The History of Christianity - John S. C. Abbott (bookstand for reading .txt) 📗

The martyrdom of Perpetua and Felicitas at Carthage was one of the memorable events of this persecution. Perpetua was a Roman lady of exalted birth, and highly educated, who had become a Christian. Felicitas was a young Christian bride, about to become a mother. The parents of Perpetua were pagans, and also her two brothers. She was but twenty-two years of age, recently married, and had an infant child.

She was arrested, and thrown into prison. Her aged father, who loved Perpetua tenderly, prostrated himself upon his knees before his daughter, and, with tears gushing from his eyes, entreated her to save her life by sacrificing to the gods. She remained firm. The high social position of the captive caused a large crowd to be assembled at the trial. Her father came, bringing to the court her babe, and entreating Perpetua, for the sake of her child, to save her life. He hoped that the sight of her child would cause her to relent, and renounce Jesus. The public prosecutor, Hilarien, then said to her,—

“In mercy to your aged father, in mercy to your babe, throw not away your life, but sacrifice to the gods.”

“I am a Christian,” she replied, “and cannot deny Christ.” The anguish of her father was so great, that he was unable to restrain loud expressions of grief; and the brutal soldiers drove him off with cruel blows. “I felt the blows,” says Perpetua in a brief memorial which she left of her trials, “as if they had fallen on myself.” Perpetua was then condemned to be torn to pieces by wild beasts.

“When the day for the spectacle arrived,” says Perpetua, “my father threw himself on the ground, tore his beard, cursed the day in which he was born, and uttered piercing cries which were sufficient to move the hardest heart.”

Both Perpetua and Felicitas were doomed to the same death. The two victims were led into the arena of the vast amphitheatre, where, with the utmost ingenuity of cruelty, they were to be gored to death by bulls. The rising seats which surrounded the amphitheatre were crowded with spectators to enjoy the spectacle.

Let us, in imagination, descend into the dark, damp dungeons opening into the arena. Here in this den are growling lions, gaunt and fierce; and here is a den of panthers with glaring eyeballs. They have been kept starved for many days to make them furious. Here in this cell of stone and iron, which the glare of the torch but feebly illumines, is a band of Christians,—fathers, mothers, sons, and daughters. They are to be thrown to-morrow into the arena naked, that they may be torn to pieces by the panthers and the lions, and that the hundred thousand pagan spectators may enjoy the sport of seeing them torn limb from limb, and devoured by the fierce and starved beasts.

In one of these cells Perpetua and Felicitas were confined. In another were several wild bulls. It was a glorious summer’s day, and the cloudless sun shone down upon the amphitheatre, over which a silken awning was spread, and which was crowded with many thousands of spectators. Here were congregated all the wealth and beauty and fashion of the city,—vestal virgins, pontiffs, ambassadors, senators, and, in the loftiest tier, a countless throng of slaves. Carthaginian ladies, affecting the utmost delicacy and refinement, vied with men in the eagerness with which they watched the bloody scenes.

In the centre of the arena there was suspended a large network bag of strong fine twine, with interstices so large as to afford no covering or veil whatever to the person. Perpetua was first brought into the arena, young and beautiful, a pure and modest Christian lady. She was led forth entirely divested of her clothing, that to the bitterness of martyrdom might be added the pangs of wounded modesty. A hundred thousand voices assailed her with insult and derision. Brutal soldiers placed her in the transparent network. There she hung in mid-air, but two feet from the ground, as if floating in space. Then the burly executioners gave her a swing with their brawny arms, whirling her in a wide circle around the arena, and retired.

An iron door creaks upon its hinges, and flies open. Out from the dungeon leaps the bull, with flaming eyes, tail in air, bellowing, and pawing the sand in rage. He glares around for an instant upon the shouting thousands, and then catches a view of the maiden swinging before him. With a bound he plunges upon her, and buries his horns in her side. The blood gushes forth, and she is tossed ten feet in the air; while the shrieks of the tortured victim are lost in the hundred thousand shouts of joy.

This scene cannot be described: it can hardly be imagined. Lunge after lunge the bull plunges upon his victim, piercing, tossing, tearing, mangling, till the sand of the arena is drenched with the blood of the victim; until her body swings around, a lifeless, mangled mass, having lost all semblance of humanity. Felicitas in the mean time is compelled to gaze upon the scene, that she may taste twice the bitterness of death. In her turn she is placed in the suspended network, and in the same fiery chariot of martyrdom ascends to heaven.

Several other Christians perished at the same time, being torn by wild beasts, and devoured by half-famished bears, leopards, and wild boars. Pages might be filled with similar accounts; but this record must be brief.

The Emperor Severus died on an expedition to Britain, in the year of our Lord 211, leaving the crown to his two sons, Caracalla and Geta. They were both thoroughly depraved boys. Caracalla, the elder, invited his brother Geta to meet him in the presence of his mother to confer upon the division of the empire. During the conference, Caracalla drew near his brother, and, taking a dagger from beneath his dress, buried it to the hilt in Geta’s heart. The murdered boy sprang into his mother’s arms, and died, she being deluged with the blood of her son. This was early in the third century, when pagan Rome was at the summit of its wealth, refinement, luxury, and power. The murderer of Geta thus became sole emperor of Rome.

Christianity was beginning to create a public conscience. It was throwing the light of future judgment and final retribution upon such hideous crimes. Both of these young men, depraved though they were, had received some religious instruction. The stings of remorse imbittered every remaining hour of Caracalla’s life. The image of his brother Geta, gasping, shrieking, dying, bathed in blood, in the arms of his terrified mother, pursued the murderer to his grave: but it did not soften his heart; it only hardened him in sin, and inflamed his soul with almost insane jealousy and fear. Every individual who was supposed to be in the interest of Geta was put to death, without regard to age or sex. In the course of a few months, twenty thousand perished by this wholesale proscription.

A wag in one of the schools in Alexandria wrote a burlesque verse upon Caracalla. The tyrant, in consequence, ordered the whole city to be destroyed. Every man, woman, and child was ordered to be put to death. A few only of the young and beautiful were reserved as slaves.

The only way in this world to be happy is to strive to promote the happiness of others. He who makes others wretched is always wretched himself. Caracalla lived the life of a demon, filling the world with woe; but, in all the empire, there was scarcely to be found a greater wretch than he.

One of his generals, Macrinus, who had displeased the emperor, learning that he was doomed to death, engaged a centurion, a man of herculean strength, to assassinate him. A dagger through the back pierced the heart of the tyrant. Thus terminated the diabolical sway of Caracalla, with which God had allowed the world to be cursed for six years.

The army had adored Caracalla; for he had given free rein to the license of the soldiers, and had enriched them by plunder. Macrinus, the assassin, was not illustrious either by birth, wealth, or military exploits. The soldiers reluctantly, and with many murmurs, submitted to the decision of the senate recognizing him as emperor. The army was encamped in winter quarters in Syria. Macrinus, exulting in new-born dignity, was luxuriating in his palace at Antioch. Under these circumstances, a Syrian soldier, by the name of Elagabalus, a reckless, unprincipled man, formed a conspiracy in the camp outside the walls of Antioch. He assumed that he was a son of one of the concubines of Caracalla. The soldiers, eager for the renewal of their former privileges of plunder and outrage, enthusiastically rallied around the banner of the insurgent general. There was one short battle. Macrinus was slain, and the troops with one accord welcomed Elagabalus as emperor. The senate, not daring to present opposition to the army, obsequiously confirmed its vote.

This rude, untamed pagan was a worshipper of the sun. He had been a high priest in one of the idol temples. With his army enlarged by brutal hordes from the East, he marched upon Rome in the double capacity of pagan pontiff and emperor. He was arrayed in sacerdotal robes of damask embroidered with gold. A gorgeous tiara was upon his brow; and he wore bracelets and a necklace incrusted with priceless gems. The city pavements over which he passed were sprinkled with gold-dust. Six milk-white horses, sumptuously caparisoned, drew a chariot containing a black stone, the symbol of the god he worshipped. Elagabalus, as pontiff, held the reins with his back to the horses, that his eyes might not be for a moment turned from the object of his idolatry.

A new temple was reared for this new idol on the Palatine Hill. Its worship was introduced with splendor such as Rome had never yet witnessed. Syrian girls of great beauty danced around the altar. Elagabalus, with his crowd of adorers of the new divinity, rioted in those dissolute rites, which even the pen of a Roman historian shrinks from recording.

The palaces of the Cæsars had been as corrupt as Europe knew how to make them; but Elagabalus transported to them all the additional vices of Asia. Modern civilization will not allow the story of his infamy to be told: the enlightenment of the nineteenth century could not bear the recital. The change which Christianity has introduced into the world is so great, that there is not a court in Europe now, no matter how corrupt, which would endure for a day a Nero or an Elagabalus.

Even pagan Rome could not long submit to so unmitigated a wretch. There was mutiny in the camp. Elagabalus was cut down in the fray. A mob of soldiers, with infuriate yells, dragged the corpse by the heels through the streets, and cast the mangled, gory mass into the Tiber. The senate passed a decree consigning his name to eternal infamy. Posterity has ratified that decree.

There are those, it is said, who believe that there is no punishment after death; that all the dead go at once to heaven. Strange must be the philosophy, and stranger still the theology, which can contemplate Elagabalus welcomed at the golden gates, angels crowding to meet him, while God, with beaming countenance, exclaims, “Well done, good and faithful servant! enter thou into the joy of thy Lord.”

The Pretorian Guard of sixteen thousand mailed and veteran soldiers, whose encampment was just outside the walls of Rome, took a nephew of Elagabalus,—Alexander Severus, a boy of but seventeen years of age,—and made him emperor. Two reasons influenced them: first, he was available; second, he was young, and they thought they could mould him at their will.

And now again we get a gleam of Christian light upon this dark scene,—a gleam of that Christian influence which ennobles statesmanship, purifies morals, and promotes every