CHAPTER XXIV.
“Yet dread me from my living tomb,
Ye bigot slaves of haughty Rome.”
Scott.
Adonijah and Lucia Claudia remained in the environs of Jerusalem with the Church and its apostolic bishop, Simeon, for many years. They were the parents of a lovely family, who were growing up in the nurture and fear of the Lord, when the Roman brethren, being desirous of sending gifts to the Hebrew Christians, wished Adonijah to come to Rome to receive their bounty for those impoverished children of Abraham who had received the faith of Jesus. The fulfilment of the prophecies respecting the dispersion of the Jews had probably occasioned that conversion among the Israelites spoken of by Hegesippus, the earliest historian of the Church. There is reason to believe that these persons retained their ancient customs as far as a people could retain them who were under the Gentile yoke of bondage, though they received Christ as their High Priest, Redeemer, and Divine Ruler. Attachment to the customs of their forefathers, and the example of Christ, “a minister of the circumcision,” made the Hebrew Christians still cling to their ancestral ritual. This adherence would in time have created a bar between them and their Gentile brethren, if it had been suffered to continue; but the revolts of the unbelieving Jews in the reigns of Trajan and Adrian caused this separation to cease. No Israelite after those wars was suffered to remain in Palestine, so that when Jerusalem was rebuilt under the heathen name of Ælia, the Christian Church established there was no longer composed of converted Jews. After a time the dispersed and scattered tribes of Israel might purchase from the Roman soldiers once a year the mournful privilege of weeping over the solitary foundation-stone of the temple, but poverty and slavery left few to avail themselves of the opportunity in that age. The custom has never ceased; it has been transmitted from generation to generation, and the nineteenth century still witnesses the affecting commemorative visit of the Jew to the desecrated shrine where his forefathers once worshipped Jehovah. He still looks forward to the promises, and fondly hopes to see the temple crown once more the holy mount; and he will not be deceived, for the builders will have then received the chief Corner-stone they rejected, and will bear his seal on their foreheads, his name on their hearts.
Nearly two thousand years of woe and degradation then lay in dark and direful perspective between the children of the dispersion and the dawn of those better things—those political privileges which the Christian legislature of our own land has accorded to them. Selfish hearts would churlishly deny to the Jew his newly granted civic rights, but they might as well shut out the light of heaven, or forbid the wind to blow, as withhold the blessings God has promised to his long-suffering people, whose restoration and final conversion is clearly decreed, and foretold by Isaiah and all the Jewish prophets.
The converted Hebrews, always working with their hands, possessed none of the commercial privileges of their unconverted brethren. These poor saints when thrust out of the synagogues were subjected to much persecution in every place, and the collection made for their relief in the metropolis of the world would provide them the means of paying the heavy tribute imposed upon them by the Roman governors. The Church of Jerusalem was too poor to aid them; the descendants of some of the apostles were tillers of the soil, who literally earned their bread in the sweat of their brows.
Many years had elapsed since Adonijah and his wife had quitted imperial Rome. The magnificent Coliseum, planned by a Christian architect martyred by Vespasian, and built by captive Jews destined to die at its dedication, shone brilliantly in the mid-day sun in its youthful magnificence; not, as now, hoary with centuries of age, save where the mantling ivy covers its ruined grandeur with a veil of beauty. A solitary subterranean epitaph records that Gaudentius, whose genius raised this mightiest monument of heathen power and heathen cruelty, died Christ’s soldier and servant, but leaves his history untold, the question how a Christian became the architect of such a structure undecided. Perhaps he was condemned like the Jewish masons to build his own arena of death and martyrdom—the first, not the last, Christian who suffered on that spot, in the mystic Babylon, for the witness of Jesus.[[25]] Adonijah regarded with mournful interest on the beautiful arch of Titus, and the emblems of the conqueror’s devastating victory and the desolation of Judea and Jerusalem. Nearly nineteen centuries have passed since the erection of a monument, beneath which no Jew’s foot has ever been known to tread, but which stands fair, glistening, and fresh in our own age as it did then, when his eyes first looked upon it. He saw in the Temple of Peace the seven-branched candlestick, the golden vine, and the splendid vessels formerly used in the temple service, and sighed over the degradation of the fallen Jewish Church. He looked upwards, nevertheless, and through the dim and shadowy future beheld the mystic dawning of that day when the dispersed of Israel would look upon Him with sorrow and contrition whom they pierced, and should be restored again to their own glorious land. He turned to Lucia Claudia as he quitted the temple, and said, “Why should I mourn, my wife, for these things, since the types and shadows of the Mosaic dispensation have been accomplished and fulfilled in Christ, and like Symeon, having seen his salvation, I am ready to depart in peace?”
The meeting between Julius the Presbyter and his sister was extremely moving. He had indeed become a vigilant and faithful minister of Christ to whom the Greek name of Theodatus had been given by the brethren as a mark of their general estimation of his piety. From him Lucia heard with painful interest of the arraignment of the Vestal College, and the danger that impended over Cornelia Cossi, the Maxima, or chief vestal priestess. No one knew why Domitian in his quality of Pontifex Maximus (head priest of Jupiter) chose to institute a prosecution which darkened the fame and endangered the lives of these unfortunate priestesses. This year he had opened his public career of crime by condemning the Consul Glabrio to combat with a lion in the arena; that valiant magistrate had however redeemed his life by slaying his brute assailant, and was banished; but Cornelia Maxima and her sister vestals found in Domitian a more incensed and formidable foe than Glabrio. Lucia obtained permission to visit the Chief Priestess in the prison to which the injustice of a heathen tyrant had condemned a pure and lofty-minded Roman lady. Time had not deprived Cornelia Maxima of her majesty of form and stature; what she had lost in youthful charms she had gained in dignity, and when she rose from her recumbent posture on the hard pavement of the Tullianum, and cast an indignant glance upon her uninvited visitor, Lucia Claudia beheld in the condemned prisoner the very Cornelia of Nero’s reign who had urged her sovereign to arraign and punish the lapsed vestal, the wife of his guilty favourite. She remembered this, but not with anger, as she approached the unhappy Cornelia, and throwing her arms about her neck assured her that Lucia Claudia still loved her, and believed her innocent. Cornelia attempted to disengage herself from the embrace, but she yielded at last to the sweet influence of those womanly tears and caresses, and wept long and passionately on Lucia’s friendly bosom. She had never shed a tear during the course of the prosecution, and when once she became calm she wept no more; no, not when she descended into her living grave in the sight of the awe-struck Roman people.
After some minutes she answered the sympathizing inquiries of her long-lost friend with placid dignity. “Lucia Claudia, I was formerly tried on this false charge and acquitted;[[26]] why the accusation has been repeated I do not know, but Cæsar has condemned me untried and unheard.”
“No one believes the charge, dear Maxima,” replied Lucia Claudia, “and it is said that the emperor would pardon you, if you would justify his cruelty by calumniating yourself.”
“The two Ocelli and poor Veronilla, dreading their living grave, confessed themselves guilty of a crime they loathed, and never committed: they were permitted to choose a milder death. But I am a Roman virgin of loftier lineage and nobler spirit; I can die, but will not justify my persecutor. Celer cleared himself and me by an heroic death; but Valerius Licinianus has purchased life and shame at my expense. His eloquence might have saved us both: he falsely avowed himself a guilty wretch. ‘Licinianus has justified me,’ was Cæsar’s own remark; and he is pardoned, while I am doomed and slandered.”
“He is again imprisoned for concealing your freedwoman at one of his farms.”
“Ah! by Vesta, a light breaks in upon me. She was fair and young. He loved her then, doubtless; those stolen visits to the temple were really made; yes, and to her. Frail girl! and base calumnious man! O Celer, Celer! and thou didst vainly endure the torturing scourge for both;” and the miserable priestess threw herself upon the ground, and fell into an agony that had no tears, found no relief in sighs and groans. The noble-minded Roman knight’s fate, indeed, had merited and won the admiration of the spectators, and in after years the degraded Licinianus—the poor Sicilian schoolmaster whose Prætorian rank excited such scornful pity—might have envied Celer’s ignominious punishment and heroic death.
Cornelia gradually overcame her bitter agony; she looked up once more, and a smile passed over her wan countenance.
“We two, Lucia Claudia, were esteemed the pride of the vestal order; and I am condemned for incest,[[27]] and thou art the widow of a bondwoman’s son, and the wife of a Hebrew freedman.”
Lucia Claudia blushed; she felt the sarcasm, but answered it with meek forbearance. “I quitted the college a believer in the God of Israel. How could a Jewish convert minister in the temple of a heathen deity? After this I became a Christian, and sought to bring in him who had made me a worshipper of the true God. He betrayed the brethren, in the blind darkness of his bigoted self-righteousness, and I gave my hand to Nymphidius to save my fellow-Christians. It was feminine weakness: I should have trusted the Church to Him whose faith I had embraced, for not a hair could be torn from a Christian’s head without divine permission. Of that unholy marriage I will not speak, which linked together the believing wife and unbelieving husband in an unequal and abhorred yoke. Listen, Cornelia, while I tell thee how it was severed, and recognise His hand who saved one and destroyed the other;” and Lucia Claudia related her own history, and that of Adonijah. She then unfolded the Christian mission to the condemned Maxima, and implored her “to repent and be baptized.”
The Maxima shook her haughty head, and turned contemptuously away. “No, Lucia; I am no believer in strange gods. My austere and holy life leaves no room for repentance; it is my pride and glory to have been a chaste votary of Vesta. Nor would I change my fate with one who has forsaken the custody of the sacred flame, on the existence of which that of Rome depends, to contract second nuptials, and bear children to a Jew.”
“Ah, Maxima, I think I could share even thy living grave, could I but know that thou didst carry with thee the faith, the hope, the love of a Christian.”
“Lucia Claudia, thou shalt see me suffer. Yes, I pray thee, follow my bier, watch me descending into my living grave, and bear witness to my constancy, I loved thee once, and I love thee still. Thou wilt be near me, thou wilt not deny me my last request?” and Lucia promised, wept, and departed.
Domitian, who was exceedingly anxious that his victim should submit to his sentence, had offered Cornelia a full pardon if she would asperse her own character, but in vain. He had pronounced judgment upon her at his Alban villa, while the poor prisoner remained at Rome, deprived of the means of defending herself, or engaging the talents of some eminent pleader in her defence. The measure was unpopular, and the emperor’s manner of exercising the office of supreme pontiff unprecedented even in that age of crime. Nobody believed the charges against the unfortunate Maxima, and when the covered litter that contained the condemned vestal priestess was seen proceeding along the silent streets, the ominous procession excited general commiseration. No reproachful word reached the ears of the victim, no malediction was heaped upon her devoted head, no injurious epithet added insult to injury, for the sympathies of a mighty people were with the calumniated Maxima. Two centuries had elapsed since such a dismal tragedy had been acted at Rome, and the advance of learning and knowledge had rendered the Romans less superstitious, though not more virtuous, and the immolation excited disgust and indignation against its actors. Wrapped in her pallium and closely veiled, Lucia Claudia clung trembling to the arm of her husband, and with faltering steps followed the procession from the prison through the thronged Forum to the Collina Gate, where the sepulchral cavern had been re-opened to enclose the living form of Cornelia Cossi. The bed, the lamp, the loaf, the bread-mill, the pitcher of water, and cruize of oil, had been already provided; the emperor in his character of supreme pontiff, wearing his sacerdotal robes, with his priestly attendants, stood by the dark yawning chasm to receive the victim; the litter was then unclosed, the unfortunate priestess was unbound, and faced Domitian, who extended his hands to utter the customary prayers in order to avert the consequences of the vestal’s imputed guilt from the heads of the Roman people.
The unfortunate Maxima turned her magnificent countenance from him to the vast assembly as she invoked Vesta and every deity of earth and heaven to attest her innocence; but her voice was distinct, clear, and even melodious. She was interrupted by the emperor, who charged her with the crime for which she was about to suffer, and urged her repeatedly to confess her guilt. To his severe remarks Cornelia calmly replied, “Cæsar believes me guilty of incest, who performed the sacred rites when he conquered and triumphed.” She had repeatedly uttered these mysterious words on her way to the Collina Gate. No one but herself and Domitian comprehended their meaning. Pliny the Younger, who was present, could not discover whether this speech was intended as a satirical allusion to the ill-success of the emperor’s Dacian campaigns, for which he had nevertheless triumphed, or whether the unfortunate vestal wished to conciliate her judge, and attest her own purity by this reply; the enigma was never solved by Cornelia. Then the imperial pontiff made his impious prayers, and after consigning the condemned vestal to her executioners departed with his priestly attendants. At this moment Lucia Claudia raised her veil, and turned her tearful eyes upon the unhappy Maxima, who returned her sympathising recognition with a glance of intelligent gratitude, and even smiled. No trace of the strong agony that had convulsed her noble figure on the pavement of the Tullianum remained on her dignified and placid countenance. She looked towards the temple of which she had been the presiding priestess, she gazed upon the Roman people, and cast a farewell look upon the bright blue heavens that canopied old Rome, and then resolutely advanced towards the chasm. As she placed her firm unshrinking foot upon the steps, the executioner put forth his hand to disengage her robe, but the vestal haughtily repulsed him, as if his touch were profanation to her purity. She was observed to gather her flowing drapery closely round her magnificent person as she descended into her living grave,[[28]] and this simple and intuitive trait of feminine modesty redeemed for ever the aspersed character of Cornelia Cossi Maxima, in the eyes of the vast assembly who witnessed it, from defamation; and that dark sepulchral vault was closed never to be re-opened to enclose another victim. The conviction that Cornelia had been unjustly immolated made a lasting impression upon the Roman people, and the mound that marked the awful spot was never again disturbed by the votaries of a cruel superstition. The extension of Christianity banished cruel heathen rites.
Adonijah drew the folds of her ample veil over the convulsed features of his fainting wife, and, wrapping her in her pallium, bore her inanimate form to the house of a Christian brother; but some time elapsed before she showed signs of life. When she recovered from her swoon, she wept long and prayed much; yet, in her deep commiseration for the unfortunate Maxima, the feeling that she had died a heathen, uncheered by the hope of a better life, was still surpassingly bitter—the bitterest drop indeed in a bitter cup. These thoughts and reflections were naturally succeeded by others of a less painful character. Her conversion to Christianity had not only been the means of bringing her out of idolatry and darkness into the bright refulgence of the Gospel day, but it had saved her from the suicidal despair of the vestals Ocelli and Veroilla, and the living interment of the calumniated Maxima Cornelia Cossi.
The Latin Church considered even the temporary residence of Lucia Claudia in Rome and Italy unsafe at such a period, and the converted vestal priestess quitted the metropolis of the world for ever. She returned with Adonijah to the Church at Jerusalem, and passed many tranquil years in the bosom of her Christian family, till the revolt of the Jews in the reign of Trajan, which was also a war with the Hebrew converts to Christianity, when, Adonijah being slain by his own countrymen, the widowed Lucia Claudia became a deaconess of the Church. She exercised this office at the time when Simeon the apostle was martyred, who, at one hundred and twenty years, excited by his patient fortitude the admiration of Atticus, the governor of Syria during the third persecution of the Christians in the reign of Trajan. She quitted Jerusalem before it was besieged by Adrian, and retired with the Hebrew Christian Church to Pella beyond Jordan, but never to return; for she fell asleep at an advanced age, in the full assurance of Christian hope.
The Hebrew Christian Church lost its distinctive character when it could no longer maintain its succession of Jewish bishops, nor retain its see; for the rescripts of Adrian, which forbade the Jews to dwell in Palestine, virtually put an end to the hierarchy:[[29]] for the second Church of Christ founded at Ælia—the name of the heathen city built by Adrian—was not composed of converted Jews, but of Gentiles who had forsaken idolatry to follow the Lord Jesus. In our own days another Hebrew Christian Church has been founded at Jerusalem, to which “kings have become nursing fathers, and queens nursing mothers,” in fulfilment of an ancient prophecy, “that Jerusalem shall evermore become the joy of the whole earth.”
“Thou living wonder of Jehovah’s word!
Thou, that without a priest or sacrifice,
Ephod or temple, lone ’mid human-kind,
Cleavest to thy statutes with unswerving mind,
As though enthroned upon His mercy-seat,
The spreading of the cherubim between,
Jehovah still were seen!
Hebrew, come forth! dread not the light of day,
Dread not the insulter’s cry;
The arch[[30]] that rose o’er thy captivity
No more shall turn thee from thy destined way.”
——“It comes—the appointed hour;
Hebrew, beneath the arch of Titus pause!
And in the closing scene of Rome’s last power,
Thy prophet’s roll unfold.
Lift up thy voice!—the day-spring from on high
Warns that the hour draws nigh:
The far seas and the multitude of isles,
All in their tongues have heard,
Each lisps the living word;
Hebrew, on thee redemption’s angel smiles.
The stone cut out without a hand
Now spreads its shade o’er earth,
And shall to heaven expand.
Tell the dispersed; kings with their fleets shall come
To bear the wanderers home,
Their queens shall fold thy nurselings on their breast,
A light o’er earth shall flow,
From Zion’s hallowed brow,
And there the Lord thy God, enthroned in glory, rest.”[[31]]
| [25] | In the Sotterania a monument, purporting to be that of Gaudentius, the architect of the Coliseum, has been discovered. It appears from the inscription that he was beheaded by Vespasian for being a Christian. The name of this martyr is the only one connected with the martyrology of the period; but as Vespasian put to death many of the descendants of David, some of these may have been Christians. |
| [26] | Neither the charge nor the time of the former trial are known. |
| [27] | Unchastity in the vestal was called incest. |
| [28] | See Appendix, [Note XIII.] |
| [29] | See Appendix, [Note XIV.] |
| [30] | The Jews never pass under the arch of Titus; to this day they go out of their direct way to avoid it. |
| [31] | Sotheby. |
APPENDIX.