The Darkening Age Page 9
The emperor Trajan replies personally and promptly. He clearly knows and is fond of his emissary: “my dear Pliny,” he calls him in one solicitous letter; “I wish you could have reached Bithynia without any illness yourself.” In another he praises Pliny’s energy and intelligence; another informs him, flatteringly, that Pliny has been “chosen as my representative” for a “special mission.”3 Trajan is remarkably closely involved in the minutiae of the province: when Pliny suggests getting a canal surveyed, Trajan replies that he will send out an engineer with experience in that line.4 Trajan is friendly, helpful and fair—though there are glimpses of steel. When Pliny wishes to turn a blind eye to some elderly criminals who have wriggled out of their sentences, Trajan is intransigent. “Let us not forget,” he writes, “that the chief reason for sending you to your province was the evident need for many reforms.”5 You can almost picture the middle-aged governor, eager celebrator of the imperial birthday, shifting uncomfortably in his seat as he reads that one.
These letters bear little trace of the figures who would later become such stalwarts of the martyr tales. In these stories, the Roman emperor is a villain who “feeds on innocent blood; hungering for the bodies of the godly”; he tears their flesh and “delights in torturing the faithful.”6 Satan himself, the “jealous and envious Evil One,” is behind these attacks, which the Romans carry out “at the instigation of evil demons.”7 But far from showing demonic frothing, Trajan’s letters show a man who is punctilious and practical, while Pliny gives the impression of a bookish, slightly fussy fellow whose greatest flaw seems to be his vanity. He is the sort of man who is more likely to pontificate on the correct wine to serve at dinner than to thunder about the importance of religion.
Then suddenly, among all the tales of provincial waterways and corrupt eastern officials, an unusual letter appears. It is now known by the unassuming name “Letter 10.96.” It was almost certainly edited at some point later, yet the whole dispatch still has the feel of being somewhat carelessly drafted: it is full of omissions, assumptions and non sequiturs. There is no obvious reason why Pliny should have spent much more time over it than any of his other letters. To him, this was not of any great significance; it was merely the record of an inconsequential encounter with some of his subjects in his province, a footnote in a busy and ultimately successful imperial career.
Trajan’s reply shows a similar lack of interest: he answers with his usual punctiliousness—but briefly. In their next letter, the two move on to the urgent need for new plumbing in a local city (“Among the chief features of Amastris, Sir . . . is a long street of great beauty. Throughout the length of this, however, there runs what is called a stream, but is in fact a filthy sewer, a disgusting eyesore which gives off a noxious stench”).8
Letter 10.96 was not, however, inconsequential for the generations of Christians that followed. For Letter 10.96 is nothing less than the very first record of the Christians by a Roman writer.
It is clear from the moment the letter opens that Pliny is finding the Christians in his new province irksome. The “wretched cult” of Christianity has been spreading there and affecting the worship of the old gods. “Not only the towns, but villages and rural districts too . . . are infected,” Pliny wrote. The temples of the old gods are becoming deserted.
Thus far at least, the letter bears some comparison to the martyr tales in which Roman governors are nettled by the neglect of the old gods. However almost immediately Pliny’s approach diverges from stereotype. Life, as always, is more complicated than simple legend.
Pliny’s problem with all of this is not religious. He is not upset because Jupiter has been neglected, or Hera has been slighted: he is upset because the citizens of his province are becoming disgruntled by the Christians’ behavior. Anonymous pamphlets, containing the names of local Christians, have started to appear.
Whoever it is who has been writing these, Pliny is now obliged to react. Not because he is fervently religious—he is not—but because it is his job as governor to keep the province calm. The preservation of order is his primary duty. “It is proper for every good and worthy Governor,” as one digest of Roman law put it, “to take care that the province over which he presides is peaceable and quiet.” The digest goes on to add, confidently and somewhat blithely, that “this he will accomplish without difficulty if he exerts himself to expel bad men.”9 Discontented locals had to be taken seriously; if they were not listened to, a situation might develop where riots could break out—for which Pliny would be held responsible. Pontius Pilate might have been the first official to be reluctantly pressed into action against Christians by local agitators—but he was certainly not the last.
Even the locals who were forcing Pliny’s hand might not have been complaining about Christians for religious reasons either: it has been speculated that what was really upsetting them was not theology but butchery. Local tradesmen were angry because this surge of Christian sentiment had led to a drop in the sales of sacrificial meat and their profits were suffering: anti-Christian sentiment caused less by Satan than by a slow trade in sausage meat.
This is a very different situation already to the martyr tales which, particularly later, portrayed Roman officials as at best piqued, and at worst obsessed, by Christians out of religious principle. A Christian historian would accuse a Roman governor of declaring that Christians “were all to be hunted out.”10 Some governors may well have said this; but vast numbers of Roman officials were far more ambivalent. There is clear evidence that, far from persecuting Christians, Roman officials actively supported some of the most prominent. None other than St. Paul—who preached so vigorously that he ensured the faith was being “proclaimed throughout the whole world”—was clearly on good terms with officials in his province: they are variously impressed by his teaching, apologize to Paul when he is mistreated and imprisoned, and even intervene to try to protect him from an angry mob.
This is not to say that Pliny had no time for the religions of his own nation; he did. In one letter he writes with lyrical enthusiasm about the shrine of a local river god that he has visited in Italy. There, he says, at the foot of a hill densely wooded with ancient cypresses, a spring gushes “into a pool as clear as glass. You can count the coins which have been thrown in and the pebbles shining at the bottom.” The temple itself is, says Pliny, “venerable”—though as with so many Romans, there were limits to his veneration. The walls of this temple were covered with inscriptions, some of which, Pliny tells his friend, “will make you laugh—though I know you are really too charitable to laugh at any of them.”11 Pliny, once again, is the perfect Roman: too well educated to indulge in fervent belief of the gods; too well bred to spurn them.
So the famous first recorded encounter between Christians and Romans does not document a clash of religious ideals: it is about law and order. It was Pliny’s duty as a governor, and as a Roman, to monitor and minimize discontent. Many future clashes would show a similar pattern. The main point of Letter 10.96 is not to fulminate about the Christian religion but to ask the correct method for dealing with it. “I have never been present at an examination of Christians,” Pliny wrote. “I do not know the nature of the extent of the punishments usually meted out to them, nor the grounds for starting an investigation and how far it should be pressed.” Pliny was by no means a modern champion of religious equality or human rights—at one point in his investigations he has two Christian women tortured with the same calm efficiency that he would have a canal surveyed—but nor is he the ranting, eager persecutor of Christian myth.
In fact, all over the empire, Romans are frustratingly unwilling to play their role as bloodthirsty martyr-makers. Many even refuse to execute Christians when they arrive in front of them. Arrius Antoninus was a Roman governor of Asia who in the late second century had executed a number of Christians in his province. He was perhaps unprepared for what came next. Instead of fleeing, local Christians suddenly turned up and, in one large mob, presented themselves bef
ore him. Antoninus did indeed dutifully kill a few (presumably there is only so much temptation a Roman can stand) but rather than dispatching the rest with pleasure, he turned to them with what, even with the passage of almost two millennia, sounds unmistakably like exasperation. “Oh you ghastly people,” he said. “If you want to die you have cliffs you can jump off and nooses to hang yourself with.”12
Other Christians were so eager to die that when they spontaneously turned up in front of officials they did so ready chained, much to the interest of bemused locals. As one Christian author excitedly said, “so far from dreading, we spontaneously call for tortures!”13 Often with disappointing results. In AD 311, St. Antony, hearing that a persecution was in full swing in nearby Alexandria, hurried from his desert dwelling to the city. There, he went out dressed in white “to catch the judge’s attention as he walked past, for Antony was burning with a desire for martyrdom.” Alas for Antony, the judge either did not notice the saint or did not bother with him. Antony returned home, “saddened by the fact that despite his wish to suffer for the name of God, martyrdom was not granted him.”14 Once back in his cell, Antony consoled himself for his continuing existence by adding a hair shirt to his daily attire and never washing again.
Other Christians who were deprived of execution turned instead to suicide. In fourth-century North Africa, locals watched in horror as faithful and “deranged men . . . because they love the name martyr and because they desire human praise more than divine charity, they kill themselves.”15 The methods of suicide varied but drowning, setting oneself on fire and jumping off cliffs were among the most popular. Whatever the method, the aim was always the same: martyrdom, eternal glory in heaven and eternal fame on earth—or so it was hoped.
The group most famous for practicing this were known as circumcellions.* As the academic Brent D. Shaw has argued, as itinerant farm workers, circumcellions were near the bottom of an extremely hierarchical empire. Their lives were difficult, precarious and grim. Commit suicide, however, and they would become not only a member of the most worshipped people on earth but be sped to a prize seat in heaven.
On the anniversaries of martyrs’ deaths, circumcellions celebrated the deceased with long riotous bouts of drinking and dancing. The celebrations on the day of an actual death were, allegedly, even greater, and lurid rumors spread of the orgiastic celebrations and sex and hard drinking that went on after one of their number committed suicide. As Augustine wrote, these people lived “as bandits, die as circumcellions, and are honoured as martyrs.”16 “Drink up! Live long!” declared the inscription put up to one martyr, apparently without irony.
Others—Christians and non-Christians alike—watched such behavior with revulsion. The circumcellions “seduce others whom they can, of either sex, to join them in this mad behaviour,” wrote Augustine.17 To the alarm of many, this behavior seemed to be contagious. The fanatical followers of one bishop barricaded themselves inside a basilica and threatened to commit mass suicide by setting themselves on fire.18 Augustine’s writings on these men (for they were mainly men) are scornful and belittling: he was engaged in as much a propaganda war as an ideological one, and he knew it. The circumcellions claimed suicide as a high calling; Augustine batted it away dismissively as a game. It was, he wrote, the “daily sport” of these people “to kill themselves, by throwing themselves over precipices, or into the water, or into the fire.”19 They were, wrote another bishop in disgust, little more than a “death sect.”20
It was by no means only the circumcellions who celebrated martyrs. A certain glamour clung to these doomed figures. Moreover, the idea that all sins were wiped out at the point of bloody death had not been lost on some of the soon-to-be martyrs. Many made the most of their last few hours on earth with enthusiasm and the atmosphere in the cells could become quite carnival-like—to the consternation of watching bishops. One observed “with groans and sorrow” how he and others had witnessed “frauds, and fornications, and adulteries” among those condemned to death.21
Pliny the Younger’s letters throw other martyrdom tropes into question. The climax of the first part of each martyr story is usually when the Roman official tries to tempt the Christians before him to sacrifice to the Roman gods. Martyr narratives present such attempts as proof of demonic possession: the Romans are trying to force Christians to “worship at the altars of devils.”22 And indeed Pliny did bring accused Christians before him and request them to make offerings to a statue of Trajan. He also asked each one if they were Christian. If they admitted it he—as happens in many martyr tales—asked them again, and again—and warned them of the punishments that awaited them as he did so. If they persisted in calling themselves Christian, he ordered them to be executed.
Superficially then, Pliny bears some resemblance to the governor of martyrology. But read his letter closely, and a different picture emerges. The reason Pliny was writing to Trajan at all was that the numbers involved in this charge were proliferating. The archetypal Roman governor would no doubt have delighted in this ripe harvest of Christians: Pliny, by contrast, is distressed. “I have therefore postponed any further examination and hastened to consult you,” he writes. “The question seems to me to be worthy of your consideration, especially in view of the number of persons endangered; for a great many individuals of every age and class, both men and women, are being brought to trial.”
The adjective he uses for the people in front of him is telling. Pliny doesn’t consider those Christians being dragged before him as wicked, or wrong, or impious; he is not bellowing at them or eyeing them salaciously or terrorizing them. He sees them as “periclitantium,” “in danger.” He is of course the agent of that peril and, if pushed, will put them to death. They are disrupting the peace in his province and it is his job to restore that peace. Nevertheless, the strong implication in the letter is that Pliny, like Arrius Antoninus, would really rather not execute large numbers of people.
Look at the martyr stories without the distorting lens of Christianity and the Romans in them start to look very different. True, officials do indeed repeatedly ask Christians to sacrifice. But just for a moment disregard the Christian theory—that this is because of demonic possession—and look instead at the reasons given by the officials themselves and it becomes clear that the Romans in these tales want the Christians to sacrifice not because they want them to be damned in the next life but because they want them to be saved in this one. They simply do not want to execute.
In one tale a Roman prefect named Probus asks the Christian on trial before him no fewer than nine times to obey him and escape execution. The prefect begs the Christian to think of his weeping family, to spare himself pain, to go free. “Give up this madness of yours, yield to [your family’s] tears, think of your youth, and offer sacrifice,” he says. “Spare yourself death.” When the Christian refuses to budge, Probus tries one more time: “At least offer sacrifice for the sake of your children!” When the Christian is unmoved, Probus issues a more explicit warning: “Take thought for yourself, young man. Offer sacrifice, so that I shall not put you to torture.”23 The Christian refuses, and dies—but not for want of trying on Probus’s part. In another story, when a young girl called Eulalia presents herself before a governor he struggles to dissuade her. Think of your future marriage, he begs. “Think of the great joys you are cutting off . . . The family you are bereaving follows you with tears . . . you are dying in the bloom of youth . . . your rash conduct is breaking their hearts.”24 Eulalia too ignores him.
Some Roman officials in these tales tried—unsuccessfully—to jolly the would-be martyr out of it. “Cease this foolishness and be of good cheer with us,” orders one.25 Another “minister of Satan” asks what person with intelligence “would choose to relinquish this sweetest light and prefer death to it?”26 It is a question that many a baffled Roman governor asks. “Don’t you see the beauty of this pleasant weather?” exhorts another. “There will be no pleasure to come your way if you kill your own self. But
listen to me and you will be saved.” Perhaps, this governor suggested, the Christian before him needed a little more time, asking, dampeningly, if he wanted a few days to think about things. “I have been lenient with you,” he tells the would-be martyr. “If you for your part will only be lenient with yourself . . . then I shall be all the more pleased.”27 In the trial of a veteran soldier named Julius, financial incentives are even proffered under the nose of a Christian by a prefect named Maximus. “You shall receive a generous bonus if you will take my advice and sacrifice to the gods,” says Maximus, temptingly.28
Martyr stories cannot, of course, be taken as fact. But they can be taken as an indication of what Christians would believe—or even what they wanted to believe. They show that early Christians could accept the idea that Roman officials might seem keen—desperate, even—to stop them dying. Officials in these tales go to extraordinary lengths to try to find a form of sacrifice that would be at once agreeable to the emperor and acceptable to the Christians. Realizing that Christians found full meat sacrifices repellent, officials also tried to tempt them with smaller acts of obedience. Just put out your fingers, Eulalia’s judge begs her, and just touch a little of that incense, and you will escape cruel suffering.29 They also struggled to find verbal formulae that Christians would agree to say. In one tale a prefect tells a Christian: “I will not tell you: ‘Sacrifice.’ You need not do any such thing. Simply take a little incense, some wine, and a branch and say: ‘Zeus all highest, protect this people.’”30 Maximus, having offered that bribe to the soldier and soon-to-be martyr Julius and been rebuffed, then thinks again and comes up with an almost Jesuitical solution to the problem. “If you think [sacrifice] is a sin,” he suggests, then “let me take the blame. I am the one who is forcing you, so that you may not give the impression of having consented voluntarily. Afterwards you can go home in peace, you will pick up your ten-year bonus and no one will ever trouble you again.”31