From The Contemporary Review. ON THE CORRUPTION OF CHRISTIANITY BY PAGANISM

IN THE LAST AGE OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE.

THE Roman Empire, although more than a thousand years have elapsed since its fall, has left indelible traces on all the institutions of the subject countries. As we have recourse to the code of Justinian and the rule of the Cæsars in order to explain the laws and government of Southern Europe; so, to account for its religious usages, we must go back to the ancient classics and the traditions of Olympus. The system from which most Teutonic races revolted in the sixteenth century, is a compromise between primitive Christianity and the older faiths which it is falsely imagined to have supplanted.

first made the Christian profession safe and respectable. Heathenism, avowed in its own person, long, it is true, lingered not only in the rural solitudes, whence it derived the name pagan, but in the principal cities too. So late as in the time of St. Chrysostom the city where the disciples were first called Christians contained quite as many believers in Jupiter as in Christ. At length, however, the triumph of the cross, or, to speak more accurately, the amalgamation of the two religions, was complete. The temples were closed by the government, and the stream of worshippers diverted into the Churches, but they brought in most of their superstitions with them; and though the names of the ancient poetic mythology were no longer heard, a new collection of similar legendary lore soon gathered round the most revered personages of Christianity.

These convictions have often struck attentive observers of the popular religion on the shores of the Mediterranean. For where the peculiar civilization of the Roman world was most firmly seated the vestiges of its religion are naturally most conspicuous. The authors of "the Silver Age" afford valuable hints for working out the same train of thought. Neglected by students of classical elegance, they are of no small interest to the theologian; since they offer a lively picture of the latest form of heathenism, just before it merged in corrupt Christianity, and so enable us to perceive how the conquered religion, like ancient Greece, has enslaved its conqueror. At the present time, when Rome is pressing her claims upon us so imperiously, and when the even semi-barbarous East has its partisans, this historical argument seems peculiarly seasonable.

If the English Church is founded on the reconciliation of two adverse systems of religion, each of which finds its appropriate expression in our formularies, the same is no less true of the Churches of Rome and Greece. The Christian and heathen elements are quite as distinguishable to this day in those unreformed Churches, as are the Protestant and Catholic ones in what has been sneeringly called "the Elizabethan compromise." We must not be misled by the retention of venerable creeds, the name Catholic, and the episcopal succession. Great part of Christendom has never been generally converted to anything like the religion revealed in the New Testament. A minority of the inhabitants of the empire really embraced the Gospel, and were nominally joined by the rest of their fellow-subjects after Christianity became the religion of the sovereign. The united body, though still called by the old names, was as different from what it had been before as the mixed It is a duty we owe to common sense to population of Samaria, after the Assyrian bring theory and emotion to the test of fact, conquest, from the Israelites of pure descent and to investigate the origin of the vast orwho had studied in the schools of the proph-ganizations which confront us, before, like ets. As the great river of America, after so much inanimate matter, we yield to the its junction with the muddy current of a mere attraction of their bulk, and rush longer and larger stream, preserves the blindly into union with we know not what. name it bore when its waters were still clear, Nor would we permit our judgment to be so we still read of Catholic Churches of the so warped by discontent at our domesEast and West, though their whole nature tic troubles as to accept en masse whathad been altered by the irruption of the half-ever foreigners offer. Should the Anglican converted Greeks, Asiatics, and Romans, Church be fallible or fallen, it by no means since Constantine, himself a half-convert, follows that the Roman is any surer guide.

That a vast revolution actually took place | limited to images of the false gods, for we in very many of the doctrines, and in all the are repeatedly assured that the true Divinity external usages of the Church, between the could have no other image of himself than age of Constantine and that of Justinian, is man created after his likeness. a simple matter of history. The truth is But let us pass over a few centuries, and too patent to be denied, account for it how we find images first tolerated as ornaments we will. With this gradual change in the of the Church in the time of Chrysostom; religion of the empire may be compared a then approved as books for the instruction similar one in that of the republic. The of the ignorant, as by Gregory the Great in Romans, it is said, had no images of their the sixth century, and in the seventh century gods for the first hundred and seventy years, grown into the universal objects of popular and, when, four hundred years later, the devotion; a practice defended by the popes, books of Numa, their lawgiver, were brought and by the last Greek father, John of Dato light, the authorities found them so sub-mascus, and finally established as the rule versive of the then established idolatry, that both of East and West at the second counthey ordered them to be burned. So the cil of Nicæa, held in 786. The Blessed Bible is suppressed in Romish countries Virgin had been long before drawn from her previous seclusion, and presented to the world as the most influential personage in the heavenly court. Angels and saints

now.

articles of commerce, and objects of childish superstition. Prodigies of the most absurd description were believed without hesitation, while asceticism was carried to such a pitch that fanatics practised every kind of selftorture, and fed on grass, living naked in

The worship of the early Christians, as described by Justin Martyr and other primitive fathers, was of the same spiritual shared her popularity. Relics had become character as that indicated in the New Testament. It was directed only to God; and, when we say God, we include God the Son, according to the testimony of Justin, and even of the heathen Pliny. The monuments of this period, preserved in the catacombs of Rome, bear no reference the open air, like the Faquirs of India.* to the Virgin or the saints, or a purgatory We are indebted for this comparison to after death. Rest and peace in Christ are Tertullian, who assures us that such extravthe prevailing idea; the palm branch, the agances were confined to the heathen in his plain cross, or monogram the usual symbols. time, the second century, and ranks it Dark, mysterious rites, strange cabalistic among the merits of the Christians that they names and invocations, worshipping of an- gave them no encouragement. "We are gels, and other superstitions, partly of Jew-not," he says, "unsocial, like Brahmins and ish, partly of oriental origin, were by no Indian Gymnosophists, who live in the means unknown; but they were confined to the Gnostic heretics, who also appear to have had some notion of a purgatory so early as in the time of St. Augustine.* Tertullian contrasts the cheerful churches of the Orthodox, open on all sides, and lightsome like a dovecot on its eminence "Domus columbæ nostræ " (alluding to the Holy Spirit), with the dim crypts where the sectaries celebrated their secret ceremonies.† On the other hand, the pompous rites of the heathen are a never-failing topic for the eloquent invective of Christian apologists. Images especially; their makers and worshippers are all included in the severest condemnation. Nor is this censure

* De Hæresibus.
† Adv. Valent. 2.

woods, exiles from the life of society, for we have learned that gratitude to the Creator requires us to repudiate no fruit of his works." As Tertullian was by nature inclined to austere views, his words are the more remarkable. They may be advantageously compared with the 21st chapter of the first Book of Evagrius, a writer of the sixth century, where he celebrates the excellent and divine life of the hermits of Palestine, who "so galled themselves as to seem tombless corpses, their outward form being assimilated to wild beasts, and their mind in a state no longer fitted for intercourse with mankind." The public opinion of the religious world must have been

strangely altered when such maniacs as the historian describes were regarded as examples of triumphant virtue subduing nature.

philosophy of most of the learned Christian divines, and their well-meant, but mistaken, policy in dealing with corruptions introduced by the ignorant. The condition of Now what was the source of all these mo- the Roman world from the very beginning mentous changes, or as Roman Catholics of Christianity was extremely unpropitious consider them, improvements, in the faith to the preservation of its purity, and as the once delivered to the saints, and the rule of ancient civilization declined, through misgodly life? Were they contemplated from government and social disorganization, it the beginning by the Founder of the Church, became increasingly difficult for the Church and revealed by Him to his first disciples, to struggle against the mischievous influwho handed down the tradition so secretly ences that beset her on every side. It has that for several centuries not a hint of it is been remarked that there is no cause or indropped? Did they grow out of the orig- stitution that is not obliged to accommodate inal religion by natural development, as a itself to the characteristics of its epoch, and plant unfolds its fresh branches? A para- to avail itself for its own purposes of the site killing the tree it grows on would be a tendencies of the society in which it has to fitter simile. Or had the Church corporate, live. Now the chief characteristic of the or the Roman Court as its head and mouth- period from the Antonines to the fall of the piece, received authority from Christ to add empire, was unquestionably a very low moto his religion new supplemental revelations rality, having little regard to truth or honfrom time to time, suggested by a perma- esty, and the tendency of its society was, nent inspiration residing in some living au- on the whole, to gross superstition. Ghosts thority? If we reject these theories, and they and genii peopled the imagination of the are no better than theories incapable of suffering subjects of Rome. Tales of witchproof, opposed to Scripture and common craft, magic, marvellous transformations, sense, and inconsistent, too, with history, prodigies, and apparitions, fill the literature which shows us the various superstitions of the period, and even respectable historrising to notice, first, as half tolerated pop-rians regularly chronicle the omens and ular practices, not as promulgated by any ecclesiastical authority, if, I say, we reject these fanciful suppositions, we are bound to offer some more reasonable explanation.

The one which seems most probable is that which ascribes the change in Christianity to its gradual fusion with the paganism of the empire. We shall first consider some of the circumstances which prepared the way for the amalgamation of the two religions, and then select a few out of innumerable examples to illustrate the manner in which heathen ideas and usages were adopted, and still maintain their ground in the unreformed Churches.

The revolution of which we are speaking had, like most others, various predisposing causes, which long wrought in silence before their effect became visible. Three are enough to mention: the irresistible tendency of the age towards superstition; the familiar intercourse between the heathen populace and the lower order of Christians; and, lastly, the credulity and false

wonders with which each reign began and ended, while pious frauds and false miracles were of frequent occurrence. A critical or inquiring spirit or a love of truth is rarely discernible in the writings of the most learned authors. The poorer class would of course be still more given to idolatry and superstition, and it was among them that the lower order of converts were obliged to live. There was far more intercourse between the professors of the two religions than is generally supposed, and the warnings against too close association with heathens and imitation of their customs which we so often find in the fathers, show how much believers and unbelievers must have been thrown together, especially during the intervals of persecution. The Emperor Hadrian, a curious observer of religious novelties, draws a striking picture of the population of Alexandria in his day, and the strange confusion of creeds and customs in that great manufacturing and trading city. He represents the inhabitants as carried away with every wind of doc

The fathers of the Church were at a loss how to deal with the superstitions which made their appearance from time to time, often under a show of piety and good intention, not propounded by Rome or any other authority, but among the common people, inconsiderately caught up, as it were, from the paganism with which the very air seemed charged.

trine.* "Those who worship Serapis are the simplicity of the Gospel. As early as Christians, and those who call themselves the Apostolic age, affected singularity in Christ's bishops are devotees of Serapis; worship, devotion to angels, and curious people are Jews, Samaritans, soothsayers, speculations about genii and their pedigrees, presbyters by turns. They were very busy a fondness for fabulous stories and ascetic and industrious, but the only God they counsels of perfection, all symptoms of worshipped was no God. Him Jews, Gentile philosophy, are mentioned by St. Christians, and Gentiles all venerate." Paul as already infecting Christian societies. There must have been doubtless some The semi-Christian bodies, called Gnostics, foundation for this caricature, since the first allowed their fancy to run riot among Fathers often complain of such unsteady these follies, but they never wanted partiprofessors, and Lucian, in his account of zans even within the Church. Treatises on the philosopher Peregrinus, gives us a a the celestial hierarchy and on fasting and lively representation of a false brother, celibacy, and rules for austere living, falsely who for a time imposed on the simplicity of attributed to Apostles and apostolic men, the faithful. But the credulity and degen- are popular productions of the first ages. erate philosophy of the fathers themselves rendered them very imperfect guardians of the purity of the Gospel. These were faults of the age rather than of the men, but they were not on that account the less but rather the more mischievous. Every concession they made to popular superstition was so much ground lost for ever, while their feeble protests and cautions were treated with indifference and soon forgotten. Their credulity betrays itself in a proneness to rely on spurious authorities like the Sibylline books, &c., and to believe every strange story that seemed to favour religion or to be honourable to the Church. Chrysostom, indeed, confessed that miracles had ceased, and assigned reasons for their discontinuance; but the majority of the fathers lived in an atmosphere of prodigies. Men of great natural good sense, the master minds of their age, are among the worst offenders in this respect. As for example, Athanasius in his "Life of Antony," and Gregory the Great in his dialogues. In fact, the world Augustine reckons the worshippers of was fast sinking into a sort of intellectual images and pictures (for there were some twilight, in which events were seen not as such already among Christians) with drunkthey really are, but as magnified and dis-ards and other scandalous offenders; torted by the passions and prejudices of the observer. Moreover, the Christian divines, in their very writings against the philosophers, show themselves deeply imbued with the spirit of Platonism, a philosophy of most superstitious tendency. Doubtless great part of their success in propagating the Gospel was due to their perfect accordance with the taste and temper of their times and country. Unlike our modern missionaries, they were educated in the same school of thought with the people whom they sought to convince, and could reason with them on their own ground. Still philosophy, and especially the debased philosophy of the later empire, was no true yoke-fellow with

Vopiscus Vit. Saturnini. † iii. 65, Ed. Ben.

Origen and Jerome devoted great learning, and greater industry, to the interpretation of Scripture, and brought to their task a more enlightened critical spirit than is usual in our own day in the Church of England. But the subtle philosophic tastes of Origen induced him to countenance various errors, especially the extravagant employment of allegory, after the example of the later Platonists. Jerome, on the other hand, with characteristic impetuosity, urged the Church forward in the dangerous courses of monastic asceticism and veneration of relics.

but then he palliates the superstitious practices at martyrs' tombs, and by his irresolution on the subject of purgatory had considerable share in importing that doctrine from his early Manichean teachers.

Chrysostom is a sensible expositor; but he, too, was carried away by the fashion of the day, and abuses his eloquence to justify a young friend, who broke his parents' heart, and brought on himself epileptic fits, by running away from home and giving himself up to self-torture in a monastery.† The sober-minded presbyter Vigilantius alone ‡ perceived that such popular fanaticisms must, like drunkenness, be encoun

De Mor. Eccl. Cath. + Stagirius.

Perhaps I should add Jovinian, another opponent of St. Jerome.

tered by total abstinence, instead of being treated with mild excuses, concessions, and gentle cautions against excess."

Christ, Abraham, Orpheus, and Alexander the Great.* He would even, it is said, have recognized Christ among the gods of the empire, and have built a temple in his honour, but that it was feared that then everybody would become Christian, and the other temples be deserted. The prayer of the priest of Isis, in Apuleius, has likewise a flavour of Christianity about it.

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book from a high pulpit solemn prayers for the Standing before the doors, he read out of a prince, the senate, the equestrian order, and the entire people of Rome, the ships at sea, and all the subject provinces. After which, according to Greek custom, he proclaimed in that language, aous ageous, dismissal for the people. On this the congregation shout assent (amen?) and go home.” †

Some apology is required for dwelling so long on the dark side of the patristic teaching. The writings of the Greek and Latin fathers have a peculiar charm for those who have sufficient learning and perseverance to attempt their study. It is not the less to be regretted that, occupied as they mostly were with controversies on the abstruse topics of the Trinity and Incarnation, grace and free will, and the origin of evil, they were not at liberty to pay more attention to the superstitions of the vulgar, but, beguiled by the appearance of good intention, and laudably anxious to facilitate the conversion of the heathen, permitted these novel practices to grow, first into tol- Who does not recognize the prayer for all erated customs, and then into established conditions of men, and the mysterious ite traditions. The enemies of the Catholics missa est," the innocent origin of the word kept a sharper look-out for their short-com- mass, so terrible to all zealous Protestants? ings, and were the first to call attention to After the proclamation of dismissal, the inthe silent revolution which was going on. itiated enter the shrine of the goddess Thus Faustus the Manichean objected that through the veil, and engage in further dethe Christians of the Church were turning votional exercises, which are but dimly the martyrs into idols, whom they wor- hinted at. The idle attempt of Julian to shipped with vows like the pagans, and ap- reform paganism on the Christian model bepeased the shades with vows and meats. longs to this same period of transition, To which attack, St. Augustine has no bet-when the rival religions were endeavouring ter answer to make than to taunt the here- to strengthen themselves by borrowing, each, tics with their own superstition about a pur- the most attractive and popular features of gatory, and to say that mere likeness to the opposite system. the heathen was not in itself objectionable.† "As we have nuns," he says, "although the heathen had Vestals, so we may feast at the sepulchres of the martyrs, although the pagan custom has been to banquet near tombs." It may be thought, in the light of later events, that the good bishop's argument should have led him to an opposite inference, and that seeing one heathen custom after another, in rapid succession, adopted by professing Christians, he ought to have suspected the propriety of monastic vows, rather than have used them to justify paganized celebrations in honour of persons who

had suffered for their opposition to paganism.

Meanwhile, as the two great communities drew nearer to each other, and grew better acquainted, the pagans began to imitate the Christians, as well as the Christians to borrow ideas from the heathens. Thus Hadrian built temples to the god without a name. Alexander Severus had a domestic chapel (lararium), wherein he offered morning prayers before images of the good princes, and of such other holy souls as

Compare the tenderness of Protestant divines towards the vagaries of Revivalists, &c. Contra Faust. xx.

It is curious to observe how, during all the changes that followed up to modern times, the various countries and cities of the Roman world have preserved some traces of a local colouring and character in their several adaptations of their earlier to their later faith. Thus Ephesus and Athens have been, as one might expect, the earliest seats of that enthusiastic devotion to the Blessed Virgin Mary which has replaced the worship of the virgins Pallas and Artemis. And it is to Irene, an Athenian lady, that the Eastern Church is chiefly indebted for the preservation of image worship, which might probably have been finally abolished if she had not become empress. St. George, one of the most popular saints of the East, still connects with the neighbourhood of Joppa the slaughter of a monster and the rescue of a distressed damsel, just as in the old local legend of Perseus and Andromeda. Spain, early familiarized by Phoenician colonists with the union of cruelty and devotion, has in modern times made human burnt sacrifices the essence of her most imposing religious pageant, her most joyous

Histor. August. + Metem. xi.