Part 10

I venture to flatter myself, my brethren, that if the greatest enemies of the Christian religion were to listen to us in this secluded temple, in which the love of virtue brings us together; if Lord Herbert, Lord Shaftesbury, Lord Bolingbroke, Tindal, Toland, Collins, Whiston, Trenchard, Gordon, and Swift were to witness our gentle and innocent simplicity, they would have less disdain and repugnance for us. They cease not to reproach us with an absurd fanaticism. We are not fanatical in belonging to the religion of Jesus. He worshipped one God, as we do; he despised empty ceremonies, as we do. No gospel has said that his mother was the mother of God, or that he was consubstantial with God. In no gospel will you find that the disciples of Jesus should arrogate the title of “Holy Father,” or “My Lord,” or that a priest who lives at Lambeth should have an income of two thousand a year while so many useful tillers of the soil have hardly the seed for the three or four acres they water with their tears. The gospel did not say to the bishops of Rome: Forge a donation of Constantine in order to seize the city of the Scipios and Cæsars and become sovereigns of Naples. It did not urge the bishops of Germany to profit by a time of anarchy to invade half of Germany. Jesus was a poor man preaching to the poor. What should we say of the followers of Penn and Fox, those enemies of pomp and friends of peace, if they bore golden mitres on their heads and were surrounded by soldiers; if they grasped the substance of the peoples; if they would give orders to kings; if their satellites, with executioners in their train, were to cry out at the top of their voices, “Foolish nations, believe in Fox and Penn, or you will die in torment”?

You know better than I what a fatal contrast the ages have witnessed between the humility of Jesus and the pride of those who have assumed his name; between their avarice and his poverty, their debauches and his chastity, his submissiveness and their bloody tyranny.

I confess, my brethren, that no word of his has made such an impression on me as that which he spoke to those who were so brutal as to strike him before he was led to execution: “If I have spoken well, why do you strike me?” That is what ought to be said to all persecutors. If my opinion differs from yours on things that it is impossible to understand; if I see the mercy of God where you would see only his power; if I have said that all the disciples of Jesus were equal, while you have thought it your duty to trample on them; if I have worshipped God alone while you have given him associates; if I have spoken ill in differing from you, bear witness of the evil; and if I have spoken well, why do you heap on me your insults and epithets? Why do you persecute me, cast me in irons, deliver me to torture and flames, and insult me even after my death? If, indeed, I had spoken ill, it was yours only to pity and instruct me. You are confident that you are infallible, that your opinion is divine, that the gates of hell will never prevail against it, that the whole world will one day embrace your opinion, that the world will be subject to you, and that you will rule from Mount Atlas to the islands of Japan. How, then, can my opinion hurt you? You do not fear me, and you persecute me! You despise me, and do away with me!

What reply can we make, my brethren, to these modest and forceful reproaches? Only the reply of the wolf to the lamb, “You have disturbed the water that I drink.” Thus have men treated each other--the gospel in one hand and sword in the other; preaching disinterestedness and accumulating treasures, praising humility and walking on the heads of prostrate princes, recommending mercy and shedding human blood.

If these barbarians find in the gospel any parable that may be distorted in their favour by fraudulent interpretation, they fasten upon it as an anvil on which they may forge their murderous weapons.

Is there a word about two swords hung above a wall? They arm themselves at once with a hundred swords. It is said that a king has killed his fatted beasts, compelled the blind and the lame to come to his feast, and cast into outer darkness him who had no wedding garment; is that, my brethren, a reason that justifies them in putting you in prison like this guest, tearing your limbs asunder on the rack, plucking out your eyes to make you blind like those who were dragged to the feast, or slaying you as the king slew his fatted beasts? Yet it is to such equivocal passages that men have so often appealed for the right to desolate a large part of the earth.

Those terrible words, “Not peace, but a sword, I bring unto you,” have caused more Christians to perish than ambition has ever sacrificed.

The scattered and unhappy Jews are consoled in their wretchedness when they see us always fighting each other from the earliest days of Christianity, always at war in public or in secret, persecuted or persecuting, oppressed or oppressing. They are united, and they laugh at our interminable quarrels. It seems that we have been concerned only in avenging them.

Wretches that we are, we insult the pagans, yet they never knew our theological quarrels; they have never shed a drop of blood for the interpretation of a dogma, and we have flooded the earth with it. In the bitterness of my heart I say to you: Jesus was persecuted, and whoever shares his thoughts will be persecuted. What was Jesus in the eyes of men, who could assuredly have no suspicion of his divinity? A good man who, having been born in poverty, spoke to the poor in opposition to the superstitions of the rich Pharisees and the insolent priests--the Socrates of Galilee. You know how he said to these Pharisees, “Woe unto you, ye blind guides, which strain at a gnat and swallow a camel! Woe unto you, for ye make clean the outside of the cup and of the platter, but within you are full of extortion and excess” (_Matthew_ xxiii.).

He often calls them “whitened sepulchres” and “race of vipers.” They were, nevertheless, men of some dignity, and they avenged themselves by his death. Arnold of Brescia, John Huss, and Jerome of Prague said much less than this to the pontiffs of their time, and they, too, were put to death. Never tilt against the ruling superstition, unless you be powerful enough to withstand it, or clever enough to escape its pursuit. The fable of Our Lady of Loretto is more extravagant than all Ovid’s metamorphoses, it is true; the miracle of St. Januarius at Naples is more ridiculous than the miracle of Egnatia, mentioned by Horace, I agree. But say aloud at Naples or Loretto what you think of these absurdities, and it will cost you your life. It is not so among certain enlightened nations. There the people have their errors, though they are less gross; and the least superstitious people are always the most tolerant.

Cast off all superstition, and be more humane. But when you speak against fanaticism, anger not the fanatics; they are delirious invalids, who would assault their physicians. Let us make their ways more gentle, not aggravate them. And let us instil, drop by drop, into their souls that divine balm of tolerance which they would reject with horror if offered to them in full.

EPISTLE TO THE ROMANS

(TRANSLATED FROM THE ITALIAN OF COUNT DE CORBERA)

ARTICLE I.

Illustrious Romans, it is not the Apostle Paul who has the honour of addressing you. It is not that worthy Jew who was born at Tarsus, according to the _Acts of the Apostles_, and at Giscala according to Jerome and other fathers; a dispute that has led some to believe that one may be born in two different places at the same time, just as there are among you certain bodies which are created by a few Latin words, and are found in a hundred thousand places at the same time.[38]

It is not the bald, hot-headed man, with long and broad nose, black eyebrows, thick and continuous, and broad shoulders and crooked legs,[39] who, having carried off the daughter of his master Gamaliel, and being subsequently dissatisfied with her, divorced her[40]; and, in pique, if we may believe contemporary Jewish writers, put himself at the head of the nascent body of the Christians.

It is not that St. Paul who, when he was a servant of Gamaliel, had the good Stephen, the patron of deacons and of those who are stoned, slain with stones, and who, while it was done, took care of the cloaks of the murderers--a fitting employment for a priest’s valet. It is not he who fell from his horse, blinded in midday by a heavenly light, and to whom God said in the air, as he says every day to so many others: “Why persecutest thou me?” It is not he who wrote to the half-Jewish, half-Christian shopkeepers of Corinth: “Have we not power to eat and to drink ... and to lead about a sister or a wife? Who goeth to war any time at his own charge?”[41] By those fine words the Reverend Father Menou, Jesuit and apostle of Lorraine, profited so well that they brought him, at Nancy, eighty thousand francs a year, a palace, and more than one handsome woman.

It is not he who wrote to the little flock in Thessalonica that the universe was about to be destroyed, and on that account it was not worth while keeping money about one. As Paul said: “For the Lord himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God; and the dead in Christ shall rise first; then we which are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them.”[42]

Observe, generous Romans, that St. Paul did but announce these pleasant things to the tailors and grocers of Thessalonica in virtue of the express prophecy of Luke (ch. xxi.), who had publicly--that is, to some fifteen or sixteen chosen souls among the people--averred that this generation would not pass away before the son of man came on the clouds with great power and glory. It is true, O Romans, that Jesus came not on the clouds with a great power; but at least the popes have had this great power, and thus are the prophecies fulfilled.

He who writes this epistle to the Romans is, again, not that St. Paul, half Jew, half Christian, who, having preached Jesus and announced the destruction of the Mosaic law, not only went to Judaise in the temple of Hershalaim, which the vulgar call Jerusalem, but, on the advice of his friend James, observed there certain rigorous practices which the Holy Inquisition now punishes with death.[43]

He who writes to you has been neither priest’s valet, nor murderer, nor keeper of cloaks, nor apostate, nor maker of tents, nor buried in the depths of the sea, like Jonah, for twenty-four hours, nor caught up to the third heaven, like Elias, without learning what the third heaven is.

He who writes to you is more a citizen than this Saul Paul, who, it is said, boasted of being one, and assuredly was not. For Tarsus, if he came from there, was not made a Roman colony until the time of Caracalla [211-217 A.D.]; and Giscala in Galilee, from which it is more probable that he came, since he was of the tribe of Benjamin, was certainly not a Roman town. Roman citizenship was not bestowed on Jews at Tarsus or anywhere else. The author of the _Acts of the Apostles_ (xvi., 37) asserts that this Jew Paul and another Jew named Silas were arrested by the authorities in the town of Philippi in Macedonia (a town founded by the father of Alexander, near which the battle between Cassius and Brutus, on the one side, and Antony and Octavian, on the other, decided the fate of your empire). Paul and Silas were scourged for stirring up the populace, and Paul said to the officers: “They have beaten us, being Romans” (_Acts_ xvi., 37). Commentators freely admit that Silas was not a Roman citizen. They do not say that the author of _Acts_ lied, but they agree that what he says is untrue; and I am sorry for the Holy Spirit, who, no doubt, dictated the _Acts of the Apostles_.

In fine, he who now writes to the descendants of Marcellus, the Scipios, the Catos, Cicero, Titus, and the Antonines, is a Roman gentleman of an ancient and transplanted family, one who cherishes his venerable country, bemoans her condition, and has left his heart in her Capitol.

Romans, listen to your fellow-citizen; listen to Rome and your ancient valour.

_L’Italico valor non è ancor morto._

ARTICLE II.

When I travelled among you, I wept to see the Zocolanti occupying that very Capitol to which Paulus Emilus led King Perseus, the descendant of Alexander, chained to his triumphal car; that temple to which the Scipios had brought the spoils of Carthage, and in which Pompey triumphed over Asia, Africa, and Europe. But even more bitter were my tears when I recalled the feast that Cæsar spread for our ancestors on twenty-two thousand tables, and when I compared the _congiaria_, that immense free distribution of corn, with the scanty and poor bread that you eat to-day, sold to you at so high a price by the apostolic chamber. Alas! you cannot even sow your soil without the permission of these apostles; and, indeed, what have you with which to sow it? There is not a citizen among you, save a few that live in the Trastevere quarter, who has a plough. Your God fed five thousand men, to say nothing of the women and children, with five loaves and two gudgeons, according to St. John; four thousand men, according to Matthew.[44] You, Romans, are made to swallow the gudgeon[45] without receiving any bread. The successors of Lucullus are reduced to the holy practice of fasting.

Your climate has never changed, whatever be said to the contrary. Who, then, has so greatly changed your soil, your fortunes, and your spirit? Whence comes it that the whole country from the gates of Rome to Ostia is inhabited only by reptiles? Why do we find that, from Montefiascone to Viterbo, and in the whole region through which the Appian Way still leads to Naples, a vast desert has replaced the smiling land that was once covered with palaces, gardens, harvests, and countless numbers of citizens? I sought the Forum Romanum of Trajan, that square once paved with reticulated marble, surrounded by a colonnaded peristyle and adorned with a hundred statues; and what I found was the Campo Vacino, the cattle-market, a market of lean and milkless cows. And I asked myself: Where are those two million Romans who once peopled this capital? I found that on the average only 3500 children are now born annually in Rome. Setting aside Jews, priests, and foreigners, Rome cannot have one hundred thousand inhabitants. I asked of them: Whose is this splendid building that I see, girt about with ruins? It belongs to the monks, they said. Here once was the house of Augustus; there Cicero dwelt, and there Pompey. On their ruins have arisen convents.

I wept, Romans; and I think highly enough of you to believe that you weep with me.

ARTICLE III.

It was explained to me that an aged priest, who has been appointed pope by other priests, cannot find either the time or the will to relieve your misery. He can think only of living. What interest should he take in Romans? He is himself rarely a Roman. What care should he take of an estate that will not pass to his children? Rome is not his patrimony, as it was that of the Cæsars. It is an ecclesiastical benefice; the papacy is a kind of commendatory abbey,[46] which each abbot ruins while he lives. The Cæsars had a real interest in seeing Rome flourish; the patricians, under the Republic, had an even greater interest. No dignities could be obtained unless the people were won with benefits, cajoled by the appearance of virtue, or fired by great victories. A pope shuts himself up with his money and his unleavened bread, and gives only his blessing to the people that was once known as “the People King.”

Your misfortunes began with the transfer of the Empire of Rome to the bounds of Thrace. Constantine, chosen emperor by a few barbaric cohorts in distant England, triumphed over the Maxentius chosen by you. Maxentius was drowned in the Tiber in the rout, and left the Empire to his rival. But the conqueror went to hide himself on the shores of the Black Sea; he could not have done more if he had been beaten. Stained with debauch and crime, murderer of his father-in-law, brother-in-law, nephew, son, and wife, abhorred by the Romans, he abandoned the ancient religion under which they had conquered so many States, and cast himself into the arms of the Christians who had found the money to which he owed his crown.[47] He thus betrayed the Empire as soon as he obtained it, and, in transplanting to the Bosphorus the great tree that had sheltered Europe, Africa, and Asia Minor, he did fatal injury to its roots.

Your next misfortune was this ecclesiastical maxim, quoted in a celebrated French poem, “Le Lutrin,” and very gravely true: “Ruin the world, if need be; it is the spirit of the Church.” The Church fought the ancient religion of the Empire, and tore its own entrails in the struggle, dividing, with equal fury and imprudence, on a hundred incomprehensible questions of which none had ever heard before. The Christian sects, hounding each other with fire and sword for metaphysical chimæras and sophisms of the school, united to seize the spoils of the priesthood founded by Numa. They did not rest until they had destroyed the altar of Victory at Rome.

St. Ambrose, passing from the bar to the bishopric of Milan without being a deacon, and your Damasus, whom a schism made bishop of Rome, profited by this fatal success. They secured the destruction of the altar of Victory, which had been set up on the Capitol[48] nearly eight hundred years before--a monument of the courage of your ancestors, destined to maintain their valour in their descendants. The emblematic figure of Victory was no object of idolatry, like your statues of Antony of Padua (who “hears those whom God will not hear”), of Francis of Assisi (who is represented over the door of a church at Rheims with this inscription: “To Francis and Jesus, both crucified”), of St. Crepin, St. Barbe, and so many others; or like the blood of a score of saints (headed by your patron Januarius, whom the rest of the earth knows not) that is liquefied at Naples on certain days, or the prepuce and navel of Jesus, or the milk, and hair, and shift, and petticoat of his mother. These are idolatries, as disgusting as they are accredited. But this Victory, surmounting a globe, with outspread wings, a sword in hand, and head crowned with laurels, was merely the noble device of the Roman Empire, the symbol of virtue. Fanaticism robbed you of the pledge of your glory.

With what effrontery did these new enthusiasts dare to substitute their Rochs, and Fiacres, and Eustaces, and Ursulas, and Scholasticas for Neptune, the ruler of the seas; Mars, the god of war; and Juno, the ruler of the air, under the sovereignty of the great Zeus, the eternal Demiourgos, master of the elements, the gods, and men! A thousand times more idolatrous than your ancestors, these maniacs bade you worship the bones of the dead. These plagiarists of antiquity borrowed the lustral water of the Romans and Greeks, their procession, the confession that was made in the mysteries of Ceres and Isis, their incense, libations, hymns, and the very garments of their priests. They spoiled the old religion, and clad themselves in its vesture. Even to-day they bow down before the statues of unknown men, while they heap reproaches on a Pericles, a Solon, a Miltiades, a Cicero, a Scipio, or a Cato for bending the knee before these emblems of divinity.

Nay, is there a single episode in the Old or the New Testament that has not been copied from the ancient mythologies of India, Chaldæa, Egypt, and Greece? Is not the sacrifice of Idomene the plain source of that of Jephtha? Is not the roe of Iphigenia the ram of Isaac? Do you not recognise Eurydice in Edith, the wife of Lot? Minerva and the winged horse Pegasus drew fountains from the rocks when they struck them; the same prodigy is ascribed to Moses. Bacchus had crossed the Red Sea dry-shod before he did, and he had caused the sun and moon to stand still before Joshua. We have the same legends, the same extravagances, on every side.

There is not a single miraculous action in the gospels that you will not find in much earlier writers. The goat Amalthæa had a horn of plenty long before it was said that Jesus had fed five thousand men, not to speak of the women, with two fishes. The daughters of Anius had changed water into wine and oil before there was any question of the marriage-feast of Cana. Athalide, Hippolytus, Alcestis, Pelops, and Heres had returned to life long before men spoke of the resurrection of Jesus; and Romulus was born of a vestal virgin more than seven hundred years before Jesus began to be regarded as virgin-born. Compare, and judge for yourselves.

ARTICLE IV.

When your altar of Victory had been destroyed, the barbarians came and finished the work of the priests. Rome became the prey and the sport of nations that it had so long ruled, if not repressed.

It is true that you still had consuls, a senate, municipal laws; but the popes have robbed you of what the Huns and Goths had left you.