time the terrible phrases which Jesus
had often in his mouth to express the plagues which should announce judgments.
Perhaps there were seen rising in the bosom of the Church some enlightened
persons pretending to speak in the name of Jesus. The elders made a most lively
opposition to them; they were assured that Jesus had announced the coming of
such seducers and warned them concerning them. That was sufficient; the
hierarchy, already strong in the Church, the spirit of docility, the inheritance
of Jesus arrested all the impostures; Christianity benefited by the great skill
with which it knew how to create an authority in the very heart of a popular
movement The budding episcopacy (or to express it better, the presbytery)
prevented those aberrations from which the conscience of crowds never escapes
when it is not directed. We feel from this point that the spirit of the Church
in human things shall be a sort of good average sense, a
This political wisdom of the representatives of the Church of
Jerusalem was not without merit. The zealots and the Christians had the same
enemies, namely, the Sadducees, the Beni-Hanan. The ardent faith of the zealots could not fail to
exercise a great seduction on the soul, not less enthusiastic, of the Judeo
Christians. Those enthusiasts who carried away the crowds to the deserts to
reveal to them the Kingdom of God resembled much John the Baptist and Jesus a
little. Some believers to whom Jesus appeared joined the party and allowed
themselves to be carried away. Everywhere the peaceful spirit inherent in
Christianity carried it with it. The heads of the Church fought with those
dangerous tendencies by the discourses which they maintained they had received
from Jesus. “Take heed that they do not seduce you,” for many shall come in my
name saying: “The Messiah is here, or he is there.” Do not believe them. For
there shall arise false Messiahs, and false prophets, and they shall do great
miracles, so, as if it were possible, to seduce the very elect. Recollect what I
have told you before. If then some come saying to you, “Come, see, he is in the
desert” do not go forth; “Come, see, he is in a hiding-place” do not believe
them. There were doubtless some apostacies and treasons of brethren by brethren.
Political divisions led to a coldness of affection, but the majority, while
feeling in the deepest manner the crisis of Israel, gave no countenance to
anarchy even when coloured by a patriotic pretext. The Christian manifesto of
that solemn hour was a discourse attributed to Jesus, a kind of apocalypse,
connected perhaps with some words pronounced by the Master, and which explained
the connection of the final catastrophe, thenceforth held to be very near, with
the political situation through which they were passing, It was not much
Other apocalypses of the same kind, circulated it appears, under Enoch’s name, and presented with the discourses, attributed to Jesus some singular conflicting thoughts. In one of them the Divine Wisdom, introduced as a prophetic personage, reproaches the people with their crimes, the murder of prophets, hardness of heart. Some fragments which may be supposed to be preserved appear to allude to the murder of Zacharias, the son of Barak. There was here also a matter as to the “height of offence,” what would be the highest degree of honour to which human malice could rise, and which appears to be the profanation of the temple by the zealots. Such monstrosities prove that the coming of of the Well-Beloved was near, and that the revenge of the righteous would not tarry. The Judeo-Christian believers especially held still too much to the temple for such a sacrilege to fill them with fear. Nothing had been seen like this since Nebuchadnezzar.
All the family of Jesus considered it was time to flee. The murder of James had
already much weakened the connections of the Jerusalem Christians with Jewish
orthodoxy; the divorce between the Church and the Synagogue was ripening every day. The hatred of
The departure seems to have been decided on in the early months of 68. To give more authority to that resolution a report was spread to the effect that the heads of the community had received a revelation on this matter; according to some this revelation was made by the ministry of an angel. It is probable that all responded to the appeal of the leaders, and that none of the brethren remained in the city, which a very correct instinct showed them was doomed to extermination.
Some indications lead us to believe that the flight of the peaceful company was
not carried out without danger. The Jews, as it would appear, pursued them, the
terrorists in fact exercised an active overlook on the roads, and killed as
traitors all those who sought to escape, unless at least they could pay a good
ransom. A circumstance which is only indicated to us in covert words saved the
fleeing people. “The dragon vomited after the woman (the Church of Jerusalem) a
river to overwhelm and drown her; but the earth helped the woman, opened its
mouth and drank up the river which the dragon had vomited towards her, and the
dragon was full of anger against the woman.” Possibly the zealots were among
those who wished to throw the whole body of the faithful into the Jordan, and
that they succeeded in escaping by passing through a part where the water was low; perhaps the party sent to
Since the first appearance of the spring of the year 68, when Vespasian undertook the campaign, his plan, we have already said, was to crush Judaism step by step, proceeding from the north and west towards the south and east, to force the fugitives to shut themselves up in Jerusalem, and there to slay without mercy that seditious multitude. He advanced as far as Emmaus, seven leagues from Jerusalem, at the foot of the great acclivity which stretches from the plain of Lydda to the Holy City. He did not consider that the time had yet come for this latter plan. He ravaged Idumea and Samaria, and on the 3rd of June he established his general quarters at Jericho, when he sent to massacre the Jews of Perea. Jerusalem was besieged on all sides, a circle of extermination surrounded it. Vespasian returned to Cesarea to assemble his entire forces, where he received news which made him stop short, and whose effect was to prolong by two years the resistance and the revolution at Jerusalem.
Nero died on the 8th of June. During the great struggles in Judea which we are
relating, he had carried on in Greece the life of an artist; he only returned
to Rome at the end of 67. He had never enjoyed himself so much; for his sake
they had made all the games coincide in one year, all the towns sent him the
prizes of their games, at every moment deputations came to seek him, to beg him
to sing to them. The great child ninny, or perhaps jester, was entranced with
joy. The Greeks alone know how to hear, said he, the Greeks
The news of the defection of Galba (3rd April) and the alliance of Spain with
Gaul, which he received while he was at dinner, came upon him like a
thunder-clap. He overturned the table where he ate, tore up the letter and
smashed two engraved vases of great value, out of which he was accustomed to
drink.. In the ridiculous preparations which he began, his principal care was
for his instruments, the theatrical baggage for his women, whom he had dressed
as Amazons, with targets and hatchets, and having their hair cut short. There
were strange alternations of depression and buffoonery, which we hesitate
sometimes whether to take as serious, or rather to treat as absurd; all the
acts of Nero floating between the black wickedness of a cruel booby and the
irony of a roué. He had not an idea which was not childish. The pretended world
of art in which he lived had rendered him completely silly. Sometimes he thought
less of fighting than going to weep without arms before his enemies. Thinking to
touch their hearts, he composed already the epinicium which he should sing with
them on the morning of the reconciliation; at other times he wished to have all
the senate massacred, to bum Rome a second time, and to let loose the beasts of
the amphitheatre upon the city. The French especially were the objects of his
rage; he spoke of causing those who were in Rome to be killed, as being
implicated with their compatriots and wishing to join them. At intervals he had
the thought of changing the seat of his empire and retiring to Alexandria. He remembered that some
The little agreement in the armies of Gaul, the death of Vindex, and the
weakness of Galba would perhaps have adjourned the deliverance of the world, if
the Roman army in its turn had not made itself heard. The praetorians revolted
and proclaimed Galba; on the evening on the 8th of June Nero saw that all was
lost. His ridiculous mind suggested to him nothing but grotesque ideas. Clothing
himself in mourning habits he went to harangue the people in this dress,
employing all his scenic power to obtain thus a pardon of the past, or, for want
of better, prefecture of Egypt. He wrote his speech. He was told before he
arrived at the forum he would be torn in pieces. He lay down; awaking in the
middle of the night he found himself without guards. They already had pillaged
his room. He rose and struck at different doors and no one replied. He came
back, wished to die, and asked for the myrmillon Spicullus, a brilliant slayer,
one of the celebrities of the amphitheatre. Everyone deserted him. He went out
wandering alone in the streets, thought of throwing himself into the Tiber, and
then retraced his steps. The world appeared to make a void about him. Phaon, his freed man, offered him then
His comical mind and vulgar slang did not abandon him. They wished him to squat in a hole like a pouzzalana, as is often seen in some places. This was for him the occasion of a joke. “What a fate, to go to live under the earth.” His reflections were like a running fire intermixed with dull pleasantries and wooden-headed remarks. He had upon each circumstance a literary reminiscence, a cool antithesis; “he who once was proud of his numerous suite, has now no more than three freed men.” Sometimes the memory of his victims would come back to him, but only struck him as figures of rhetoric, never led to a moral act of repentance. The comedian survived through all. His situation was for him nothing but a drama—a drama which he had recited. Recalling the parts in which he had figured as a patricide or princes reduced to the condition of beggars, he remarked that now he played all that on his own account and would sing this verse, which a tragedian had placed in the mouth of Œdipus:
Incapable of a serious thought, he wished them to dig
The courier of Phaon meanwhile brought a despatch. Nero tore it from him; he read that the senate had declared him the public enemy and had condemned him to be punished according to the ancient custom. “What is that custom?” asked he. They told him that the head of the culprit, quite bare, was stuck into a fork while they beat it with rods until death followed. Then the body was drawn by a hook and thrown into the Tiber. He trembled, took two poignards which he had on him, tried their points, sheathed them again, saying the fatal hour had not yet come. He engaged Sporus to begin his funeral dirge, tried hard to kill himself and could not. His awkwardness, this kind of talent which he had for making all the fibres of the soul vibrate falsely, that laugh at once brutal and infernal, that pretentious stupidity which made his whole life resemble the memory of Agrippa’s Sabbat, attained to the sublime of absurdity. He could not succeed in killing himself. “Is there no one here to set an example to me?” he said. He redoubled his quotations, spoke in Greek, and made some bits of verse. All at once they heard the noise of a detachment of cavalry which came to take him alive.
The steps of the heavy horses fall upon my ears,
said he. Epaphroditus then took his poignard and plunged it into his neck. The centurion came in nearly
at the same moment. He wished to stop the blood, and sought to make him believe he had come to save him. “Too late!” said the dying man, whose eyes rolled
in his head and glazed with horror, “Behold where fidelity is found!” added he, expiring. It was his last
comic feature. Nero giving vent to a melancholy complaint upon the wickedness of his century, upon the
disappearance of good faith and virtue! Let us applaud, the drama is complete! Once more, Nature, with the
He had held much to this, that they should not deliver his head to insults, and that they should not burn him entirely. His two nurses and Actea, who loved him still, hound him secretly in a rich white shroud, embroidered with gold and with all the luxury they knew he loved. They laid his ashes in the tomb of Domitius, a great mausoleum which commanded the gardens (The Pincio) and made a fine effect from the Campus Martius. From thence his ghost haunted the Middle Ages like a vampire; to conquer the apparitions which haunted the district, they built the Church of Santa Maria del Popolo.
Thus perished, at thirty-one years of age, after having reigned thirteen years
and eight months, the sovereign —not the most foolish or the most wicked, but
the vainest and the most ridiculous, whom the chance of events had brought into
the first ranks of history. Nero is beyond everything a literary perversion; he
was far from being destitute of all talent or of all honesty; this poor young
man, intoxicated with bad literature, drunk with acclamations, who forgot his
empire for Terpnos, who, receiving the news of the revolt of the Gauls did not
withdraw from the spectacle at which he assisted, shewed his favour to the
athlete, and did not think during many days of anything but his lyre and his
voice. The most culpable in all of this were the people most greedy of pleasure,
who exacted above all that their sovereign should amuse them, and also the false
taste of the time, which had inverted the order of greatness, and gave too large
a value to the man of renown in letters and the artist. The danger of literary
education is that it inspires an inordinate love of glory without ever affording
a serious moral, which fixes the meaning of true glory. It was destined that a
natural and subtle vanity, longing for the immense and the infinite, but without
any judgment, should make a deplorable shipwreck. But his qualities, such as aversion to war,
It is often asserted, to shew the irremediable nature of the masses, that Nero was popular in some points of view. The fact is that he had upon his own account two currents of opposite opinion. All those who were serious and honest detested him, the lower people loved him, some artlessly and by the vague sentiment which makes the poor plebeian love his prince if he has a brilliant exterior, the others because he intoxicated them with feasts. During those fêtes they saw him mixing with the crowd, dining, eating in the theatre in the midst of the mob. Did he not besides hate the Senate, the Roman nobility, whose character was so harsh and so little popular? The companions who surrounded him were at least amiable and polite. The soldiers of the guard always preserved their affection for him. For a long time his tomb was found always ornamented with fresh flowers, and portraits of him were placed in the rostra by unknown hands. The origin of the good fortune of Otho was that he had been his confidant and that he imitated his manners. Vitellius, to make himself acceptable at Rome, affected openly to take Nero as his model, and to follow his methods of government. Thirty or forty years after, all the world wished he were still living, and longed for his return.
This popularity, in reward to which there is no need
The strangeness of the spectacles in which they has taken part left few winds in their sober senses. Human nature had been pushed to the limits of the possible, there remained the vacuum which follows fits of fever;—everywhere spectres and visions of blood. It was said that at the moment when Nero came out through the Colline gate to take refuge in Phaon’s villa, a flash struck his eyes, and that at the same moment the earth trembled as if it were opening, and that the souls of all those whom he had killed threw themselves upon him. There was in the air as it were a thirst for vengeance. Soon we shall assist at one of the interludes of the grand heavenly drama, where the souls of the slain, lying under God’s altar, cry with a loud voice “Oh Lord, how long till thou shalt demand our blood from those who inhabit the earth,” and there shall be given to them a white robe because they have to wait a little longer!
The first impression on the Jews and Christians at the news of the revolt of
Vindex had been that of extreme joy. They believed that the empire would end
with Cæsar’s house, and that the revolted generals, full of hatred to Rome,
would not think of anything except rendering themselves independent in their
respective provinces. The movement of the Gauls was accepted in Judea as having
a significance analogous to that of the Jews themselves. There war was a deep
error. No part of the empire, Judea excepted, wished to see broken up that great
association which gave to the world peace and material prosperity. All the
countries on the borders of the Mediterranean, once at enmity, were delighted to
live together. Gaul itself, although less peaceful than the rest, limited its
revolutionary desires to the overthrow of the bad emperors, to demanding reform,
and to seeking for a liberal government. But we can imagine that people,
accustomed to the ephemeral kingdoms of the East, should have regarded as
finished an empire whose dynasty was about to be extinguished, and should have
believed that the different nations subjugated one or two centuries before would
form separate States under the generals who held the command. For eighteen
months, in fact, none of the leaders of the revolted legions succeeded in
putting down his rivals in a permanent way. Never had the world been seized with
such a trembling; at Rome the nightmare of Nero scarcely dispelled; at
Jerusalem a whole nation in a state of madness; the Christians under the stroke of the
When we read the Apocalypse without knowing the date or having its key, such a book appears the work of the most capricious and individual fancy; but when we replace the strange vision in this interregnum from Nero to Vespasian, in which the empire passed through the gravest crisis it had known, the work appears in the most extraordinary sympathy with the state of men’s minds; we may add with the state of the globe, for we shall soon see that the physical history of the world at the same period furnishes its elements. The world really dotted on miracles; never had it been so impressed by omens. The God-Father appeared to have veiled his face; certain unclean larvæ, monsters coming forth from a mysterious slime, appeared to be wandering through the air. Everyone believed that the world was on the eve of some unheard-of event, Belief in the signs of the times and prodigies was universal; scarcely more than a few hundreds of educated men saw their absurdity. Some charlatans, more or less authentic depositaries of the old chimeras of Babylon, played on the ignorance of the people and pretended to explain omens. These wretches became personages; the time was passed in expelling and then recalling them; Otho and Vitellius especially were entirely given up to them. The highest politics did not disdain to take note of these puerile dreams.
One of the most important branches of Babylonian divination was the
interpretation of monstrous births, considered as implying certain indications of coming
Men were also preoccupied with meteors and signs in the sky. The bolides made the greatest impression. It is known that the frequency of the bolides is a periodic phenomenon, which occurs nearly every thirty years. On these occasions there are some nights when, literally, the stars have the appearance of falling from heaven. Comets, eclipses, parhelia, and aurora borealis, in which were seen crowns, swords, and stripes of blood; burning clouds of plastic forms, in which were designed battles and fantastic animals; were greedily remarked and never appear to have been observed with such intensity as during these tragic years. People spoke only of showers of blood, astonishing effects of lightning, streams flowing upwards to their course, and rivers of blood. A thousand things to which people had paid no attention obtained through the feverish emotion of the public an exaggerated importance. The infamous charlatan, Balbillus, took advantage of the impression which these events sometimes made on the emperor, to excite his suspicions against the most illustrious, and to draw from him the cruellest orders.
The plagues of the period, besides, justified up to a certain point these
madnesses. Blood ran in floods on all sides. The death of Nero, which was a
deliverance in many points of view, began a period of civil wars. The battle of the legions of Gaul under Vindex and
Famine, indeed, was added to the massacres. In the year 68 the arrivals from Alexandria were insufficient. At the beginning of March, 69, an inundation of the Tiber was most disastrous. The wretchedness was fearful; a sudden eruption of the sea covered Lycia with mourning. In the year 65, a horrible pestilence afflicted Rome; during the autumn the dead were reckoned at 30,000. In the same year everybody spoke of the fearful fire at Lyons. And the Campagna was ravaged by water-spouts and cyclones, whose outbreaks were heard even at the gates of Rome. The order of nature seemed reversed; fearful storms spread terror in all directions.
But what struck people most was the earthquakes. The globe underwent a
convulsion parallel to that of the moral world; it seemed as if the world and
the human race had fever at the same time. It is a peculiarity of popular
movements to mix together all that excites the imagination of the crowds, at the
time when they are carried out. A natural phenomenon, a great crime, a crowd of
things accidental or without apparent connection, are linked together in the
grand rhapsody which humanity composes from age to age. It is thus
Vesuvius was preparing for its terrible eruption of 79. On the 5th February, 63,
Pompeii was nearly engulfed by an earthquake. A great number of the inhabitants
would not re-enter it. The volcanic centre of the Bay of Naples at the time of
which we speak was near Pouzzoles and Cuma. Vesuvius was still silent, but that
series of little craters which constitute the district to the west of Naples and
which are called the Phlegrean Fields, shewed everywhere the mark of fire.
Avernus, the Acherusia palus (the lake Fusaro), the lake Aguano, the Solfatara,
the little extinct volcanoes of Astroni, Camaldoli, Ischia, and Nisida, present
to-day something squalid; the traveller takes away an impression of them rather
more pleasant than frightful. Such was not the sentiment of antiquity. These
stoves, these deep grottoes, these thermal springs, those bubblings up, those
miasmas, those hollow sounds, those yawning mouths, (bocche d’inferno) vomiting
out sulphur and fiery vapours, inspire Virgil. They were likewise one of the
essential factors in the Apocalyptic literature. The Jew who disembarked at
Pouzzoles to proceed to business or intrigue at Rome, saw this ground smoking in
all its pores, shaking without ceasing, as if its bowels were
Nowhere is such an expression which is applied to Pouzzoles or other places of
the same character more striking than in the book of Enoch. According to one of
the authors of that bizarre Apocalypse, the residence of the fallen angels is a
subterraneous valley situated in the west near the “mountain of metals.” This
mountain is filled with flames of fire, it breathes an odour of sulphur; there
go forth from it bubbling and sulphurous streams (thermal waters) which are used
to cure diseases and near which the kings and great men of the earth gave themselves up to all sorts of pleasures. The fools! they
It was besides not only Italy, it was the eastern regions of the Mediterranean
which trembled. For two centuries Asia Minor was in one continual quake. The
towns were unceasingly occupied in reconstructing themselves; certain places
like Philadelphia experienced shocks every day. Tralles was in a condition of
perpetual falling down; they were obliged to invent for the houses a system of
mutual support. In the year 17 he destruction of fourteen towns in the district
of Timolus and Messogis took place; it was the most terrible catastrophe of
which mention had ever been made till then. In the years 23, 34, 37, 46, 51 and
53 there were partial misfortunes in Greece, Asia and Italy. Thera tans in a
condition of active labour, Antioch was
All this made a sort of gloomy atmosphere, in which the imagination of the
Christians found a strong excitement. Now, in view of the commotion of the
physical and moral world, would not the believers cry with more assurance than
ever, Maranatha, Maranatha! “Our Lord is coming, our Lord is coming.” The
earth appeared to them to be crumbling, and already they believed they saw the
kings and powerful men and the rich fleeing as they cried “Mountains, fall upon
us, bills, conceal us.” A constant habit of mind of the old prophets was to take
occasion by some natural plague to announce the near approach of the “day of
Jehovah.” A passage in Joel which was applied to Messianic times gave as certain
prognostications of the great day signs in heaven and on the earth, prophets
arising from all parts, rivers of blood, fire, pillars of smoke, the sun
darkened, the moon bloody. They believed likewise that Jesus had announced
earthquakes, famines, and pestilences as the overtures to the great day; then,
as foregoing indexes of his coming, eclipses, the moon
The province of Asia was that most agitated by those terrors. The church at Colosse had received a mortal blow by the catastrophe of the year 60.
Hierapolis, although built in the midst of the most bizarre dejections of a
volcanic eruption, did not suffer, it seems. It was perhaps there that the
Colossian believers took refuge. Everything shows us from that time Hierapolis
as a city apart. The profession of Judaism was public there. Some inscriptions
still existing among the wonderfully preserved ruins of that extraordinary city
mention the annual distributions which should be made to some corporations of
workmen, from “the feast of unleavened bread,” and from “the feast of
Pentecost.” Nowhere were good works, charitable institutions, and societies for
mutual help among people following the same trade of so much importance. Kinds
of orphanages, créches or children’s homes, evidence philanthropic cares
singularly developed. Philadelphia presents an analogous aspect; the state
bodies there became the basis of political divisions. A peaceful democracy of
workmen, associated among themselves and not occupied with politics, was the
social form of almost all those rich towns of Asia and Phrygia. Far from being
forbidden to a slave, virtue was considered to be the special portion of the man
who suffers. About the time we are writing of, was born at Hierapolis an infant
even so poor that they sold it in its cradle, and never knew it except under the
name of the “bought slave,” Epictetus, a name which, thanks to him, has become
the synonym of virtue itself. One day there shall come forth from
In the eyes of Christianity Hierapolis had an honour which far surpassed that of having given birth to Epictetus. It gave hospitality to one of the few survivors of the first Christian generation, to one of those who had seen Jesus, the Apostle Philip. We may suppose that Philip came into Asia after the crises which rendered Jerusalem uninhabitable for peaceful people, and expelled the Christians from its midst. Asia was the province where the Jews were most at peace; thither flowed the others. The relations between Rome and Hierapolis were likewise easy and regular. Philip was a priestly personage and belonged to the old school, very analogous to James. It was pretended that he wrought miracles, even the raising of the dead. He had four daughters, who were prophetesses. It appears that one of these died before Philip came into Asia. Of the three others, two grew old in their virginity; the fourth married during her father’s life, prophesied like her sisters, and died at Ephesus. These strange women were very famous in Asia. Papias, who was bishop of Hierapolis about the year 130, had known them, but he had never seen the Apostle himself. He heard from these old enthusiastic women some extraordinary facts and marvellous recitals of their father’s miracles. They also knew many things as to the other Apostles or Apostolic personages, especially a Joseph Barnabus, who, according to them, had drank a deadly poison without being harmed.
Thus, on John’s side, there was constituted in Asia a second centre of authority
and Apostolic tradition. John and Philip elevated the countries which they had
chosen to reside in nearly to the level of Judea. “These two great stars of
Asia,” as they were called, were for some years the lighthouse of the church, deprived
The crisis in Judea, by dispersing, about 68, the apostles and apostolic men, would yet bring to Ephesus and into the valley of the Meander, other considerable personage in the nascent Church. A very great number of disciples, in any ease, who had seen the Apostles at Jerusalem, were found in Asia, and appear to have led that wandering life from town to town which was much to the taste of the Jews. Perhaps the mysterious personages called Presbyteros Johannes and Aristion were among the emigrés. Those listeners to the Twelve spread throughout Asia the tradition of the Church of Jerusalem, and succeeded in giving Judeo-Christianity the preponderance there. They were eagerly questioned as to the sayings of the apostles and the authentic words of Jesus. Later on those who had seen them were so proud of having drunk from the pure source, that they despised the little writings which claimed to report the discourses of Jesus.
There was something very peculiar about the state of mind in which these
churches lived buried in the depths of a province whose peaceful climate and
profound heaven appeared to lead to mysticism. In no place did the Messianic
ideas so much preoccupy men’s attention. They gave themselves up to extravagant
imaginations, the most absurd parabolic language, coming from the traditions of
Philip and John, were propagated. The gospel which was formed on this coast had
something mythical and peculiar about it. It was imagined
John at Ephesus strengthened daily. His supremacy was recognised throughout the
whole province, except perhaps at Hierapolis, where Philip lived. The churches
of Smyrna, Pergamos, Thyatira, Sardis, Philadelphia, and Laodocea had adopted
him as their head, listening with respect to his statements, his councils, and
his reproaches. The Apostle, or those whom he gave the right to speak for him,
generally assumed a severe tone. A great rudeness, an extreme intolerance, a
hard and gross language against those who thought otherwise than he did appeared
to have been a part of John’s character. It is, it was said, in regard him that
Jesus promulgated this principle, “whosoever is not for us is against us.” The
series of anecdotes which were told of his sweetness and indulgence seem to have
been invented agreeably to the model which is visible in the Johannine epistles,
epistles whose authenticity is very doubtful. Features of an opposite kind, and
which show much violence, accord better with the evangelical records and with
the Apocalypse, and prove that the hastiness which had gained him the surname of
Son of Thunder had only grown greater with age. It may be, however, that these
qualities and contradictory defects might not be so exclusive of each other as
one might think. Religious fanaticism often produces in the same person the
extremes of harshness and goodness; just as an inquisitor of the middle ages,
who made thousands of unfortunates burn for insignificant subtleties, was at the
same time the gentlest, and in one sense the humblest, of men. It
Rage against the Roman empire, delight in the misfortunes which befel it, the
hope of soon seeing it dismembered, were the innermost thoughts of all the
believers. They sympathized with the Jewish insurrection, and were persuaded
that the Romans had not quite reached their end. The time was distant since
Paul, and perhaps Peter, preached the acceptance of the Roman authority,
attributing even to that authority a sort of divine character. The principles of
the enthusiastic Jews in the refusal to pay taxes, as to the diabolic origin of
all profane power, as to the idolatry implied in acts of civil life according to
the Roman usages, carried them away It was the natural consequence of
persecution; moderate principles had ceased to be applicable. Without being so
violent as in 64, persecution continued secretly. Asia was the province where
the fall of Nero had made the deepest impression.
This idea, which gave birth to the Apocalypse, took every day more distinct
forms; the Christian conscience had arrived at the height of its enthusiasm when
a matter which took place in the neighbouring isles of Asia gave body to what up
till then had been only imagination. A false Nero appeared and inspired in the
provinces of Asia and Achaia, a lively sentiment of either curiosity, hope, or
fear. He was, it would appear, a slave from Pontus, according to others an
Italian of servile rank. He much resembled the deceased emperor; he had his
large eyes, his strong hair, his haggard look, his theatrical and fierce face;
he knew like him how to play the guitar, and to sing. The impostor found around
him a first nucleus composed of deserters and vagabonds, and attempting to reach
by sea Syria and Egypt, was cast by a tempest on the island of Cythnos, one of the Cylades.
Other things which took place in Asia or in the Archipelago, and whose date we
cannot fix for want of sufficient indications, increased the agitation still
more. An ardent Neronian who joined to political passion some marks of a
sorcerer, declared himself loudly for either the Cythnian impostor or for Nero,
who was thought to have taken refuge among the Parthians. He apparently forced
peaceable people to recognise Nero. He re-established his statues and ordered
them to be honoured; we are sometimes even tempted to believe that a coin was
struck with the legend Nero redux. What is certain is, that the Christians
imagined they would be forced to honour Nero’s statues, the money, token, or
stamp in the name of “the beast” “without which one could neither sell nor buy,”
and thus caused them insurmountable scruples; the gold marked with the sign of
the great head of idolatry burned their fingers. It appears that rather than
lend themselves to such acts of apostasy some of the believers in Ephesus were
exiled; we can suppose that John was of that number. This incident, obscure for
us, plays a large part in the Apocalypse, and was perhaps its prime origin.
“Attention” said the seer, “there is here the end of the patience of the saints
who keep the commandments of God and the faith of Jesus.” The occurrences in
Rome and Italy gave reason for this feverish expectancy. Galba did not
The form of “Apocalypse” adopted by the author was not new in Israel. Ezekiel
had already inaugurated a considerable change in the old prophetic style, and we
may in a sense regard it as the creator of the Apocalyptic class. To fervent
preaching, accompanied sometimes by extremely allegorical acts, he had
substituted, doubtless under the influence of Assyrian art, the vision, that is
to say, a complicated symbolism, where the abstract idea was presented by means
of chimerical beings conceived outside of all reality. Zachariah continues to
walk in the same path; a vision becomes the necessary framework of all
prophetic instruction. Indeed, the author of the book of Daniel, by the
extraordinary popularity he obtained, fixed absolutely the rules of the class.
The book of Enoch, the Assumption of Moses and certain sibylline poems were the
fruit of his powerful initiative. The prophetic instinct of the Semites, their
tendency to group facts in view of a certain philosophy of history, and to
The author of this bizarre writing, which a still more bizarre fate destined to such different interpretations, laid down in it the whole weight of the Christian conscience, then addressed it under the form of an epistle to the seven principal Churches of Asia. He asked that it should be read, as was the custom with all apostolic epistles, to the assembled faithful. There was perhaps in that an imitation of Paul, who preferred to act by letters than personally. Such communications in any case were not rare, and it was always the coming of the Lord which was their object. Some pretended revelations on the nearness of the last day circulated under the name of different apostles, so much so that Paul was obliged to warn his churches against the abuse which might be made of his writing to support such frauds. The work begins by a title which was worthy of its origin and its lofty theme:—
The Revelation of Jesus Christ which God gave him to show unto his servants, even the things which must shortly come to pass: and he sat and signified it by his angel unto his servant John, who bare witness of the word of God, and of the testimony of Jesus Christ, even of all things that he saw. Blessed is he that readeth, and they that hear the words of the prophecy and keep the things which are written therein, for the time is at hand.
John, to the seven churches which are in Asia, Grace to you, and peace from him
which is, and which was, and
Behold he cometh with the clouds, and every eye shall see him, and they which pierced him; and all the tribes of the earth shall mourn over him, even so, Amen. I am the Alpha and the Omega, saith the Lord God, which is and which was, and which is to come, the Almighty.
John, your brother and partaker with you in the tribulation and kingdom and patience which are in Jesus, was in the isle that is called Patmos, for the word of God and the testimony of Jesus. I was in the Spirit on the Lord’s day, and I heard behind me a great voice, as of a trumpet, saying, What thou seest write in a book, and send it to the seven churches, unto Ephesus and unto Smyrna, and unto Pergamum, and unto Thyatira, and unto Sardis, and unto Philadelphia, and unto Laodicea. And I turned to see the voice which spake unto me, and having turned I saw seven golden candlesticks, and in the midst of the candlesticks one like unto a son of man, clothed with a garment down to the foot, and girt about at the breasts with a golden girdle. And his head and his hair were white as white wool, white as snow, and his eyes were as a flame of fire, and his feet like unto burnished brass, as if it had been refined in a furnace, and his voice as the voice of many waters, and he had in his right hand seven stars, and out of his mouth proceeded a sharp two-edged sword, and his countenance was as the sun shineth in his strength. And when I saw him I fell at his feet as one dead. And he laid his right hand upon me, saying, Fear not; I am the first and the last and the living one. And I was dead, and behold I am alive for evermore, and I have the keys of death and of Hades Write therefore the things which thou sawest and the things which are and the things which shall come to pass hereafter; the mystery of the seven stars which thou rawest in my right hand, and the seven golden candlesticks. The seven stars are the angels of the seven churches, and the seven candlesticks are seven churches.
In the Jewish conceptions, among the Gnostics and Cabbalists who were dominant about this time, every
person, and indeed every moral being, such as death or grief, has its angel; there was thus the angel of Persia
To the angel of the church of Ephesus;
These things saith he that holdeth the seven stars in his right hand, who walketh in the midst of the seven golden candlesticks I know thy works and thy labour, and thy patience, and how thou can et not bear them which are evil, and thou hast tried them which say they are apostles, and are not, and hast found them liars. And hest borne and had patience, and for my name’s sake hast laboured and hast not fainted. Nevertheless I have somewhat against thee, because thou hest left thy first love. Remember therefore from whence thou art fallen, and repent and do the first works; or else I will tome unto thee quickly, and will remove thy candlestick out of his place, except thou repent. But this thou hast, that thou hatest the deeds of the Nicolaitanes, which I also hate. He that hath an ear let him hear what the spirit saith unto the churches; to him that overcometh will I give to eat of the tree of life which is in the midst of the paradise of God.
And unto the angel of the church of Smyrna:
These things saith the first and the last, which was dead and is alive. I know thy works and tribulation, and poverty, (but thou art rich) and I know the blasphemy of them which say they are Jews and are not, but are the synagogue of Satan. Fear none of those things which thou shalt suffer, behold the devil shall cast some of you into prison that ye may be tried, and ye shall have tribulation ten days. Be thou faithful unto death, and I will give thee a crown of life. He that hath an ear let him hear what the Spirit saith unto the churches. He that overcometh shall not be hurt of the second death.
And to the angel of the church of Pergamum:
These things saith he which hath the sharp sword with two edges: I know thy works
and where thou dwellest, even where Satan’s seat is; and thou holdest fast my
name, and hast
And unto the angel of the church of Thyatira:
These things saith the son of God, who hath his eyes like unto a flame of fire, and his feet are like fine brass. I know thy works, and charity, and service, and faith, and thy patience and thy works; and the last to be more than the first. Notwithstanding, I have a few things against thee, because thou sufferest that woman Jezebel, which calleth herself a prophetess, to teach and to seduce my servants to commit fornication and to eat things sacrificed unto idols. And I give her space to repent of her fornication, and she repented not. Behold I will cast her into a bed and them that commit adultery with her into great tribulation, except they repent of their deeds. And I will kill her children with death; and all the churches shall know that I am he which searcheth the reins and hearts; and I will give unto every one of you according to your works. But unto you I say, and unto the rest in Thyatira, as many as have not this doctrine and which have not known the depths of Satan as they speak, I will put upon you none other burden. But that which ye have already hold fast till I come. And he that overcometh and keepeth my works unto the end, to him will I give power over the nations. And he shall rule them with a rod of iron; as the vessels of a potter shall they be broken to shivers, even as I received of my father. And I will give him the morning star. He that hath an ear let him hear what the Spirit saith unto the churches.
And unto the angel of the church of Sardis:
These things saith he that hath the seven Spirits of God and the seven stars:
I know thy works, that thou hast a
And to the angel of the church of Philadelphia:
These things saith he that is holy, he that is true, he that hath the key of David, he that openeth and no man shutteth, and shutteth and no man openeth. I know thy works; behold I have set before thee an open door, and no man can shut it; for thou hast a little strength and hast kept my word, and hast not denied my name. Behold, I will make them of Satan, which say they are Jews and are not, but do lie; behold I will make them to come and worship before thy feet, and to know that I have loved thee. Because thou hast kept the word of my patience, I also will keep thee from the hour of temptation, which shall come upon all the world, to try them that dwell upon the earth. Behold I come quickly, hold that fast which thou hast, that no man take my crown. Him that overcometh will I make a pillar in the temple of my God, and he shall go no more out; and I will write upon him the name of my God, and the name of the city of my God, which is new Jerusalem; which cometh down out of Heaven from my God, and I will write upon him my new name. He that hath an ear let him hear what the Spirit saith unto the churches.
And unto the angel of the church of Laodicea:
These things saith the Amen, the faithful and true witness, the beginning of the
creation of God. I know thy works, that thou art neither cold nor hot. I would
thou wert cold or hot. So then because thou art lukewarm and neither cold nor
hot, I will spew thee out of my mouth. Because thou sayest I am rich, and
increased with goods, and have need of nothing, and knowest not that thou art
wretched, and miserable, and poor, and
Who is this John who dares to make himself the interpreter of these celestial
mandates, who speaks to the Churches of Asia with such authority, who boasts
that he has passed through the same persecutions as his readers? It is either
the Apostle John or a homonym of the Apostle John, or some one who has a desire
to pass for the Apostle John. It is scarcely admissible that in the year 69,
during the apostle’s life or a little after his death, some one had usurped his
name without his consent for such searching counsels and reprimands. Among the
apostle’s homonyms, no one would have dared to take up such a position. The Presbyteros Johannes (the only person who is alleged to have done so), if he
ever existed, was, it would seem, of a later generation. Without denying the
doubts which rest on nearly all these questions as to the authenticity of the
apostolic writings, seeing the emit scruple which is made in attributing to
apostles and holy persons the revelations to which they wished to give
authority, we regard it as probable that the Apocalypse is the work of the
Apostle John, or at least that it was accepted by him and addressed to the
Churches of Asia under his patronage The prong impression of the massacres of
the year 64, the feeling of the dangers through which the author has run, the
horror of Rome, appear to us to point to the apostle who, according to our
hypothesis, had been at Rome and could say, in speaking of those tragic events:
Quorum pars magna fui. Blood stifled
Why did the author of the Apocalypse, whoever he was, choose Patmos for the place of his vision? It is difficult to say. Patmos or Pathos is a little island about four leagues in length, but very narrow. It was in the antiquity of Greece, flourishing and very populous. In the Roman period, it kept all the importance which its smallness warranted, thanks to its fine port, formed in the centre of the island by the isthmus which joins the massive rocks of the north to those of the south. Patmos was, according to the habits of the coasting trade then, the first or the last station for the traveller who went from Ephesus to Rome or from Rome to Ephesus. It is wrong to represent it as a rock or a desert, Patmos was and will become again one of the most important maritime stations of the Archipelago: for it is at the branching off of many lines. If Asia should renew its youth, Patmos would be for it something analagous to what Syra is for modern Greece, to what Delos and Rhenia among the Cyclades, a sort of emporium in the eyes of the merchant marine, a point of “correspondence” useful to travellers.
It was probably this which caused this little island to be selected—a selection
from which has resulted later on such a high Christian celebrity to the spot.
Whether the apostle had retired thither to escape some persecuting
Men so ardent as those bitter and fanatical descendants of the old prophets of
Israel carried their fancies wherever they went, and that imagination was so
completely shut in within the circle of the old Hebrew poetry that the nature
which surrounded them did not exist for them. Patmos resembles all the islands
of the Archipelago: an azure sea, limped air, a serene sky, rocks with jagged
peaks, only occasionally clad with a light downy verdure, The aspect is naked
and sterile; but the forms and colour of the rock, the living blue of the sea, pencilled by beautiful white birds, opposed to the reddish tints of the rocks,
are something wonderful. Those myriads of isles and islets of the most varied
forms which emerge like pyramids or shields on the waves, and dance an eternal rondo
After the message to the seven churches, the course of the vision unrolls
itself. A door is opened in heaven; the Seer is wrapped in spirit, and through
this opening his look penetrates to the very heart of the heavenly court. All
the heaven of the Jewish cabala reveals itself to him. A single throne exists,
and upon that throne, around which is the rainbow, is seated God himself, like a
colossal ruby, darting forth its fires. Around the throne are twenty-four
secondary seats, upon which are seated four-and-twenty elders clothed in white, having upon their heads crowns of gold. It is humanity represented by a senate
of its élite, who form the permanent court of the Eternal; in front burn seven
lamps, which are the seven spirits of God (the seven gifts of the divine
wisdom). Behind are four monsters, composed of features borrowed from the
cherubs of Ezekiel, and seraphs of Isaiah. These are: the first in the form of
a lion, the second in the form of a calf, the third in the form of a man, the
fourth in the form of an eagle with outspread wings These four monsters in
Ezekiel formerly represented the attributes of the divine being: wisdom, power,
omniscience, and creation. They have six wings and are covered with eyes over
their whole bodies. The angels, creatures inferior to the great supernatural
personifications which had been spoken of, a sort of winged servants, surround
the throne in thousands of thousands and myriads of myriads. An eternal rolling
of thunder comes forth from the throne. In the foreground there stretches an
immense azure surface, like crystal (the firmament). A
Christ has not figured up till now in the court of heaven; the Seer makes us
assist at the ceremony of his enthronement. At the right of him who is seated on
the throne there is seen a book in the form of a roll, written on both sides and
sealed with seven seals. It is the hook of the divine secrets, the great
Revelation. No one either in earth or heaven has been found worthy to open it or
even to look upon it. John then begins to weep; the future, the only consolation
of the Christian, is not there to be revealed to him. One of the elders
encourages him. In fact he who should open the book is soon found. It may be
divined without difficulty that it is Jesus, for in the very centre of the great
assembly at the foot of the throne in the midst of the animals and elders upon
the crystalline altar appears a slain lamb. It was the favourite image under
which the Christian imagination loved to picture Jesus to itself; a Iamb slain
became a Paschal victim and always with God. He has seven horns and seven eyes,
symbols of the seven spirits of God, whose fulness Jesus has received, and who
are through him about to be spread over the whole world. The Lamb rises, goes
right up to the throne of the Eternal, and takes the Book. A wondrous emotion then
fills heaven. The four animals, the four-and-twenty elders fall on their knees
before the Lamb. They hold in their hands harps and vials of gold full of
incense (the prayers of saints) and sing a new song: “Thou, thou alone art
worthy to take the book and to open its seals; for thou hast been slain and
with thy blood hast thou gained unto God a company of elect out
Thus is Jesus introduced in the highest rank of the celestial hierarchy. Not only the angels, but also the four-and-twenty elders, and the four animals who are superior to the angels, prostrate themselves before him. He has mounted the steps of the throne of God and has taken the book placed at the right hand of God, which no one could even look upon. He opens the seven seals of the book and the grand drama begins. The début is brilliant. According to a conception of the most righteous people, the author places the origin of the Messianic agitation at the moment in which Rome extends its empire to Judea. At the opening of the first seal a white horse comes forth. The rider who is mounted on him carries a bow in his hand, a crown surrounds his head, he gains victory everywhere. This is the Roman Empire, which up till the time of the Seer none could resist, but this triumphal prologue is of short duration; the signs coming before the brilliant appearance of Messiah shall be unheard-of plagues, and it is by the most terrific images that the celestial tragedy is carried out. We are at the beginning of what is called “the period of the sorrows of the Messiah.” Each seal which is opened henceforth brings upon humanity some horrible misfortunes.
At the opening of the second seal a red horse comes forth. To him who rides upon
it is given power to take
At the opening of the third seal a black horse leaps forth. His rider holds a balance. In the midst of the four animals the voice which tariffs in heaven the prices of commodities for poor mortals, says to the horseman, “A bushel of wheat for a penny, three bushels of barley for a penny, and touch not the oil or the wine.” That is famine, not to speak of the great dearth which took place under Claudius; the scarcity in the year 68 was extreme.
At the opening of the fourth seal a yellow horse comes forth. His rider was called Death. Sheol followed him, and there was power given to him to kill the quarter of the world by the sword, pestilence, and wild beasts.
Such are the great plagues which announce the approaching advent of the Messiah. Justice wills it that immediately the divine wrath shall be lit against the world. In fact at the opening of the fifth seal the Seer is witness of a touching spectacle. He recognises under the altar the souls of those who have been slain for their faith, and for the witness they have rendered to Christ (certainly the victims of the year 64). These holy souls cry out to God, and say to Him, “How long, O Lord, holy and true. Wilt Thou not do justice and demand our blood from those that dwell upon the earth?” But the time is not yet come, the number of the martyrs who should fill up the overflowing of wrath has not yet been reached. To each one of the victims who are under the altar, is given a white robe, a pledge of future justification and triumph, and they are told to wait a little while until their fellow-servants and brethren who should be slain like them should bear witness in their turn.
After this fine interlude, we do not return to the period of precursory plagues, but the phenomena of the last judgment. At the opening of the sixth seal a great shaking of the universe takes place. The heaven becomes black like sackcloth of hair, the moon takes the colour of blood, the stars fall from heaven to earth like the fruit of a fig tree shaken with the wind. The sky draws itself back like a book that is rolled up, the mountains and hills are hurled from their places. The kings and the great men of the earth, the military tribunes, and the rich and the strong, slaves and free men, hide themselves in the caves and among the rocks saying to the mountains, “Fall upon us, and save us from the glance of Him who sits upon the throne and from the wrath of the Lamb!”
The great execution is then to be accomplished. The four angels of the winds are
placed at the four corners of the earth; they have only to give bridle to the
elements which are entrusted to them, that these, following their natural fury,
should destroy the world. All power is given to these four actors. They are at
their posts; but the fundamental idea of the poem is to show the great judgment
adjourned without ceasing till the moment it appears it must take place. An
angel bearing in his hand the seal of God (a seal which has for a legend, like
all royal seals, the name of him to whom it belongs, ליהוה), comes forth from
the east. He cries to the four angels of the destroying winds to keep back for
some time yet the forces which they wield, until the elect, who presently live,
are marked in the forehead, by the stamp, by which, as was done by the blood of
the Paschal Lamb in Egypt, they should be preserved from these plagues. The
angel impresses then the divine signet upon a hundred and forty-four thousand
persons belonging to the twelve tribes of Israel. It is not really said that
these hundred and forty-four thousand elect are only Jews. Israel is here
certainly the true spiritual Israel, “the Israel of God,” as St. Paul
The seventh seal is opened. They are waiting for the grand spectacle of the consummation of time. But, in the poem, as in reality, this catastrophe always recedes; we believed it was coming, but it has not. In place of the final dénoûement which ought to be the effect of the opening of the seventh seal, there is silence in heaven for half-an-hour, indicating that the first act of the mystery has ended, and that another is about to begin.
After the sacramental silence the seven archangels which are before the throne
of God, and of whom mention has just been made, enter on the scene. To them are
given seven trumpets, which each uses as a signal of other prognostics. John’s
gloomy fancy was not satisfied; this time it is in the plagues of Egypt that his
anger against the world seeks types for punishments. Some natural phenomena occurring about the year 68,
Before the blast of the seven trumpets begins, a silent scene of great effect comes in. An angel advances toward the golden altar which is before the throne, having in his hand a golden censer. Some lumps of incense are turned over the coals of the altar and send up perfumes before the Eternal. The angel then refills his censer with coals from the altar and throws them on the ground. These coals, in striking the surface of the earth, produce thunders and lightnings, voices and earthquakes. The incense, the author himself tells us, are the prayers of saints. The sighs of these pious persons, rising before God, and calling for the destruction of the Roman empire, become burning coals to the profane world, which strikes it, rends it, and consumes it, without it knowing whence the attack comes.
The seven angels then prepare to place their trumpets to their lips.
At the sound of the first angel’s trumpet a hail mingled with fire and blood falls on the earth. The third of the earth is burned, the third of the trees is burned; all green herbage is burned. In 63 and 68 and 69, there was, in fact, a great terror caused by storms in which men saw something supernatural
At the sound of the second angel’s trumpet, a great mountain, incandescent, is thrown into the sea; the third of the sea is turned into blood, the third of all fishes die, the third of ships is destroyed. There is here an allusion to the aspects of the isle of Thera, which the prophet could almost see on the horizon of Patmos, and which resembles an extinct volcano. A new island had appeared in the midst of its crater in the year 46 or 47. In its moments of activity one can see in the neighbourhood of Thera flames on the surface of the sea.
At the blast of the third angel’s trumpet, a great star falls from heaven,
burning like a faggot; it extinguishes
At the blast of the fourth angel’s trumpet the third of the sun, the third of the moon, and the third of the stars are extinguished, so that the third of the world’s light is darkened. This may be connected with eclipses which terrified people during those years, or the terrible storm of 10th January, 69.
These plagues are not over yet. An eagle flying in the zenith uttered three cries of misfortune, and announced to men some unheard-of calamities for the three trumpet blasts which remain.
At the sound of the fifth trumpet a star (that is to say, an angel) falls from
heaven; the key of the bottomless pit (hell) is given to him. The angel opens
the bottomless pit; then comes up from it a smoke like that of a great furnace;
the sun and the heavens are darkened. From this smoke come forth locusts, who
cover the earth like squadrons of cavalry. These locusts, led by their king,
the angel of the abyss, who is called in Hebrew Abaddon, and in Greek Apollyon,
torment men during five months (a whole summer). It is possible that the plague
of the locusts may about this time have been very intense in some provinces; in
any case the imitation of the plagues of Egypt is evident here. The bottomless
pit is probably the Solfatara of Pouzzuoli (what is termed the Forum of
The sound of the sixth trumpet brings another plague: it is the invasion of the Parthians, which everybody believed imminent. A voice comes from the four horns of the altar, which is before God, and orders the release of four angels who are chained on the banks of the Euphrates. The four angels (perhaps the Assyrians, Babylonians, Medes and Persians), who were ready for the day, the hour, the month, and the year, were placing themselves at the head of terrible cavalry amounting to two hundred millions of men. The description of the horses and horsemen is quite fantastical. The horses, which kill with the tail, are probably an allusion to the Parthian cavalry, who shot arrows while flying. A third of humanity is exterminated. Nevertheless those who survive do not repent. They continue to worship devils, idols of gold and silver, who can neither see, nor hear, or walk. They are obstinate in their homicides, their evil deeds, their fornications, their robberies.
They wait for the seventh trumpet to sound; out here, as in the act of the opening of the seals, the Seer appears to hesitate, or rather to place himself in a position to wait the result. He stops himself at the solemn moment. The terrible secret cannot yet be entirely made known. A gigantic angel, his head girt with a rainbow, one foot on the earth, another on the sea, whose voice seven thunders repeat, says certain mysterious words, which a voice from heaven forbids John to write. The gigantic angel then lifts his hands towards heaven and swears by the Eternal that there shall be no more delay, and that at the sound of the seventh trumpet will be accomplished the mystery of God announced by the prophets.
The apocalyptic drama therefore is about to finish. To prolong his book, the author gives himself a new prophetic mission. Rejecting an energetic symbol employed before by Ezekiel, John receives a fatidic book from the gigantic angel, and eats it. A voice says to him: “It is necessary that thou shouldst prophecy still before many races, and peoples, and tongues, and kings.” The framework of the vision, which is to be closed by the seventh trumpet, enlarges itself thus, and the author begins a second part, when he will unveil his views on the destinies of the kings and peoples of his time. The first six trumpets, in fact, like the opening of the first six seals, are connected with the facts which had taken place when the author wrote. What follows, on the contrary, is connected for the most part with the future.
It is upon Jerusalem first that the looks of the Seer are cast. By a plain
symbolism, he gives it to be understood that the city should be delivered to the
Gentiles; to see that in the opening months of 69, needed no great prophetic
effort. The portico and the court of the Gentiles shall even be polluted by the
feet of the profane; but the imagination of a Jew so fervent cannot conceive of
the temple destroyed, the temple being the only place in the world where God can receive a worship
Jerusalem, during this time, shall be a theatre of a partly religious battle
analogous to the struggles which have filled history in all times. God will give
a mission to “his two witnesses” who shall prophecy during two hundred and sixty
days (that is, three years and a half) clothed in sackcloth. These two prophets
are compared to two olive trees and to two candles before the Lord. They shall
have the powers of a Moses and an Elias; they will be able to shut heaven and
keep back the rain, to turn water into blood, and to smite the earth with
whatever plague they will. If any one tries to do them harm, a fire shall come
out of their mouths and devour their adversaries. When they shall have finished
giving their witness, the beast who comes up from the abyss, the Roman power,
(or rather Nero reappearing as Antichrist) shall slay them. Their bodies will
remain three days and a half stretched out without burial in the streets of the
great city which is symbolically called “Sodom” and “Egypt,” and where their
master was crucified. The worldly shall rejoice, and shall felicitate each
other, and send each other presents; for these two prophets had become
insupportable by their austere preaching and by their temple miracles. But at
the end of three days and a half, behold, the spirit of life shall re-enter the
two saints: they shall rise to their feet, and a great terror shall seize all
those who see them. Soon they mount heavenwards
We have already often met this idea that the solemn hour shall be preceded by the appearance of the two witnesses, who are most often believed to be Enoch and Elias in prison. These two friends of God passed, indeed, for not being dead. The first was reported to have uselessly predicted the deluge to his contemporaries, who would not listen to him. He was the type of a Jew preaching repentance among the heathen. Sometimes also, the witnesses seem to resemble Moses, whose death was equally uncertain, and Jeremiah. Our author appears, moreover, to consider the two witnesses two important personages in the church of Jerusalem, two apostles of a great holiness, who shall be slain, then raised again, and shall ascend to heaven like Elias and Jesus. It is not impossible that the vision had for its first portion a retrospective value and is connected with the murder of the two Jameses, especially with the death of James, the Lord’s brother which was considered by many at Jerusalem as a public misfortune, a fatal event and a sign of the times. Perhaps also one of these preachers of repentance is John the Baptist, the other Jesus. As to the persuasion that the end shall not take place till the Jews shall be converted, it was general among the Christians; we find it likewise in St. Paul.
The remainder of Israel having come to the true faith, the world has only to
end. The seventh angel places his trumpet to his lips. At the sound of that last
trumpet great voices cry out: “Behold! the hour has come when our Lord with
his Christ shall reign over the world to all eternity.” The four-and-twenty
elders fall on their faces and worship. They thank God for having inaugurated
his kingdom, in spite of the powerless rage of the Gentiles, and proclaim the hour of
All is finished; the believers have received the great revelation which should comfort them. The judgment is at hand; it shall be held in a sacred half-year, equivalent to three years and a half. But we have already seen the author, little careful as to the unity of his work, reserving to himself the means of continuing it, when it should be finished. The book, in fact, is only half of the course; a new series of visions is about to he unrolled before us.
The first is one of the finest. In the midst of heaven appears a woman (the
Church of Israel) clothed with the sun, having the moon under her feet, and
around her head a crown of twelve stars (the twelve tribes of Israel). She cries
as if she was in the throes of labour, pregnant as she is with the ideal
Messiah. Before her is set an enormous red dragon, with seven crowned heads and
ten horns, and whose tail, sweeping the sky, draws down a third of the stars and
casts them on the earth. It is Satan, in the features of the most powerful of
his incarnations, the Roman empire, the red pictures the imperial purple. The
seven crowned heads are the seven Cæsars who have reigned up till the time the
author writes: Julius Cæsar, Augustus, Tiberius, Caligula, Claudius, Nero and
Galba; the ten horns are the ten pro-consuls who govern the provinces. The
dragon waits for the birth of the child to devour it. The woman brings into the
world a son, destined “to rule the nations with a rod of iron”—a feature
characteristic of the Messiah. The child (Jesus) is raised to heaven by God. God
places him at his side upon his throne. The woman flees into the desert, where
God has prepared a retreat for her for 1,260 days. There is here an evident allusion either to the flight of
Then a great battle takes place in heaven. Up till then Satan, the Katigor, the malevolent critic of the creation, had his entrées into the divine court. He profits by them, according to an old habit which he had not lost since the age of the patriarch Job, to hurt pious men and especially the Christians, and to bring upon them frightful troubles. The persecutions of Rome and Ephesus have been his work. Now he will lose this privilege. The archangel Michael (the guardian angel of Israel) with his angels, gives battle to him. Satan is defeated, chased from heaven, cast to the earth as well as his supporters; a song of victory arises, when the celestial beings see precipitated from height to depth the caluminator, the detractor of all good, who does not cease day and night to accuse and to blacken their brethren dwelling on the earth. The church of heaven and that below fraternize over the defeat of Satan. That defeat is due to the blood of the Lamb and also to the courage of the martyrs who have carried their sacrifice even up to death. But woe to the profane world The Dragon has descended to his own place, and they can all wait for his despair; for he knows that his days are numbered.
The first object against which the Dragon cast on the earth turns his rage, is
the woman (the church of Israel) who has brought into the world this divine
fruit whom God has made to sit at his right hand. But protection from on high covers the woman; there are given to her
Then the prophet sees coming up from the sea a beast which in many points
resembles the Dragon. It has ten horns, and seven heads and diadems on its ten
horns, and on each of its heads a blasphemous name. Its general aspect is that
of the leopard; his feet are those of a bear, his mouth that of a lion. The
Dragon (Satan) gives him his strength, his throne and his power. One of his
heads has received a mortal blow; but the wound has been healed. The whole
earth falls in wonder before this powerful animal, and all men begin to worship
the Dragon because he has given power to the beast; they also worship the beast,
saying: “Who is like the beast, and who can fight against him?” And there is
given to him a mouth speaking words full of blasphemy and pride, and the duration
of his omnipotence is fixed at forty-two months (three years and a half). Then
the beast begins to vomit forth blasphemies against God, against his name and
the tabernacle, and against those who dwell in heaven. And it was given to him
to make war on the saints and to conquer them, and power was ceded to him over
every tribe and tongue and race. And all men worshipped him except those whose
This symbolism is very clear. Already in the Sibylline poem, composed in the
second century B.C., the Roman power is qualified by having “numerous heads.”
The allegories drawn from polycephalous beasts were very much in vogue; the
principal interpretation of these emblems was to consider each head as
signifying a sovereign. The monster of the Apocalypse, is besides, composed by
the reunion of the attributes of the four empires of Daniel, and that alone
shows it concerns a new empire, absorbing in itself the former empires. The
beast which comes forth from the sea is therefore the Roman empire, which, to
the people of Palestine, appeared to come from beyond the seas. This empire is only a form of Satan (the dragon) or rather, it is Satan
himself with all his
attributes; he holds his power to cause Satan to be adored, that is, to
maintain idolatry, which, to the authors mind, is nothing but the worship of
demons. The ten crowned are the ten provinces, whose pro-consuls are real kings;
the seven heads are the seven emperors who have succeeded each other from Julius
Cæsar to Galba; the blasphemous name written on each head is the title of
Σεβαστός, or Augustus, which appeared to the seven Jews to imply an injury to
God. The whole world is given up by Satan to this empire, in return for the
homage which the said empire procures Satan; the greatness and the pride of
Rome, the imperium which it has decreed, its divinity, an object of a special
and public worship, are a perpetual blasphemy against God, sole real sovereign
of the world. The empire in question is naturally the enemy of the Jews and
Jerusalem. He made a fierce war with the saints (the author appears on the whole favourably to
The symbol which follows is far from being as transparent to us. Another beast goes forth from the earth; it has two horns like those of a lamb, but it speaks like the Dragon (Satan). It exercises all the power of the first beast in its presence and under its eyes; it fills in its turn the rôle of delegate, and employs all its authority to cause the inhabitants of the earth to worship the first beast, “whose mortal hurt has been cured.” This second beast works great miracles; it goes so far as to bring the fire of heaven upon the earth in presence of numerous spectators; it seduces the world by the prodigies which it executes in the name and for the service of the first beast (of that beast, adds the author, which has received a stroke of the sword and nevertheless lives). And there was given (to the second beast) to put the breath of life into the image of the first beast, so that that image spoke. And it had the power to cause after this that all those who refused to adore the first beast should be put to death. And it established as a law that all, small and great, rich and poor, free and slaves, should bear a mark on their right hand or on their forehead. And it commanded besides that no one should be able to buy or sell if he did not bear the sign of the beast, or his name in all its letters, that is, the number made up by the letters of his name added together like figures. “Here is wisdom!” cries the author. “Let him who has understanding calculate the number of the beast. It is the number of a man This number is 666.”
In reality, if we add together the letters of the name of Nero, transcribed in Hebrew נררן קסו (Νέρων Καῖσαρ) according to their numerical value we obtain the number 666. Neron Kesar was indeed the name by which the Christians of Asia designated the monster; the coins of Asia bore as a legend: ΝΕΡΟΝ, ΚΑΙΣΑΡ. Those kinds of reckonings were familiar to the Jews, and made a cabbalistic puzzle which they called ghematria; the Greeks of Asia even were no longer strangers to it; in the second century the Gnostics affected it.
Thus the Emperor, who was represented by the head wounded to death, but not
killed (the author himself tells us), is Nero—Nero who, according to a popular
opinion widespread in Asia, still lived. But who is this second beast, this
agent of Nero, who has the manners of a pious Jew, and the language of Satan,
who is the alter ego of Nero, toils for his profit, and even causes a statue of
Nero to speak, persecutes the believing Jews who do not wish to render Nero the
same honour as the heathen, nor to bear the mark of affiliation to his party,
renders life impossible, and forbids them to do the most necessary things, to
buy and sell? Certain peculiarities would apply to a Jewish functionary, such
as Tiberius Alexander, devoted to the Romans and held by his compatriots as an
apostate. The mere fact of paying the impost to the empire might be called “an
adoration of the beast,” tribute in the eyes of the Jews having the character of
a religious offering, and implying a worship of the sovereign. The sign or mark
of the beast (Νέρων Καῖσαρ) that it would be needful for him to enjoy the
common law, must have been either the brevet of a Roman citizenship, without
which in some countries life was difficult, and which for the enthusiastic Jews
constituted the crime of association with a work of Satan; or the coin with the
effigies of Nero, a coin held by the revolted Jews as execrable because of the
images and blasphemous inscriptions they found there, so that they hastened, when they were free at Jerusalem, to
The pro-consul of Asia at this time was Fonteius Agrippa, a grave functionary,
to whom we cannot look to take us out of our embarrassment. A high priest of
Asia, zealous for the worship of Rome and Augustus, and accustomed to vex the
Jews and the Christians by the delegation of civil power which was granted him,
meets some of the exigencies of the problem. But the features which the second
beast presents as a seducer and a wonder-worker do not agree with such a
personage. These features lead us to think of a false prophet, an enchanter,
notably Simon the Magician, imitator of Christ, become in the legend the
flatterer, the parasite and the wizard of Nero, or to Balbillus of Ephesus, or
to the Antichrist, of whom Paul speaks obscurely in the second epistle to the
Thessalonians It is probable that the personage seen here by the author of the
Apocalypse is some impostor of Ephesus, a partisan of Nero, probably an agent of
the false Nero or the false Nero himself. The same personage, in fact, is later
on called “the False Prophet” in the sense that he is the proclaimer of a false
god who is Nero. It is necessary to take account of the importance held at this
time by the Magi, the Chaldean and “Mathematicians,” pests of whom Ephesus was
the principal home. We recall also that Nero dreamed once of “the kingdom of
Jerusalem,” that he was much mixed up with the astrological movements of his
age, and that, nearly alone of all the emperors, he was worshipped while he
lived, which was the sign of the Antichrist. During his travels in Greece,
especially, the adulation of Achaia and Asia went beyond all conceivable bounds. Lastly, we cannot
In the midst of the waves of wraths there now appears a grassy islet. In the most violent of the frightful struggles of the last days, it shall be a place of refreshment: it is the church—the little family of Jesus. The prophet sees, resting on Mount Sion, the 144,000 sealed out of the whole world, bearing the name of God written on their foreheads. The Lamb dwells peacefully in the midst of them. Some celestial chords of harps descend on the assembly; the musicians sing a new song, which no ether than the 144,000 elect can repeat. Chastity is the sign of those blessed ones; all are virgin, without stain; their mouth has never uttered a lie: they also follow the Lamb whithersoever he goes, as firstfruits of the earth and the nucleus of the future world.
After this brief glance at a residence of innocence and peace, the author
returns to his terrible visions. Three angels rapidly cross the sky. The first
flies in the zenith holding the everlasting Gospel. He proclaims in the face of
all nations the new doctrine, and announces the day of judgment. The second
angel celebrates in advance the destruction of Rome. “She has fallen, she has
fallen, the great Babylon which has made all nations drunk with the wine of her
fornication.” The third angel forbids the adoration of the beast and the images of the beast borne by the
Pictures of the great judgment present themselves to the imagination of the Seer. A white cloud comes from the sky: on this cloud is seated like a Son of Man an angel like the Messiah having on his bead a golden crown and in his hand a sharp sickle. The harvest of the earth is ripe. The Son of Man puts forth his sickle and the earth is reaped. Another angel comes to the vintage; he throws it all into the great winepress of the wrath of God. The winepress is trodden under-foot outside the city; the blood which comes forth from it rises up to the horse bridles, over a space of six hundred stadii.
After these different episodes, a celestial ceremony, analogous to the two
mysteries of the opening of the seals and the trumpet unrolls itself before the
Seer. Seven angels are charged to quiet the earth with seven different hurts, by
which the wrath of God may be exhausted. But first we are reassured as to what
concerns the fate of the elect. Upon a vast crystalline sea, mingled with fire, are seen the conquerors
The first angel empties his cup on the earth and a pernicious ulcer strikes all men who bear the mark of the beast and who adore his image.
The second empties his cup upon the sea and it is changed into blood, and all the animals living in its bosom die.
The third angel empties his cup upon the rivers and streams and they are changed into blood. The angel of the waters does not complain of the loss of his element. He says: “Thou art just, oh Lord, and art holy, who art and who west, thou shalt do whatsoever is right. They have shed the blood of the saints and the prophets, and thou hast given them blood to drink; they are worthy of it.” The altar says from its side: “Yea, Lord God Almighty, thy judgments are true and just.” The fourth angel empties his cup upon the sun and the sun burns men like a fire. Men, far from being penitent, blaspheme God, who has power to smite them with such plagues.
The fifth angel empties his cup upon the throne of the beast (the city of Rome) and all the kingdom of the beast (the Roman empire) is plunged into darkness. Men gnaw their tongues in pain; in place of repenting they insult the God of heaven.
The sixth angel empties his cup into the Euphrates, which dries up at once to
prepare the way for the king’s coming from the East. Then, from the mouth of the
The seventh angel empties his vial into the air; a cry comes forth from the altar, “It is done'” And
there were lightnings, and voices, and thunderings, and an earthquake such as has never been seen, while the great city
(Jerusalem) is broken into three parts; and the cities of the Decapolis are destroyed, and the great Babylon (Rome)
comes up in remembrance before God, who is prepared at length to make her drink of the cup of His wrath. The islands fled,
and the mountains
The cycle of the preludes is completed, and there remains nothing more but to see the judgment of God unroll itself. The Seer makes us first look on at the judgment of the greatest of all the culprits, the city of Rome. One of the seven angels who has emptied the vials approaches God and says to him: “Come, and I will show thee the judgment of the great whore who sits on the great waters, with whom the kings of the earth have committed fornication.” John then saw a woman seated on a beast like that which, coming forth from the sea, figured in its entirety the Roman empire, by one of its heads, Nero. The beast is scarlet, covered with names of blasphemy, it has seven heads and ten horns. The prostitute wears the dress of her profession; clothed in purple, covered with gold, pearls, and precious stones, she holds in her hand a cup full of the abomination and impurities of her fornication. And upon her forehead is written a name, a mystery, “Babylon the great, the mother of harlots, and the abomination of the earth.”
And I saw the woman drunken with the blood of the saints and with the blood of
the martyrs of Jesus. And when I saw her, I wondered with a great wonder, and
the angel said unto me, Wherefore didst thou wonder? I will tell thee the
mystery of the woman, and of the beast that carrieth her, which hath the seven
heads and the ten horns. The beast that thou sawest was, and is not, and is
about to come out of the abyss, and to go into perdition. And they that dwell on
the earth shall wonder, they whose name hath not been written in the book of
life from the foundation of the world, when they behold the beast, how that he
was, and is not and shall come. Here is the mind which hath wisdom. The seven
heads are seven mountains on which the Roman sitteth: and they are seven kings,
the five are fallen, the one is, the other is not yet come; and when he cometh
he must continue a little while. And the beast that was, and is not, is himself
also an eighth, and is of the seven; and he goeth into perdition. And the ten
horns that thou sawest are ten kings, which have received no kingdom as
This is quite clear. The harlot is Rome, who has corrupted the world, who has
employed her power to propagate and to uphold idolatry, who has persecuted the
saints, and who has made the blood of the martyrs to flow in streams. The beast
is Nero, who was believed to be dead; who shall return, whose second reign shall
be ephemeral and be followed by complete destruction. The seven heads have two
meanings; they are the seven hills on which Rome is set; but they are
especially the seven emperors: Julius Cæsar, Augustus, Tiberius, Caligula,
Claudius, Nero and Galba. The first five are dead. Galba reigns for the moment;
but he is old and feeble; he soon falls. The sixth, Nero, who is at once the
beast and one of the seven kings, is not really dead; he will reign still, but
for a short time; he will be thus the eighth king, and then perish. As to the
ten horns; these are the pro-consuls and the imperial legates of the ten
principal provinces who are not real kings, but who receive power from the
emperor for a limited time, ruling agreeably to one thought, that which is
conveyed to them from Rome, and are perfectly submissive to the empire, from
whom they derive their power. These partial kings are all as malevolent against
the Christians as Nero himself. Representing
We see at what point the pamphlet by the head of the churches of Asia enters
into the life of a position which, for an imagination so easily struck as that
of the Jews, would appear strange; in fact, Nero by his wickedness and folly of
a special kind, had thrown reason out of doors. The empire at his death was as
if escheat. After the assassination of Caligula, there was still a republican
party; besides, the adopted family of Augustus had all his prestige; after
Nero ’s assassination, there was no longer a republican party, and the family of
Augustus was extinct. The empire fell into the hands of eight or ten generals
who held high commands. The author of the Apocalypse, not understanding anything
as to the Roman matters, is astonished that ten leaders, who appeared to him as
kings, should not be declared independent and form a concert, and has attributed
this result to an act of the divine will. It is clear that the Jews of the east,
oppressed by the Romans for two years back, and who feel themselves feebly
compact since July 68, because Mucian and Vespasian were absorbed by general
affairs, believed that the empire was about to be dissolved, and triumphed for a
while. There was in this not such a superficial view as we might believe. Tacitus,
Such was the relation of the Apocalypse with the singular episode of the false
Nero, who just at the moment when the Seer of Patmos wrote filled Asia and the
islands of the Archipelago with emotion. Such a coincidence is assured by the
most singular facts. Cythnos and Patmos are only forty leagues from each other,
and news circulates quickly in the Archipelago. The days of the Christian
prophet were those when most was spoken of the impostor, hailed by some with
enthusiasm, looked upon with terror by others. We have shown that he established
himself at Cythnos in 69, or perhaps in December 68. The centurion Sisenna who
touched at Cythnos in the first days of February, coming from the East and
bringing to the Pretorians of Rome some pledges of agreement on the part of the
army of Syria, had much difficulty in escaping from them. A few days after,
Calpurnius Asprenas, who had received from Galba the government of Galatia and
Pamphylia, and who was accompanied by two galleys of the fleet of Misena,
arrived at Cythnos. Some emissaries of the pretender tried the magical effect of the name of Nero
Interpreting the political events to the taste of his hatred, as a fanatic Jew, he predicted that the commandants of the provinces, whom he believed full of rancour against Rome, and up to a certain accord with Nero, should ravage the city and burn it Taking the fact now as accomplished, he sings of the ruin of his enemy. He has for that only to copy the declamations of the ancient prophets against Babylon and Tyre. Israel has marked the history of its curses. To all the great profane States he said: “Blessed is he who shall render thee for the evil which thou hest done us!” A bright angel descends from heaven, and with a strong voice: “Fallen, fallen,” said he, “is the great Babylon, and it is no longer anything but a dwelling for devils, a place for unclean spirits, a refuge for abominable birds, because that all the nations have drunk of the wine of her fornication, with whom the kings of the earth have polluted themselves, and by whom the merchants of the earth have been enriched by her wealth.” Another voice was heard from heaven saying:
Come out of her, my people, lest be ye partakers of her crimes and be struck by
the plagues which will fall on her. Her abominations have come up even to
heaven, and God has remembered her iniquities. Render her what she has done to
others; pay her back double for her works; return her the double of the cup
she has poured out to others. For as much glory and wealth as she had, so give
her as much torment and affliction. I sit as a queen, said she in her heart;
and shall never know sorrow. Behold why her chastisements shall come all in the
same day: death, desolation, famine and fire; for powerful is the God who
judges her. And there shall be seen weeping over her the kings of the earth who
have partaken of her uncleanness and her debaucheries. At the sight of the smoke
of her burning; “Woe woe!” shall her companions in debauchery exclaim, keeping
at a distance, struck with terror. “What! the great, the powerful Babylon! In
one hour her judgment has come!” And the merchants of the earth shall bewail
her, for no one longer buys their merchandise. Vessels of gold and silver,
precious stones, pearls, fine linen, purple, silk, scarlet, thyinewood, ivory,
brass, iron, marble, incense, wine, oil, flour of wheat, corn, beasts,
Rejoice over her ruin, O heaven; rejoice, ye saints, apostles and prophets; for God has judged your cause and has avenged you of her.”
Then an angel of strong power seized a great stone, like n millstone, and cast it into the sea, saying:
Then shall Babylon be thrown down, and there shall be found no longer a trace of her; and the voice of the harp players and the musicians, the sound of the flute and the trumpet shall be heard no more at all in thee, and the light of a lamp shall shine no more at all in thee, and the voice of the bridegroom and of the bride shall be heard no more at all in thee, for thy merchants were the princes of the earth, for with thy sorcery were all the nations deceived. And in her was found the blood of prophets and of saints, and of all that have been slain upon the earth.
The ruin of this chief enemy of the people of God is the object of great
festival in heaven. A voice like that of an innumerable multitude makes itself
heard and cries “Alleluia! salvation, and glory and power to our God; for his
judgments are righteous, and he has judged the great whore who has polluted the
earth by her whoredom, and he has revenged the blood of his servants shed by
her.” And another chorus replies: “Alleluia! the smoke of her burning shall
ascend in the ages of ages.” Then the four-and-twenty elders and the four beasts
prostrate themselves and adore God, seated on the throne, saying: “Amen!
Alleluia!” A voice comes forth from the throne chanting the inaudible song of
The Roman armies, the grand instrument of the power of Satan, are conquered; Nero, the Antichrist, their last head, is shut up in hell; but the dragon, the old serpent, Satan, exists still. We have seen how he was cast from heaven to the earth; the earth must now in turn be delivered from him. An angel descends from heaven holding the key of the abyss and having in his hand a great chain. He seizes the dragon, binds him for a thousand years, precipitates him into the abyss, closes with his key the opening of the gulf and seals it with a seal. For a thousand years the devil remains chained; moral and physical evil, which are his productions, are suspended, not destroyed. Satan cannot any longer seduce the peoples, but he is not destroyed for all eternity.
A tribunal is established to proclaim those who should take part in the reign of
a thousand years. This reign is reserved for the martyrs. The first place there
belongs to the souls which have been smitten by the axe to render testimony to
Jesus and to the word of God (the Roman martyrs of 64); then come those who
have refused to worship the beast and his image, and who have not received his
mark upon their foreheads nor in their hands (the confessors of Ephesus, of
whom the Seer was one). The elect of this first kingdom are raised from the dead
and reign upon the earth with Christ for a thousand years. It is not that the
rest of humanity had disappeared, nor even the whole world had become Christian;
the millenium is in the centre of the earth like a little paradise. Rome no
When the thousand years shall have been accomplished, Satan shall be loosed from his prison for some time; evil shall begin again upon the earth. Satan unchained shall wander anew among the nations, shall drive them from one end of the world to the other by frightful wars; Gog and Magog, mythical personages of the barbarian invasions, lead to battle armies as numerous as the sand of the seashore. The church shall be as if drowned in this deluge. The barbarians shall besiege the camp of the saints, the beloved city, that is to say this Jerusalem, terrestrial still, but entirely holy, where the faithful friends of Jesus are; the fire of heaven shall fall upon them and devour them. Then Satan, who has seduced them, shall be cast into the flaming brimstone furnace, where are already the beast (Nero) and the false prophets (?) and where all the cursed go thenceforth to be tormented night and day through the ages of ages.
Creation has now accomplished its task. There remains nothing more but to
proceed to the last judgment. A throne shining with light appears, and upon this
throne the supreme judge. At sight of him the heaven and the earth fled away,
there was no more place found for them. The dead, great and small, are raised
again. Death and Sheol give up their prey; the sea on its side gives up the drowned, which, devoured by it, had not
Evil being destroyed without recovery, the reign of absolute good begins. The
old earth and the old heaven have disappeared; a new earth and a new heaven
succeed them, and “there was no more sea.” That earth and that heaven are
nothing, nevertheless, but a regeneration of the present earth and heaven, and
even Jerusalem, which was the pearl, the gem of the whole earth, this same
Jerusalem shall still be the radiant centre of the new. The apostle saw this new
Jerusalem ascending out of heaven from God, clothed like a bride prepared for
her husband. A great voice comes forth from the throne, “Behold the tabernacle
of God will dwell with men.” Men shall be still henceforth his people and he
shall be present always in the midst of them, and he shall wipe away all tears
from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be any more
grief, nor cries, nor sorrows, for all that has passed away. Jehovah himself
takes the word to promulgate the law of this eternal world. “It is done, behold,
I make all things new, I am the Α and Ω, I am the beginning and the end. To him
who is athirst I will give to drink freely of the water of life. The conqueror
shall possess all these good things and I will be his God, and he shall be my
son. As to the fearful, the unbelieving, the abominable, murderers, fornicators,
authors of wicked deeds, idolaters, and liars, their part shall be in the lake
of brimstone and fire.” An angel approached the Seer and said to him, “Come I
will shew thee the bride of the Lamb,” and he led him in spirit to
The work then closes with this epilogue:
And I John am he that heard and flaw these things. And when I heard and saw I fell down to worship before the feet of the angel which shewed me these things. And he saith unto me, see thou do it not; I am a fellow servant with thee and with thy brethren the prophets, and with them which keep the words of this book; worship God. And he saith unto me, seal not up the words of the prophecy of this book. For the time is at hand. He that is unrighteous, let him do unrighteousness still: and he that is filthy, let him be made filthy still: and he that is righteous, let him do righteousness still: and he that is holy let him be made holy still.
A distant voice, the voice of Jesus himself, is supposed to reply to these promises and to guarantee them.
Behold I come quickly, and my reward is with me to render to each man according as his work is. I am the Alpha and the Omega, the first and the last, the beginning and the end. Blessed are they that wash their robes, that they may have the right to come to the tree of life and may enter in by the gates into the city. Without are the dogs, and the sorcerers, and the fornicators, and the murderers, and the idolaters, and everyone that loveth and maketh a lie. I Jesus have sent mine angel to testify unto you these things for the churches. I am the root and the offspring of David, the bright, the morning star.
Then the voices of heaven and those of earth cross each other and arrive moriendo in a finale of complete sympathy:
And the spirit and the bride say come, and he that heareth, let him say, come. And he that is athirst let him come: he that will, let him take the water of life freely.
I testify unto every man that heareth the words of the prophecy of this book. If any man shall add unto them, God shall add unto him the plagues which are written in this book. And if any man shall take away from the words of the book of this prophecy, God shall take away his part from the tree of life, and out of the holy city which are written in this book.
He which testifieth these things saith, Yea, I come quickly, Amen. Come, Lord Jesus. The grace of the Lord Jesus be with you all, Amen.
There is no doubt that, presented under cover
of the most venerated name in Christianity, the Apocalypse made upon the Churches of
Asia a very deep impression. A crowd of details now become obscure, were clear
to his contemporaries. His bold announcement of an approaching convulsion was
not all surprising. Discourses, not less formal, attributed to Jesus, were
spread abroad every day and accepted. For a year, besides, the events of the
world would present a marvellous confirmation of the Book. About the 1st
February the death of Galba and the accession of Otho became known in Asia. Then
each day brought some apparent indication of the breaking up of the empire; the
powerlessness of Otho became known through all the provinces; Vitellius
maintaining his title against Rome and the Senate, the two bloody battles of
Bedriac, Otho deserted in his turn, the accession of Vespasian, the battle in
the streets of Rome, the fire in the Capitol lit by the combatants, a fire from
which many concluded that the destinies of Rome were drawing to a close;
everything would appear astonishingly conformable to the gloomy predictions of
the prophet. The deceptions did not begin till the taking of Jerusalem, the
destruction of the temple, and the final termination of the Flavian dynasty But
religious faith is never cast down in its hopes; the work besides was obscure
and susceptible in many passages of different interpretations. Thus a few years
after the publication of the book a different meaning was attached to many
chapters from that which the author had intended. The author had announced that the Roman
During the three first centuries the general meaning of the book was preserved at least for some initiated
persons. The author of the Sibylline poem, which is dated a little before the year 80, if he had not read the prophesy of
Patmos, had heard it spoken of. He sees in it quite an analagous order of ideas; he knows what the sixth vial signifies.
For him Nero is the Anti-Messiah: the monster has fled beyond the Euphrates; he will return with thousands of men. The
author of the apocalypse of Esdras, (a work dating from certainly the year 96, 97, or 98), notoriously imitates the
apocalypse of John, employs his symbolic process, his notations. and his language. We can say as much of the
Ascension
of Isaiah (a work of the second century), where Nero, the incarnation of Belial, plays a rôle which proves that the
author knew the number of the beast. The authors of the Sibylline poems, which date from the time of the Antonines,
penetrate likewise the enigmas of the apostolic manifesto, and adopted their utopias, even those which, like the return
of Nero, were decidedly smitten with decay. St. Justin and Melito appear to have had a nearly complete knowledge of the
book. We can say as much of Commodian who (about 250) mingled with his interpretation some elements from another source,
but who does not for an instant doubt
After the reconciliation of the empire and the church, in the fourth century,
the fortune of the Apocalypse was gravely compromised. The Greek and Latin
doctors, who no longer separated the future of Christianity from that of the
empire, could not admit as inspired a book whose fundamental basis was hatred of
Rome and a prediction of the end of its ruler. Nearly every enlightened portion
of the Eastern church which had received a Hellenic education, full of dislike
to the Millenarian and Judeo—Christian writings—declared the Apocalypse
apocryphal. The book had taken in the Greek and Latin New Testament such a
strong position that it was impossible to expel it; men had recourse, to
disembarrass themselves of the objections which it raised, to feats of
exegetical power. Yet the evidence was crushing The Latins, less opposed than
the Greek to millenarianism, continued to identify Anti-Christ with Nero. Up to
the time of Charlemagne, there was a sort of tradition of that kind. St. Beat of Liebana, who commented on the Apocalypse in 786, affirms, by mixing up, it is
true, more than one inconsequence, that the beast of chapters xiii. and xvii.,
which should reappear at the head of
It was not till about the twelfth century, when the Middle Ages threw themselves into the path of a scholastic rationalism, little concerned with the tradition of the Fathers, that the meaning of the vision of John was at all compromised. Joachim of Flores may be considered as the first who carried the Apocalypse boldly into the field of boundless imagination, and sought, under the bizarre figures of a circumstantial writing, which limited its horizon to three and a-half years, the secret of the entire future of humanity.
The chimerical commentaries to which this false idea gave rise have thrown on
the book an unjust discredit. The Apocalypse has taken again in our days, thanks
to a sounder exegesis, the high place which belongs to it in the sacred
writings. The Apocalypse is, in a sense, the seal of prophecy, the last word of
Israel. When we read in the ancient prophets, in Joel, for example, the
description of “the day of Jehovah,” that is of the grand assize which the
supreme judge of human things holds from time to time, to restore the order
constantly disturbed by men, we find there the germ of the Patmos vision. Every
historic revolution or convulsion became, to the fancy of the Jew, determined to
pass from the immortality of the soul and to establish the reign of justice on
the earth, a providential force, the prelude of a judgment much more solemn and
final still. At each event a prophet rose, crying: “Sound, sound the trumpet
in Zion; for the day of Jehovah comes; it is near.” The Apocalypse is the sequel
and the crown of this strange literature, which is the proper glory of Israel.
Its author is the last great prophet: he Is only inferior to his predecessors because he
Like the larger number of people who possess a brilliant past literature, Israel lived in pictures consecrated by its old and wonderful literature. They were not composed of much else than scraps from the ancient texts; Christian poetry, for example, knew no other literary process. But when passion is sincere the form, even the most artificial, takes from the beauty. The Words of a Believer are in regard to the Apocalypse what the Apocalypse is in regard to the ancient prophets, and yet the Words of a Believer is a book of real effect; one never can re-read it without lively emotion.
The dogmas of the time present, like the style, some-thing artificial; but they
correspond to a deep feeling. The process of theological elaboration consists in
a bold transposition, applying to the reign of Messiah and to Jesus every phrase
of the ancient writings which appears susceptible of a vague relation with an
obscure ideal. As the exegesis which presides over these Messianic combinations
was thoroughly mediocre, the singular formations of which we speak imply often
grave contradictions. That is seen especially in the
This method of creation by the outer way, if I may say so, this fashion of
combining by means of an exegesis of appropriation—phrases taken from here and
there, and of constructing a new theology by this arbitrary play—is found again
in the Apocalypse in everything that regards the mystery of the end of time. The
theory of the Apocalypse on this point is distinguished by essential features
from that which we find in St. Paul, and from that which the synoptical gospels
place in the mouth of Jesus. St. Paul seems, it is true, sometimes to believe in
the reign of Christ during the time which should be before the last end of all
things, but he never becomes so precise as our author. In fact, according to the
Apocalypse, the coming of the future reign of Christ is very near—it ought to
follow closely on the destruction of the Roman empire The martyrs shall alone be
raised again in this first resurrection: the rest of the dead shall not rise
yet. Such absurdities were the result of the slow and incoherent manner in which Israel formed
The reign of Christ with his martyrs takes place on the earth, at Jerusalem, doubtless
in the midst of nations not converted, but bound in respect towards the saints. It will last a thousand years.
After these thousand years there shall be a new reign of Satan over the barbarous nations, whom the Church
would not have converted; he shall make horrible wars, and be on the point of crushing the Church itself.
God will exterminate them, and then there will come “the second resurrection,” that is the general, and
the last judgment, which shall be followed by the end of the world. It is the doctrine which has been
styled “millenarianism,” a doctrine spread soon in the first three centuries, which never could become
dormant in the Church, but which has re-appeared constantly at different periods in her history, and is
supported by texts much more ancient and formal than those which support many other dogmas universally
accepted. It was the result of a materialistic exegesis, ruled by the need of finding true both the phrases in which the
The Persian aspect of these dreams can be perceived at the first glance.
Millenarianism, and, if it can be so expressed, apocalypticism have flourished
in Iran for a very long time back. At the bottom of the
The defects of such a system are manifest, and it was attempted in vain to hide them. Some hard and glaring colours, a complete absence of all plastic sentiment, harmony sacrificed to symbolism, something crude, bitter, and inorganic, made the Apocalypse the perfect antipodes of the Greek chef d’œuvre, whose type is the living beauty of the body of the man or woman. A sort of materialism lessens the most ideal conceptions of the author. He piles up gold: he has, like the Orientals, an immoderate taste for precious stones. His heavenly Jerusalem is awkward, puerile, impossible, in contradiction to all the good rules of architecture, which are those of reason. He makes it brilliant to the eyes, and he does not dream of having it sculptured by a Phidias. God, likewise, is for him “a smargdine vision,” a sort of huge diamond, flashing a thousand fires on a throne. Assuredly Jupiter Olympus was a symbol much superior to that. The error which too often has led away Christian art towards rich decoration finds its root in the Apocalypse. A temple of Jesuits, in gold or in lapis-lazuli, is more beautiful than the Parthenon, if we were to admit this idea, that the liturgical use of a precious article glorifies God.
A most troublesome feature was this gloomy hatred of the profane world, which is
common to our author and to all the makers of apocalypses, especially the author
of the book of Enoch. His harshness, his passionate and unjust judgments on
Roman society, shock us, and justify to a certain extent those who summed
This is what has made the Apocalypse a dangerous book in some points of view. It
is the book par excellence of the proud Jew. According to its author, the
distinction between Jews and heathens will continue even in the kingdom of God.
While the twelve tribes eat of the fruit of the tree of life, the Gentiles must
be content with a medicinal concoction of its leaves. The author looks on the
Gentiles, even believing in Jesus, even martyrs of Jesus, as strangers
introduced into the family of Israel, as plebeians admitted by grace to connect
themselves with an aristocracy. His Messiah is essentially the Jewish Messiah;
Jesus is for him beyond everything the good David, a product of the Church of
Israel, a member of the holy family which God had chosen; it is the Church of
Israel which works the saving work by this elect coming forth from its bosom.
Every practice capable of establishing a bond between the pure race and the
heathen (eating ordinary food, the practice of marriage in the ordinary
conditions) appeared to him an abomination. The heathen, as a whole, are, in his
eyes, wretches, polluted by all crimes, and who can only be governed by terror.
The real world is the kingdom of devils. The disciples
All this is very far from the Gospel of Jesus. The author is too passionate, he sees everything through the veil of a sanguine apoplexy, or the gleam of a fire. What was most lugubrious at Paris on the 25th May, 1871, was not the flames, it was the general colour of the city, when seen from an elevated position: a yellow and false tone, a sort of flat paleness. Such is the light with which our author colours his vision. Nothing resembles it less than the pure sun of Galilee. We feel from the present time that the apocalyptic species, no more than the species of the epistles, shall not be of the literary form which shall convert the world. There are these little collections of sentences and parables which are disdained by exact traditionists, that memory-help by which the less educated and the least well instructed set forth for their own personal use what they know of the acts and words of Jesus, who are destined to be the reading—the charm of the feature. The simple framework of the anecdotal life of Jesus has manifestly done more to enchant the world than the painful piling up of apocalypses and the touching exhortations in the letters of apostles. So true is that Jesus, Jesus only, had in the mysterious work of the Christian growth, always the great, the triumphant, and decisive part. Each book, each Christian institution is valued in proportion to what it contains of Jesus. The synoptical gospels, where Jesus is alone, and of which it may be said he is the true author, are par excellence the Christian book, the eternal book.
Yet the Apocalypse occupies in the sacred canon a legitimate place in many points of view. A book of
Antichrist has ceased to frighten us, and the book of Malvenda has no longer
many readers. We know that the end of the world is not so near as the illummati
of the first century believed it, and that that end shall not be a sudden
catastrophe. It shall take place calmly, in millions of years, when our system
shall not repair its losses sufficiently, and when the earth shall have used up
the treasure of the old sun warehoused like a provision for the journey in its
depths. Before this exhaustion of planetary capital, will humanity attain to
perfect knowledge—which is nothing else than the power of mastering the forces
of the world, or even the earth—an experience wanting among so many millions of
others; will it freeze before the problem which shall kill death has been
solved? We know not. But, with the Seer of Patmos, beyond changing
alternatives, we shall discover the ideal, and we affirm that this ideal shall
be realised some day. Across the clouds of a universe in their state of embryo,
we perceive the laws of the progress of life, the consciousness of going on
increasing unceasingly, and the possibility of a condition in which all shall be
in a definitive being (God) what the innumerable boughs of the tree are in the
tree, what the myriads of cells of the living being are
The spectacle of the world, as we have already said, only answered too well to the dreams of the Seer of Patmos. The government of the military Coups d’Etat, bore its fruits. Politics were in the camps, and the empire was at auction. There had been some assemblies during Nero’s time, where there could be seen gathered together seven future emperors and the father of an eighth. The real republican, Virginius, who wished the empire for the senate and the people, was only a Utopian. Galba, an old honest general, who refused to lend himself to these military orgies, was soon destroyed. The soldiers for a moment had the idea of killing all the senators, to make the government easy. Roman unity appeared on the point of being broken up. It was not only among the Christians that such a tragical situation inspired sinister predictions. Men spoke of a child with three heads, born at Syracuse in 68, and in whom people saw the symbol of the three emperors who ruled for less than a year, and who existed together all three for many hours.
Some days after the prophet of Asia had written his strange work, Galba was
killed, and Otho proclaimed (15th January, 69). That was like a resurrection of
Nero. Grave, economic, and disagreeable, Galba was in everything the contrary of
him whom he replaced. If he had succeeded in making good his adoption of Piso,
he would have been a sort of Nerva, and the series of the philosophic emperors
would have begun thirty years sooner; but the detestable school of Nero
prevailed. Otho resembled that monster; the soldiers and all
What is sadder is that the political lowering which had taken place did not give security. The ignoble Vitellius had been proclaimed some days before Otho (2nd January, 69) in Germany. He did not desist. A horrible civil war, such as had not been since that between Augustus and Antony, appeared inevitable. The public imagination was much excited; people only saw frightful prognostics; the crimes of the soldiery spread terror everywhere. Never had such a year been seen; the world sweated blood. The first battle of Bedriac, which left the empire to Vitellius alone, (about 15th April) cost the lives of 80,000 men. The disbanded legionaries pillaged the country, and fought among themselves. The people mixed themselves up with them; one would have imagined it was the breaking up of society. At the same time the astrologers and the charlatans of all sorts swarmed; the city of Rome was theirs; reason appeared confounded in presence of a deluge of crimes and follies, which defied all philosophy. Certain words of Jesus which the Christians repeated quite low, kept them in a sort of continual fever; the fate of Jerusalem was especially with them the object of an ardent pre-occupation.
The East, indeed, was not less troubled than the West. We have seen that at the
opening of the month of June of the year 68, the military operations of the Romans
Vespasian, during this time, remained inactive m Cesarea. His son Titus had succeeded in engaging him in a network of intrigues, cunningly combined. Under Galba, Titus had hoped to see himself adopted by the old emperor. After the death of Galba, he saw that he could not arrive at the supreme power except as successor to his father. With the art of the most consummate policy he knew how to turn the chances in favour of a grave, honest general, without distinction, without personal ambition, who did nearly nothing to aid his own fortune. All the East contributed to it. Mucian and the legions of Syria impatiently endured the sight of the legions of the West disposing alone of the empire; they pretended to make him emperor in their turn. Now Mucian, a sort of sceptic more zealous in disposing of the power than in exercising it, did not wish the purple for himself. In spite of his old age, his middle-class birth, his second-rate intelligence, Vespasian found himself designated thus. Titus, who was twenty-eight years of age, raised besides by his merits, his address, his activity, what the talent of his father had obscured. After Otho’s death, the legions of the east took only with regret the oath to Vitellius. The insolence of the soldiers of Germany revolted them. They had made them believe that Vitellius wished to send his favourite legions into Syria, and to transport over the borders of the Rhine the legions of Syria, beloved in this country, and to which many alliances had attached them.
Nero, besides, although dead, continued to hold the die of human things, and the
fable of his resurrection was not without some truth, as a metaphor. His party
survived him. Vitellius, after Otho, placed himself to the great joy of the
little people as a declared admirer, imitator, and avenger of Nero. He protested
that, in his opinion, Nero had given the model of the best government of the
republic. He made him magnificent funeral obsequies, ordered some pieces of his music to
What was most extraordinary in this is that the moderate Jews, such as Josephus,
adhered to him also, and wished with all their strength to apply to the Roman
general the ideas by which they were prepossessed. We have seen that the Jewish
surroundings of Nero had succeeded in persuading him that, dethroned at
On the 1st July, Tiberius Alexander proclaimed Vespasian at Alexandria, and
caused the oath to be taken to him; on the 3rd, the army of Judea saluted him
as Augustus at Cesarea; Mucian, at Antioch, caused him to be recognised by the
Syrian legions, and on the 15th all the East submitted to him. A congress was
held at Beyrout, at which it was decided that Mucian should march upon Italy,
while Titus continued the war against the Jews, and that Vespasian should await
the issue of events at Alexandria. After a bloody civil war (the third which had taken place
The wise Vespasian, much lees shaken than those who fought with him to conquer the empire, spent his time at Alexandria, with Tiberius Alexander. He only revisited Rome in the month of July of the year 70, a little before the total destruction of Jerusalem. Titus, instead of pushing the war in Judea, had followed his father into Egypt; he remained beside him until the early days of March.
The struggles in Jerusalem only increased. Fanatical movements are far from
excluding from them those who are actors in their hatred, jealousy, and
defiance; banded together, men who are very self-opinionated and passionate
usually suspect each other, and there is in that a power; for this reciprocal
suspicion creates a terror among them, binds them together as by a chain
Simon, son of Gioras, commanded in the city; John of Gischala with his
assassins was master of the temple. A third party was formed, under the conduct
of Eleazar, son of Simon, of priestly race, who detached a party of the zealots
from John of Gischala and established himself in the inner enceinte of the
temple, living on the consecrated provisions they found there, and of those
which still continued to be brought to the priests, as first fruits. These three
parties were at continual warfare with each other; they walked over heaps of
corpses; they no longer buried the dead. Immense provisions of barley had been
made, and this would permit them to exist for years. John and Simon burned these
in order to keep each other from them. The situation of the inhabitants was fearful; peaceable
The oddest thing in all this was that they were not altogether wrong. The
enthusiasts of Jerusalem, who declared that Jerusalem was eternal, while it was
burning, were much nearer the truth than the people who saw in them nothing but
assassins. They deceived themselves on the military question, but not on the
distant religious result. These disturbed days, indeed, well marked the moment
in which Jerusalem became the spiritual capital of the world. The Apocalypse,
the burning expression of love which it inspires, has made sacred the image of “the beloved city.” Ah! who is able to say beforehand what shall be in the
future, holy or wicked, foolish or wise? A sudden change in the course of a
vessel makes a progress a retreat, and turns a contrary into a favourable wind. In view of
At last the circle of fire had wound itself around the unfortunate city, never more to relax its hold. As soon as the season permitted, Titus left Alexandria, reached Cesarea, and from that city, at the head of a formidable army, advanced towards Jerusalem. He had with him four legions, the 5th, Macedonian, the 10th, Fretensis, the 12th, Fulminata, the 15th, Apollinaris, not to speak of the numerous auxiliary troops furnished by his Syrian allies, and many Arabs who had come to pillage. All the Jews who had rallied to him, Agrippa, Tiberius Alexander, now prefect of the prætorium, Josephus the future historian, accompanied him: Berenice doubtless waited at Cesarea. The military valour of the captain corresponded with the strength of the army. Titus was a remarkable soldier, and especially an excellent officer of genius, while he was also a very sensible man, a profound politician, and considering the cruelty of the manners of the age, very humane. Vespasian, irritated by the satisfaction the Jews showed in seeing the civil wars, and the efforts they were making to bring about an invasion by the Parthians, had ordered great severity. Gentleness, according to him, was always interpreted as weakness by haughty races, persuaded that they were fighting for God and with God.
The Roman army arrived at Gabaoth-Saul, a league and a half from Jerusalem, in
the early days of April. They were just on the eve of the feast of the Passover;
an enormous number of Jews from all countries had assembled in the city; Josephus gives the number of
The city could be reckoned among the strongest in the world. The walls were a perfect type of those constructions in enormous blocks which were always affected in Syria; in the interior, the enceinte of the temple, that of the high city, and that of Acra formed as if partition walls, and appeared to be so many ramparts. The number of the defenders was very great; provisions, although diminished by the fires, abounded still The parties in the interior of the city continued to fight still; but they combined for defence. At the beginning of the days of the Passover, Eleazar’s faction nearly disappeared and merged itself in John’s. Titus conducted the operations with consummate skill; never had the Romans shown such a skilful poliorcétique. In the closing days of April, the legions had forced the first enceinte from the north side and were masters of the northern portion of the city. Five days after the second wall, the wall of Acra, was taken, the half of the city was thus in the power of the Romans. On the 12th May, they attacked the fortress Antonia. Surrounded by Jews who all, Tiberius Alexander excepted, desired the preservation of the city and the temple, ruled more than he would confess by his love for Berenice, who appears to have been a pious Jewess and much devoted to her nation, Titus sought, it is said, a means of reconciliation, and made acceptable offers; all was useless. The besieged replied to the propositions of the conqueror only by sarcasm.
The siege then assumed a character of horrible cruelty. The Romans displayed instruments of the most hideous tortures; the audacity of the Jews only increased. On the 27th and 29th of May they burned the machines of the Romans, and even attacked them in their camp. Discouragement fell on the besiegers. Many were persuaded that the Jews spoke the truth, and that Jerusalem was impregnable; desertion began. Titus, giving up the hope of carrying the place by sheer force, blockaded it closely. A wall of countervallation, raised rapidly (in the beginning of June) and doubled on the side of Perea by a line of castella, crowning the heights of the mount of Olives, totally separated the city from without. Up till then vegetables were procured from the neighbourhood; famine now became fearful. The fanatics, provided with necessaries, cared little for this. Rigorous perquisitions, accompanied by tortures, were made to discover concealed grain. Whoever wore a certain look of strength at once passed as culpable in hiding provisions. Pieces of bread were torn from people’s mouths. The most fearful diseases developed in the heart of this huddled-up, enfeebled, fevered mass. Some terrible stories were circulated and redoubled the terror.
From that moment hunger, rage, despair, and madness inhabited Jerusalem. It was a cage of wild madness, a city of shrieks, of cannibals, a hell. Titus, on his side, was cruel; five hundred unfortunates per day were crucified with odious refinements in sight of the city. There was not sufficient wood to make crosses, and there was no room to place them.
In this excess or evils, the faith and fanaticism of the Jews shewed themselves
more ardently than ever. They believed the temple to be indestructible. The
greater number were persuaded that, the city being under the special protection
of the Eternal, it was impossible to take it. Prophets spread themselves among
the people, announcing approaching succour.
Yet Titus became weary of these delays; he longed only for Rome: its splendours and its pleasures. A city taken by famine appeared to him an exploit insufficient to inaugurate brilliantly a dynasty. He then caused to be constructed four new aggeræ for a sharp attack. The trees of the gardens in the suburbs of Jerusalem were cut down a distance of four leagues. In twenty-one days everything was ready. On the 21st July the Jews attempted the operation in which they had succeeded on the former occasion; they went out to burn and sap the tower Antonia. On the 5th July Titus was master of it, and caused it to be almost entirely demolished, to open a large passage for his cavalry and his machines, at the point where all his efforts converged, and where the last struggle must take place.
The temple, as we have said, was by its peculiar method of construction the strongest of fortresses. The
Jews who had entrenched themselves with John of Gischala prepared themselves for battle. The priests
themselves were under arms. On the 17th the perpetual
On the 12th July Titus began his works against the temple. The struggle was most
bloody. On the 28th the Romans were masters of the whole gallery of the north
from the fortress Antonia up to the vale of Kedron. The attack commenced then
against the temple itself. On the 2nd August the most powerful machines were put
to assail the walls wonderfully constructed with porticos which surrounded the
inner courts. The effect was scarcely felt; but on the 8th of August the Romans
succeeded in setting the gates on fire. The stupor of the Jews was then
inexpressible; they had never believed that this was possible. At sight of the
flames which leapt up they poured upon the Romans a flood of curses. On the 9th
August Titus gave orders that the fire should be extinguished, and held a
council of war at which there were present Tiberius Alexander, Cerealis, and his
principal officers. The question was as to whether the temple should be burned.
Many were of opinion that so long as the edifice remained the Jews would never
be quiet. As to Titus, it is difficult to know what he meant, for
It is difficult to decide between two versions so absolutely irreconcilable, for
the opinion attributed to Titus by Josephus may very well be regarded as an
invention by that historian, jealous of shewing the sympathy of his patron for Judaism, cleansing himself in the eyes of the Jews of the crime of having
destroyed the temple and of satisfying the ardent desire of which Titus had to
pass for a very moderate man. It cannot be denied that the brief discourse put
by Tacitus in the mouth of the victorious captain may be, not only for the style
but for the order of ideas, an exact reflex of the sentiments of Tacitus
himself. We have a right to suppose that the Latin historian, full of spite
against the Jews and the Christians, and of that bad temper which characterizes
the age of Trajan and the Antonines, had made Titus speak like a Roman
aristocrat of his time, while in reality the middle-class Titus had more
complacence for oriental superstitions than the high noblesse who succeeded the
Flavii had for them. Living for two or three years with Jews who had boasted to
him of their temple as the wonder of the world, won by the caresses of Josephus,
Agrippa, and still more of Berenice, he might very well desire the preservation
of a sanctuary whose worship many of his friends represented to him as being
quite peaceable. It is therefore possible that, as Josephus has it, some orders had been
The Jews anticipated the attacks. On the 10th of August in the morning they
delivered a furious attack without success. Titus retired into the Antonia to
rest and to prepare for the assault next day. A detachment was left to prevent
the fire from being relit. Then took place, according to Josephus, the incident
which led to the ruin of the sacred pile. The Jews threw themselves with rage
upon the detachment which watched near the fire; the Romans repulsed them,
entering pell-mell into the temple with the fugitives. The irritation of the
Romans was at its height. A soldier “without any one commanding him, and as if
impelled by a supernatural movement,” took a joist which was in flames, and
having raised it, with one of his companions, threw the brand through a window
which opened upon the porticos of the north side. The flame and the smoke rose
rapidly. Titus was resting at that moment in his tent. They ran to call him.
Then, if Josephus must be believed, a sort of struggle was begun between him and
his soldiers; Titus with voice and gesture ordered the fire to be extinguished;
but the disorder was such that they did not understand him; those who might
doubt his intentions affected not to hear him. In place of stopping the fire the legionaries
This recital of Josephus includes more than one probability. It is difficult to
believe that the Roman legions could have shown themselves so disobedient to a
victorious leader. Dion Cassius declares, on the contrary, that Titus needed to
employ force to make the soldiers penetrate into a place surrounded by terrors,
and of which all the profaners were believed to be struck dead. One thing only
is certain—that Titus some years afterwards would have been glad if in the
Jewish world they had told the same thing as Josephus did, and that they should
have attributed the burning of the Temple to the discipline of his soldiers, or
rather to a supernatural movement of some agent, unconscious of a superior will.
The history of the war of the Jews was written about the end of the reign of
Vespasian, in 76, or rather sooner, when Titus already aspired to be “the
delight of the human race,” and wished to pass as a model of gentleness and
goodness. In the preceding years, and that of another world than that of the
Jews, he would surely have received eulogia of a different kind. Among the
tableaux which were borne in the triumph of the year 71 was the image of “the
fire set to the Temple,” in which certainly they would not seek to represent that fact otherwise than as
The struggle during this time was hot in the court and parvis. A frightful
carnage was made round the altar, a sort of truncated pyramid, surmounted by a
platform, which was raised in front of the Temple; the corpses of those whom
they killed upon the platform rolled over upon the steps and reached to the
feet. Rivers of blood flowed on all sides, nothing was heard but the piercing
cries of those whom they killed and who died adjuring heaven. There was time
still to take refuge in the high city; many liked rather to go to be killed,
regarding as a lot to be envied dying for their temple; others threw themselves
into the flames; others still precipitated themselves upon the swords of the
Romans, while some slew themselves or each other. Some priests who had succeeded
in gaining the crest of the Temple roof, tore the points which they found there
with their leaden sockets and threw them upon the Romans; they continued this
up till the time the flames enveloped them. A great number of Jews had
assembled around the holy place, upon the word of a prophet, who had assured
them that the very moment had come when God was about to shew them the signs of
salvation. A gallery where it is said six thousand of these wretches had
retired (nearly all women and children) was burned. Two gates of the Temple and
a part of the enceinte reserved for the women were only preserved for the
moment. The Romans planted their ensigns upon the place where the sanctuary had
been, and offered the worship to which they had been accustomed. The old Zion
remained; the high town, the strongest part of the city, having its ramparts still
The aggeræ being finished, the Romans began to batter the wall of the high
tower. At the first attack, 7th September, they overturned a part as well as
some of the tower. Attenuated by famine, undermined by fever and rage, the
defenders were nothing more than skeletons. The legions passed in without difficulty; up till
On the 8th all resistance was over; the soldiers were fatigued—they killed the weak who couldn't march. The remainder, women and children, were pushed like a flock towards the enceinte of the Temple, and enclosed in the inner court which had escaped the fire. Of this multitude set aside for death or slavery, they made lists. Everyone who had fought was massacred. Seven hundred people, the finest in figure and the best made, were reserved to follow the triumph of Titus. Among the others, those who had passed the age of 17, were sent into Egypt, their feet in irons, for the forced works, or divided among the provinces to be slain in the amphitheatres. Those who were less than 17 were sold. The sorting of the prisoners occupied many days, during which there died thousands, it is said, some because they gave them no food, others because they refused to accept it.
The Romans employed the following days in burning tits rest of the city,
overturning the walls, and rumaging in the sewers and subterranean passages.
They found there great riches and many of the insurrectionists living, whom they
killed at once, and more than two thousand corpses, without speaking of prisoners whom
The Temple and the great constructions were demolished to the very foundations. The sub-basement of the Temple was, however, preserved, and constitutes what is called at this day Naramesch-scherif. Titus wished also to preserve the three towers of Hippicus, Phasaël, and Mariamne, to make posterity know against what walls he had had to fight. The wall of the western side was left standing to shelter the camp of the 10th legion Fretensius, which was sent to hold guard over the ruins of the fallen city. Lastly, some houses on the extremity of Mount Sion escaped the destruction, and remained in the condition of isolated ruins. All the rest disappeared. From the month of September, 70, to the year 122, when Hadrian re-built it under the name of Ælia Capitolina, Jerusalem was nothing but a field of rubbish, in a corner of which the tents of a legion always on guard were set up. They believed they saw at every instant the fire re-lit which lay under these calcined stones. They trembled lest the spirit of life should come into the corpses which appeared still at the depths of their charnel-house, to raise their arms and declare that they had with them the promises of eternity.
Titus appears to have remained about a month in the neighbourhood of Jerusalem, offering sacrifices and rewarding his soldiers; the spoils of the captives were sent to Cesaræa. The season, already far advanced, prevented the young captain from leaving for Rome. He employed the winter in visiting different cities of the East and giving fêtes. He took with him bands of Jewish prisoners, who were delivered to the beasts, burned alive, or forced to fight against each other. At Paneas, on the 24th October, the birthday of his brother Domitian, more than 2,500 Jews perished in the flames, or in these horrible games. At Beyrout, on the 17th November, the same number of captives perished, to celebrate the birthday of Vespasian. Hatred of the Jews was the dominant sentiment in Syrian cities. These hideous massacres were hailed with joy. What was perhaps most frightful was that Josephus and Agrippa did not quit Titus during this time, and were witnesses of these monstrosities.
Titus made after this a long voyage into Syria going as far as the Euphrates. At
Antioch he found the people exasperated against the Jews—they accused them of a
fire which would have consumed the city. Titus contented himself with
suppressing the bronze tables on which were engraved their privileges. He made a present to Antioch of the veiled
Cherubim which covered the ark. This singular
trophy was placed before the great western gates of the city, which took from
that the name of the Gate of the Cherubim. Near that he dedicated a guadriga to the moon,
The volume of the Thora and the hangings of the sanctuary were
taken into the imperial palace, the articles of gold, especially the table of
the shew bread and the candlestick, were deposited in a great edifice, which Vespasian caused
to be built opposite the Palatine on the other side of the Sacred way under the
name of the Temple of Peace, and which was in some sort the Museum of the Flavii. A triumphal arch of Pentelic marble, which exists to this day, kept up
the memory of this extraordinary pomp, and the representation of the principal objects which were borne
Every patriotic movement is entitled to respect, but the
zealots were not only patriots, they were fanatics, assassins, of insupportable
tyranny. What they wished was the maintenance of a law of blood which would
permit the stoning of the evil thinker. What they rejected was the common law, laic and liberal, which does not
The most dangerous tendency of its Thora, a law in itself at once moral and
civil, giving the advantage to social questions over military and political
ones, shall rule in the church. During all the Middle Ages, the individual,
censured and overlooked by the community, shall fear the sermon and tremble
before excommunication, and that shall be a just return after the moral
indifference of heathen societies, a protest against the insufficiency of the
Roman institution to improve the individual. It is certainly a detestable principle the
Judea after these events was overturned from top to bottom. Vespasian ordered all lands to be sold which were unowned by the death or captivity of their proprietors. The idea was suggested to him which later occurred to Hadrian, to rebuild Jerusalem under another name, and establish a colony there. He did not wish this, and annexed the whole country to the emperor’s own domains. He gave only to eight hundred veterans the borough of Emmaus, near Jerusalem, and made of it a little colony, a trace of which is preserved to this day in the name of the pretty village of Kulonia. A special tribute (fiscus) was imposed upon the Jews. In all the empire they were to pay annually to the capital a sum of drachmas which they had been accustomed to pay to their temple at Jerusalem. The little coterie of allied Jews, Josephus, Agrippa, Berenice, and Tiberius Alexander, chose Rome as a residence. We see it continued to play a considerable part, at one time obtaining for Judaism favourable regard at court—at other times pursued by the hatred of the enthusiastic believers; at other times conceiving more than a hope, especially when it seemed to require little for Berenice to become the wife of Titus, and hold the sceptre of the universe.
Reduced to solitude Judea remained tranquil; but the enormous overthrow of
which it had been the theatre continued to provoke difficulties in the
neighbouring countries. The fermentation of Judaism lasted until the end of the
year 73. The zealots who had escaped massacre, the volunteers of the siege, and
all the madmen of Jerusalem, spread themselves in Egypt and
Incredible fact! This long and terrible agony was not immediately followed by
death. Under Trajan and under Hadrian we see the national Judaism revived, and
still engaging in bloody combats; but the lot was evidently cast. The zealot was
conquered beyond recovery. The way traced by Jesus, comprehended instinctively
by the church of Jerusalem, who were refugees in Perea, became the way of
Israel. The temporal kingdom of the Jews had been hateful, hard and cruel. The
epoch of the Asmoneans when they enjoyed independence was their most sorrowful
age. Was it Herodianism, Sadduceeism, that shameful alliance of a principality
without grandeur with the priesthood, which was to be regretted? No, certainly,
that was not the goal of “the people of God.” One would need to be blind not to
see that the ideal institutions
The Roman empire was not flexible, to lend itself to the communities which it united. Of the four empires, this was, according to the Jews, the harshest and most wicked. Like Antiochus Epiphanes, the Roman empire led the Jewish people astray from their true vocation, by causing it through reaction to form a kingdom or separate state. This tendency was not that of men who represented the genius of the race. In some points of view these last preferred the Romans. The idea of Jewish nationality became each day an obsolete idea, an idea of the furious and frenzied, against which the pious men made no scruple to claim the protection of their conquerors. The true Jew, attached to the Thora, making the holy books his rule and his life, as well as the Christian, lost in the hope of his kingdom of God, renounced more and more all nationality. The principles of Judas the Ganlonite, which was the soul of the great revolt, anarchical principles, according to which, God alone being “Master,” no man has the right to take that title, could produce bands of fanatics analogous to the Independents of Cromwell, they could found nothing durable. These feverish irruptions were the indication of the deep throes which threatened the heart of Israel, and which, by making it sweat blood for humanity, must necessarily cause it to perish in frightful convulsions.
The nations must choose in fact between the long peaceful and obscure destinies of that which lives for itself, and the trouble and stormy career of that which lives for humanity. The nation which agitates in its bosom social and religious problems is nearly always weak as a nation. Every country which dreams of a Kingdom of God, which looks for general ideas, which pursues a work of universal interest, sacrifices by this its particular destiny, grows feeble and loses its role as a terrestrial country. It was so with Judea, Greece, and Italy. It shall be so with France. One never carries with impunity fire within oneself. Jerusalem, the city of middle-class people, would have pursued indefinitely its mediocre history. It is because it had the incomparable honour of being the cradle of Christianity that it was the victim of the Johns of Gischala, of the Bar Giorases, in appearance plagues of their country, in reality the instruments of their apotheosis. Those zealots, whom Josephus treats as brigands and assassins, were politicians of the lowest order, military men with little capacity, but they lost heroically that which could not be saved. They lost a material city, they opened the spiritual Jerusalem, seated in her desolation much more gloriously than she was in the days of Herod and Solomon.
What did the conservatives and Sadducees desire? They wished something paltry;
the continuation of a city of priests like Emesa, Tyana, or Comanus. Certainly
they were not deceived when they declared that the rising of enthusiasts was the
loss of the nation; but revolution and Messianism were indeed the vocation of
this people, that by which it contributed to the universal work of civilisation.
We deceive ourselves no longer when we say to France, “Renounce revolution or
thou art lost”; but if the future belongs to some ideas which are elaborated obscurely in the
heart of the people, it will be found that France will have its revenge by what
caused in 1870-1871 its feebleness and its misery. At
How shall Judaism, deprived of its holy city and its temple, transform itself? How shall Talmudism leave the position which events have made to the Israelite? That is what we shall see in our fifth book. In a sense, after the production of Christianity, Judaism has no longer a raison d’etre. From this moment the spirit of life has gone from Jerusalem. Israel has given all to the son of its sorrow, and it has been exhausted in this childbirth. The Elohim whom they believed they heard murmur in the temple: “Let us go forth, let us go forth!” spoke truly. The law of great creations is that the creator virtually expires in transmitting existence to another. After the complete inoculation of life with that which should continue it, the initiator is nothing but a dry stem, an attenuated being. But it is rare, nevertheless, that this sentence of nature is accomplished at once. The plant which has yielded its flower does not consent to die because of that. The world is full of these walking skeletons who survive the doom which has struck them. Judaism is of this number. History has no spectacle stranger than that of this conservation of a people in the state of a ghost, of a people who, during nearly a thousand years, have lost the sentiment of fact, have not written a readable page, have not transmitted an acceptable instruction. Should one be astonished if, after having thus lived for ages outside of the free atmosphere of humanity, in a cellar, if I may say so, in a condition of partial madness, it should come forth, astonished by the light etiolated?
As to the consequences which resulted for Christianity from the destruction of
Jerusalem, they are so evident
The ruin of Jerusalem and of the temple was for Christianity an unequalled good
fortune. If the argument attributed by Tacitus to Titus is exactly reported, the
victorious general believed that the destruction of the temple would be the ruin
of Christianity, as well as of that of Judaism. Never were men more completely
deceived. The Romans imagined to cut away at the same time the shoot, but the
shoot was already a bush which lived by its own life. If the temple had
survived, Christianity would certainly have been arrested in its development.
The temple, surviving, would have continued to be the centre of all Judaic
works. They could never have ceased from looking upon it as the most holy place
in the world, going there on pilgrimage and bringing tributes thither. The
church of Jerusalem, grouped around the sacred parvis, would have continued, by
the name of its primacy, to obtain the homages of all the world, to persecute
the churches of Paul, demanding that to have the right to to call himself a
disciple of Jesus, one must practice circumcision and observe the Mosaic code.
Every fertile propaganda would have been forbidden, letters of obedience signed
at Jerusalem would have been exacted from the missionary. A centre of
indisputable authority, a patriarchate, composed of a sort of college of
cardinals, under the presidency of persons analogous to James, pure Jews
belonging to the family of Jesus, would have established itself and would have
constituted an immense danger for the nascent church. When one sees St. Paul
after so much ill-usage remain always attached to the church at Jerusalem, one
can conceive what difficulties a rupture with these holy personages would have
presented. Such a schism would have been considered an enormity equivalent to
the abandonment of Christianity. The separation between it and Judaism would have been impossible; now this
The situation much resembles some things in the Catholicism of
our days. No religious community has ever had more internal activity, more of a
tendency to send forth from its bosom original creations than Catholicism for
sixty years back. All these efforts, nevertheless, remain without result for one
single reason; that reason is the absolute rule of the court of Rome. It is the
court of Rome which has chased from the church Lamennais, Hermes, Döllinger, Father
Hyacinthe, and all the Apologists who have defended it with some success. It is
the court of Rome which has distressed and reduced to powerlessness Lacordaire
and Montalembert, it is the court of Rome which by its Syllabus and its council
has cut the whole future from liberal Catholics. When is this sad state of
things to be changed? When Rome shall be no more the pontifical city, when the dangerous oligarchy which
All are agreed that, from the end of the second century, the general belief of the Christian churches was that the Apostle Peter suffered martyrdom at Rome, and that the Apostle John lived at Ephesus until an advanced age. Protestant theologians from the sixteenth century have pronounced strongly against the visit of St. Peter to Rome. As to the opinion regarding the residence of John at Ephesus, it is only in our day that it has found contradiction.
The reason why Protestants attach so much importance to the denial of Peter’s
coming to Rome is easily grasped. During the whole Middle Ages the coming of St.
Peter to Rome was the basis of the exorbitant pretentions of the papacy. These
pretentions were founded on three propositions which were held to be “of the
faith,” let, Jesus himself conferred on Peter a primacy in the Church; 2nd,
that primacy ought to be transmitted to Peter’s successors; 3rd, the successors
of Peter are the Bishops of Rome. Peter, after having resided at Jerusalem, then
at Antioch, having definitively fixed his residence at Rome. To overthrow this
last fact, was therefore to overturn from top to bottom the edifice of Roman
theology. Men expended much learning on this; they showed that Roman tradition
was not supported on direct or very solid evidences; but they treated lightly
the indirect proofs; they pointed in a troublesome way to the passage in
To us the question has less importance than it had for the first Protestants,
and it is easier to solve it impartially. We certainly do not believe that Jesus
intended to establish a leader in his church, nor especially, to attach that
primacy to the episcopal succession of a fixed city. The episcopate, at first
scarcely existed in the thoughts of Jesus; besides, if it was
Let us say first that Catholics have exposed themselves to the most weighty
objections on the part of their adversaries with their unfortunate theory as to
Peter’s coming to Rome in the year 42—a theory borrowed from Eusebius and St
Jerome, and which limits the duration of the pontificate of Peter to
twenty-three or twenty-four years. It is sufficient not to retain any doubt on
that point, to consider that the persecution of which Peter was the object at
Jerusalem on the part of Herod Agrippa I. (
But did he not go there after Paul? This is what Protestant critics have never
succeeded in proving. Not only does this late journey of Peter to Rome offer no impossibility, but some strong
1. An incontestable thing is that Peter died a martyr. The evidence of the fourth gospel, Clemens Romans, and of the fragment called the Canon de Muratori, Dionysius of Corinth, Caius and Tertullian, leave no doubt on this matter. That the fourth gospel may be apocryphal, and that the twenty-first chapter has been added at a latter date, is of no consequence. It is clear that we have in the verses where Jesus announces to Peter that he will die by the same penalty as himself, the expression of an opinion established in the churches before the year 120 or 130, and to which allusions are made as to a thing known to all. It was almost alone at Rome, indeed, that Nero’s persecution was violent. At Jerusalem or at Antioch, the martyrdom of Peter could be less easily explained.
2. The second argument is drawn from
3. The system which served as the basis for the Ebionite Acts of Peter is also
well worthy of consideration. This system shows us St. Peter following Simon
Magus everywhere (see on that point St. Paul) to combat his false doctrines. M.
Lipsius has brought into the analysis of this curious legend an admirable
sagacity of criticism. He has shown that the basis of the different editions
which have come down to us was a primitive record, written about the year 130, a
writing in which Peter came to Rome to conquer Simon-Paul in the centre of his
power, and found it dead, after having confounded this father in all his errors.
It seems difficult to believe that the Ebionite author, at a date so remote,
should have given so much importance to the journey of Peter to Rome, if that
journey had not had some reality. The theory of the Ebionite legend must
I regard then as probable the tradition of Peter’s residence at Rome; but I believe that this sojourn was of short duration, and that Peter suffered martyrdom a little time after his arrival in the eternal city. A coincidence favourable to this theory is the record of Tacitus, Annals xv., 44. This record presents a quite natural occasion with which to connect Peter’s martyrdom. The apostle of the Judeo-Christians formed part of the list of sufferers whom Tacitus describes as crucibus affixi, and thus it is not without reason that the Seer of the Apocalypse places, “the apostles” among the holy victims of the year 64, who applauded the destruction of the city which slew them.
The coming of John to Ephesus, having a dogmatic value much less considerable than the coming of Peter to Rome, has not excited such lengthened controversies. The opinion generally received up to the present day, was that the apostle John, son of Zebedee, died very old in the capital of the province of Asia, Even those who refused to believe that during his residence the apostle wrote the fourth gospel and the epistles which bear his name, even those who denied that the Apocalypse was his work, continued to believe in the reality of this, journey attended by tradition. The first, Lützelberger, in 1840, raised upon this point some elaborated doubts; but he was little listened to. Some critics who cannot be reproached with an excess of credulousness, Baur, Strauss, Schwegler, Zeller, Hilgenfeld, Volkmar, all by making a large part in the legend in the records as to the sojourn of John at Ephesus, persisted in regarding as historical the very fact of the apostle’s coming into these regions. It is in 1867, in the first volume of his Life of Jesus, that M. Keim has directed against this traditional opinion quite a serious attack. The basis of M. Keim’s theory is that Presbyteros Johannes has been confounded with John the Apostle, and that the statments of the ecclesiastical writers upon him ought to be listened to first. This was followed by M.M. Wittichen and Holtzmann. More recently M. Scholten, of the University of Leyden, in a lengthened work, was forced to destroy one after another all the proofs of the formerly received theory, and to demonstrate that the Apostle John had never set foot in Asia.
The tractate of M. Scholten is a true chef d’œuvre of argumentation and method. The author passes in review not only all the evidences which are alleged for or against the tradition, but also all the writings where it can and according to him ought to be mentioned. The learned Professor of Leyden had been formerly of a different opinion. In his long arguments against the authenticity of the fourth gospel, he had strongly insisted on the passage in which Polycrates of Ephesus, about the end of the second century, represents John as having been in Asia, one of the pillars of the Jewish and Quarto-deciman parties. But it is nothing to a friend of truth that it should be necessary in these difficult questions to modify and reform his opinion. M. Scholten’s arguments have not convinced me; they have put John into Asia among the number of doubtful facts; they have not put it among the number certainly of apocryphal facts. I believe, indeed, that the chances of truth are still in favour of the tradition. Less probable in my view than Peter’s residence at Rome, the theory of the residence of John at Ephesus maintains its probability, and I think that in many cases M. Scholten has given proof of an exaggerated scepticism. As I may permit myself once more to say, a theologian is never a perfect critic. M. Scholten has a mind too lofty to allow himself ever to be ruled by apologetic or dogmatic views; but the theologian is so accustomed to subordinate fact to idea, that rarely does he place himself in the simple point of view of the historian. For twenty-five years back, especially we have seen that the Protestant liberal school have allowed themselves to be carried away by an excess of negativeness in which we doubt whether the laic science which sees in those studies nothing but simply interesting researches, will follow it. Their religious position is come to this point, that they make a defence of supernatural beliefs more easy by “cheapening” the texts and sacrificing them largely, rather then by maintaining their authenticity.
I am persuaded that a criticism unprejudiced by all theological prepossession shall find one day that the liberal theologians of our century have been too much in doubt, and that it will agree not certainly in spirit, but in some results, with the ancient traditional schools.
Among the writings passed in review by M. Scholten the Apocalypse holds
naturally the first rank. This is the point where the illustrious critic shews
himself weakest. Of three things, one is true either the Apocalypse is by the
Apostle John, or it is by a forger who has intended to make it pass for a work
of the Apostle John, or it is by a homonym of the Apostle John, such as John
Mark or the enigmatical Presbyteros Johannes. On the third hypothesis it is
clear that the Apocalypse less nothing to do with the residence of the Apostle
John in Asia,
M. Scholten’s discussion relative to the text of Papias is very important. It
has been the lot of this ἀρχαῖος ἀνήρ to be badly understood since Irenæus, who
has certainly wrongly made him an auditor of the Apostle John, until Eusebius,
who also wrongly supposes that he knew directly Presbyteros Johannes. M. Keim
had already shewn that the text of Papias, well understood, proves rather to be
against than for the residence of the Apostle John in Asia. M. Scholten goes much
further; he concludes from the passage in question, that even Presbyteros
Johannes had not resided in Asia. He believes that this personage, distinct in
his view from the Apostle John, resided in Palestine, and was a contemporary of
Papias. We agree with M. Scholten, that if the passage in Papias is correct, it
is an objection against the residence of the apostle in Asia. But is it correct? Are the words
ἤ τί Ἰωάννης not an interpolation? To those who find this
idea arbitrary, I would reply that, if they maintain
ἤ τί Ἰωάννης, the words
οἱ τοῦ κυρίου μαθηταί, placed after
Ἀριστίων καὶ ὁ πρεσβύτερος Ἰωαννης
made a bizarre and incoherent collection. What, nevertheless, confirms M. Scholten’s doubts is a passage in
Papias, quoted by George Hamartolus,
The most curious passage in the Fathers of the Church on the question which
occupies as is the fragment of the epistle of
We see that Irenæus did not make an appeal as in the greater part of the other
passages in which he speaks of the residence of the apostle in Asia, to a vague
tradition; he recites to Florinus some remembrances of childhood, under their
common master Polycarp. One of these souvenirs is that Polycarp spoke often of
his personal relations with the Apostle John. M. Scholten has seen thoroughly
that it is necessary to admit the reality of these relations, or to declare
apocryphal the Epistle to Florinus. He decides for this second view. His reasons
seem to me to be very weak. And first in the book Against Heresies Irenæus
expresses himself nearly in the same manner as in the letter to Florinus. The
principal objection of M. Scholten is drawn from this, that to explain such
relations between John and Polycarp, there must be supposed for the apostle, for
Polycarp, and for Irenæus, an extraordinary longevity. I am not much moved by
that; John could not be dead, until about the year 80 or 90, and Irenæus wrote
about 180. Irenæus was therefore at the same distance from the last years of
John, as we are from the last years of Voltaire. Now without any
A difficulty in the chronological system, which we would explain is the journey which Polycarp made to Rome, under the pontificate of Anicet. Anicet, according to the received chronology, became Bishop of Rome in the year 154, or rather sooner. There is, therefore, some little difficulty to find a place for the journey of Polycarp. M. Waddington’s results appeal decisive; if it be necessary to be in sequence with these results, to ante-date a little the elevation of Anicet to the pontificate, we ought not to hesitate, seeing that the pontifical lists offer some trouble in that direction, and that many lists place Anicet before Pius. It is to be regretted that M. Lipsius, who has published recently a very good work upon the Chronology of the Bishop of Rome up to the Fourth Century, had not known M. Waddington’s treatise; he would have found there matter for an important discussion.
Is it likely, says M. Scholten, that an old man, already nearly a centenarian,
would have taken such a voyage and that at a time when it was much more
difficult to travel than in our days? The voyages from Ephesus or from Smyrna to
Rome would have been more easy. A merchant of Hierapolis tells us in his epitaph
that he had made seventy-two times the distance from Hierapolis to Italy by
doubling the Malean Cape. This merchant continued therefore his journeys up to
an age advanced as that when Polycarp made his voyage to Rome. Such navigations (they
One of the most curious parts of M. Scholten’s treatise is that in which he recurs to the question of the fourth gospel, which he had already treated with no much fulness some years before. M. Scholten does not only admit that this gospel may be the work of John, but he still refuses it all connection with John. He denies that John is the disciple named many times in this gospel with mystery and designated as “the disciple whom Jesus loved.” According to M. Scholten that disciple is not a real person. The immortal disciple who, as distinguished from the other disciples of the Master, should live until the end of the ages by the force of his mind, this disciple, whose evidence, reposing upon spiritual contemplation, is of an absolute authenticity, ought not to be identified with any of the Galillean apostles. He is an ideal personage. It is quite impossible for me to admit that opinion. But let us not complicate difficult questions by another more difficult still. M. Scholten has removed many supports upon which formerly rested the opinion of the residence of the Apostle John in Asia. He has proved that this fact does not arise from the penumbra through which we see nearly all the facts of Apostolic history. In what concerns Papias he has raised an objection to which it is easy to reply; nevertheless he has not set forth all the arguments which can be alleged in favour of the tradition. The first chapters of the Apocalypse, the letter of Irenæus to Florinus, the passage in Polycrates remain three solid bases upon which we cannot build up a certainty, but which M. Scholten, in spite of his trenchant dialectic, has not overturned.
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