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APPENDIX

ON PLINY AND THE CHRISTIANS

SINCE this book has passed through the press my attention has been called to the treatment of the question by Bishop Lightfoot (Apostolic Fathers, Part ii. pp. 1-21), who, while taking the view adopted in the Introduction that Trajan did not definitely and for the first time introduce a policy of persecution, and that his rescript was actuated by political considerations rather than religious, and had reference mainly to the possible dangers of secret associations, still so far follows the generally received view of ecclesiastical critics as to consider it a distinct persecution, following those of Nero and Domitian, and indeed as 'the most severe of all the persecutions of which we have any knowledge during the first and second centuries.' Taking this view of the events of Nero's and Domitian's reigns, Dr. Lightfoot naturally joins issue with the view that during the whole of the first century the Christians were regarded as a sect of the Jews, and therefore shared whatever measure of toleration was accorded to the latter. He admits, how

ever, as an indisputable fact that at first this confusion between Jew and Christian did exist. 'But from the first moment when the Christians began to be troublesome to others and to get themselves into trouble in consequence, it became a matter of the highest concern to the Jews to emphasise the distinction between themselves and the new religion.' This is no doubt true, but when did this take place? The freedom of preaching allowed to St. Paul in Rome shows that they had not begun to make themselves troublesome, or to get into trouble with the government within a year of the so-called Neronian persecution. As far as that persecution goes, therefore, Dr. Lightfoot's argument does not apply. But apart from this, would the Jews have been more successful in convincing the government at Rome of the distinction between them and the Christians than they were with such men as Gallio in the provinces? Dr. Lightfoot thinks they would, because they had a powerful advocate at headquarters. If Nero ruled the world, Poppaea ruled Nero.' Poppaea was no doubt affected by

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the craze, not unfashionable among Roman ladies, for Jewish proselytism, but that she herself understood the distinction between Judaism and Christianity, or could have made Nero understand it too, or that through her influence 'the Jews were in the ascendant at the imperial court at that moment,' are none of them suppositions which have sufficient probability to be taken into serious account. That with or without Poppaea's help, 'the Jews may have taken the opportunity of calumniating the Christians, and so transferring much of the sudden odium from themselves to this hated sect,' is what I have already said, but that by no means shows a Christian persecution to have taken place. But Dr. Lightfoot lays even more stress on the language of Tacitus and Suetonius, who both of them distinctly mention the Christians as the victims of Nero's cruelty. The view that they may be 'injecting into the incidents of the reign of Nero the language and experience that belong to the age of Trajan,' he regards as a wholly gratuitous assumption. That it is an assumption which cannot be proved is not denied, but at least it has the advantage of explaining the facts, which Dr. Lightfoot's assumption about the all-predominant influence of Poppaea and her use of it against the Christians does not do. Nor can it be said to be gratuitous. These notices, written certainly not before the second decade of the second century, are the very first indications in non-Christian writers that the Christians were regarded as an independent body, or were in fact known by name to the Roman world at all. Josephus, Seneca, and the elder Pliny are absolutely silent about them. This silence does not prove that those writers knew nothing about the Christians, but it certainly gives some grounds for the assumption, while both Tacitus and Suetonius, whose notices about the Christians are later in date than Pliny's letter, might have gained their information, if in no other way, from their mutual friend. But Dr. Lightfoot finds positive arguments for his own view in the account of Tacitus and Suetonius. In the first place, Tacitus says, quos vulgus Christianos apellabat,' not the 'common people calls,' but 'the common people called them Christians,' i.e. in Nero's time. It seems obvious to remark on this, that if Tacitus was, as assumed, speaking of Nero's time with the knowledge only gained in his own, he would naturally have made his account consistent by the use of the fitting tenses. Again Tacitus himself betrays no signs of confusing the two. His knowledge of the origin of Christianity is decidedly. more accurate than his knowledge of the origin of Judaism,' and, 'It is an important fact that both these writers regard Christianity as a new religion.' Surely Dr. Lightfoot misunderstands the point of the argument. It is not contended by any one that either Tacitus or Suetonius confused the Christians with the Jews, or that they regarded Christianity as other than a new religion. On the contrary, the assumption with which Dr. Lightfoot finds fault, is that, knowing, from whatever source, the distinction themselves, they wrongly described the events of Nero's

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reign, as if it was equally well known at that time. Whether this is true or not, it is absolutely unaffected by Dr. Lightfoot's arguments. Passing from the events of Nero's to those of Domitian's reign, and from Tacitus and Suetonius to Dio Cassius or his epitomator, Dr. Lightfoot confesses that 'the account of Dio Cassius respecting the proceedings taken by this emperor against Flavius Clemens and Domitilla seems at first sight to favour the view that the two religions were identified at this time.' But, he proceeds, 'we must remember that these are not the words of the historian himself. It is just in incidents of this kind that an epitome is most likely to mislead; and even the epitomator does not distinctly say that Flavius Clemens and Domitilla were themselves among the perverts to Jewish practices. The notice is entirely satisfied by the supposition that offences not identical, but similar in kind-offences, namely, which the Roman law regarded as "atheism "— are classed together in a rough way. When for instance Tacitus (Ann. ii. 85) says, "A debate was held on the expulsion of Egyptian and Judaic ceremonies (de sacris Aegyptiis Iudaicisque pellendis); and a decree of the senate was passed ordering that four thousand persons of the class of freedmen, tainted with that superstition (ea superstitione infecta), who were of a proper age, should be transported to the island of Sardinia,' no one infers from this passage that either the authors of the decree themselves, or the historian who records it, identified the worship of Isis and Serapis with the religion of the Jews, though from a Roman point of view the association of the two would appear in the highest degree natural.' The passage from Tacitus may be disposed of at once. It has no sort of analogy with the notice in Dio Cassius. The Egyptian and Jewish rites are clearly spoken of as different. The 'ea superstitione' does not really conceal this difference, as, though certainly not without ambiguity, it refers only to the Jews. This, the natural interpretation even of Tacitus's words by themselves, is proved to be correct by the corresponding passage in Suetonius (Tib. 36): "Externas caerimonias, Aegyptios Iudaicosque ritus compescuit. Iudaeorum iuventutem per speciem sacramenti in provincias gravioris caeli distribuit." The passage in Dio Cassius (quoted on p. 56) is of quite a different character: “ ἐπηνέχθη δὲ ἀμφοῖν ἔγκλημα ἀθεότητος ὑφ ̓ ἧς καὶ ἄλλοι εἰς τὰ τῶν Ιουδαίων ἤθη ἐξοκέλλοντες πολλοὶ κατεδικάσθησαν. It seems to me absolutely impossible to avoid the conclusion that the writer of these words, whether Dio Cassius or his epitomator, classed Clemens and Domitilla under the same head as the Judaisers whom he next mentions. We may regard them all as Jewish proselytes, or we may, as is usually and more probably done, regard them all as Christians, but it is, in Dr. Lightfoot's words, 'a wholly gratuitous assumption' which would never occur to any one who had no particular point to prove by it, to say that Clemens and Domitilla were Christians and the rest Jewish proselytes. Nor do I understand the point which 1 If the two classes had been regarded by the writer as different, he would have used

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Dr. Lightfoot makes with regard to the probability of a mistake on the part of the epitomator. The epitomator was Xiphilinus, a monk of the eleventh century, and the very fact that he does not distinctly claim Clemens and Domitilla as Christian martyrs, seems to show that he simply reproduced the statement of Dio as he found it. At any rate, if he departed from his authority at all, we should have expected him rather to bring out than to slur over the distinction between the two classes, if that distinction was traceable in Dio. But though I do not think that Dr. Lightfoot has weakened the case of those who do not believe that the Jews and Christians were clearly distinguished up to the reign of Domitian, and who therefore refuse to admit that the persecutions of that emperor and Nero were levelled primarily against the Christians as a body, I believe that he is quite right in calling attention to an aspect of the matter which, as he says, has been strangely overlooked. 'The mere negative fact,' he says, 'that the Christian religion had not been recognised as lawful would be an ample justification for proceedings against the Christians as soon as it came to be recognised that Christianity was something distinct from Judaism. No positive prohibition was needed. Here was a religion rampant, which had never been licensed by the state, and this fact alone was sufficient to set the law in motion.' With one or two qualifications, this may be accepted as correct. The statement, however, that every religion in order to be free from persecution needed to be licensed, is too sweeping. The general principle of the Roman government in matters of religion was toleration, and only those religions which by in any way taking the form of collegia constituted a political danger, or were dangerous to public morality, would be liable to interference. The law therefore which Dr. Lightfoot speaks of as able to be set in motion was no general law against unlicensed religions, but rather the law general or special against unlicensed collegia. Thus the worship of Isis was put down more than once (Val. Max. i 3, 4: cf. also Tertull. Apol. 6), but then we find evidence from inscriptions that there were numerous 'collegia Isidis,' which, joined to the secrecy of the worship, might easily be made causes of political danger. Again Augustus granted toleration to the Jewish worship, but he did this by instructing the governors of the Oriental provinces not to enforce against the Jews the strict laws concerning associations and meetings (Mommsen, Rom. Geschichte, vol. v, p. 497). Again Dio Cassius puts into the mouth of Maecenas the maxims of Roman policy in this respect (52, 36): 'Toùs dè dù §evíčovtáS TI περὶ αὐτὸ τὸ θεῖον) καὶ μίσει καὶ κόλαζε μὴ μόνον τῶν θεῶν ἕνεκα ἀλλ ̓ ὅτι καὶ καινά τινα δαιμόνια οἱ τοιοῦτοι ἀντεσφέροντες πολλοὺς ἀναπείθουσιν ἀλλοτριονομεῖν κἀκ τούτου καὶ συνωμοσίαι καὶ συστάσεις ἑταιρεῖαί τε yiyvovraι.' Lastly, as I have tried to show (p. 61), the persecution in Bithynia was based on the edict which Pliny had issued against hetaeriae,

ἕτεροι and not ἄλλοι. The former denotes difference of class or category, the latter

difference between individuals in the same class.

and was therefore directed not against adherents of an illegal religion, but against members of an unlicensed and forbidden 'collegium.'

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These qualifications to Dr. Lightfoot's statement which I have quoted above lead thus to a very practical distinction between his view and that which I have followed. He maintains that the events under Nero, Domitian, and Trajan were all persecutions of the Christians as an unlicensed religion. My view is that they should none of them be called persecutions of the Christians at all, in the first two cases because the Christians were not recognised as a distinct body as yet, in the last case, because it was a mere prosecution under a law against secret associations, of which the Christian meetings seemed to be a violation; and, as I have pointed out, Trajan's rescript could only have reference to Pliny's province. Why Dr. Lightfoot should describe it as 'the most severe of all the persecutions of which we have any knowledge during the first and second centuries,' while admitting that Pliny's correspondence is 'the sole ultimate chronicle of this important chapter in the sufferings of the early Church,' I do not understand. Pliny's letter certainly implied that he had only executed a few, and that as soon as he found that the number of the accused was becoming considerable, he delayed proceedings till he had consulted the emperor; and the practical result of Trajan's rescript must have been to stop the persecution, since he forbade any initiative to be taken by Pliny (conquirendi non sunt), and also any anonymous accusations (sine auctore propositi libelli in nullo crimine locum habere debent).

I agree therefore on the whole, though from somewhat different reasons, with Dr. Lightfoot's opinion that 'as regards Trajan's attitude towards Christianity, the view of the earliest Christian fathers was less wide of the truth than the view of recent modern critics,' ¿.e. that the rescript of the emperor inaugurated a new era. It was, it seems to me, merely the official interpretation, confirming Pliny's previous action, of the law against unlicensed collegia. So far as it went, however, it was an edict of proscription against Christianity, which by its very essence was an association and therefore illegal, and if it could be proved that the rescript was intended to apply to the whole empire, which I think was certainly not the case, it might fairly be described as the initiation of an anti-Christian policy. Whether the later and undoubted persecutors, e.g. M. Aurelius, Decius, Diocletian, etc., used it as a precedent, only giving it a general application, is uncertain, but is by no means improbable.

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