CHAPTER XIII. DEBASEMENT OF THE NEW POWER WHEN SEIZED BY RULERS.
Cost of making the New Ideas triumphant—Change in Character in the hands of Kings, Courtiers, and Profitmongers—Emancipations become a matter of Policy and Profit—Repudiation of Principles of Fraternity and Equality—Horrors of Introduction of Proletarianism.
We have seen, in the two last chapters, what terrible tribulations it cost the early Christians to obtain admission into the world for the doctrines of liberty, fraternity, and equality,—we ought rather, perhaps, to say, for the more comprehensive doctrines of justice and humanity, upon which the others must be based to be real and enduring. For upwards of three hundred years these poor Christians were the victims of an untiring persecution, which smote them without pity and without remorse, in every part of the wide-extended Roman empire. We have seen how, at ten distinct epochs, by the edicts of as many emperors, this persecution burst upon them with such signal and surpassing fury that, to this day, it seems almost a miracle that the sect was not utterly extirpated. More marvellous still, we find them growing and extending themselves after every persecution, till at length, under Constantine, they have become so numerous and formidable that persecution may no longer be safely tried. Indeed, force would no longer prevail; so fraud must be resorted to. The sham conversion of Constantine and his courtiers was the fraud had recourse to. Those hypocrites suddenly pretended to a new light. Constantine made his own conversion quite a supernatural affair; he pretended to have seen a brilliant apparition in the heavens, presenting a cross with this inscription, “In hoc signo vinces,”—“In this sign thou shalt conquer.” His courtiers and expectants, of course, partook of the imperial illumination; they discovered with miraculous haste, if not by miraculous agency, the divine authority of the Christian religion. By embracing it in name and profession they wisely calculated they could more easily extinguish it in substance and in practice than by any other means. In the first place, it would detach the mere political Christians—i.e., the selfish and ambitious ones—from the real ones, the honest, unsuspecting mass. In the next place, it would conciliate the former by throwing open to them the offices and honours of the state; and, at the same time, flatter the multitude by the seeming conversion of an emperor and his court to their religion. Above all, it would have the advantage of pricking up the Christian organization (which, up to that epoch, was a veritable democratic organization) by detaching from the multitude all their leading spiritual and political chiefs, who would thenceforward be sure to have one doctrine for the rich and another for the poor, in order to keep the doors of preferment open for themselves. Such, at least, was the effect of the legal establishment of Christianity; and they know but little of men and of politics who would attribute that event to other motives or causes.
In truth, the progress of real Christianity—the Christianity taught by Christ and his disciples—received its death-blow from its legal establishment by Constantine. As long as it had the enemies of human rights for its foes, it attracted to itself the friends of human rights; but the moment it became a state religion—the religion of courts and courtiers—the religion of emperors and aristocrats—the religion of ambitious priests and sanguinary soldiers—the religion, in short, of the rich and powerful,—from that moment it repelled sincere believers from all communion with the church. It either plunged them into despair for humanity, or else forced them, by their necessities and passions, to become servile and hypocritical professors of what in their hearts they despised, as being a libel upon the Redeemer and a fraud upon humanity. It was, in effect, paganism under a new name and with somewhat new forms.
Altogether the propagation of Christianity assumed a new aspect after it became the religion of the Roman empire. Pride and hypocrisy took the place of humility and zeal. Ambition, corruption, and servility entirely supplanted in the hearts of men the virtues which the Gospel had hitherto consecrated in the eyes of Christians. Not a shred of democracy, not a vestige of fraternity nor of the love of liberty and equality, could survive in a religion patronised by courts, professed by its parasites and prostitutes, made a stepping-stone for the purposes of lucre and ambition, guarded and defended by prætorian bands, and surrounded with the munificence and corruption of imperial power.
The effects of the change soon became visible and palpable to all. During the three first centuries every extension of the Christian propagandism was followed by the most beneficial social consequences. It brought rich and poor, gentle and simple, high and low, learned and unlearned, Jew and Gentile, into terms of the closest and most cordial communionship. All distinctions of wealth and talent, of rank, station, office, intellectual and personal endowments—all, all sank before the beneficent spell of a religion which declared all men equal and brothers, and which promised to all a heaven both here and hereafter, upon the sole condition of keeping its commandments and carrying into effect its precepts. In the face of such a religion, no man who believed in it could be a tyrant; no man would be a slave a moment longer than he could help. “My service,” says Christ, “is perfect freedom.” Thus was it understood by the Christians of the first three centuries. Under the Heaven-bred influence of the new dispensation, masters manumitted their slaves in thousands. The slaves so manumitted loved their masters to distraction, and would die rather than betray or disoblige them. The rich converts divided their substance freely with the poor; the poor as freely bestowed their services, and administered comforts to the rich, renouncing or losing all feelings of envy and distrust towards them. Everywhere collections were made amongst the brethren for distressed members—for members even of churches or congregations in far-off countries; and these collections were always superabundant, because from the heart, and inspired by a power greater than the power of pelf. In many of the primitive congregations a real equality prevailed amongst all the members—a veritable reciprocity of benefactions and sacrifices—a bona fide community of goods and of friendly offices.
This it was which gave such an extraordinary impulse to Christianity at its first outset:—the total absence of selfishness; the perfect sincerity of the members; their unbounded faith in their new religion and in one another; their sovereign contempt for worldly advantages obtained by trickery and fraud; and their firm belief that it needed only their example and precept to change the face of entire humanity, and assimilate the rest of the world to themselves in virtue and innate happiness. In a word, they abounded and superabounded in the three cardinal virtues—
FAITH, HOPE, AND CHARITY!
faith in their principles—a perfect hope of seeing them realised—and a charity prepared to make the most unbounded allowances for the weaknesses and follies of all who might oppose themselves to the new dispensation. No wonder, with such principles, they accomplished such marvels.
But all was changed with the change that took place under Constantine. Masters, it is true, still continued to manumit their slaves; but, alas! it was in a very different spirit, and for very different purposes from those which actuated the true or early Christians. It appears from the concurrent testimonies of the Fathers of the church, and of legal documents still extant, that vast numbers of slaves were manumitted, in the first three centuries, through the pious zeal of their masters; and that those slaves and their progeny fell into great poverty and want through the absence of any legal provision for them, to compensate for the loss of their masters’ protection and support. The early Christian missionaries, who caused their liberation from slavery, never, of course, contemplated such a result. They looked to a complete renovation of society, which would dispense the blessings of creation to all God’s creatures alike, according to their services and deserts. They never imagined a state of things in which to be free would imply freedom only to starve. Yet such, unfortunately, was the result they unconsciously brought about. The myriads of manumitted slaves, once deprived of their masters’ homes and protection, had thenceforward no other means of providing a subsistence, but to betake themselves to one or other of the four courses indicated in our first and second chapters. They must either find work as hired labourers, or they must beg, or they must steal, or they (if females) must turn to prostitution. They must, to repeat the Guizot classification of proletarianism, become
LABOURERS, BEGGARS, THIEVES, OR PROSTITUTES
And that is just what happened. All that could find work, and were inclined to work, became labourers for hire; others took to begging; a third class became thieves and robbers; and the unfortunates of the weaker sex as naturally and as necessarily betook themselves to prostitution.
The majority of both sexes, of course, took to hired labour, when they could get it, as the safest occupation. Having no land nor capital wherewith to turn their freedom to account for their own advantage, they had no alternative but to find employers, or else die of hunger, unless they betook themselves to the other courses adverted to.
Here began that frightful system of wages-slavery, so often adverted to in the progress of this inquiry—that desolating system which has since extended itself all over the civilized world, and which has converted three-fourths of Christendom into more degraded and unhappy beings than were the ancient chattel-slaves of the pagans or the negro-slaves who were in the Southern States of the American republic.
Constantine’s courtier-“Christians” and capitalists were not slow in availing themselves of this new form of slavery. They soon discovered that it was (to them) a cheaper slavery than the old one. They discovered that an “independent labourer” might be made, by the fear of starvation, to do more work than a chattel-slave ever did under the fear of the lash; and with this advantage in their own favour, that he might be turned off and left to starve when there was no work for him; whereas they would have to keep the chattel-slave, and keep him well too, whether there was work for him or not.
But as we have already, in a former chapter, so largely dwelt on the comparative merits of the two kinds of slavery, it is unnecessary to repeat here the signal advantages which landlords and capitalists derive from wages-slavery in comparison with the other. At any rate, the capitalists or proprietors, under Constantine and his successors, must have been well aware of them; for we find that, instead of compelling the manumitted slaves and their progeny to return to the condition of chattel-slavery, they greatly added to their numbers by still further manumissions, only accompanying them with very stringent laws and regulations to keep them, now “independent labourers,” as effectually under their thumb as when they had been nominal bondsmen.
Had the primitive Christians foreseen the terrible abuse their benevolent labours were destined to give rise to, it may be questioned whether they would not have abandoned their mission, rather than risk the superinducing of proletarianism, with all its horrors, upon the system they sought to explode—the system of chattel-slavery. It was not in order to fill the world with famishing beggars, with necessitous thieves and prostitutes, and, above all, with myriads of honest producers starving in the midst of their own productions,—it was not for such unholy purposes that the early Christians divized the régime of fraternity and equality; yet all the traditions that remain to us of Christian propagandism prove unmistakably that such were its effects, even before the downfall of the Roman empire, to which event it, in our opinion, in no small degree contributed.
Indeed, Rome was already overrun with paupers and fugitive slaves, and Italy with thieves and vagabonds, before Constantine found it politic to make Christianity a state religion. But, lest we might be suspected of giving scope to invention, or of indulging in idle imaginings, on a subject so fraught with interest to mankind, we shall here use the authority of a profound antiquarian to illustrate this critical period of history, when the great transition from chattel-slavery to proletarianism was effected. Let our readers fail not, in perusing it, to compare it with what we have previously laid down in respect of the condition of slaves under the old pagan system. We quote from the learned work of M. Granier de Cassagnac, entitled “Histoire des Classes Ouvrières et Bourgeoises”:—
“Things remained in this state, that is to say, the poor, still far from numerous, had no hospital or asylum in which to take refuge during the first ages of the vulgar era. The Christians dispensed alms freely and bountifully, nourishing the necessitous poor out of their substance. But they were not yet masters; they were still a minority of the population. They could not act collectively, publicly, or in a corporate or legal capacity, but only individually and in an isolated manner, each on his own account. The pagan clergy, on the other hand, who were in possession of immense territorial estates, which proceeded partly from permanent grants or donations disbursed from the imperial treasury, and dating as far back as the age of Numa (who had originated them), and partly from innumerable inheritances and legacies which had subsequently fallen to them, never had any idea of succouring the poor, or of organizing any system of public charity; and when, towards the close of the fourth century, Symmachus addressed to Valentinian II., to Theodosius, and to Arcadius those two celebrated letters on the pagan worship which was falling into decay, in which he complains so bitterly of the emperors having confiscated the property of the priests and the vestals, St. Ambrose, in the first of his two answers to Symmachus addressed to Valentinian II., contrasts with the avarice of the pagan clergy, who kept all their riches to themselves, the self-denial of the Christian church, which possessed nothing (as St. Ambrose expresses it) but its faith, and the whole of whose goods were the property of the poor.
“However, although it is certain the number of permanent poor or professional beggars was not very numerous up to the beginning of the third century, there occurred terrible epochs when this number was fearfully augmented. It was in years of famine—in years when the harvests failed in Sicily or in Africa, or when the two corporations of shippers and bakers—one charged with superintending the importations and the other with the distribution of bread and flour—were suddenly brought to a standstill, that occurred those horrible famines from which the superior administration of modern times preserves the people of our times; it was then that all the slaves of Italy, no longer fed by their masters, were seen flocking to Rome to demand bread; but as this increase of population soon threatened Rome itself with starvation, they were expelled the city upon a given day, to go and die where they might. This was the ordinary course adopted by Roman administrations in critical times; and Symmachus, who was prefect of Rome about the year 383, wrote thus:—‘We fear the total failure of provisions at Rome, even after having chased away all the stranger-population which took refuge amongst us, and which the city subsisted.’
“On their side, the Christians inveighed loudly against the burgesses of Rome for refusing to divide their superfluity with the strangers who sought relief within her walls. St. Ambrose, who makes mention of this expulsion in several parts of his works, inveighs indignantly against this want of feeling on the part of the pagans. ‘Those,’ says he, ‘who banish the poor strangers from Rome are much to blame. It is inhuman to repulse a fellow-creature at the moment he craves succour at your hands. Brute beasts do not treat their kind so: ’tis only man that behaves so to man.’ Sometimes the pagans themselves protested against the expulsion of strangers when famine threatened the towns they had fled from.”
This, it will be observed, took place after the legal establishment of Christianity under Constantine. M. de Cassagnac continues:—
“For the rest, it is manifest from divers writings of the third and fourth centuries that, as soon as the charity of the early Christians became known, the poor gathered in groups around the churches. At Rome they congregated near the church of the Apostles, in the Vatican. It was there they received a diurnal distribution of alms, as may be seen (amongst other proofs) in the works of Ammian Marcellinus, and in the poem of Prudentius against Symmachus. Moreover, it seems all manner of imposition used to be committed by loose characters to surprise the compassion of the Christian bishops. Here is the way St. Ambrose expresses himself on this subject, in the second book of his treatise on the duties of ministers:—‘We must fix bounds to our liberality, that it may not be abused or rendered useless. The priests, in particular, ought to be very circumspect on this head, that they may proportion their alms to the justice of the case, and not to the importunity of the claimant. Never did the greediness of beggars reach such a pitch. Able-bodied men present themselves, strolling about for the mere pleasure of vagabondizing, and who would absorb the relief due only to the veritable poor. There are some of them who feign to be in debt: let this point be strictly verified. Others declare they have been despoiled by robbers: let exact information be taken of these persons,’ &c. The scandal given by these fraudulent beggars and their impositions went to such a length, that the Emperor Valentinian II. made a law, dated from Padua, in 382, expelling from Rome all who were not beggars really incapable of gaining a livelihood.
“The law of Valentinian is very curious, in so far as it contains certain data and precise details illustrative of the state of pauperism in Italy towards the close of the fourth century. We see by it, for example, that the greater part of the beggars congregated at Rome were either runaway slaves or serfs whom the culture of the fields could not supply with employment. They precipitated themselves into Rome, which was then the largest city in the world, and where, better than anywhere else, they might escape the vigilant search of their masters.... Justinian re-enacts pretty nearly the same law as Valentinian—only with this difference,—that he condemns all sturdy beggars to labour on the public works.
“The whole of this vast redundancy of beggars took place in the third and fourth centuries. It seems they had interpreted literally St. Jerome’s character of Christians, when he calls them, in his 26th Epistle to Pammachius, the subordinates and candidates of the poor. The predominant historic and social fact of the fourth century is the outrageous multiplication of proletarians, and (after innumerable failures of private charity) the creation and organization of a grand system of public charity to relieve the wants of the poor, and to provide asylums for old age, for the infirm, and for deserted children. This eleemosynary system, which the lapse of time has but more largely developed, and which is still the only palliative resorted to by modern societies to cure, or rather to bandage, the wounds of civilization, thus owes its origin to Christianism.
“Seeing that antiquity, during a period of more than 4,000 years, had not emancipated so many slaves as to produce any noticeable or considerable mass of proletarians, and that in less than 400 years Christianism had so multiplied them, that regular society was, as it were, choked and perilled by them, one would be tempted to believe that Christianity made a dead set against slavery, and went to work by grand essays of systematic enfranchisement. That, however, would be an error. In general, Christianism did not meddle with the positive law: it left to Cæsar what belonged to Cæsar. St. Paul wrote to the slaves of Ephesus that the new religion made no change in their duties as slaves. Nevertheless, Christianity created, alongside the old moral world, a new moral world, into which it admitted all who volunteered to accept its conditions. It was by this attractive power that Christianism drew over to it, in succession, all the members of pagan society; and the magnificent application that it gave to its ideas of charity, fraternity, and love was the principal cause which indirectly determined so many emancipations, and which gave birth to such a host of proletarians.”
