Besides the private persecution which never ceased (and which is always more galling and unbearable than the public), there were at least ten great imperial crusades directed against Christianity. When we say directed against Christianity, we wish to be distinctly understood as meaning against liberty and equality. About the spiritualism of Christianity the pagan rulers cared not a straw, more than they did about their own gods. Religion was a mere pretence in the matter, as it is in all such matters. It served their purposes with the multitude (who alone are sincere on such occasions); and that is all they cared for. It is by viewing persecution in this light—the only true light—that modern reformers can profit by our remarks on this head.
The first great persecution (which took place under Nero, about A.D. 64) is noticed by Tacitus in his “Annals.” From the language used by that historian, it is manifest that the wealthier classes of Rome regarded the Christians of that period as a most dangerous combination against not only the government, but (to use a doctrinaire phrase) against “society” itself. Tacitus—himself an aristocrat—regarded the aristocratic orders of his day as constituting society; and finding these orders to be no favourites with the Christians, he roundly accuses the latter of “hatred towards the human race,” and describes them as followers of one Christ, who was the founder of a “deplorable and destructive superstition”! In the same way, the Bonapartes, the Thiers, and the Guizots of the present day represent their own plundering class as society, and describe such men as Ledru Rollin, Mazzini, Louis Blanc, Proudhon, &c., as enemies of all law and order—as enemies of family, property, and religion,—in short, as warring against “the very existence of society itself” (their own words), because they preferred the rights and happiness of the great majority to the usurpations of a criminal and contemptible minority. It is now an established fact—a fact as well attested as any in history—that the insurrection and bloody carnage in June, 1848, was preconcerted and with great pains elaborated by the friends of “law and order,” in order to purge “society” of Red Republicanism and Socialism, or (to use their own phrase) pour en finir—i.e. to make a finish of the democratic and social republic by drowning it in the blood of its authors and most heroic defenders.
It is not so well known how the great fire originated in Rome, which Nero and his myrmidons charged upon the Christians. History had no historians for the poor of those days. There is but too much reason, however, to believe that the burning of Rome in Nero’s time was as much the work of the friends of “law and order,” and for a similar purpose, as the June insurrection was notoriously the work of the same description of gentry in Paris. Times and circumstances change, but not human nature; it is always the same, and will ever develop itself in the like way under like circumstances. Nero is said to have fiddled when Rome burned. The friends of “law and order,” the defenders of “society,” were never in brighter ecstacies than when Cavaignac announced the demolition, by shells and cannon, of the houses of the insurgents, and the massacre of their brave defenders. If setting fire to Rome, and reducing three-fourths of it to ashes, could have been made available for the destruction of the Christians, the aristocracy of that day would no more have scrupled at it than did Rostochin the burning of Moscow, Cavaignac the demolitions in Paris, or General Oudinot the bombardment of Rome. Aristocrats have never been aught but robbers since the birth of their order; and all history proves that they invariably become murderers, burners, devastators, and hirers of assassins the moment the people attempt to recover their own. It was so, most likely, in the burning of Rome. To this day, Nero himself is suspected of the deed, though we think it far more likely to have been the work of his aristocracy, with whom he was no favourite, because he made himself too familiar with the common people.
But whether the atrocity was Nero’s work, or that of the aristocratic enemies of Christianity, it is certain the unfortunate Christians were made to bear the odium and penalties of it. Without any evidence on the matter, the best and bravest of the Christian party—those publicly known as such—were openly seized and accused of the act. Through these, others were discovered and laid hold of, till the imperial net was full of victims. They were condemned to a variety of cruel deaths, and they perished in the midst of all manner of insults and execrations. Some were sewed up in the skins of wild beasts, and then thrown to hungry dogs, to be torn in pieces and devoured. Some were nailed to crosses, like their Divine Master. Others were burnt alive, in a manner which ought to cause aristocracy and vulgar intolerance to be abhorred till the crack of doom. The victims were first sewed up in pitched clothes or coverings; these were then set on fire, and, being lighted up at night, they served as torches to illuminate Nero’s own gardens, which were given for the purpose.
These barbarities were followed by edicts published against the Christians, which enjoined upon the authorities to repress them by every means placed at their disposal by the law. Of course, many martyrs suffered, especially in Italy. St. Peter and St. Paul are generally supposed to have been of the number. The former was crucified, it is said, with his head downwards, at his own request. St. Paul was beheaded. Such, at least, is the tradition preserved by the early Fathers, who are all unanimous that their martyrdom was a consequence of this persecution; though it is not precisely known whether it was the burning of Rome that was made the pretence of killing them, or a revolt of the Jews from the Romans, which took place a year or two later, through a successful insurrection in Jerusalem. The former is the more likely and accredited, though the latter is not improbable, seeing the Christians gave the Romans some trouble at the time in Judea, where their garrison in Jerusalem was put to the sword, and one of their generals, who came to besiege it, was ignominiously repulsed and defeated in his retreat. Such events would naturally exasperate the Romans against both Jews and Christians; and as the populace hated both sects alike, the martyrdom of Peter and Paul might be easily enough accounted for under the circumstances.
It is needless to say, Nero’s persecution was unsuccessful. It only made the Christians more cautious. Their numbers and zeal but multiplied in despite of it. And if, to men of their principles, it could be any satisfaction to hear of their enemy’s death, they had abundant occasion for it when it became known that Nero fell by his own hand—thus atoning for his injustice to them by at last doing justice to himself. If we mistake not, the Red Republicans and Social Reformers of the Continent will have cause to rejoice at many such acts of self-retribution on the part of their oppressors before many years elapse.
The second general persecution of the Christians took place in the reign of Domitian, towards the close of the first century. In this persecution many Christian teachers of great eminence suffered, but with no better success to the cause of paganism than the first. It appears to have ceased at the death of Domitian.
The third great persecution commenced in the third year of the Emperor Trajan, A.D. 100. Without going into the causes alleged by divines and churchmen for this persecution (which they would have us think was a purely spiritual affair), let us at once say that every feature of it known to us in these days shows clearly enough that it was the temporal and not the spiritual tendencies of Christianity the Emperor Trajan directed his force against. Indeed, the charges recorded against them are precisely the same as those made against Chartists in England, Red Republicans in France, or democrats anywhere in the present day. One churchman, treating of it, says, “Under the plausible pretence of their holding illegal meetings and societies, they were severely persecuted by the governors of provinces and other officers, in which persecutions great numbers fell by the rage of popular tumult, as well as by laws and processes.” Is it not under a similar “plausible pretence of holding illegal meetings and societies” that most persecutions take place against the political and social reformers of the present day? And wherein are the doctrines professed by the latter different from those recorded of the Christians in Trajan’s time? In no one essential particular. What a pity that our modern divines and churchmen cannot be got to see the persecutions of Chartists and Socialists, now-a-days, with the same eyes with which they look upon those of our predecessors, in religion and politics, who suffered under Nero, Domitian, and Trajan! The Trajan persecution continued several years, and made an immense number of martyrs; amongst others the famous Clement, Bishop of Rome. But as Trajan was an emperor famed for his liberality, justice, and moderation, some of our modern parsons are at a loss to account for his severity to the Christians. Unless it be the chastening hand of Providence, they know not what to see in it. Sweet innocents! Did they ever hear of any liberal persecutors in England, or of any moderate mitrailleurs in France? Know they not that the authors of all the late massacres, transportations and dungeonings in France call themselves moderate reformers and liberals, and declare they will have only la république des honnêtes gens—the republic of honest men? Know they not, too, that the really honest men who are their victims get the very identical names, in France, that Trajan’s judges gave the victims of his persecution—viz., brigands, malefactors, and traitors? Yes, let modern churchmen and parsons pretend what they may, the authorities they now uphold are the exact counterpart of the Trajans and Domitians of old; and the political victims of the present day are as exactly the counterpart of those early Christians whose martyrdom they so affect to deplore, and which (to blind their flocks) they would have us believe was purely the consequence of their opinions touching a future state.
In this persecution under Trajan, and in another which ensued under his successor Adrian, it is as well known as anything in history that the great bulk of the martyrs suffered for the political and not the spiritual dogmas they upheld, and that in the eye of public opinion they passed not so much for blasphemers and atheists (names given to them to please the superstitious rabble), but as seditious disturbers of the peace, enemies of the emperor, malefactors towards society, and traitors to the imperial government.