She sang of Love—the love whose firesBurn with a pure and gentle flame,No passion lights of wild desiresRed with the lurid glow of shame.She sang of angels, and their wingsSeemed rustling through each soft refrain;Gladness and sorrow, kindred thingsShe wove in many a tender strain.She sang of Heaven and of God,Of Bethlehem’s star and Calvary’s way,Gethsemane—the bloody sod,Death, darkness, resurrection-day.She sang of Mary—Mother blest,Her sweetest carols were of thee!Close folded to thy loving breastHow fair her home in heaven must be!
She sang of Love—the love whose firesBurn with a pure and gentle flame,No passion lights of wild desiresRed with the lurid glow of shame.She sang of angels, and their wingsSeemed rustling through each soft refrain;Gladness and sorrow, kindred thingsShe wove in many a tender strain.She sang of Heaven and of God,Of Bethlehem’s star and Calvary’s way,Gethsemane—the bloody sod,Death, darkness, resurrection-day.She sang of Mary—Mother blest,Her sweetest carols were of thee!Close folded to thy loving breastHow fair her home in heaven must be!
She sang of Love—the love whose firesBurn with a pure and gentle flame,No passion lights of wild desiresRed with the lurid glow of shame.
She sang of Love—the love whose fires
Burn with a pure and gentle flame,
No passion lights of wild desires
Red with the lurid glow of shame.
She sang of angels, and their wingsSeemed rustling through each soft refrain;Gladness and sorrow, kindred thingsShe wove in many a tender strain.
She sang of angels, and their wings
Seemed rustling through each soft refrain;
Gladness and sorrow, kindred things
She wove in many a tender strain.
She sang of Heaven and of God,Of Bethlehem’s star and Calvary’s way,Gethsemane—the bloody sod,Death, darkness, resurrection-day.
She sang of Heaven and of God,
Of Bethlehem’s star and Calvary’s way,
Gethsemane—the bloody sod,
Death, darkness, resurrection-day.
She sang of Mary—Mother blest,Her sweetest carols were of thee!Close folded to thy loving breastHow fair her home in heaven must be!
She sang of Mary—Mother blest,
Her sweetest carols were of thee!
Close folded to thy loving breast
How fair her home in heaven must be!
I was very stupid in my youth, and am still far from being sharp. I could not master knotty questions like other boys; so this natural deficiency had to be supplemented by some plan that would facilitate the acquisition of knowledge. The advantage to be derived from a garrulous preceptor, whose mind was stored with all sorts of learning without dogmatism or hard formularies, were fully appreciated by my parents. John O’Neil was a very old man when I was a boy, and he was just the person qualified to impart an astonishing quantity of all sorts of facts, and perhaps fancies. I hold him in affectionate remembrance though he be dead over twenty-five years, and rests near the remains of his favorite hero, O’Connell, in Glasnevin Cemetery. When he became the chief architect of my intellectual structure, I thought him the most learned man in the world. On account of my dulness, he adopted the method of sermonizing to me instead of giving me unintelligible lessons to be learned out of books. I took a great fancy to him, because I found him exceedingly interesting, and he evinced a strong liking for me because I was docile. We became inseparable companions, notwithstanding the great discrepancy in our years. His tall, erect, lank figure and lantern jaw were to me the physiological signs of profundity, firmness, and power, and his white head was the symbol of wisdom. Our tastes—well, I had no tastes save such as he chose to awaken in me, and hence there came to be very soon a great similitude in our respective inclinations. I was like a ball of wax, a sheet of paper, or any other original impressionable thing you may name, in his hands for ten years, after which very probably I began to harden, though I was not conscious of the process. However, the large fund of knowledge that he imparted to me crystallized, as it were, and became fixed in my possession as firmly as if it had been elaborately achieved by a severe mental training. After I went to college he was still my friend, and rejoiced in my subsequent successes, and followed me with a jealous eye and a sort of parental anxiety in my foreign travels, and even in death he did not forget me, for he made me the custodian of his great heaps of literary productions, all in manuscript, embracing sketches, diaries, notes of travel, learned fragments on scientific and scholastic topics, essays, tales, letters, the beginnings and the endings and the middles of books on history, politics, and polemics, pieces of pamphlets and speeches, with a miscellaneous lot of poetry in all measures. He was a great, good man, who never had what is called an aim in life, but he certainly had an aimafterlife; and yet no one could esteem the importance of this pilgrimage more than he did. He would frequently boast of being heterodox on that point. “You will hear,” he would remark, “people depreciating this life as a matter of little concern. Don’t allow their sophistryto have much weight with you. The prevalent opinions which are flippantly spoken thereon will not stand the test of sound Christian reasoning. That part of human existence which finds its scene and scope of exertion in this life is filled with eternal potentialities. You have heard it said that man wants but little here below. Where else does he want it? Here is where he wants everything. Then do not hesitate to ask, but be careful not to ask amiss. When the battle is over, it will be too late to make requisitions for auxiliaries. If you conquer, assistance will not be wanted; if you are defeated, assistance cannot reach you. The fight cannot be renewed; the victory or defeat will be final. This life is immense. You cannot think too much of it, cannot estimate it too highly. A minute has almost an infinite value. Man wants much here, and wants it all the time.” I thought his language at that time fantastical; now I regard it as profound. From a survey of his own aimless career, it is evident he did not reduce the good of earthly existence of which he spoke to any sort of money value. Those elements and forces of life to which he attached such deep significance and importance could not have their equivalent in currency, nor in comforts, nor in real estate, nor even in fame. My old preceptor had spent most of his youth in travelling, and the picturesque meanderings of the Rhine furnished subjects for many of his later recollections. I recall now with a melancholy regret the many pleasant evenings I enjoyed listening to his narratives of travel on that historic river, and in imagination sat with him on the Drachenfels’ crest, looking down upon scenes made memorable by the lives and struggles of countless heroes and the crowds of humanity that came and went through the course of a hundred generations—some leaving their mark, and others erasing it again; some leaving a smile behind them on the face of the country, and others a scar. He loved to talk about the beautiful city of Bonn, where he had spent some years, it being the most attractive place, he said, from Strasbourg to the sea—for learning was cheap there, and so were victuals—the only things he found indispensable to a happy life. He would glide into a monologue of dramatic glow and fervor in reciting how he procured access to the extensive library of its new university, and, crawling up a step-ladder, would perch himself on top like a Hun, who, after a sleep of a thousand years, had resurrected himself, gathered his bones from the plains of Chalons, and having procured a second-hand suit of modern clothes from a Jew in Cologne, traced with eager avidity the vicissitudes of war and empire since the days of Attila. It was there, no doubt, he discovered the materials of this curious paper, which I found among his literary remains. Whether he gathered the materials himself, or merely transcribed the work of some previous writer, I am unable to determine. Without laying any claim to critical acumen, I must confess it appears to me to be a meritorious piece, and I picked it out, because I thought it unique and brief, for submission to the more extensive experience and more impartial judgment ofThe Catholic World’sreaders. Having entire control of these productions of my friend and preceptor, I took the liberty of substituting modern phraseology for what was antique, and of putting the sketchin such style that the most superficial reader will have no difficulty in running it over. Objection may be raised to the title on the score of fitness. I did not feel authorized to change it, believing the one chosen by the judgment of my old friend as suitable as any I could substitute.
In the year 1250 the mind of man was as restless and impatient of restraint as now, and some people in Bonn, under a quiet exterior, nursed in their bosoms latent volcanoes of passion, and indulged the waywardness of rebellious fancy to a degree that would have proved calamitous to the placid flow of life and thought could instrumentality for action have been found. There is indubitable proof that the principle of the Reformation, which three hundred years later burst through the environment of dogma and spread like a flood of lava over Europe, existed actively in Bonn in the year named, and would have arrived at mature strength if nature had not interposed an impassable barrier to the proceeding. It is hard to rebel against nature, and it is madness to expect success in such a revolt. Fourteen men, whose names have come down to us, gave body and tone, and a not very clearly defined purpose, to this untimely uprising against the inevitable in Bonn. How many others were in sympathy or in active affiliation with them is not shown. Those fourteen were bold spirits, who labored under the misfortune of having come into the world three or four centuries too soon. They were great men out of place. There is an element of rebellion in great spirits which only finds its proper antidote in the stronger and more harmonious principle of obedience. Obedience is the first condition of creatures. Those fourteen grew weary of listening to the Gospel preached every Sunday from the pulpit of S. Remigius, when they attended Mass with the thousands of their townsmen. The Scriptures, both New and Old, were given out in small doses, with an abundant mixture of explanation and homily and salutary exhortation. Their appetites craved a larger supply of Scripture, and indeed some of them were so unreasonable as to desire the reading of the whole book, from Genesis to Revelations, at one service. “Let us,” said Giestfacher, “have it all. No one is authorized to give a selection from the Bible and hold back the rest. It is our feast, and we have a right to the full enjoyment thereof.”
“Well,” said Heuck, his neighbor, to whom he addressed the remonstrance; “go to the scrivener’s and purchase a copy and send your ass to carry it home. Our friend Schwartz finished a fine one last week. It can be had for sixteen hundred dollars. When you have it safe at home, employ a reader, who will be able to mouth it all off for you in fifty hours, allowing a few intervals for refreshment, but none for sleep.” And Heuck laughed, or rather sneered, at Giestfacher as he walked away.
Giestfacher was a reformer, however, and was not to be put down in that frivolous manner. He had been a student himself with the view of entering the ministry, but, being maliciously charged with certain grave irregularities, his prospects in that direction were seriously clouded, and in a moment of grand though passionate self-assertion he threw up his expectations and abandoned the idea of entering the church, but instead took to theworld. He was a reformer from his infancy, and continually quarrelled with his family about the humdrum state of things at home; was at enmity with the system of municipal government at Bonn; and held very animated controversies with the physicians of the place on the system of therapeutics then pursued, insisting strongly that all diseases arose from bad blood, and that a vivisection with warm wine would prove a remedy for everything. He lacked professional skill to attempt an experiment in the medical reforms he advocated; besides, that department would not admit of bungling with impunity. For municipal reforms he failed in power, and the reward in fame or popular applause that might follow successful operations in that limited sphere of action was not deemed equivalent to the labor. But in the field of religion there was ample room for all sorts of tentative processes without danger; and, in addition to security, notoriety might be obtained by being simplyoutré. He had settled upon religious reform, and his enthusiasm nullified the cautionary suggestions of his reason, and reduced mountains of difficulty to the insignificant magnitude of molehills; even Heuck could be induced to adopt his views by cogent reasoning and much persuasion. Enthusiasm is allied to madness—a splendid help, but a dangerous guide.
Giestfacher used his tongue, and in the course of a year had made twelve or fourteen proselytes. Those who cannot enjoy the monotony of life and the spells ofennuithat attack the best-regulated temperaments, fly to novelty for relief. The fearful prospect of an unknown and nameless grave and an oblivious future drives many restless spirits into experiments in morals and in politics as well as in natural philosophy, in the vain hope of rescuing their names from the “gulf of nothingness” that awaits mediocrity. The new reformers, zealous men and bold, met in Giestfacher’s house on Corpus Christi in 1251, the minutes of which meeting are still extant; and from that record I learn there were present Stein the wheelwright, Lullman the baker, Schwartz the scrivener, Heuck the armorer, Giestfacher the cloth merchant, Braunn, another scrivener, Hartzwein the vintner, Blum the advocate, Werner, another scrivener, Reudlehuber, another scrivener, Andersen, a stationer, Esch the architect, Dusch the monk, discarded by his brethren for violations of discipline, and Wagner the potter. Blum was appointed to take an account of the proceedings, and Giestfacher was made president of the society.
“We are all agreed,” said Giestfacher, “that the Scriptures ought to be given to the people. From these divine writings we learn a time shall come when wars shall cease, and the Alemanni and the Frank and the Tartar may eat from the same plate and drink out of the same cup in peace and fraternity, and wear cloth caps instead of brass helmets, and plough the fields with their spears instead of letting daylight through each other therewith, and the shepherds shall tend their flocks with a crook and not with a bow to keep off the enemy. How can that time come unless the people be made acquainted with those promises? I believe we, who, like the apostles, number fourteen, are divinely commissioned to change things for the better, and initiate the great movements which will bring about the millennium. Let usrise up to the dignity of our position. Let us prove equal to the inspiration of the occasion. We are called together by heaven for a new purpose. The time is approaching when universal light will dispel the gloom, and peace succeed to all disturbance. Let us give the Scriptures to the people. They are the words of God, that carry healing on their wings. They are the dove that was sent out from the ark. They are the pillar of light in the desert. They are the sword of Joshua, the sling of David, the rod of Moses. Let us fourteen give them to the people, and start out anew, like the apostles from Jerusalem, to overturn the idols of the times and emancipate the nations. We have piled up heaps of stones in every town and monuments of brass, and still men are not changed. We see them still lying, warring, hoarding riches, and making gods of their bellies—all of which is condemned by the word of God. What will change all this? I say, let the piles of stone and the monuments of brass slide, and give the Scriptures a chance. Let us give them to the people, and the reign of brotherhood and peace will commence, wars shall cease, nation will no longer rise up against nation, rebellion will erect its horrid front no more. Men will cease hoarding riches and oppressing the poor. There will be no more robbing rings in corporate towns, and men in power will not blacken their character and imperil the safety of the state by nepotism. The whole world will become pure. No scandals will arise in the church, and there will be no blasphemy or false swearing, and Christian brethren shall not conspire for each other’s ruin.”
“We see,” remarked Heuck, “that those who have the Scriptures are no better than other people. They too are given to lying, hoarding riches, warring one against another, and making gods of their bellies. How is that?”
“Yes,” said Blum, “I know three scriveners of this town who boast of having transcribed twenty Bibles each, and they get drunk thrice a week and quarrel with their wives; and there’s Giebricht, the one-legged soldier, who can repeat the Scriptures until you sleep listening to him, says he killed nine men in battle and wounded twenty others. The Scriptures did not make him very peaceful. The loss of a leg had a more quieting effect on him than all his memorizing of the sacred books.”
“We did not get together,” said Werner, “to discuss that phase of the subject. It was well understood, and thereunto agreed a month ago, that the spread of the Scriptures was desirable; and to this end we met, that means wise and effective may be devised whereby we can supply every one with the word of God, that all may search therein for the correct and approved way of salvation.”
“So be it,” said Dusch the monk.
“Hear, hear!” said Schwartz.
“Let us agree like brethren,” said Braunn.
“We are subject to one spirit,” said Hartzwein the vintner, “and all moved by the same inspiration. Discord is unseemly. We must not dispute on the subject of drunkenness. Let us have the mature views of Brother Giestfacher, and his plans. The end is already clear if the means be of approved piety and really orthodox. In addition to the Scriptures, I would rejoice very much to see prayer more generallypractised. We ought to do nothing without prayer. Let us first of all consult the Lord. What says Brother Blum?”
Blum rose and said it was a purely business meeting. He had no doubt it ought to have been opened with prayer. It was an old and salutary practice that came down from the days of the apostles, and Paul recommended it. But as they were now in the midst of business, he thought it would be as wise and as conformable with ancient Christian and saintly practice to go on with their work, and rest satisfied with mental ejaculation, as to inaugurate a formal prayer-meeting.
Esch thought differently; he held that prayer was always in season.
Reudlehuber meekly said that the Scriptures showed there was a time for everything, whence it was plain that prayer might be out of place as well as penitential tears on some occasions. It would not look well for a man to rise up in the midst of a marriage feast and, beating his breast, cry outMea culpa.
“We have too many prayers in the church,” said Giestfacher, “and not enough of Scripture; that is the trouble with us. Brethren must rise above the weaknesses of the mere pietist. Moses was no pietist; he was a great big, leonine character. We must be broad and liberal in our views; not given to fault-finding nor complaining. Pray whenever you feel like it, and drink when you have a mind to. Noah got drunk. I’d rather be the prodigal son, and indulge in a hearty natural appetite for awhile, than be his cautious, speculating, avaricious brother, who had not soul enough most likely to treat his acquaintances to a pint of wine once in his lifetime. Great men get tipsy. Great nations are bibulous. We are not here to make war on those who drink wine and cultivate the grape, nor are we authorized in making war on weavers because Dives was damned for wearing fine linen. It is our mission to spread the Scriptures. The world wants light. He is a benefactor of mankind who puts two rays where there was only one before.”
“Let us hear your plans, Brother Giestfacher,” cried out a number of voices simultaneously.
In response, Brother Giestfacher stated that there were no plans necessary. All that was to be done was to circulate the Scriptures. Let us get one hundred thousand sheets of vellum to begin with, and set a hundred scriveners to work transcribing copies of the Bible, and then distribute these copies among the people.
The plan was plain and simple and magnificent, Braunn thought, but there were not ten thousand sheets of vellum in the town nor in the whole district, and much of that would be required for civil uses; besides, the number of sheep in the neighborhood had been so reduced by the recent war that vellum would be scarce and costly for ten years to come.
Werner lamented the irremediable condition of the world when the free circulation of the word of God depended on the number of sheep, and the number of sheep was regulated by war, and war by the ambition, jealousy, or pride of princes.
“It is painfully true,” said Heuck, “that the world stands in sad need of reform, if souls are to be rescued from their spiritual perils only by the means proposed in the magnificent sheep-skin scheme of BrotherGiestfacher.” It was horrible to think that the immortal part of man was doomed to perish, to be snuffed out, as it were, in eternal darkness, because soldiers had an unholy appetite for mutton.
Braunn said the work could be started on three or four thousand hides, and ere they were used up a new supply might arrive from some unexpected quarter.
Esch said that they ought to have faith; the Hand that fed the patriarch in the desert would provide vellum if he was prayerfully besought for assistance.Hewould be willing to commence on one sheet, feeling convinced there would be more than enough in the end.
Blum did not take altogether so sanguine a view of things as Brother Esch. He was especially dubious about that vellum supply; not that he questioned the power of Providence at all, but it struck him that it would be just as well and as easy for the society to prayerfully ask for an ample supply of ready-made Bibles as to expect a miracle in prepared sheep-skin; and he was still further persuaded that if the books were absolutely necessary to one’s salvation, they would be miraculously given. But he did not put the movement on that ground. It is very easy for men, and particularly idiotic men, to convince themselves that God will answer all their whims and caprices by the performance of a miracle. We are going upon the theory that the work is good, just as it is good to feed the hungry and clothe the naked. We expect to find favor in heaven because we endeavor to do a work of charity according to our honest impression.
“How many persons,” inquired Heuck, “do you propose to supply with complete copies of the Scriptures?”
“Every one in the district,” replied Giestfacher.
“Brother Dusch,” continued Heuck, “how many heads of families are there in the district? Your abbot had the census taken a few month’s ago, while you were yet in grace and favor at the monastery.”
Brother Dusch said he heard there were twenty-two thousand from the Drachenfels to within six miles of Cologne, but all of them could not read.
“We will send out,” said Giestfacher enthusiastically, “an army of colporteurs, who will distribute and read at the same time.”
“I perceive,” said Blum, “that this discussion will never stop. New avenues of thought and new mountains of objection are coming to view at every advance in the debate. Let us do something first, and talk afterwards. To supply twenty-two thousand persons with expensive volumes will require considerably more than mere resolves and enthusiasm. I propose that we buy up all the vellum in the city to-day, and that we all go security for the payment. I propose also that we employ Brothers Braunn, Schwartz, Werner, and Reudlehuber to commence transcribing, and that we all go security for their pay. Unless we begin somewhere, we can never have anything done. What says Brother Giestfacher?”
Giestfacher said it did not become men of action, reformers who proposed to turn over the world and inaugurate a new era and a new life and a new law, to stop at trifles or to consider petty difficulties. The design that had been developed at that meeting contemplated a sweeping change. Instead of havinga few books, here and there, at every church, cathedral, monastery, and market-place, learnedly and laboriously expounded by saints of a thousand austerities and of penitential garb, every house would be supplied, and there should be no more destitution in the land. The prophecies and the gospels and the mysteries of revelation would be on the lips of sucking babes, and the people who stood at the street-corners and at the marts of trade, the tiller of the soil, the pedler, the sailor, the old soldier, and the liberated prisoner, together with the man who sold fish and the woman who sold buttermilk, would stand up and preach the Gospel and display a mission, schoolboys would discuss the contents of that book freely, and even the inmates of lunatic asylums would expound it with luminous aptitude and startling fancy. The proposition of Brother Blum met his entire approval. He would pledge everything he had, and risk even life itself, to start the new principle, so that the world might bask in sunshine and not in shadow. It was about time that men had their intellects brightened up some. Even in the days of the apostles those pious men did not do their whole duty. They labored with much assiduity and conscientiousness, but they neglected to adopt measures looking to the spread of the Scriptures. He had no doubt but they fell a long way short of their mission, and were now enduring the pangs of a peck of purgatorial coal for their remissness. There were good men who perhaps found heaven without interesting themselves in the multiplication of copies of the Bible. They were not called to that work; but what was to be thought of those who had the call, the power, the skill, and yet neglected to spread the word. He believed SS. Gregory Nazianzen, Athanasius, Jerome, Chrysostom, Augustine, and others of those early doctors of the church, had a fearful account to render for having neglected the Scriptures. S. Paul, too, was not free from censure. It was true he wrote a few things, but he took no thought of multiplying copies of his epistles.
“How many copies,” inquired Heuck, “do you think S. Paul ought to have written of his letters before you would consider him blameless?”
“He ought,” said Giestfacher, “to have written all the time instead of making tents. ‘How many copies’ is a professional question which I will leave the scriveners to answer. I may remark that it would evidently be unprofitable for us to enter on a minute and detailed discussion on that point here. It is our duty to supplement the shortcomings of those early workers in the field, and finish what they failed to accomplish. They were bound to give the new principle a fair start. The plan suggested was the best, simplest, and clearest, and he hoped every one of the brethren would give it a hearty and cordial support.”
The principle of communism, or the right of communities to govern themselves in certain affairs and to carry on free trade with certain other communities, had been granted the previous century, and Bonn was one of the towns that enjoyed the privilege; but the people still respected religion and did no trafficking on holydays. Giestfacher could not therefore purchase the vellum on Corpus Christi, but had to wait till next day, at whichtime he could not conveniently find the other members of the new Bible society, and, fearing that news of their project would get abroad and raise the price of the article he wanted, he hastened to the various places where it was kept for sale, and bought all of it up in the course of two hours, paying his own money in part and giving his bond for the balance. The parchment was delivered to the four scriveners, who gathered their families about them, and all the assistants (journeymen) that could be found in the town, and proceeded with the transcribing of the Bible. At the next meeting each scrivener reported that he had about half a book ready, that the work was going rapidly and smoothly forward, and that the scribes were enthusiastic at the prospect of brisk business and good pay. The report was deemed very encouraging. It went to show that the society could have four Bibles every two weeks, or about one hundred a year, and that in the course of two hundred and twenty years every head of a family in the district could be provided with a Bible of his own. The scriveners stated, moreover, that they had neglected their profane business, for which they could have got cash, to proceed in the sacred work, and as there were several people depending on them for means of living, a little money would be absolutely necessary with the grace of God.
Giestfacher also stated that he spent all the money he had in part payment for the parchment, and pledged his property for the balance. His business was somewhat crippled already in consequence of the outlay, and he expected to have part of the burden assumed by every one of the society.
Werner said he had fifteen transcribers working for him, and each one agreed to let one-third of the market value of his work remain in the hands of the society as a subscription to the good work, but the other two-thirds would have to be paid weekly, as they could not live without means. They were all poor, and depending solely on their skill in transcribing for a living.
The debate was long, earnest, eloquent, and more or less pious.
Blum made a motion that the bishop of the diocese and the Pope be made honorary members of the society. Giestfacher opposed this with eloquent acrimony, saying it was a movement outside of all sorts of church patronage; that it was designed to supersede churches and preaching; for when every man had the Bible he would be a church unto himself, and would not need any more teaching. He also had a resolution adopted pledging each and every member to constitute himself a colporteur of the Bible, and to read and peddle it in sun and rain; and it was finally settled that a subscription should be taken up; that each member of the society be constituted a collector, and proceed at once to every man who loved the Lord and gloried in the Gospel to get his contribution.
At the next meeting the brethren were all present except Dusch, who was reported as an absconder with the funds he had collected, and was said to be at that moment in Cologne, drunk perhaps. Four complete Bibles were presented as the result of two weeks’ hard labor and pious effort and the aggregate production of forty-five writers. The financial reports on the whole were favorable; and the scriveners were provided with sufficient means and encouragement to begin another setof four Bibles. Brother Giestfacher was partially secured in his venture for the parchment, while it was said that the article had doubled in price during the past fortnight, and very little of it could be got from Cologne, as there was a scarcity of it there also, coupled with an extraordinary demand. It was also stated that the monks at the monastery had to erase the works of Virgil in order to find material for making a copy of the homilies of S. John Chrysostom which was wanted for the Bishop of Metz. In like manner, it was decided to erase the histories of Labanius and Zozirnus, as being cheaper than procuring original parchment on which to transcribe a fine Greek copy of the whole Bible, to take the place of one destroyed by the late war. The heavy purchase that Brother Giestfacher had made created a panic in the vellum market that was already felt in the heart of Burgundy. The scriveners’ business had also experienced a revulsion. People of the world who wanted testamentary and legal documents, deeds, contracts, and the like properly engrossed, were offering fabulous sums to have the work done, as most of the professionals of that class were now engaged by the society, and had no time to do any other sort of writing. A debate sprung up as to the proper disposition to be made of the four Bibles on hand, and also as to the manner of beginning and conducting the distribution. In view of the demand for the written word, and of the scarcity of copies and the high price of parchment, it was suggested by Heuck to sell them, and divide the proceeds among the poor and the cripples left after the late war. Five hundred dollars each could be readily got for the books, he said, and it was extremely doubtful whether those who would get them as gifts from the society would resist the temptation of selling them to the first purchaser that came along. In addition to this heavy reason in favor of his line of policy, Heuck suggested the possibility of trouble arising when they should come to grapple with the huge difficulties of actual distribution; to give one of those volumes, he said, would be like giving an estate and making a man wealthy for life.
Giestfacher said it would be impracticable to make any private distribution among the destitute for some time. The guilds of coopers, tailors, shoemakers, armorers, fullers, tanners, masons, artificers, and others should be first supplied; and in addition to the Bible kept chained in the market-place for all who wished to read, he would have one placed at the town-pump and one at the town-house, so that the thirsty might also drink the waters of life, and those who were seeking justice at the court might ascertain the law of God before going in.
Blum said another collection would have to be raised to erect a shed over the Bibles that were proposed to be placed at the town-pump and at the town-house and to pay for suitable chains and clasps to secure them from the depredations of the pilfering.
Esch was of opinion that another subscription could not be successfully taken up until their work had produced manifest fruit for good. The people have much faith, but when they find salt mixed with their drink instead of honey, credulity is turned into disgust. A Bible chained to the town-pump will be a sad realization of their extravagant hopes. Every manwho subscribed five dollars expects to get a book worth five hundred, an illuminated Bible fit for a cathedral church. He warned them that they were getting into a labyrinth, and that they would have to resort to prayer yet to carry them through in safety. Werner thought it would be wisest to pursue a quiescent policy for some time, and to forego the indulgence of their anxious desire for palpable results until they should be in a condition to make an impression. He advocated the wisdom of delay. They also serve, he said, who only stand and wait, and it might prove an unwise proceeding to come out with their public exhibition just then. In a few months, when thirty or forty Bibles would be on hand, a larger number than could be found in any library in the world, they might hope, by the show of so much labor, to create enthusiasm.
“But still,” urged Heuck, “you will have the difficulty to contend with—who is to get them?”
“There will,” remarked Blum, “be a greater difficulty to contend with about that time: the settlement of obligations for parchment and the pay of the scriveners who are employed in transcribing. Our means at present, even if we pay the scriveners but one-third their wages, will not suffice to bring out twenty volumes. So we are just in this difficulty: in order to do something, we must have means, and in order to get means, we must do something. It is a sort of vicious circle projected from logic into finance. It will take the keen-edged genius of Brother Giestfacher to cut this knot.”
“The work,” said Giestfacher, “in which we are engaged is of such merit that it will stand of itself. I have no fears of ultimate triumph. If you all fail, God and I will carry it on. Heaven is in it. I am in it. It must succeed. I am a little oldish, I confess, but there is twenty years of work in me still. I feel my foot sufficiently sure to tread the perilous path of this adventure to the goal.”
“Let us,” interposed Schwartz, “stop this profitless debate, and give a cheer to Brother Giestfacher. He is the blood and the bone of this movement. We are in with him. We are all in the same boat. If we have discovered a pusillanimous simpleton among us, it is not too late to cast him out. I feel my gorge and my strength rise together, and I swear to you by S. Remigius, brethren, that I am prepared to sink or swim, and whoever attempts to scuttle the ship shall himself perish first.”
Two or three other brethren, feeling the peculiar inspiration of the moment, rose up and, stamping their feet on the floor, proclaimed their adherence to the principles of the society, and vowed to see it through to the end.
This meeting then adjourned.
There is no minute of any subsequent meeting to be found among the manuscripts that I have consulted, but I discovered a statement made by Heuck, dated six months later, who, being called before the municipal authorities to testify what he knew about certain transactions of a number of men that had banded themselves together secretly for the purpose of creating a panic in the vellum market, and of disturbing the business of the scriveners, said he was one of fourteen citizens interested in the promulgation of the Gospel free to the poor. That, after five or six meetings, he left the society in company with two others; that two ofthe members became obnoxious, and were expelled—the one, Dusch, for embezzling money collected for Scripture-writing and Scripture-diffusing purposes, the other, Werner, for having retained one of their volumes, and disposed of it to the lord of Drachenfels for four hundred dollars; that they did not pursue and prosecute these delinquents for fear of bringing reproach on the project; and then he went on to state: “I left the society voluntarily and in disgust. We had fourteen Bibles on hand, but could not agree about their distribution. They were too valuable to give away for nothing, and it was discovered that they were all written in Latin, and not in the vernacular, and they would prove of as little value to the great mass of people for whom they were originally designed as if they had been written in Hebrew. In addition to this I found, for I understand the language perfectly, that no two of them were alike, and, in conjunction with scrivener Schwartz, I minutely examined one taken at random from the pile, and compared it with the volume at the Cathedral. We found fifteen hundred discrepancies. In some places whole sentences were left out. In others, words were made to express a different sense from the original. In others, letters were omitted or put in redundantly, in such a way as to change the meaning; and the grammatical structure was villanously bad. Seeing that the volumes were of no use as a representation of the word of God, and being conscientiously convinced that the books contained poison for the people instead of medicine, I made a motion in meeting to have them all burned. Schwartz opposed it on the ground that they were innoxious anyhow, there being none of the common people capable of understanding the language in which they were written, and, though they were a failure as Bibles, the vellum might be again used; and as the scriveners were not paid for their labor, they had a claim upon the volumes. The scriveners got the books, to which, in my opinion, they had no just claim, for the villanous, bad work they did on them deserved censure and not pay. I have heard since that some of those scriveners made wealth by selling the books to Englishmen for genuine and carefully prepared transcripts from authorized texts. The president and founder of the society, Giestfacher, is now in jail for debt, he having failed to meet his obligations for the vellum he purchased when he took it into his head to enlighten mankind—more especially that portion of it that dwells on the Rhine adjacent to the city of Bonn—by distributing corrupt copies of Latin Bibles to poor people who are not well able to read their own language. The ‘good work’ still occupies the brains and energies of three or four enthusiasts, who have already arrived at the conclusion that the apostles were in league with hell to keep the people ignorant, because they did not give every man a copy of the Bible. The founder sent me a letter two days ago, in which he complains of being deserted by his companions in his extremity. His creditors have seized on all his goods, and there is a considerable sum yet unpaid. He blames the Pope and the bishop in unmeasured terms for this; says it is a conspiracy to keep the Bible from the people. He sees no prospect of being released unless the members of the society come to his speedy relief. The principles, hesays, for which he suffers will yet triumph. The time will come when Bibles will be multiplied by some cheap and easy process. Until then, the common run of humanity must be satisfied to be damned, drawing what little consolation they may from the expectation that their descendants a few centuries hence will enjoy the slim privilege of reading Bibles prepared with as little regard to accuracy as these were. I am sorry to see such a noble intellect as Giestfacher undoubtedly possesses show signs of aberration. The entire failure of his project was more than he could bear. He had centred his hopes upon it. He indulged dreams of fame and greatness arising out of the triumph of his idea. Esch has become an atheist. He says the Christian’s God would not have given a book to be the guide and dependence of man for salvation, and yet allow nature, an inferior creation, to interpose insuperable barriers to its promulgation. Every time a sheep-skin is destroyed, says Esch, a community is damned. The dearness and scarcity of parchment keep the world in ignorance. Braunn says the world cannot be saved except by a special revelation to every individual, for there is hardly a copy of the Bible without errors, so that whether every human creature got one or not, they would be still unsafe. One of the common herd must learn Latin and Greek and Hebrew well, and then spend a lifetime tracing up, through all its changes, transcriptions, and corruptions of idiom, one chapter, or at most one book, and die before he be fully assured of the soundness of one text, a paragraph, a line, a word. In fact, says Braunn, there can be no certainty about anything. Language may have had altogether a different meaning twelve hundred years ago to what it has now. Braunn and Schwartz and myself wanted to have a committee of five of our number appointed to revise and correct the text of each book that was produced by comparing it with such Greek and Hebrew copies as were represented of sound and correct authority; but Giestfacher laughed at us, saying we knew nothing of Greek or Hebrew; that we would have to hire some monks to do the job for us, which would be going back again to the very places and principles and practices against which we had revolted and protested. Moreover, continued Giestfacher, we cannot tell whether the oldest, most original copies that can be found are true in every particular. How can we know from any sort of mere human testimony that this copy or that is in accordance with what the prophets and apostles wrote. The whole Bible may be wrong as far as ourknowledge, as such, is able to testify. We are reduced tofaithin this connection and must rest on that alone.
“I thought, and so did Schwartz, that the faith of Giestfacher must be peculiar when it could accept copies as good enough and true enough after we had discovered hundreds of palpable and grievous errors in them. A book of romance would do a person of Giestfacher’s temper as well as the Bible—faith being capable of making up for all deficiencies. I saw that an extravagance of credulity, called faith, on the part of Giestfacher, led to monomania; and a predominance of irrational reason on the part of Esch had led to utter negation. I did not covet either condition, and I concluded to remain safe at anchor where I had been before, rather than longer follow those adventurersin a wild career after a fancied good—a mere phantom of their own creation. I lost twenty-five dollars by the temporary madness. That cannot be recalled. I rejoice that I lost no more, and I am grateful that the hallucination which lasted nearly a year has passed away without any permanent injury.”
The remainder of Heuck’s statement had partially faded from the parchment by time and dampness, and could not be accurately made out. Sufficient was left visible, however, to show that he expressed a desire to be held excusable for whatever injuries to souls might result from the grave errors that existed in the Bibles disseminated by the cupidity of the scriveners with the guilty knowledge of such errors.
I interested myself in rescuing from oblivion such parts of the record of those curious mediæval transactions as served to show to the people of later times what extraordinary mental and religious activity existed in those ages, when it was foolishly and stupidly thought there were but henchmen and slaves on the one side, and bloody mailed despots on the other. The arrogance of more favored epochs has characterized those days by the epithet of “dark.” Pride is apt to be blind. The characterization is unjust. All the lights of science could not come in one blaze. The people of those days looked back upon a period anterior to their own as “dark,” and those looked still further backward upon greater obscurity, as they thought. The universal boastfulness of man accounts for this increasing obscurity as we reach back into antiquity. Philosophers and poets and men of learning, thinking themselves, and wishing to have other people think them, above personal egotism, adopted the method of praising their age, and thus indirectly eulogizing, themselves; and as they could not compare their times with the future of which they knew nothing, they naturally fell into the unfilial crime of drawing disparaging comparisons with their fathers. There is an inclination, too, in the imperfection of human nature to belittle what is remote and magnify what is near at hand. Even now, men as enthusiastic and conscientious and religious as Heuck and Giestfacher and Schwartz find themselves surrounded by the same difficulties, and as deeply at a loss to advance a valid reason for their revolt and their protest.
In one of his bold Apologies[9]the great African writer Tertullian said to the rulers of the Roman Empire that “it was one and the same thing for the truth [of Christianity] to be announced to the world, and for the world to hate and persecute it.” This persecution of the church began on the very spot that was her birth-place; for soon after the ascension of our Lord the wicked Jews tried by every means to crush her. “From the days of the apostles,” wrote Tertullian in the IIId century, “the synagogue has been a source of persecutions.” At first the church was attacked by words only; but these were soon replaced by weapons, when Stephen was stoned, the apostles were thrown into prison and scourged, and all the East had risen in commotion against the Christians. The Gentiles soon followed the example of the Jews, and those persecutions which bore an official character throughout the Roman Empire, and lasted for three centuries, are commonly called the Ten General Persecutions. Besides these, there were partial persecutions at all times in some part or other of the empire. Nero, whose name is synonymous with cruelty, was the first emperor to begin a general persecution of the Christians; and Tertullian made a strong point in his favor when he cried out to the people (Apol. v.), saying, “That our troubles began at such a source, we glory; for whoever has studied his nature knows well that nothing but what is good and great was ever condemned by Nero.” This persecution began in the year 64, and lasted four years. Its pretext was the burning of Rome, the work of the emperor himself, who ambitiously desired, when he would have rebuilt the city and made it still more grand, to call it by his own name; but the plan not succeeding, he tried to avert the odium of the deed from his own person, and accused the Christians. Their extermination was decreed. The pagan historian Tacitus has mentioned, in hisAnnals(xv. 44), some of the principal torments inflicted on the Christians. He says that they were covered with the skins of wild beasts and torn to pieces by savage hounds, were crucified, were burned alive, and that some, being coated with resinous substances, were put up in the imperial garden at night to serve as human torches. TheRoman Martyrologymakes a special commemoration, on the 24th of June, of these martyrs for having all been disciples of the apostles and the firstlings of the Christian flock which the church in Rome presented to the Lord. In this persecution S. Peter was crucified with his head downwards; S. Paul was beheaded; and among the other more illustrious victims we find S. Mark the Evangelist, S. Thecla, the first martyr of her sex, SS. Gervase and Protase at Milan, S. Vitalis at Ravenna, and S. Polycetus at Saragossa in Spain. The number of the slain, and the hitherto unheard-ofcruelties practised upon them, moved to pity many of the heathen, and the sight of so much fortitude for a principle of religion was the means, through divine grace, of many conversions. After this, as after every succeeding persecution, the great truth spoken by Tertullian was exemplified: that the blood of the martyrs was the seed of Christians.
By a law of the empire, which was not revoked until nearly three hundred years afterwards, under Constantine, the profession of the Christian religion was made a capital offence. This law, it is true, was not enforced at all times, especially under benign or indifferent rulers; but it hung continually suspended over the heads of the Christians like a sword of Damocles.
The second persecution was that of Domitian, from 94 to 96. Tertullian calls him “a portion of Nero by his cruelty.” At first he only imposed heavy fines upon the wealthy Christians; but, thirsting for blood, he soon published more cruel edicts against them. Among his noblest victims were his cousin-german, Flavius Clemens, a man of consular dignity; John the Evangelist, who was thrown into a caldron of boiling oil (from which, however, he miraculously escaped unhurt); Andrew the Apostle, Dionysius the Areopagite, and Onesimus, S. Paul’s convert. Hegesippus, quoted by Eusebius in hisEcclesiastical History, has recorded a very interesting fact about the children of Jude, surnamed Thaddeus in the Gospel, telling us that, having confessed the faith under this reign, they were always honored in the church of Jerusalem, not alone as martyrs, but as relatives of Jesus Christ according to the flesh.
The third persecution was Trajan’s, from 97 to 116. In answer to a letter from his friend Pliny the Younger, who had command in Asia Minor, the emperor ordered that the Christians were not to be sought out, but that, if accused, and they remained obstinate in their faith, they were to be put to death. Under an appearance of mercy a large field was opened for the cruelty and exactions of Roman officials, which they were not slow to work. A single circumstance attests the severity of the persecution. This was that the Tiberian governor of Palestine wrote to the emperor complaining of the odious duty imposed upon him, since the Christians were forthcoming in greater numbers than he could, without tiring, have executed. The persecution was particularly severe in the East. Simeon, bishop of Jerusalem, Ignatius of Antioch, and the virgin Domitilla, who was related to three emperors, are among the more illustrious martyrs of the period.
Next came the persecution of Hadrian, lasting from 118 to about 129. We have the authority of S. Jerome for saying that it was very violent. This emperor was a coward and, perhaps as a consequence, intensely superstitious. One of his particular grievances against the Christians was that they professed a religion in which he had no share. Under him perished, with countless others, Pope Alexander I. and his priests, Eventius and Theodulus; Eustace, a celebrated general, with his wife and little children; Symphorosa and her seven sons; Zoe, with her husband and two children.
The fifth was the persecution of Marcus Aurelius. Although he was by nature well inclined, he was certainly the author of much innocent bloodshed, which may be in part ascribed to the powerful influenceof the so-called philosophers whose company and tone he affected. The persecution raged most severely among the Gauls; and elsewhere we find the illustrious names of Justin the great Apologist, Polycarp, bishop of Smyrna, and Felicitas and her seven children.
Followed the persecution of Septimius Severus, which lasted from 200 to 211, and was so extremely violent that many Christians believed Antichrist had come. It reaped from the church such distinguished persons as Pope Victor at Rome; Leonidas, father of the great Origen, at Alexandria; Irenæus and companions at Lyons; Perpetua and Felicitas in Mauritania. Egypt was particularly rich in holy martyrs.
After this one came the persecution of Maximinus, from 235 to 237. It was in the beginning more especially directed against the sacred ministers of the church. Several popes were put to death; and among the inferior clergy we find the deacon Ambrose, who was the bosom friend of Origen and one of his principal assistants in his work on the Holy Scriptures.
The persecution of Decius lasted from 249 to 251. The Christians, in spite of all repressive measures, had steadily increased in numbers; but this emperor thought to do what his predecessors had failed in, and was hardly seated on the throne before he published most cruel edicts against them. Among the more celebrated names of this persecution are those of Popes Fabian and Cornelius; Saturninus, first bishop of Toulouse; Babylas, bishop of Antioch; the famous Christopher in Lycia, about whom there is a beautiful legend; and the noble virgin Agatha in Sicily. The great scholar Origen was put to the torture during this persecution, but escaped death. Like Maximinus, this emperor singled out the heads of the various local churches, the most active and learned ministers, the highest of both sexes in the social scale, aiming less at the death than the apostasy of Christians, hoping in this way to destroy the faith; whence S. Cyprian laments in one of his epistles that the Christians suffer atrocious torments without the final consolation of martyrdom. One effect of this persecution was of immense benefit to the church in the East; for S. Paul, surnamed First Hermit, took refuge from the storm in Upper Egypt, where he peopled by his example the region around Thebes with those holy anchorites since called the Fathers of the Desert.
The ninth persecution was that of Valerian, who, although at first favorable to the Christians, became one of their greatest opposers at the instigation of their sworn enemy, Marcian. At this date we find upon the list of martyrs the eminent names of Popes Stephen and Sixtus II., Lawrence the Roman deacon, and Cyprian, the great convert and bishop of Carthage.
The persecution of Diocletian was the last and the bloodiest of all. It raged from 303 to 310. Maximian, the emperor’s colleague, had already put to death many Christians, and among others, on the 22d of September, 286, Maurice and his Theban legion, before the persecution became general throughout the Roman Empire. It began in this form at Nicomedia on occasion of a fire that consumed a part of the imperial palace, and which was maliciously ascribed to the Christians; and it is remarkablethat the two extreme persecutions of the early church should both have begun with a false charge of incendiarism. Diocletian used to sit upon his throne at Nicomedia, watching the death-pangs of his Christian subjects who were being burned, not singly, but in great crowds. Many officers and servants of his household perished, and, to distinguish them from the rest, they were dropped into the sea with large stones fastened about their necks. A special object of the persecutors was to destroy the churches and tombs of earlier martyrs, to seize the vessels used in the Holy Sacrifice, and to burn the liturgical books and the Holy Scriptures. TheRoman Martyrologymakes a particular mention on the 2d of January of those who suffered death rather than deliver up these books to the tyrant. Although innumerable copies of the Scriptures perished, not a few were saved, and new copies multiplied either by favor of the less stringent executors of the law, or because the privilege was bought by the faithful at a great price. Some years ago the German Biblical critic Tischendorf discovered on Mount Sinai a Greek codex of extraordinary antiquity and only two removes from an original of Origen. It is connected with one of the celebrated martyrs of this persecution, and bears upon what we have just said of the Sacred Scriptures. In this codex, at the end of the Book of Esther, there is a note attesting that the copy was collated with a very ancient manuscript that had itself been corrected by the hand of the blessed martyr Pamphilus, priest of Cæsarea in Palestine, while in prison, assisted by Antoninus, his fellow-prisoner, who read for him from a copy of the Hexapla of Origen, which had been revised by that author himself. The touching spectacle of these two men, both of whom gave their blood for the faith, occupied, in the midst of the inconveniences, pain, and weariness of captivity, in transcribing good copies of the Bible, is one of the many instances, discovered in every age, showing the care that the church has had to multiply and guard from error the holy written Word of God.
Among the petty sources of annoyance during this persecution, was the difficulty of procuring food, drink, or raiment that had not been offered to idols; for the pagan priests had set up statues of their divinities in all the market-places, hostelries, and shops, and at the private and public fountains. They used also to go around city and country sprinkling with superstitious lustral water the gardens, vineyards, orchards, and fields, so as to put the Christians to the greatest straits to obtain anything that had not been polluted in this manner. We learn from the Acts of S. Theodotus, a Christian tradesman of Ancyra, the obstacles he had to surmount at this time to procure pure bread and wine to be used by the priests in the Mass. We can appreciate the intense severity of this persecution in many ways; but one of the most singular proofs of it is that pagans in Spain inscribed upon a marble monument, erected in Diocletian’s honor,that he had abolished the very name of Christian. This emperor had also the rare but unenviable privilege of giving his name to a new chronological period, called by the pagans, in compliment to his bloody zeal for their rites, the Era of Diocletian; but the Christians called it the Era of the Martyrs. It beganon the 29th of August, 284, and was long in use in Egypt and Abyssinia. Some of the more renowned victims of this persecution are Sebastian, an imperial officer; Agnes, a Roman virgin; Lucy, a virgin of Syracuse, and the Forty Martyrs of Sebaste.
It may be interesting to note briefly the chief causes of so much cruel bloodshed, even under princes of undoubted moderation in the general government of affairs, as were Trajan, Marcus Aurelius, Antoninus the Pious, and a few others.
The most continual, if not the deepest, source of persecution were the passions of the populace. Calumny of the subtlest and most popular kind, and pressed at all times with patient effort, had so inflamed the minds of the brutal lower classes that only a word or a sign was required to set them upon the Christians. These were called disloyal to the empire, unfriendly to the princes, of a foreign religion, people who refused to fall into the ways of the majority, and enemies of the human race. From the remains of ancient histories, from the Acts of martyrs, from pagan inscriptions, and from other sources, more than fifty-seven different opprobrious qualifications, applied to the Christians as a body, have been counted up. But when particular calumnies became any way stale, the Christians could always be accused as the cause of every calamity that befell the state; so that, in the words of Tertullian (Apol. xl.), “If the Tiber exceeded its limits, if the Nile did not rise to irrigate the fields, if the rain failed to fall, if the earth quaked, if famine or pestilence scourged the land, at once the cry was raised, Christians to the lions!”
The next most constant source of trouble was the pernicious influence of the Philosophers—a set of men who pretended to be seekers after wisdom, and distinguished themselves from the vulgar by a certain style of dress. Puffed up as they were with their own knowledge, nothing irritated their pride so much as that men of the despised Christian class should presume to dispute their doctrines and teach that profane philosophy was naught, since man could not be made perfect by human wisdom, but only by the testimony of Christ who was crucified. Among the Christians, too, a special order of men whom we call Apologists, and among whom we count Justin, Tertullian, Tatian, Arnobius, Minutius Felix, Origen, Aristides, Quadratus, Athenagoras, and Miltiades the chief, exposed in their eloquent writings the vanity, contradictions, and vices of their opponents, succeeding sometimes in silencing false accusations, and even in arresting the course of persecution. Their apologies and memorials form one of the most instructive branches of early Christian literature, and are a considerable compensation for the loss of so many Acts of martyrs and other venerable documents destroyed by the pagans or which have otherwise perished.
The third great cause of persecution was found (to use a comparatively modern word) in the Erastianism of the Roman Empire. The emperor was, by right of the purple, high-pontiff, and no religion was recognized that did not profess its existence and authority dependent upon the state. Naturally, a religion whose followers would reply to every iniquitous command, “We ought to obey God rather than men,” could expect no mercy, but only continual war.
Sometimes the Christians were put to death in the same manner as the common malefactors, such as by decapitation, crucifixion, or scourging; sometimes in the manner reserved for particular classes of criminals, as being hurled down a precipice, drowned, devoured by wild beasts, left to starve. But sometimes, also, the exquisite cruelty of the persecutors delighted to feed upon the sufferings of its victims, and make dying as long and painful as possible. Thus, there are innumerable examples of Christians being flayed alive, the skin being neatly cut off in long strips, and pepper or vinegar rubbed into the raw flesh; or slowly crushed between two large stones; or having molten lead poured down the throat. Some Christians were tied to stakes in the ground and gored to death by wild bulls, or thinly smeared with honey and exposed under a broiling sun to the insects which would be attracted; some were tied to the tails of vicious horses and dragged to pieces some were sewed up in sacks with vipers, scorpions, or other venomous things, and thrown into the water; some had their members violently torn from the trunk of the body; some were tortured by fire in ways almost unknown to the most savage Indians of America; some were slowly scourged to death with whips made of several bronze chainlets, at the extremity of each of which was a jagged bullet; while jerking out of the teeth in slow succession; cutting off the nose, ears, lips, and breasts; tearing of the flesh with hot pincers; sticking sharp sticks up under the finger-nails; being held suspended, head downward, over a smoking fire; stretching upon a rack, and breaking upon the wheel, were some only of the commonest tortures that preceded the final death-stroke by sword or lance. Many instruments used in tormenting the martyrs have been found at different times, and are now carefully preserved in collections of Christian antiquities; and from these, from early-written descriptions, and from the rude representations on the tombs of martyrs in the Catacombs, it is known positively that over one hundred different modes of torture were used upon the Christians.
From the earliest period particular pains were taken by the pastors of the church to have the remains of the martyrs collected and some account of their sufferings consigned to letters; and Pope S. Clement, a disciple of the Apostle Peter, instituted a college of notaries, one for each of the seven ecclesiastical districts into which he had divided Rome, with the special charge of collecting with diligence all the information possible about the martyrs. They were not to pass over even the minutest circumstances of their confession of faith and death. This attendance on the last moments of the martyrs was often accompanied by great personal risk, or at least a heavy expense in the way of buying the good-will of venal officers; but it was a thing of the utmost importance, in view of the church’s doctrine concerning the veneration and invocation of saints, that nothing should be left undone which prudence would suggest to leave it beyond a doubt that the martyrs had confessed thetruefaith, and had suffered deathforthe faith. The pagans soon discovered the value that was set upon such documents, and very many of them were seized and destroyed. The fact that the Actof the martyrs were objects of careful search is so well attested—as is also the other fact, that an immense number perished—that it is a wonder and a grace of divine Providence how any, however few comparatively, have come down to us. It has been calculated that at least five million Christians—men, women, and children—were put to death for the faith during the first three centuries of the church.
The French historian Ampère has very justly remarked that amidst the moral decay of the Roman Empire, when all else was lust and despotism, the Christians alone saved the dignity of human nature; and the Spaniard Balmes, when treating of the progress of individuality under the influence of Catholicity (European Civilization, ch. xxiii.), remarks that it was the martyrs who first gave the great example of proclaiming that “the individual should cease to acknowledge power when power exacts from him what he believes to be contrary to his conscience.” The patience of the martyrs rebuked the sensualism of the pagans; and their fearless assertions that matters of conscience are beyond the jurisdiction of any civil ruler proved them to be the best friends of human liberty; while their constancy and number during three hundred years of persecution, that only ceased with their triumph, is one of the solid arguments to prove that the Catholic Church has a divine origin, and a sustaining divinity within her.