Europe's inner demons

It was a world from which, by the very nature of their religion, Christians excluded themselves. Their god too was a ruler of the universe and demanded total allegiance; conflict between his claims and those of the world-empire and its religion was inevitable. Not that the early Christians were political revolutionaries — but they were millenarians. As they saw it the existing world was thoroughly evil, the realm of the Devil; it was about to go under in a sea of fire; and it would be replaced by a perfected world, in which all power and glory would belong to the returning Christ and his Saints. As for the Roman Empire, it was the representative for the time being of the Devil; and in opposing it the Christians were carrying on not a political but an eschatological struggle. With its pantheon of gods and its deification of the emperor, Rome was the embodiment of “idolatry”, it was the Second Babylon, the realm of Antichrist.

This attitude was fully developed already in the sub-apostolic age, when the Roman authorities themselves were scarcely aware of the very existence of Christians. It was intensified from A.D. 70 onwards, as a protest against the Roman policy of associating the native religions in the provinces with the imperial cult; for though this policy was not consciously anti-Christian, it was interpreted by Christians as a further manifestation of idolatry. And the same attitude of rejection persisted into the second half of the second century. This was a time when the peoples of the Empire were enjoying unexampled prosperity and were united in genuine loyalty to Rome and to the emperor. In this environment the Christian communities were singled out as small, inward-looking communities which took not the slightest interest in civic affairs and ignored civic obligations. Interested only in the speedy end of the world, they took no part in the daily life in the city and refused to make even token gestures of loyalty to the emperor, or of reverence to the gods of Rome.

In all their ways, Christians negated the values and beliefs by which the pagan Graeco-Roman world lived. It is not surprising that to pagan eyes they looked like a body of conspirators intent on destroying society. “A new and maleficent superstition”, “an immoderate and perverse superstition”—the phrases of Suetonius and Pliny show clearly enough the mixture of contempt and anxiety with which Christians were regarded. The very presence of such people was felt to be an offence to the gods, such as might well induce them to withdraw their protection; in which case a whole civilization would be engulfed in earthquake, revolution or military defeat. It was precisely because he was such a conscientious emperor, and so genuinely concerned for the public good, that Marcus Aurelius permitted agitators and informers to go into action against the Christians, and encouraged trials and executions. In the late second century, according to Tertullian, it was taken for granted that “the Christians are the cause of every public catastrophe, every disaster that hits the populace. If the Tiber floods or the Nile fails to, if there is a drought or an earthquake, a famine or a plague, the cries go up at once: ‘Throw the Christians to the lions!’”⁽³⁹⁾ It was in the same period that Christians came to be suspected of incestuous orgies, of killing and eating children, of worshipping a donkey-god or a priest’s genitals. In these fantasies and accusations the Graeco-Roman world expressed its feeling that these people were indeed outside humanity and hostile to it.

It was only in the second century that Christians were accused of such things by non-Christians,^†† and it is easy to see why. Before that, Christians were too few and obscure to attract attention, or to be at all clearly distinguishable from the main body of Jews. By the third century, they were becoming too numerous, and above all too widely dispersed through the population, for such tales to retain much plausibility. Countless aristocratic families had some Christian members, mostly women — and how could these people really be suspected of indulging in incestuous orgies and ritual cannibalism? Moreover the attitude of the Christians themselves was changing. They were no longer so obsessed by fantasies of the imminent end of this world and the coming of the Millennium. The hierarchy was becoming more developed, the clergy were acquiring wealth, the bishops were becoming important public figures and leaders. By about 23 °Christianity had established itself as one of the principal religions of the Empire, and the Church was beginning to look upon the Empire less as a realm of demons than as a potentially Christian institution. Such persecutions as came after that date were imposed by imperial decree and no longer invoked these horrific fantasies.