The Early Christians in Rome

by H. D. M. Spence-Jones

But Hadrian was not a good man, though he was a magnificent sovereign. His life was made up of the strangest contradictions. At times he played the part almost of an ascetic, abstaining from wine in his repasts, and even submitting to the work and fatigues of an ordinary legionary soldier. At times his life was disfigured by the grossest excesses and debauchery.[31] His attitude towards Christianity especially concerns us. He had no religion, no faith. He was interested in all cults to a certain extent, was even initiated into the mysteries of some of the old pagan beliefs; and while he accepted nothing, he denied nothing.

His famous rescript to Serenus Granianus, now generally accepted as genuine, gives us some conception of his estimate of Christianity, at least in the earlier portion of his reign. It virtually endorses what Trajan had written to Pliny in the matter of the Bithynian Christians. They were not to be hunted out, but if legally convicted as Christians they were to suffer. Hadrian, certainly in his earlier years, even went further in the direction of toleration than his predecessor. An informer, unless he could prove the truth of his accusation, would be subject to the severest penalties of the law.

But Hadrian, like Trajan who reigned before him, and Antoninus Pius who succeeded him on the imperial throne, knew very little of Christianity. It is more than doubtful if he had ever seen a Gospel; and although his sense of justice and his perfect indifference to all religions dictated the terms and inspired the tone of the famous rescript in question, in common with all Roman statesmen he evidently disliked and even feared the strange faith which was gradually gaining ground so rapidly in the world of Rome.

This dislike of Christianity, which some historians characterize in Hadrian’s case as positively hatred of the faith, was shown markedly in the latter years of his life by the deliberate insults which he offered to the most sacred Christian memories in Jerusalem after the close of the terrible Jewish war in A.D. 135. Some modern writers have pleaded that no special profanation was intended by Hadrian when the building of Ælia Capitolina on the site of Jerusalem was proceeded with after the Jewish war; but the testimony of Christian writers[32] here is very positive. An image of Jupiter was placed on the Mount of the Ascension; a statue of Venus was adored on the hill of Golgotha; Bethlehem was dedicated to Adonis, and a sacred grove was planted there; and the impure Phœnician rites were actually celebrated in the grotto of the Nativity.

But for the historian of the first days of Christianity, by far the most important event in this brilliant reign of Hadrian was the fatal Jewish war of A.D. 133–5 and its striking results. This was the war of extermination, as the Talmud subsequently termed it; the war in which the false Messiah Bar-cochab and the famous Rabbi Akiba were the most prominent figures. The outcome of this terrible war was the absolute destruction of the nationality of the Jewish people. From henceforth, i.e. after A.D. 134–5, the whole spirit of the Jews was changed; they lived from this time with new ideals, with new and different hopes and aims. This wonderful change we have described at some length and with many details in Book V. of this work.

From this time forward, there is no doubt that the conception which Roman statesmen had formed of Christianity underwent a marked change. Hitherto, more or less, the Christian was regarded as a Jewish dissenter, and was viewed at Rome with dislike, but at the same time with a certain contemptuous toleration provided that he kept out of sight. Trajan evidently, from the Pliny correspondence, was averse to harsh persecution if it could be avoided; and Hadrian, certainly in his earlier years, followed the policy of Trajan. But after A.D. 135 all this was changed. The Jewish people after the termination of the last bitter war passed into stillness.

They now rigidly abstained from admitting any stranger Gentiles into the charmed circle of Judaism, sternly forbidding any proselytizing. They abandoned all earthly ambition—their hope and expectation of seeing their land independent and powerful was relegated to a dim and distant future. They believed that they were the chosen people in far-back days of the Eternal of Hosts—they would quietly wait His good pleasure, and by a rigid observance in all its minutest details of the divine law, which they made the sole object of their study and meditation, would merit once more His favour; they hoped and expected at some distant day again to rejoice in the light of His countenance,—a light, alas! long since veiled owing to their past disobedience; to the Christian and his teaching in the meantime they vowed an implacable hatred.

It then began (after A.D. 134–5), slowly at first, to dawn upon the statesmen of Rome that the Christian was no mere Jewish dissenter, but a member of a new and perfectly distinct community, a sect intensely in earnest, successful in making proselytes, possessing, too, a secret power which the Roman statesman marvelled at but was incapable of understanding,—a secret power which made the Christian absolutely fearless of death and utterly regardless of any punishment human ingenuity could devise; a sect, too, which, quite independent of the Jews, daily was multiplying, and was rapidly numbering in its ranks men and women of every calling, drawn, too, from every province indifferently in the wide Roman empire,—becoming, indeed, an Empire within an Empire.

But the subjects of this inner Empire, while loyal to the State, obedient, and peaceful, dwelt as it were as a nation apart, professing an allegiance to an invisible Power unknown to the ancient traditions of Rome, and irreconcilably hostile to the ancient religion on which the true Roman loved to believe the grandeur of the Empire was based.

The consciousness of all this may be said to have really dawned upon Roman statesmen only after the great change which passed over Judaism at the close of the awful war of Hadrian,—a change which showed for the first time the broad gulf which yawned between the Jewish people and the new Christian community.