Voltaire: Treatise on Tolerance - Вольтер

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little reason to believe that there ever was an inquisition instituted against the Christians under the Roman emperors; I mean, that they were ever judicially examined on the subject of their faith; neither do we find that Jew, Syrian, Egyptian bards, Druids, or philosophers were ever troubled on this account. The primitive martyrs then were men who opposed the worship of false gods. But, however wise or pious they might be in rejecting the belief of such absurd fictions, if, not content with worshipping the true God in spirit and in truth, they offered a violent and public outrage to the received religion of the government under which they lived, however absurd that religion might be, impartiality obliges us to confess that they themselves were the first persecutors.

      Tertullian, in his Apology,22 says that the Christians were looked upon as a turbulent and seditious sect. This accusation is doubtless unjust; but it serves to prove that the civil power did not set itself against the Christians purely on account of their religion. In another place,23 he says that the Christians refused to adorn the doors of their houses with laurel branches on the days of public rejoicing for the victories of the emperors. Now this blamable particularity might not, without some reason, be taken for disaffection to the government.

      The first judicial act of severity we find exercised against the Christians was that of Domitian; but this extended only to banishment, which did not last above a year, for, says the author above quoted, Facile cœptum repressit restitutis quos ipse relegaverat. Lactantius, so remarkable for his passionate and pompous style, acknowledges that from the time of Domitian to that of Decius the Church continued in a peaceable and flourishing condition. This long tranquillity, says he,24 was interrupted by that execrable animal Decius, who began to oppress the Church: Post multos annos extitit execrabile animal Decius qui vexaret ecclesiam.

      I shall not here enter into a discussion of the opinion of the learned Mr. Dodwell concerning the small number of martyrs; but if the Romans had been such violent persecutors of the Christian religion, if their senate had condemned so many of its innocent votaries to perish by the most unheard-of tortures, plunging them alive in boiling oil, and exposing their wives and daughters naked to the wild beasts in the circus, how happened it that they suffered all the first bishops of Rome to live unmolested? St. Ireneus reckons only one martyr among all these bishops, namely, Telesphorus, who suffered in the year 139 of our vulgar era; nor have we any positive proof of this Telesphorus being put to death. Zephirinus governed the flock in Rome for eighteen years successively, and died peaceably in the year 219. It is true that in the ancient martyrologies we find almost all the first popes ranked as martyrs, but the word martyr is there taken only in its original and true signification, which is a witness and not a sufferer.

      Moreover, we can hardly reconcile this rage of persecution with the liberty granted the Christians, of assembling no less than fifty-six councils in the course of the first three centuries, as is acknowledged by all ecclesiastical writers.

      That there were persecutions, is doubtless; but if they had been as violent as represented, it is hardly probable that Tertullian, who wrote with so much energy against the established religion, would have been suffered to die peaceably in his bed. It is certain that none of the emperors ever read his “Apology,” as an obscure work composed in Africa can hardly be supposed to have come into the hands of the governors of the world; but then, it might have been shown to their proconsuls in Africa, and have drawn down their resentment upon the author; nevertheless, we do not find that he suffered martyrdom.

      Origen taught the Christian religion publicly in Alexandria, and yet was not put to death for it. And this very Origen himself, who spoke with so much freedom both to the heathens and the Christians, and who, while he taught Jesus to the one, denied the triple Godhead to the other, expressly acknowledges, in his third book against Celsus, that “There were very few who suffered martyrdom, and those at a great distance of time from one another; notwithstanding,” says he, “that the Christians leave nothing undone to make their religion generally embraced, running from city to city, and from town to town, to make converts.”

      It must be confessed that these continual peregrinations might readily give cause to the priests, who were their enemies, to accuse them of a design to raise disturbances; and yet we find that these missions were tolerated even among the Egyptians, who have ever been a turbulent, factious, and mean people, and who tore a Roman to death for having killed a cat; in a word, a nation at all times contemptible, whatever may have been said to the contrary by the admirers of pyramids.25

      What person could do more to call down upon him the resentment of both ecclesiastical and civil power than St. Gregory Thaumaturgos, the disciple of Origen? This same St. Gregory had a vision during the night-time, in which an old man appeared to him sent from God, accompanied by a woman shining with glory; the first of these was St. John the Evangelist, and the other the Holy Virgin. St. John dictated to him a creed, which Gregory afterwards went about to preach. In his way he passed through Neo-Cæsarea, where the rain obliged him to stay all night, and he took up his lodging near a temple famous for its oracles. Here he made several signs of the cross. The high priest coming the next morning into the temple was surprised to find that the oracle did not give its answer as usual, upon which he invoked the spirits of the place, who appearing, told him that they could no longer inhabit that mansion, as St. Gregory had passed a night there and had made signs of the cross, upon which the high priest caused Gregory to be seized, who gave him to understand that he could drive out or cause to enter the familiar spirits wherever he pleased. “If so,” said the high priest, “pray send them back here again.” Then St. Gregory, tearing a leaf from a little book he held in his hand, wrote these words upon it: “Gregory to Satan: I command thee to enter again into this temple.” The paper being laid upon the altar, the demons, in obedience to the saint’s mandate, gave their oracles that day as usual, after which they remained silent.

      This story is related by St. Gregory of Nyssa in his life of St. Gregory Thaumaturgos. Certainly, the idolatrous priests had great reason to be offended with St. Gregory, and might have delivered him over to the secular power as one who was their greatest enemy, and yet we do not find that they offered him any hurt.

      The history of St. Cyprian informs us that he was the first bishop of Carthage who suffered martyrdom; this was A. D. 258, consequently no bishop of Carthage had been put to death on account of religion for a great length of time. The history of this saint does not inform us what charge was brought against him, who were his enemies, or how he incurred the displeasure of the proconsul of Africa. We find St. Cyprian thus writing to Cornelius, bishop of Rome: “There has been a tumult of the people lately at Carthage, in which it was twice proposed to throw me to the lions.” It might possibly happen that the blind resentment of the people of Carthage did at length cause Cyprian to be put to death, for, certainly, he was never condemned to suffer for his religion by the Emperor Gallus, who lived at so great a distance, and, moreover, permitted Cornelius to exercise his episcopal function under his very eye.

      So many and various are the hidden causes that are frequently blended with the apparent one, in the persecution of an individual, that it is hardly possible for posterity to discover the true source of the misfortunes that befell even the most considerable personages, much less that of the sufferings of a private person, hardly known to any but those of his own sect.

      And here let it be observed that neither St. Gregory Thaumaturgos nor St. Denis, bishop of Alexandria, who were both contemporaries of St. Cyprian, suffered the slightest persecution. How then happened it that, being certainly as well known as the bishop of Carthage, they were suffered to live unmolested, while he was delivered over to punishment? May we not fairly infer that the one fell a victim to personal and powerful enemies, either in consequence of a malicious accusation, or from reasons of state, which frequently interfere in religious matters, while the other had the good fortune to escape the designs of wicked men?

      We cannot, with any degree of probability, suppose that the charge of being a Christian was the only cause of St. Ignatius being put to death, under the just and merciful Trajan, since we find that several of his own religion were suffered to accompany and minister comfort to him on his way to Rome.26 There had been frequent seditions in Antioch, a city remarkable for the turbulent disposition of its inhabitants; here Ignatius privately acted as bishop over the Christians. It might happen that

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