The Enemy Within Page 2

  “Thyestian feasts” form part of the rumor: lavish banquets, prepared in secret and held in the predawn hours while others sleep, with a great excess of food and drink. The main fare, the choicest delicacy, is human flesh. This, indeed, is the purpose of the entire event: drinking the blood and consuming the inner organs (especially the heart) of a fellow being—preferably a newborn child. Infanticide and cannibalism, nothing less.

  “Oedipodean intercourse” makes a second part of the rumor: sexual orgies in which parents and children or brothers and sisters become partners. Incest, blatant and vile.

  Finally, suffusing the rest, “black magic”: the use of charms, spells, and invocations to wound, to spoil, to deform, to coerce. This is among the most familiar and notorious accusations against Christians; Lyons is but one of its many venues. As tension mounts, the municipal authorities take action. The city’s governor is temporarily absent, but his tribunes (local magistrates) meet in their offices beside the Forum and announce a new policy. From now on the Christians must be confined and carefully watched. No longer will they be admitted to the public baths and markets. They are not to walk the streets and thoroughfares, except under close supervision.

  But this is only a prelude. In the days to come, known Christians are dragged from their homes by mobs of irate citizens. Some are simply denounced and ridiculed. Others are beaten with whips and clubs, still others taken to the city walls and stoned. Their property is looted, their servants set free. Eventually, a large number are hauled to the central marketplace for a formal inquisition. The questions pour out in a torrent: Are you not among the accursed band of Christ-idolators? Have you joined in their forbidden feasts and orgies? Do you, like the rest of them, spurn the authority of the imperial state?

  In the face of such extreme pressures, some yield, others stand fast. To confess is to risk the full wrath of the mob. To deny is to play the coward. To recant is to escape, at least for a time. In the end, most will be charged with treason and blasphemy, and cast into prison. Their fate will be decided upon the return of the governor.

  These details reach us now by way of a long letter written after the fact by survivors of the Lyons “martyrdom.” The letter begins with an address, “From the servants sojourning in Vienne and Lyons in Gaul, to the brethren in Asia and Phrygia, who have the same hope of redemption.” It was meant, in short, for another band of Christians, residing far off in what today we call the Middle East.

  At this point the Christian movement was just over a hundred years old. From ragged and uncertain beginnings in the aftermath of Jesus’ death around A.D. 30, it had achieved strong gains. Its growth was especially marked during the early part of the second century, in the cities and villages between the Mediterranean and the Black seas, in Syria, in Egypt (around the ancient metropolis Alexandria), and (to a lesser extent) in Palestine. It had then begun to spread north and west into Roman Gaul. Lyons would quickly become the front line in this latest expansion, along with its sister city, Vienne.

  Lyons had grown impressively during the previous decades. Originally just a small settlement of fishermen and boatmen near the point where the Rhône and the Saône rivers meet, it was colonized in the name of Rome as early as A.D. 43. There, a military garrison overlooking the river confluence would enable farther advance to the north. There, too, a nucleus of trade would rapidly develop. Soon the emperor Augustus would make Lyons the provincial capital. And his successor (and son-in-law), Agrippa, would create a network of roads reaching out in several directions from the town center—over and around the Alps, off toward the Pyrénées and beyond.

  By the mid-2nd century, the city’s population of perhaps 50,000 was divided into three districts. To the north lay the chief Roman settlement, with villas and barracks grouped around a large forum. To the west, on the back of a steep ridge, was the heart of the Gallic community; in its midst stood important public buildings, an amphitheater, and a terraced altar for worship of the emperor. Toward the south, straggling out on a narrow peninsula and along the opposite riverbank, was the lower city, home to numerous ship carpenters, sailors, porters, and tradesmen.

  The people of early Lyons were remarkably cosmopolitan in spirit and diverse in origin. In addition to a large contingent of Romans (officials, soldiers, merchants), there were many immigrants from the Orient, especially the Greek cities of Asia Minor. Even the Gallic majority was a checkerboard of regional and local difference: peasants from the countryside both near and far, boatmen and traders from upstream sites beside the two major rivers. Latin was the language of state, and south Gallic dialects the main vernacular. Greek and Aramaic were also frequently spoken.

  The city’s economy was centered on trade; in virtually all sectors a market atmosphere prevailed. Grains, meat, and dairy products flowed in from the surrounding villages, and out again down the rivers. Craft production focused on ceramics and ironwares. There was wealth among the local aristocracy; there was poverty and vagrancy, too, within the ranks of the maritime workforce.

  The culture of the city was no less variegated. Religious worship stretched across a remarkably wide range. The Roman gods came first: Jupiter, Juno, Minerva, and many others. State-run festivals, including veneration of emperors past and present, filled the calendar. But dozens of richly developed cults also clamored for attention. Among the various cult figures, some loomed especially large: Cybele, the Mother of Gods, of Phrygian origin but found in different guises all around the Mediterranean; Mithra, the Sun God; Isis, Osiris, and Serapis, brought by migrants from Egypt and now joined to Roman tradition; Bacchus and the Olympian gods of Greece. There were probably (though not certainly) some Jews at Lyons, as well.

  And, finally, there were the Christians. These included many foreigners, recent arrivals from the much larger Christian communities across the Mediterranean. A few had attained some prosperity and local distinction—a physician, a public advocate—but most were of modest social position; some were slaves.

  Regarded at first as members of a minor Jewish sect and thus as targets for traditional anti-Semitism, Roman Christians had gradually forged a separate identity. But precisely for that reason, they seemed worrying, and threatening, to their neighbors. More than Jews and devotees of the foreign cults, Christians set themselves apart. Living in what they thought of as the Last Times, and thus in full expectation of an approaching apocalypse, they declined to conform with common standards. On the contrary, they viewed the world around them with a hostile eye. Rome itself was for them a seat of idolatry, the new “Babylon.” Throughout the empire, they saw ominous signs of Satan’s influence growing apace, just as forecast by their Scriptures for the premillennial years.

  In the eyes of the public at large, such attitudes seemed deeply subversive. Christian disdain, Christian clannishness, Christian proselytizing all bespoke a “conspiracy” gnawing at the entrails of the empire. Moreover, the details of Christian worship were uniformly horrifying. At regular intervals their members would gather for a rite called the Eucharist, which included deliberate acts of flesh-eating. Another of their ceremonies was the Agape—the “bond of love”—performed at night, in private homes, in order to achieve a mutual state of spiritual ecstasy. But not only spiritual—physical, sensual, sexual, too! And openly promiscuous, setting aside even Nature’s ancient prohibition against intimacy within families.

  Given all these elements—conspiracy, revolution, sacrilege, cannibalism, black magic, incest—the Christian movement posed a grave and gathering danger. The great gods, on whose protection the empire and all its citizens relied, would surely be angered; this, in turn, might bring catastrophe. According to one observer (writing some years later), it was widely assumed that “Christians are the cause of . . . every disaster that afflicts the populace. If the Tiber floods, or the Nile fails to, if there is a drought or an earthquake, a famine or a plague, the cries go up at once: ‘Throw the Christians to the lions!’ ”

  In the middle decades of the 2nd century,
fears for the future of the empire began to merge with actual events. “Barbarian assaults” were launched at several points along the frontier: in the east, by the Parthians (in what is present-day Iran), and, to the north, by Germanic forces crossing the Danube and pressing down toward the Alps. Most were thrown back during the decade of the 160s, but at severe cost to the victors. Plague, carried by returning soldiers, would soon ravage entire populations in and around Rome itself. Military struggle bred political conflict; the new emperor, Marcus Aurelius, was forced to repel direct challenges from his own generals. Moreover, the prosperity of the early 2nd century would gradually erode. Trade slowed, debt rose, the ranks of the poor increased.

  These darkening conditions obtained, to a greater or lesser degree, throughout the empire. And they helped build a rising tide of persecution that was directed mainly against Christians. In 166, there was a brutal killing, of the bishop of the church at Smyrna. Similar violence occurred at Gortyna (on Crete), in Athens, and in Philadelphia (today Amman, the capital of Jordan) at the eastern end of the Mediterranean. Other sites of martyrdom included Christian communities in the Anatolian Pontus, and perhaps Rome itself.

  After some months, the imperial governor returns to Lyons from his journeying. Now he will hear the charges against the city’s Christians. A crowd gathers at the amphitheater; the prisoners are brought in. As the hearing goes forward, a local dignitary named Vettus Epagathus can stand it no longer and asks to speak on their behalf. They are innocent, he says; there is nothing “atheistic” or “impious” about them. But he is shouted down by the onlookers. The governor demands to know if Vettus is himself a Christian; he admits to at least a sympathetic interest, and is immediately condemned. The crowd mocks him as “the comforter of the Christians.”

  Witnesses are summoned, including some who have been slaves in the households of the accused. Threatened with physical harm, they confirm the reports about their masters: again, the focus is “Thyestian feasts” and “Oedipodean intercourse.” At this, the crowd turns furious. Several among the accused, in their terror, deny their faith. But others are ready to confess, and suffer the consequences: a deacon from Vienne named Sanctus, a Roman named Maturus, an immigrant from Pergamon named Attalus, a local slave woman named Blandina. All are subjected to grievous torture: burning with heated brass, stretching on the rack, beating and choking. Presently the bishop of their church—one Pothinus, said to be “over ninety years old and very weak physically”—is dragged before the governor. Refusing to recant or yield in any way, he is savagely clubbed to death.

  The proceedings continue for many days before an increasingly maddened public. And a new element is added: forced combat with wild beasts. Maturus and Sanctus are badly injured this way. Attalus is paraded through the amphitheater behind a placard on which is written HERE IS ATTALUS THE CHRISTIAN; later he will be torn apart by lions. The slave Blandina’s steadfast faith serves only to goad the crowd to ever greater ferocity; after hours of excruciating torment, she is “thrown to a bull” and gored to death.

  Eventually the governor, armed with new instructions from Rome, orders the beheading of “all who appear to possess Roman citizenship,” and sends the rest “to the beasts.” But even this is not the end of it. The corpses of the victims are devoured by dogs or cast into the fire. And whatever yet remains is “for many days watched with a military guard . . . all unburied.” Again the mob gathers; some “rage and gnash their teeth,” others “laugh and jeer . . . saying ‘where is their god, and what good to them was their worship?’ ” When six more days have passed, there is one final burning, with the ashes “swept into the river Rhône”—to foreclose the chance that “they might ever rise again.”

  To repeat, all of this comes to us from a remnant of Lyons Christians who somehow survived. Thus it reflects their viewpoint, their feelings—their sorrow, horror, outrage, pride. But how would it be remembered by the large majority of citizens who were pagan? The latter left no direct record, but one can easily imagine . . .

  The Christians have gotten what they deserve. Their shameful beliefs and practices place them wholly beyond the bounds of human community. They are atheists—devils—saboteurs—scum. And they must be destroyed.

  CHAPTER II

  Witch-hunting Panorama, 150-1750

  Perhaps it seems ironic that a history of witch-hunting should begin with the persecution and martyrdom of the early Christians, for the later parts of this history will feature Christians on the opposite side—as themselves the persecutors and martyr-makers. There may, however, be some dynamic linkage here. Done-to becomes done-by: such reversals are not uncommon in groups as well as individuals.

  Admittedly, the parallels are inexact and incomplete. The early Christians were an actual, easily identifiable community, whereas the “witches” of late medieval and early modern times were no such thing. Still, in both cases, the element of scapegoating loomed very large. In both, highly stereotyped images rooted in fantasy served to energize a horrific chain of events. Both expressed a strong anti-conspiratorial bent, a conviction of dark doings hatched in secret places with deeply subversive intent. And both, finally, drew upon a similar reservoir of feeling: terror, rage, revulsion, hatred.

  Of course, it took many centuries to accomplish the change from victims to victimizers. Christianity had to move from its initially beleaguered position—move, that is, in two directions, both in toward the center of the empire and out toward the margins of what was then called the civilized world. The conversion of the Emperor Constantine, and his founding of the city of Constantinople in 330 as a new Christian nucleus; the decrees of another emperor, Theodosius, which in effect equated orthodox Christian practice with good citizenship; the gathering momentum, from the 4th century onward, of missionary work among “pagan” peoples both within and beyond the imperial borders; the piecemeal assimilation during the 5th, 6th, and 7th centuries of “barbarian” conquerors (Goths, Franks, Visigoths) to Christian faith and culture; thus the leading milestones enroute to eventual hegemony.

  There were also deep challenges to confront and setbacks to overcome. Some reflected internal strains: for example, the proliferation of “heresies” (Gnosticism, Manichaeism, Pelagianism, Arianism) and the great schism that gradually divided East and West (Byzantium and Rome). Others came from outside, especially the steadily encroaching presence of Islam. The overall range of Church authority would contract significantly between the 6th and 13th centuries, as the Holy Land (Palestine) and adjacent parts of the Mediterranean east, Asia Minor, North Africa, and southern Spain passed into Muslim hands. Still, throughout its European heartland, Catholic Christianity gained and held the role of a state religion.

  This was, in most regions anyway, a patchy landscape. Bishops, priests, and other clerics shaped doctrine, maintained Church properties, and sought to control worship practice, usually with some official backing from secular princes and potentates. Popular religion was another matter: Among the vast ranks of the pre-modern peasantry, Christian faith remained relatively shallow, and was variously interwoven with many still-lively vestiges of paganism. For most it was chiefly about “works” and ritual observance: attending Mass, genuflecting to religious authorities, going on pilgrimage, venerating the saints (or living “holy men”), and so on. Thus, as one historian has written, “it could complement rather than compete with animist beliefs and practices.”

  Local cult activities, passed down from pre-Christian times, survived more or less intact in many areas. Typically, they focused on a host of immediate and practical concerns: crop fertility and weather; love, sex, and reproduction; protection of health and property; and all the vagaries of human relations. In some cases they included the worship of pagan deities; the Greco-Roman goddesses Hecate and Diana seem to have been particular favorites. These two were associated in popular belief with nocturnal rites—especially for women who might be magically transported over long distances through the use of special unguents or powders (or
simple broomsticks). Indeed, this was a world in which magic of all sorts proliferated and flourished: philtres, potions, charms and incantations, the use of “sympathetic” imagery, fortune-telling, conjuring, and countless other practices so humble and obscure they left no traceable record. The substances used to arouse love, for example, included herbal potions and powders, pulverized bones, ashes, bathing water, menstrual blood, hair (especially pubic hair), and human feces. There were, moreover, specialists in such matters, known in everyday parlance as “cunning folk.” In centuries to come these would become targets of increasingly dark suspicion; but throughout the Middle Ages they operated quite openly and, at times, with genuine public appreciation. To consult them, to follow their prescriptions, was simply part of everyday survival.

  In the same milieu flourished sorcery, though this was always harder to see and to specify. Maleficium, the performance of harmful acts by supernatural means, was perforce a secret thing; we can glimpse it now only indirectly, through the manifest fears of those who wished to suppress it (for example, religious authorities) or to counteract it (the many ordinary people who considered themselves its victims). Often enough when misfortune struck—when the harvest failed, when hailstorms hit, when people or livestock mysteriously sickened—neighbors would turn on one another with accusations of dabbling in “the black arts.” We cannot tell, from the distance of a dozen centuries and more, where the truth lay in any specific case. We can, however, be sure that the idea of sorcery had wide currency. We can also infer that in such a climate of belief and opinion, some individuals must have tried their hand at it: must have fashioned the charms, cast the spells, uttered the curses, conjured the spirits against all manner of rivals and antagonists.