Fabiola; Or, The Church of the Catacombs

by Nicholas Patrick Wiseman

The Claudian Aqueduct.

basking brightly in the setting sun. The craggy range of Sabine mountains on the left, and the golden expanse of the sea on the right of the beholder, closed in this perfect landscape.

It would be attributing to Maximian a quality which he did not possess, were we to give him credit for loving a residence so admirably situated, through any taste for the beautiful. The splendor of the buildings, which he had still further adorned, or possibly the facility of running out of the city for the chase of boar and wolf, was the motive of this preference. A native of Sirmium, in Sclavonia, a reputed barbarian therefore of the lowest extraction, a mere soldier of fortune, without any education, endowed with little more than a brute strength, which made his surname of Herculeus most appropriate, he had been raised to the purple by his brother-barbarian Diocles, known as the emperor Dioclesian. Like him, covetous to meanness, and spendthrift to recklessness, addicted to the same coarse vices and foul crimes, which a Christian pen refuses to record, without restraint of any passion, without sense of justice, or feeling of humanity, this monster had never ceased to oppress, persecute, and slay whoever stood in his way. To him the coming persecution looked like an approaching feast does to a glutton, who requires the excitement of a surfeit to relieve the monotony of daily excess. Gigantic in frame, with the well-known features of his race, with the hair on his head and face more yellow than red, shaggy and wild, like tufts of straw, with eyes restlessly rolling in a compound expression of suspicion, profligacy, and ferocity, this almost last of Rome’s tyrants struck terror into the heart of any beholder, except a Christian. Is it wonderful that he hated the race and its name?

In the large basilica, or hall, then, of the Ædes Lateranæ,[110] Maximian met his motley council, in which secrecy was ensured by penalty of death. In the semicircular apse at the upper end of the hall, sat the emperor, on an ivory throne richly adorned, and before him were arranged his obsequious and almost trembling advisers. A chosen body of guards kept the entrance; and the officer in command, Sebastian, was leaning negligently against it on the inside, but carefully noted every word that was spoken.

Little did the emperor think, that the hall in which he sat, and which he afterwards gave, with the contiguous palace, to Constantine, as part of the dowry of his daughter, Fausta, would be transferred by him to the head of the religion he was planning to extirpate, and become, retaining its name of the Lateran Basilica, the cathedral of Rome, “of all the churches of the city and of the world the mother and chief.”[111] Little did he imagine, that on the spot whereon rested his throne, would be raised a Chair, whence commands should issue, to reach worlds unknown to Roman sway, from an immortal race of sovereigns, spiritual and temporal.

Precedence was granted, by religious courtesy, to the priests; each of whom had his tale to tell. Here a river had overflowed its banks, and done much mischief to the neighboring plains; there an earthquake had thrown down part of a town; on the northern frontiers the barbarians threatened invasion; at the south, the plague was ravaging the pious population. In every instance, the oracles had declared, that it was all owing to the Christians, whose toleration irritated the gods, and whose evil charms brought calamity on the empire. Nay, some had afflicted their votaries by openly proclaiming, that they would utter no more, till the odious Nazarenes had been exterminated; and the great Delphic oracle had not hesitated to declare, “that the Just did not allow the gods to speak.”

Next came the philosophers and orators, each of whom made his own long-winded oration; during which Maximian gave unequivocal signs of weariness. But as the Emperors in the East had held a similar meeting, he considered it his duty to sit out the annoyance. The usual calumnies were repeated, for the ten-thousandth time, to an applauding assembly; the stories of murdering and eating infants, of committing foul crimes, of worshipping martyrs’ bodies, of adoring an ass’s head, and inconsistently enough of being unbelievers, and serving no God. These tales were all most firmly believed: though probably their reciters knew perfectly well, they were but good sound heathen lies, very useful in keeping up a horror of Christianity.

But, at length, up rose the man, who was considered to have most deeply studied the doctrines of the enemy, and best to know their dangerous tactics. He was supposed to have read their own books, and to be drawing up a confutation of their errors, which would fairly crush them. Indeed, so great was his weight with his own side, that when he asserted that Christians held any monstrous principle, had their supreme pontiff in person contradicted it, every one would have laughed at the very idea of taking his word for his own belief, against the assertion of Calpurnius.