English Conferences of Ernest Renan: Rome and Christianity. Marcus Aurelius

by Ernest Renan

I.

From the year 120 to 130 the Episcopate was elaborated in the Christian Church, and the creation of the Episcopate was eminently a Roman work. All ecclesiæ imply a little hierarchy,—a bureau as it is called to-day,—a president, some assessors, and a small staff of men in its service. Democratic associations are careful that these functions shall be limited as far as possible as to power and duration; but from this arises that precarious something which has prevented any democratic association from outlasting the circumstances which have created it. The Jewish synagogues have had more continuity, although the synagogical body has never come to be a clergy. This is the result of the subordinate place which Judaism has held during several centuries: the pressure from without has counteracted the effects of internal divisions. If the Christian Church had been left with the same absence of directorship, it would doubtless have missed its destiny.

If its ecclesiastical powers had continued to be regarded as emanating from the Church itself, it would have lost all its hieratic and theocratic character. It was written, on the contrary, that a clergy should monopolize the Christian Church, and substitute themselves for it. Acting as its spokesman, presenting itself as having the sole power of attorney in every thing, this clergy will be its strength, and at the same time its gnawing worm,—the principal cause of its future falls.

I repeat, that history has no example of a more complete transformation than that which occurred in the government of the Christian Church about the time of Hadrian and Antonine. What happened in the Christian Church will happen in any association in which the subordinates could resign in favor of the bureau, and that again in favor of the president; so that afterwards the subordinates and the seniors would have no deliberative voice nor influence, nor any control in the management of the funds, and the president would be able to say, "I alone, I, am the association." The presbyteri (seniors) or episcopi (superintending officers) became very soon the only representatives of the Church; and almost immediately another still more important revolution took place. Among the presbyteri or episcopi, there had been one, who, through the habit of occupying the principal seat, absorbed the power of the others, and became pre-eminently the episcopos or the presbyteros. The form of worship contributed powerfully to the establishment of this unity. The eucharistic act could only be celebrated by one person, and gave to the celebrant an extreme importance. That episcopos, with a surprising rapidity, became the head of the presbytery, and, consequently, the entire Church. His cathedra was placed apart, and, having the form of an arm-chair, became the seat of honor, the symbol of primacy. From this time, each church has but one chief presbyteros, who is thus called to the exclusion of the other episcopi. Beside this bishop, there were deacons, widows, and a council of presbyteri: but the great step has been taken; the bishop is the sole successor of the prophets, his associates have disappeared. Apostolic authority, reputed as transmitted by the laying-on of hands, suppressed the authority of the community. The bishops of the various churches soon placed themselves in communication with the others, and formed of the Universal Church a sort of oligarchy, which held assemblies, censured its members, decided questions of faith, and was in itself a true sovereign power. On one side, the shepherds; on the other, the flock. Primitive equality no longer existed: in fact, it had endured but a single day. The Church, however, was only an instrument in the hands of those who guided her; and these held their power, not from the community, but from the spiritual inheritance of a transmission claiming to date back to the apostles in a continuous line. It is evident that the representative system will never be in any degree whatever the law of the Christian Church.

It was the Episcopate, without the intervention of civil power, with no support from the tribunals, which thus established order above liberty in a society originally founded upon individual inspiration. This is why the Ebionites, who had no Episcopate, had also no idea of Catholicity. At first sight, the work of Jesus was not made to last. Founded upon a belief in the destruction of the world, which, as years rolled on, was proved an error, it seemed that his congregation could only dissolve in anarchy. The prophetic book, the charismes, the speaking of tongues, individual inspiration, were no more than were necessary to bring all again into the proportions of a common chapel. Individual inspiration created, but immediately destroyed what it created. After liberty, law is necessary. The work of Jesus might be considered as saved the day in which it was admitted that the Church has a direct power, a power representing that of Jesus. Since then the Church dominates the individual, drawing him to her bosom through his need. Inspiration passes from the individual to the community. The clergy is the dispenser of all pardons, the intermediary between God and the faithful. Obedience, first to the Church, then to the bishop, becomes the highest duty. Innovation is the sign of error: schism, henceforth, will be for the Christian the worst of crimes.

In a certain regard one may say that this was a decadence, a diminution of that spontaneity which had been eminently creative until now. It was evident that ecclesiastical forms were about to absorb, to stifle, the work of Jesus, that all free manifestations of Christian life would soon be arrested. Under the censure of the Episcopate, the speaking of tongues, prophecy, the creation of legends, the making of new sacred books, would soon become withered powers, the charismes would be reduced to official sacraments. In another sense, however, such a transformation was the essential condition of the strength of humanity. And, moreover, the centralization of powers became necessary when churches were more numerous: intercourse between these little pious societies would be impossible, unless they had representatives appointed to act for them. It is undeniable, moreover, that, without the Episcopate, the churches, re-united for a time by the souvenirs of Jesus, would gradually have been dispersed. The divergences of opinion, the difference in the turn of imagination, and, above all, the rivalries, and the unsatisfied amours-propres, would have operated by their infinite effects of disunion and disintegration. Christianity would have expired at the end of three or four centuries, like [Mithraicism] and so many other sects which were not allowed to endure. Democracy is sometimes eminently creative; but it is upon the condition that the democracy comes forth from conservative institutions which prevent the revolutionary fever from prolonging itself indefinitely.

Here was the greatest miracle of the new Christianity. It drew order, hierarchy, authority, and obedience from the free subjection of desires: it organized the crowd; it disciplined anarchy. What does this miracle accomplish other than to strike at the pretended derogations to the laws of physical nature? The spirit of Jesus strongly inoculated in his disciples that spirit of sweetness, of abnegation, of forgetfulness of the present; that unique pursuit of interior joys which kills ambition; that strong preference given to childhood; those words repeated without ceasing, as from Jesus, "Whoever is first among you, let him be the servant of all." The influence of the apostles was not less in that direction. The apostles lived and ruled after their death. The idea that the head of the Church held his command under the members of the Church who had elected him never once occurs in the literature of this time. The Church thus escaped through the supernatural origin of its power, that element of decay which exists in delegated authority. A legislative and executive authority may come from the people; but sacraments and dispensations of celestial pardons have nothing in common with universal suffrage. Such privileges come from heaven, or, according to the Christian formula, from Jesus Christ, the source of all pardon and of all good.

The religion of Jesus thus became something solid and consistent. The great danger of Gnosticism, which was to divide Christianity into numberless sects, was exorcised. The word "Catholic Church" resounded everywhere, as the name of that great body which would thenceforth survive the ages unbroken. The character of this catholicity is already seen. The Montanists are regarded as sectarian; the Marcionites are convinced of the falseness of the apostolic doctrine; the different Gnostic schools are more and more driven from the bosom of the general church. Something had arisen which was neither Montanism, nor Marcionism, nor Gnosticism; which was Christianity, not sectarian,—the Christianity of the majority of bishops, resisting sects, and using them all, having, if you will, only negative characters, but preserved by these negative characters from the pietist aberrations, and from dissolving rationalism. Christianity, like all parties who wish to live, disciplines itself, and restrains its own excesses. It unites to mystical exaltation a fund of good sense and moderation which will kill Millenarism, Charisms, Glossolaly, and all the primitive phenomenal spirits. A handful of excited men, like the Montanists, running into martyrdom, discouraging penitence, condemning marriage, are not the Church. The juste milieu triumphs. Radicals of any sort will never be allowed to destroy the work of Jesus. The Church is always of a medium opinion: it belongs to all the world, and is not the privilege of an aristocracy. The pietist aristocracy of the Phrygian sects and the speculative aristocracy of the Gnostics are equally stripped of their pretensions.

In the midst of the enormous variety of opinions which fill the first Christian age, the Catholic opinion constitutes a sort of standard. It was not necessary to reason with the heretic in order to convince him. It was sufficient to show him that he was not in communion with the Catholic Church, with the grand churches which trace the succession of their bishops to the apostles. Quod semper, quod ubique became the absolute rule of truth. The argument of prescription to which Tertullian gave such eloquent force reviews all the Catholic controversy. To prove to any one that he was an innovator, a disturber, was to prove that he was wrong,—an insufficient rule, since, by a singular irony of fate, the doctor himself who developed this method of refutation in so imperious a manner, Tertullian, died a heretic.

Correspondence between the churches was an early custom. Circular letters from the heads of the great churches, read on Sunday in the re-unions of the faithful, were a sort of continuation of the apostolic literature. The ecclesiastical province, questioning the precedency of the great churches, appeared in germ. The Church, like the synagogue and the mosque, is essentially a citadel. Christianity, like Judaism and Islamism, is a religion of cities. The countryman, the paganus, will be the last resistance which Christianity will encounter. The few rural Christians came to the church of the neighboring city. The Roman municipality thus enclosed the church. Among the cities, the civitas, the grand city, was alone a veritable church, with an episcopos. The small city was in ecclesiastical dependence on the great city. This primacy of the great cities was an important fact. The great city once converted, the small city and the country followed the movement. The diocese was thus the unity of the conglomerate Christians. As for the ecclesiastical province, it corresponded to the Roman province: the divisions of worship of Rome and Augustus were the secret law which ruled all. Those cities which had a flamen, or archiereus, are those which later had an archbishop: the flamen civitatis became the bishop. After the third century, the flamen held the rank in the city which was later that of the bishop in the diocese. Thus it happened that the ecclesiastical geography of a country was very nearly the geography of the same country in the Roman epoch. The picture of the bishops and the archbishops is that of the ancient civitates, according to their line of subordination. The empire was as the mould in which the new religion was formed. The interior framework, the outlines, the hierarchical divisions, were those of the empire. The ancient archives of the Roman administration, and the church-registers of the middle ages, and even those of our own day, are nearly the same thing.