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

This strange apathy is not peculiar to Alexandria. Practically without exception the authentic acts of the martyrs of this persecution are court records taken down by the official stenographers in the ordinary course of the day's work. They are dry, mechanical, and repetitious to a degree. They exhibit, in general, harrassed and exasperated judges driven to the infliction of extreme penalties in the face of a cold and skeptical public. One imperial decree ordered that all men, women, and children, even infants at the breast, should sacrifice and offer oblations, that guards should be placed in the markets and at the baths in order to enforce sacrifices there. The popular reaction in Caesarea is thus recorded: "The heathen blamed the severity and exceeding absurdity of what was done for these things appeared to them extreme and burdensome."⁹⁴ "He (the Judge) ordered the dead to be exposed in the open air as food for wild beasts; and beasts and birds of prey scattered the human limbs here and there, so that nothing appeared more horrible even to those who formerly hated us, though they bewailed not so much the calamity of those against whom these things were done as the outrage against themselves and the common nature of man."⁹⁵

The one thing to be said of this type of mob mind is manifestly that it is transitional. The pendulum has swung through exactly half its arc and for the brief instant presents the fallacious appearance of quiescence. How transitory this quiet was on the part of the Alexandrian mob is evidenced by the history of Athanasius. That great statesman conciliated and consolidated public opinion in Egypt. Backed by this opinion he practically cancelled the power of the civil authorities of the country and negotiated as an equal with the emperors. For the first time in more than three centuries the will of the common people again became a power able to limit the military despotism which dominated the civilized world.

The re-birth of popular government in the Fourth century through the agency of Christian mobs is the most important preliminary step in the growth of the political power of the Catholic Church. A study of the mobs of Alexandria, Rome, Constantinople and other great cities shows beyond question that the political power of the Church had its origin in no alliance with imperial authority, but was independent of and generally antagonistic to that authority. The history of these Christian mobs lies outside the limits of our study but it is worth while in the case of the Alexandrian populace to give two or three brief extracts illustrating the final steps of the process which changed a fanatically pagan mob into an equally fanatical Christian one. What we have to consider is only the last stage of an evolution already more than half complete at the time of the Nicene Council. Under extreme provocation and certain of imperial complacency at their excesses, the pagan mob during the reign of Julian indulged in one last outburst against the exceedingly unpopular George of Cappadocia who had been forcibly intruded into the seat of Athanasius. To quote the Historian Socrates: "The Christians on discovering these abominations went forth eagerly to expose them to the view and execration of all and therefore carried the skulls throughout the city in a kind of triumphal procession for the inspection of the people. When the pagans of Alexandria beheld this, unable to bear the insulting character of the act, they became so exasperated that they assailed the Christians with whatever weapons chanced to come to hand, in their fury destroying numbers of them in a variety of ways and, as it generally happens in such a case, neither friends or relations were spared but friends, brothers, parents, and children imbued their hands in each others blood. The pagans having dragged George out of the church, fastened him to a camel and when they had torn him to pieces they burned him together with the camel."⁹⁶ In this account we see the last expiring efforts of the pagan mob movement. Any mob movement collapses rapidly when it turns in upon itself, and the evil results of its violence react immediately upon the members of the mob. By this time it is evident that the number of Christians in Alexandria was so large that any public persecution of them brought serious and unendurable consequences upon the populace generally. Then the movement ended.

But in the two centuries or more that the pagan movement lasted, a contrary Christian mob movement had been developing along the same general lines as the other. This movement, being later in its inception, came to a head correspondingly later and reached its crisis under the patriarch Cyril. Its violence was first directed against the Jews whom the Christians appear to have hated even more than they hated the pagans. The Jews were the weaker and less numerous faction opposed to the Christians and as the Pagans seem to have liked them too little to support them against the Christians, it is not surprising that the Christian mob, which had pretty well reduced the political authorities to impotence, should vent its rage against the Jews and their synagogues. "Cyril accompanied by an immense crowd of people, going to their synagogues, took them away from them and drove the Jews out of the city, permitting the multitude to plunder their goods. Thus the Jews who had inhabited the city from the time of Alexander were expelled from it."⁹⁷

Sometime after the expulsion of the Jews, the Christian mob, now directing its spite against the rapidly disappearing paganism, perpetrated perhaps the most atrocious crime that stains the history of Alexandria – the murder of Hypatia. This beautiful, learned, and virtuous woman, 'the fairest flower of paganism' is one of the very few members of her sex who has attained high eminence in the realm philosophical speculation. She enjoyed the deserved esteem of all the intellectual leaders of her age – Christian as well as pagan – and to the latest ages her name will be mentioned with respect by all those speculative thinkers whose respect can confer honor. Socrates describes her murder as follows: "It was calumniously reported among the Christian populace that it was she who prevented Orestes from being reconciled to the bishop. Some of them therefore hurried away by a fierce and bigoted zeal, whose ringleader was a reader named Peter, waylaid her returning home and dragged her from her carriage; they took her to the church called Ceasareum where they completely stripped her and then murdered her with oyster shells. After tearing her body in pieces, they took her mangled limbs to a place called Cinaron and there burned them."⁹⁸

Christian crowd sentiment when hardly yet at its full power was deprived of its original object of animosity by the collapse of paganism. Being under the psychological necessity of expressing itself, this mob feeling happened to take as shibboleths some current theological catchwords. The subsequent history of Alexandria and other great cities presents therefore the strange scene of rival sects disturbing public order and profoundly agitating vast throngs of people in a struggle over the most abstruse and recondite metaphysical concepts. For the sake of clear thinking it is necessary for us to remind ourselves that these concepts are merely weird garments fortuitously snatched up to cover the nakedness of a profound social and economic revolution.

The above sketch, imperfect as it is and full of lacunae due to the inadequacy of the primary source material, is yet perhaps complete enough to enable us to summarize the chief steps in the process of the socialization in its aspect of a crowd movement. We have seen that this crowd movement, like all others, had its origin in social unrest due to shattered private and community ideals. The customary forms of expression being inhibited or repressed, the balked disposition experienced an organic demand for new stimulation. This new stimulation was sought in various ways; aimless or practically aimless travelling or local wandering, local disorder and agitation, increase in crime – and insanity. Gradually this unrest focused itself and public attention became fixed on Christianity. By the process of circular interaction, the so-called 'vicious circle', public sentiment increased in intensity, the name 'Christian' became a shibboleth. When applied to an individual it let loose upon him the pent up emotion of the mob – an emotion or unreflective rage and anger. By the further process of idealization or sublimation, using the terms in their technical sense, the populace came to believe that Christianity was the great and superhuman (daemoniac) source of all evils; earthquakes, disease epidemics, famine etc. Seeking release for psychic tensions which were not understood and largely subconscious, they found it in a reversion to the oldest of the 'releasing instincts' that of hunting. The primary thing about the persecutions is that they were man hunts. The cruelty exhibited, while also serving as a tension release for mob feeling, is psychologically a secondary form of such release – though a very old form. The discharge of the accumulated public sentiment and of the severe social tensions produced group action of two kinds: (a) Direct action: tearing the victim in pieces, gathering wood to burn him, striking him with sticks, stones, etc. (b) Expressive action, taking the form of shouts, cries and ejaculations which became customary and traditional, 'Christianos ad leones.' The very methods of lynching became ceremonial and even ritualistic. The beasts were first choice, then burning and then other forms in descending scale. The narrow range of the mob mind is illustrated by the closeness with which it adhered to contemporary judicial methods of punishment. The most obvious method of killing, and one which had the advantage of enabling a great number of people to see what was going on, the method of hanging, which is in such common use by mobs of our day, does not seem to have been employed by the ancient crowds – at any rate its use was rare in the modern form, strangling. There are some cases of hanging naked women by one foot. Expressive action also took the form of wild and fantastic legends of cannibalism, child murder and such like. The crisis of this pagan mob movement came about the middle of the third century. The Decian persecution appears to have been 'popular' in the strict etymological sense of that word. The persecution of Diolection, though the most severe, seems to have had no great force of pagan public sentiment behind it. That sentiment was not hostile; it was neutral. The populace did nothing to hinder the measures of the government and it did nothing to help them. In another generation the pagan movement had spent itself. This analysis of the pagan mob sentiment against the Christians is applicable mutatis nominibus, to the Christians' mob movement against the pagans and to the movement of the 'orthodox' Christians against the 'heretics.' Perhaps we should say here, in defense of human nature, that these mob movements were not due to human depravity; they were, in strict literalness, diseases, epidemics of nervous disorder induced by pathological social conditions. Before any persecuting attitude became habitual to the pagan populace pagan common sense had exhausted argument, persuasion, expostulation and every other intellectual device. Only after reason and religion (in the pagan sense) had been employed in vain; only after long exasperation at a hopeless situation, when absolutely nothing else could be done, was popular violence aroused. Social conditions being what they were, traditional mental attitudes common to pagan and Christians alike required that something be done and mob action was the last desperate alternative to the admission of a new intellectual concept.

The function of Chiliasm in this crowd movement is plain from its history as previously sketched. It was a Christian shibboleth peculiarly valuable for securing group cohesion, and for arousing individual staying power in times of persecution. Of the numerous characteristics of successful 'sect shibboleths' three are perhaps especially note worthy: (a) Satisfaction of the demand for mystical experience. (b) Operation as an isolating device. (c) Revolt against the prevailing moral order. In the period of greatest need Chiliasm fulfilled these requirements very well. Many a Christian of little education was lifted out of himself to endure martyrdom by somewhat crass imaginations of participation in the reign of the saints in the rebuilt Jerusalem. Many a little band of sectaries maintained their group solidarity because of the belief that they were the elect people 'chosen of God' for future glory in the millennial kingdom. Many a faithful one who would otherwise have given up in despair, must have gained strength and courage from the thought of that happy era, soon to come, when the cruel persecutors of the church would be slaves suffered to live only that their servitude might augment the dignity and honor of the saints in the beatific kingdom.

The relation of the Chiliastic expectation to that strange insensibility to pain which was so remarkable a characteristic of the early martyrs cannot be stated with exactness. It was probably close – at least in numerous cases. We have what seems to be entirely trustworthy evidence that not only strong men but even delicate and sensitive women exhibited the power of inhibiting the normal reactions to the most excruciating torments. This almost incredible power of inhibition can only be explained as the result of the building up of a pathologically intense, ecstatic, mental state. This ecstatic mental state would appear to have been acquired by a series of psychic changes and organic, neuronic adjustments requiring, ordinarily, a fairly considerable amount of time. This peculiar psychological condition had not merely to be built up. It must have attained an extraordinary degree of habituation in order to render its subjects impervious to such extreme sensory excitations. The requisite degree of imperviousness can hardly have been acquired without such permeation of consciousness by imagination as constituted a complete subjective universe. Many of the martyrs would seem to have lived, more or less habitually, in a mental world of their own which shut them off from susceptibility to external stimuli. This condition is frequently found in artists and thinkers, and with the accompanying insensibility to pain, is a common phenomenon in the 'trance' state as well as in some forms of insanity.⁹⁹

It would go beyond the evidence to claim that Chiliastic concepts functioned exclusively, or even predominantly, in the production of the 'martyr psychosis,' but the evidence does point to the conclusion that apocalyptic expectations held a more prominent place in the consciousness of the martyrs than in that of the generality of Christians. It is certain that Chiliasm became especially manifest in times of persecution but Chiliasm must have operated even in ordinary times to produce the phenomena which persecution brought into prominence. Even today, in the entire absence of persecution, Chiliastic excitement among certain groups of secretaries produces types of religious psychosis closely similar to those exhibited by the martyrs.¹⁰⁰

On the whole the conclusion appears warranted that the increasing power and progressive socialization of the church, which made persecution at first hopeless and at last impossible, rendered Chiliasm, as a crowd shibboleth, gradually useless and finally pernicious to the ecclesiastical hierarchy. Had further persecutions been possible Chiliasm would no doubt have been retained longer, but its usefulness was fatally impaired when the majority of people nominally embraced Christianity. It was of little or no value in those struggles with heretical Christian sects which engaged the activities of orthodox mobs from the time of Constantine onwards. Other shibboleths such as 'The Church' and 'Catholicism' were more effective in this contest. Similarly for the larger purpose of ecclesiastical polity, agencies like monasticism and missionary enterprise were employed, which conserved the shibboleth values of Chiliasm and were free from its defects as an instrument of hierarchical ambition. The aims of the rulers of the Church became increasingly social and political and with such aims Chiliasm was fundamentally incompatible.

CHAPTER IV
CHILIASM AND PATRIOTISM

Perhaps the most pronounced characteristic of pre-Christian, Judaistic Chiliasm is its nationalistic or ethnic patriotism. Of course any attempt to rigidly differentiate the nationalistic and religious concepts of the Hebrews of the two centuries preceding the advent of Christianity would be foredoomed to failure. Never perhaps were patriotism and religion more nearly synonymous than at this period among this people. That their Chiliasm has a strongly nationalistic content is therefore natural and inevitable. The same patriotic animus is to be found in a great number of their other religious tenets and practices. The emphasis is perpetually upon the enhancement of the value of the Jewish race and nation and the corresponding depreciation of other nations and faiths.

But while it is true, that, owing to the inseparable integration of Church and State in Judea, in the first two centuries before Christ, we find a very considerable proportion of the religious beliefs and observances highly charged with nationalistic patriotism; this is perhaps more noticeable in the case of Chiliasm than in the case of any other contemporary theological concept. The nature of the Millennial belief was such as qualified it to function with especial ease and success in that particular historical situation. For considerably more than half a century before the birth of Christ the dominant fact in Hebrew history is the increase of the power and influence of the Roman state in the political life of the Jewish people. This increase was perfectly natural. Indeed it was inevitable. That the petty Judean state would eventually be absorbed in the world wide republic was a fact patent to any reasonably intelligent student of the situation.¹⁰¹ Under the circumstances it could hardly fail to take place even without any direct provocation to overt action on the part of either Jews or Romans. It is not our purpose to follow the long, hopeless struggle of the Jews against the inevitable extinction of their political independence. The Jew was fighting against fate. From the first interference of Rome in the affairs of Palestine to the last execution of Bar Cochba rebels, the end was never in real doubt – humanly speaking. The inevitableness of the catastrophe in this long drawn out tragedy is, in the writer's judgment, in some measurable degree connected both with the nature and subsequent history of Jewish Chiliasm. Later Hebrew Chiliasm is a very peculiar form of belief. It is characterized by what can only be called a crass and exaggerated anthropomorphic supernaturalism. It would seem as if pari passu with the increasing conviction of the futility of opposition to the power of Rome, there was an increasing conviction of a catastrophic supernal manifestation, which manifestation in its details became ever more and more crude and vulgar. The developing knowledge and conviction of the invincible power of Rome is sufficient to explain the increasing dependence upon supernatural aid for deliverance – but the peculiar crassness of the supernaturalism is the arresting element in the later Jewish Chiliastic writings. When every allowance has been made for the natural exuberance of the Oriental imagination something still remains to be accounted for. It is at least possible that the, to our taste, repulsive features of supernalistic vengeance and glory are the result of a long process of selection. In no people of whom we have historical knowledge is the spirit of nationalistic patriotism more deeply rooted than in the Jew. We may take it that practically all the Hebrews of the generations under discussion believed in an eventually triumphant Jewish state. Differences of education, and religious faith, however, conditioned the opinions as to the time when this triumphant state would appear and still more the method by which it would appear. The better educated Jews, who were conversant with the political conditions of the contemporary world and whose belief in supernatural aid was perhaps weakest, appear to have adopted a laissez-faire attitude. They seem to have been advocates of a pro-Roman policy; to make the best of the existing Roman supremacy waiting for the unpredictable time when Rome should follow the path of Egypt, Assyria, and other world powers who in their several ages had subjugated the children of Abraham. This party would perhaps have been willing to take advantage of any condition of affairs which offered a reasonably safe opportunity of successful revolt but under existing conditions they were opposed to armed resistance to the mistress of the world.

At the other end of the scale was a party of bigotedly and fanatically zealous patriots obsessed with the idea that immediate supernatural assistance would be forthcoming in the event of armed revolt. Between these two parties was another party – if it may be called such – partaking in various degrees of the characteristics of these two extremists parties. The Apocaliptic and Chiliastic literature of the period was extensive. It would be possible to arrange even such fragments as remain, according to the preponderance of supernal elements. It would seem to be a rational deduction that if we possessed this literature in its completeness we should be able (bearing in mind that we are dealing with a relatively considerable period of time) to follow the whole process of the supersession of more rational Chiliastic concepts in favor of the more crudely supernaturalistic ones. Rome was at once strongly repressive of movements for political liberty and tolerant of religious liberty. Those writings in which Chiliastic expectations took the form of advocating the active preparing for and co-operating with the expected Messiah would suffer extinction. On the other hand those Chiliastic beliefs which inculcated absolute and entire dependence upon supernatural aid for the achievement of national independence would be politically harmless and exuberance in such imaginings might flourish unhindered. The more fantastic and absurd the expectations the less likely they were to be suppressed by the imperial authorities. Whatever the measure of truth in the above conjecture it is certain that Jewish Chiliasm developed to the last extreme of extravagance. With the doubtful exception of some Hindu legends, there is nothing, which more exceeds the bounds of reason and common sense, in the literature of the world. It is perhaps not too much to say that Jewish Chiliasm died of excess development – a method of extinction of which nature makes liberal use.

The later history of Jewish Chiliasm does not concern us. Under the constantly repeated blows of disappointment it changed its form and content into the more rational concept of salvation and glorification of the individual human soul after death. What does concern us is that this Jewish Chiliasm in all but its most extreme form was taken over by Christianity. The intellectual background of Hebrew patriotism of course persisted in the Christians of the first generation who were largely Jews or Proselytes. The imminent divine kingdom of Christ does indeed take the place of the lower concept of a rigidly nationalistic kingdom. The kingdom of Christ even to the first generation of Christians must have had a larger content than the previous Jewish belief which it fulfilled and supplemented. Yet the essential thing to remember is that so far at least as the Jewish Christians were concerned Chiliastic expectations, though somewhat further extended, were still a form of expression for the forces of Hebrew nationalistic patriotism. The kingdom of the Jews had been transformed, or perhaps better, transmogrified, into the Kingdom of Christ and his saints¹⁰² but its essential content was unchanged and so long at least as a considerable proportion of Christians were converted Jews this condition of affairs persisted. The constant criticism of Chiliasm by Gentile Christians is that it is Judaizing. It is perhaps not exceeding the limits of permissable hypothesis to suppose that one of the reasons why Chiliasm failed to make a permanent place for itself in the belief of the universal church is to be found in this very fact that it was in essence a form of political, Jewish, nationalistic patriotism, to which the other portions of the Christian world, perhaps unconsciously, but not the less effectively, objected.

The success of Roman imperialism in denationalizing conquered peoples was truly remarkable. In this most difficult task of practical statesmanship its accomplishments far surpass those of any other empire, ancient or modern. But this success, great and unparalleled as it was, nevertheless was not absolute. Except in particular cases it was never really complete. The measure of its accomplishment was very different in different parts of the empire. In Italy, Gaul, Spain, and perhaps Britain its success may fairly be considered complete, but these were countries where the proportion of Roman settlers and colonists was very large. They were countries, furthermore, which were early conquered – countries, which, at the time of the Roman conquest, had not advanced a great distance toward the attainment of national solidarity in politics, religion, art, literature, war or social intercourse. This lack of development of local, national institutions and psychology left the ground relatively free for the development of distinctively Roman civilization and habits of thought. The comparative freedom of these Western provinces of the empire from religious heresies at the time that the Eastern provinces were so prolific of them, is commonly ascribed to inferior aptitude of these Western peoples for metaphysical speculation. We do not attempt to deny such inferiority, though the subsequent development of metaphysical speculation in Western Europe during the time that the reviving sense of nationality first began to be felt in the Middle Ages and Reformation Era, suggests another cause as operative.

If we consider three regions where Chiliasm, and also unquestionable heresies, were particularly rife; i.e., Phrygia, Egypt, and Roman Africa we see at once that these regions were seats of old, deeply rooted, and thoroughly developed civilizations. To go into the subject merely a little way we find that a nationalistic tradition existed in Phrygia at the time of the composition of the Iliad.¹⁰³ This nationalistic tradition was considerably more than a thousand years old at the time of the introduction of Christianity. Roman political power had by this time been thoroughly established in the country and there is no reason to believe that political rebellion was contemplated at the time of the rise of Chiliasm and the heresies. But while armed revolt may not have been considered as practicable, or even as desirable, the fundamental, nationalistic characteristics of the underlying strata of the population do not seem to have been very greatly altered. Long before the advent either of the Roman political power or the Christian religion a homogenous, national psychology had become characteristic of the Phrygian population. The Phrygian seems to have put on Christianity very much as he put on the toga. He wore the toga regularly and easily enough it may be, but in gestures and action, in speech and manner, he was still a Phrygian. This typical Phrygian seems to have been commonly regarded in the contemporary world as a bucolic sort of individual, much perhaps as a Kansan is regarded in the United States, and with perhaps as much or as little reason. The fact is that while ancient Phrygia without question possessed a large rural population, it also possessed numerous cities where the graces and amenities of life were as fully developed as in any of the neighboring provinces which did not suffer from the attribution of rusticity. The human instinct to botanize a neighboring people while doubtless adding to the gaiety of nations has to be taken magno cum grano salis by the historian.

Whatever may be said of their other cultural institutions it is a fact that the Phrygians at the time of the introduction of Christianity had already developed certain distinctively national, religious characteristics which marked them off from their neighbors.

The Phrygian Mysteries while doubtless in certain broad characteristics similar to the Eleusinian Mysteries had peculiarities of their own and were cherished by the people as something particularly expressive of their especial form of the philosophy of life. In spite of any decay and degradation which may have overtaken these mysteries in the course of a long history, it is certain that their primary object was the elevation and enhancement of life.

The national religious consciousness of Phrygia was peculiar in the prominent place given to women. To this day it is impossible to say with certainty whether the superior place in their religious system is held by the male or female concepts of deity. Perhaps on the whole the female concept preponderates.¹⁰⁴ What is true of theology is also true of cultus. Priestesses and prophetesses held a position of marked prominence and importance. Possibly the most pronouncedly distinctive mark of Phrygian religion was the emphasis upon inspiration, immediate divine revelation, exstatic conditions of religious excitation, the well known "Phrygian Frenzy." If now, with even this meagre, historical, nationalistic background in view, we examine the expression of Chiliasm in Phrygia we see at once how it took the form and color of the national psychology. The most pronounced Chiliastic expectations are found in Montanism, which was so strongly marked by characteristics of its place of origin that it was known throughout the rest of the Christian world as the 'Phrygian Heresy.' So strong was the influence of national sentiment that a very marked change was introduced in one, most important particular. Christian Chiliasm, originating as a Jewish form of nationalistic patriotism, emphasized the fact that in the Millennium Christ was to reign in Jerusalem, which was to supplant Rome as the center and ruler of the world. In this respect Phrygian Chiliasm makes a complete break with the Hebrew tradition. Christ was to appear and reign, not in Jerusalem, but in Pepuza. An insignificant town of Phrygia was to become the capital of the world wide kingdom of Christ on earth, displacing both Rome and Jerusalem. Nationalistic patriotism – not to say megalomania – could scarcely go farther.