Chapter IX
Original French
Des Martyrs.
IL y eut dans la suite des Martyrs Chrétiens: il est bien difficile de savoir précisément pour quelles raisons ces Martyrs furent condamnés; mais j'ose croire qu'aucun ne le fut sous les premiers Césars, pour sa seule Religion; on les tolérait toutes; comment aurait-on pu rechercher & poursuivre des hommes obscurs, qui avaient un culte particulier, dans le temps qu'on permettait tous les autres?
Les Titus, les Trajans, les Antonins, les Decius n'étaient pas des barbares: peut-on imaginer qu'ils auraient privé les seuls Chrétiens d'une liberté dont jouissait toute la terre? Les aurait-on seulement osé accuser d'avoir des mysteres secrets, tandis que les mysteres d'Isis, ceux de Mitras, ceux de la Déesse de Syrie, tous étrangers au culte Romain, étaient permis sans contradiction? Il faut bien que la persécution ait eu d'autres causes, & que les haines particulieres, soutenues par la raison d'Etat, ayent répandu le sang des Chrétiens.
Par exemple, lorsque St. Laurent refuse au Préfet de Rome, Cornelius Secularis, l'argent des Chrétiens qu'il avait en sa garde, il est naturel que le Préfet & l'Empereur soient irrités; ils ne savaient pas que St. Laurent avait distribué cet argent aux pauvres, & qu'il avait fait une œuvre charitable & sainte, ils le regarderent comme un réfractaire, & le firent périr.17
Considérons le martyre de St. Polyeucte. Le condamna-t-on pour sa Religion seule? Il va dans le Temple, où l'on rend aux Dieux des actions de graces pour la victoire de l'Empereur Decius; il y insulte les Sacrificateurs, il renverse & brise les Autels & les Statues: quel est le Pays au monde où l'on pardonnerait un pareil attentat? Le Chrétien qui déchira publiquement l'Edit de l'Empereur Dioclétien, & qui attira sur ses freres la grande persécution, dans les deux dernieres années du regne de ce Prince, n'avait pas un zele selon la science; & il était bien malheureux d'être la cause du désastre de son parti. Ce zele inconsidéré qui éclata souvent, & qui fut même condamné par plusieurs Peres de l'Eglise, a été probablement la source de toutes les persécutions.
Je ne compare point, sans doute, les premiers Sacramentaires aux premiers Chrétiens; je ne mets point l'erreur à côté de la vérité: mais Farel, prédécesseur de Jean Calvin, fit dans Arles la même chose que St. Polyeucte avait fait en Arménie. On portait dans les rues la Statue de St. Antoine l'Hermite en procession; Farel tombe avec quelques-uns des siens sur les Moines qui portaient St. Antoine, les bat, les disperse, & jette St. Antoine dans la riviere. Il méritait la mort qu'il ne reçut pas, parce qu'il eut le temps de s'enfuir. S'il s'était contenté de crier à ces Moines, qu'il ne croyait pas qu'un corbeau eût apporté la moitié d'un pain à St. Antoine l'Hermite, ni que St. Antoine eût eu des conversations avec des Centaures & des Satyres, il aurait mérité une forte réprimande, parce qu'il troublait l'ordre; mais si le soir, après la procession, il avait examiné paisiblement l'histoire du corbeau, des Centaures & des Satyres, on n'aurait rien eu à lui reprocher.
Quoi! les Romains auraient souffert que l'infame Antinoüs fût mis au rang des seconds Dieux, & ils auraient déchiré, livré aux bêtes tous ceux auxquels on n'aurait reproché que d'avoir paisiblement adoré un juste! Quoi! ils auraient reconnu un Dieu suprême18, un Dieu Souverain, maître de tous les Dieux secondaires, attesté par cette formule, Deus optimus maximus, & ils auraient recherché ceux qui adoraient un Dieu unique!
Il n'est pas croyable que jamais il y eût une Inquisition contre les Chrétiens sous les Empereurs, c'est-à-dire, qu'on soit venu chez eux les interroger sur leur créance. On ne troubla jamais sur cet article ni Juif, ni Syrien, ni Egyptien, ni Bardes, ni Druides, ni Philosophes. Les Martyrs furent donc ceux qui s'éleverent contre les faux Dieux. C'était une chose très-sage, très-pieuse de n'y pas croire; mais enfin, si, non contents d'adorer un Dieu en esprit & en vérité, ils éclaterent violemment contre le culte reçu, quelque absurde qu'il pût être, on est forcé d'avouer qu'eux-mêmes étaient intolérants.
Tertullien, dans son Apologétique,avoue qu'on regardait les Chrétiens comme des factieux; Chap. 39.l'accusation était injuste, mais elle prouvait que ce n'était pas la Religion seule des Chrétiens qui excitait le zele des Magistrats. Chap. 35.Il avoue que les Chrétiens refusaient d'orner leurs portes de branches de laurier dans les réjouissances publiques pour les victoires des Empereurs: on pouvait aisément prendre cette affectation condamnable pour un crime de leze-Majesté.
La premiere sévérité juridique exercée contre les Chrétiens, fut celle de Domitien; mais elle se borna à un exil qui ne dura pas une année: Facile cœptum repressit restitutis quos ipse relegaverat, dit Tertullien. Lactance, dont le style est si emporté, convient que depuis Domitien jusqu'à Decius Chap. 3.l'Eglise fut tranquille & florissante. Cette longue paix, dit-il, fut interrompue quand cet exécrable animal Decius opprima l'Eglise: post multos annos extitit execrabile animal Decius, qui vexaret Ecclesiam.
On ne veut point discuter ici le sentiment du savant Dodwel, sur le petit nombre des Martyrs; mais si les Romains avaient tant persécuté la Religion Chrétienne, si le Sénat avait fait mourir tant d'innocents par des supplices inusités, s'ils avaient plongé des Chrétiens dans l'huile bouillante, s'ils avaient exposé des filles toutes nues aux bêtes dans le Cirque, comment auraient-ils laissé en paix tous les premiers Evêques de Rome? St. Irenée ne compte pour Martyr, parmi ces Evêques, que le seul Télesphore, dans l'an 139 de l'Ere vulgaire; & on n'a aucune preuve que ce Télesphore ait été mis à mort. Zéphirin gouverna le troupeau de Rome pendant dix-huit années, & mourut paisiblement l'an 219. Il est vrai que dans les anciens Martyrologes, on place presque tous les premiers Papes; mais le mot de martyr n'était pris alors que suivant sa véritable signification: martyre voulait dire témoignage, & non pas supplice.
Il est difficile d'accorder cette fureur de persécution avec la liberté qu'eurent les Chrétiens d'assembler cinquante-six Conciles, que les Ecrivains Ecclésiastiques comptent dans les trois premiers siecles.
Il y eut des persécutions; mais si elles avaient été aussi violentes qu'on le dit, il est vraisemblable que Tertullien, qui écrivit avec tant de force contre le culte reçu, ne serait pas mort dans son lit. On sait bien que les Empereurs ne lurent pas son Apologétique; qu'un Ecrit obscur, composé en Afrique, ne parvient pas à ceux qui sont chargés du gouvernement du monde: mais il devait être connu de ceux qui approchaient le Proconsul d'Afrique; il devait attirer beaucoup de haine à l'Auteur; cependant il ne souffrit point le martyre.
Origene enseigna publiquement dans Alexandrie, & ne fut point mis à mort. Ce même Origene, qui parlait avec tant de liberté aux Païens & aux Chrétiens, qui annonçait Jesus aux uns, qui niait un Dieu en trois Personnes aux autres, avoue expressément dans son troisieme Livre contre Celse, qu'il y a eu très-peu de Martyrs, & encore de loin à loin; cependant, dit-il, les Chrétiens ne négligent rien pour faire embrasser leur Religion par tout le monde; ils courent dans les Villes, dans les Bourgs, dans les Villages.
Il est certain que ces courses continuelles pouvaient être aisément accusées de sédition par les Prêtres ennemis, & pourtant ces missions sont tolérées malgré le Peuple Egyptien, toujours turbulent, séditieux & lâche; Peuple qui avait déchiré un Romain pour avoir tué un chat; Peuple en tout temps méprisable, quoi qu'en disent les admirateurs des pyramides.19
Qui devait plus soulever contre lui les Prêtres & le Gouvernement que St. Grégoire Taumaturge, disciple d'Origene? Grégoire avait vu pendant la nuit un vieillard envoyé de Dieu, accompagné d'une femme resplendissante de lumiere: cette femme était la Ste. Vierge, & ce vieillard était St. Jean l'Evangéliste. St. Jean lui dicta un symbole, que St. Grégoire alla prêcher. Il passa, en allant à Néocésarée, près d'un Temple où l'on rendait des oracles, & où la pluye l'obligea de passer la nuit; il y fit plusieurs signes de croix. Le lendemain, le grand Sacrificateur du Temple fut étonné que les démons qui lui répondaient auparavant, ne voulaient plus rendre d'oracles: il les appella; les diables vinrent pour lui dire qu'ils ne viendraient plus; ils lui apprirent qu'ils ne pouvaient plus habiter ce Temple, parce que Grégoire y avait passé la nuit, & qu'il y avait fait des signes de croix. Le Sacrificateur fit saisir Grégoire, qui lui répondit: Je peux chasser les démons d'où je veux, & les faire entrer où il me plaîra. Faites-les donc rentrer dans mon Temple, dit le Sacrificateur. Alors Grégoire déchira un petit morceau d'un volume qu'il tenait à la main, & y traça ces paroles: Grégoire, à Sathan; je te commande de rentrer dans ce Temple: on mit ce billet sur l'Autel; les démons obéirent, & rendirent ce jour-là leurs oracles comme à l'ordinaire; après quoi ils cesserent, comme on le sait.
C'est St. Grégoire de Nysse qui rapporte ces faits dans la Vie de St. Grégoire Taumaturge. Les Prêtres des Idoles devaient sans doute être animés contre Grégoire, & dans leur aveuglement le déférer au Magistrat; cependant leur plus grand ennemi n'essuya aucune persécution.
Il est dit dans l'Histoire de St. Cyprien, qu'il fut le premier Evêque de Carthage condamné à la mort. Le martyre de St. Cyprien est de l'an 258, de notre Ere; donc pendant un très-long-temps aucun Evêque de Carthage ne fut immolé pour sa religion. L'Histoire ne nous dit point quelles calomnies s'éleverent contre St. Cyprien, quels ennemis il avait, pourquoi le Proconsul d'Afrique fut irrité contre lui. St. Cyprien écrit à Cornelius, Evêque de Rome: Il arriva depuis peu une émotion populaire à Carthage, & on cria par deux fois qu'il fallait me jetter aux lions. Il est bien vraisemblable que les emportements du Peuple féroce de Carthage furent enfin cause de la mort de Cyprien; & il est bien sûr que ce ne fut pas l'Empereur Gallus qui le condamna de si loin pour sa religion, puisqu'il laissait en paix Corneille qui vivait sous ses yeux.
Tant de causes secretes se mêlent souvent à la cause apparente, tant de ressorts inconnus servent à persécuter un homme, qu'il est impossible de démêler, dans les siecles postérieurs, la source cachée des malheurs des hommes les plus considérables, à plus forte raison celle du supplice d'un Particulier qui ne pouvait être connu que par ceux de son parti.
Remarquez que St. Grégoire Taumaturge, & St. Denis, Evêque d'Alexandrie, qui ne furent point suppliciés, vivaient dans le temps de St. Cyprien. Pourquoi, étant aussi connus pour le moins que cet Evêque de Carthage, demeurerent-ils paisibles? & pourquoi St. Cyprien fut-il livré au supplice? N'y a-t-il pas quelque apparence que l'un succomba sous des ennemis personnels & puissants, sous la calomnie, sous le prétexte de la raison d'Etat, qui se joint si souvent à la Religion, & que les autres eurent le bonheur d'échapper à la méchanceté des hommes?
Il n'est guères possible que la seule accusation de Christianisme ait fait périr St. Ignace, sous le clément & juste Trajan, puisqu'on permit aux Chrétiens de l'accompagner & de le consoler quand on le conduisit à Rome20. Il y avait eu souvent des séditions dans Antioche, ville toujours turbulente, où Ignace était Evêque secret des Chrétiens: peut-être ces séditions, malignement imputées aux Chrétiens innocents, exciterent l'attention du Gouvernement, qui fut trompé, comme il est trop souvent arrivé.
St. Siméon, par exemple, fut accusé devant Sapor d'être l'espion des Romains. L'Histoire de son martyre rapporte que le Roi Sapor lui proposa d'adorer le Soleil: mais on sait que les Perses ne rendaient point de culte au Soleil; ils le regardaient comme un emblême du bon principe, d'Oromase, ou Orosmade, du Dieu Créateur qu'ils reconnaissaient.
Quelque tolérant que l'on puisse être, on ne peut s'empêcher de sentir quelque indignation contre ces déclamateurs, qui accusent Dioclétien d'avoir persécuté les Chrétiens, depuis qu'il fut sur le Trône: rapportons-nous-en à Eusebe de Césarée, son témoignage ne peut être récusé; le favori, le panégyriste de Constantin, l'ennemi violent des Empereurs précédents, doit en être cru quand il les justifie: voici ses paroles: Hist. Ecclésiastiq. Liv. 8.«Les Empereurs donnerent long-temps aux Chrétiens de grandes marques de bienveillance; ils leur confierent des Provinces; plusieurs Chrétiens demeurerent dans le Palais; ils épouserent même des Chrétiennes; Dioclétien prit pour son épouse Prisca, dont la fille fut femme de Maximien Galere, &c.
Qu'on apprenne donc de ce témoignage décisif à ne plus calomnier; qu'on juge si la persécution excitée par Galere, après dix-neuf ans d'un regne de clémence & de bienfaits, ne doit pas avoir sa source dans quelque intrigue que nous ne connaissons pas.
Qu'on voye combien la fable de la Légion Thébaine ou Thébéenne, massacrée, dit-on, toute entiere pour la Religion, est une fable absurde. Il est ridicule qu'on ait fait venir cette Légion d'Asie par le grand St. Bernard; il est impossible qu'on l'eût appellée d'Asie pour venir appaiser une sédition dans les Gaules, un an après que cette sédition avait été réprimée: il n'est pas moins impossible qu'on ait égorgé six mille hommes d'Infanterie, & sept cents Cavaliers, dans un passage où deux cents hommes pourraient arrêter une Armée entiere. La relation de cette prétendue boucherie commence par une imposture évidente: Quand la terre gémissait sous la tyrannie de Dioclétien, le Ciel se peuplait de Martyrs. Or cette aventure, comme on l'a dit, est supposée en 286, temps où Dioclétien favorisait le plus les Chrétiens, & où l'Empire Romain fut le plus heureux. Enfin ce qui devrait épargner toutes ces discussions, c'est qu'il eut jamais de Légion Thébaine: les Romains étaient trop fiers & trop sensés pour composer une Légion de ces Egyptiens qui ne servaient à Rome que d'esclaves, Verna Canopi: c'est comme s'ils avaient eu une Légion Juive. Nous avons les noms des trente-deux Légions qui faisaient les principales forces de l'Empire Romain; assurément la Légion Thébaine ne s'y trouve pas. Rangeons donc ce conte avec les vers acrostiches des Sibylles qui prédisaient les miracles de Jesus-Christ, & avec tant de pieces supposées, qu'un faux zele prodigua pour abuser la crédulité.
17 Nous respectons assurément tout ce que l'Eglise rend respectable; nous invoquons les Sts. Martyrs; mais en révérant St. Laurent, ne peut-on pas douter que St. Sixte lui ait dit: Vous me suivrez dans trois jours; que dans ce court intervalle le Préfet de Rome lui ait fait demander l'argent des Chrétiens; que le Diacre Laurent ait eu le temps de faire assembler tous les pauvres de la Ville, qu'il ait marché devant le Préfet pour le mener à l'endroit où étaient ces pauvres, qu'on lui ait fait son procès, qu'il ait subi la question, que le Préfet ait commandé à un Forgeron un gril assez grand pour y rôtir un homme, que le premier Magistrat de Rome ait assisté lui-même à cet étrange supplice; que St. Laurent sur ce gril, ait dit: «Je suis assez cuit d'un côté, fais-moi retourner de l'autre, si tu veux me manger?» Ce gril n'est guères dans le génie des Romains; & comment se peut-il faire qu'aucun Auteur Païen n'ait parlé d'aucune de ces aventures?
18 Il n'y a qu'à ouvrir Virgile pour voir que les Romains reconnaissaient un Dieu suprême, Souverain de tous les êtres célestes.
O! quis res hominumque DeumqueÆternis regis imperiis, & fulmine terres,O Pater, ô hominum divûmque æterna potestas, &c.
Horace s'exprime bien plus fortement:
Undè nil majus generatur ipso,Nec viget quidquam simile, aut secundum.
On ne chantait autre chose que l'unité de Dieu dans les mysteres auxquels presque tous les Romains étaient initiés. Voyez la belle Hymne d'Orphée; lisez la Lettre de Maxime de Madaure à St. Augustin dans laquelle il dit, qu'il n'y a que des imbécilles qui puissent ne pas reconnaître un Dieu Souverain. Longinien, étant Païen, écrit au même St. Augustin, que Dieu est unique, incompréhensible, ineffable. Lactance lui-même, qu'on ne peut accuser d'être trop indulgent, avoue dans son Livre V, que les Romains soumettent tous les Dieux au Dieu suprême: Illos subjicit & mancipat Deo. Tertullien même, dans son Apologétique, avoue que tout l'Empire reconnaissait un Dieu maître du monde, dont la puissance & la majesté sont infinies. Principem mundi perfectæ potentiæ, & majestatis. Ouvrez sur-tout Platon, le maître de Cicéron dans la Philosophie, vous y verrez qu'il n'y a qu'un Dieu, qu'il faut l'adorer, l'aimer, travailler à lui ressembler par la sainteté & par la justice. Epictete dans les fers, Marc-Antonin sur le Trône, disent la même chose en cent endroits.
19 Cette assertion doit être prouvée. Il faut convenir que depuis que l'Histoire a succédé à la Fable, on ne voit dans les Egyptiens qu'un Peuple aussi lâche que superstitieux. Cambyse s'empare de l'Egypte par une seule bataille: Alexandre y donne des Loix sans essuyer un seul combat, sans qu'aucune Ville ose attendre un siege: les Ptolomées s'en emparent sans coup férir; César & Auguste la subjuguent aussi aisément. Omar prend toute l'Egypte en une seule campagne; les Mammelucs, Peuples de la Colchide & des environs du Mont Caucase, en sont les maîtres après Omar; ce sont eux, & non les Egyptiens, qui défont l'armée de St. Louis, & qui prennent ce Roi prisonnier. Enfin, les Mammelucs étant devenus Egyptiens, c'est-à-dire, mous, lâches, inappliqués, volages, comme les Habitants naturels de ce climat, ils passent en trois mois sous le joug de Selim I, qui fait pendre leur Soudan, & qui laisse cette Province annexée à l'Empire des Turcs, jusqu'à ce que d'autres barbares s'en emparent un jour.
Hérodote rapporte que dans les temps fabuleux, un Roi Egyptien, nommé Sésostris, sortit de son Pays dans le dessein formel de conquérir l'Univers: il est visible qu'un tel dessein n'est digne que de Pycrocole ou de Don-Quichote; & sans compter que le nom de Sésostris n'est point Egyptien, on peut mettre cet événement, ainsi que tous les faits antérieurs, au rang des mille & une nuits. Rien n'est plus commun chez les Peuples conquis, que de débiter des fables sur leur ancienne grandeur, comme, dans certains Pays, certaines misérables familles se font descendre d'antiques Souverains. Les Prêtres d'Egypte conterent à Hérodote que ce Roi, qu'il appelle Sésostris, était allé subjuguer la Colchide; c'est comme si on disait qu'un Roi de France partit de la Tourraine pour aller subjuguer la Norvege.
On a beau répéter tous ces contes dans mille & mille volumes, ils n'en sont pas plus vraisemblables; il est bien plus naturel que les Habitants robustes & féroces du Caucase, les Colchidiens, & les autres Scythes, qui vinrent tant de fois ravager l'Asie, pénétrerent jusqu'en Egypte: & si les Prêtres de Colchos rapporterent ensuite chez eux la mode de la circoncision, ce n'est pas une preuve qu'ils ayent été subjugués par les Egyptiens. Diodore de Sicile rapporte que tous les Rois vaincus par Sésostris venaient tous les ans du fond de leurs Royaumes lui apporter leurs tributs, & que Sésostris se servait d'eux comme de chevaux de carrosse, qu'il les faisait atteler à son char pour aller au Temple. Ces histoires de Gargantua sont tous les jours fidélement copiées. Assurément ces Rois étaient bien bons de venir de si loin servir ainsi de chevaux.
Quant aux pyramides, & aux autres antiquités, elles ne prouvent autre chose que l'orgueil & le mauvais goût des Princes d'Egypte, & l'esclavage d'un Peuple imbécille, employant ses bras, qui étaient son seul bien, à satisfaire la grossiere ostentation de ses Maîtres. Le gouvernement de ce Peuple, dans les temps mêmes que l'on vante si fort, paraît absurde & tyrannique: on prétend que toutes les Terres appartenaient à leurs Monarques. C'était bien à de pareils esclaves à conquérir le monde!
Cette profonde science des Prêtres Egyptiens est encore un des plus énormes ridicules de l'Histoire ancienne, c'est-à-dire, de la Fable. Des gens qui prétendaient que dans le cours d'onze mille années le Soleil s'était levé deux fois au couchant, & couché deux fois au levant, en recommençant son cours, étaient sans doute bien au-dessous de l'Auteur de l'Almanach de Liege. La Religion de ces Prêtres qui gouvernaient l'Etat, n'était pas comparable à celle des Peuples les plus sauvages de l'Amérique: on sait qu'ils adoraient des crocodiles, des singes, des chats, des oignons; & il n'y a peut-être aujourd'hui dans toute la terre que le culte du grand Lama qui soit aussi absurde.
Leurs Arts ne valent guères mieux que leur Religion; il n'y a pas une seule ancienne statue Egyptienne qui soit supportable, & tout ce qu'ils ont eu de bon a été fait dans Alexandrie sous les Ptolomées & sous les Césars, par des Artistes de Grece: ils ont eu besoin d'un Grec pour apprendre la Géométrie.
L'illustre Bossuet s'extasie sur le mérite Egyptien, dans son Discours sur l'Histoire universelle, adressé au fils de Louis XIV. Il peut éblouir un jeune Prince, mais il contente bien peu les Savants; c'est une très-éloquente déclamation, mais un Historien doit être plus Philosophe qu'Orateur. Au reste, on ne donne cette réflexion sur les Egyptiens que comme une conjecture: quel autre nom peut-on donner à tout ce qu'on dit de l'Antiquité?
20 On ne révoque point en doute la mort de St. Ignace; mais qu'on lise la Relation de son martyre, un homme de bon sens ne sentira-t-il pas quelques doutes s'élever dans son esprit? L'Auteur inconnu de cette Relation dit, que Trajan crut qu'il manquerait quelque chose à sa gloire, s'il ne soumettait à son Empire le Dieu des Chrétiens. Quelle idée! Trajan était-il un homme qui voulût triompher des Dieux? Lorsqu'Ignace parut devant l'Empereur, ce Prince lui dit: Qui es-tu, esprit impur? Il n'est guères vraisemblable qu'un Empereur ait parlé à un prisonnier, & qu'il l'ait condamné lui-même; ce n'est pas ainsi que les Souverains en usent. Si Trajan fit venir Ignace devant lui, il ne lui demanda pas: Qui es-tu? il le savait bien. Ce mot, esprit impur, a-t-il pu être prononcé par un homme comme Trajan? Ne voit-on pas que c'est une expression d'exorciste, qu'un Chrétien met dans la bouche d'un Empereur? Est-ce là, bon Dieu! le style de Trajan?
Peut-on imaginer qu'Ignace lui ait répondu qu'il se nommait Théophore, parce qu'il portait Jesus dans son cœur, & que Trajan eût disserté avec lui sur Jesus-Christ? On fait dire à Trajan, à la fin de la conversation: Nous ordonnons qu'Ignace, qui se glorifie de porter en lui le Crucifié, sera mis aux fers, &c. Un Sophiste, ennemi des Chrétiens, pouvait appeller Jesus-Christ le Crucifié; mais il n'est guères probable que dans un Arrêt on se fût servi de ce terme. Le supplice de la croix était si usité chez les Romains, qu'on ne pouvait, dans le style des Loix, désigner par le Crucifié l'objet du culte des Chrétiens, & ce n'est pas ainsi que les Loix & les Empereurs prononcent leurs jugements.
On fait ensuite écrire une longue Lettre par St. Ignace aux Chrétiens de Rome: Je vous écris, dit-il, tout enchaîné que je suis. Certainement, s'il lui fut permis d'écrire aux Chrétiens de Rome, ces Chrétiens n'étaient donc pas recherchés; Trajan n'avait donc pas dessein de soumettre leur Dieu à son Empire: ou si ces Chrétiens étaient sous le fléau de la persécution, Ignace commettait une très grande imprudence en leur écrivant; c'était les exposer, les livrer; c'était se rendre leur délateur.
Il semble que ceux qui ont rédigé ces actes, devaient avoir plus d'égard aux vraisemblances & aux convenances. Le martyre de St. Polycarpe fait naître encore plus de doutes. Il est dit qu'une voix cria du haut du Ciel, Courage, Polycarpe! que les Chrétiens l'entendirent, mais que les autres n'entendirent rien: il est dit que quand on eut lié Polycarpe au poteau, & que le bûcher fut en flammes, ces flammes s'écarterent de lui, & formerent un arc au-dessus de sa tête; qu'il en sortit une colombe; que le Saint, respecté par le feu, exhala une odeur d'aromates qui embauma toute l'assemblée: mais que celui dont le feu n'osait approcher, ne put résister au tranchant du glaive. Il faut avouer qu'on doit pardonner à ceux qui trouvent dans ces Histoires plus de piété que de vérité.
Musean translation
Complete machine-assisted Musean translation directly from French, reviewed against it. Includes all 25 chapters, Voltaire’s notes and the added Article with six edition references. Article transcription: French Wikisource, Garnier 1879, revision 15479820. Translation and Article: creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/.
On Martyrs.
There were Christian martyrs in later times. It is very difficult to know precisely why these martyrs were condemned; but I venture to believe that under the first Caesars none was condemned for his religion alone. All religions were tolerated. How could obscure men with a worship of their own have been hunted down and prosecuted when every other form of worship was permitted?
The Tituses, the Trajans, the Antonines, the Deciuses were not barbarians. Can we imagine that they would have denied Christians alone a freedom enjoyed by the whole earth? Would anyone even have dared accuse them of having secret mysteries, when the mysteries of Isis, of Mithras, of the Syrian goddess—all foreign to Roman worship—were permitted without objection? Persecution must have had other causes; private hatreds, sustained by reasons of state, must have shed Christian blood.
For example, when St. Lawrence refuses to give the prefect of Rome, Cornelius Secularis, the Christians’ money entrusted to his keeping, it is natural that the prefect and the emperor should be angered. They did not know that St. Lawrence had distributed this money to the poor and performed a charitable and holy deed; they regarded him as an insubordinate man and put him to death.17
Consider the martyrdom of St. Polyeuctus. Was he condemned for his religion alone? He enters the temple where thanks are being offered to the gods for the emperor Decius’s victory; he insults the priests, overturns and smashes the altars and statues. In what country in the world would such an outrage be forgiven? The Christian who publicly tore up the emperor Diocletian’s edict, bringing the great persecution upon his brethren in the last two years of that prince’s reign, had a zeal not guided by knowledge; and it was a great misfortune for him to cause his own party’s disaster. This reckless zeal, which often broke out and which several Fathers of the Church themselves condemned, was probably the source of all the persecutions.
I certainly do not compare the first Sacramentarians to the first Christians; I do not set error beside truth. But Farel, John Calvin’s predecessor, did in Arles what St. Polyeuctus had done in Armenia. A statue of St. Anthony the Hermit was being carried through the streets in procession. Farel, with some of his followers, falls upon the monks carrying St. Anthony, beats them, scatters them, and throws St. Anthony into the river. He deserved the death he escaped because he had time to flee. Had he merely shouted to these monks that he did not believe a raven had brought half a loaf to St. Anthony the Hermit, or that St. Anthony had conversed with centaurs and satyrs, he would have deserved a stern reprimand for disturbing the peace. But if that evening, after the procession, he had calmly examined the story of the raven, the centaurs, and the satyrs, no one could have reproached him.
What! The Romans would have allowed the infamous Antinous to be placed among the lesser gods, yet torn to pieces and thrown to wild beasts all those who could be charged with nothing but peacefully worshiping a just man! What! They would have acknowledged a supreme God,18 a sovereign God, master of all the subordinate gods, as the formula “God, best and greatest” attests, yet hunted down those who worshiped one God!
It is not credible that there was ever an Inquisition against Christians under the emperors—that is, that people went into their homes to question them about their beliefs. No Jew, Syrian, Egyptian, bard, Druid, or philosopher was ever troubled on that account. The martyrs, then, were those who rose against the false gods. Not to believe in them was very wise and very pious; but if, not content to worship one God in spirit and in truth, they violently attacked the established worship, however absurd it might be, we are forced to admit that they themselves were intolerant.
Tertullian, in his Apology, admits that Christians were regarded as agitators. Chap. 39. The accusation was unjust, but it proved that it was not the Christians’ religion alone that stirred the magistrates’ zeal. Chap. 35. He admits that Christians refused to adorn their doors with laurel branches during public celebrations of the emperors’ victories: this blameworthy display could easily be taken for the crime of treason.
The first judicial severity exercised against Christians was Domitian’s; but it went no further than an exile lasting less than a year: “He readily checked what he had begun, restoring those he himself had banished,” says Tertullian. Lactantius, whose style is so impassioned, concedes that from Domitian to Decius—Chap. 3.—the Church was peaceful and flourishing. This long peace, he says, was interrupted when that execrable animal Decius oppressed the Church: “After many years there arose that execrable animal Decius, to harass the Church.”
There is no wish here to discuss the learned Dodwell’s opinion on the small number of martyrs. But if the Romans had persecuted the Christian religion so fiercely, if the Senate had put so many innocent people to death by unheard-of torments, if they had plunged Christians into boiling oil, if they had exposed naked girls to wild beasts in the circus, how could they have left all the first bishops of Rome in peace? Among these bishops, St. Irenaeus counts only Telesphorus as a martyr, in the year 139 of the common era; and there is no proof that this Telesphorus was put to death. Zephyrinus governed the flock of Rome for eighteen years and died peacefully in 219. It is true that almost all the first popes appear in the ancient martyrologies; but the word martyr was then understood only in its true sense: martyrdom meant testimony, not execution.
It is difficult to reconcile this frenzy of persecution with the freedom Christians enjoyed to hold fifty-six councils, which ecclesiastical writers count in the first three centuries.
There were persecutions; but had they been as violent as we are told, Tertullian, who wrote so forcefully against the established worship, would probably not have died in his bed. We know very well that the emperors did not read his Apology, that an obscure work composed in Africa does not reach those charged with governing the world. But it must have been known to people close to the proconsul of Africa; it must have brought its author a great deal of hatred. Yet he did not suffer martyrdom.
Origen taught publicly in Alexandria and was not put to death. This same Origen, who spoke so freely to pagans and Christians, proclaiming Jesus to the former and denying a God in three Persons to the latter, expressly admits in his third book against Celsus that “there have been very few martyrs, and those at long intervals.” “Yet,” he says, “Christians neglect nothing to bring everyone to embrace their religion; they travel through cities, towns, and villages.”
Certainly these continual journeys could easily have been denounced as seditious by hostile priests; yet these missions were tolerated despite the Egyptian people, always turbulent, seditious, and cowardly—a people who had torn a Roman to pieces for killing a cat; a people contemptible in every age, whatever the admirers of the pyramids may say.19
Who was more likely to rouse the priests and the government against him than St. Gregory Thaumaturgus, Origen’s disciple? One night Gregory had seen an old man sent by God, accompanied by a woman radiant with light: this woman was the Holy Virgin, and this old man was St. John the Evangelist. St. John dictated a creed to him, which St. Gregory went out to preach. On his way to Neocaesarea, he passed a temple where oracles were given, and rain obliged him to spend the night there; he made several signs of the cross. The next day the temple’s high priest was astonished that the demons who had previously answered him no longer wished to deliver oracles. He summoned them; the devils came to tell him that they would come no more. They informed him that they could no longer inhabit this temple because Gregory had spent the night there and made signs of the cross. The priest had Gregory seized, and Gregory answered him: “I can drive demons from wherever I wish and make them enter wherever I please.” “Then make them return to my temple,” said the priest. Gregory then tore a small piece from a volume he held in his hand and wrote these words on it: “Gregory to Satan: I command you to return to this temple.” The note was placed on the altar; the demons obeyed and delivered their oracles that day as usual, after which, as we know, they ceased.
It is St. Gregory of Nyssa who relates these events in the Life of St. Gregory Thaumaturgus. The priests of the idols must surely have been incensed against Gregory and, in their blindness, have denounced him to the magistrate; yet their greatest enemy suffered no persecution.
The history of St. Cyprian says that he was the first bishop of Carthage condemned to death. St. Cyprian’s martyrdom dates from the year 258 of our era; therefore, for a very long time, no bishop of Carthage was sacrificed for his religion. History does not tell us what slanders arose against St. Cyprian, what enemies he had, or why the proconsul of Africa was angered against him. St. Cyprian writes to Cornelius, bishop of Rome: “There was recently a popular disturbance in Carthage, and twice the cry went up that I should be thrown to the lions.” It is very likely that the frenzy of Carthage’s savage populace finally caused Cyprian’s death; and it is quite certain that it was not the emperor Gallus who condemned him from so far away for his religion, since he left Cornelius, who lived under his very eyes, in peace.
So many hidden causes often mingle with the apparent cause, so many unknown forces work to persecute a man, that in later centuries it is impossible to disentangle the hidden source of the misfortunes of even the most eminent men—much less the source of the execution of a private individual who could have been known only to those of his own party.
Observe that St. Gregory Thaumaturgus and St. Dionysius, bishop of Alexandria, who were not executed, lived in St. Cyprian’s time. Why did they remain in peace, though at least as well known as this bishop of Carthage? And why was St. Cyprian delivered to execution? Is there not some likelihood that one succumbed to powerful personal enemies, to slander, to the pretext of reasons of state so often joined to religion, while the others had the good fortune to escape human malice?
It is hardly possible that the accusation of Christianity alone brought St. Ignatius to his death under the merciful and just Trajan, since Christians were allowed to accompany and console him when he was taken to Rome.20 There had often been riots in Antioch, an ever-turbulent city where Ignatius was the Christians’ secret bishop. Perhaps these riots, maliciously imputed to innocent Christians, drew the attention of the government, which was deceived, as has happened all too often.
St. Simeon, for example, was accused before Shapur of being a Roman spy. The history of his martyrdom relates that King Shapur proposed that he worship the sun; but we know that the Persians did not worship the sun. They regarded it as an emblem of the good principle, of Oromase, or Orosmade, the Creator God whom they acknowledged.
However tolerant we may be, we cannot help feeling some indignation against those declaimers who accuse Diocletian of persecuting Christians from the moment he came to the throne. Let us rely on Eusebius of Caesarea; his testimony cannot be rejected. Constantine’s favorite and panegyrist, the violent enemy of the preceding emperors, must be believed when he vindicates them. Here are his words: Hist. Ecclésiastiq. Liv. 8. “The emperors long gave Christians great marks of goodwill; they entrusted provinces to them; several Christians lived in the palace; they even married Christian women; Diocletian took Prisca as his wife, whose daughter became the wife of Maximian Galerius, etc.”
Let this decisive testimony teach people to slander no more; let them judge whether the persecution stirred up by Galerius, after nineteen years of a reign of mercy and beneficence, must not have had its source in some intrigue unknown to us.
Consider how absurd is the fable of the Theban, or Thebaean, Legion, supposedly massacred to the last man for its religion. It is ridiculous to have brought this legion from Asia by way of the Great St. Bernard; it is impossible that it should have been summoned from Asia to quell a revolt in Gaul a year after that revolt had been suppressed. It is no less impossible that six thousand infantrymen and seven hundred cavalrymen should have been slaughtered in a pass where two hundred men could hold off an entire army. The account of this alleged butchery begins with an obvious imposture: “While the earth groaned beneath Diocletian’s tyranny, heaven was filling with martyrs.” Now this adventure, as we have said, is supposed to have occurred in 286, when Diocletian most favored the Christians and the Roman Empire was at its happiest. Finally, what should spare us all these discussions is that there never was a Theban Legion: the Romans were too proud and too sensible to form a legion from those Egyptians who served in Rome only as slaves, a homeborn slave of Canopus. It would be as if they had had a Jewish Legion. We have the names of the thirty-two legions that formed the main strength of the Roman Empire; the Theban Legion is certainly not among them. Let us therefore place this tale beside the Sibyls’ acrostic verses predicting the miracles of Jesus Christ, and so many other forged writings that a false zeal lavished on the world to exploit its credulity.
17 We certainly respect everything the Church makes worthy of respect; we invoke the holy martyrs. But while revering St. Lawrence, may we not doubt that St. Sixtus told him, “You will follow me in three days”; that within this short interval the prefect of Rome had the Christians’ money demanded of him; that the deacon Lawrence had time to gather all the city’s poor; that he walked before the prefect to lead him to the place where these poor people were; that he was tried and put to torture; that the prefect ordered a blacksmith to make a gridiron large enough to roast a man; that Rome’s chief magistrate attended this strange execution in person; that St. Lawrence, on this gridiron, said, “I am cooked enough on one side; have me turned over to the other if you want to eat me”? This gridiron is scarcely in the Roman spirit; and how can it be that no pagan author mentioned any of these adventures?
18 We need only open Virgil to see that the Romans acknowledged a supreme God, sovereign over all heavenly beings.
O you who rule the affairs of men and godsWith everlasting power, and terrify with your thunderbolt,O Father, eternal power of men and gods, etc.
Horace speaks far more strongly:
From whom nothing greater than himself is born,Nor does anything flourish that is his like or second.
Nothing but the unity of God was sung in the mysteries into which almost all Romans were initiated. See the beautiful Hymn of Orpheus; read the letter of Maximus of Madaura to St. Augustine, in which he says that “only fools can fail to acknowledge a sovereign God.” Longinianus, a pagan, writes to the same St. Augustine that “God is one, incomprehensible, ineffable.” Lactantius himself, who cannot be accused of excessive indulgence, admits in his Book V that “the Romans subject all the gods to the supreme God”: “He subjects and binds them to God.” Even Tertullian, in his Apology, admits that the whole empire acknowledged a God who ruled the world, whose power and majesty are infinite: “The ruler of the world, of perfect power and majesty.” Above all, open Plato, Cicero’s master in philosophy, and you will see that “there is only one God,” that “we must worship him, love him, and strive to resemble him through holiness and justice.” Epictetus in chains and Marcus Aurelius on the throne say the same thing in a hundred places.
19 This assertion needs proof. We must acknowledge that, ever since history succeeded fable, we see in the Egyptians only a people as cowardly as they are superstitious. Cambyses takes Egypt in a single battle; Alexander gives it laws without fighting a single engagement, without any city daring to await a siege; the Ptolemies take possession of it without striking a blow; Caesar and Augustus subjugate it just as easily. Omar takes all Egypt in a single campaign; the Mamluks, peoples from Colchis and the lands around Mount Caucasus, are its masters after Omar. It is they, not the Egyptians, who defeat St. Louis’s army and take that king prisoner. Finally, once the Mamluks have become Egyptians—that is, soft, cowardly, idle, and fickle, like the native inhabitants of that climate—they pass in three months under the yoke of Selim I, who hangs their sultan and leaves this province annexed to the Turkish Empire, until one day other barbarians seize it.
Herodotus relates that in fabulous times an Egyptian king called Sesostris left his country with the express intention of conquering the world. It is plain that such a plan is worthy only of Picrochole or Don Quixote; and quite apart from the fact that the name Sesostris is not Egyptian, this event, like all the earlier ones, may be ranked with the Thousand and One Nights. Nothing is more common among conquered peoples than to retail fables about their former greatness, just as in certain countries certain wretched families claim descent from ancient sovereigns. The priests of Egypt told Herodotus that this king, whom he calls Sesostris, had gone to subjugate Colchis; it is as if we were told that a king of France had set out from Touraine to subjugate Norway.
These tales may be repeated in thousands upon thousands of volumes without becoming any more plausible. It is far more natural that the robust and savage inhabitants of the Caucasus, the Colchians and the other Scythians, who so often came to ravage Asia, should have penetrated as far as Egypt; and if the priests of Colchis later brought the custom of circumcision home with them, that does not prove that they had been subjugated by the Egyptians. Diodorus of Sicily relates that every king conquered by Sesostris came each year from the depths of his kingdom to bring him tribute, and that Sesostris used them as carriage horses, having them harnessed to his chariot when he went to the temple. These tales of Gargantua are faithfully copied every day. Certainly those kings were very obliging to come from so far away to serve as horses in this fashion.
As for the pyramids and the other antiquities, they prove nothing but the pride and bad taste of Egypt’s princes, and the slavery of a foolish people who used their arms, their sole possession, to satisfy their masters’ vulgar ostentation. Even in the times so greatly praised, this people’s government seems absurd and tyrannical: we are told that all the land belonged to their monarchs. Such slaves were just the people to conquer the world!
This profound learning of the Egyptian priests is another of the most enormous absurdities of ancient history—that is, of fable. Men who claimed that in the course of eleven thousand years the sun had risen twice in the west and set twice in the east, beginning its course anew, were surely far beneath the author of the Liège Almanac. The religion of these priests who governed the state could not compare with that of the most savage peoples of America. We know that they worshiped crocodiles, monkeys, cats, and onions; and perhaps today, on the whole earth, only the worship of the great Lama is as absurd.
Their arts are scarcely better than their religion. There is not a single ancient Egyptian statue that is tolerable, and everything good they possessed was made in Alexandria under the Ptolemies and the Caesars, by artists from Greece. They needed a Greek to teach them geometry.
The illustrious Bossuet goes into raptures over Egyptian merit in his Discourse on Universal History, addressed to Louis XIV’s son. He may dazzle a young prince, but he gives scholars very little satisfaction. It is a highly eloquent declamation, but a historian should be more philosopher than orator. Besides, this reflection on the Egyptians is offered only as a conjecture: what other name can we give to everything said about antiquity?
20 The death of St. Ignatius is not called into question; but let a person of good sense read the account of his martyrdom—will he not feel some doubts rising in his mind? The unknown author of this account says that “Trajan believed something would be lacking in his glory if he did not subject the Christians’ God to his empire.” What a notion! Was Trajan a man who wished to triumph over the gods? When Ignatius appeared before the emperor, that prince said to him: “Who are you, impure spirit?” It is scarcely likely that an emperor would have spoken to a prisoner and condemned him himself; that is not how sovereigns act. If Trajan summoned Ignatius before him, he did not ask him, “Who are you?” He knew very well. Could those words, “impure spirit,” have been uttered by a man like Trajan? Do we not see that this is an exorcist’s expression, which a Christian puts into an emperor’s mouth? Good God, is that Trajan’s style?
Can we imagine that Ignatius answered that his name was Theophorus because he carried Jesus in his heart, and that Trajan debated Jesus Christ with him? At the end of the conversation Trajan is made to say: “We order that Ignatius, who boasts of carrying the Crucified within him, shall be put in chains, etc.” A sophist hostile to Christians might have called Jesus Christ “the Crucified”; but it is scarcely likely that such a term would have been used in a judicial decree. Execution on the cross was so common among the Romans that the language of the law could not have designated the object of Christian worship as “the Crucified”; and this is not how laws and emperors pronounce their judgments.
Next St. Ignatius is made to write a long letter to the Christians of Rome. “I write to you,” he says, “though I am entirely in chains.” Certainly, if he was allowed to write to the Christians of Rome, those Christians were not being hunted down; Trajan therefore did not intend to subject their God to his empire. Or, if those Christians were under the scourge of persecution, Ignatius committed a very great imprudence in writing to them: he was exposing them, handing them over, making himself their informer.
It seems that those who drew up these acts should have paid greater heed to plausibility and propriety. The martyrdom of St. Polycarp raises still more doubts. We are told that a voice cried from heaven, “Courage, Polycarp!”; that the Christians heard it, but the others heard nothing. We are told that when Polycarp had been bound to the stake and the pyre was ablaze, the flames drew away from him and formed an arch above his head; that a dove came out of it; that the saint, spared by the fire, gave off a fragrance of spices that perfumed the entire gathering; but that he whom fire dared not approach could not withstand the sword’s edge. We must admit that those who find more piety than truth in these stories deserve forgiveness.
Plain English translation
Independent, complete machine-assisted Plain English translation directly from French, reviewed against it. All 25 chapters, author’s notes and added Article with six edition references are retained. Article transcription: French Wikisource, Garnier 1879, revision 15479820. Translation and Article: creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/.
On martyrs.
There were Christian martyrs later on. It is very hard to know exactly why these martyrs were condemned. But I venture to believe that under the first Caesars none was condemned for his religion alone. All religions were tolerated. How could obscure people with a particular form of worship have been hunted down and prosecuted when every other form was allowed?
Rulers such as Titus, Trajan, the Antonines, and Decius were not barbarians. Can we imagine that they would have denied Christians alone a freedom enjoyed by the whole world? Would anyone even have dared accuse them of having secret mysteries, when the mysteries of Isis, Mithras, and the goddess of Syria, all foreign to Roman worship, were allowed without objection? Persecution must have had other causes. Private hatred, backed by reasons of state, must have shed Christian blood.
For example, when St. Lawrence refuses to hand over to the prefect of Rome, Cornelius Secularis, the Christians’ money in his keeping, it is natural that the prefect and the emperor should be angry. They did not know that St. Lawrence had distributed this money to the poor and had done a charitable and holy deed. They saw him as someone defying authority and put him to death.17
Consider the martyrdom of St. Polyeuctus. Was he condemned for his religion alone? He goes into the temple where thanks are being offered to the gods for the emperor Decius’s victory. There he insults the priests and knocks down and breaks the altars and statues. What country in the world would forgive such an attack? The Christian who publicly tore up the emperor Diocletian’s edict, bringing the great persecution on his brothers during the last two years of that ruler’s reign, had a zeal not guided by knowledge. It was deeply unfortunate that he caused his own community’s disaster. This thoughtless zeal, which often broke out and which several Fathers of the Church themselves condemned, was probably the source of all the persecutions.
Of course I am not comparing the first Sacramentarians with the first Christians. I am not putting error on a level with truth. But Farel, John Calvin’s predecessor, did the same thing in Arles that St. Polyeuctus had done in Armenia. A statue of St. Anthony the Hermit was being carried through the streets in a procession. Farel and some of his followers attacked the monks carrying St. Anthony, beat them, scattered them, and threw St. Anthony into the river. He deserved death, which he escaped because he had time to flee. Suppose he had merely shouted at these monks that he did not believe a raven had brought half a loaf of bread to St. Anthony the Hermit, or that St. Anthony had talked with centaurs and satyrs. He would have deserved a severe reprimand for disturbing the peace. But if that evening, after the procession, he had calmly examined the story of the raven, the centaurs, and the satyrs, there would have been nothing to reproach him for.
What! The Romans would have allowed the infamous Antinous to be ranked among the lesser gods, yet torn apart and thrown to wild beasts everyone whose only offense was quietly worshiping a righteous man! What! They would have acknowledged a supreme God,18 a sovereign God, master of all the lesser gods, as the formula “God, best and greatest” attests, yet hunted down people who worshiped one God!
It is not believable that there was ever an Inquisition against Christians under the emperors—that is, that officials went to their homes to question them about their beliefs. No Jew, Syrian, Egyptian, bard, Druid, or philosopher was ever troubled on that point. The martyrs, then, were those who spoke out against the false gods. It was very wise and very religious not to believe in them. But if Christians were not content to worship one God in spirit and in truth, and violently attacked the established religion, however absurd it might be, we have to admit that they themselves were intolerant.
In his Apology, Tertullian admits that Christians were regarded as agitators. Chap. 39. The accusation was unjust, but it proved that it was not the Christians’ religion alone that stirred the officials’ zeal. Chap. 35. He admits that Christians refused to decorate their doors with laurel branches during public celebrations of the emperors’ victories. This blameworthy display could easily be taken as a crime against the sovereign.
The first legal severity against Christians was Domitian’s. But it went no further than exile lasting less than a year. Tertullian says: “He readily stopped what he had begun, recalling those he himself had banished.” Lactantius, whose style is so heated, acknowledges that from Domitian to Decius—Chap. 3.—the Church was peaceful and flourishing. This long peace, he says, was broken when that detestable animal Decius oppressed the Church: “After many years there appeared the detestable animal Decius to torment the Church.”
I do not intend to discuss here the learned Dodwell’s view that there were few martyrs. But if the Romans had persecuted the Christian religion so much, if the Senate had killed so many innocent people with unusual tortures, if they had plunged Christians into boiling oil, if they had exposed naked girls to wild beasts in the circus, how could they have left all the first bishops of Rome in peace? Among those bishops, St. Irenaeus counts only Telesphorus as a martyr, in the year 139 of the common era. And there is no evidence that this Telesphorus was put to death. Zephyrinus governed the flock of Rome for eighteen years and died peacefully in 219. It is true that the old martyrologies list almost all the first popes. But the word martyr was then used only in its true sense: martyrdom meant testimony, not execution.
It is hard to reconcile this fury of persecution with the Christians’ freedom to hold the fifty-six councils that Church writers count in the first three centuries.
There were persecutions. But if they had been as violent as people say, Tertullian, who wrote so forcefully against the established religion, would probably not have died in his bed. We know very well that the emperors did not read his Apology. An obscure work written in Africa does not reach the people responsible for governing the world. But it must have been known to people close to the proconsul of Africa. It must have brought its author a great deal of hatred. Yet he did not suffer martyrdom.
Origen taught publicly in Alexandria and was not put to death. This same Origen, who spoke so freely to pagans and Christians, preaching Jesus to the former and denying a God in three persons to the latter, expressly admits in his third book against Celsus that “there have been very few martyrs, and those only at long intervals.” “Yet,” he says, “Christians leave nothing undone to get everyone to embrace their religion. They travel through cities, towns, and villages.”
Certainly these continual journeys could easily have been labeled seditious by hostile priests. Yet these missions were tolerated, despite the Egyptian people, always unruly, rebellious, and cowardly. These were people who had torn a Roman apart for killing a cat, people contemptible in every age, whatever the admirers of the pyramids may say.19
Who was more likely to turn the priests and the government against him than St. Gregory Thaumaturgus, a disciple of Origen? During the night Gregory had seen an old man sent by God, accompanied by a woman shining with light. This woman was the Holy Virgin, and the old man was St. John the Evangelist. St. John dictated a creed to him, which St. Gregory went out to preach. On his way to Neocaesarea he passed a temple where oracles were given. Rain forced him to spend the night there, and he made several signs of the cross. The next day the temple’s high priest was astonished that the demons who had previously answered him would no longer give oracles. He called them. The devils came to tell him they would not come anymore. They explained that they could no longer live in the temple because Gregory had spent the night there and made signs of the cross. The priest had Gregory seized. Gregory answered him: “I can drive demons out of wherever I want and make them go in wherever I please.” “Then make them go back into my temple,” said the priest. So Gregory tore a small piece from a book he was holding and wrote these words on it: “Gregory to Satan: I order you to go back into this temple.” The note was placed on the altar. The demons obeyed and gave their oracles as usual that day. After that, as everyone knows, they stopped.
St. Gregory of Nyssa reports these events in his Life of St. Gregory Thaumaturgus. The idol priests must certainly have been angry with Gregory and, in their blindness, denounced him to the authorities. Yet their greatest enemy suffered no persecution.
The history of St. Cyprian says that he was the first bishop of Carthage sentenced to death. St. Cyprian’s martyrdom dates from the year 258 of our era. So for a very long time no bishop of Carthage was put to death for his religion. History does not tell us what slanders arose against St. Cyprian, what enemies he had, or why the proconsul of Africa was angry with him. St. Cyprian writes to Cornelius, bishop of Rome: “There was recently a popular disturbance in Carthage, and twice people shouted that I should be thrown to the lions.” It is very likely that the violent outbursts of Carthage’s savage people finally caused Cyprian’s death. And certainly it was not the emperor Gallus who condemned him from so far away for his religion, since he left Cornelius, who lived right under his eyes, in peace.
So many hidden causes often combine with the apparent one, so many unknown forces help persecute someone, that in later centuries it is impossible to untangle the hidden source of even the most important people’s misfortunes. It is all the more impossible to do so for the execution of a private individual who could have been known only to his own community.
Notice that St. Gregory Thaumaturgus and St. Dionysius, bishop of Alexandria, who were not executed, lived at the same time as St. Cyprian. Why were they left in peace, though they were at least as well known as this bishop of Carthage? And why was St. Cyprian handed over to execution? Is there not some reason to think that one fell victim to powerful personal enemies, slander, and the pretext of reasons of state, so often combined with religion, while the others had the good fortune to escape human malice?
It is hardly possible that the accusation of Christianity alone caused St. Ignatius’s death under the merciful and just Trajan, since Christians were allowed to accompany and comfort him when he was taken to Rome.20 There had often been riots in Antioch, an endlessly turbulent city where Ignatius was the Christians’ secret bishop. Perhaps these riots, maliciously blamed on innocent Christians, drew the attention of the government, which was deceived, as has happened too often.
St. Simeon, for example, was accused before Shapur of being a Roman spy. The account of his martyrdom says that King Shapur asked him to worship the sun. But we know that the Persians did not worship the sun. They regarded it as an emblem of the good principle, Oromase, or Orosmade, the creator God whom they acknowledged.
However tolerant we may be, we cannot help feeling some indignation at the ranters who accuse Diocletian of persecuting Christians from the moment he took the throne. Let us trust Eusebius of Caesarea. His testimony cannot be rejected. As Constantine’s favorite and his writer of praise, and a fierce enemy of the previous emperors, he must be believed when he clears them. Here are his words: Hist. Ecclésiastiq. Liv. 8. “For a long time the emperors gave Christians great signs of goodwill. They entrusted provinces to them. Several Christians lived in the palace. The emperors even married Christian women. Diocletian took Prisca as his wife, and her daughter became the wife of Maximian Galerius, etc.”
Let this decisive testimony teach people to stop slandering. Consider whether the persecution stirred up by Galerius, after nineteen years of a reign marked by mercy and benefits, must not have arisen from some intrigue unknown to us.
Consider how absurd the story of the Theban, or Thebaean, legion is, supposedly massacred to the last man for its religion. It is ridiculous to claim that this legion was brought from Asia by way of the Great St. Bernard Pass. It is impossible that it was summoned from Asia to put down a rebellion in Gaul a year after that rebellion had been suppressed. It is equally impossible that six thousand infantrymen and seven hundred cavalrymen were slaughtered in a pass where two hundred men could stop a whole army. The account of this supposed butchery begins with an obvious falsehood: “When the earth groaned under Diocletian’s tyranny, heaven was filling with martyrs.” Yet this episode, as we have said, supposedly happened in 286, when Diocletian was most favorable to Christians and the Roman Empire was happiest. Finally, what should spare us all these discussions is that there never was a Theban legion. The Romans were too proud and too sensible to form a legion from those Egyptians who served in Rome only as slaves, “a slave born in Canopus.” It would be as if they had had a Jewish legion. We have the names of the thirty-two legions that made up the Roman Empire’s main forces. The Theban legion certainly is not among them. Let us put this tale alongside the Sibyls’ acrostic verses predicting Jesus Christ’s miracles, and so many forged documents that false zeal poured out to exploit people’s willingness to believe.
17 We certainly respect everything the Church makes worthy of respect. We call on the holy martyrs. But while honoring St. Lawrence, may we not doubt that St. Sixtus told him, “You will follow me in three days”? May we not doubt that in this short interval the prefect of Rome sent to demand the Christians’ money from him; that the deacon Lawrence had time to gather all the city’s poor; that he walked ahead of the prefect to lead him to where these poor people were; that he was tried and tortured; that the prefect ordered a blacksmith to make a gridiron large enough to roast a man; that Rome’s highest official personally attended this strange execution; and that St. Lawrence, lying on this gridiron, said, “I am cooked enough on one side. Have me turned over to the other if you want to eat me”? This gridiron hardly fits the Roman character. And how can it be that no pagan writer mentioned any of these events?
18 We need only open Virgil to see that the Romans acknowledged a supreme God, ruler of all heavenly beings.
O you who govern the affairs of humans and godsWith eternal command, and terrify with your thunderbolt,O Father, O eternal power over humans and gods, etc.
Horace expresses it much more strongly:
From whom nothing greater than himself is born,And nothing lives that is his equal or his second.
Nothing but the oneness of God was sung in the mysteries into which almost all Romans were initiated. See the beautiful hymn of Orpheus. Read the letter from Maximus of Madaura to St. Augustine, in which he says that only fools can fail to acknowledge a sovereign God. Longinianus, a pagan, writes to the same St. Augustine that God is one, incomprehensible, and beyond words. Lactantius himself, who cannot be accused of being too lenient, admits in his Book V that the Romans subject all the gods to the supreme God: “He makes them subject and subordinate to God.” Even Tertullian, in his Apology, admits that the whole empire acknowledged one God as master of the world, whose power and majesty are infinite: “The ruler of the world, of perfect power and majesty.” Above all, open Plato, Cicero’s teacher in philosophy. There you will see that there is only one God, that we must worship him, love him, and work to resemble him through holiness and justice. Epictetus in chains and Marcus Aurelius on the throne say the same thing in a hundred places.
19 This claim needs proof. We must admit that ever since history replaced fable, the Egyptians appear only as a people as cowardly as they are superstitious. Cambyses takes Egypt in a single battle. Alexander gives it laws without fighting a single battle, without any city daring to wait for a siege. The Ptolemies take it without a blow. Caesar and Augustus subdue it just as easily. Omar takes all Egypt in a single campaign. After Omar, the Mamluks, people from Colchis and the region around Mount Caucasus, become its masters. It is they, not the Egyptians, who defeat St. Louis’s army and take that king prisoner. Finally, when the Mamluks have become Egyptians—that is, soft, cowardly, idle, and fickle, like the native inhabitants of that climate—they fall under the yoke of Selim I in three months. He hangs their sultan and leaves this province annexed to the Turkish Empire, until other barbarians take it one day.
Herodotus reports that in the age of fable an Egyptian king named Sesostris left his country with the definite intention of conquering the world. Obviously such a plan is worthy only of Picrochole or Don Quixote. Quite apart from the fact that the name Sesostris is not Egyptian, we can put this event, like all earlier ones, among the tales of the Thousand and One Nights. Nothing is more common among conquered peoples than to spread fables about their former greatness, just as in certain countries some wretched families claim descent from ancient rulers. The Egyptian priests told Herodotus that this king, whom he calls Sesostris, had gone off to conquer Colchis. That is like saying that a king of France left Touraine to conquer Norway.
These tales can be repeated in thousands upon thousands of books without becoming any more plausible. It is much more natural to suppose that the strong, fierce inhabitants of the Caucasus, the Colchians and the other Scythians, who came so often to ravage Asia, pushed as far as Egypt. And if the priests of Colchis later brought home the practice of circumcision, that does not prove that the Egyptians had conquered them. Diodorus of Sicily reports that all the kings defeated by Sesostris came every year from the depths of their kingdoms to bring him their tribute. He says that Sesostris used them as carriage horses, having them harnessed to his chariot to go to the temple. These Gargantua stories are faithfully copied every day. Those kings were certainly obliging to come so far to serve as horses in this way.
As for the pyramids and the other ancient monuments, they prove nothing but the pride and bad taste of Egypt’s rulers, and the enslavement of a foolish people. They used their arms, their only possession, to satisfy their masters’ crude taste for display. Even in the times people praise so highly, this people’s government seems absurd and tyrannical. It is claimed that all the land belonged to their monarchs. Such slaves were just the people to conquer the world!
The Egyptian priests’ profound learning is another of the most enormous absurdities of ancient history—that is, of fable. People who claimed that over eleven thousand years the sun had risen twice in the west and set twice in the east, restarting its course, were surely far below the author of the Liège Almanac. The religion of these priests, who governed the state, could not compare with that of the most savage peoples of America. We know that they worshiped crocodiles, monkeys, cats, and onions. Perhaps in the whole world today only the worship of the great Lama is equally absurd.
Their arts are hardly better than their religion. There is not a single ancient Egyptian statue that is bearable. Everything good they had was made in Alexandria under the Ptolemies and the Caesars, by Greek artists. They needed a Greek to teach them geometry.
The famous Bossuet goes into raptures over Egyptian merit in his Discourse on Universal History, addressed to Louis XIV’s son. He may dazzle a young prince, but he gives scholars very little satisfaction. It is a very eloquent piece of rhetoric, but a historian should be more of a philosopher than an orator. In any case, this reflection on the Egyptians is offered only as a conjecture. What other name can we give to anything said about antiquity?
20 St. Ignatius’s death is not being questioned. But read the account of his martyrdom: will a sensible person not feel some doubts arise? The unknown author of this account says that Trajan thought something would be missing from his glory unless he brought the Christians’ God under his rule. What an idea! Was Trajan a man who wanted to triumph over the gods? When Ignatius appeared before the emperor, the ruler said to him: “Who are you, unclean spirit?” It is hardly likely that an emperor spoke to a prisoner and condemned him personally. That is not how sovereigns act. If Trajan had Ignatius brought before him, he did not ask, “Who are you?” He knew perfectly well. Could a man like Trajan have spoken the words “unclean spirit”? Can we not see that this is an exorcist’s expression, put into an emperor’s mouth by a Christian? Good God, is that Trajan’s style?
Can we imagine that Ignatius answered that his name was Theophorus because he carried Jesus in his heart, and that Trajan debated Jesus Christ with him? At the end of the conversation Trajan is made to say: “We order that Ignatius, who boasts of carrying the Crucified within him, be put in chains, etc.” A sophist hostile to Christians might call Jesus Christ “the Crucified.” But it is hardly likely that this term would have been used in a legal sentence. Crucifixion was so common among the Romans that legal language could not use “the Crucified” to identify the object of Christian worship. That is not how laws and emperors pronounce judgment.
Then St. Ignatius is made to write a long letter to the Christians of Rome. “I write to you,” he says, “though I am entirely in chains.” Certainly, if he was allowed to write to the Christians of Rome, those Christians were not being hunted down. Trajan, then, had no intention of bringing their God under his rule. Or, if those Christians were suffering persecution, Ignatius was being extremely reckless in writing to them. He was exposing them, giving them away, making himself their informer.
It seems that those who drew up these acts should have paid more attention to plausibility and fitness. The martyrdom of St. Polycarp raises still more doubts. We are told that a voice called from heaven, “Courage, Polycarp!” Christians heard it, but the others heard nothing. We are told that when Polycarp had been tied to the stake and the wood was blazing, the flames drew away from him and formed an arch over his head; that a dove came out of it; that the saint, spared by the fire, gave off a fragrance of spices that filled the whole gathering; but that the man whom fire dared not approach could not withstand the edge of a sword. We must admit that people who find more piety than truth in these stories deserve to be forgiven.
About this section
Chapter IX is part of Treatise on Tolerance by Voltaire. This page sets the French original beside 2 direct-source translations, so any line can be checked against the source. It is chapter 9 of 26 in the work, which is kept in the European tradition.
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