CHAPTER II.

PETER AT ROME.

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, 14charlatans, magicians, and thaumaturgists. Nothing was more common among the Jews than a journey to Italy. The historian, Josephus, came to Rome in the year 62 or 63 to obtain the deliverance of the Jewish priests, very holy personages, who, so as to eat nothing impure, lived in foreign countries on nuts and figs, and whom Felix had sent to give account to the emperor for some offence which is not known. Who were these priests? Was their affair entirely disconnected with Peter and Paul? The want of historic proof leaves us in much doubt as to all these points. The very fact on which modern Catholics base the edifice of their faith is far from being certain. We, however, believe that the Acts of Peter, such as the Ebionites recount, are only fabulous in detail. The fundamental idea of these Acts, Peter journeying through the world after Simon, the magician, to refute him, bearing the true gospel, which should overturn the gospel of the impostor, “coming after him like the light after the darkness, like knowledge after ignorance, like healing after sickness”—this conception is true when we put Paul’s name in place of Simon’s, and when, instead of the ferocious hatred which the Ebionites always exhibited against the preacher of the Gentiles, we picture between the two apostles a simple opposition of principle, excluding neither sympathy nor agreement on the fundamental point—the love of Jesus. In the journey undertaken by the old Galilean disciple to follow the track of Paul, we even willingly admit that Peter, following Paul closely, touched at Corinth, where he had, before his coming, a considerable party, and that he there much strengthened the Judæo-Christians, so much so that later on the Church of Corinth could pretend to have been founded by the two apostles, and to maintain, by making a slight error as to date, that Peter and Paul had been there at the same time, and from thence went forth in company to find death at Rome.

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, 16in the memory of the next generation, Peter and Paul are the leaders of opposing parties in the bosom of the Church; it is that the author of the Apocalypse, from the day of the death of the apostles, or at least of Peter, is, of all the Judæo-Christians, the most bitter against Paul. Paul looked on himself as the leader of the converted heathen wherever he found them; there was in this his interpretation of the agreement of Antioch; the Judæo-Christians regarded him evidently in a different manner. It is probable that this last party, which had always been very strong at Rome, drew from Peter’s arrival a grand ground of preponderance. Peter became its leader and leader of the Church of Rome. Now the unequalled prestige of Rome gave to such a title the greatest importance. We can see something providential in the part played by this extraordinary city. Following the reaction which was thus produced against Paul, Peter became more and more, in virtue of a sort of opposition, the leader of the apostles. Reconciliation is quickly made between minds easily impressed. The chief of the apostles in the capital of the world! What more could be said? The grand association of ideas which was to dominate the destinies of humanity during thousands of years was being made. Peter and Rome became inseparable; Rome is predestined to be the capital of Latin Christianity; the legend of Peter, first Pope, is written in advance; but it will require four or five centuries to unwind itself. Rome in any case could scarcely doubt the day on which Peter set foot in it, that that day ruled its future, and that the poor Syrian who had entered within its walls had taken possession of it for centuries.

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 17to them; but they heard the people around them speaking of them. One Icarus, who, in the wooden amphitheatre in the Field of Mars, pretended to be able to fly in the air, and who fell in front of Nero’s own stall, covering him with his blood, struck them greatly and became the principal element in one of their legends. The crime of Rome attained the last bounds of the infernal sublime; it was already a custom in the sect—it may have been a precaution against the police, or from a taste for mystery—to call this city only by the name of Babylon. The Jews had the habit thus of applying to modern things some symbolical proper names borrowed from their ancient sacred literature.

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 18were like an inundation dammed up for a while which made an irruption. The Church of Rome was already quite a people. The court and the city began seriously to speak about it; its progress was for some time the news of the day. Conversatives thought with a sort of terror of this cloaca of impurity which they pictured to themselves in the depths of Rome; they spoke with anger of those kinds of evil ineradicable plants which they always snatched at and which always resisted.

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, 20whose odium fell on the whole church. The language of the Apostles, at this supreme moment, was of an extreme prudence. Some unfortunates put to the torture, some scourged slaves, were allowed to endure insult, calling their masters idolaters, menacing them with the wrath of God. Others, by excess of zeal, declaimed loudly against the heathen and reproached them with their vices; the reasonable brethren wittily called them “bishops,” or “overseers of those without.” Cruel misfortunes came upon them; the wise directors of the community, far from praising them, told them plainly enough that they had received what they deserved.

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 21other hand, the legend of Simon falling from the sky is not without an analogue in the accident which happened in the ampitheatre under Nero to an actor who played the part of Icarus. The plan taken by the author of the Apocalyse of expressing himself in enigmas throws all these events greatly into obscurity; but we should not be deceived if we searched behind every line of that strange book for some allusion to the most minute anecdotal circumstances of Nero’s reign.

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.