The Transformation of Early Christianity from an Eschatological to a Socialized Movement

CHAPTER III
THE EARLY CHURCH AND THE POPULACE

The transformation of early Christianity from an eschatological to a socialized movement was the result of the interaction of three social groups – three 'publics' – the Jewish, the Pagan, and the Christian. It was a single movement, working itself out through these three 'crowds'. Christianity, like all other great religions, was in its first beginnings essentially a mob phenomenon – that is to say it was a very slow movement which had a long history back of it.

Perhaps no current opinion is more unfounded than the notion that mob movements are sudden and unpredictable. They are almost incredibly slow of development. The range of action found in the mob is more narrowly and rigidly circumscribed than in almost any other social group. A crowd is open to suggestions that are in line with its previous experience, and to no others.

The initial success of Christ with the Jewish crowds was only possible because for generations the whole Jewish public had been looking forward to a Messiah and a Messianic kingdom. In so far as Christ appeared to fulfill this preconceived expectation he gained popular support. When he disappointed it, he lost his popularity and his life.

The early and enormous success of the apostles on the day of Pentecost and immediately afterwards was due primarily to the fact that the Chiliastic expectation preached to the Jerusalem crowds was very closely in line with their inherited beliefs. As soon as Christianity began to develop doctrines and practices even slightly at variance with those traditional to Judaism it lost the support of the Jewish public. Beginning as a strictly Jewish sect, it alienated practically the whole Jewish race within little more than a generation. This alienation was the inevitable effect of an idea of universalism opposed to the hereditary Jewish nationalism. This idea of universalism was not a new thing. It was to be found in the ancient Jewish scriptures. But it had never become popularized. It formed no part of the content of contemporary public opinion among the Jews. Christianity met with success in the great cosmopolitan centers, like Antioch and Alexandria, where universalism was a tradition and had become a part of the crowd sentiment. It succeeded best of all in Rome where universalism reached its highest development. Yet even here a limitation is to be noted. Christianity was universal in its willingness to receive people of all races and nations. It was not universal in its willingness to acknowledge the validity of other religions. This variation from the traditional Greek and Roman universalism had momentous results. It made the propagation of the Christian Gospel much more difficult and involved the church, at least temporarily, in the current syncretism which was a popular movement. So e.g., we find Justin calling Socrates a Christian and asserting that the stories of Noah and Deucalion are merely versions of the same event.

The main characteristics of crowd psychology are familiar enough. Crowds do not reason. They accept or reject ideas as a whole. They are governed by phrases, symbols, and shibboleths. They tolerate neither discussion nor contradiction. The suggestions brought to bear on them invade the whole of their understanding and tend to transform themselves into acts. Crowds entertain only violent and extreme sentiments and they unconsciously accord a mysterious power to the formula or leader that for the moment arouses their enthusiasm.

Any movement in order to become popular, in order to 'get over' to the general public, has to operate within the limits set by this psychology. The amount of change, adaptation, and development necessary before a movement can fit into these limitations and express itself powerfully within them is so considerable that no historical example can probably be found where the required accommodation has been accomplished in less than three generations. It is the purpose of this chapter to trace, so far as the surviving source material permits, the steps of this accommodation in the case of early Christianity.

For some time before Christ the Jewish people had been restless. Their desires and aspirations for national and religious greatness had been repressed and inhibited. The unrest thus generated took various forms; patriotic uprisings, religious revivals, etc. Christ was at first considered merely as another Theudas or Judas of Galilee or John the Baptist. In the pagan world the pax Romana produced a somewhat similar restlessness. Travel increased; wandering, much of it aimless, characterized whole classes of people;⁷⁵ there was a marked increase in crime, vice, insanity, and suicide which alarmed all the moralists. This condition of affairs was eminently suitable for the first beginnings of a crowd movement; indeed no great crowd movement can begin except under such circumstances. The wanderings of St. Paul and the other Christians apostles – called missionary journeys – were really only particular cases of a general condition. The same organic demand for new stimulation, the same sense of shattered religious and philosophic ideals prevailed in the pagan as in the Jewish world. It would be hard to find a greater contrast of character than Christ and Lucian. Yet the fiery earnestness with which Christ denounces contemporary Jewish religiosity and the cool cynicism with which Lucian mocks at the pagan piety of the same age have a like cause. Economic pressure on the lower strata of society contributed to the unrest. The slave, the small shopkeeper, and the free artisan had a hard time of it in the Roman world. Economically oppressed classes are material ready to the hand of the agitator, religious or other. In the crowd movements recorded in the Acts we can trace the first beginnings of the Christian populace.⁷⁶ "In Iconium a great multitude both of Jews and of Greeks believed but the Jews that were disobedient stirred up the souls of the Gentiles and made them evil affected against the brethren. But the multitude of the city was divided and part held with the Jews and part with the apostles." At Lytra there was a typical case of mob action where the apostles were first worshipped and then stoned. In the cases of the mobs at Philippi and Ephesus we see the economic motive, the threatened loss of livelihood, entering along with anger at an attack on the received religion. In the case of the Jerusalem and Athenian crowds we see acceptance, or at least acquiescence, on the part of the crowd up to the point where Christianity breaks with their tradition. In general we see anger on the part of the crowds only after agitation deliberately stirred up by interested parties; priests, sorcerers, craftsmen or the like. Generally speaking the antipathy is no part of the crowd psychology, and on occasion the crowd may be on the side of the missionaries of the new religion. In general also the Christians were not sufficiently numerous to make a counter crowd demonstration of their own.

In Pliny's letter to Trojan, although it is a generation later than the Acts and refers to a region where Christianity had been preached for a considerable period of time, we find a marked instability in the attitude of the public: "Many of every age, every rank and even of both sexes are brought into danger and will be in the future. The contagion of that superstition has penetrated not only the cities but also the villages and country places and yet it seems possible to stop it and set it right. At any rate it is certain enough that the temples deserted until quite recently begin to be frequented, that the ceremonies of religion, long disused, are restored and that fodder for the victims comes to market, whereas buyers for it were until now very few. From this it may easily be supposed that a multitude of men can be reclaimed if there be a place of repentence."⁷⁷

There seems no reasonable ground for doubting that Pliny's judgment was correct. While the blood of the martyrs is doubtless the seed of the church, a continuous, general, and relentless persecution can extirpate a religion in a given nation; as the history of the Inquisition abundantly proves. Still more easily can propaganda for the older religion win back its former adherents of the first and second generations. It is not, in general, till a generation has grown up entirely inside a new religion that such a religion is well established. The generation which at maturity makes the rupture with the older faith can be brought back to it by less expenditure of energy than was expended by them in breaking away in the first place. The success of the Jesuits e.g., is quite inexplicable on any other hypothesis. The generation who are children at the time their parents make the break with the old religion are notoriously undependable in the religious matters. It was in all probability these people that Pliny had to deal with. It is at least permissable to hazard the guess that the Laodiceans who aroused the wrath of the author of the Revelation were of this generation. It is certain that many of the 'Lapsi' who caused so much trouble to Christian apologists and church councils belonged in this chronological class.

In Justin Martyr we have a hint of a further development in the crowd attitude toward the Christians. Justin says: "When you (Jews) knew that He had risen from the dead and ascended to heaven as the prophets foretold He would, you not only did not repent of the wickedness you had committed, but at that time you selected and sent out from Jerusalem chosen men through all the land to tell that the godless heresy of the Christians had sprung up and to publish those things which all they, who knew us not, speak against us. So that you are the cause not only of your own unrighteousness but that of all other men."⁷⁸

Irrespective of the exact historical accuracy of this statement, it is indicative of the process, technically known as 'circular interaction,' which is so essential a step in the development of popular opinion and the building up of crowd sentiment. Before any group of people can become either popular or unpopular there must be a focusing and fixation of public attention upon them. Even in the new Testament we find the Jews sending emissaries from city to city to call attention to the Christian propaganda. Prejudice against the Christians was thus aroused in persons who had never either seen or heard them. The basis of 'circular interaction' is unconscious or subconscious emotional reaction. A's frown brings a frown to the face of B. B's frown in turn intensifies A's. This simple process is the source of all expressions of crowd emotion. By multiplication of numbers and increase in the stimuli employed it is capable of provoking a vicious circle of feeling which eventually causes individuals in a crowd to do things and feel things which no individual in the crowd would do or feel when outside the circle. It is to the credit or discredit of the Jews that they first set this 'vicious circle' in operation against the Christians. Of course the same psychological principle operated to produce zeal and enthusiasm and contempt of pain and death in the Christian 'crowd'. By this process of 'circular interaction' the name, 'Christian,' had already in the time of Justin become a mob shibboleth. It seems to have operated precisely as the shibboleth 'traitor' operates on a patriotic crowd in war time, or 'scab' on a labor group. It became a shibboleth of exactly opposite significance in the Christian 'crowd'. The way was thus prepared for the next step in the process of developing the ultimate crisis. This step – the disparate 'universe of discourse' – is exhibited in process of formation in the account of the martyrdom of Polycarp. The account, as we have it, undoubtedly contains later additions, but these additions even of miraculous elements, do not necessarily invalidate those portions of the story with which we are alone concerned. The martyrologist certainly had no intention of writing his story for the purpose of illustrating the principles of group psychology and the undesigned and incidental statements of crowd reactions are precisely the ones of value for our purpose. A few brief excerpts are sufficient to illustrate the stage reached in the growth of the disparate 'universe of discourse.' "The whole multitude, marvelling at the nobility of mind displayed by the devout and godly race of Christians cried out: "Away with the Atheists: let Polycarp be sought out."⁷⁹ He went eagerly forward with all haste and was conducted to the Stadium where the tumult was so great that there was no possibility of being heard."⁸⁰

"Polycarp has confessed that he is Christian. This proclamation having been made by the herald, the whole multitude both of the heathen and Jews who dwelt in Smyrna cried out with uncontrollable fury and in a loud voice: "This is the teacher of Asia, the father of the Christians and the overthrower of our gods, he who has been teaching many not to sacrifice or to worship the gods." Speaking thus they cried out and besought Phillip, the Asiarch, to let loose a lion upon Polycarp. But Philip answered that it was not lawful for him to do so seeing the shows of beasts were already finished. Then it seemed good to them to cry out with one voice that Polycarp should be burned alive."⁸¹

"This then was carried into effect with greater speed than it was spoken, the multitude immediately gathering together wood and fagots out of the shops and baths, the Jews especially, according to custom eagerly assisting them in it."⁸²

"We afterwards took up his bones, as being more precious than the most exquisite jewels and more purified than gold and deposited them in a fitting place, whither, being gathered together as opportunity is allowed us, with joy and rejoicing the Lord shall grant us to celebrate the anniversary of his martyrdom both in memory of those who have already finished their course and for the exercising and preparation of those yet to walk in their steps."⁸³

In the disparate universe of discourse in its complete form common shibboleths produce entirely different mental reactions – usually antagonistic ones. There is also complete accord as to the shibboleths. The cry here is at one time against the Atheists, then against the Christians. But the Christians could and did deny the charge of Atheism. They were as antagonistic to Atheism as the Pagans. An incomplete development of crowd feeling is evident on the part of the pagans. The Jews are still the inciters and leading spirits of the mob. The very statement that the Jews acted 'according to custom' shows that mobbing Christians was still looked upon as a peculiarly Jewish trait. It was not yet entirely spontaneous on the part of the pagan public. Most noticeable of all is the indifference of the mob toward the Christians' adoration of relics of the martyrs. No effort was made to prevent the Christians from obtaining the bones of Polycarp. Either the cult of relics was not known to the pagans and Jews – though it seems to be firmly established among the Christians – or else, the effect of the cult in perpetuating Christianity had not yet had time to make itself manifest to the pagan public – or to the Jewish. In any case we have here the plain evidence of the imperfectly developed condition of the crowd mind, owing perhaps to a too short tradition.

Our next evidence is the martyrdoms of Lyons and Vienne preserved in a letter quoted by Eusebius. "They (the Christians) endured nobly the injuries inflicted upon them by the populace, clamor and blows and draggings and robberies and stonings and imprisonments and all things which an infuriated mob delight in inflicting on enemies and adversaries."⁸⁴

"When these accusations were reported all the people raged like wild beasts against us, so that even if any had before been moderate on account of friendship, they were now exceedingly furious and gnashed their teeth against us.

"When he (Bishop Pothinus) was brought to the tribunal accompanied by a multitude who shouted against him in every manner as if he were Christ himself, he bore noble witness. Then he was dragged away harshly and received blows of every kind. Those men near him struck him with their hands and feet, regardless of his age, and those at a distance hurled at him whatever they could seize, all of them thinking that they would be guilty of great wickedness and impiety if any possible abuse were omitted. For thus they thought to avenge their own deities."⁸⁵

"But not even thus was their madness and cruelty toward the saints satisfied. Wild and barbarous tribes were not easily appeased and their violence found another peculiar opportunity in the dead bodies. For they cast to the dogs those who had died of suffocation in the prison and they exposed the remains left by the wild beasts and by fire mangled and charred. And some gnashed their teeth against them, but others mocked at them. The bodies of the martyrs having thus in every manner been exposed for six days were afterwards burned and reduced to ashes and swept into the Rhone so that no trace of them might appear on the earth. And this they did as if able to conquer God and prevent their new birth; 'that', as they said, 'they may have no hope of a resurrection through trust in which they bring to us this foreign and new religion.' "⁸⁶

We have in this account a marked advance, as regards the development of the mob mind, over what is found in the martyrdom of Polycarp. Many of the 'crowd' phenomena are indeed the same but the differences are even more striking than the similarities. We find in Lyons no body of Jews or other especially interested persons leading the mob on by manifestations of peculiar zeal and forwardness. When the accounts are compared in their entirety it becomes at once manifest that there is a consistency of attitude, a whole heartedness in the actions of the Lyons mob that is lacking in the case of the Syrmnaens. There is a degree of familiarity with Christian doctrine – especially the doctrine of the resurrection – which denotes a much more thorough permeation of the public mind by Christianity. There may be no difference in the hatred of the two mobs for the new faith, but it had more content in the mind of the Gallic crowd. The degree of thought and pains taken by the Lyonese persecutors – the guards placed to prevent the Christians from stealing the relics of the martyrs, the elaborate efforts to nullify the possibility of a resurrection – the very extent and thoroughness and duration of the persecution are different from anything to be found in the other martyrdom.

The difficulty to be explained – if it is a difficulty – from the point of view of crowd psychology is that there is difference of only eleven years – taking the ordinary chronology – between the two persecutions. It is true that the Lyons persecution is the later, but the difference in the mob behavior is such as might well demand the lapse of a generation had the phenomena been exhibited by the public of the same city. There must unquestionably have been a great difference in the demotic composition of the populations of Lyons and Smyrna; the reference to barbarians in Lyons shows as much, but the behavior of mobs as controlled by the time needed for the focusing and fixation of attention and the development of a disparate universe of discourse is very little effected by difference of demotic composition. It has indeed been suggested by one critic,⁸⁷ that the persecution at Lyons belongs in the reign of Septimus Severus instead of that of Marcus Aurelius. This would explain away the difficulty, but there seems no necessary reason for adopting this opinion. It would rather appear that there existed peculiar conditions in Lyons and vicinity which account for the fact that the persecution, so far as we know, was confined to that locality and also for the fact that the mob mind was in a maturer state of antagonism to Christianity. Just what these peculiar conditions were, it is impossible to say with entire certainty. However there is at least a very suggestive hint in a paragraph by the greatest modern authority on Roman Gaul⁸⁸ contained in his well known volume on Ancient France.⁸⁹ The paragraph is also worth quoting as giving a valuable insight into the psychology of the peoples of the ancient Roman World. "The Roman Empire was in no wise maintained by force but by the religious admiration it inspired. It would be without a parallel in the history of the world that a form of government held in popular detestation should have lasted for five centuries. It would be inexplicable that the thirty legions of the Empire should have constrained a hundred million men to obedience. The reason of their obedience was that the Emperor, who personified the greatness of Rome was worshipped like a divinity by unanimous consent. There were altars in honor of the Emperor in the smallest townships of his realm. From one end of the Empire to the other a new religion was seen to arise in those days which had for its divinities the Emperors themselves. Some years before the Christian era the whole of Gaul, represented by sixty cities, built in common a temple near the city of Lyons in honor of Augustus. Its priests, elected by the united Gallic cities, were the principal personages in their country. It is impossible to attribute all this to fear and servility. Whole nations are not servile and especially for three centuries. It was not the courtiers who worshipped the prince, it was Rome, and it was not Rome merely but it was Gaul, it was Spain. It was Greece and Asia."

While no dogmatic assertion is justified, it does not, perhaps, exceed the limits of reasonable inference to suppose that the existence of this noted center of Emperor worship in the immediate neighborhood of Lyons may account, in part at least, for the especial hatred of the populace of that city for persons who refused to sacrifice to the Emperor and also for the maturity of their feeling against the Christians, who were as far as we are aware, probably the only persons who refused thus to sacrifice. This stray bit of evidence is admittedly not conclusive. It is offered merely for what it may be worth. There is evidence that by the middle of the second Century popular opinion was sufficiently inflamed against the Christians to render the administration of justice precarious because of mob violence. Edicts of Hadrian and Antonius Pious specifically declared that the clamor of the multitude should not be received as legal evidence to convict or to punish them, as such tumultuous accusations were repugnant both to the firmness and the equity of the law.⁹⁰

This attitude seems to have persisted with relatively little change for about a century. During this period the official 'persecutions' were neither numerous nor severe. From the very few scattered and incidental references which have alone survived regarding the mob feeling of the time, we can assert no more than that it was an exasperated one, likely to break out upon provocation but under ordinary circumstances more or less in abeyance. On the whole it was undoubtedly more violent at the end of the period than at the beginning.

Fortunately from the middle of the third Century onwards we have a fairly continuous history of a single 'public' (Alexandria) which is lacking before this time. The Alexandrian populace were noted for their tumultuous disposition, but we have no reliable account of their behavior towards the Christians until the time of Severus, 202 A.D. In the account given by Eusebius of the martyrdom of the beautiful virgin, Potamiaena, it is stated that: "the people attempted to annoy and insult her with abusive words." As however the intervention of a single officer sufficed to protect her from the people on this occasion, the public sentiment cannot have been inflamed to any alarming extent. If we may trust Palladius, her martyrdom was the result of a plot of a would-be ravisher and in any case it was not the product of any spontaneous popular movement.

In the period between 202 A.D. and 249 A.D. a well developed tradition of hatred and violence grew up in the popular mind. We have no record of the steps in the process but the extant accounts of the Decian and Valerian persecutions in Alexandria leave no doubt of the fact. These persecutions can only be called 'legal' by a violent stretch of verbal usage. They were mob lynchings, sometimes sanctioned by the forms of law, but quite as often without even the barest pretense of judicial execution. They were quite as frequent and as savage in the later part of the reign of Philip, as in the time of Decius. They were not called forth by any imperial edict – they preceded the edict by at least a year and were of a character such as no merely governmental, legal process would ever, or could ever, take on. Mobbing Christians had become a form of popular sport, a generally shared sort of public amusement – exciting and not dangerous. The letter of Bishop Dionysius makes this very clear. To quote: "The persecution among us did not begin with the royal decree but preceded it an entire year. The prophet and author of evils to this city moved and aroused against us the masses of the heathen rekindling among them the superstition of their country and finding full opportunity for any wickedness. They considered this the only pious service of their demons that they should slay us." Then follows a long list of mob lynchings of which we take a single specimen: "They seized Serapion in his own house and tortured him and having broken all his limbs, they threw him headlong from an upper story."⁹¹ "And there was no street, nor public read, nor lane open to us night or day but always and everywhere all them cried out that if anyone would not repeat their impious words, he should be immediately dragged away and burned. And matters continued thus for a considerable time. But a sedition and civil war came upon the wretched people and turned their cruelty toward us against one another. So we breathed for a while as they ceased from their rage against us."⁹²

The mob broke loose against the Christians again the following year, but there is no object in cataloguing the grewsome exhibitions of crowd brutality. It is evident that what we have in this account is no exhibition of political oppression by a tyrannical government, but a genuine outbreak of group animosity which had been long incubating in the popular mind. All the phenomena which are characteristic of fully matured public feeling are found complete; circular interaction, shibboleths, sect isolation devices and the rest. When public feeling has developed to such a degree of intensity as this, the accumulated sentiment and social unrest must of necessity discharge themselves in some form of direct group action. This direct action however may take the from either of physical violence or, under certain conditions, of some sort of mystical experience; conversion, dancing, rolling on the ground, etc. In exceptional cases the two forms are combined. An illustration of this latter phenomenon is given by Bishop Dionysius in this same letter; "In Cephus, a large assembly gathered with us and God opened for us a door for the word. At first we were persecuted and stoned but afterward not a few of the heathen forsook their idols and turned to God."⁹³ It is necessary to mention perhaps the largest, and certainly the most dignified and respectable crowd that is to be met with in connection with this persecution – that of Carthage on the occasion of the martyrdom of Bishop Cyprian. We find here neither rage on one side nor unseemly exaltation on the other. Pagans and Christians alike behaved with decent seriousness at the death of that famous man who was equally respected by all classes of the population. But martyrs of the social eminence of Cyprian were very rare, and orderly behaviour in such a vast multitude as witnessed his end was still rarer.

To return to the populace of Alexandria. The long peace of the Church which intervened between the persecution of Valerian and that of Diocletian witnessed in Alexandria, as elsewhere, a great growth of Christianity in numbers, influence, and wealth. It would perhaps be going beyond the evidence to say that in this interval, the majority of the population of the city were won over to the new faith, but it is certain that the number of Christians became so great as to intimidate the pagan portion of the people. The Alexandrian mob was still very much in evidence but it gradually ceased to harrass the Christians except under the most exceptional circumstances. The dangers of such action became so considerable and the chances of success so problematical that we find a period when a practice of mutual forbearance governed the behavior of the hostile groups.

The study of crowd psychology presents no more impressive contrast than that exhibited by the people of Alexandria during the Diocletian persecution compared with their behavior during that of Decius. In the last and greatest of the persecutions, in the most tumultuous city of the empire, the mob took no part. Like the famous image of Brutus, it is more conspicuous by its absence than it would be by its presence. The persecution was a purely governmental measure officially carried out by judges and executioners in accordance with orders. In one obscure and doubtful instance we are told that the bystanders beat certain martyrs when legal permission was given to the people to treat them so. In another case we are told that the cruelty of the punishments filled the spectators with fear. These are the only references to the public that occur in the long and minute account of an eye witness of famous events extending over a considerable number of years. Both before and after this period the mob of the Egyptian metropolis exhibits the utmost extreme of religious fanaticism. During this period that mob had to be most carefully considered by the government in other than religious matters. But as a religious power it did not exist. Had the persecution of Diocletian happened a generation earlier it could have counted on a very considerable degree of popular support, had it happened a generation later it would have caused a revolt that could only have been put down by a large army. Happening at the precise time it did, it provoked no popular reaction at all.