But, instead of these lofty basilicas, in place of these insulting devices,—Christus vincit, Christus regnat, Christus imperat,—it would be better to raise a poor chapel to these good Jews who first pronounced on the quay of Rome the name of Jesus.
A capital trait, which it is important to note in any case, is, that the Church of Rome was not, like the churches of Asia Minor, Macedonia, and Greece, a foundation of the school of Paul. It was fundamentally Judæan-Christian, re-attaching itself directly to the Church of Jerusalem. Paul here will never be on his own ground: he will find in this great church many weaknesses which he will treat with indulgence, but which will wound his exalted idealism. Attached to circumcision and outward observances, Ebionite through its taste for abstinences, and by its doctrine concerning the person and death of Jesus more Jewish than Christian, leaning strongly towards Millenarianism, the Roman Church showed, since its first days, the essential traits which will distinguish it through its long history. Own daughter of Jerusalem, the Roman Church will always have an ascetic, sacerdotal character, opposed to the Protestant tendencies of Paul. Peter will be its veritable head; then, the political and hierarchical spirit of old Rome penetrating it, it will indeed become the new Jerusalem, the city of the Pontificate, of the hieratic and solemn religion, of the material sacraments which justify of themselves, the city of the ascetics of the manner of Jacques Ohliam with his callous knees and his plate of gold upon his brow. It will be the authoritative church. If we can believe it, the only mark of the apostolic mission will be to show a letter signed by the apostles, to produce a certificate of orthodoxy. The good and the evil which the Church of Jerusalem did in giving birth to Christianity, the Church of Rome will do for the Universal Church. It is in vain that Paul will address to it his beautiful epistle to explain the mystery of the cross of Jesus and of salvation by faith alone. The Church of Rome will scarcely comprehend it; but Luther four and a half centuries later will comprehend it, and will open a new era in a secular series of the alternate triumphs of Peter and Paul.
II.
An important event in the history of the world took place in the year 61. Paul was led a prisoner to Rome in order to follow up the appeal which he had made to the tribunal of the emperor. A sort of profound instinct had always made Paul desire this journey. His arrival at Rome was almost as marked an event in his life as his conversion. He believed that he had attained the summit of his apostolic life; and doubtless he recalled the dream in which, after one of his days of struggle, Christ had appeared to him, and said, "Be of good cheer, Paul; for as thou hast testified of me in Jerusalem, so must thou bear witness also at Rome."
You will not forget the wide divisions which separated the disciples of Jesus during the first century from the foundation of Christianity,—divisions so broad, that all the differences which to-day separate the orthodox, the heretics, and the schismatics of the whole world, are nothing beside the dissensions of Peter and Paul. The Church of Jerusalem, obstinately attached to Judaism, refused all intercourse with the uncircumcised, however pious they might be. Paul, on the contrary, thought that to maintain the ancient law was an injury to Jesus, since thus it might be supposed, that, outside the merits of Jesus, such or such a work could serve for the justification of the faithful. However strange it may appear, it is certain that the Judæan-Christians of Jerusalem, with James at their head, organized some active contra-missions in order to combat the effect of the missions of Paul, and that the emissaries of these ardent conservatives followed in some sort the lead of the apostle of the Gentiles. Peter belonged to the party at Jerusalem, but showed in his conduct that sort of timid moderation which seems to have been the foundation of his character. Did Peter also come to Rome? Formerly, gentlemen, this question was one of the most exciting which could be agitated. Formerly the history of religion was written, not to recount it, but in order to prove it: religious history was an annex of theology. During the grand revolt, so full of courage and of ardent conviction, which, during the sixteenth century, placed one-half of Europe in opposition to Rome, the negation of the sojourn of Peter at Rome became a sort of dogma. The Bishop of Rome is the successor of St. Peter, said the Catholics, and as such the head of Christendom. How could that reasoning be more strongly refuted than by maintaining that Peter never placed his foot in Rome?
As for us, we are permitted to regard this question with the most perfect disinterestedness. We do not believe, in any sense, that Jesus intended to give any head whatever to his church; and above all, it is doubtful whether the idea of such a church as developed later had existed in the mind of the founder of Christianity. The word ecclesia occurs only in the Gospel of St. Matthew. The idea of the episcopos, as it existed in the second century, had no place in the mind of Jesus. He himself was the living episcopos during his brief Galilean appearance: from that time it is the Spirit who inspires each one until he may return. In any case, if it had been possible that Jesus should have had any idea whatever of the ecclesia and episcopos, it is absolutely beyond doubt, that Jesus never thought of giving the future episcopos of the city of Rome to be the head of his church,—that impious city, the centre of all the impurities of the earth, of whose existence he perhaps knew scarcely any thing, and of which he should have entertained the gloomy opinions which all the Jews professed. If there is any thing in the world which was not instituted by Jesus, it is the Papacy, that is to say, the idea that the Church is a monarchy. We are, then, perfectly at liberty to discuss the question of Peter's coming to Rome. This question is absolutely without consequence for us; and from our solution the only result will be to say whether Leo XIII. is or is not the head of the Christian conscience. Whether Peter was or was not in Rome, it has for us no political nor moral bearing. It is a curious question of history: it is useless to pursue it further.
First, let us say, that the Catholics have laid themselves open to the peremptory objections of their adversaries by their unfortunate reckoning of the coming of Peter to Rome in the year 42,—a reckoning borrowed from Eusebius and St. Jerome, which extends the duration of the pontificate of Peter to twenty-three or twenty-four years. There is nothing more inadmissible. In order to leave no doubt in regard to this, it is sufficient to consider that the persecution of Peter at Jerusalem by Herod Agrippa occurred in the year 44. It would be superfluous to oppose longer a thesis which can have no one reasonable defence. It is possible, in fact, to go much further, and to affirm that Peter had not yet come to Rome when Paul was taken there, that is to say, in the year 61. The Epistle of Paul to the Romans, written about the year 58, is a very considerable argument here. One can scarcely imagine St. Paul writing to the faithful, of whom St. Peter was the head, without making the least mention of the latter. The last chapter of the Acts of the Apostles is still more demonstrative. This chapter, especially from the seventeenth to the twenty-ninth verse, cannot be explained, if Peter was at Rome when Paul arrived there. Let us, then, consider it absolutely certain that Peter did not come to Rome before Paul, that is to say, before or about the year 61.
But did he not come there after Paul? This has never been positively proved; this late journey of Peter's to Rome was not only probable, but there are strong arguments in its favor. Besides the testimony of the Fathers of the second and third centuries, there are three reasons which do not appear to me unworthy:—
1st, It is indisputably certain that Peter suffered a martyr's death. The testimony of the fourth evangelist, of Clement Romanus, of the fragment which is called the "Canon de Muratori," of Denis of Corinth, of Caius, of Tertullian, leave no doubt in this respect. Let the fourth Gospel be [apocryphal], allow that chapter xxi. has been added in later times, it makes no difference. It is clear, that, in the verses in which Jesus announces to Peter that he shall die by the same suffering as his own, we have the expression of an opinion established in the Church about 120 or 130, to which allusions are made as to a fact known to all. Now, it is not possible to imagine that Peter died a martyr outside of Rome. It was only at Rome, in fact, that the persecution of Nero was violent. At Jerusalem, at Antioch, the martyrdom of Peter would have been much less probable.