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

by Ernest Renan

I.

The establishment of the Jews at Rome dated nearly sixty years before Jesus Christ. They multiplied rapidly. Cicero represented it as an act of courage to dare to oppose them. Cæsar favored them, and found them faithful. The people detested them, thought them malevolent, accused them of forming a secret society whose members were advanced at any price, to the detriment of others. But all did not approve these superficial judgments. The Jews had as many friends as detractors: something superior was noticeable in them. The poor Jewish colporter of the Trastevere often in the evening returned home rich with the charities received from a pious hand. Women, above all, were attracted by these missionaries in rags. Juvenal counts the weakness towards the Jewish religion among the vices of the ladies of his time. The word of Zachariah was verified to the letter: the world seized upon the garments of the Jews, and said, "Lead us to Jerusalem."

The principal Jewish quarter of Rome was situated beyond the Tiber, that is to say, in the poorest and dirtiest part of the city, probably near the present Porta Portese. There, or rather opposite to the foot of the Aventine, the gate of Rome was formerly situated, where the merchandise brought from Ostia in barges was discharged. It was a quarter of Jews and Syrians,—"nations born for servitude," as Cicero said. The nucleus of the Jewish population at Rome was formed, in truth, of freedmen, descended, for the most part, from those prisoners whom Pompey had carried there. They had passed through slavery, without changing their religious customs in the least. That which is admirable in Judaism is that simplicity of faith which makes the Jew, transported a thousand leagues from his country, at the end of several generations, always a very Jew. The intercourse between the synagogues of Rome and Jerusalem was continual. The first colony had been re-enforced with numerous emigrants. These poor men disembarked by hundreds at the Ripa, and lived together in the adjacent quarter of the Trastevere, serving as street-porters, engaged in small affairs, exchanging matches for broken glasses, and showing to the proud Italiote populations a type which later became too familiar to them,—that of the beggar accomplished in his art. A Roman who respected himself never placed his foot in these abject quarters. It was as a suburb given up to despised classes and to infectious employments: the tanneries, the gut-works, the rotting vats were banished there. These unhappy people lived tranquilly enough in this remote corner, in the midst of bales of merchandise, low inns, and porters of manure (Syri), who had there their general headquarters. The police only entered there when affrays were bloody, or occurred too often. Few quarters of Rome were so free: politics had nothing to do there. Worship was not only practised there in ordinary times without obstacles, but its propagation was also accomplished with great facility.

Protected by the disdain which they inspired, caring little, moreover, for the railleries of the men of the world, the Jews of the Trastevere led a very active religious and social life. They had some schools of hakamin: nowhere was the ritual and ceremonial of the law observed more scrupulously: the organization of the synagogue was the most complete ever known. The titles of "father and mother" of the synagogues were much prized. Some rich converts took biblical names; they brought their slaves into the church with them, they had the Scriptures explained by the doctors, built places of prayer, and manifested their pride of the consideration which they enjoyed in this little world. The poor Jew found the means, while begging with a trembling voice, to whisper in the ear of the great Roman lady some words of the law, and frequently won over the matron who opened to him her hand full of small coin. To observe the sabbath and the Jewish feasts was to Horace the trait which classed a man in the crowd of weak minds. The universal benevolence, the happiness of reposing with the just, the assistance of the poor, the purity of manners, the gentle acceptance of death considered as a sleep, are some of the sentiments which are found in the Jewish inscriptions, with that particular accent of touching unction, of certain hope, which characterizes the Christian inscriptions. There have been many rich and powerful Jews in the world, such as Tiberius Alexander, who arrived at the greatest honors of the empire, who exercised two or three times the strongest influence upon public affairs, and even had, to the great grief of the Romans, his statue in the Forum; but those were not good Jews. The Herods, though practising their worship at Rome with much show, were also far from being true Israelites, even if their only sins were their relations with the Pagans.

A world of ideas was thus set in motion on the vulgar quay where the merchandise of the whole world was piled up; but all that would be lost in a great city like Paris. Undoubtedly the proud patricians, who, in their promenades on the Aventine, cast their eyes upon the other side of the Tiber, did not imagine the future that was forming itself in that little cluster of poor houses at the foot of Janiculum.

Near the port was a sort of lodging-house well known to the people and the soldiers under the name of Taberna Meritoria. In order to attract the loungers, a pretended spring of oil coming out of a rock was shown there. From a very early time this spring of oil was considered by the Christians as symbolic: it was pretended that its appearance was coincident with the birth of Jesus. It seems that later the Taberna became a church. Under Alexander Severus we find the Christians and the inn-keepers in a contest over a place which formerly had been public: that good emperor gave it to the Christians. This is probably the origin of the Church of the Santa Maria of the Trastevere.

It is natural that the capital should have fully accepted the name of Jesus before the intermediate countries could be evangelized, as a high summit is lighted up while the valleys between it and the sun are still obscure. Rome was the rendezvous for all the Oriental worships,—the point upon the coast of the Mediterranean with which the Syrians had the most intercourse. They arrived there in enormous bands. Like all the poor populations rising for the assault of the great cities to which they come to seek their fortunes, they were serviceable and humble. All the world spoke Greek. The ancient Roman plebeians, attached to the old customs, lost ground each day, drowned as they were in this wave of strangers.

We admit then, that towards the year 50 of our era, some Syrian Jews, already Christians, entered the capital of the empire, and communicated the faith which rendered them happy to their companions. At this time no one suspected that the founder of a second empire was in Rome,—a second Romulus, lodging at the port in a bed of straw. A little band was formed. These ancestors of the Roman prelates were poor, dirty, common people, without distinction, without manners, clothed with fetid garments, having the bad breath of men who are badly fed. Their dwellings had that odor of misery which is exhaled from persons grossly clothed and nourished, and huddled together in narrow rooms. We know the names of two Jews who were the most prominent in these movements. They were Aquila, a Jew, originally from Pontus, who was like St. Paul an upholsterer, and Priscilla his wife,—a pious couple. Banished from Rome they took refuge at Corinth, where they soon became the intimate friends of St. Paul, and zealous workers with him. Thus Aquila and Priscilla are the most ancient known members of the Church of Rome. There is scarcely a souvenir of them there. Tradition, always unjust, because it is always ruled by political motives, has expelled these two obscure workmen from the Christian Pantheon in order to attribute the honor of the foundation of the Church of Rome to a name more in keeping with its proud pretensions. We do not see the original point of the origin of Occidental Christianity in the theatrical Basilica consecrated to St. Peter: it is at that ancient Ghetto, the Porta Portese. It is in tracing these poor vagabond Jews, who bore with them the religion of the world,—these suffering men, dreaming in their misery of the kingdom of God,—that we shall find it again. We do not dispute with Rome its essential title. Rome was probably the first point in the Western World, and even in Europe, where Christianity was established.