The Apostles

by Ernest Renan

From a very early period women were admitted to this employment;[7.10] and, as in these days, they were called “sisters.”[7.11] At first they were widows;[7.12] but later, virgins were preferred for this office.[7.13] Admirable tact was shown by the Church in this movement. These good and simple men, with that profound science which comes from the heart, laid the basis of that grand system of charity which is the peculiar merit of Christianity. They had no precedent for such an institution. A vast system of benevolence and of reciprocal aid, to which the two sexes brought their diverse qualities, and lent their united efforts for the relief of human misery, was the holy creation which resulted from the travail of these two or three first years—the most prolific years in the history of Christianity. It is certain that the vital thoughts of Jesus filled the souls of His disciples and directed all their acts. Justice, indeed, demands that to Jesus should be referred the honor of all the great deeds of His apostles. It is probable that during His life He laid the foundations of those establishments which were successfully developed so soon after His death.

Women, naturally, were attracted towards a community where the weak were so cordially protected. Their position in society had previously been humble and precarious; widows, particularly, notwithstanding several protecting laws, were but little respected,[7.14] and often even abandoned to misery. Many of the doctors were opposed to giving them any religious education.[7.15] The Talmud placed along with the other pests of mankind, the gossiping and inquisitive widow, who spent her days in chatting with her neighbors, and the maiden who wasted her time in incessant praying.[7.16] The new religion offered to these poor and neglected souls a sure and honorable asylum.[7.17] Several women occupied a prominent place in the Church, and their houses served as places of meeting;[7.18] while those who had no houses were formed into a species of feminine presbyteral body,[{7.19}] comprising probably the virgins, who did important duty in charitable works. Those institutions, regarded as the fruit of a later Christianity, such as congregations of women, nuns, and sisters of charity, were really one of its first creations, the beginning of its influence, and the most perfect expression of its spirit. The admirable idea of consecrating by a sort of religious character and subjecting to regular discipline those women who were not in the bonds of marriage, is peculiarly and entirely Christian. The word “widow” became a synonyme for a person devoted to religious works, consecrated to God, and, consequently, a “deaconess.”[7.20] In those countries, where the wife at her twenty-fourth year already began to fade, and where there was no middle state between the child and the old woman, it was practically a new life which was thus opened for that portion of the human race the most capable of devotion.

The times of the Seleucidæ had been a terrible epoch for female depravity. Never before were known so many domestic dramas, and such a series of poisonings and adulteries. The wise men of that day considered woman as a scourge to humanity; as the first cause of baseness and shame; as an evil genius whose only part in life was to impair whatever there was of good in the opposite sex.[{7.21}] Christianity changed all this. At that age which, to our view, is yet youth, but at which the existence of the Oriental woman is so gloomy, so fatally prone to evil suggestions, the widow could, by covering her head with a black shawl,[{7.22}] become a respectable person worthily employed, and, as a deaconess, the equal of the most esteemed men in the community. The difficult and dubious position of the childless widow, Christianity elevated even to sanctity.[{7.23}] The widow became almost the equal of the maiden. She was καλογρια, “beautiful old age,”[{7.24}] venerated and useful, and receiving the respect usually awarded to a mother. These women, constantly going to and fro,[{7.25}] were the most useful missionaries of the new religion. Protestants are in error in viewing these facts through the light of the system of modern individuality. Socialism and cenobitism are primitive features of Christianity.

The bishop and priest of later days did not yet exist; but that intimate familiarity of souls not bound by ties of blood, known as the pastoral ministry, was already founded. This was always the special gift of Jesus; and, as it were, a heritage from Him. Jesus had often said that He was more than father and mother, and that those who followed Him must forsake those beloved beings. Christianity placed some things above the family. It created a fraternity and spiritual marriages. The ancient system of marriages, which without restriction placed the wife in the power of the husband, was mere slavery. The moral liberty of woman began when the Church gave her in Jesus a friend and a guide, who advised and consoled her, always listened to her grievances, and sometimes advised resistance. Women need a governing power, and are only happy when governed; but it is necessary that they should love the one who wields that power. This is what neither ancient society, Judaism, nor Islamism, were able to do. Woman never had a religious conscience, a moral individuality, or an opinion of her own, previous to Christianity. Thanks to the Bishops and to monastic life, Radegonda found means for escaping from the arms of a barbarous husband. The life of the soul being all that is really of importance, it is just and reasonable that the pastor who would make the divine chords of the heart vibrate, the secret counsellor who holds the key of the conscience, should be more than a father, more than a husband. In one sense Christianity was a reaction against the too narrow domestic system of the Aramaic race. The old Aramaic societies only admitted married men, and were singularly strict in their views of the marriage relation. All this was something analogous to the English family—a narrow, closed up, contracted circle—an egotism of several, as withering to the soul as the egotism of an individual. Christianity, with its divine idea of the liberty of God, corrected these exaggerations. And first it allotted to every one the duties common to mankind. It saw that the family relation was not of sole importance in life, or at least that the duty of reproducing the human race did not devolve on every one; and that there should be persons freed from these duties, which are undoubtedly sacred, but not intended for every one. The same exceptions made in favor of the hetairæ like Aspasia by Greek society, and of the cortigiana like Imperia, in recognition of the necessities of polished society, Christianity made for the priest and the deaconess for the public welfare. It admitted different classes in society. There are people who find it more delightful to be loved by a hundred people than by five or six; and for these the family in its ordinary conditions seems insufficient, cold, and wearisome. Why, then, should we extend to all, the exigencies of our dull and mediocre social system? His temporal family is not sufficient for man; he feels the need of brothers and sisters besides those of the flesh.

By its hierarchy of different social functions,[{7.26}] the primitive Church seemed to conciliate for the time these opposing exigencies. We shall never understand, never comprehend, how happy these people were under these holy regulations which sustained liberty without restraining it, and permitted at the same time the advantages of communistic and private life. It was far different from the confusion of our artificial societies, in which the sensitive soul so often finds it cruelly isolated. In these little refuges which they call churches, the social atmosphere was sweet and inviting; the member lived there in the same faith and actuated by the same hopes. But it is clear that these conditions could not apply to a very large society. When entire countries became Christianized, the system of the first churches became a Utopian idea only partially realized in monasteries, and the monastic life in this sense was the continuation of the primitive churches.[{7.27}] The convent is the necessary consequence of the Christian spirit; there is no perfect Christianity without the convent, because it is only there that the evangelical idea can be realized.

A large share of the credit, certainly, of these great creations should be given to Judaism. Each one of the Jewish communities scattered along the shores of the Mediterranean was already a sort of church, with its charitable treasury. Almsgiving, always recommended by the elders,[7.28] was a recognised precept; it was practised in the temple and in the synagogues,[{7.29}] and it was deemed the first duty of the proselyte.[{7.30}] In every age Judaism was noted for its careful attention to the poor, and the fraternal charity which it inspired.

It would be highly unjust to hold up Christianity as a reproach to Judaism, since to the latter primitive Christianity owes almost everything. It is when we look upon the Roman world that we are the most astonished at the miracles of charity performed by the Church. Never did a profane society, recognising only right for its basis, produce such admirable effects. The law of every profane, or, if I may say so, every philosophic system of society, is liberty, sometimes equality, but never fraternity. To charity, viewed as a right, it acknowledges no obligations; it only pays attention to individuals; it finds charity often inconvenient, and neglects it. Every attempt to apply the public funds to the aid of the poor savors of communism. When a man dies of hunger, when entire classes languish in misery, the policy of the profane social system limits itself to acknowledging that the fact is unfortunate. It can easily show that there is no civil order without liberty; now, as a consequence of liberty, he who has nothing, and can get nothing, perishes from hunger. That is indeed logical; but there is no guard against the abuse of logic. The necessities of the most numerous class always result in dispensing with it. Institutions purely political and civil are not enough; social and religious aspirations claim a religious satisfaction. The glory of the Jewish people is, that they boldly proclaimed this principle. The Jewish law is social, and not political; the prophets, the authors of the Apocalypses, were the promoters of social and political revolutions. In the first half of the first century, in the presence of profane civilization, the absorbing idea of the Jews was to repel the benefits of the Roman system, with its philosophy, democracy, and equality, and to proclaim the excellence of their theocratic law. “The law is happiness,” was the idea of such Jewish thinkers as Philon and Josephus. The laws of other people were intended to secure justice, and had nothing to do with the goodness and happiness of man; while on the other hand, the Jewish law descended to the details of moral education. Christianity is only the development of this idea. Each church is a monastery where all possess rights over all the others; where there should be neither poor nor wicked; and where, consequently, every individual is careful to guard and restrain himself. Primitive Christianity may be defined as a vast association of poor people; as a heroic struggle against egotism, founded upon the idea that no one has a right to more than is absolutely necessary for him, and that all the superfluity belongs to those who possess nothing. It will at once be seen that with such a spirit and the Roman spirit war to the death must ensue; and that Christianity, on its part, can never dominate the world without important modifications of its native tendencies and its original programme.

But the needs which it represents will always last. The communistic life during the second half of the Middle Ages, serving for the abuses of an intolerant Church, the monastery having become a mere feudal fief, or the barracks for a dangerous and fanatic military modern feeling, became bitterly opposed to the cenobitic system. We have forgotten that it was in the communistic life that the soul of man experienced its fullest joy. The song, “Oh, how good and joyful a thing it is for brethren to dwell together in unity,”[{7.31}] has ceased to be our refrain. But when modern individualism shall have borne its latest fruits, when humanity, shrunken and saddened, shall also have become weak and impotent, it will return to these great institutions and stern disciplines; when our material society—I should say our world of pigmies—shall have been scourged with whips by the heroic and the idealistic, then the communistic system will regain all its force. Many great things, such as science, will be organized under a monastic form. Egotism, the essential law of civil law, of civil society, will be insufficient for great minds; all coming, from whatever point of view, will be opposed to vulgarity. The words of Jesus and the ideas of the Middle Ages in regard to poverty will again be appreciated. It will be understood that the possession of anything implies an inferiority, and that the founders of the mystic life disputed for centuries as to whether Jesus owned even that which he used for his daily wants. The Franciscan subtleties will become again great social problems. The splendid ideal devised by the author of the Acts will be inscribed as a prophetic revelation at the gates of the paradise of humanity: “And the multitude of them that believed were of one heart and one soul; neither said of them that aught of the things which he possessed was his own, but they had all things in common, neither was any among them that lacked: for as many as were possessors of land or houses sold them, and brought the price of the things that were sold, and laid them down at the apostles' feet, and distribution was made unto every man, according as he had need. And they continuing with one accord in the temple and breaking bread from house to house, did eat their meat with gladness and singleness of heart.”[{7.32}]

Let us not anticipate events. It is now about the year 36. Tiberius at Caprea could have no more doubt that a formidable enemy to the empire was growing up. In two or three years the new sect had made surprising progress; now counted several thousands of adherents.[{7.33}] It was easy to foresee that its conquests would be chiefly among the Hellenists and proselytes. The Galilean group, which had heard the Master, though preserving its precedence, seemed almost lost in the current of new-comers who spoke Greek. At the time of which we speak, no heathen, that is to say, no man who had not held previous relations with Judaism, had entered into the Church; but proselytes[{7.34}] performed important functions in it. The jurisdiction of the disciples had also largely extended, and was no longer simply a little college of Palestineans, but included people of Cyprus, Antioch, and Cyrene,[{7.35}] and of almost all the points on the eastern shore of the Mediterranean where Jewish colonies had been established. Egypt alone knew nothing of the primitive Church, and for a long time remained ignorant. The Jews of that country were almost in a state of schism with those of Judea. They had customs of their own, superior in many points to those of Palestine, and were almost entirely unaffected by the great religious movement at Jerusalem.