CHAPTER IV
[1] The Farmer's Calendar, given in the accompanying Book of Readings (R. 14), illustrates very well the gods and sacrifices for one phase of Roman life. Petronius, in his Satires, says, "Our country is so full of divinities that it is much easier to find a god than a man."
[2] "The chief objects of pagan religion were to foretell the future, to explain the universe, to avert calamity, and to obtain the assistance of the gods. They contained no instruments of moral teaching analogous to our institution of preaching, or to the moral preparation for the reception of the sacrament, or to confession, or to the reading of the Bible, or to religious education, or to united prayer for spiritual benefits. To make men virtuous was no more the function of the priest than of the physician." (Lecky, W. E. H., History of European Morals, chap, iv.)
[3] Seneca (4-65 A.D.), the tutor of the Emperor Nero, and the Greek freedman Epictetus (d. 100 A.D.) both expounded Stoicism at Rome during the first Christian century, and the Thoughts of the Emperor Marcus Aurelius (161-180 A.D.) represents one of the finest expositions of the application of this philosophy to the problems of human life.
[4] See Proverbs, xxxi, for a good statement of the ancient Hebrew ideal of womanhood.
[5] This collective term is applied to the first five books of the Old Testament, and includes Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy. These five books form a wonderful collection of the historical and legal material relating to the wanderings and experiences and practices of the people.
[6] Chapter 1 of the Gospel according to Saint Matthew gives, in detail (1-16), the genealogy of Jesus, concluding with the following verse:
"17. So all the generations from Abraham to David are fourteen generations; and from David until the carrying away into Babylon are fourteen generations; and from the carrying away into Babylon unto Christ are fourteen generations."
[7] To many of these churches he wrote a series of epistles. These constitute a little more than one fourth of the New Testament. See accompanying Book of Readings (or Romans, I, 1-17) for the introductory part of Paul's Epistle to the Romans.
[8] "Its missionaries were Jews, a turbulent race, not to be assimilated, and as much despised and hated by pagan Rome as by the mediaeval Christians. Wherever it attracted any notice, therefore, it seems to have been regarded as some rebel faction of the Jews, gone mad upon some obscure point of the national superstition—an outcast sect of an outcast race." (Adams, G. B., Civilization during the Middle Ages, p. 39.)
[9] "Starting from an insignificant province, from a despised race, proclaimed by a mere handful of ignorant workmen, demanding self-control and renunciation before unheard of, certain to arouse in time powerful enemies in the highly cultivated and critical society which it attacked, the odds against it were tremendous." (Ibid., p. 41.)
[10] "It is not easy to imagine how, in the face of an Asia Minor, a Greece, an Italy the Roman split up into a hundred small republics; of a Gaul, a Spain, an Africa, an Egypt, in possession of their old national institutions, the apostles could have succeeded, or even how their project could have been started. The unity of the Empire was a condition precedent of all religious proselytism on a grand scale if it was to place itself above the nationalities." (Renan, E., Hibbert Lectures, 1880; Influence of Rome on the Christian Church.)
[11] In Acts xxv, 1-12, it is recorded that the Apostle Paul, accused by the Jews and virtually on trial for his life before the provincial governor Festus, fell back on his Roman citizenship and successfully "appealed to Caesar." (See footnote 3, page 57.)
[12] "The miracle of miracles, greater than dried-up seas and cloven rocks, greater than the dead rising again to life, was when the Augustus on his throne, Pontiff of the gods of Rome, himself a god to the subjects of Rome, bent himself to become the worshiper of a crucified provincial of his Empire." (Freeman, E. A., Periods of European History, p. 67.)
[13] In 319 and 326 the clergy were exempted from all public burdens, and only the poor were to be admitted to the clergy. In 343 the clergy were exempted "from public burdens and from every disquietude of civil office." In 377 all clergy were exempted from personal taxes. (See R. 38.)
[14] From the Roman world the idea has spread, through the Greek Catholic Church, to Greece, parts of the Balkans, and Russia; through the Roman Catholic Church to all western Europe and the two Americas; and through the Protestant churches which sprang from the Roman Catholic by secession, and the Mohammedan faith, to include almost all the world. Only among uncivilized tribes and in Asia do we find any great number of fundamentally different religious conceptions.
[15] Paul to the Romans (x, 9) stated the fundamentals of belief as follows: "If thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved."
[16] M. Boissier. La Fin du Paganisme, vol. 1, p. 200.
[17] Justin Martyr (105?-167), a former Greek teacher and philosopher, continued to follow his profession, wear his Greek philosopher's garb, and held that the teachings of Christianity were already contained in Greek philosophy, and that Plato and Socrates were Christians before the coming of the Christian faith.
Clement (c. 160-c. 215), the successor of Pantaeus as head of the catechetical school at Alexandria, held to the harmony of the Gospels with philosophy, and that "Plato was Moses Atticized."
Origen (c. 185-c. 254), a pupil and successor of Clement, and the most learned of all the early Christian Fathers, labored to harmonize the Christian faith with Greek learning and philosophy, and did much to formulate the dogmas of the early Church.
Saint Basil (331-379) tried to allay the rising prejudice against pagan learning, and to show the helpfulness to the Christian life of the Greek literature and philosophy.
Gregory of Nazianzus (c. 330-c. 390) was filled with indignation and protested loudly at the closing of the pagan schools to Christians by the edict of the Emperor Julian, in 362.
[18] Tertullian (c. 150-230) had been well educated in Greek literature and philosophy, and had attained distinction as a lawyer.
Saint Jerome (c. 340-420) was saturated with pagan learning, but later advised against it.
Saint Augustine (354-430), the master mind among the Latin Fathers, was for years a teacher of oratory and rhetoric in Roman schools, and had written part of an encyclopaedia on the liberal arts before his conversion. Many others who became prominent in the Western Church had in their earlier life been teachers in the Roman higher schools.
[19] Dreaming that he had died and gone to Heaven, he was asked, "Who art thou?" On replying, "A Christian," he heard the awful judgment, "It is false: thou art no Christian; thou art a Ciceronian; where the treasure is, there the heart is also."
[20] The knowledge of Greek remained alive longer in Ireland than anywhere else in the western world, being known there as late as the seventh century. Greek was also preserved in parts of Spain for two centuries after it had died out in Italy.
[21] In the West there was no other great city than Rome. At the period of its maximum greatness, in the first century B.C., it was a city of approximately 450,000 people.
[22] After many struggles and conflicts between the Bishops of Constantinople, Alexandria, and Rome, the Bishop of Rome was finally recognized by the second great Church Council, held at Constantinople in 381, as the head of the entire Church (Canon 3), corresponding to the Emperor on the political side of the dying Empire. The separation of the eastern and western churches was rapid after this time. (See Map, p. 103.)
[23] The word pagan as applied to unbeliever illustrates this progress of the Church, being derived from the Latin paganus, meaning countryman, villager, rustic.
[24] See the accompanying Book of Readings for a drawing and detailed explanation of the monastery of Saint Gall, in Switzerland (R. 69). This was one of the most important monasteries of the Middle Ages.