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

by Ernest Renan

Truly, I repeat it, it is more than doubtful if pure Judaism—that which is developed under the Talmudical form, and which is still in our day so powerful—would have had this extraordinary fortune. Judaism propagates itself through Christianity. But one understands nothing of religious history (some one, I hope, will demonstrate it to you some day), unless it is fixed as a fundamental principle that Christianity had its origin in Judaism itself,—Judaism with its fruitful principles of alms and charity, with its absolute confidence in the future of humanity, with that joy of the heart of which it has always had the secret,—only Judaism freed from some observances and distinctive traits which had been invented to characterize the special religion of the children of Israel.

II.

If one studies in fact the progress of the primitive Christian missions, he remarks that they are all directed towards the West: in other words, they take the Roman Empire as their theatre and limit. If one excepts some small portions of the vassal territory of the Arsacidæ, lying between the Euphrates and the Tigris, the empire of the Parthians received no Christian missions during the first century. The Tigris was an eastern boundary which Christianity did not pass under the Sassanidæ. Two great causes—the Mediterranean and the Roman Empire—determined this capital fact.

The Mediterranean had been, during a thousand years, the great route on which all civilizations and all ideas had passed each other. The Romans, having freed it from piracy, had made it an unequalled way of communication. It was in a sense the railroad of that time. A numerous marine of coasting-vessels rendered the voyages along the borders of this great lake very easy. The relative security which the routes of the empire afforded, the sure guaranties found in the public powers, the scattering of the Jews over all the coasts of the Mediterranean, the use of the Greek tongue in the eastern portion of this sea, the unity of civilization which the Greeks first, and then the Romans, had created, made the map of the empire also the map of the countries reserved to the Christian missions and destined to become Christian. The Roman orbis became the Christian orbis in the sense in which it may be said that the founders of the empire were the founders of the Christian monarchy, or, at least, that they have drawn its outlines. Every province conquered by the Roman Empire became a province conquered by Christianity. Let the figures of the apostles be imagined in the presence of Asia Minor, of Greece, of Italy divided into a hundred little republics, of Gaul, of Spain, of Africa, of Egypt, with its old national institutions, and their success can no more be thought of, or rather it would seem that their project could never have had birth. The union of the empire was the necessary preliminary condition of all great religious propagandism, placing it above nationalities. The empire recognized this in the fourth century. It became Christian. It saw that Christianity was the religion which it had accepted without knowing it,—the religion limited by its frontiers, identified with it, capable of bringing it a second life.

The Church, on its side, made itself entirely Roman, and has remained to this day a fragment of the empire. During the middle ages the Church was the old Rome, seizing again its authority over the barbarians, imposing on them its decretals, as formerly it had imposed its laws, governing them by its cardinals, as it had before governed through its imperial legates and proconsuls.

In creating its vast empire, Rome imposed, then, the material condition of the propagation of Christianity. She raised up, above all, the moral state which served as an atmosphere and a medium for the new doctrine. While destroying politics everywhere, it created what may be called socialism and religion. At the close of the frightful wars which for some centuries had rent the world, the empire had an era of prosperity and of welfare such as it had never known: we may even be permitted to add (without a paradox) liberty. Liberty of thought, at least, increased under this new régime. This liberty is often more prosperous under a king or a prince than under the jealous and narrow-minded plebeian. The ancient republics did not have it. The Greeks did great things without it, thanks to the incomparable power of their genius; but it must not be forgotten that Athens had a fine and noble Inquisition. The king Archon was the inquisitor; the royal Portico was the holy office in which the accusations of impiety were adjudged. These were the cases in which the Attic orators were most frequently engaged. Not only philosophical crimes, such as the denial of God or of a Providence, but the lightest attaint of the municipal worship, the preaching of strange religions, the most puerile infractions of the scrupulous legislation of the mysteries, were crimes guilty of death. The gods whom Aristophanes mocked on the stage sometimes destroyed. They destroyed Socrates; they failed to kill Alcibiades. Anaxagoras, Protagoras, Diagoras of Melas, Prodicus of Ceos, Stilpo, Aristotle, Theophrastus, Aspasia, Euripides, were more or less seriously disturbed. Liberty of thought was, in truth, the fruit of the royalties resulting from the Macedonian conquest. It was the Attali, the Ptolemies, who first gave to men of thought the freedom which no one of the old republics had ever offered them. The Roman Empire held to the same traditions. There was under the empire more than one arbitrary law against the philosophers; but these always resulted from their meddling with political affairs. In the laws of the Romans, before the time of Constantine, no clause is found against the liberty of thought; in the history of the emperors, no process of abstract doctrine. No savant was disturbed in his researches. Men whom the middle ages would have burned, such as Galen, Lucian, Plotinus, lived tranquilly, protected by law. The empire inaugurated a period of liberty in the sense that it destroyed the absolute sovereignty of the family, the city, the tribe, and replaced or modified these sovereignties by those of the State. Now, an absolute power is as much more vexatious as the circle in which it is exercised is more narrow. The ancient republics, the feudalities, tyrannized over the individual much more than did the State. Unquestionably the Roman Empire persecuted Christianity severely at times; but at least it did not destroy it. Now the republics would have rendered it impossible. Judaism, if it had not been under the Roman authority, would have stifled it. It was the Roman magistrates who hindered the Pharisees from killing Christianity. Some lofty ideas of universal brotherhood—results, in the main, of stoicism,—a sort of general sentiment of humanity, were the fruit of the least narrow régime and of the least exclusive education to which the individual was submitted. The people dreamed of a new era and new worlds. The public riches were great; and, in spite of the imperfection of the economical doctrines of the time, there was general comfort.

General customs were not such as are often imagined. It is true, that, in Rome, all the vices were publicly displayed with a revolting cynicism: the spectacles, above all, had introduced a frightful corruption. Certain countries, as Egypt, had descended to the lowest baseness. But there existed in most of the provinces a middle class, in which goodness, conjugal fidelity, the domestic virtues, and uprightness were commonly practised. Does there anywhere exist, in a world of honest people in small villages, an ideal of family life more charming than that which Plutarch has left us? What good fellowship! What sweetness of manners! What chaste and attractive simplicity! Chæronea was evidently not the only place where life was so pure and so innocent.

The customs, even outside of Rome, were still somewhat cruel, either through the remaining spirit of ancient manners, everywhere sanguinary, or through the special influence of Roman harshness. But there was progress during this period. What sweet and pure sentiment, what feeling of melancholy tenderness, has not found expression by the pen of Virgil or of Tibullus? The world unbent, lost its ancient severity, and acquired some softness and tenderness. Some maxims for humanity were spread abroad. Equality and the abstract idea of the rights of man were boldly preached by stoicism. Woman became more and more the mistress of herself. The precepts for the treatment of slaves were improved. The slave was no longer that necessarily grotesque and wicked being which the Latin comedy introduced in order to provoke bursts of laughter, and whom Cato recommended to be treated as a beast of burden. Now, times are much changed. The slave is morally equal to his master: it is admitted that he is capable of virtue, of fidelity, of devotion, and he gives proofs of it. The prejudices concerning noble birth grow less. Some very humane and just laws are made, even under the worst emperors. Tiberius was a skilful financier: he founded upon an excellent basis an establishment of crédit foncier. Nero inaugurated in the system of taxation, until then unjust and barbarous, some improvements which shame even our own time. Legislation was considerably advanced, while the punishment of death was stupidly prodigal. Love of the poor, sympathy for all, and almsgiving, came to be considered virtues.

III.

Unquestionably I understand and share the indignation of sincere liberals against a government which diffused a frightful despotism over the world. But is it our fault that the wants of humanity are diverse, its aspirations manifold, its aims contradictory? Politics is not every thing here below. What the world desired, after those frightful butcheries of the earlier centuries, was gentleness, humanity. They had enough of heroism: those vigorous goddesses, eternally brandishing their spears on the height of the Acropolis, inspired sentiment no longer. The earth, as in the time of Cadmus, had swallowed her most noble sons. The proud Grecian races had killed each other. The Peloponessus was a desert. The sweet voice of Virgil gently took up the cry of humanity, peace, pity!