I — Idole, Idolatre, Idolatrie
Original French
IDOLE, vient du grec Eidos, figure, Eidolos; représentation d’une figure, Latreuein, servir, révérer, adorer. Ce mot adorer est latin, & a beaucoup d’acceptions différentes: il signifie porter la main à la bouche en parlant avec respect: se courber, se mettre à genoux, saluer, & enfin communément, rendre un culte suprême.
Il est utile de remarquer ici que le dictionnaire de Trévoux commence cet article par dire que tous les payens étaient idolâtres, & que les Indiens sont encor des peuples idolâtres. Premiérement, on n’appella personne payen avant Théodose le jeune; ce nom fut donné alors aux habitans des bourgs d’Italie, Pagorum incolæ Pagani, qui conservèrent leur ancienne religion. Secondement, l’Indoustan est Mahométan, & les Mahométans sont les implacables ennemis des images & de l’idolatrie. Troisiémement, on ne doit point appeller idolâtres beaucoup de peuples de l’Inde qui sont de l’ancienne religion des Parsis, ni certaines Castes qui n’ont point d’idoles.
EXAMEN,
S’il y a jamais eu un gouvernement idolâtre.
Il paraît que jamais il n’y a eu aucun peuple sur la terre qui ait pris ce nom d’idolâtre. Ce mot est une injure, un terme outrageant, tel que celui de Gavache que les Espagnols donnaient autrefois aux Français, & celui de Maranes que les Français donnaient aux Espagnols. Si on avait demandé au sénat de Rome, à l’Aréopage d’Athènes, à la cour des rois de Perse, Etes-vous idolâtres? ils auraient à peine entendu cette question. Nul n’aurait répondu, Nous adorons des images, des idoles. On ne trouve ce mot, idolâtre, idolatrie, ni dans Homère, ni dans Hésiode, ni dans Hérodote, ni dans aucun auteur de la religion des Gentils. Il n’y a jamais eu aucun édit, aucune loi qui ordonnât qu’on adorât des idoles, qu’on les servît en Dieux, qu’on les regardât comme des Dieux.
Quand les capitaines Romains & Carthaginois faisaient un traité, ils attestaient tous leurs Dieux. C’est en leur présence, disaient-ils, que nous jurons la paix. Or les statues de tous ces Dieux, dont le dénombrement était très-long, n’étaient pas dans la tente des généraux; ils regardaient les Dieux comme présents aux actions des hommes, comme témoins, comme juges, & ce n’est pas assurément le simulacre qui constituait la divinité.
De quel œil voyaient-ils donc les statues de leurs fausses divinités dans les temples? Du même œil, s’il est permis de s’exprimer ainsi, que nous voyons les images des objets de notre vénération. L’erreur n’était pas d’adorer un morceau de bois ou de marbre, mais d’adorer une fausse divinité représentée par ce bois & ce marbre. La différence entre eux & nous n’est pas qu’ils eussent des images & que nous n’en ayons point; la différence est que leurs images figuraient des êtres fantastiques dans une religion fausse, & que les nôtres figurent des êtres réels dans une religion véritable. Les Grecs avaient la statue d’Hercule, & nous celle de St. Christophe; ils avaient Esculape & sa chèvre, & nous St. Roch & son chien; Jupiter armé du tonnerre, & nous St. Antoine de Padoue, & St. Jacques de Compostela.
Quand le consul Pline adresse ses priéres aux Dieux immortels, dans l’éxorde du panégirique de Trajan, ce n’est pas à des images qu’il les adresse; ces images n’étaient pas immortelles.
Ni les derniers temps du paganisme, ni les plus reculés, n’offrent pas un seul fait qui puisse faire conclure qu’on adorât une idole. Homère ne parle que des Dieux qui habitent le haut Olimpe. Le Palladium, quoique tombé du ciel, n’était qu’un gage sacré de la protection de Pallas; c’était elle qu’on vénérait dans le Palladium.
Mais les Romains & les Grecs se mettaient à genoux devant des statues, leur donnaient des couronnes, de l’encens, des fleurs, les promenaient en triomphe dans les places publiques. Nous avons sanctifié ces coutumes, & nous ne sommes point idolâtres.
Les femmes en temps de sécheresse portaient les statues des Dieux, après avoir jeuné. Elles marchaient piés nuds, les cheveux épars, & aussi-tôt il pleuvait à seaux, comme dit Pétrone, & statim urceatim pluebat. N’avons-nous pas consacré cet usage illégitime chez les Gentils, & légitime sans doute parmi nous? Dans combien de villes ne porte-t-on pas nuds piés les châsses des Saints pour obtenir les bénédictions du ciel par leur intercession? Si un Turc, un lettré Chinois était témoin de ces cérémonies, il pourait par ignorance nous accuser d’abord de mettre notre confiance dans les simulacres que nous promenons ainsi en procession; mais il suffirait d’un mot pour le détromper.
On est surpris du nombre prodigieux de déclamations débitées dans tous les temps contre l’idolâtrie des Romains, & des Grecs; & ensuite on est plus surpris encor quand on voit qu’ils n’étaient pas idolâtres.
Il y avait des temples plus privilégiés que les autres. La grande Diane d’Ephèse avait plus de réputation qu’une Diane de village. Il se faisait plus de miracles dans le temple d’Esculape à Epidaure, que dans un autre de ses temples. La statue de Jupiter Olimpien attirait plus d’offrandes que celle de Jupiter Paphlagonien. Mais puisqu’il faut toujours opposer ici les coutumes d’une religion vraye, à celles d’une religion fausse, n’avons-nous pas eu depuis plusieurs siécles plus de dévotion à certains autels qu’à d’autres? Ne portons-nous pas plus d’offrandes à Notre-Dame de Lorette, qu’à Notre-Dame des Neiges? C’est à nous à voir si on doit saisir ce prétexte pour nous accuser d’idolatrie?
On n’avait imaginé qu’une seule Diane, un seul Apollon, un seul Esculape; non pas autant d’Apollons, de Dianes & d’Esculapes qu’ils avaient de temples & de statues. Il est donc prouvé, autant qu’un point d’histoire peut l’être, que les anciens ne croyaient pas qu’une statue fût une divinité, que le culte ne pouvait être rapporté à cette statue, à cette idole, & que par-conséquent les anciens n’étaient point idolâtres.
Une populace grossiére & superstitieuse qui ne raisonnait point, qui ne sçavait ni douter, ni nier, ni croire, qui courait aux temples par oisiveté, & parce que les petits y sont égaux aux grands, qui portait son offrande par coutume, qui parlait continuellement de miracles sans en avoir examiné aucun, & qui n’était guères au-dessus des victimes qu’elle amenait; cette populace, dis-je, pouvait bien, à la vue de la grande Diane, & de Jupiter tonnant, être frappée d’une horreur religieuse, & adorer sans le sçavoir, la statue même; c’est ce qui est arrivé quelquefois dans nos temples à nos païsans grossiers, & on n’a pas manqué de les instruire que c’est aux bienheureux, aux immortels reçus dans le ciel, qu’ils doivent demander leur intercession, & non à des figures de bois & de pierre, & qu’ils ne doivent adorer que Dieu seul.
Les Grecs & les Romains augmentèrent le nombre de leurs Dieux par des apothéoses; les Grecs divinisaient les conquérants, comme Bacchus, Hercule, Persée. Rome dressa des autels à ses empereurs. Nos apothéoses sont d’un genre différent. Nous avons des Saints au lieu de leurs demi-Dieux, de leurs Dieux secondaires; mais nous n’avons égard ni au rang, ni aux conquêtes. Nous avons élevé des temples à des hommes simplement vertueux, qui seraient la plûpart ignorés sur la terre, s’ils n’étaient placés dans le ciel. Les apothéoses des anciens sont faites par la flaterie, les nôtres par le respect pour la vertu. Mais ces anciennes apothéoses sont encor une preuve convaincante que les Grecs & les Romains n’étaient point proprement idolâtres. Il est clair qu’ils n’admettaient pas plus une vertu divine dans la statue d’Auguste & de Claudius, que dans leurs médailles.
Ciceron dans ses ouvrages philosophiques ne laisse pas soupçonner seulement qu’on puisse se méprendre aux statues des Dieux & les confondre avec les Dieux mêmes. Ses interlocuteurs foudroyent la religion établie; mais aucun d’eux n’imagine d’accuser les Romains de prendre du marbre & de l’airain pour des divinités. Lucrèce ne reproche cette sottise à personne, lui qui reproche tout aux superstitieux. Donc, encor une fois, cette opinion n’existait pas, on n’en avait aucune idée. Il n’y avait point d’idolâtres.
Horace fait parler une statue de Priape; il lui fait dire, J’étais autrefois un tronc de figuier; un charpentier ne sachant s’il ferait de moi un Dieu ou un banc, se détermina enfin à me faire Dieu &c. Que conclure de cette plaisanterie? Priape était de ces petites divinités subalternes, abandonnées aux railleurs; & cette plaisanterie même est la preuve la plus forte que cette figure de Priape qu’on mettait dans les potagers pour effrayer les oiseaux, n’était pas fort révérée.
Dacier en se livrant à l’esprit commentateur n’a pas manqué d’observer que Baruch avait prédit cette avanture, en disant, Ils ne seront que ce que voudront les ouvriers; mais il pouvait observer aussi qu’on en peut dire autant de toutes les statues.
On peut d’un bloc de marbre tirer tout aussi bien une cuvette qu’une figure d’Alexandre, ou de Jupiter, ou de quelqu’autre chose plus respectable. La matiére dont étaient formés les cherubins du Saint des Saints aurait pû servir également aux fonctions les plus viles. Un trône, un autel en sont-ils moins révérés, parce que l’ouvrier en pouvait faire une table de cuisine?
Dacier au lieu de conclure que les Romains adoraient la statue de Priape, & que Baruch l’avait prédit, devait donc conclure que les Romains s’en moquaient. Consultez tous les auteurs qui parlent de statues de leurs Dieux, vous n’en trouverez aucun qui parle d’idolatrie; ils disent expressément le contraire. Vous voyez dans Martial:
Qui finxit sacros auro vel marmore vultus,Non facit ille Deos.
Dans Ovide: Colitur pro Jove forma Jovis.
Dans Stace: Nulla autem effigies, nulli commissa matello,Forma Dei mentes habitare ac numina gaudet.
Dans Lucain: Estne Dei sedes, nisi terra & pontus & aer?
On ferait un volume de tous les passages qui déposent que des images n’étaient que des images.
Il n’y a que le cas où les statues rendaient des oracles, qui ait pu faire penser que ces statues avaient en elles quelque chose de divin. Mais certainement l’opinion régnante était que les dieux avaient choisi certains autels, certains simulacres pour y venir résider quelquefois, pour y donner audience aux hommes, pour leur répondre. On ne voit dans Homère & dans les chœurs de tragédies Grecques, que des priéres à Apollon qui rend ses oracles sur les montagnes, en tel temple, en telle ville; il n’y a pas dans toute l’antiquité la moindre trace d’une priére adressée à une statue.
Ceux qui professaient la magie, qui la croyaient une science, ou qui feignaient de le croire, prétendaient avoir le secret de faire descendre les Dieux dans les statues, non pas les grands Dieux, mais les Dieux secondaires, les génies. C’est ce que Mercure Trismégiste appellait faire des Dieux; & c’est ce que St. Augustin réfute dans sa cité de Dieu. Mais cela même montre évidemment que les simulacres n’avaient rien en eux de divin, puisqu’il falait qu’un magicien les animât. Et il me semble qu’il arrivait bien rarement qu’un magicien fût assez habile pour donner une ame à une statue pour la faire parler.
En un mot les images des Dieux n’étaient point des Dieux; Jupiter, & non pas son image, lançait le tonnerre; ce n’était pas la statue de Neptune qui soulevait les mers, ni celle d’Apollon qui donnait la lumière. Les Grecs & les Romains étaient des Gentils, des Polithéïstes, & n’étaient point des idolâtres.
Si les Perses, les Sabéens, les Egyptiens, les Tartares; les Turcs ont été idolâtres? & de quelle antiquité est l’origine des simulacres appellés idoles. Histoire de leur culte.
C’est une grande erreur d’appeller idolâtres les peuples qui rendirent un culte au soleil & aux étoiles. Ces nations n’eurent longtemps ni simulacres ni temples. Si elles se trompèrent, c’est en rendant aux astres ce qu’ils devaient au créateur des astres: Encor le dogme de Zoroastre ou Zerdust, recueilli dans le Sadder, enseigne-t-il un être suprême, vengeur & rémunérateur; & cela est bien loin de l’idolatrie. Le gouvernement de la Chine n’a jamais eu aucune idole; il a toûjours conservé le culte simple du maître du ciel Kingtien. Gengis-Kan chez les Tartares n’était point idolâtre, & n’avait aucun simulacre. Les Musulmans qui remplissent la Grèce, l’Asie mineure, la Syrie, la Perse, l’Inde & l’Afrique, appellent les chrêtiens idolâtres, giaours, parce qu’ils croyent que les chrêtiens rendent un culte aux images. Ils brisèrent plusieurs statues qu’ils trouvèrent à Constantinople dans Ste. Sophie, & dans l’église des Sts. Apotres, & dans d’autres qu’ils convertirent en mosquées. L’apparence les trompa comme elle trompe toûjours les hommes, & leur fit croire que des temples dédiés à des saints qui avaient été hommes autrefois, des images de ces saints revérées à genoux, des miracles opérés dans ces temples, étaient des preuves invincibles de l’idolatrie la plus complette. Cependant il n’en est rien. Les chrêtiens n’adorent en effet qu’un seul Dieu, & ne révérent dans les bienheureux que la vertu même de Dieu qui agit dans ses saints. Les iconoclastes & les protestans ont fait le même reproche d’idolatrie à l’église, & on leur a fait la même réponse.
Comme les hommes ont eu très-rarement des idées précises, & ont encor moins exprimé leurs idées par des mots précis, & sans équivoque, nous appellames du nom d’idolâtres les gentils, & surtout les polithéïstes. On a écrit des volumes immenses, on a débité des sentiments divers sur l’origine de ce culte rendu à Dieu, ou à plusieurs Dieux sous des figures sensibles: cette multitude de livres & d’opinions ne prouve que l’ignorance.
On ne sait pas qui inventa les habits & les chaussures, & on veut savoir qui le premier inventa les idoles? Qu’importe un passage de Sanchoniaton qui vivait avant la guerre de Troye? que nous apprend-il, quand il dit que le cahos, l’esprit, c’est-à-dire le souffle, amoureux de ses principes, en tira le limon, qu’il rendit l’air lumineux, que le vent Colp & sa femme Baü engendrèrent Eon, qu’Eon engendra Genos? que Cronos leur descendant avait deux yeux par derrière comme par devant, qu’il devint Dieu, & qu’il donna l’Egypte à son fils Taut? Voilà un des plus respectables monumens de l’antiquité.
Orphée antérieur à Sanchoniaton, ne nous en apprendra pas davantage, dans sa Théogonie, que Damascius nous a conservée. Il représente le principe du monde sous la figure d’un dragon à deux têtes, l’une de taureau, l’autre de lion, un visage au milieu, qu’il appelle visage dieu, & des ailes dorées aux épaules.
Mais vous pouvez de ces idées bizarres tirer deux grandes vérités; l’une que les images sensibles & les hiérogliphes sont de l’antiquité la plus haute; l’autre que tous les anciens philosophes ont reconnu un premier principe.
Quant au politheïsme, le bon sens vous dira que dès qu’il y a eu des hommes, c’est-à-dire des animaux faibles, capables de raison & de folie, sujets à tous les accidents, à la maladie & à la mort, ces hommes ont senti leur faiblesse & leur dépendance: ils ont reconnu aisément qu’il est quelque chose de plus puissant qu’eux. Ils ont senti une force dans la terre qui fournit leurs aliments; une dans l’air qui souvent les détruit; une dans le feu qui consume, & dans l’eau qui submerge. Quoi de plus naturel dans des hommes ignorants que d’imaginer des êtres qui présidaient à ces éléments? Quoi de plus naturel que de révérer la force invisible qui faisait luire aux yeux le soleil & les étoiles? Et dès qu’on voulut se former une idée de ces puissances supérieures à l’homme, quoi de plus naturel encor que de les figurer d’une manière sensible? Pouvait-on même s’y prendre autrement? La religion juive qui précéda la nôtre, & qui fut donnée par Dieu même, était toute remplie de ces images sous lesquelles Dieu est représenté. Il daigne parler dans un buisson le langage humain; il parait sur une montagne. Les esprits célestes qu’il envoye viennent tous avec une forme humaine; enfin le sanctuaire est rempli de chérubins, qui sont des corps d’hommes avec des ailes & des têtes d’animaux; c’est ce qui a donné lieu à l’erreur de Plutarque, de Tacite, d’Appien, & de tant d’autres, de reprocher aux juifs d’adorer une tête d’âne. Dieu malgré sa défense de peindre, & de sculpter aucune figure, a donc daigné se proportionner à la faiblesse humaine, qui demandait qu’on parlat aux sens par des images.
Isaïe dans le chap. VI. voit le Seigneur assis sur un trône, & le bas de sa robe qui remplit le temple. Le Seigneur étend sa main, & touche la bouche de Jérémie, au ch. I. de ce Prophète. Ezéchiel au chap. III. voit un trône de saphir, & Dieu lui parait comme un homme assis sur ce trône. Ces images n’altérent point la pureté de la religion juive, qui jamais n’employa les tableaux, les statues, les idoles, pour représenter Dieu aux yeux du peuple.
Les lettrés Chinois, les Parsis, les anciens Egyptiens n’eurent point d’idoles; mais bientôt Isis & Osiris furent figurés; bientôt Bel à Babylone fut un gros colosse. Brama fut un monstre bizarre dans la presqu’Ile de l’Inde. Les Grecs surtout multiplièrent les noms des Dieux, les statues & les temples; mais en attribuant toûjours la suprême puissance à leur Zeus, nommé par les latins Jupiter; maître des Dieux & des hommes. Les Romains imitèrent les Grecs. Ces peuples placèrent toûjours tous les Dieux dans le ciel, sans sçavoir ce qu’ils entendaient par le ciel & par leur Olimpe: il n’y avait pas d’apparence que ces êtres supérieurs habitassent dans les nuées, qui ne sont que de l’eau. On en avait placé d’abord sept dans les sept planètes, parmi lesquelles on comptait le soleil; mais depuis la demeure de tous les Dieux fut l’étendue du ciel.
Les Romains eurent leurs douze grands Dieux; six mâles & six femelles, qu’ils nommèrent Dii majorum gentium. Jupiter, Neptune, Apollon, Vulcain, Mars, Mercure; Junon, Vesta, Minerve, Cérès, Vénus, Diane. Pluton fut alors oublié; Vesta prit sa place.
Ensuite venaient les Dieux minorum gentium, les Dieux indigètes, les héros, comme Bacchus, Hercule, Esculape; les Dieux infernaux, Pluton, Proserpine; ceux de la mer, comme Thétis, Amphitrite, les Néreïdes, Glaucus; puis les Driades, les Naïades; les dieux des jardins, ceux des bergers; il y en avait pour chaque profession, pour chaque action de la vie, pour les enfans, pour les filles nubiles, pour les mariées, pour les accouchées; on eut le Dieu Pet. On divinisa enfin les empereurs. Ni ces empereurs ni le Dieu Pet, ni la déesse Pertunda, ni Priape, ni Rumilia la déesse des tetons, ni Stercutius le Dieu de la garderobe, ne furent à la vérité regardés comme les maîtres du ciel & de la terre. Les empereurs eurent quelquefois des temples, les petits Dieux Pénates n’en eurent point, mais tous eurent leur figure, leur idole.
C’étaient de petits magots dont on ornait son cabinet. C’étaient les amusements des vieilles femmes & des enfans, qui n’étaient autorisés par aucun culte public. On laissait agir à son gré la superstition de chaque particulier. On retrouve encor ces petites idoles dans les ruines des anciennes villes.
Si personne ne sait quand les hommes commencèrent à se faire des idoles, on sait qu’elles sont de l’antiquité la plus haute. Tharé père d’Abraham en faisait à Ur en Chaldée. Rachel déroba & emporta les idoles de son beau-père Laban. On ne peut remonter plus haut.
Mais quelle notion précise avaient les anciennes nations de tous ces simulacres? Quelle vertu, quelle puissance leur attribuait-on? croyoit-on que les Dieux descendaient du ciel pour venir se cacher dans ces statues? ou qu’ils leur communiquaient une partie de l’esprit divin, ou qu’ils ne leur communiquaient rien du tout? c’est encor sur quoi on a très-inutilement écrit; il est clair que chaque homme en jugeait selon le degré de sa raison, ou de sa crédulité, ou de son fanatisme. Il est évident que les prêtres attachaient le plus de divinité qu’ils pouvaient à leurs statues, pour s’attirer plus d’offrandes. On sçait que les philosophes réprouvaient ces superstitions, que les guerriers s’en moquaient, que les magistrats les toléraient, & que le peuple toûjours absurde ne savait ce qu’il faisait. C’est en peu de mots l’histoire de toutes les nations à qui Dieu ne s’est pas fait connaître.
On peut se faire la même idée du culte que toute l’Egypte rendit à un bœuf, & que plusieurs villes rendirent à un chien, à un singe, à un chat, à des ognons. Il y a grande apparence que ce furent d’abord des emblêmes. Ensuite un certain bœuf Apis, un certain chien, nommé Anubis, furent adorés, on mangea toûjours du bœuf & des ognons; mais il est difficile de savoir ce que pensaient les vieilles femmes d’Egypte, des ognons sacrés & des bœufs.
Les idoles parlaient assez souvent. On faisait commémoration à Rome le jour de la fête de Cibèle, des belles paroles que la statue avait prononcées, lorsqu’on en fit la translation du palais du Roi Attale.
Ipsa pati volui; ne sit mora, mitte volentem,Dignus Roma locus, quò Deus omnis eat.
“J’ai voulu qu’on m’enlevât, emmenez-moi vite; Rome est digne que tout Dieu s’y établisse.”
La statue de la fortune avait parlé; les Scipions, les Cicérons, les Césars, à la vérité, n’en croyaient rien; mais la vieille à qui Encolpe donna un écu pour acheter des oyes & des dieux, pouvait fort bien le croire.
Les idoles rendaient aussi des oracles, & les prêtres cachés dans le creux des statues parlaient au nom de la divinité.
Comment au milieu de tant de Dieux & de tant de théogonies différentes, & de cultes particuliers, n’y eut-il jamais de guerre de religion chez les peuples nommés idolâtres? Cette paix fut un bien qui nâquit d’un mal, de l’erreur même. Car chaque nation reconnaissant plusieurs dieux inférieurs, trouva bon que ses voisins eussent aussi les leurs. Si vous exceptez Cambise à qui on reproche d’avoir tué le bœuf Apis, on ne voit dans l’histoire prophane aucun conquérant qui ait maltraité les dieux d’un peuple vaincu. Les gentils n’avaient aucune religion exclusive, & les prêtres ne songèrent qu’à multiplier les offrandes & les sacrifices.
Les premiéres offrandes furent des fruits. Bientôt après il falut des animaux pour la table des prêtres; ils les égorgeaient eux-mêmes; ils devinrent bouchers & cruels: enfin ils introduisirent l’usage horrible de sacrifier des victimes humaines; & surtout des enfans & de jeunes filles. Jamais les Chinois, ni les Parsis, ni les Indiens ne furent coupables de ces abominations. Mais à Hiéropolis en Egypte, au rapport de Porphire, on immola des hommes.
Dans la Tauride on sacrifiait les étrangers. Heureusement les prêtres de la Tauride ne devaient pas avoir beaucoup de pratiques. Les premiers Grecs, les Cypriots, les Phéniciens, les Tyriens, les Cartaginois, eurent cette superstition abominable. Les Romains eux-mêmes tombèrent dans ce crime de religion; & Plutarque rapporte qu’ils immolèrent deux Grecs & deux Gaulois, pour expier les galanteries de trois Vestales. Procope, contemporain du roi des Francs Théodebert, dit que les Francs immolèrent des hommes quand ils entrèrent en Italie avec ce Prince. Les Gaulois, les Germains faisaient communément de ces affreux sacrifices. On ne peut guères lire l’histoire sans concevoir de l’horreur pour le genre humain.
Il est vrai que chez les Juifs Jephté sacrifia sa fille, & que Saül fut prêt d’immoler son fils. Il est vrai que ceux qui étaient voüés au Seigneur par anathême ne pouvaient être rachetés ainsi qu’on rachetait les bêtes, & qu’il falait qu’ils périssent. Samuel prêtre Juif hacha en morceaux avec un saint couperet le roi Agag prisonnier de guerre à qui Saül avait pardonné, & Saül fut réprouvé pour avoir observé le droit des gens avec ce roi; Mais Dieu maître des hommes, peut leur ôter la vie quand il veut, comme il le veut, & par qui il veut; & ce n’est pas aux hommes à se mettre à la place du maître de la vie & de la mort, & à usurper les droits de l’Etre suprême.
Pour consoler le genre humain de cet horrible tableau, de ces pieux sacrilèges, il est important de savoir que chez presque toutes les nations nommées idolâtres, il y avait la théologie sacrée & l’erreur populaire, le culte secret & les cérémonies publiques, la religion des sages & celle du vulgaire. On n’enseignait qu’un seul Dieu aux initiés dans les mistères: il n’y a qu’à jetter les yeux sur l’hymne attribuée à l’ancien Orphée, qu’on chantait dans les mystères de Cérès Eléusine, si célébre en Europe & en Asie. “Contemple la nature divine, illumine ton esprit, gouverne ton cœur, marche dans la voye de la justice: que le Dieu du ciel & de la terre soit toujours présent à tes yeux; il est unique, il existe seul par lui-même; tous les êtres tiennent de lui leur existence: il les soutient tous; il n’a jamais été vû des mortels, & il voit toutes choses.”
Qu’on lise encor ce passage du philosophe Maxime de Madaure, dans sa lettre à St. Augustin: “Quel homme est assez grossier, assez stupide pour douter qu’il soit un Dieu suprême, éternel, infini, qui n’a rien engendré de semblable à lui-même, & qui est le père commun de toutes choses?”
Il y a mille témoignages que les sages abhorraient non-seulement l’idolatrie, mais encor le polithéïsme.
Epictète, ce modèle de résignation & de patience, cet homme si grand dans une condition si basse, ne parle jamais que d’un seul Dieu. Voici une de ses maximes: “Dieu m’a créé, Dieu est au dedans de moi; je le porte partout. Pourais-je le souiller par des pensées obscènes, par des actions injustes, par d’infames désirs? Mon devoir est de remercier Dieu de tout, de le loüer de tout, & de ne cesser de le bénir, qu’en cessant de vivre.” Toutes les idées d’Epictète roulent sur ce principe.
Marc-Aurèle, aussi grand peut-être sur le trône de l’empire Romain, qu’Epictète dans l’esclavage, parle souvent, à la vérité, des Dieux, soit pour se conformer au langage reçu, soit pour exprimer des êtres mitoyens entre l’Etre suprême & les hommes; mais en combien d’endroits ne fait-il pas voir qu’il ne reconnait qu’un Dieu éternel, infini? “Notre ame, dit-il, est une émanation de la divinité. Mes enfans, mon corps, mes esprits me viennent de Dieu.”
Les Stoïciens, les Platoniciens, admettaient une nature divine & universelle: les Epicuriens la niaient. Les Pontifes ne parlaient que d’un seul Dieu dans les mystères. Où étaient donc les idolâtres?
Au reste c’est une des grandes erreurs du Dictionnaire de Moréri de dire que du temps de Théodose le jeune, il ne resta plus d’idolâtres que dans les païs reculés de l’Asie & de l’Afrique. Il y avait dans l’Italie beaucoup de peuples encor gentils, même au septiéme siécle. Le nord de l’Allemagne depuis le Vézer, n’était pas chrétien du temps de Charlemagne. La Pologne & tout le septentrion restèrent longtemps après lui dans ce qu’on appelle idolatrie. La moitié de l’Afrique, tous les royaumes au-delà du Gange, le Japon, la populace de la Chine, cent hordes de Tartares ont conservé leur ancien culte. Il n’y a plus en Europe que quelques Lapons, quelques Samoïedes, quelques Tartares, qui ayent persévéré dans la religion de leurs ancêtres.
Finissons par remarquer que dans les temps qu’on appelle parmi nous le moyen âge, nous appellions le païs des Mahométans la Paganie. Nous traitions d’idolâtres, d’adorateurs d’images, un peuple qui a les images en horreur. Avoüons encor une fois, que les Turcs sont plus excusables de nous croire idolâtres, quand ils voyent nos autels chargés d’images & de statues.
Musean translation
Mouseia’s complete machine-assisted Musean translation of the 73 articles in the 1764 first edition, made directly from the French and reviewed against the scan-collated French text. The author’s notes, quotations and verse are retained. Historical ethnic labels, including offensive terms, are retained from the 1764 text.
Idol comes from the Greek eidos, figure; eidolos, representation of a figure; latreuein, to serve, revere, worship. The word adorer, to worship, is Latin and has many different meanings: it means bringing the hand to the mouth while speaking respectfully; bowing, kneeling, saluting; and finally, in common usage, rendering supreme homage.
It is worth noting here that the Dictionary of Trévoux begins this article by saying that all pagans were idolaters and that the Indians are still idolatrous peoples. First, no one was called a pagan before Theodosius the Younger; the name was then given to the inhabitants of the villages of Italy, Pagorum incolae Pagani, who retained their ancient religion. Second, Hindustan is Mohammedan, and Mohammedans are the implacable enemies of images and idolatry. Third, many Indian peoples who follow the ancient religion of the Parsis should not be called idolaters, nor should certain castes that have no idols.
An inquiry
Whether there has ever been an idolatrous government.
It appears that no people on earth has ever assumed the name of idolater. The word is an insult, an abusive term like Gavache, which the Spaniards once applied to the French, or Maranes, which the French applied to the Spaniards. If the Roman senate, the Areopagus of Athens, or the court of the Persian kings had been asked, “Are you idolaters?” they would scarcely have understood the question. No one would have answered, “We worship images, idols.” Neither idolater nor idolatry is found in Homer, Hesiod, Herodotus, or any author of the Gentile religion. There has never been an edict or law ordering that idols be worshiped, served as gods, regarded as gods.
When Roman and Carthaginian commanders made a treaty, they called all their gods to witness. “It is in their presence,” they said, “that we swear to peace.” Now the statues of all these gods, whose enumeration was very long, were not in the generals’ tent. They regarded the gods as present at men’s actions, as witnesses, as judges; and certainly the image was not what constituted the divinity.
How, then, did they regard the statues of their false divinities in the temples? In the same way, if we may put it so, that we regard images of the objects of our veneration. Their error was not to worship a piece of wood or marble, but to worship a false divinity represented by that wood and marble. The difference between them and us is not that they had images and we have none; the difference is that their images depicted imaginary beings in a false religion, while ours depict real beings in a true religion. The Greeks had a statue of Hercules, and we have one of St. Christopher; they had Aesculapius and his goat, and we have St. Roch and his dog; Jupiter armed with thunder, and we have St. Anthony of Padua and St. James of Compostela.
When the consul Pliny addresses his prayers to the immortal gods in the opening of his panegyric on Trajan, he does not address them to images; these images were not immortal.
Neither the last days of paganism nor its remotest beginnings offer a single fact from which it can be concluded that an idol was worshiped. Homer speaks only of gods who inhabit high Olympus. The Palladium, although fallen from heaven, was merely a sacred pledge of Pallas’s protection; it was she who was venerated in the Palladium.
But the Romans and Greeks knelt before statues, gave them crowns, incense, flowers, carried them in triumph through public squares. We have sanctified these customs, and we are not idolaters.
In times of drought women carried the statues of the gods after fasting. They walked barefoot with their hair loose, and immediately it rained buckets, as Petronius says, et statim urceatim pluebat. Have we not consecrated this practice, illegitimate among the Gentiles and doubtless legitimate among us? In how many towns do people not carry saints’ shrines barefoot to obtain heaven’s blessings through their intercession? If a Turk or a Chinese scholar witnessed these ceremonies, ignorance might lead him at first to accuse us of placing our trust in the images we thus carry in procession; but one word would be enough to undeceive him.
We are astonished at the prodigious number of declamations poured out in every age against the idolatry of the Romans and Greeks; then we are more astonished still when we see that they were not idolaters.
Some temples were more privileged than others. The great Diana of Ephesus enjoyed a greater reputation than a village Diana. More miracles were performed in the temple of Aesculapius at Epidaurus than in another of his temples. The statue of Olympian Jupiter drew more offerings than that of Paphlagonian Jupiter. But since we must continually contrast the customs of a true religion with those of a false one here, have we not for several centuries shown greater devotion to certain altars than to others? Do we not bring more offerings to Our Lady of Loreto than to Our Lady of the Snows? It is for us to consider whether this pretext should be seized upon to accuse us of idolatry.
Only one Diana, one Apollo, one Aesculapius had been imagined—not as many Apollos, Dianas, and Aesculapiuses as they had temples and statues. It is therefore proved, as far as a point of history can be, that the ancients did not believe a statue to be a divinity, that their worship could not be directed to that statue, that idol, and consequently that the ancients were not idolaters.
A coarse and superstitious populace that did not reason, that knew neither how to doubt, nor deny, nor believe; that flocked to temples out of idleness and because the humble stand equal there with the great; that brought its offering out of habit; that spoke continually of miracles without having examined a single one, and was scarcely above the sacrificial beasts it brought—this populace, I say, might well, at the sight of the great Diana and of Jupiter the Thunderer, be struck with religious awe and unknowingly worship the statue itself. This has sometimes happened in our temples to our ignorant peasants, and care has been taken to teach them that they must ask the intercession of the blessed, the immortals received into heaven, not of figures of wood and stone, and that they must worship God alone.
The Greeks and Romans increased the number of their gods by apotheoses. The Greeks deified conquerors, such as Bacchus, Hercules, Perseus. Rome raised altars to its emperors. Our apotheoses are of a different kind. We have saints instead of their demigods, their secondary gods; but we pay no regard to rank or conquests. We have raised temples to men who were simply virtuous, most of whom would be unknown on earth had they not been placed in heaven. The apotheoses of the ancients sprang from flattery; ours spring from respect for virtue. But these ancient apotheoses are further convincing proof that the Greeks and Romans were not idolaters in the proper sense. Plainly they supposed no more divine power in the statues of Augustus and Claudius than in their medals.
In his philosophical works Cicero does not leave room even to suspect that anyone could mistake the statues of the gods and confuse them with the gods themselves. His speakers thunder against the established religion, but none thinks of accusing the Romans of taking marble and bronze for divinities. Lucretius, who reproaches the superstitious with everything, reproaches no one with this folly. Once again, then: this opinion did not exist; no one had any notion of it. There were no idolaters.
Horace makes a statue of Priapus speak. He makes it say, “I was once a fig-tree trunk; a carpenter, not knowing whether to make me a god or a bench, finally decided to make me a god, etc.” What are we to conclude from this joke? Priapus was one of those minor subordinate divinities left to the mockers; and this very joke is the strongest proof that the figure of Priapus set in vegetable gardens to frighten the birds was not greatly revered.
Giving free rein to the commentator’s spirit, Dacier did not fail to observe that Baruch had foretold this adventure when he said, “They will be only what the workmen choose”; but he might also have observed that the same can be said of every statue.
A basin can be carved from a block of marble just as readily as a figure of Alexander, Jupiter, or something more respectable still. The material from which the cherubim in the Holy of Holies were formed might equally have served the basest purposes. Are a throne and an altar any less revered because the craftsman could have made a kitchen table out of them?
Instead of concluding that the Romans worshiped the statue of Priapus and that Baruch had foretold it, Dacier should therefore have concluded that the Romans laughed at it. Consult all the authors who speak of statues of their gods: you will find none who speaks of idolatry; they expressly say the contrary. You read in Martial:
He who shaped sacred faces in gold or marbleDoes not make gods.
In Ovid: “Jupiter’s form is worshiped in place of Jupiter.”
In Statius: “But no image, no form of God entrusted to metal:He delights to inhabit minds and divine powers.”
In Lucan: “Is there any dwelling of God but earth and sea and air?”
A volume could be made of all the passages testifying that images were only images.
Only the cases in which statues delivered oracles could have led anyone to think that these statues had something divine within them. But certainly the prevailing opinion was that the gods had chosen certain altars, certain images, to come and dwell in from time to time, to give men audience there, to answer them. In Homer and the choruses of Greek tragedies we see nothing but prayers to Apollo, who delivers his oracles on the mountains, in this temple, in that town; in all antiquity there is not the slightest trace of a prayer addressed to a statue.
Those who practiced magic, who believed it a science or pretended to believe it, claimed to possess the secret of making the gods descend into statues—not the great gods, but the secondary gods, the spirits. This is what Mercury Trismegistus called making gods, and what St. Augustine refutes in The City of God. But this very thing plainly shows that the images had nothing divine in themselves, since a magician had to animate them. And it seems to me that it very rarely happened that a magician was skillful enough to give a statue a soul and make it speak.
In short, images of the gods were not gods. Jupiter, not his image, hurled the thunderbolt; it was not Neptune’s statue that stirred up the seas, nor Apollo’s that gave light. The Greeks and Romans were Gentiles, polytheists, and not idolaters.
Whether the Persians, Sabaeans, Egyptians, Tartars, and Turks were idolaters; and how ancient is the origin of the images called idols. History of their worship.
It is a great mistake to call the peoples who worshiped the sun and stars idolaters. These nations long had neither images nor temples. If they erred, it was in rendering to the stars what they owed to the creator of the stars. Even so, the doctrine of Zoroaster, or Zerdust, collected in the Sadder, teaches a supreme being who avenges and rewards, and that is very far from idolatry. The government of China has never had an idol; it has always preserved the simple worship of the master of heaven, Kingtien. Among the Tartars, Genghis Khan was not an idolater and had no image. The Muslims who fill Greece, Asia Minor, Syria, Persia, India, and Africa call Christians idolaters, giaours, because they believe Christians worship images. They broke many statues they found at Constantinople in Hagia Sophia, in the Church of the Holy Apostles, and in other churches they converted into mosques. Appearances deceived them, as they always deceive men, and led them to believe that temples dedicated to saints who had once been men, images of these saints revered on bended knees, miracles performed in these temples, were irresistible proofs of the most complete idolatry. Yet it is nothing of the kind. Christians in fact worship only one God, and in the blessed they revere only the very power of God acting in his saints. The iconoclasts and Protestants have made the same charge of idolatry against the Church, and have received the same answer.
As men have very rarely had precise ideas, and have even less often expressed their ideas in precise, unambiguous words, we gave the name idolaters to the Gentiles, especially the polytheists. Immense volumes have been written and various opinions aired on the origin of this worship rendered to God, or to several gods, under visible forms. This multitude of books and opinions proves only ignorance.
We do not know who invented clothes and shoes, yet we want to know who first invented idols! What does a passage of Sanchoniathon, who lived before the Trojan War, matter? What does he teach us when he says that chaos, spirit—that is, breath—in love with its own principles, drew mud from them; that it made the air luminous; that the wind Colp and his wife Baau begot Eon; that Eon begot Genos; that Cronos, their descendant, had two eyes behind as well as in front; that he became a god and gave Egypt to his son Thoth? There is one of antiquity’s most respectable monuments.
Orpheus, earlier than Sanchoniathon, will teach us no more in his Theogony, preserved for us by Damascius. He represents the origin of the world as a dragon with two heads, one a bull’s, the other a lion’s, a face in the middle, which he calls the god-face, and golden wings at the shoulders.
But from these strange ideas you can draw two great truths: one, that visible images and hieroglyphs are of the highest antiquity; the other, that all the ancient philosophers acknowledged a first principle.
As for polytheism, common sense will tell you that as soon as there were men—that is, weak animals capable of reason and folly, subject to every accident, to illness and death—these men felt their weakness and dependence. They readily acknowledged that something was more powerful than themselves. They felt a force in the earth that supplied their food, one in the air that often destroyed them, one in the fire that consumed and the water that submerged. What could be more natural for ignorant men than to imagine beings presiding over these elements? What could be more natural than to revere the invisible force that made the sun and stars shine before their eyes? And as soon as they wished to form an idea of these powers superior to man, what could be more natural than to depict them in visible forms? Could they even have gone about it otherwise? The Jewish religion, which preceded ours and was given by God himself, was full of these images under which God is represented. He deigns to speak human language in a bush; he appears on a mountain. The heavenly spirits he sends all come in human form; finally, the sanctuary is filled with cherubim, human bodies with wings and animals’ heads. This gave rise to the error of Plutarch, Tacitus, Appian, and so many others in reproaching the Jews with worshiping an ass’s head. Despite his prohibition on painting or carving any figure, God therefore deigned to accommodate himself to human weakness, which required that the senses be addressed through images.
In chapter VI Isaiah sees the Lord seated on a throne, and the hem of his robe filling the temple. In chapter I of Jeremiah, the Lord stretches out his hand and touches the prophet’s mouth. In chapter III Ezekiel sees a sapphire throne, and God appears to him as a man seated upon that throne. These images do not impair the purity of the Jewish religion, which never employed paintings, statues, or idols to represent God before the people’s eyes.
Chinese scholars, Parsis, and the ancient Egyptians had no idols; but soon Isis and Osiris were depicted; soon Bel at Babylon became a huge colossus. Brahma was a strange monster on the Indian peninsula. The Greeks above all multiplied the names of gods, statues, and temples, while always attributing supreme power to their Zeus, called Jupiter by the Latins, master of gods and men. The Romans imitated the Greeks. These peoples always placed all their gods in heaven, without knowing what they meant by heaven and their Olympus. There was no likelihood of these superior beings inhabiting clouds, which are only water. At first seven had been placed in the seven planets, among which the sun was counted; afterward the dwelling of all the gods was the expanse of heaven.
The Romans had their twelve great gods, six male and six female, whom they called Dii majorum gentium: Jupiter, Neptune, Apollo, Vulcan, Mars, Mercury; Juno, Vesta, Minerva, Ceres, Venus, Diana. Pluto was forgotten then; Vesta took his place.
Next came the gods minorum gentium, the native gods, the heroes, such as Bacchus, Hercules, Aesculapius; the infernal gods, Pluto, Proserpina; those of the sea, such as Thetis, Amphitrite, the Nereids, Glaucus; then the Dryads, the Naiads; the gods of gardens, those of shepherds. There were gods for every profession, for every action of life, for children, for marriageable girls, for married women, for women in childbirth; there was a god Fart. Finally the emperors were deified. Neither these emperors, nor the god Fart, nor the goddess Pertunda, nor Priapus, nor Rumilia, goddess of teats, nor Stercutius, god of the privy, were in truth regarded as masters of heaven and earth. The emperors sometimes had temples; the little Penates had none; but all had their figure, their idol.
They were little figurines used to ornament a private room. They were the amusements of old women and children, sanctioned by no public worship. Each individual’s superstition was allowed to act as it pleased. These little idols are still found in the ruins of ancient cities.
If no one knows when men began making idols, we know that they are of the highest antiquity. Terah, Abraham’s father, made them at Ur in Chaldea. Rachel stole and carried away the idols of her father-in-law Laban. We cannot go back any further.
But what precise notion did the ancient nations have of all these images? What virtue, what power was attributed to them? Did people believe that the gods descended from heaven to hide inside these statues, or communicated part of the divine spirit to them, or communicated nothing at all? This, too, has been written about to very little purpose. Plainly each man judged according to the degree of his reason, his credulity, or his fanaticism. Evidently the priests attached as much divinity as possible to their statues, to attract more offerings. We know that philosophers condemned these superstitions, that warriors laughed at them, that magistrates tolerated them, and that the people, always absurd, did not know what they were doing. That, in a few words, is the history of all the nations to whom God has not made himself known.
The same idea may be formed of the worship that all Egypt paid to an ox, and that several cities paid to a dog, a monkey, a cat, onions. It is very likely that these were emblems at first. Later a certain ox, Apis, and a certain dog named Anubis were worshiped; people continued to eat beef and onions, but it is difficult to know what the old women of Egypt thought about sacred onions and oxen.
Idols spoke fairly often. At Rome, on Cybele’s feast day, people commemorated the fine words the statue had uttered when it was removed from King Attalus’s palace:
I myself wished to undergo it; do not delay; send me, willing as I am.Rome is a worthy place for every god to come.
“I wished to be taken away; bring me quickly. Rome is worthy of having every god settle there.”
The statue of Fortune had spoken. The Scipios, Ciceros, and Caesars, to be sure, believed none of it; but the old woman to whom Encolpius gave an écu to buy geese and gods might very well believe it.
Idols also delivered oracles, and priests hidden in the hollow of the statues spoke in the divinity’s name.
How, amid so many gods, so many different theogonies and particular cults, was there never a religious war among the peoples called idolaters? This peace was a good born of an evil, of error itself. For each nation, acknowledging several lesser gods, found it quite proper that its neighbors should have theirs as well. Apart from Cambyses, who is accused of killing the ox Apis, we find in secular history no conqueror who mistreated the gods of a conquered people. The Gentiles had no exclusive religion, and their priests thought only of multiplying offerings and sacrifices.
The first offerings were fruits. Soon animals were needed for the priests’ table; they slaughtered the animals themselves; they became butchers and grew cruel. At last they introduced the horrible practice of sacrificing human victims, especially children and young girls. Neither the Chinese, the Parsis, nor the Indians were ever guilty of these abominations. But at Hieropolis in Egypt, according to Porphyry, men were sacrificed.
In Tauris strangers were sacrificed. Fortunately the priests of Tauris cannot have had many customers. The early Greeks, the Cypriots, Phoenicians, Tyrians, and Carthaginians practiced this abominable superstition. The Romans themselves fell into this religious crime; Plutarch relates that they sacrificed two Greeks and two Gauls to atone for the love affairs of three Vestals. Procopius, a contemporary of Theudebert, king of the Franks, says that the Franks sacrificed men when they entered Italy with that prince. The Gauls and Germans commonly performed these dreadful sacrifices. One can scarcely read history without conceiving a horror of the human race.
It is true that among the Jews Jephthah sacrificed his daughter and Saul was ready to sacrifice his son. It is true that those devoted to the Lord by anathema could not be redeemed as animals were redeemed, and had to perish. Samuel, a Jewish priest, hacked to pieces with a holy cleaver King Agag, a prisoner of war whom Saul had pardoned; and Saul was rejected for having observed the law of nations toward this king. But God, the master of men, may take their lives when he wishes, as he wishes, and through whom he wishes. It is not for men to put themselves in the place of the master of life and death and usurp the rights of the Supreme Being.
To console the human race for this horrible picture, for these pious sacrileges, it is important to know that among almost all the nations called idolaters there was sacred theology and popular error, secret worship and public ceremonies, the religion of the wise and that of the vulgar. Only one God was taught to initiates in the mysteries. We need only glance at the hymn attributed to the ancient Orpheus, sung in the mysteries of Eleusinian Ceres, so celebrated in Europe and Asia: “Contemplate the divine nature; illuminate your mind; govern your heart; walk in the path of justice. Let the God of heaven and earth be always present before your eyes. He is one; he alone exists by himself; all beings owe their existence to him; he sustains them all; he has never been seen by mortals, and he sees all things.”
Read also this passage from the philosopher Maximus of Madaura, in his letter to St. Augustine: “What man is so ignorant, so stupid as to doubt that there is a supreme, eternal, infinite God, who has begotten nothing like himself and is the common father of all things?”
There are a thousand testimonies that the wise abhorred not only idolatry but polytheism as well.
Epictetus, that model of resignation and patience, a man so great in so lowly a condition, never speaks of more than one God. Here is one of his maxims: “God created me; God is within me; I carry him everywhere. Could I sully him with obscene thoughts, unjust actions, infamous desires? My duty is to thank God for everything, praise him for everything, and cease blessing him only when I cease to live.” All Epictetus’s ideas turn on this principle.
Marcus Aurelius, perhaps as great on the Roman imperial throne as Epictetus in slavery, often speaks of gods, it is true, either to conform to accepted language or to express beings intermediate between the Supreme Being and men; but in how many places does he not show that he acknowledges only one eternal, infinite God? “Our soul,” he says, “is an emanation of the divinity. My children, my body, my spirits come to me from God.”
The Stoics and Platonists admitted a divine, universal nature; the Epicureans denied it. The pontiffs spoke of only one God in the mysteries. Where, then, were the idolaters?
Besides, it is one of the great errors of Moréri’s dictionary to say that in the time of Theodosius the Younger no idolaters remained except in remote parts of Asia and Africa. In Italy many peoples were still Gentiles even in the seventh century. Northern Germany, from the Weser onward, was not Christian in Charlemagne’s time. Poland and the whole north remained in what is called idolatry long after him. Half of Africa, all the kingdoms beyond the Ganges, Japan, the common people of China, a hundred Tartar hordes have preserved their ancient worship. In Europe there remain only a few Lapps, a few Samoyeds, a few Tartars who have persisted in the religion of their ancestors.
Let us end by noting that in the times we call the Middle Ages, we called the land of the Mohammedans Pagania. We branded as idolaters, as worshipers of images, a people who abhor images. Let us admit once more that the Turks are more excusable for believing us idolaters when they see our altars laden with images and statues.
Plain English translation
Mouseia’s complete machine-assisted Plain English translation of the same 73 articles, made directly from the French and reviewed against the scan-collated French text. The author’s notes, quotations and verse are retained. Historical ethnic labels, including offensive terms, are retained from the 1764 text.
Idol comes from Greek: Eidos means figure; Eidolos, a figure’s representation. Latreuein means to serve, respect, worship. Adore is a Latin word with many different meanings. It means bringing your hand to your mouth while speaking respectfully. It also means bowing, kneeling, or greeting someone. Finally, its usual meaning is to offer the highest form of worship.
Notice how the Trévoux dictionary opens this article. It says all pagans were idolaters, and the Indians are still idolatrous peoples. First, before Theodosius the Younger, no one used pagan as a name for people. Then they gave that name to Italian villagers who kept their old religion: village inhabitants are pagans. Second, Hindustan is Mohammedan. Mohammedans are the bitter enemies of images and idolatry. Third, many Indian peoples follow the Parsis’ old religion. We shouldn’t call them idolaters, or call certain castes with no idols that either.
An examination
Has there ever been an idolatrous government?
No nation seems ever to have called itself a nation of idolaters. People use the word to insult and abuse others. It’s like Gavache, the Spaniards’ old name for the French. Maranes was the French name for the Spaniards. Ask the Roman senate, the Areopagus at Athens, or the Persian royal court, “Are you idolaters?” They’d hardly know what you meant. None would say, “We worship images and idols.” Neither Homer, Hesiod, nor Herodotus uses idolater or idolatry. Nor does any other writer who followed the Gentile religion. No law or decree ever required anyone to worship idols, serve them as gods, or take them for gods.
Roman and Carthaginian commanders called every god to witness their treaties. “We swear peace before them,” they would say. But where were the statues of all those gods? The gods made a very long list, but their statues weren’t in the generals’ tent. They believed the gods were there watching what people did. The gods witnessed their acts and judged them. Surely it wasn’t an image that made a god divine.
What, then, did the statues of false gods in temples mean to them? We might say they meant what our religious images mean to us. It wasn’t wood or marble that they mistakenly worshiped. Their worship went to the false god shown in it. Both they and we have images; that’s not what separates us. Their false religion pictured beings that didn’t exist. Our true religion pictures beings that do. Where the Greeks had Hercules’s statue, we have St. Christopher’s. Their Aesculapius had a goat; our St. Roch has a dog. They had Jupiter with his thunderbolts; we have St. Anthony of Padua and St. James of Compostela.
Pliny opens his praise of Trajan by praying to the immortal gods. The consul isn’t praying to images. Images weren’t immortal.
Search paganism’s final days or its earliest beginnings. Not one fact shows that people worshiped an idol. Homer speaks only of the gods who live on high Olympus. The Palladium had fallen from heaven. But it was only a sacred guarantee of Pallas’s protection. People honored Pallas in the Palladium.
But Romans and Greeks did kneel before statues. They gave them crowns, incense, and flowers. They carried them in triumph through public squares. We’ve made these customs holy, and we aren’t idolaters.
In times of drought, women fasted and then carried the statues of the gods. They walked barefoot with their hair loose. Immediately it rained by the bucketful, as Petronius says: and at once it poured down in buckets. Haven’t we made this custom sacred? It was wrong among the Gentiles, but it’s undoubtedly right among us. In how many towns do people walk barefoot carrying the saints’ shrines? They ask the saints to intercede for heaven’s blessings. A Turk or Chinese scholar might see these ceremonies without understanding them. At first he might accuse us of trusting the images we carry in procession. One word would put him right.
Count all the speeches against Roman and Greek idolatry, made in every age. Their enormous number surprises us. Finding that the Romans and Greeks weren’t idolaters surprises us even more.
Not every temple had the same privileges. The great Diana at Ephesus had more fame than a village Diana. Aesculapius worked more miracles at Epidaurus than at another temple of his. People gave Olympian Jupiter’s statue more offerings than Paphlagonian Jupiter’s. But here, as always, we must set true religion’s customs against false religion’s. For centuries, haven’t we favored certain altars over others? Our Lady of Loreto gets more offerings from us than Our Lady of the Snows, doesn’t she? We should ask ourselves whether that gives anyone grounds to call us idolaters.
People imagined just one Diana, one Apollo, one Aesculapius. They didn’t imagine a separate Apollo, Diana, or Aesculapius for every temple and statue. Historical proof can go only so far. Within those limits, this proves the ancients didn’t think a statue was a deity. Their worship couldn’t be directed at that statue, that idol. So they weren’t idolaters.
A rough, superstitious crowd didn’t reason. It knew neither how to doubt, nor how to deny, nor how to believe. It rushed to the temples because it had nothing to do and because the lowly are equal to the great there. It brought offerings out of habit. It kept talking of miracles without having examined a single one. It was barely above the sacrificial animals it brought. Such a crowd might see the great Diana and Jupiter the Thunderer and feel religious terror. As I say, it could then worship the statue itself without knowing it. This has sometimes happened in our own temples among our rough peasants. People have made sure to teach them better. They must ask the blessed, the immortals received into heaven, to intercede for them. They must not ask wooden or stone figures. Only God is to be worshiped.
Greeks and Romans added gods by raising people to divine status. Greece did this for conquerors: Bacchus, Hercules, Perseus. Rome gave its emperors altars. Our way of raising people to heaven is different. Saints take the place of their demigods and lesser gods. But neither high rank nor conquest counts with us. Goodness alone has won men temples among us. Most would have no name on earth without their place in heaven. They made gods of people through flattery; we honor virtue. Yet their old practice also convincingly shows they weren’t idolaters in the strict sense. They didn’t credit statues of Augustus or Claudius with divine power any more than they credited their coins.
Nothing in Cicero’s philosophical works even suggests confusing gods with statues. His speakers tear into the religion of their day. Yet none charges Romans with believing bronze and marble are gods. Lucretius attacks superstitious people on every other point. Yet even he never charges anyone with that nonsense. Once more, then: nobody held this view or even thought of it. Idolaters didn’t exist.
Horace makes a statue of Priapus speak. Here’s what it says: “I was once a fig-tree trunk. A carpenter couldn’t decide whether to make me a god or a bench. Finally he chose to make me a god &c.” What does this joke show? Priapus was one of those minor gods people were free to mock. People put his figure in vegetable gardens to scare birds. The joke itself is the strongest proof that they didn’t respect it much.
Dacier couldn’t resist acting like a commentator. He pointed to Baruch’s prediction of this episode: “They’ll be whatever the craftsmen choose to make them.” He might just as well have noted that this applies to every statue.
A block of marble can just as easily be made into a basin as into a figure of Alexander, Jupiter, or something else more worthy of respect. Think of the material used for the cherubim in the Holy of Holies. It could just as well have served the lowest purposes. Does a throne or altar deserve less respect because its maker could have made a kitchen table?
Dacier thought the Romans worshiped Priapus’s statue and Baruch had predicted it. He should have concluded that the Romans mocked it. Look at all the authors who discuss their gods’ statues. None speaks of idolatry. They explicitly say the opposite. Here’s Martial:
Whoever shapes sacred faces in gold or marbleDoesn’t make gods.
In Ovid: Jupiter’s image is worshiped in Jupiter’s place.
In Statius: God’s form isn’t held in any image or metal;The divine power delights in living in minds.
In Lucan: Where else does God dwell but earth, sea, and air?
We could fill a book with passages showing that images were only images.
There was just one reason to think a statue held something divine: statues sometimes gave oracles. But we know what people generally believed. The gods chose particular altars and images to stay in from time to time. There they would hear people and answer them. Look at Homer or the choruses of Greek tragedies. Their prayers go only to Apollo, who gives oracles on the mountains, in this temple or that city. All antiquity offers no trace at all of a prayer to a statue.
People practiced magic and believed it was a science, or pretended to believe it. They claimed to know how to bring gods down into statues. These weren’t the great gods, but lesser gods, spirits. Hermes Trismegistus called this making gods. St. Augustine argues against it in his City of God. But a magician had to bring these images to life. That clearly shows they held nothing divine in themselves. And magicians could very rarely give a statue a soul and make it speak, I think.
Simply put, an image of a god wasn’t the god. Thunderbolts came from Jupiter, not a picture of him. The sea wasn’t stirred up by Neptune’s statue. Light didn’t come from Apollo’s statue. The Greeks and Romans were Gentiles and polytheists, not idolaters.
Were the Persians, Sabaeans, Egyptians, Tartars, and Turks idolaters? How old are the images called idols? A history of their worship.
Worshiping the sun and stars doesn’t make a people idolaters. Calling them that is a serious mistake. These nations went a long time without temples or images. Their error, if any, was to give those heavenly bodies the worship their creator deserved. And Zoroaster, or Zerdust, teaches something else in the Sadder’s collected teachings: a supreme being who rewards and punishes. There’s nothing close to idolatry in that. China’s government has never possessed any idol. It has kept to simple worship of Kingtien, heaven’s master. The Tartar Genghis Khan had no image and wasn’t an idolater. Muslims live throughout Greece, Asia Minor, Syria, Persia, India, and Africa. They think Christians worship images, so they call them giaours, idolaters. At Constantinople, they smashed several statues in Hagia Sophia and the Church of the Holy Apostles. They also smashed them in other churches they made into mosques. They fell for appearances, as people always do. Here were temples to saints who had once been men. Here were people kneeling to honor those saints’ images. Here were miracles happening in those temples. Surely, they thought, this proved idolatry of the fullest kind. But it proves nothing of the sort. Only one God receives Christian worship. What Christians honor in the blessed is God’s own power at work in his saints. Iconoclasts and Protestants have charged the Church with idolatry too. They’ve been given the very same reply.
Precise ideas have always been rare among people. Clear, precise words for those ideas have been rarer still. That is why we gave the name idolaters to the Gentiles, and especially to polytheists. Where did this worship of God, or several gods, through visible figures begin? People have written huge books and put forward different opinions about it. All these books and opinions prove only ignorance.
Who first made clothes or shoes? We don’t know. Yet we expect to discover who first made idols! What use is that passage in Sanchuniathon, who lived before Troy’s war? Does his story teach us anything? Chaos, spirit—in other words, breath—loved its own elements and brought mud out of them. It made the air bright. Colp, the wind, and his wife Baü produced Aeon. Aeon in turn produced Genos. Cronus came from their line, with two eyes at the back as at the front. He became a god, then gave his son Taut Egypt. Such is one of the ancient world’s most honored records.
Orpheus came before Sanchuniathon. His Theogony, which Damascius preserved for us, won’t teach us any more. He shows the world’s first principle as a dragon with two heads. One is a bull’s, the other a lion’s. Between them is a face he calls the god-face. It has golden wings on its shoulders.
But you can draw two great truths from these strange ideas. One is that visible images and hieroglyphs go back to the earliest antiquity. The other is that all ancient philosophers recognized a first principle.
Common sense gives us the answer about polytheism. From the moment people existed, they felt weak and dependent. These weak animals could reason, but could also act foolishly. They faced accidents of every kind, sickness, and death. It wasn’t hard to see that something had greater power. The earth fed them: they felt a force there. Air often destroyed them: it too had a force. So did fire that consumed and water that drowned. What would ignorant people more naturally do than imagine beings ruling those elements? Wouldn’t they naturally honor some unseen power making sun and stars shine before them? They wanted to picture powers greater than human beings. Giving them forms the senses could grasp was natural too. Was there even another way? God himself gave the Jews the religion that came before ours. Images of him filled it. He agrees to speak to humans in their language from a bush. He shows himself on a mountain. Every heavenly spirit he sends takes a human shape. The sanctuary itself holds cherubim: human bodies with wings and animal heads. Plutarch, Tacitus, Appian, and many others got this wrong. They charged the Jews with worshiping a donkey’s head. So although God forbade painting or carving any figure, he agreed to meet human weakness on its own terms. That weakness required images that spoke to the senses.
Isaiah’s vision in chap. VI. shows the Lord on a throne. His robe’s lower part fills the temple. In Jeremiah, ch. I., the Lord reaches out and touches the prophet’s mouth. Ezekiel’s vision in chap. III. shows a throne of sapphire. On it God appears to sit in human form. None of these images makes the Jewish religion less pure. It never put paintings, statues, or idols before the people to show them God.
The Chinese scholars, the Parsis, and the ancient Egyptians had no idols. But soon Isis and Osiris were represented in images. Soon Bel in Babylon was a huge colossus. Brahma was a strange monster in the Indian peninsula. The Greeks especially kept adding gods’ names, statues, and temples. But supreme power always belonged to their Zeus. The Latins called him Jupiter, master of gods and men. The Romans copied the Greeks. These peoples said all their gods were in heaven. They never knew what they meant by that heaven, or by their Olympus. There was no reason to think these higher beings lived in the clouds, which are only water. At first they had placed seven of them in the seven planets, among which they counted the sun. Later, however, all the gods lived in the expanse of heaven.
Rome’s twelve chief gods included six males and six females. Their name was gods of the greater order. The males were Jupiter, Neptune, Apollo, Vulcan, Mars, Mercury; the females Juno, Vesta, Minerva, Ceres, Venus, Diana. They left Pluto out at that point and put Vesta in his place.
Next came gods of the lesser order, the native gods, heroes like Bacchus, Hercules, and Aesculapius. The underworld had Pluto and Proserpina. The sea had Thetis, Amphitrite, the Nereids, and Glaucus. Then came the Dryads and Naiads, the gods of gardens and of shepherds. Every profession and every action in life had its gods. Children had theirs, as did girls old enough to marry, brides, and women who’d given birth. There was the god Fart. Finally, the emperors were made divine. But people didn’t really see them as masters of heaven and earth. Nor did they see the god Fart, the goddess Pertunda, or Priapus that way. Nor Rumilia, goddess of breasts, or Stercutius, god of the toilet. Emperors sometimes had temples; the little household gods, the Penates, had none. But all had a figure, an idol.
People kept these little ugly figurines as ornaments in their private rooms. Old women and children amused themselves with them. No public religious practice gave them any backing. Everyone was free to follow their own superstitions. We still find these small idols among ancient cities’ ruins.
We can’t date the first idols people made. We do know they reach back to the earliest times. Abraham’s father Terah made them in Chaldea, at Ur. Rachel took her father-in-law Laban’s idols, stealing them away. That’s as far back as we can go.
What exactly did ancient peoples think these images were? What powers and abilities did they give them? Did people believe gods came from heaven to hide inside the statues? Or that they shared some of their divine spirit with them? Or that they gave them none? Once again, people have written about this quite uselessly. Each person plainly decided by his own reason, gullibility, or fanaticism. Priests obviously loaded their statues with as much divinity as possible. That way they drew more offerings. Philosophers, we know, rejected these superstitions; soldiers found them laughable. Officials let them pass. The people, as absurd as ever, had no idea what they were doing. There’s the brief history of every nation God hasn’t revealed himself to.
The same account fits the worship of an ox throughout Egypt. It also fits the dog, monkey, cat, and onions worshiped in various cities. These very probably started out as symbols. Later people worshiped one particular ox, Apis, and one particular dog, Anubis. They went on eating onions and beef all the same. What did Egypt’s old women think about sacred oxen and onions? That’s hard to find out.
Idols spoke quite often. At Rome, on the feast day of Cybele, people commemorated the fine words the statue had spoken when it was moved from King Attalus’s palace.
I wanted to be taken; don’t delay, send me as I wish,Rome’s a worthy place for every god to go.
“I wanted to be carried away; take me quickly. Rome deserves to have every god settle there.”
Fortune’s statue had spoken too. Of course, men like the Scipios, Ciceros, and Caesars believed none of it. But think of the old woman Encolpius paid an écu to buy geese and gods. She could easily have believed the story.
Idols also gave oracles, and priests hidden inside the hollow statues spoke in the deity’s name.
The peoples called idolaters had so many gods, stories of their origins, and separate forms of worship. Why did they never have a religious war? This peace was a good thing born from a bad one: error itself. Each nation accepted several lesser gods. So it was quite happy for its neighbors to have theirs too. Cambyses is accused of killing the ox Apis. Set him aside. Secular history gives no other conqueror who mistreated the gods of a people he conquered. The Gentiles had no exclusive religion, and the priests thought only of increasing offerings and sacrifices.
People offered fruit at first. Before long the priests’ meals required animals. The priests did their own slaughtering, turning into cruel butchers. At last they brought in that dreadful practice, human sacrifice. They sacrificed children and young girls especially. The Chinese, Parsis, and Indians never committed these horrors. Yet Porphyry tells us of people sacrificed at Hierapolis in Egypt.
Foreigners were the sacrificial victims in Tauris. Fortunately its priests probably didn’t get much business. This hideous superstition belonged to the early Greeks and Cypriots too. Phoenicians, Tyrians, and Carthaginians practiced it as well. Rome itself committed this crime in religion’s name. According to Plutarch, three Vestal Virgins had love affairs. The Romans sacrificed two Greeks and two Gauls to atone for them. Procopius lived at the same time as the Frankish king Theudebert. He says the Franks sacrificed humans on entering Italy with that prince. Such terrible sacrifices were common among Gauls and Germans. How can we read history without recoiling from the human race?
True, among the Jews, Jephthah sacrificed his daughter. Saul was ready to sacrifice his son. True, people devoted to the Lord under a curse couldn’t be bought back as animals could. They had to die. Samuel, a Jewish priest, hacked King Agag to pieces with a holy cleaver. This king was a prisoner of war whom Saul had pardoned. Saul respected the law of nations in treating that king, and was condemned for it. But God is humanity’s master. He can take people’s lives whenever, however, and through whomever he wants. People mustn’t take the place of the master of life and death. They mustn’t seize the Supreme Being’s rights.
Here’s something important to comfort humanity after this horrible picture of devout sacrilege. Almost all the nations called idolatrous had both sacred teaching and popular error. They had secret worship and public ceremonies, a religion for the wise and one for ordinary people. Those admitted to the mysteries learned about just one God. Look at the hymn credited to the ancient Orpheus. People sang it in the mysteries of Ceres at Eleusis, so famous in Europe and Asia. “Think about the divine nature, light up your mind, control your heart, follow the path of justice. Always keep the God of heaven and earth before your eyes. He’s one; he alone exists by himself. All beings owe their existence to him. He supports them all. No mortal has ever seen him, and he sees everything.”
There’s also this passage in a letter to St. Augustine. Its author is the philosopher Maximus of Madaura: “How crude and stupid must someone be to doubt the supreme God exists? He’s eternal and infinite. He has produced no being like himself; he’s the father of all things alike.”
A thousand witnesses tell us that the wise hated both idolatry and polytheism.
Epictetus was a model of acceptance and patience, a great man in a lowly position. He never speaks of more than one God. Here’s one of his sayings: “God created me. God’s inside me; I carry him everywhere. Could I dirty him with obscene thoughts, unjust actions, or shameful desires? I must thank God for everything and praise him for everything. I must keep blessing him until I stop living.” All Epictetus’s ideas center on this principle.
Perhaps Marcus Aurelius matched Epictetus’s greatness: one ruled Rome’s empire, the other was a slave. Marcus does speak of gods often enough. He may simply be using everyone else’s language. Or he may mean beings between humans and the Supreme Being. Yet again and again he makes his belief clear: there’s just one God, eternal and infinite. He says, “Our soul comes out of the divine being. God gives me my children, my body, my spirits.”
The Stoics and Platonists accepted a universal divine nature; the Epicureans denied it. In the mysteries, the priests spoke only of one God. Where, then, were the idolaters?
Moréri’s Dictionary is seriously wrong on another point. It claims that under Theodosius the Younger, idolaters survived only in distant parts of Asia and Africa. Italy still had many Gentile peoples in the seventh century. In Charlemagne’s day, northern Germany from the Weser onward wasn’t Christian. What people call idolatry lasted long after him in Poland and throughout the north. The old worship survives in half of Africa and every kingdom beyond the Ganges. It survives in Japan, among China’s common people, and among a hundred Tartar hordes. Within Europe, only a few Lapps, Samoyeds, and Tartars have stayed with their ancestors’ religion.
Let’s end with a reminder about what we call the Middle Ages. Back then we named Mohammedan lands Pagania. These people detest images, yet we called them idolaters, worshipers of images. Once again we should be readier to excuse the Turks when they think we’re idolaters. Our altars, as they see them, are piled with statues and images.
About this section
I — Idole, Idolatre, Idolatrie is part of Pocket Philosophical Dictionary by Voltaire. This page sets the French original beside 2 direct-source translations, so any line can be checked against the source. It is article 48 of 73 in the work, which is kept in the European tradition.
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