of this period, for to it belong the two greatest historical events--the
dissolution of ancient pagan, and the birth of modern Christian society.

Five notable sovereigns, Nerva, Trajan, Hadrian, Antoninus Pius, and
Marcus Aurelius swayed the Roman empire during this period (A.D. 96-150).
What Nerva was has just been described; and he made no mistake in
adopting Trajan as his successor.  Trajan, unconnected by origin, as
Nerva also had been, with old Rome, was born in Spain, near Seville, and
by military service in the East had made his first steps towards fortune
and renown.  He was essentially a soldier--a moral and a modest soldier;
a friend to justice and the public weal; grand in what he undertook for
the empire he governed; simple and modest on his own score; respectful
towards the civil authority and the laws; untiring and equitable in the
work of provincial administration; without any philosophical system or
pretensions; full of energy and boldness, honesty and good sense.  He
stoutly defended the empire against the Germans on the banks of the
Danube, won for it the province of Dacia, and, being more taken up with
the East than the West, made many Asiatic conquests, of which his
successor, Hadrian, lost no time in abandoning, wisely no doubt,
a portion.  Hadrian, adopted by Trajan, and a Spaniard too, was
intellectually superior and morally very inferior to him.  He was full
of ambition, vanity, invention, and restlessness; he was sceptical in
thought and cynical in manners; and he was overflowing with political,
philosophical, and literary views and pretensions.  He passed the
twenty-one years of his reign chiefly in travelling about the empire,
in Asia, Africa, Greece, Spain, Gaul, and Great Britain, opening roads,
raising ramparts and monuments, founding schools of learning and museums,
and encouraging among the provinces, as well as at Rome, the march of
administration, legislation, and intellect, more for his own pleasure and
his own glorification than in the interest of his country and of society.
At the close of this active career, when he was ill and felt that he was
dying, he did the best deed of his life.  He had proved, in the discharge
of high offices, the calm and clear-sighted wisdom of Titus Antoninus, a
Gaul, whose family came originally from Nimes; he had seen him one day
coming to the senate and respectfully supporting the tottering steps of
his aged father (or father-in-law, according to Aurelius Victor); and he
adopted him as his successor.  Antoninus Pius, as a civilian, was just
what Trajan had been as a warrior--moral and modest; just and frugal;
attentive to the public weal; gentle towards individuals; full of respect
for laws and rights; scrupulous in justifying his deeds before the senate
and making them known to the populations by carefully posted edicts; and
more anxious to do no wrong or harm to anybody than to gain lustre from
brilliant or popular deeds.  "He surpasses all men in goodness," said his
contemporaries, and he conferred on the empire the best of gifts, for he
gave it Marcus Aurelius for its ruler.

It has been said that Marcus Aurelius was philosophy enthroned.  Without
any desire to contest or detract from that compliment, let it be added
that he was conscientiousness enthroned.  It is his grand and original
characteristic that he governed the Roman empire and himself with a
constant moral solicitude, ever anxious to realize that ideal of personal
virtue and general justice which he had conceived, and to which he
aspired.  His conception, indeed, of virtue and justice was incomplete,
and even false in certain cases; and in more than one instance, such as
the persecution of the Christians, he committed acts quite contrary to
the moral law which he intended to put in practice towards all men; but
his respect for the moral law was profound, and his intention to shape
his acts according to it, serious and sincere.  Let us cull a few phrases
from that collection of his private thoughts, which he entitled _For
Self,_ and which is really the most faithful picture man ever left of
himself and the pains he took with himself.  "There is," says he,
"relationship between all beings endowed with reason.  The world is like
a superior city within which the other cities are but families.  .  .  .
I have conceived the idea of a government founded on laws of general and
equal application.  Beware lest thou Caesarze thyself, for it is what
happens only too often.  Keep thyself simple, good, unaltered, worthy,
grave, a friend to justice, pious, kindly disposed, courageous enough for
any duty.  .  .  .  Reverence the gods, preserve mankind.  Life is short;
the only possible good fruit of our earthly existence is holiness of
intention and deeds that tend to the common weal.  .  .  .  My soul, be
thou covered with shame!  Thy life is well nigh gone, and thou hast not
yet learned how to live."  Amongst men who have ruled great states, it is
not easy to mention more than two, Marcus Aurelius and Saint Louis, who
have been thus passionately concerned about the moral condition of their
souls and the moral conduct of their lives.  The mind of Marcus Aurelius
was superior to that of Saint Louis; but Saint Louis was a Christian, and
his moral ideal was more pure, more complete, more satisfying, and more
strengthening for the soul than the philosophical ideal of Marcus
Aurelius.  And so Saint Louis was serene and confident as to his fate and
that of the human race, whilst Marcus Aurelius was disquieted and sad--
sad for himself and also for humanity, for his country and for his times:
"O, my sole," was his cry, "wherefore art thou troubled, and why am I so
vexed?"

We are here brought closer to the fact which has already been
foreshadowed, and which characterizes the moral and social condition of
the Roman world at this period.  It would be a great error to take the
five emperors just spoken of--Nerva, Trajan, Hadrian, Antoninus Pius, and
Marcus Aurelius--as representatives of the society amidst which they
lived, and as giving in a certain degree the measure of its
enlightenment, its morality, its prosperity, its disposition, and
condition in general.  Those five princes were not only picked men,
superior in mind and character to the majority of their contemporaries,
but they were men almost isolated in their generation; in them there was
a resumption of all that had been acquired by Greek and Roman antiquity
of enlightenment and virtue, practical wisdom and philosophical morality:
they were the heirs and the survivors of the great minds and the great
politicians of Athens and Rome, of the Areopagus and the Senate.  They
were not in intellectual and moral harmony with the society they
governed, and their action upon it served hardly to preserve it partially
and temporarily from the evils to which it was committed by its own vices
and to break its fall.  When they were thoughtful and modest as Marcus
Aurelius was, they were gloomy and disposed to discouragement, for they
had a secret foreboding of the uselessness of their efforts.

Nor was their gloom groundless: in spite of their honest plans and
of brilliant appearances, the degradation, material as well as moral,
of Roman society went on increasing.  The wars, the luxury, the
dilapidations, and the disturbances of the empire always raised its
expenses much above its receipts.  The rough miserliness of Vespasian and
the wise economy of Antoninus Pius were far from sufficient to restore
the balance; the aggravation of imposts was incessant; and the
population, especially the agricultural population, dwindled away more
and more, in Italy itself, the centre of the state.  This evil disquieted
the emperors, when they were neither idiots nor madmen; Claudius,
Vespasian, Nerva, and Trajan labored to supply a remedy, and Augustus
himself had set them the example.  They established in Italy colonies of
veterans to whom they assigned lands; they made gifts thereof to indigent
Roman citizens; they attracted by the title of senator rich citizens from
the provinces, and when they had once installed them as landholders in
Italy, they did not permit them to depart without authorization.  Trajan
decreed that every candidate for the Roman magistracies should be bound
to have a third of his fortune invested in Italian land, "in order," says
Pliny the Younger, "that those who sought the public dignities should
regard Rome and Italy not as an inn to put up at in travelling, but as
their home."  And Pliny the Elder, going as a philosophical observer to
the very root of the evil, says, in his pompous manner, "In former times
our generals tilled their fields with their own hands; the earth, we may
suppose, opened graciously beneath a plough crowned with laurels and held
by triumphal hands, maybe because those great men gave to tillage the
same care that they gave to war, and that they sowed seed with the same
attention with which they pitched a camp; or maybe, also, because
everything fructifies best in honorable hands, because everything is done
with the most scrupulous exactitude.  .  .  .  Nowadays these same fields
are given over to slaves in chains, to malefactors who are condemned to
penal servitude, and on whose brow there is a brand.  Earth is not deaf
to our prayers; we give her the name of mother; culture is what we call
the pains we bestow on her .  .  .  but can we be surprised if she render
not to slaves the recompense she paid to generals?"

What must have been the decay of population and of agriculture in the
provinces, when even in Italy there was need of such strong protective
efforts, which were nevertheless so slightly successful?

Pliny had seen what was the fatal canker of the Roman empire in the
country as well as in the towns: slavery or semi-slavery.

Landed property was overwhelmed with taxes, was subject to conditions
which branded it with a sort of servitude, and was cultivated by a
servile population, in whose hands it became almost barren.  The large
holders were thus disgusted, and the small ruined or reduced to a
condition more and more degraded.  Add to this state of things in the
civil department a complete absence of freedom and vitality in the
political; no elections, no discussion, no public responsibility;
characters weakened by indolence and silence, or destroyed by despotic
power, or corrupted by the intrigues of court or army.  Take a step
farther; cast a glance over the moral department; no religious creeds and
nothing left of even Paganism but its festivals and frivolous or shameful
superstitions.  The philosophy of Greece and the old Roman manner of life
had raised up, it is true, in the higher ranks of society Stoics and
jurists, the former the last champions of morality and the dignity of
human nature, the latter the last enlightened servants of the civil
community.  But neither the doctrines of the Stoics nor the science and
able reasoning of the jurists were lights and guides within the reach and
for the use of the populace, who remained a prey to the vices and
miseries of servitude or public disorders, oscillating between the
wearisomeness of barren ignorance and the corruptiveness of a life of
adventure.  All the causes of decay were at this time spreading
throughout Roman society; not a single preservative or regenerative
principle of national life was in any force or any esteem.

After the death of Marcus Aurelius the decay manifested and developed
itself, almost without interruption, for the space of a century, the
outward and visible sign of it being the disorganization and repeated
falls of the government itself.  The series of emperors given to the
Roman world by heirship or adoption, from Augustus to Marcus Aurelius,
was succeeded by what may be termed an imperial anarchy; in the course of
one hundred and thirty-two years the sceptre passed into the hands of
thirty-nine sovereigns with the title of _emperor (Augustus)_, and was
clutched at by thirty-one pretenders, whom history has dubbed tyrants,
without other claim than their fiery ambition and their trials of
strength, supported at one time in such and such a province of the empire
by certain legions or some local uprising, at another, and most
frequently in Italy itself, by the Praetorian guards, who had at their
disposal the name of Rome and the shadow of a senate.  There were
Italians, Africans, Spaniards, Gauls, Britons, Illyrians, and Asiatics;
and amongst the number were to be met with some cases of eminence in war
and politics, and some even of rare virtue and patriotism, such as
Pertinax, Septimius Severus, Alexander Severus, Deeius, Claudius
Gothicus, Aurelian, Tacitus, and Probus.  They made great efforts, some
to protect the empire against the barbarians, growing day by day more
aggressive, others to re-establish within it some sort of order, and to
restore to the laws some sort of force.  All failed, and nearly all died
a violent death, after a short-lived guardianship of a fabric that was
crumbling to pieces in every part, but still under the grand name of
Roman Empire.  Gaul had her share in this series of ephemeral emperors
and tyrants; one of the most wicked and most insane, though issue of one
of the most valorous and able, Caracalla, son of Septimius Severus, was
born at Lyons, four years after the death of Marcus Aurelius.  A hundred
years later Narbonne gave in two years to the Roman world three emperors,
Carus and his two sons, Carinus and Numerian.  Amongst the thirty-one
tyrants who did not attain to the title of Augustus, six were Gauls; and
the last two, Amandus and AElianus, were, A.D. 285, the chiefs of that
great insurrection of peasants, slaves or half-slaves, who, under the
name of Bagaudians (signifying, according to Ducange, a wandering troop
of insurgents from field and forest), spread themselves over the north of
Gaul, between the Rhine and the Loire, pillaging and ravaging in all
directions, after having themselves endured the pillaging and ravages of
the fiscal agents and soldiers of the empire.  A contemporary witness,
Lactantius, describes the causes of this popular outbreak in the
following words: "So enormous had the imposts become, that the tillers'
strength was exhausted; fields became deserts and farms were changed into
forests.  The fiscal agents measured the land by the clod; trees,
vinestalks, were all counted.  The cattle were marked; the people
registered.  Old age or sickness was no excuse; the sick and the infirm
were brought up; every one's age was put down; a few years were added on
to the children's, and taken off from the old men's.  Meanwhile the
cattle decreased, the people died, and there was no deduction made for
the dead."

It is said that to excite the confidence and zeal of their bands, the two
chiefs of the Bagaudians had medals struck, and that one exhibited the
head of Amandus, "Emperor, Caesar, Augustus, pious and prosperous," with
the word "Hope" on the other side.

When public evils have reached such a pitch, and nevertheless the day has
not yet arrived for the entire disappearance of the system that causes
them, there arises nearly always a new power which, in the name of
necessity, applies some remedy to an intolerable condition.  A legion
cantoned amongst the Tungrians (Tongres), in Belgica, had on its
muster-roll a Dalmatian named Diocletian, not yet very high in rank,
but already much looked up to by his comrades on account of his
intelligence and his bravery.  He lodged at a woman's, who was, they
said, a Druidess, and had the prophetic faculty.  One day when he was
settling his account with her, she complained of his extreme parsimony:
"Thou'rt too stingy, Diocletian," said she; and he answered laughing,
"I'll be prodigal when I'm emperor."  "Laugh not," rejoined she: "thou'lt
be emperor when thou hast slain a wild boar" (aper).  The conversation
got about amongst Diocletian's comrades.  He made his way in the army,
showing continual ability and valor, and several times during his changes
of quarters and frequent hunting expeditions he found occasion to kill
wild boars; but he did not immediately become emperor, and several of his
contemporaries, Aurelian, Tacitus, Probus, Carus, and Numerian, reached
the goal before him.  "I kill the wild boars," said he to one of his
friends, "and another eats them."  The last mentioned of these ephemeral
emperors, Numerian, had for his father-in-law and inseparable comrade a
Praetorian prefect named Arrius Aper.  During a campaign in Mesopotamia
Numerian was assassinated, and the voice of the army pronounced Aper
guilty.  The legions assembled to deliberate about Numerian's death and
to choose his successor.  Aper was brought before the assembly under a
guard of soldiers.  Through the exertions of zealous friends the
candidature of Diocletian found great favor.  At the first words
pronounced by him from a raised platform in the presence of the troops,
cries of "Diocletian Augustus "were raised in every quarter.  Other
voices called on him to express his feelings about Numerian's murderers.
Drawing his sword, Diocletian declared on oath that he was innocent of
the emperor's death, but that he knew who was guilty and would find means
to punish him.  Descending suddenly from the platform, he made straight
for the Praetorian prefect, and saying, "Aper, be comforted; thou shalt
not die by vulgar hands; by the right hand of great AEneas thou fallest,"
he gave him his death-wound.  "I have killed the prophetic wild boar,"
said he in the evening to his confidants; and soon afterwards, in spite
of the efforts of certain rivals, he was emperor.

"Nothing is more difficult than to govern," was a remark his comrades had
often heard made by him amidst so many imperial catastrophes.  Emperor in
his turn, Diocletian treasured up this profound idea of the difficulty of
government, and he set to work, ably, if not successfully, to master it.
Convinced that the empire was too vast, and that a single man did not
suffice to make head against the two evils that were destroying it,--war
against barbarians on the frontiers, and anarchy within,--he divided the
Roman world into two portions, gave the West to Maximian, one of his
comrades, a coarse but valiant soldier, and kept the East himself.  To
the anarchy that reigned within he opposed a general despotic
administrative organization, a vast hierarchy of civil and military
agents, everywhere present, everywhere masters, and dependent upon the
emperor alone.  By his incontestable and admitted superiority, Diocletian
remained the soul of these two bodies.  At the end of eight years he saw
that the two empires were still too vast; and to each Augustus he added a
Caesar,--Galerius and Constantius Chlorus,--who, save a nominal, rather
than real, subordination to the two emperors, had, each in his own state,
the imperial power with the same administrative system.  In this
partition of the Roman world, Gaul had the best of it: she had for
master, Constantius Chlorus, a tried warrior, but just, gentle, and
disposed to temper the exercise of absolute power with moderation and
equity.  He had a son, Constantine, at this time eighteen years of age,
whom he was educating carefully for government as well as for war.  This
system of the Roman empire, thus divided between four masters, lasted
thirteen years; still fruitful in wars and in troubles at home, but
without victories, and with somewhat less of anarchy.  In spite of this
appearance of success and durability, absolute power failed to perform
its task; and, weary of his burden and disgusted with the imperfection of
his work, Diocletian abdicated A.D. 303.  No event, no solicitations of
his old comrades in arms and empire, could draw him from his retreat on
his native soil of Salona, in Dalmatia.  "If you could see the vegetables
planted by these hands," said he to Maximian and Galerius, "you would not
make the attempt."  He had persuaded or rather dragged his first
colleague, Maximian, into abdication after him; and so Galerius in the
East, and Constantius Chlorus in the West, remained sole emperors.  After
the retirement of Diocletian, ambitions, rivalries, and intrigues were
not slow to make head; Maximian reappeared on the scene of empire, but
only to speedily disappear (A.D. 310), leaving in his place his son
Maxentius.  Constantius Chlorus had died A.D. 306, and his son,
Constantine, had immediately been proclaimed by his army Caesar and
Augustus.  Galerius died A.D. 311 and Constantine remained to dispute the
mastery with Maxentius in the West, and in the East with Maximinus and
Licinius, the last colleagues taken by Diocletian and Galerius.  On the
29th of October, A.D. 312, after having gained several battles against
Maxentius in Italy, at Milan, Brescia, and Verona, Constantine pursued
and defeated him before Rome, on the borders of the Tiber, at the foot of
the Milvian bridge; and the son of Maximian, drowned in the Tiber, left
to the son of Constantins Chlorus the Empire of the West, to which that
of the East was destined to be in a few years added, by the defeat and
death of Licinius.  Constantine, more clear-sighted and more fortunate
than any of his predecessors, had understood his era, and opened his eyes
to the new light which was rising upon the world.  Far from persecuting
the Christians, as Diocletian and Galerius had done, he had given them
protection, countenance, and audience; and towards him turned all their
hopes.  He had even, it is said, in his last battle against Maxentius,
displayed the Christian banner, the cross, with this inscription: Hoc
signo vinces ("with this device thou shalt conquer ").  There is no
knowing what was at that time the state of his soul, and to what extent
it was penetrated by the first rays of Christian faith; but it is certain
that he was the first amongst the masters of the Roman world to perceive
and accept its influence.  With him Paganism fell, and Christianity
mounted the throne.  With him the decay of Roman society stops, and the
era of modern society commences.

[Illustration: Knights returning from Foray----311]




CHAPTER VI.----ESTABLISHMENT OF CHRISTIANITY IN GAUL.

When Christianity began to penetrate into Gaul, it encountered there two
religions very different one from the other, and infinitely more
different from the Christian religion; these were Druidism and Paganism--
hostile one to the other, but with a hostility political only, and
unconnected with those really religious questions that Christianity was
coming to raise.

[Illustration: Christianity established in Gaul----111]

Druidism, considered as a religion, was a mass of confusion, wherein the
instinctive notions of the human race concerning the origin and destiny
of the world and of mankind were mingled with the Oriental dreams of
metempsychosis--that pretended transmigration, at successive periods, of
immortal souls into divers creatures.  This confusion was worse
confounded by traditions borrowed from the mythologies of the East and
the North, by shadowy remnants of a symbolical worship paid to the
material forces of nature, and by barbaric practices, such as human
sacrifices, in honor of the gods or of the dead.  People who are without
the scientific development of language and the art of writing do not
attain to systematic and productive religious creeds.  There is nothing
to show that, from the first appearance of the Gauls in history to their
struggle with victorious Rome, the religious influence of Druidism had
caused any notable progress to be made in Gallic manners and
civilization.  A general and strong, but vague and incoherent, belief in
the immortality of the soul was its noblest characteristic.  But with the
religious elements, at the same time coarse and mystical, were united two
facts of importance: the Druids formed a veritable ecclesiastical
corporation, which had, throughout Gallic society, fixed attributes,
special manners and customs, an existence at the same time distinct and
national; and in the wars with Rome this corporation became the most
faithful representatives and the most persistent defenders of Gallic
independence and nationality.  The Druids were far more a clergy than
Druidism was a religion; but it was an organized and a patriotic clergy.
It was especially on this account that they exercised in Gaul an
influence which was still existent, particularly in north-western Gaul,
at the time when Christianity reached the Gallic provinces of the south
and centre.

[Illustration: Druids offering Human Sacrifices----111]

The Greco-Roman Paganism was, at this time, far more powerful than
Druidism in Gaul, and yet more lukewarm and destitute of all religious
vitality.  It was the religion of the conquerors and of the state, and
was invested, in that quality, with real power; but, beyond that, it had
but the power derived from popular customs and superstitions.  As a
religious creed, the Latin Paganism was at bottom empty, indifferent, and
inclined to tolerate all religions in the state, provided only that they,
in their turn, were indifferent at any rate towards itself, and that they
did not come troubling the state, either by disobeying her rulers or by
attacking her old deities, dead and buried beneath their own still
standing altars.

Such were the two religions with which, in Gaul, nascent Christianity had
to contend.  Compared with them it was, to all appearance, very small and
very weak; but it was provided with the most efficient weapons for
fighting and beating them, for it had exactly the moral forces which they
lacked.  Christianity, instead of being, like Druidism, a religion
exclusively national and hostile to all that was foreign, proclaimed a
universal religion, free from all local and national partiality,
addressing itself to all men in the name of the same God, and offering to
all the same salvation.  It is one of the strangest and most significant
facts in history, that the religion most universally human, most
dissociated from every consideration but that of the rights and
well-being of the human race in its entirety--that such a religion, be
it repeated, should have come forth from the womb of the most exclusive,
most rigorously and obstinately national religion that ever appeared in
the world, that is, Judaism.  Such, nevertheless, was the birth of
Christianity; and this wonderful contrast between the essence and the
earthly origin of Christianity was without doubt one of its most
powerful attractions and most efficacious means of success.

Against Paganism Christianity was armed with moral forces not a whit less
great.  Confronting mythological traditions and poetical or philosophical
allegories, appeared a religion truly religious, concerned solely with
the relations of mankind to God and with their eternal future.  To the
pagan indifference of the Roman world the Christians opposed the profound
conviction of their faith, and not only their firmness in defending it
against all powers and all dangers, but also their ardent passion for
propagating it without any motive but the yearning to make their fellows
share in its benefits and its hopes.  They confronted, nay, they welcomed
martyrdom, at one time to maintain their own Christianity, at another to
make others Christians around them; propagandism was for them a duty
almost as imperative as fidelity.  And it was not in memory of old and
obsolete mythologies, but in the name of recent deeds and persons, in
obedience to laws proceeding from God, One and Universal, in fulfilment
and continuation of a contemporary and superhuman history,--that of Jesus
Christ, the Son of God and Son of Man,--that the Christians of the first
two centuries labored to convert to their faith the whole Roman world.
Marcus Aurelius was contemptuously astonished at what he called the
obstinacy of the Christians; he knew not from what source these nameless
heroes drew a strength superior to his own, though he was at the same
time emperor and sage.  It is impossible to assign with exactness the
date of the first footprints and first labors of Christianity in Gaul.
It was not, however, from Italy, nor in the Latin tongue and through
Latin writers, but from the East and through the Greeks, that it first
came and began to spread.  Marseilles--and the different Greek colonies,
originally from Asia Minor and settled upon the shores of the
Mediterranean or along the Rhone, mark the route and were the places
whither the first Christian missionaries carried their teaching: on this
point the letters of the Apostles and the writings of the first two
generations of their disciples are clear and abiding proof.  In the west
of the empire, especially in Italy, the Christians at their first
appearance were confounded with the Jews, and comprehended under the same
name: "The Emperor Claudius," says Suetonius, "drove from Rome (A.D. 52)
the Jews who, at the instigation of Christus, were in continual
commotion."  After the destruction of Jerusalem by Titus (A.D. 71), the
Jews, Christian or not, dispersed throughout the Empire; but the
Christians were not slow to signalize themselves by their religious
fervor, and to come forward everywhere under their own true name.  Lyons
became the chief centre of Christian preaching and association in Gaul.
As early as the first half of the second century there existed there a
Christian congregation, regularly organized as a church, and already
sufficiently important to be in intimate and frequent communication with
the Christian Churches of the East and West.  There is a tradition,
generally admitted, that St. Pothinus, the first Bishop of Lyons, was
sent thither from the East by the Bishop of Smyrna, St. Polycarp, himself
a disciple of St. John.  One thing is certain, that the Christian Church
of Lyons produced Gaul's first martyrs, amongst whom was the Bishop, St.
Pothinus.

It was under Marcus Aurelius, the most philosophical and most
conscientious of the emperors, that there was enacted for the first
time in Gaul, against nascent Christianity, that scene of tyranny and
barbarity which was to be renewed so often and during so many centuries
in the midst of Christendom itself.  In the eastern provinces of the
Empire and in Italy the Christians had already been several times
persecuted, now with cold-blooded cruelty, now with some slight
hesitation and irresolution.  Nero had caused them to be burned in the
streets of Rome, accusing them of the conflagration himself had kindled,
and, a few months before his fall, St. Peter and St. Paul had undergone
martyrdom at Rome.  Domitian had persecuted and put to death Christians
even in his own family, and though invested with the honors of the
consulate.  Righteous Trajan, when consulted by Pliny the Younger on the
conduct he should adopt in Bithynia towards the Christians, had answered,
"It is impossible, in this sort of matter, to establish any certain
general rule; there must be no quest set on foot against them, and no
unsigned indictment must be accepted; but if they be accused and
convicted, they must be punished."  To be punished, it sufficed that they
were convicted of being Christians; and it was Trajan himself who
condemned St. Ignatius, Bishop of Antioch, to be brought to Rome and
thrown to the beasts, for the simple reason that he was highly Christian.
Marcus Aurelius, not only by virtue of his philosophical
conscientiousness, but by reason of an incident in his history, seemed
bound to be farther than any other from persecuting the Christians.
During one of his campaigns on the Danube, A.D. 174, his army was
suffering cruelly from fatigue and thirst; and at the very moment when
they were on the point of engaging in a great battle against the
barbarians, the rain fell in abundance, refreshed the Roman soldiers, and
conduced to their victory.  There was in the Roman army a legion, the
twelfth, called the _Melitine_ or the _Thundering,_ which bore on its
roll many Christian soldiers.  They gave thanks for the rain and the
victory to the one omnipotent God who had heard their prayers, whilst the
pagans rendered like honor to Jupiter, the rain-giver and the thunderer.
The report about these Christians got spread abroad and gained credit in
the Empire, so much so that there was attributed to Marcus Aurelius a
letter, in which, by reason, no doubt, of this incident, he forbade
persecution of the Christians.  Tertullian, a contemporary witness,
speaks of this letter in perfect confidence; and the Christian writers
of the following century did not hesitate to regard it as authentic.
Nowadays a strict examination of its existing text does not allow such a
character to be attributed to it.  At any rate the persecutions of the
Christians were not forbidden, for in the year 177, that is, only three
years after the victory of Marcus Aurelius over the Germans, there took
place, undoubtedly by his orders, the persecution which caused at Lyons
the first Gallic martyrdom.  This was the fourth, or, according to
others, the fifth great imperial persecution of the Christians.

Most tales of the martyrs were written long after the event, and came to
be nothing more than legends laden with details often utterly puerile or
devoid of proof.  The martyrs of Lyons in the second century wrote, so to
speak, their own history; for it was their comrades, eye-witnesses of
their sufferings and their virtue, who gave an account of them in a long
letter addressed to their friends in Asia Minor, and written with
passionate sympathy and pious prolixity, but bearing all the,
characteristics of truth.  It seems desirable to submit for perusal that
document, which has been preserved almost entire in the Ecclesiastical
History of Eusebius, Bishop of Caesarea in the third century, and which
will exhibit, better than any modern representations, the state of facts
and of souls in the midst of the imperial persecutions, and the mighty
faith, devotion, and courage with which the early Christians faced the
most cruel trials.

"The servants of Christ, dwelling at Vienne and Lyons in Gaul, to the
brethren settled in Asia and Phrygia, who have the same faith and hope of
redemption that we have, peace, grace, and glory from God the Father and
Jesus Christ our Lord!

"None can tell to you in speech or fully set forth to you in writing the
weight of our misery, the madness and rage of the Gentiles against the
saints, and all that hath been suffered by the blessed martyrs.  Our
enemy doth rush upon us with all the fury of his powers, and already
giveth us a foretaste and the first-fruits of all the license with which
he doth intend to set upon us.  He hath omitted nothing for the training
of his agents against us, and he doth exercise them in a sort of
preparatory work against the servants of the Lord.  Not only are we
driven from the public buildings, from the baths, and from the forum, but
it is forbidden to all our people to appear publicly in any place
whatsoever.

"The grace of God hath striven for us against the devil: at the same time
that it hath sustained the weak, it hath opposed to the Evil One, as it
were, pillars of strength--men strong and valiant, ready to draw on
themselves all his attacks.  They have had to bear all manner of insult;
they have deemed but a small matter that which others find hard and
terrible; and they have thought only of going to Christ, proving by their
example that the sufferings of this world are not worthy to be put in the
balance with the glory which is to be manifested in us.  They have
endured, in the first place, all the outrages that could be heaped upon
them by the multitude, outcries, blows, thefts, spoliation, stoning,
imprisonment, all that the fury of the people could devise against hated
enemies.  Then, dragged to the forum by the military tribune and the
magistrates of the city, they have been questioned before the people and
cast into prison until the coming of the governor.  He, from the moment
our people appeared before him, committed all manner of violence against
them.  Then stood forth one of our brethren, Vettius Epagathus, full of
love towards God and his neighbor, living a life so pure and strict that,
young as he was, men held him to be the equal of the aged Zacharias.--
He could not bear that judgment so unjust should go forth against us,
and, moved with indignation, he asked leave to defend his brethren, and
to prove that there was in them no kind of irreligion or impiety.  Those
present at the tribunal, amongst whom he was known and celebrated, cried
out against him, and the governor himself, enraged at so just a demand,
asked him no more than this question, 'Art thou a Christian?'
Straightway with a loud voice, he declared himself a Christian, and was
placed amongst the number of the martyrs.  .  .  .

"Afterwards the rest began to be examined and classed.  The first, firm
and well prepared, made hearty and solemn confession of their faith.
Others, ill prepared and with little firmness, showed that they lacked
strength for such a fight.  About ten of them fell away, which caused us
incredible pain and mourning.  Their example broke down the courage of
others, who, not being yet in bonds, though they had already had much to
suffer, kept close to the martyrs, and withdrew not out of their sight.
Then were we all stricken with dread for the issue of the trial: not that
we had great fear of the torments inflicted, but because, prophesying the
result according to the degree of courage of the accused, we feared much
falling away.  They took, day by day, those of our brethren who were
worthy to replace the weak; so that all the best of the two churches,
those whose care and zeal had founded them, were taken and confined.
They took, likewise, some of our slaves, for the governor had ordered
that they should be all summoned to attend in public; and they, fearing
the torments they saw the saints undergo, and instigated by the soldiers,
accused us falsely of odious deeds, such as the banquet of Thyestes, the
incest of OEdipus, and other crimes which must not be named or even
thought of, and which we cannot bring ourselves to believe that men were
ever guilty of.  These reports having once spread amongst the people,
even those persons who had hitherto, by reason, perhaps, of relationship,
shown moderation towards us, burst forth into bitter indignation against
our people.  Thus was fulfilled that which had been prophesied by the
Lord: 'The time cometh when whosoever shall kill you shall think that he
doeth God service.'  Since that day the holy martyrs have suffered
tortures that no words can express.

"The fury of the multitude, of the governor, and of the soldiers, fell
chiefly upon Sanctus, a deacon of Vienne; upon Maturus, a neophyte still,
but already a valiant champion of Christ; upon Attalus also, born at
Pergamus, but who hath ever been one of the pillars of our Church; upon
Blandina, lastly, in whom Christ hath made it appear that persons who
seem vile and despised of men are just those whom God holds in the
highest honor by reason of the excellent love they bear Him, which is
manifested in their firm virtue, and not in vain show.  All of us, and
even Blandina's mistress here below, who fought valiantly with the other
martyrs, feared that this poor slave, so weak of body, would not be in a
condition to freely confess her faith; but she was sustained by such
vigor of soul that the executioners, who from morn till eve put her to
all manner of torture, failed in their efforts, and declared themselves
beaten, not knowing what further punishment to inflict, and marvelling
that she still lived, with her body pierced through and through, and torn
piecemeal by so many tortures, of which a single one should have sufficed
to kill her.  But that blessed saint, like a valiant athlete, took fresh
courage and strength from the confession of her faith; all feeling of
pain vanished, and ease returned to her at the mere utterance of the
words, 'I am a Christian, and no evil is wrought amongst us.'

"As for Sanctus, the executioners hoped that in the midst of the tortures
inflicted upon him--the most atrocious which man could devise--they would
hear him say something unseemly or unlawful; but so firmly did he resist
them, that, without even saying his name, or that of his nation or city,
or whether he was bond or free, he only replied in the Roman tongue, to
all questions, 'I am a Christian.'  Therein was, for him, his name, his
country, his condition, his whole being; and never could the Gentiles
wrest from him another word.  The fury of the governor and the
executioners was redoubled against him; and, not knowing how to torment
him further, they applied to his most tender members bars of red-hot
iron.  His members burned; but he, upright and immovable, persisted in
his profession of faith, as if living waters from the bosom of Christ
flowed over him and refreshed him.  .  .  .  Some days after, these
infidels began again to torture him, believing that if they inflicted
upon his blistering wounds the same agonies, they would triumph over him,
who seemed unable to bear the mere touch of their hands; and they hoped,
also, that the sight of this torturing alive would terrify his comrades.
But, contrary to general expectation, the body of Sanctus, rising
suddenly up, stood erect and firm amidst these repeated torments, and
recovered its old appearance and the use of its members, as if, by Divine
grace, this second laceration of his flesh had caused healing rather than
suffering.  .  .  .

"When the tyrants had thus expended and exhausted their tortures against
the firmness of the martyrs sustained by Christ, the devil devised other
contrivances.  They were cast into the darkest and most unendurable place
in their prison; their feet were dragged out and compressed to the utmost
tension of the muscles; the jailers, as if instigated by a demon, tried
every sort of torture, insomuch that several of them, for whom God willed
such an end, died of suffocation in prison.  Others, who had been
tortured in such a manner that it was thought impossible they should long
survive, deprived as they were of every remedy and aid from men, but
supported nevertheless by the grace of God, remained sound and strong in
body as in soul, and comforted and reanimated their brethren.  .  .  .

"The blessed Pothinus, who held at that time the bishopric of Lyons,
being upwards of ninety, and so weak in body that he could hardly
breathe, was himself brought before the tribunal, so worn with old age
and sickness that he seemed nigh to extinction; but he still possessed
his soul, wherewith to subserve the triumph of Christ.  Being brought by
the soldiers before the tribunal, whither he was accompanied by all the
magistrates of the city and the whole populace, that pursued him with
hootings, he offered, as if he had been the very Christ, the most
glorious testimony.  At a question from the governor, who asked what the
God of the Christians was, he answered, 'If thou be worthy, thou shalt
know.'  He was immediately raised up, without any respect or humanity,
and blows were showered upon him; those who happened to be nearest to him
assaulted him grievously with foot and fist, without the slightest regard
for his age; those who were farther off cast at him whatever was to their
hand; they would all have thought themselves guilty of the greatest
default if they had not done their best, each on his own score, to insult
him brutally.  They believed they were avenging the wrongs of their gods.
Pothinus, still breathing, was cast again into prison, and two days after
yielded up his spirit.

"Then were manifested a singular dispensation of God and the immeasurable
compassion of Jesus Christ; an example rare amongst brethren, but in
accord with the intentions and the justice of the Lord.  All those who,
at their first arrest, had denied their faith, were themselves cast into
prison and given over to the same sufferings as the other martyrs, for
their denial did not serve them at all.  Those who had made profession of
being what they really were--that is, Christians--were imprisoned without
being accused of other crimes.  The former, on the contrary, were
confined as homicides and wretches, thus suffering a double punishment.
The one sort found repose in the honorable joys of martyrdom, in the hope
of promised blessedness, in the love of Christ, and in the spirit of God
the Father; the other were a prey to the reproaches of conscience.  It
was easy to distinguish the one from the other by their looks.  The one
walked joyously, bearing on their faces a majesty mingled with sweetness,
and their very bonds seemed unto them an ornament, even as the broidery
that decks a bride .  .  .  the other, with downcast eyes and humble and
dejected air, were an object of contempt to the Gentiles themselves, who
regarded them as cowards who had forfeited the glorious and saving name
of Christians.  And so they who were present at this double spectacle
were thereby signally strengthened, and whoever amongst them chanced to
be arrested confessed the faith without doubt or hesitation.  .  .  .

"Things having come to this pass, different kinds of death were inflicted
on the martyrs, and they offered to God a crown of divers flowers.  It
was but right that the most valiant champions, those who had sustained a
double assault and gained a signal victory, should receive a splendid
crown of immortality.  The neophyte Maturus and the deacon Sanctus, with
Blandina and Attalus, then, were led into the amphitheatre, and thrown to
the beasts, as a sight to please the inhumanity of the Gentiles.  .  .  .
Maturus and Sanctus there underwent all kinds of tortures, as if they had
hitherto suffered nothing; or, rather, like athletes who had already been
several times victorious, and were contending for the crown of crowns,
they braved the stripes with which they were beaten, the bites of the
beasts that dragged them to and fro, and all that was demanded by the
outcries of an insensate mob, so much the more furious, because it could
by no means overcome the firmness of the martyrs or extort from Sanctus
any other speech than that which, on the first day, he had uttered: 'I am
a Christian.'

"After this fearful contest, as life was not extinct, their throats were
at last cut, when they alone had thus been offered as a spectacle to the
public instead of the variety displayed in the combat of gladiators.
Blandina, in her turn, tied to a stake, was given to the beasts: she was
seen hanging, as it were, on a sort of cross, calling upon God with
trustful fervor, and the brethren present were reminded, in the person of
a sister, of Him who had been crucified for their salvation.  .  .  .  As
none of the beasts would touch the body of Blandina, she was released
from the stake, taken back to prison, and reserved for another occasion.
.  .  .  Attalus, whose execution, seeing that he was a man of mark, was
furiously demanded by the people, came forward ready to brave everything,
as a man deriving confidence from the memory of his life, for he had
courageously trained himself to discipline, and had always amongst us
borne witness for the truth.  He was led all round the amphitheatre,
preceded by a board bearing this inscription in Latin: 'This is Attalus
the Christian.'  The people pursued him with the most furious hootings;
but the governor, having learnt that he was a Roman citizen, had him
taken back to prison with the rest.  Having subsequently written to
Caesar, he waited for his decision as to those who were thus detained.

"This delay was neither useless nor unprofitable, for then shone forth
the boundless compassion of Christ.  Those of the brethren who had been
but dead members of the Church, were recalled to life by the pains and
help of the living; the martyrs obtained grace for those who had fallen
away; and great was the joy in the Church, at the same time virgin and
mother, for she once more found living those whom she had given up for
dead.  Thus revived and strengthened by the goodness of God, who willeth
not the death of the sinner, but rather inviteth him to repentance, they
presented themselves before the tribunal, to be questioned afresh by the
governor.  Caesar had replied that they who confessed themselves to be
Christians should be put to the sword, and they who denied sent away safe
and sound.  When the time for the great market had fully come, there
assembled a numerous multitude from every nation and every province.  The
governor had the blessed martyrs brought up before his judgment-seat,
showing them before the people with all the pomp of a theatre.  He
questioned them afresh; and those who were discovered to be Roman
citizens were beheaded, the rest were thrown to the beasts.

"Great glory was gained for Christ by means of those who had at first
denied their faith, and who now confessed it contrary to the expectation
of the Gentiles.  Those who, having been privately questioned, declared
themselves Christians were added to the number of the martyrs.  Those in
whom appeared no vestige of faith, and no fear of God, remained without
the pale of the Church.  When they were dealing with those who had been
reunited to it, one Alexander, a Phrygian by nation, a physician by
profession, who had for many years been dwelling in Gaul, a man well
known to all for his love of God and open preaching of the faith, took
his place in the hall of judgment, exhorting by signs all who filled it
to confess their faith, even as if he had been called in to deliver them
of it.  The multitude, enraged to see that those who had at first denied,
turned round and proclaimed their faith, cried out against Alexander,
whom they accused of the conversion.  The governor forthwith asked him
what he was, and at the answer, 'I am a Christian,' condemned him to the
beasts.  On the morrow Alexander was again brought up, together with
Attalus, whom the governor, to please the people, had once more condemned
to the beasts.  After they had both suffered in the amphitheatre all the
torments that could be devised, they were put to the sword.  Alexander
uttered not a complaint, not a word; he had the air of one who was
talking inwardly with God.  Attalus, seated on an iron seat, and waiting