Christianity diminished

[Ed Cryer]

There's a chapter in The Cloister and The Hearth by Charles Reade that
puts down Christianity better than I've ever seen before, even in
Friedrich Nietzsche's impassioned diatribes.

Ed


"The heathen blotted out? Why they hold four-fifths of the world. And
what have we Christians invented without their aid? painting? sculpture?
these are heathen arts, and we but pigmies at them. What modern mind can
conceive and grave so god-like forms as did the chief Athenian
sculptors, and the Libyan Licas, and Dinocrates of Macedon, and Scopas,
Timotheus, Leochares, and Briaxis; Chares, Lysippus, and the immortal
three of Rhodes, that wrought Laocoon from a single block? What prince
hath the genius to turn mountains into statues, as was done at Bagistan,
and projected at Athos? what town the soul to plant a colossus of brass
in the sea, for the tallest ships to sail in and out between his legs?
Is it architecture we have invented? Why here too we are but children.
Can we match for pure design the Parthenon, with its clusters of double
and single Doric columns? (I do adore the Doric when the scale is
large), and, for grandeur and finish, the theatres of Greece and Rome,
or the prodigious temples of Egypt, up to whose portals men walked
awe-struck through avenues a mile long of sphinxes, each as big as a
Venetian palace. And all these prodigies of porphyry cut and polished
like crystal, not rough hewn as in our puny structures. Even now their
polished columns and pilasters lie o'erthrown and broken, o'ergrown with
acanthus and myrtle, but sparkling still, and flouting the slovenly art
of modern workmen. Is it sewers, aqueducts, viaducts?

"Why we have lost the art of making a road—lost it with the world's
greatest models under our very eye. Is it sepulchres of the dead? Why no
Christian nation has ever erected a tomb, the sight of which does not
set a scholar laughing. Do but think of the Mausoleum, and the Pyramids,
and the monstrous sepulchres of the Indus and Ganges, which outside are
mountains, and within are mines of precious stones. Ah, you have not
seen the East, Jerome, or you could not decry the heathen."

Jerome observed that these were mere material things. True greatness was
in the soul.

"Well then," replied Colonna, "in the world of mind, what have we
discovered? Is it geometry? Is it logic? Nay, we are all pupils of
Euclid and Aristotle. Is it written characters, an invention almost
divine? We no more invented it than Cadmus did. Is it poetry? Homer hath
never been approached by us, nor hath Virgil, nor Horace. Is it tragedy
or comedy? Why poets, actors, theatres, all fell to dust at our touch.
Have we succeeded in reviving them? Would you compare our little
miserable mysteries and moralities, all frigid personification and dog
Latin, with the glories of a Greek play (on the decoration of which a
hundred thousand crowns had been spent) performed inside a marble
miracle, the audience a seated city, and the poet a Sophocles?

"What then have we invented? Is it monotheism? Why the learned and
philosophical among the Greeks and Romans held it; even their more
enlightened poets were monotheists in their sleeves.

Ζευς εστιν ουρανος, Ζευς τε γη Ζευς τοι πανια
saith the Greek, and Lucan echoes him:
'Jupiter est quod cunque vides quo cunque moveris.'
"Their vulgar were polytheists; and what are ours? We have not invented
'invocation of the saints.' Our sancti answer to their Dæmones and Divi,
and the heathen used to pray their Divi or deified mortals to intercede
with the higher divinity; but the ruder minds among them, incapable of
nice distinctions, worshipped those lesser gods they should have but
invoked. And so do the mob of Christians in our day, following the
heathen vulgar by unbroken tradition. For in holy writ is no polytheism
of any sort or kind.

"We have not invented so much as a form, or variety, of polytheism. The
pagan vulgar worshipped all sorts of deified mortals, and each had his
favourite, to whom he prayed ten times for once to the Omnipotent. Our
vulgar worship canonized mortals, and each has his favourite, to whom he
prays ten times for once to God. Call you that invention? Invention is
confined to the East. Among the ancient vulgar only the mariners were
monotheists; they worshipped Venus; called her 'Stella maris,' and
'Regina cælorum.' Among our vulgar only the mariners are monotheists;
they worship the Virgin Mary, and call her 'the Star of the Sea,' and
'the Queen of Heaven.' Call you theirs a new religion? An old doublet
with a new button. Our vulgar make images, and adore them, which is
absurd; for adoration is the homage due from a creature to its creator;
now here man is the creator; so the statues ought to worship him, and
would, if they had brains enough to justify a rat in worshipping them.
But even this abuse, though childish enough to be modern, is ancient.
The pagan vulgar in these parts made their images, then knelt before
them, adorned them with flowers, offered incense to them, lighted tapers
before them, carried them in procession, and made pilgrimages to them
just to the smallest tittle as we their imitators do."

Jerome here broke in impatiently, and reminded him that the images the
most revered in Christendom were made by no mortal hand, but had dropt
from heaven.

"Ay," cried Colonna, "such are the tutelary images of most great Italian
towns. I have examined nineteen of them, and made draughts of them. If
they came from the sky, our worst sculptors are our angels. But my mind
is easy on that score. Ungainly statue, or villanous daub fell never yet
from heaven to smuggle the bread out of capable workmen's mouths. All
this is Pagan, and arose thus. The Trojans had oriental imaginations,
and feigned that their Palladium, a wooden statue three cubits long,
fell down from heaven. The Greeks took this fib home among the spoils of
Troy, and soon it rained statues on all the Grecian cities, and their
Latin apes. And one of these Palladia gave St. Paul trouble at Ephesus;
'twas a statue of Diana that fell down from Jupiter: credat qui credere
possit."

"What would you cast your profane doubts on that picture of our blessed
Lady, which scarce a century agone hung lustrous in the air over this
very city, and was taken down by the Pope and bestowed in St. Peter's
Church?"

"I have no profane doubts on the matter, Jerome. This is the story of
Numa's shield, revived by theologians with an itch for fiction, but no
talent that way; not being orientals. The 'ancile,' or sacred shield of
Numa hung lustrous in the air over this very city, till that pious
prince took it down and hung it in the temple of Jupiter. Be just,
swallow both stories or neither. The 'Bocca della Verita' passes for a
statue of the Virgin, and convicted a woman of perjury the other day; it
is in reality an image of the goddess Rhea, and the modern figment is
one of its ancient traditions; swallow both or neither.

'Qui Bavium non odit amet tua carmina, Mavi.'
"But indeed we owe all our Palladiuncula, and all our speaking, nodding,
winking, sweating, bleeding statues to these poor abused heathens: the
Athenian statues all sweated before the battle of Chæronea, so did the
Roman statues during Tully's consulship, viz., the statue of Victory at
Capua, of Mars at Rome, and of Apollo outside the gates. The Palladium
itself was brought to Italy by Æneas, and after keeping quiet three
centuries, made an observation in Vesta's Temple: a trivial one, I fear,
since it hath not survived; Juno's statue at Veii assented with a nod to
go to Rome. Anthony's statue on Mount Alban bled from every vein in its
marble, before the fight of Actium. Others cured diseases: as that of
Pelichus, derided by Lucian; for the wiser among the heathen believed in
sweating marble, weeping wood, and bleeding brass—as I do. Of all our
marks and dents made in stone by soft substances, this saint's knee, and
that saint's finger, and t'other's head, the original is heathen. Thus
the foot-prints of Hercules were shown on a rock in Scythia. Castor and
Pollux fighting on white horses for Rome against the Latians, left the
prints of their hoofs on a rock at Regillum. A temple was built to them
on the spot, and the marks were to be seen in Tully's day. You may see
near Venice a great stone cut nearly in half by St. George's sword. This
he ne'er had done but for the old Roman who cut the whetstone in two
with his razor.

'Qui Bavium non odit amet tua carmina, Mavi.'
"Kissing of images, and the Pope's toe, is Eastern Paganism. The
Egyptians had it of the Assyrians, the Greeks of the Egyptians, the
Romans of the Greeks, and we of the Romans, whose Pontifex Maximus had
his toe kissed under the Empire. The Druids kissed their High Priest's
toe a thousand years b. c. The Mussulmans, who like you, profess to
abhor Heathenism, kiss the stone of the Caaba: a Pagan practice.

"The Priests of Baal kissed their idols so.

"Tully tells us of a fair image of Hercules at Agrigentum, whose chin
was worn by kissing. The lower parts of the statue we call Peter are
Jupiter. The toe is sore worn, but not all by Christian mouths. The
heathen vulgar laid their lips there first, for many a year, and ours
have but followed them, as monkeys their masters. And that is why, down
with the poor heathen! Pereant qui ante nos nostra fecerint.

"Our infant baptism is Persian, with the font, and the signing of the
child's brow. Our throwing three handfuls of earth on the coffin, and
saying dust to dust, is Egyptian.

"Our incense is Oriental, Roman, Pagan; and the early Fathers of the
Church regarded it with superstitious horror, and died for refusing to
handle it. Our holy water is Pagan, and all its uses. See, here is a
Pagan aspersorium. Could you tell it from one of ours? It stood in the
same part of their temples, and was used in ordinary worship as ours,
and in extraordinary purifications. They called it Aqua lustralis. Their
vulgar, like ours, thought drops of it falling on the body would wash
out sin; and their men of sense, like ours, smiled or sighed at such
credulity. What saith Ovid of this folly, which hath outlived him?

'Ah nimium faciles, qui tristia crimina cœdis
Flumineâ tolli posse putetis aquâ.'
Thou seest the heathen were not all fools. No more are we. Not all."
Fra Colonna uttered all this with such volubility, that his hearers
could not edge in a word of remonstrance; and not being interrupted in
praising his favourites, he recovered his good humour, without any
diminution of his volubility.

"We celebrate the miraculous Conception of the Virgin on the 2nd of
February. The old Romans celebrated the miraculous Conception of Juno on
the 2nd of February. Our feast of All Saints is on the 2nd of November.
The Festum Dei Mortis was on the 2nd of November. Our Candlemas is also
an old Roman feast: neither the date nor the ceremony altered one
tittle. The patrician ladies carried candles about the city that night
as our signoras do now. At the gate of San Croce our courtezans keep a
feast on the 20th August. Ask them why! The little noodles cannot tell
you. On that very spot stood the Temple of Venus. Her building is gone;
but her rite remains. Did we discover Purgatory? On the contrary, all we
really know about it is from two treatises of Plato, the Gorgias and the
Phædo, and the sixth book of Virgil's Æneid."

"I take it from a holier source: St. Gregory": said Jerome, sternly.

"Like enough," replied Colonna, drily. "But St. Gregory was not so nice;
he took it from Virgil. Some souls, saith Gregory, are purged by fire,
others by water, others by air.

"Says Virgil:—

'Aliæ panduntur inanes,
Suspensæ ad ventos, aliis sub gurgite vasto
Infectum eluitur scelus, aut exuritur igni.'
But peradventure, you think Pope Gregory I. lived before Virgil, and
Virgil versified him.
"But the doctrine is Eastern, and as much older than Plato as Plato than
Gregory. Our prayers for the dead came from Asia with Æneas. Ovid tells,
that when he prayed for the soul of Anchises, the custom was strange in
Italy.

'Hunc morem Ænæas, pietatis idoneus auctor
Attulit in terras, juste Latine, tuas.'
The 'Biblicæ Sortes,' which I have seen consulted on the altar, are a
parody on the 'Sortes Virgilianæ.' Our numerous altars in one church are
heathen: the Jews, who are monotheists, have but one altar in a church.
But the Pagans had many, being polytheists. In the temple of Paphian
Venus were a hundred of them. 'Centum que Sabæo thure calent aræ.' Our
altars and our hundred lights around St. Peter's tomb are Pagan. 'Centum
aras posuit vigilemque sacraverat ignem.' We invent nothing, not even
numerically. Our very Devil is the god Pan: horns and hoofs and all; but
blackened. For we cannot draw; we can but daub the figures of Antiquity
with a little sorry paint or soot. Our Moses hath stolen the horns of
Ammon; our Wolfgang the hook of Saturn; and Janus bore the keys of
heaven before St. Peter. All our really old Italian bronzes of the
Virgin and Child are Venuses and Cupids. So is the wooden statue, that
stands hard by this house, of Pope Joan and the child she is said to
have brought forth there in the middle of a procession. Idiots! are
new-born children thirteen years old? And that boy is not a day younger.
Cupid! Cupid! Cupid! And since you accuse me of credulity, know that to
my mind that Papess is full as mythological, born of froth, and every
way unreal, as the goddess who passes for her in the next street, or as
the saints you call St. Baccho and St. Quirina: or St. Oracte, which is
a dunce-like corruption of Mount Soracte, or St. Amphibolus, an English
saint, which is a dunce-like corruption of the cloak worn by their St.
Alban, or as the Spanish saint, St. Viar, which words on his tombstone,
written thus: 'S. Viar,' prove him no saint, but a good old nameless
heathen, and 'præfectus Viarum,' or overseer of roads (would he were
back to earth, and paganizing of our Christian roads!), or as our St.
Veronica of Benasco, which Veronica is a dunce-like corruption of the
'Vera icon,' which this saint brought into the church. I wish it may not
be as unreal as the donor, or as the eleven thousand virgins of Cologne,
who were but a couple."
Clement interrupted him to inquire what he meant. "I have spoken with
those who have seen their bones."

"What of eleven thousand virgins all collected in one place and at one
time? Do but bethink thee, Clement. Not one of the great Eastern cities
of antiquity could collect eleven thousand Pagan virgins at one time,
far less a puny Western city. Eleven thousand Christian virgins in a
little, wee Paynim city!

'Quod cunque ostendis mihi sic incredulus odi.'
The simple sooth is this. The martyrs were two: the Breton princess
herself, falsely called British, and her maid Onesimilla, which is a
Greek name, Onesima, diminished. This some fool did mispronounce undecim
mille, eleven thousand: loose tongue found credulous ears, and so one
fool made many; eleven thousand of them, an you will. And you charge me
with credulity, Jerome? and bid me read the lives of the saints. Well, I
have read them: and many a dear old Pagan acquaintance I found there.
The best fictions in the book are Oriental, and are known to have been
current in Persia and Arabia eight hundred years and more before the
dates the Church assigns to them as facts. As for the true Western
figments, they lack the Oriental plausibility. Think you I am credulous
enough to believe that St. Ida joined a decapitated head to its body?
that Cuthbert's carcass directed his bearers where to go, and where to
stop; that a city was eaten up of rats to punish one Hatto for comparing
the poor to mice; that angels have a little horn in their foreheads, and
that this was seen and recorded at the time by St. Veronica of Benasco,
who never existed, and hath left us this information and a miraculous
handkercher? For my part, I think the holiest woman the world ere saw
must have an existence ere she can have a handkercher, or an eye to take
unicorns for angels. Think you I believe that a brace of lions turned
sextons and helped Anthony bury Paul of Thebes? that Patrick, a Scotch
saint, stuck a goat's beard on all the descendants of one that offended
him? that certain thieves, having stolen the convent ram, and denying
it, St. Pol de Leon bade the ram bear witness, and straight the mutton
bleated in the thief's belly? Would you have me give up the skilful
figments of antiquity for such old wives' fables as these? The ancients
lied about animals, too: but then they lied logically; we unreasonably.
Do but compare Ephis and his lion, or, better still, Androcles and his
lion, with Anthony and his two lions. Both the pagan lions do what lions
never did; but at least they act in character. A lion with a bone in his
throat, or a thorn in his foot, could not do better than be civil to a
man. But Anthony's lions are asses in a lion's skin. What leonine motive
could they have in turning sextons? A lion's business is to make
corpses, not inter them." He added with a sigh, "Our lies are as
inferior to the lies of the ancients as our statues, and for the same
reason; we do not study nature as they did. We are imitatores, servum
pecus. Believe you 'the lives of the saints;' that Paul the Theban was
the first hermit, and Anthony the first Cænobite? Why, Pythagoras was an
Eremite, and under ground for seven years: and his daughter was an
abbess. Monks and hermits were in the East long before Moses, and
neither old Greece nor Rome was ever without them. As for St. Francis
and his snowballs, he did but mimic Diogenes, who, naked, embraced
statues on which snow had fallen. The folly without the poetry. Ape of
an ape—for Diogenes was but a mimic therein of the Brahmins and Indian
gymnosophists. Natheless, the children of this Francis bid fair to pelt
us out of the church with their snowballs. Tell me now, Clement, what
habit is lovelier than the vestments of our priests? Well, we owe them
all to Numa Pompilius, except the girdle and the stole, which are
judaical. As for the amice and the albe, they retain the very names they
bore in Numa's day. The 'pelt' worn by the canons comes from primeval
Paganism. 'Tis a relic of those rude times when the sacrificing priest
wore the skins of the beasts with the fur outward. Strip off thy black
gown, Jerome, thy girdle and cowl, for they come to us all three from
the Pagan ladies. Let thy hair grow like Absalom's, Jerome! for the
tonsure is as Pagan as the Muses."
"Take care what thou sayest," said Jerome, sternly. "We know the very
year in which the church did first ordain it."

"But not invent it, Jerome. The Brahmins wore it a few thousand years
ere that. From them it came through the Assyrians to the priests of Isis
in Egypt, and afterwards of Serapis at Athens. The late Pope (the saints
be good to him) once told me the tonsure was forbidden by God to the
Levites in the Pentateuch. If so, this was because of the Egyptian
priests wearing it. I trust to his holiness. I am no biblical scholar.
The Latin of thy namesake Jerome is a barrier I cannot overleap. 'Dixit
ad me Dominus Deus. Dixi ad Dominum Deum.' No, thank you, holy Jerome; I
can stand a good deal, but I cannot stand thy Latin. Nay; give me the
New Testament! 'Tis not the Greek of Xenophon; but 'tis Greek. And there
be heathen sayings in it too. For St. Paul was not so spiteful against
them as thou. When the heathen said a good thing that suited his matter,
by Jupiter he just took it, and mixed it to all eternity with the
inspired text."

"Come forth, Clement, come forth!" said Jerome, rising; "and thou,
profane monk, know that but for the powerful house that upholds thee,
thy accursed heresy should go no farther, for I would have thee burned
at the stake." And he strode out white with indignation.

Colonna's reception of this threat did credit to him as an enthusiast.
He ran and hallowed joyfully after Jerome. "And that is Pagan. Burning
of men's bodies for the opinions of their souls is a purely Pagan
custom—as Pagan as incense, holy water, a hundred altars in one church,
the tonsure, the cardinal's, or flamen's hat, the word Pope, the——"

Here Jerome slammed the door.