CHAPTER XVIII.

RELIGIOUS LEGISLATION AT THIS PERIOD.

The Empire in the first century, even whilst showing itself hostile to the religious innovations which came from the East, did not offer a constant resistance to them. The principle of the religion of the State was but moderately maintained. Under the Republic at various intervals, foreign religions had been forbidden, in particular the worship of Sabazius, of Isis, of Serapis. The people were impelled towards these religions by an irresistible force. When the demolition of the temple of Isis and Serapis, was decreed at Rome, in the year 185535, not a workman was found who would put a hand to the work, and the Consul himself was obliged to break in the door with the blows of an axe It is clear that the Latin rite was not sufficient for the mob. Not unreasonably it has been supposed, that it was to gratify the popular instinct that Cæsar re-established the worship of Isis and Serapis.

With the profound and liberal intention characteristic of him, this great man showed himself favourable to a complete liberty of conscience. Augustus was more attached to the national religion. He had antipathy for the Oriental religions; he forbade even the propagation of Egyptian ceremonies in Italy; but he wished that every religion, that of the Jews especially, should be supreme at home. He exempted the Jews from every-thing that might distress their consciences, especially from secular work on the Sabbath. Some persons of his court were less tolerant, and would willingly have made him a persecutor for the benefit of the Latin religion. He does not appear to have yielded to these wretched counsels. Josephus, who is suspected of exaggeration in this matter, will even have it that he made gifts of sacred vessels to the temple at Jerusalem.

It was Tiberius who first laid down the principle of the religion of the State, with clearness, and took serious precautions against the Jewish and Oriental propaganda. It must be remembered that the Emperor was “Grand Pontiff,” that in protecting the old Roman religion he did but execute a duty laid upon him. Caligula withdrew the edicts of Tiberius, but his madness prevented anything further from being done. Claudius appears to have imitated the policy of Augustus. At Rome he strengthened the Latin religion, showed himself interested in the progress made by foreign religion, displayed harshness to the Jews, and pursued the confraternities with fury. In Judea, on the contrary, he showed himself well disposed towards the natives. The favour which the Agrippas displayed at Rome under 186these two last reigns, assured to their co-religionists a powerful protection, except in those cases when the police of Rome required measures of safety.

Nero concerned himself but little with religion. His odious treatment of the Christians came from native ferocity and not from legislative disposition. The examples of persecution which were quoted in Roman society at this time sprang rather from family than public authority. Such things still happened only in the noble houses of Rome, which preserved the old traditions. The provinces were perfectly free to follow their own religions on the single condition that they did not insult the religions of other countries. The provincials of Rome had the same right, provided they made no scandal. The only two religions against which the Empire made war in the first century, Druidism and Judaism, were fortresses where nationalities defended themselves. All the world was convinced that the profession of Judaism implied contempt for the civil law, and indifference to the prosperity of the State. When Judaism was content to be a simple personal religion, it was not persecuted. The severities against the worship of Serapis, arose perhaps from the mono-theistic character which it presented, and which already caused it to be confounded with the Jewish and the Christian religion.

No fixed law then forbade in the time of the apostles the profession of monotheistic religion. These religions, until the accession of the Syrian Emperors, were always watched, but it was not until the time of Trajan that the Empire began to prosecute them systematically as hostile to others, as intolerant, and as implying the negation of the State. In short, the only thing against which the Roman Empire declared war in the matter of religion was theocracy. Its principle was that of the lay state; it did not admit that a religion had civil or political consequence in any degree; above all it did not allow of any association 187within the State for objects outside of it. This last point is essential, seeing that it really was at the root of all the persecutions. The law upon confraternities, much more than religious intolerance, was the fatal cause of the violences which dishonoured the reigns of the best sovereigns.

The Greek countries, associated as they were with all things good and delicate, had had the priority over the Romans. The Greek Eranes or Thiases of Athens, Rhodes, of the inlands of the Archipelago, had been excellent societies for mutual help, credit, assurance in case of fire, piety, honest pleasures. Every Erane had its decisions engraved upon the arches (stelos), its archives, its common chest, fed by voluntary gifts and assessments. The Eranites or Thiastes celebrated together certain festivals and met for banquets, where cordiality reigned. A member, embarassed for money, might borrow from the chest on condition of repayment. Women formed part of these Eranes, and had their separate President (proëranistria). The meetings were absolutely secret; a rigid order was maintained in them; they took place, it would seem, in closed gardens, surrounded by porches or small buildings, in the midst of which rose the altar of sacrifice. Finally, every congregation had a body of dignitaries, drawn by lot for a year (Clerotes), according to the custom of ancient Greek democracies, from whom the Christian “clergy” may have taken their name. The president alone was elected. These officers caused the new members to submit to a species of examination, and were bound to certify that he was “holy, pious and good.” There was in these little confraternities, during the two or three centuries which preceded our era, a movement almost as varied as that which in the middle ages produced so many religious orders and subdivisions of these orders. In the single island of Rhodes there were computed to be as many as nineteen, many of which bore the names of their founders or their reformers. Some of these 188Thiastes, especially those of Bacchus, held elevated doctrines, and sought to give some consolation to men of good will. If there still remained in the Greek world a little love, pity, religious morality, it was due to the liberty of such private religions. These religions were in a sort of way associated with the official religion, the abandonment of which became every day more and more marked.

At Rome association of the same kind encountered greater difficulties and not less favour amongst the proscribed classes. The principles of the Roman policy concerning confraternities had been promulgated for the first time under the Republic (186 B.C.) apropos of the Bacchanals. The Romans by their natural taste were greatly inclined to associations, especially to religious associations; but permanent congregations of this kind displeased the patricians, guardians of public powers, who, in their narrow and dry conception of life, admitted only the Family of the State as the social group. The most minute precautions were taken; a preliminary authorization was made a necessity, the number of members was limited; it was forbidden to have a permanent magister sacrorum, and to create a common fund by means of subscriptions. The same solicitude was manifested on various occasions in the history of the empire. The laws contained texts for repressions of every kind. But it was for the authorities to say, if they should or should not be used. The proscribed religions often appeared a very few years after their proscription. The foreign emigration, besides, especially that of the Syrians, perpetually renewed the funds from which the beliefs were nourished, which it was vainly sought to extirpate.

It is remarkable to note, to how great a degree a subject in appearance so wholly secondary occupied the strongest heads. One of the principal cares of Cæsar and of Augustus was to prevent the formation of new societies and to destroy those which had already been 189established. It appears that a decree was issued under Augustus, in which an attempt was made to define with clearness the limits of the law of union and association. These limits were extremely narrow. The societies were to be exclusively burial clubs. They were not permitted to meet more often than once a month; they might occupy themselves only with the funerals of deceased members; under no pretext might they extend their powers. The Emperor strove after the impossible. He wished out of his exaggerated idea of the state to isolate the individual, to destroy every moral tie between man, to repress a legitimate desire of the poor, that of crowding together in a small space to keep each other warm. In ancient Greece the city was very tyrannical, but it gave in exchange for its vexations so much pleasure, so much light, so much glory, that no one dreamed of complaining. Men would have died for her with joy; her most unjust caprices were submitted to without murmuring. The Roman Empire was too large for patriotism. It offered to all immense material advantages; it gave nothing to love. The insupportable sadness inseparable from such a life appeared worse than death.

Thus, notwithstanding all the efforts of the politicians, the confraternities developed themselves enormously. They were exactly analogous to our middle age confraternities with their patron saints and their corporation meals. The great families were careful of their name, of their country, of their tradition; the humble, the small, had only their collegium. There they found all their pleasures. All the texts show us collegia or cœtus, as formed of slaves, of veterans, of small people (tenuiores). Equality reigned there among the freemen, emancipated slaves and servile persons. The women in them were numerous. At the risk of a thousand cavils, sometimes of the most severe punishments, men became members of these collegia, where they lived in the bonds of an agreeable confraternity, where they found mutual help, 190where they contracted relations which lasted after death. The place of meeting, or schola collegii, had usually a tetrastyle (a four sided porch), where was put up the rules of the college, by the side of the altar of the tutelary deity and a triclinium for meals. The meals were, in fact, impatiently expected; they took place on the feast days of the patron (God), and on the anniversaries of certain brethren who had founded benefactions. Every one carried thither his little basket (sportula); one of the brethren in turn furnished the accessories of the feast, the beds, the plate, bread, wine, sardines and hot water. The slave, who had been enfranchised gave his comrades an amphora of good wine. A gentle joy animated the festival; it was expressly stipulated that there should be no discussion of the business of the college, so that nothing should trouble the quarter of an hour of joy and rest which these poor people reserved to themselves. Every act of turbulence and every ill-natured word was punished with a fine.

To all appearance, these colleges were only burial societies, to use the modern phrase. But that alone would not have sufficed to give them a moral character. In the Roman period, as in our time, and at all periods when religion is weakened, the piety of the tombs was almost the only one which the people retained. They liked to believe that they would not be thrown into the horrible common trench, that the college would provide for their funerals, that the brethren would come on foot to the funeral pile to receive a little honorarium of twenty centimes. Slaves especially wished to hope that if their masters caused their bodies to be thrown into the sewers, there would be some friends to make for them “imaginary funerals.” The poor man put his half-penny per month into the common fund, to provide for himself, after his death, a little urn in a Columbarium, with a slab of marble, on which his name might be engraved. Sepulture amongst the Romans being intimately 191bound up with the sacra gentilitia, or family rites, had an extreme importance. The persons, intending to be buried together, contracted a species of intimate brotherhood and relationship.

It thus came about that Christianity presented itself for a long time in Rome as a kind of funeral collegium, and that the first Christian sanctuaries were the tombs of the martyrs. If Christianity had been that one, however, it would not have provoked so many severities; but it was besides quite another thing; it had common treasuries; it boasted of being a complete city; it believed itself assured of the future. When, on a Saturday evening, one enters the limits of a Greek Church in Turkey, for example that of S. Photinus in Smyrna, he is struck with the strength of these associated religions, in the midst of a persecuting and malevolent society. This irregular accumulation of buildings (church, presbytery, schools, prison), those faithful ones coming and going in their enclosed city, those lately opened tombs, on each of which a lamp is burning, the corpse-like odour, the impression of damp mustiness, the murmur of prayers, the appeals for charity, from a soft and warm atmosphere, that a stranger at times must find sufficiently sickening, but that is to the initiated eminently grateful.

These societies, once provided with a special authorization, had in Rome all the rights of civil persons; but such an authorization was granted only with infinite reserves, as soon as the societies had funds in hand, and other matters than funerals might occupy them. The pretext of religion, or of the accomplishment of vows in common is foreseen, and formally pointed out as being amongst the circumstances, which give to a meeting the character of au offence; and this offence was no other than that of treason, at least for the person who hail called the assembly together. Claudius went so far as to close the inns where the confraternities met, and even to interdict the little eating-houses, where these poor people could get soup and hot water cheaply. 192Trajan and the best Emperors defied all the associations. The extreme humility of the persons was an essential condition that the right of religious meeting should be accorded, and even then, only with many restrictions. The legists, who put together the Roman law, eminent though they were as jurisconsults, afforded a measure of their ignorance of human nature by pursuing in every way, even by threats of capital punishment, in restraining by every kind of odious and puerile precaution, an eternal need of the soul. Like the authors of our Civil Code, they figured life to themselves with a mortal coldness. If life consisted in amusing oneself by superior orders, in eating a morsel of bread, in tasting pleasure in one’s rank and under the eye of a chief, everything would be well imagined. But the punishment of societies which abandoned that false and limited direction, is first weariness, then the violent triumph of religious parties. Never will man consent to breathe that glacial air; he wants the little enclosure, the confraternity in which men live and die together. Our great abstract societies are not sufficient to answer to all the instincts of sociability which are in man. Let him put his heart into anything, seek consolation where it may be found, create brethren for himself, contract ties of the heart. Let not the cold hand of the State interfere in this kingdom of the soul, which is the kingdom of liberty. Life and joy will not re-enter the world until our defiance of the collegia, that sad inheritance from the Roman law, shall have disappeared. Association outside the State, without destroying the State, is the capital question of the future. The future law as to associations will decide if modern society shall or shall not share the fate of ancient society. One example may suffice: the Roman Empire had bound up its destiny with the law upon the cœtus illiciti, the illicita collegia. Christians and barbarians accomplishing in this the work of the human conscience, have broken the law; the empire to which that law was attached has foundered with it.

The Greek and Roman world; the lay world; the profane world, which did not know what a priest is, which had neither divine law nor revealed book, touched here upon problems which it could not solve. We may add that if there had been priests, a severe theology, a strongly organized religion, it would not have created the lay State, inaugurated the idea of a rational society, of a society founded upon simple human necessities, and upon the natural relations of individuals. The religious inferiority of the Greeks and Romans was the consequence of their political and intellectual superiority. The religious superiority of the Jewish people, on the contrary, was the cause of their political and philosophical inferiority. Judaism and primitive Christianity embodied the negation, or rather the subjection of the civil State. Like Islamism, they established society upon religion. When human affairs are taken up in this way, great universal proselytisms are founded, apostles run about from one end of the world to another converting it; but political institutions, national independence, a dynasty, a code, a people—none of these are founded.