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By a singular accident, the ruffian Commodus was personally less inimically disposed to the Christians than his wise and amiable father. His favourite concubine, Martia, in some manner connected with the Christians, mitigated the barbarity of his temper, and restored to the persecuted Christians a long and unbroken peace, which had been perpetually interrupted by the hostility of the populace, and the edicts of the government in the former reign. Christianity had no doubt been rigidly repelled from the precincts of the court during the life of Marcus, by the predominance of the philosophic faction. From this period, a Christian party occasionally appears in Rome many families of distinction and opulence professed Christian tenets, and it is sometimes found in connection with the imperial family. Still Rome, to the last, seems to have been the centre of the Pagan interest, though other causes will hereafter appear for this curious fact in the conflict of the two religions.

A.

Reign of

Severus.

D. 194.

to 210.

Caracalia.

Severus wielded the sceptre of the world with the vigour of the older empire. But his earlier years were occupied in the establishment of his power over the hostile factions of his competitors, and by his Eastern wars; his later by the settlement of the remote province of Britain (1). Severus was at one time the protector, at another the persecutor, of Christianity. Local circumstances appear to have influenced his conduct, on both occasions, to the Christian party. A Christian named Proculus, a dependent, probably, upon his favourite freed slave Evodus, had been so fortunate as to restore him to health by anointing him with oil, and was received into the imperial family, in which he retained his honourable situation till his death. Not improbably through the same connection, a Christian nurse and a Christian preceptor formed the disposition of the young Infancy of Caracalla ; and, till the natural ferocity of his character ripened under the fatal influence of jealous ambition, fraternal hatred, and unbounded power, the gentleness of his manners, and the sweetness of his temper, enchanted and attached his family, his friends, the senale, and the people of Rome. The people beheld with satisfaction the infant pupil of Christianity turning aside his head and weeping at the barbarity of the ordinary public spectacles, in which criminals were exposed to wild-beasts (2). The Christian interest at the court repressed the occasional outbursts of popular animosity: many Christians of rank and distinction enjoyed the avowed favour of the Emperor. Their security may partly be attributed to their calm determination not to mingle themselves up with the contending factions for the empire. During the conflict of parties, they had Peacefal refused to espouse the cause either of Niger or Albinus. Retired conduct of within themselves, they rendered their prompt and cheerful obe- tians. dience to the ruling Emperor. The implacable vengeance which

(1) Compare Tillemont, Hist. des Empereurs, (2) Spartian. Anton. Caracalla, p. 404. iii. part 1. p. 146.

the Chris

Persecu

tion in the East.

in the

West.

Severus wreaked on the senate, for their real or suspected inclination to the party of Albinus, his remorseless execution of so many of the noblest of the aristocracy, may have placed in a stronger light the happier fortune, and commended the unimpeachable loyalty, of the Christians. The provincial governors, as usual, reflected the example of the court; some adopted merciful expedients to avoid the necessity of carrying the laws into effect against those Christians who were denounced before their tribunals; while the more venal humanity of others extorted a considerable profit from the Christians for their security. The unlawful religion, in many places, purchased its peace at the price of a regular tax, which was paid by other illegal, and mostly infamous, professions. This traffic with the authorities was sternly denounced by some of the more ardent believers, as degrading to the religion, and an ignominious barter of the hopes and glories of martyrdom (1).

Such was the flourishing and peaceful state of Christianity during the early part of the reign of Severus. In the East, at a later period, A. C. 202. he embraced a sterner policy. During the conflict with Niger, the Samaritans had espoused the losing, the Jews the successful, party. The edicts of Severus were, on the whole, favourable to the Jews, but the prohibition to circumcise proselytes was re-enacted during his residence in Syria, in the tenth year of his reign. The same prohibition against the admission of new proselytes was extended to the Christians. But this edict may have been intended to allay the Christi violence of the hostile factions in Syria. Of the persecution under anity not persecuted Severus there are few, if any, traces in the West (2). It is confined to Syria, perhaps Cappadocia, to Egypt, and to Africa; and, in the latter provinces, appears as the act of hostile governors, proceeding upon the existing laws, rather than the consequence of any recent edict of the Emperor. The Syrian Eusebius may have exaggerated local acts of oppression, of which the sad traces were recorded in his native country, into a general persecution he admits that Probable Alexandria was the chief scene of Christian suffering. The date and the scene of the persecution may lend a clue to its origin. From Egypt. Syria, the Emperor, exactly at this time, proceeded to Egypt. He surveyed, with wondering interest, the monuments of Egyptian glory and of Egyptian superstition (3), the temples of Memphis, the Pyramids, the Labyrinth, the Memnonium. The plague alone prevented him from continuing his excursions into Ethiopia. The dark and relentless mind of Severus appears to have been strongly impressed with the religion of Serapis. In either character, as the

causes.

(1) Sed quid non timiditas persuadebit, quasi
et fugere scriptura permittat, et redimere præ-
cipiat."
.*** Nescio dolendum an erubescendum sit
cum in matricibus beneficiariorum et curiosorum,
inter tabernarios et lanios et fares balnearum et
aleones et lenones, Christiani quoque vectigales
continentur. Tertull. de fugâ, c. 13.

(2) Nous ne trouvons rien de considérable touchant les martyrs que la persécution de Sévère a pu faire à Rome et en Italie. Tillemont. St. Andeole, and the other martyrs in Gaul (Tille mont, p. 160.), are of more than suspicious au thority.

(3) Spartian. Hist. Aug. p. 553.

great Pantheistic deity, which absorbed the attributes and functions of all the more ancient gods of Egypt, or in his more limited character, as the Pluto of their mythology, the lord of the realm of departed spirits, Serapis (1) was likely to captivate the imagination of Severus, and to suit those gloomier moods in which it delighted in brooding over the secrets of futurity; and, having realised the proud prognostics of greatness, which his youth had watched with hope, now began to dwell on the darker omens of decline and dissolution (2). The hour of imperial favour was likely to be seized by the Egyptian priesthood to obtain the mastery, and to wreak their revenge on this new foreign religion, which was making such rapid progress throughout the province, and the whole of Africa. Whether or not the Emperor actually authorised the persecution, his countenance would strengthen the Pagan interest, and encourage the obsequious Præfect (3) in adopting violent measures. Lætus would be vindicating the religion of the Emperor in asserting the superiority of Serapis; and the superiority of Serapis could be by no means so effectually asserted, as by the oppression of his most powerful adversaries. Alexandria was the ripe and pregnant soil of religious, feud and deadly animosity. The hostile parties which divided the city-the Jews, the Pagans, and the Christians-though perpetually blending and modifying each other's doctrines, and forming schools in which Judaism allegorised itself into Platonism, Platonism having assimilated itself to the higher Egyptian mythology, soared into Christianity, and a Platonic Christianity, from a religion, became a mystic philosophy-awaited, nevertheless, the signal for persecution, and for license to draw off in sanguinary factions, and to settle the controversies of the schools by bloody tumults in the streets (4). The perpetual syncretism of opinions instead of leading to peace and charity, seemed to inflame the deadly animosity; and the philosophical spirit which attempted to blend all the higher doctrines into a lofty Eclectic system, had no effect in harmonising the minds of the different sects to mutual toleration and amity. It was now the triumph of Paganism. The controversy with Christianity was carried on by burning their priests and torturing their virgins, until the catechetical or elementary schools of learning, by which the Alexandrian Christians trained up their pupils for the reception of their more mysterious doctrines, were deserted, the young Origen alone laboured, with indefatigable and successful ac

(1) Compare de Guigniaut, Serapis et son Origine.

(2) Spartian had the advantage of consulting the autobiography of the Emperor Severus. Had time hut spared us the original, and taken the whole Augustan history in exchange!

(3) His name was Lætus. Euseb. Eccl. Hist.

vi. 2.

(4) Leonidas, the father of Origen, perished in this persecution. Origen was only kept away

from joining him in his imprisenment, and if possible, in his martyrdom, by the prudent stratagem of his mother, who concealed all his clothes. The boy of seventeen sent a letter to his father, entreating him not to allow his parental affection for himself and his six brothers to stand in his way of obtaining the martyr's crown. Euseb. vi. 2. The property of Leonidas was confiscated to the imperial treasury. Ibid.

Africa.

African

anity.

tivity, to supply the void caused by the general desertion of the persecuted teachers (1).

The African Præfect followed the example of Lætus in Egypt. In no part of the Roman empire had Christianity taken more deep and permanent root than in the province of Africa, then crowded with rich and populous cities, and forming, with Egypt, the granary of the Western world; but which many centuries of Christian feud, Vandal invasion, and Mahometan barbarism, have blasted to a thinly-peopled desert. Up to this period, this secluded region had gone on advancing in its uninterrupted course of civilisation. Since the battle of Munda, the African province had stood aloof from the tumults and desolation which attended the changes in the imperial dynasty. As yet it had raised no competitor for the empire, though Severus, the ruling monarch, was of African descent. The single legion, which was considered adequate to protect its remote tranquillity from the occasional incursions of the Moorish tribes, had been found sufficient for its purpose. The Paganism of the African cities was probably weaker than in other parts of the empire. It had no ancient and sacred associations with national pride. The new cities had raised new temples, to gods foreign to the region. The religion of Carthage (2), if it had not entirely perished with the final destruction of the city, maintained but a feeble hold upon the Italianised inhabitants. The Carthage of the empire was a Roman city. If Christianity tended to mitigate the fierce spirit of the inhabitants of these burning regions, it acquired itself a depth and empassioned vehemence, which perpetually broke through all restraints of moderation, charity, and peace. From Tertullian to Augustine, the climate seems to be working into the language, into the essence of Christianity. Here disputes madden into feuds; and feuds, which, in other countries, were allayed by time, or died away of themselves, grew into obstinate, implacable, and irreconcileable factions.

African Christianity had no communion with the dreamy and Christi speculative genius of the East. It sternly rejected the wild and poetic impersonations, the daring cosmogonies, of the Gnostic sects it was severe, simple, practical, in its creed; it governed by its strong and imperious hold upon the feelings, by profound and agitating emotion. It eagerly received the rigid asceticism of the antimaterialist system, while it disdained the fantastic theories by which it accounted for the origin of evil. The imagination had another office than that of following out its own fanciful creations ; it spoke directly to the fears and to the passions; it delighted in realising the terrors of the final judgment; in arraying, in the most appalling language, the gloomy mysteries of future retribution.

Euseb. Eccles. Hist. vi. 2.

Compare Munter, Relig. der Carthager.
The worship of the Dea cœlestis, the Queen of
Heaven, should perhaps be excepted, See, for-

ward, the reign of Elagabalus. Even in the fifth century the Queen of Heaven, according to Salvian (de Gubernatione Dei, lib. viii.), shared the worship of Carthage with Christ.

This character appears in the dark splendour of Tertullian's writings; engages him in contemptuous and relentless warfare against the Gnostic opinions, and their latest and most dangerous cham→ pion, Marcion; till, at length, it hardens into the severe, yet simpler, enthusiasm of Montanism. It appears allied with the stern assertion of ecclesiastical order and sacerdotal domination, in the earnest and zealous Cyprian; it is still manifestly working, though in a chastened and loftier form, in the deep and impassioned, but comprehensive, mind of Augustine.

ism.

Tertullian alone belongs to the present period, and Tertullian is, perhaps, the representative and the perfect type of this Africanism. It is among the most remarkable illustrations of the secret unily which connected the whole Christian world, that opinions first propagated on the shores of the Euxine found their most vigorous antagonist on the coast of Africa, while a new and fervid enthusiasm, which arose in Phrygia, captivated the kindred spirit of Tertullian. Montanism harmonised with African Christianity in the simplicity Montanof its creed, which did not depart from the predominant form of Christianity; in the extreme rigour of its fasts (for while Gnosticism outbid the religion of Jesus and his Apostles, Montanism outbid the Gnostics in its austerities (1); it admitted marriage as a necessary evil, but it denounced second nuptials as an inexpiable sin) (2); above all, in its resolving religion into inward emotion. There is a singular correspondence between Phrygian Heathenism and the Phrygian Christianity of Montanus and his followers. The Orgiasm, the inward rapture, the working of a divine influence upon the soul, till it was wrought up to a state of holy frenzy, had continually sent forth the priests of Cybele, and females of a highly excitable temperament, into the Western provinces (3); whom the vulgar beheld with awe, as manifestly possessed by the divinity; whom the philosophic party, equally mistaken, treated with contempt, as imposters. So, with the followers of Montanus (and women were his most ardent votaries), with Prisca and Maximilla, the apostles of his sect, the pure, and meek, and peaceful spirit of Christianity became a wild, a visionary, a frantic enthusiasm: it worked paroxysms of intense devotion; it made the soul partake of all the fever of phy

(1) The Western churches were, as yet, generally averse to the excessive fasting subsequent ly introduced to so great an extent, by the monastic spirit. See the curious vision of Attalus, the martyr of Lyons, in which a fellow-prisoner, Alcibiades, who had long lived on bread and water alone, was reproved for not making free use of God's creatures; and thus giving offence to the church. The churches of Lyons and Vienne having been founded from Phrygia, were anxious to avoid the least imputation of Montanism. Euseb. Eccl. Hist. v. 3.

(2) The prophetesses abandoned their husbands, according to Apollonius apud Euseb. v.

18.

(3) The effect of natural character and tempe rament on the opinions and form of religion did not escape the observation of the Christian writers. There is a curious passage on the Phrygian national character in Socrates, H. E. iv. 28.--"The Phrygians are a chaste and temperate people; they seldom swear; the Scythians and Thracians are choleric; the Eastern nations more disposed to immorality; the Paphlagonians and Phrygians to neither: they do not care for the theatre or the games; prostitution is unusual." Their suppressed passions seem to have broken out at all periods in religious emotions.

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