CHAPTER III.

THE ORDER OF THE SAINTS.

As long as there were apostles and prophets they were the homines religiosi, the representatives of ecstasy and exaltation, and of all that was extraordinary. They were the incarnation of the enthusiastic impulse, of that excess of zeal, love and energy which could find no room in the everyday life. This impulse had to discover a new outlet when the order of the apostles and of the prophets succumbed to the altered circumstances of the times. The Christian life was too abnormal, too vehement, too volcanic to find full satisfaction in the office of bishop or of teacher, and in the ordinary layman’s piety. There must be saints to set a goal to the longing of the deepest natures, to whom the masses could look up and venerate as heroes. They are the successors of the apostles and the prophets in the abnormal manner of their lives, though not in their historical calling. They do not represent anything distinctively Christian; they belong rather to the universal history of religion than to the history of the Gospel.

Who are the saints of the sub-apostolic age? First 22 of all come the martyrs. It was a time of struggle, and they died a hero’s death for their Redeemer. Even in the Apocalypse they occupy the first rank. It is of them that the writer is thinking when he praises the great multitude who have come out of the great tribulation, who have conquered in the strength of the Lamb: they are the first to rise from the dead and to live and reign with Christ in the millennial kingdom. One is mentioned by name, the martyr of Pergamos, Antipas the faithful witness. The Apocalypse itself is intended as an invitation to martyrdom: “Blessed are the dead which die in the Lord from henceforth” [i.e., as martyrs]; “yea, saith the spirit, they shall rest from their labours; for their works follow with them.”

Other writings celebrate the martyrs of past ages as saints, so the Epistle to the Hebrews. The catalogue of the men of faith—the cloud of witnesses—is closed with the martyrs. The author enumerates every variety of death and terror. “Some were crucified, others had trial of mockings and scourgings; yea, moreover, of bonds and imprisonment; they were stoned, tortured, sawn asunder; they were slain with the sword: they went about in sheepskins, in goatskins, being destitute, afflicted, evil-intreated, of whom the world was not worthy.” That applies to the martyrs of the Jewish Church, but it shows how Christian enthusiasm was kindled by such fancies. The Acts of the Apostles celebrates the apostles as martyrs. Nothing but his martyrdom is related of James, and not much more of Stephen. St Peter and St Paul are heroes of suffering. But the fatal termination is by no means the most important part 25 of a martyrdom. The most famous cases are those when the hero is rescued from the greatest danger by a divine miracle: Peter in prison, Paul at Lystra and at Philippi. The first Epistle of St Clement refers to the two apostles St Peter and St Paul, who died the martyr’s death. “To whom were added a great number of the elect, who, suffering many torments and much dishonour through jealous enmity, gave us thereby a most excellent example.” The “Shepherd” of Hermas, written in a time of persecution, is especially instructive. In his vision the prophet is about to seat himself on the right hand of the woman that appears to him, but she refuses to give him this seat of honour; it belongs to the martyrs alone who have endured scourgings and imprisonment, great plagues, crucifixion and wild beasts for the sake of the Name. It is true, however, that the same third vision afterwards mentions only the martyrs in the second place, namely, after the apostles, bishops, teachers and deacons. The martyr is accordingly to rank above the prophets but below the bishops, which points to the first beginnings of disputes as to precedence. Martyrdom is already reckoned as so high a merit, quite in itself and apart from the rest of the Christian life, that Hermas feels himself compelled to enter the lists against this exaggerated estimate of its value. To certain martyrs or confessors he declares: “Had ye not suffered for the name of the Lord, ye had been as dead in the sight of God because of your sins.” At the same time he declares that martyrdom procures forgiveness of sins for all men. Such were the views of the Church at Rome. The martyrdom of Polycarp and the Ignatian letters show us how far 24 more highly martyrdom was esteemed in the East than the episcopal office, for both Polycarp and Ignatius were bishops. So we read in the martyrdom of Polycarp. “We pray to Christ as to the Son of God, but we love the martyrs as the disciples and followers of the Lord.” Ignatius, who has so lofty a consciousness of his episcopal office, declares that it is only now, in martyrdom, that he begins to be a true disciple of Jesus. It is only the martyr who in the strict sense of the word follows the steps of Jesus. The high esteem, therefore, in which these martyred saints were held had consequences of a directly political nature for the surviving confessors. They were considered to be inspired in an extraordinary degree—according to Jesus’ promise that the Spirit should be their advocate when they should be delivered up for judgment—and so they came to be the rivals of the bishops.

The ascetics formed the second class of the saints. 1 Cor. vii. and the enigmatic and uncertain saying of Jesus concerning those who made themselves eunuchs for the kingdom of heaven’s sake in Matt. xix. led many in very early times to attach a superior sanctity to the single state. This form of asceticism was reckoned as the token of an especial charism. Separate orders of virgins and of widows came into being. The author of the Lucan writings helps to exalt and to glorify them by his enthusiastic description of the widow Hannah and of the virgin Tabitha. By the time when the Pastoral letters were written the honourable title of widow must have been very grossly misused. Not only was greater sanctity attached to it, but considerable support was assigned 25 to the widows by the congregations. Thereupon widows with large families of children presented themselves for admission into the sacred order, or quite young widows whose secret intention was to marry again. The energetic manner in which the author sets about the reform and reduction of the order of widows is very entertaining. He is fighting at the same time for the episcopal authority, upon which these holy ladies often trench. From the very first the ascetic was the natural rival of the bishop. He had the greater sanctity, the bishop the greater dignity. If the ascetic began to boast into the bargain, then strife was scarcely to be avoided. “The ascetic is not to boast”—the words of warning come to us from a document of the first century—“for he knows that it is not from himself that he has received the strength to be continent.” Bishop Ignatius writes to Bishop Polycarp still more uncompromisingly: “If a man possesses the power to remain continent then he shall refrain from vaunting in honour of the body of the Lord [i.e., of the Church]. If he vaunts, then he is lost; and if he is accounted more highly than the bishop, then he has utterly perished.” That sounds like the motto for the great war that was to be waged for centuries between the official position and the holy life, between the bishop and the monk. The esteem in which the ascetic life was held was still further increased by certain mystic tendencies: the marriage with Christ did not appear to be quite capable of realization save in the case of the unmarried. Then there was the loathing felt for the only too familiar heathen life of impurity, together with various forms of the late-Jewish and foreign aversion 26 to nature. Even at this early date asceticism was exalted to the highest honour in current legends. Abundant proof of this statement can be found in the Acts of the virgin Thecla, in almost all the apocryphal Acts of Apostles, and in the Gospel of Mary. Entire continence is everywhere accounted the higher and truer form of Christianity. No wonder that the bishop fell into disrepute and that the episcopal author of the Pastoral epistles inveighs loudly against those emissaries of the devil who forbid marriage. In the eyes of a great portion of the Christian community the ascetics appeared to be the only people who had seriously set out in quest of the ideal of the Gospel.

The beginnings of the voluminous literature of hagiology can be traced back to the end of the first century. The series is begun by the Gospels; Jesus Himself appears in them as the first of the saints, though He is, it is true, at the same time the messenger of the clear Word of God. The various Acts of the Apostles follow next; they reflect the ideal of popular piety. The men of God are there depicted as converters of the heathen, as workers of miracles, as ascetics, and as martyrs. It is possible that our canonical book of the Acts is the first of this group of literary productions. But the editor reproduces the legend of the saints with an ecclesiastical bias and writes as a conscious advocate of episcopal authority. In the apocryphal writings, on the contrary, the saint is pourtrayed without any ecclesiastical coloring. They are the last products of the dying enthusiasm. Human and divine here melt into one; the miraculous forms the rule, the ordinary the exception. 27 The tendency is throughout ascetic and anti social, but secular interests claim their due in the romantic form in which they are composed. At bottom all these saints are, after all, caricatures of Jesus and of His great successor.

Thus equipped with bishops, theologians and saints, the Church goes forward to meet the problems of the new age. There were no longer any great personalities with an immediate divine calling. That is not the fault of the Church. The time now came when second-rate characters and talents were strong enough to find a place for the new religion in the world and to preserve it from entire destruction therein.