“——Woman all exceedsIn ardent sanctitude and pious deeds:And chief in woman charities prevailThat soothe when sorrows or disease assail.As dropping balm medicinal instilsHealth when we pine, her tears alleviate ills;And the moist emblems of her pity flowAs heaven relented with the watery bow.”Barret.
“——Woman all exceedsIn ardent sanctitude and pious deeds:And chief in woman charities prevailThat soothe when sorrows or disease assail.As dropping balm medicinal instilsHealth when we pine, her tears alleviate ills;And the moist emblems of her pity flowAs heaven relented with the watery bow.”Barret.
“——Woman all exceedsIn ardent sanctitude and pious deeds:And chief in woman charities prevailThat soothe when sorrows or disease assail.As dropping balm medicinal instilsHealth when we pine, her tears alleviate ills;And the moist emblems of her pity flowAs heaven relented with the watery bow.”Barret.
“——Woman all exceeds
In ardent sanctitude and pious deeds:
And chief in woman charities prevail
That soothe when sorrows or disease assail.
As dropping balm medicinal instils
Health when we pine, her tears alleviate ills;
And the moist emblems of her pity flow
As heaven relented with the watery bow.”
Barret.
For many weary days did Lucia watch with fond fidelity the sick couch of her lover, breathing faithful and earnest prayers for his conversion and recovery. Though unconscious of her presence, her step and voice haunted him like a vision—as something known and loved in other days. Reason at length returned, the light was suffered once more to cheer his eyes, and looking up he beheld its beams shining upon the kneeling form of Lucia Claudia.
Her lover uttered her name, and that but once; words could not express his feelings; to him she seemed alive from the dead; his thought could it have found a voice had said, “God, thou art merciful to me a sinner.”
He gazed long and intensely upon his living, his beloved Lucia; a slight scar upon her throat, half hidden among the glittering tresses of sun-bright hair that shaded her lovely face and bosom, recalled her peril to his mind. How had she escaped the jealous fury of her husband? to what strange intervention of Providence did she owe her preservation? He looked from her to her brother, as if to ask him to narrate the particulars of her escape. Lucia guessed his meaning, and seating herself beside him commenced her tale.
“Adonijah, thou wouldest know the history of my wonderful preservation; listen and adore the mercy that saved me from the consequences of my unhappy husband’s posthumous jealousy. His strange behaviour during our brief interview—his passionate farewell, his abrupt departure, and the terrible import of his last words, filled me with apprehension. Some dark ambitious scheme was working in his brain, while the sounds of distant commotion in the camp denoted that Rome was again about to be plunged into a new revolution.
“There was no one within the house of whom I could ask counsel, for my faithful Cornelia was absent, engaged in her office of deaconess, and if present what arm short of Omnipotence could save me from the cruel love, or rather fierce jealousy, of Nymphidius Sabinus. I resumed my devotions and, in the words of the Psalmist of Israel, ‘gave myself unto prayer.’
“I was yet kneeling when Marcus abruptly entered the chamber with consternation and horror depicted on every stern feature. His looks, his bold intrusion on the privacy of a noble Roman lady, told at once his errand. He came, I knew, to slay me.
“Assuming courage I did not at that moment feel, I demanded the occasion of his coming; he briefly communicated the commands of his lord, and putting a dagger into my hand bade me fall by my own hand rather than by a less noble one.
“I put back the deadly weapon which Christianity and ‘the coming in of a better hope’ forbade me to use, and then, actuated by the feeling of self-preservation inherent in human nature, pleaded earnestly for my life.
“I thought I saw signs of relenting in his eye, but his dread of Nymphidius prevailed over his inclination to save me. He caught me by the hair and raised the dagger to slay me. In humble imitation of my Saviour, I prayed Him to forgive my murderers; this unnerved the assassin’s arm, the blow was given, but the wound was slight. Marcus fell at my feet, and flinging the dagger from him buried his convulsed features in my garments and wept like an infant.
“I passed this interval in silent prayer. At length the freedman raised his head, and, telling me ‘that he would report me as dead to his master,’ staunched the wound in my throat, from which the blood was flowing profusely, and demanded ‘whither he should convey me.’
“I resolved to enter the Arenaria, my husband’s attempt to destroy me justifying the step I was about to take. I told him I would leave the house privately that night. He wrapped me in my veil and pallium, kissed my hand, and left me. I found no difficulty in gaining the asylum I had chosen, as an opening existed leading from the sumptuous palace which had formed my miserable home. The Consul Nymphidius perished that night. He lost the object of his ambitious hopes, and I the grievous chain of my unhappy wedlock. Words would fail me to describe its horrors, or the guilt of that ambitious, licentious man. But from the lion’s mouth the Lord delivered me, leading me forth into green pastures beside the waters of comfort. During the stormy revolutions that have convulsed my native city I have dwelt in peace among the brethren, apart from the vain world and its vainer things. A strong desire to see the effigy of my beloved brother Lucius conducted me to the mausoleum of my ancestors, to which an entrance had been pierced from the Arenaria, where I was found by Julius, who, supposing me to be a spirit, fled from me in horror. He took refuge among the brethren, and was by them persuaded ‘to forsake the unfruitful works of darkness, to serve the living God.’ While listening to the consoling words of Linus, he again caught sight of me, and, still deeming me an inhabitant of the shades below, swooned away.”
“Yes, sweet sister,” rejoined Julius, “it was not till I felt thy warm breath on my cheek, and heard thy dear familiar voice speaking comfort to my guilty soul, that I knew I held my living Lucia in my arms.” He paused, and then turning to Adonijah said, “I, too, have a tale to tell; a sad one over which thy heart will bleed.” The bereaved father then related the death of the young Lucius and his own remorse and despair, beseeching Adonijah, as he concluded his touching narrative, “to forgive the sins of a repentant enemy, and contrite man.”
Adonijah was astonished beyond measure at this change in Julius Claudius. “Could this be the vain, selfish, cruel, licentious Roman who owned no law but his own will, whose guileful features, notwithstanding their feminine beauty, lately expressed nothing but deceit and perfidy?” His very countenance seemed altered, showing humility and deep contrition, as if it were the transcript of his new heart. “Could Christianity be false that brought forth fruits like these?”
Lucia Claudia, wiping the tears from her soft eyes, invited her brother to join her in an act of devout thanksgiving to Him whose mercy had been manifested to Jew and Gentile in their persons; and Adonijah united in the Christian’s prayer with deep fervour, and yet they offered it up in the name and through the mediation of the crucified Jesus!
CHAPTER XXII.
“Thou living wonder of Jehovah’s word!Thou, that without a priest or sacrifice,Ephod or temple, lone ’mid human kind,Cleav’st to thy statutes with unswerving mind,As though enthroned upon His mercy-seat,The spreading of the cherubim between,Jehovah yet were seen!Hebrew, come forth! dread not the light of day,Dread not the insulter’s cry;The arch that rose o’er thy captivityNo more shall turn thee from thy destined way.”Sotheby.
“Thou living wonder of Jehovah’s word!Thou, that without a priest or sacrifice,Ephod or temple, lone ’mid human kind,Cleav’st to thy statutes with unswerving mind,As though enthroned upon His mercy-seat,The spreading of the cherubim between,Jehovah yet were seen!Hebrew, come forth! dread not the light of day,Dread not the insulter’s cry;The arch that rose o’er thy captivityNo more shall turn thee from thy destined way.”Sotheby.
“Thou living wonder of Jehovah’s word!Thou, that without a priest or sacrifice,Ephod or temple, lone ’mid human kind,Cleav’st to thy statutes with unswerving mind,As though enthroned upon His mercy-seat,The spreading of the cherubim between,Jehovah yet were seen!Hebrew, come forth! dread not the light of day,Dread not the insulter’s cry;The arch that rose o’er thy captivityNo more shall turn thee from thy destined way.”Sotheby.
“Thou living wonder of Jehovah’s word!
Thou, that without a priest or sacrifice,
Ephod or temple, lone ’mid human kind,
Cleav’st to thy statutes with unswerving mind,
As though enthroned upon His mercy-seat,
The spreading of the cherubim between,
Jehovah yet were seen!
Hebrew, come forth! dread not the light of day,
Dread not the insulter’s cry;
The arch that rose o’er thy captivity
No more shall turn thee from thy destined way.”
Sotheby.
In the dear society of Lucia the hours of pain and languor glided gently away. It was her beloved hand that wiped away the tears Adonijah shed for the young Lucius, the sweet blossom that had entwined itself about his desolate heart. It was her voice that soothed his remorse, her soft eyes that told him she forgave his former perfidy. She mourned with him over the calamities of his captive people, while her faith bade him look beyond ages of bondage in anticipation of that glorious hour when the Lord who scattered the tribes abroad shall gather them again.
In her face the Hebrew still traced the love that had formerly gilded his chains, and made his bondage sweet. All indeed that a pious Christian could feel for one of differing faith, Lucia felt for Adonijah. He had first won her from idolatry and darkness to worship Jehovah, and, though no human passion could beguile her heart from Him, its tender affections were still placed upon the captive Jew. For his conversion she prayed unceasingly, and every conversation she held with him had the same noble object in view.
A deep sense of his own unworthiness, a sensibility to sin never experienced before, was felt by the half-convinced Pharisee. He reviewed his past life, and internally owned that he had come short of that perfection demanded by a holy God.
He was ready to acknowledge Jesus as a prophet, as “a teacher sent from God,” for had not his prophetic words respecting Jerusalem been fulfilled in his own day? This was much for a Jew to acknowledge, but it is and has been acknowledged by many who have died like their forefathers, strangers to the salvation wrought by Christ.
“Search the Scriptures,” said our Lord to the Jews of His day, “for in them ye think ye have eternal life, and they are they which testify of me.” “Search thou the Scriptures, who art an heir of the promises made to Abraham,” said Linus to the doubting Hebrew, “and thou wilt see that we have not followed ‘cunningly devised fables.’ ”
Adonijah examined those sacred records daily and perseveringly, praying the Lord Jehovah to enlighten his mind respecting Him whom the Christians affirmed to be the Messiah of the Jews. He found every type and shadow complete, every prophecy fulfilled in that wondrous Person whom the Jews had rejected and slain. His heart was softened, nay, it was pierced through with a view of his sins and his sinless Saviour’s sufferings.
At first the Divinity of Jesus Christ was to him, as to the Jews of this day, “a stumbling-block and rock of offence;” but the New Testament, which declares Him “to be the Son of God with power,” only confirms the previous testimony borne by the Old. The evidence of both is in perfect and beautiful harmony with each other. Adonijah compared them together, and found the chain complete, till like Thomas he said of Jesus, “My Lord and my God.”
The life and doctrines of Jesus alone would declare his Divinity, even if it had not been confirmed by miracles or foreshown by prophecy. Human nature fallen and degenerate could never have produced fruits like these. Compare his brightest saints with the Son of God, and they only shine with beams reflected from his surpassing glory.
Deeply mourning over Him whom his sins had pierced, Adonijah found pardon and peace with the Great Shepherd of Israel, at whose cross he for ever laid down his pharisaic pride and self-idolatry, receiving the Son of David not only as his Prophet, Priest, and King, but as his atoning sacrifice, his righteousness, the Lord his God, the long-promised Messiah of his people.
Julius Claudius, that brand plucked from the burning, was destined to become a light in the Church, and to preach the faith he once laboured to destroy. He intended to devote himself to the ministry of the word as soon as he had been admitted into the Christian fold by baptism. He wished to repair the wrongs of Adonijah by uniting him to his sister, upon whom he bestowed an ample portion, but the residue of his fortune he gave to the Church, for the support of the Christian community, that still required from the wealthy those gifts which we find recorded in the Acts of the Apostles. The dowry of Lucia Claudia was already destined by her to aid the funds of the impoverished Jewish Church, which then held the pre-eminence over every other, as having been planted by the Lord himself.
CHAPTER XXIII.
“See how these Christians love one another.”Tertullian.
“See how these Christians love one another.”Tertullian.
“See how these Christians love one another.”Tertullian.
“See how these Christians love one another.”
Tertullian.
The manumission of Adonijah preceded his baptism. His dark clustering locks were closely shaven, and the cap of liberty was placed upon his head with the usual ceremonies. He was no longer a slave, but he was a freeman without a country. No civic privileges were connected with, or conferred by the gift of liberty. The manumitted slave could not serve in the Roman army, nor hold any office in the state, unless the emperor chose to exercise his despotic authority in his favour. He might enrol his name on the list of Ærarians and become a member of a guild, and follow a trade, or he might remain in the household of his patron; but he could not become a citizen of Rome without influence or gold: both were exerted in his favour.
The conversion of Julius and Adonijah were interesting events to the Roman Christians, and the sponsari of the catechumeni were selected from the most distinguished members of the Church by its pious bishop. In the primitive times the sponsors answered for the good faith of those persons who desired to be instructed in the Christian religion. It is from this custom that the sponsors in our own Church are derived; for when infant baptism became general, the sponsari answered for Christian babes as they formerly had done for the adult heathen whom they presented as catechumeni[20]or candidates for that sacrament.
The sponsari of Julius Claudius and his Hebrew freedman were not men of rank, but experienced Christians. Indeed, one was an aged slave; but the Church numbered many such among her brightest jewels. Her internal order, though marked by distinctive and fixed degrees of rank, did not rest upon those external ones upon which worldly societies depend; the beautiful and harmonious bond of love alone united all the members of the universal or Catholic Church together in the first ages of Christianity.
The admission of Julius Claudius and Adonijah was followed by the marriage of Lucia and her lover. If the existence of the nobly descended Roman lady had been known beyond the pale of the Church, some impediment might yet have divided her from Adonijah. Nor would it have been safe for the vestal who had broken her vow to have re-appeared in the heathen metropolis. So she was married to Adonijah in the privacy of the Sotterrania,[21]and Julius finally, through the purchased influence of Cenis, the mistress of the emperor Vespasian, got the name of Adonijah enrolled in one of the civic tribes.
The new-made citizen of Rome did not intend to remain in the metropolis of the world. He wished to revisit his native land, for to him the desolation of Judea was dearer than the magnificence of imperial Rome.
The Church of Jerusalem, with its bishop Simeon, had returned to Judea. No molestation was offered by the Gentile conquerors to those Jews who had never taken up arms against them, and the converted Israelites, of which the Church then holding the supremacy over every other was composed, had an apostle for their head of the lineage of David, being the kinsman of the Lord,[22]as well as his disciple. By this Church Adonijah and Lucia were received with affectionate greeting and hospitality. The travellers had indeed found a welcome from the brethren in every place, for the tenets of Christianity were widely promulgated throughout Asia; for the dispersion of Israel had caused many Gentiles to enter the Church, nor, as we have seen, did all the Jews remain in the blindness of error; for ecclesiastical records assure us that numbers about this time repented and received the faith they had blasphemed and persecuted, being convinced by the ruin of their city and destruction of their temple that the crucified Jesus was their promised Saviour.
In passing through his native land Adonijah soften paused to weep and pray. He lamented the woes of his country, while he acknowledged the justice of the sentence that had gone forth against her. He visited the ruins of Nazareth and Bethlehem, he wept at Mount Calvary, he mourned over the destruction of the temple; but he saw the traces made in the living rock by the earthquake, and the sepulchre that could not hold in its keeping the risen Son of God, and was comforted. One was by his side who shared his sorrows and his joys, who wept with him for the sins of his people, and rejoiced in that atonement by which they might yet be forgiven and restored to their own land.[23]It was natural that a converted Jew, long exiled from his native land, should seek the memorable spots rendered holy by the birth, ministry, crucifixion, resurrection, and ascension of Christ, and that his Gentile wife should share his feelings, and accompany him in his pilgrimage; yet pilgrimages were not common in the first ages of the Church. No allusion to such visits can be found in any part of the New Testament, to afford either example or encouragement to a practice that afterwards became so general. The faith of the early Christians needed not such excitement; they felt the presence of their Lord in heaven, and did not seek to trace his footsteps upon earth.
Lucia Claudia had not quitted Rome without regret; she was a member of that glorious Church to which the noblest of St. Paul’s Epistles had been addressed while he was yet personally unknown to his Roman brethren. She was the pastoral daughter of Linus, the friend of Pomponia Græcina and of the fair British convert Claudia, celebrated by Martial for her beautiful complexion, but whom the Church numbered among its precious jewels; Clement, too, and many other persons whose names were written in the Book of Life, regarded Lucia Claudia as a sister. No human society was ever so closely united in friendship as the primitive Christians, who obeyed from the heart the new commandment enjoined by their Lord, “Love one another.”
Lucia Claudia, however, found the same tender affection, the same perfect union, existing among the Christians of Palestine as at Rome. Some were then living who had seen the Lord, and had listened to those divine precepts which had made the Gentile officers sent to apprehend him return to their dissatisfied employers with the remarkable reply, “Never man spake like this man,” and she no longer regretted Rome. To Adonijah, the Hebrew Christian Church planted by the High Priest of the order of Melchisedec, so long-promised to Israel and rejected when He came, was a lively representation of heaven upon earth. He recognised the Lord’s Prayer as a Jewish one,[24]to which one petition alone had been added by the great Head of the Christian Church, who then gave it the perfection “which came down from the Fountain of Goodness and Father of Light.” The Psalms of David, too, sung in his own dear loved land, were full of that light which was spreading then over the whole earth to enlighten the dark and idolatrous Gentiles Jerusalem and the cities of Judea might lie in the dust of desolation for ages, but Christ had been the glory of the land; and the heart of the Jew clave to his ruined country, as if no curse lay upon its hills and valleys, for the Sun of Righteousness had risen there with healing on his wings, and Adonijah acknowledged the Son of David as his Lord and his God, and he loved best to worship where the steps of his Saviour had been.
[20]Infant baptism was general in the second Century—a fact proved by the works of Cyprian, and there is reason to believe that the infant children of Christian parents were usually baptized, though the practice fell into disuse in the third and fourth centuries.
[20]
Infant baptism was general in the second Century—a fact proved by the works of Cyprian, and there is reason to believe that the infant children of Christian parents were usually baptized, though the practice fell into disuse in the third and fourth centuries.
[21]Whether the early Christians used the present ritual we are not able to determine. The ring placed upon the finger of the bride was an ancient heathen custom, nor can we find a different origin for the bride-cake, which in the middle ages was decorated with ribbons and placed upon the altar. It is probable that the Church retained such rites as were not inconsistent with a Christian profession.
[21]
Whether the early Christians used the present ritual we are not able to determine. The ring placed upon the finger of the bride was an ancient heathen custom, nor can we find a different origin for the bride-cake, which in the middle ages was decorated with ribbons and placed upon the altar. It is probable that the Church retained such rites as were not inconsistent with a Christian profession.
[22]Simeon, the brother of Jude, the son or grandson of Cleopas, is supposed by some to have been the nephew of Joseph, by others the offspring of the Virgin’s sister, who was also named Mary. It is possible that both these statements may be correct. He succeeded St. James the Less in the Bishopric of Jerusalem, and was crucified in the reign of Trajan, in his 120th year.
[22]
Simeon, the brother of Jude, the son or grandson of Cleopas, is supposed by some to have been the nephew of Joseph, by others the offspring of the Virgin’s sister, who was also named Mary. It is possible that both these statements may be correct. He succeeded St. James the Less in the Bishopric of Jerusalem, and was crucified in the reign of Trajan, in his 120th year.
[23]See Appendix,Note XII.
[23]
See Appendix,Note XII.
[24]The Lord’s Prayer is from the Mishna of the Jews; to this beautiful compilation our Saviour added a characteristic petition, “Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive them that trespass against us,” for he approved the beautiful formula then in use, and gave it all it wanted.
[24]
The Lord’s Prayer is from the Mishna of the Jews; to this beautiful compilation our Saviour added a characteristic petition, “Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive them that trespass against us,” for he approved the beautiful formula then in use, and gave it all it wanted.
CHAPTER XXIV.
“Yet dread me from my living tomb,Ye bigot slaves of haughty Rome.”Scott.
“Yet dread me from my living tomb,Ye bigot slaves of haughty Rome.”Scott.
“Yet dread me from my living tomb,Ye bigot slaves of haughty Rome.”Scott.
“Yet dread me from my living tomb,
Ye bigot slaves of haughty Rome.”
Scott.
Adonijah and Lucia Claudia remained in the environs of Jerusalem with the Church and its apostolic bishop, Simeon, for many years. They were the parents of a lovely family, who were growing up in the nurture and fear of the Lord, when the Roman brethren, being desirous of sending gifts to the Hebrew Christians, wished Adonijah to come to Rome to receive their bounty for those impoverished children of Abraham who had received the faith of Jesus. The fulfilment of the prophecies respecting the dispersion of the Jews had probably occasioned that conversion among the Israelites spoken of by Hegesippus, the earliest historian of the Church. There is reason to believe that these persons retained their ancient customs as far as a people could retain them who were under the Gentile yoke of bondage, though they received Christ as their High Priest, Redeemer, and Divine Ruler. Attachment to the customs of their forefathers, and the example of Christ, “a minister of the circumcision,” made the Hebrew Christians still cling to their ancestral ritual. This adherence would in time have created a bar between them and their Gentile brethren, if it had been suffered to continue; but the revolts of the unbelieving Jews in the reigns of Trajan and Adrian caused this separation to cease. No Israelite after those wars was suffered to remain in Palestine, so that when Jerusalem was rebuilt under the heathen name of Ælia, the Christian Church established there was no longer composed of converted Jews. After a time the dispersed and scattered tribes of Israel might purchase from the Roman soldiers once a year the mournful privilege of weeping over the solitary foundation-stone of the temple, but poverty and slavery left few to avail themselves of the opportunity in that age. The custom has never ceased; it has been transmitted from generation to generation, and the nineteenth century still witnesses the affecting commemorative visit of the Jew to the desecrated shrine where his forefathers once worshipped Jehovah. He still looks forward to the promises, and fondly hopes to see the temple crown once more the holy mount; and he will not be deceived, for the builders will have then received the chief Corner-stone they rejected, and will bear his seal on their foreheads, his name on their hearts.
Nearly two thousand years of woe and degradation then lay in dark and direful perspective between the children of the dispersion and the dawn of those better things—those political privileges which the Christian legislature of our own land has accorded to them. Selfish hearts would churlishly deny to the Jew his newly granted civic rights, but they might as well shut out the light of heaven, or forbid the wind to blow, as withhold the blessings God has promised to his long-suffering people, whose restoration and final conversion is clearly decreed, and foretold by Isaiah and all the Jewish prophets.
The converted Hebrews, always working with their hands, possessed none of the commercial privileges of their unconverted brethren. These poor saints when thrust out of the synagogues were subjected to much persecution in every place, and the collection made for their relief in the metropolis of the world would provide them the means of paying the heavy tribute imposed upon them by the Roman governors. The Church of Jerusalem was too poor to aid them; the descendants of some of the apostles were tillers of the soil, who literally earned their bread in the sweat of their brows.
Many years had elapsed since Adonijah and his wife had quitted imperial Rome. The magnificent Coliseum, planned by a Christian architect martyred by Vespasian, and built by captive Jews destined to die at its dedication, shone brilliantly in the mid-day sun in its youthful magnificence; not, as now, hoary with centuries of age, save where the mantling ivy covers its ruined grandeur with a veil of beauty. A solitary subterranean epitaph records that Gaudentius, whose genius raised this mightiest monument of heathen power and heathen cruelty, died Christ’s soldier and servant, but leaves his history untold, the question how a Christian became the architect of such a structure undecided. Perhaps he was condemned like the Jewish masons to build his own arena of death and martyrdom—the first, not the last, Christian who suffered on that spot, in the mystic Babylon, for the witness of Jesus.[25]Adonijah regarded with mournful interest on the beautiful arch of Titus, and the emblems of the conqueror’s devastating victory and the desolation of Judea and Jerusalem. Nearly nineteen centuries have passed since the erection of a monument, beneath which no Jew’s foot has ever been known to tread, but which stands fair, glistening, and fresh in our own age as it did then, when his eyes first looked upon it. He saw in the Temple of Peace the seven-branched candlestick, the golden vine, and the splendid vessels formerly used in the temple service, and sighed over the degradation of the fallen Jewish Church. He looked upwards, nevertheless, and through the dim and shadowy future beheld the mystic dawning of that day when the dispersed of Israel would look upon Him with sorrow and contrition whom they pierced, and should be restored again to their own glorious land. He turned to Lucia Claudia as he quitted the temple, and said, “Why should I mourn, my wife, for these things, since the types and shadows of the Mosaic dispensation have been accomplished and fulfilled in Christ, and like Symeon, having seen his salvation, I am ready to depart in peace?”
The meeting between Julius the Presbyter and his sister was extremely moving. He had indeed become a vigilant and faithful minister of Christ to whom the Greek name of Theodatus had been given by the brethren as a mark of their general estimation of his piety. From him Lucia heard with painful interest of the arraignment of the Vestal College, and the danger that impended over Cornelia Cossi, the Maxima, or chief vestal priestess. No one knew why Domitian in his quality of Pontifex Maximus (head priest of Jupiter) chose to institute a prosecution which darkened the fame and endangered the lives of these unfortunate priestesses. This year he had opened his public career of crime by condemning the Consul Glabrio to combat with a lion in the arena; that valiant magistrate had however redeemed his life by slaying his brute assailant, and was banished; but Cornelia Maxima and her sister vestals found in Domitian a more incensed and formidable foe than Glabrio. Lucia obtained permission to visit the Chief Priestess in the prison to which the injustice of a heathen tyrant had condemned a pure and lofty-minded Roman lady. Time had not deprived Cornelia Maxima of her majesty of form and stature; what she had lost in youthful charms she had gained in dignity, and when she rose from her recumbent posture on the hard pavement of the Tullianum, and cast an indignant glance upon her uninvited visitor, Lucia Claudia beheld in the condemned prisoner the very Cornelia of Nero’s reign who had urged her sovereign to arraign and punish the lapsed vestal, the wife of his guilty favourite. She remembered this, but not with anger, as she approached the unhappy Cornelia, and throwing her arms about her neck assured her that Lucia Claudia still loved her, and believed her innocent. Cornelia attempted to disengage herself from the embrace, but she yielded at last to the sweet influence of those womanly tears and caresses, and wept long and passionately on Lucia’s friendly bosom. She had never shed a tear during the course of the prosecution, and when once she became calm she wept no more; no, not when she descended into her living grave in the sight of the awe-struck Roman people.
After some minutes she answered the sympathizing inquiries of her long-lost friend with placid dignity. “Lucia Claudia, I was formerly tried on this false charge and acquitted;[26]why the accusation has been repeated I do not know, but Cæsar has condemned me untried and unheard.”
“No one believes the charge, dear Maxima,” replied Lucia Claudia, “and it is said that the emperor would pardon you, if you would justify his cruelty by calumniating yourself.”
“The two Ocelli and poor Veronilla, dreading their living grave, confessed themselves guilty of a crime they loathed, and never committed: they were permitted to choose a milder death. But I am a Roman virgin of loftier lineage and nobler spirit; I can die, but will not justify my persecutor. Celer cleared himself and me by an heroic death; but Valerius Licinianus has purchased life and shame at my expense. His eloquence might have saved us both: he falsely avowed himself a guilty wretch. ‘Licinianus has justified me,’ was Cæsar’s own remark; and he is pardoned, while I am doomed and slandered.”
“He is again imprisoned for concealing your freedwoman at one of his farms.”
“Ah! by Vesta, a light breaks in upon me. She was fair and young. He loved her then, doubtless; those stolen visits to the temple were really made; yes, and to her. Frail girl! and base calumnious man! O Celer, Celer! and thou didst vainly endure the torturing scourge for both;” and the miserable priestess threw herself upon the ground, and fell into an agony that had no tears, found no relief in sighs and groans. The noble-minded Roman knight’s fate, indeed, had merited and won the admiration of the spectators, and in after years the degraded Licinianus—the poor Sicilian schoolmaster whose Prætorian rank excited such scornful pity—might have envied Celer’s ignominious punishment and heroic death.
Cornelia gradually overcame her bitter agony; she looked up once more, and a smile passed over her wan countenance.
“We two, Lucia Claudia, were esteemed the pride of the vestal order; and I am condemned for incest,[27]and thou art the widow of a bondwoman’s son, and the wife of a Hebrew freedman.”
Lucia Claudia blushed; she felt the sarcasm, but answered it with meek forbearance. “I quitted the college a believer in the God of Israel. How could a Jewish convert minister in the temple of a heathen deity? After this I became a Christian, and sought to bring in him who had made me a worshipper of the true God. He betrayed the brethren, in the blind darkness of his bigoted self-righteousness, and I gave my hand to Nymphidius to save my fellow-Christians. It was feminine weakness: I should have trusted the Church to Him whose faith I had embraced, for not a hair could be torn from a Christian’s head without divine permission. Of that unholy marriage I will not speak, which linked together the believing wife and unbelieving husband in an unequal and abhorred yoke. Listen, Cornelia, while I tell thee how it was severed, and recognise His hand who saved one and destroyed the other;” and Lucia Claudia related her own history, and that of Adonijah. She then unfolded the Christian mission to the condemned Maxima, and implored her “to repent and be baptized.”
The Maxima shook her haughty head, and turned contemptuously away. “No, Lucia; I am no believer in strange gods. My austere and holy life leaves no room for repentance; it is my pride and glory to have been a chaste votary of Vesta. Nor would I change my fate with one who has forsaken the custody of the sacred flame, on the existence of which that of Rome depends, to contract second nuptials, and bear children to a Jew.”
“Ah, Maxima, I think I could share even thy living grave, could I but know that thou didst carry with thee the faith, the hope, the love of a Christian.”
“Lucia Claudia, thou shalt see me suffer. Yes, I pray thee, follow my bier, watch me descending into my living grave, and bear witness to my constancy, I loved thee once, and I love thee still. Thou wilt be near me, thou wilt not deny me my last request?” and Lucia promised, wept, and departed.
Domitian, who was exceedingly anxious that his victim should submit to his sentence, had offered Cornelia a full pardon if she would asperse her own character, but in vain. He had pronounced judgment upon her at his Alban villa, while the poor prisoner remained at Rome, deprived of the means of defending herself, or engaging the talents of some eminent pleader in her defence. The measure was unpopular, and the emperor’s manner of exercising the office of supreme pontiff unprecedented even in that age of crime. Nobody believed the charges against the unfortunate Maxima, and when the covered litter that contained the condemned vestal priestess was seen proceeding along the silent streets, the ominous procession excited general commiseration. No reproachful word reached the ears of the victim, no malediction was heaped upon her devoted head, no injurious epithet added insult to injury, for the sympathies of a mighty people were with the calumniated Maxima. Two centuries had elapsed since such a dismal tragedy had been acted at Rome, and the advance of learning and knowledge had rendered the Romans less superstitious, though not more virtuous, and the immolation excited disgust and indignation against its actors. Wrapped in her pallium and closely veiled, Lucia Claudia clung trembling to the arm of her husband, and with faltering steps followed the procession from the prison through the thronged Forum to the Collina Gate, where the sepulchral cavern had been re-opened to enclose the living form of Cornelia Cossi. The bed, the lamp, the loaf, the bread-mill, the pitcher of water, and cruize of oil, had been already provided; the emperor in his character of supreme pontiff, wearing his sacerdotal robes, with his priestly attendants, stood by the dark yawning chasm to receive the victim; the litter was then unclosed, the unfortunate priestess was unbound, and faced Domitian, who extended his hands to utter the customary prayers in order to avert the consequences of the vestal’s imputed guilt from the heads of the Roman people.
The unfortunate Maxima turned her magnificent countenance from him to the vast assembly as she invoked Vesta and every deity of earth and heaven to attest her innocence; but her voice was distinct, clear, and even melodious. She was interrupted by the emperor, who charged her with the crime for which she was about to suffer, and urged her repeatedly to confess her guilt. To his severe remarks Cornelia calmly replied, “Cæsar believes me guilty of incest, who performed the sacred rites when he conquered and triumphed.” She had repeatedly uttered these mysterious words on her way to the Collina Gate. No one but herself and Domitian comprehended their meaning. Pliny the Younger, who was present, could not discover whether this speech was intended as a satirical allusion to the ill-success of the emperor’s Dacian campaigns, for which he had nevertheless triumphed, or whether the unfortunate vestal wished to conciliate her judge, and attest her own purity by this reply; the enigma was never solved by Cornelia. Then the imperial pontiff made his impious prayers, and after consigning the condemned vestal to her executioners departed with his priestly attendants. At this moment Lucia Claudia raised her veil, and turned her tearful eyes upon the unhappy Maxima, who returned her sympathising recognition with a glance of intelligent gratitude, and even smiled. No trace of the strong agony that had convulsed her noble figure on the pavement of the Tullianum remained on her dignified and placid countenance. She looked towards the temple of which she had been the presiding priestess, she gazed upon the Roman people, and cast a farewell look upon the bright blue heavens that canopied old Rome, and then resolutely advanced towards the chasm. As she placed her firm unshrinking foot upon the steps, the executioner put forth his hand to disengage her robe, but the vestal haughtily repulsed him, as if his touch were profanation to her purity. She was observed to gather her flowing drapery closely round her magnificent person as she descended into her living grave,[28]and this simple and intuitive trait of feminine modesty redeemed for ever the aspersed character of Cornelia Cossi Maxima, in the eyes of the vast assembly who witnessed it, from defamation; and that dark sepulchral vault was closed never to be re-opened to enclose another victim. The conviction that Cornelia had been unjustly immolated made a lasting impression upon the Roman people, and the mound that marked the awful spot was never again disturbed by the votaries of a cruel superstition. The extension of Christianity banished cruel heathen rites.
Adonijah drew the folds of her ample veil over the convulsed features of his fainting wife, and, wrapping her in her pallium, bore her inanimate form to the house of a Christian brother; but some time elapsed before she showed signs of life. When she recovered from her swoon, she wept long and prayed much; yet, in her deep commiseration for the unfortunate Maxima, the feeling that she had died a heathen, uncheered by the hope of a better life, was still surpassingly bitter—the bitterest drop indeed in a bitter cup. These thoughts and reflections were naturally succeeded by others of a less painful character. Her conversion to Christianity had not only been the means of bringing her out of idolatry and darkness into the bright refulgence of the Gospel day, but it had saved her from the suicidal despair of the vestals Ocelli and Veroilla, and the living interment of the calumniated Maxima Cornelia Cossi.
The Latin Church considered even the temporary residence of Lucia Claudia in Rome and Italy unsafe at such a period, and the converted vestal priestess quitted the metropolis of the world for ever. She returned with Adonijah to the Church at Jerusalem, and passed many tranquil years in the bosom of her Christian family, till the revolt of the Jews in the reign of Trajan, which was also a war with the Hebrew converts to Christianity, when, Adonijah being slain by his own countrymen, the widowed Lucia Claudia became a deaconess of the Church. She exercised this office at the time when Simeon the apostle was martyred, who, at one hundred and twenty years, excited by his patient fortitude the admiration of Atticus, the governor of Syria during the third persecution of the Christians in the reign of Trajan. She quitted Jerusalem before it was besieged by Adrian, and retired with the Hebrew Christian Church to Pella beyond Jordan, but never to return; for she fell asleep at an advanced age, in the full assurance of Christian hope.
The Hebrew Christian Church lost its distinctive character when it could no longer maintain its succession of Jewish bishops, nor retain its see; for the rescripts of Adrian, which forbade the Jews to dwell in Palestine, virtually put an end to the hierarchy:[29]for the second Church of Christ founded at Ælia—the name of the heathen city built by Adrian—was not composed of converted Jews, but of Gentiles who had forsaken idolatry to follow the Lord Jesus. In our own days another Hebrew Christian Church has been founded at Jerusalem, to which “kings have become nursing fathers, and queens nursing mothers,” in fulfilment of an ancient prophecy, “that Jerusalem shall evermore become the joy of the whole earth.”
“Thou living wonder of Jehovah’s word!
Thou, that without a priest or sacrifice,
Ephod or temple, lone ’mid human-kind,
Cleavest to thy statutes with unswerving mind,
As though enthroned upon His mercy-seat,
The spreading of the cherubim between,
Jehovah still were seen!
Hebrew, come forth! dread not the light of day,
Dread not the insulter’s cry;
The arch[30]that rose o’er thy captivity
No more shall turn thee from thy destined way.”
——“It comes—the appointed hour;
Hebrew, beneath the arch of Titus pause!
And in the closing scene of Rome’s last power,
Thy prophet’s roll unfold.
Lift up thy voice!—the day-spring from on high
Warns that the hour draws nigh:
The far seas and the multitude of isles,
All in their tongues have heard,
Each lisps the living word;
Hebrew, on thee redemption’s angel smiles.
The stone cut out without a hand
Now spreads its shade o’er earth,
And shall to heaven expand.
Tell the dispersed; kings with their fleets shall come
To bear the wanderers home,
Their queens shall fold thy nurselings on their breast,
A light o’er earth shall flow,
From Zion’s hallowed brow,
And there the Lord thy God, enthroned in glory, rest.”[31]