François-René vicomte de Chateaubriand: The Martyrs. Chapters 1-12. O.W. Wright translation. New York: Derby and Jackson, 1859. Originally published in 1809.
In his preface, Chateaubriand explains his intention in writing this prose epic. “I advanced, in a former work”— The Genius of Christianity, which had appeared, to considerable applause, seven years earlier—that “Christianity appeared to me more favorable than Paganism for the development of and the play of passions in the epic” and, further, “that the marvelous of this religion might contend for the palm of interest with the marvelous borrowed from mythology.” [1] With The Martyrs he seeks to prove these claims by a kind of thought experiment. To do so, he sets his plot near the end of the third century AD, when Diocletian ruled the Roman Empire and initiated what would later be called the Great Persecution against Christians. This setting enables him to compare and contrast “the predominant features of the two religions: the ethics, the sacrifices, the ceremonies of both systems of worship” and indeed their rival gods, Jupiter and Jehovah. Because the Empire encompassed such vast territory, he can also present the diverse lands of its provinces and the moeurs of their peoples, many of which he had visited. He exercises his poetic license, putting Augustine and Jerome in this period, making them friends of his hero, Eudorus, as men who converted from paganism to Christianity and took up different vocations within the Church.
Like all the epic poets, he begins with an invocation of the Celestial Muse, inspirer of Homer and Virgil in “that art pleased with austere thoughts, with grave and sublime meditations” (I.31). But he wants the Muse to teach him “upon the harp of David,” not the lyre of Greece and Rome, and “to give to my eyes a portion of those tears that Jeremiah shed over the miseries of Zion,” so that he may “speak of the sorrows of the persecuted Church” (I.31-32). He issues a poetic version of a hero’s challenge to a rival: “Come, Muse of Falsehood, come struggle with the Muse of Truth” (I.32). Having survived nine persecutions under previous emperors, Christians had enjoyed peace under Diocletian, their numbers growing, “contest[ing] the honors offered on the shrine of idolatry” (I.32). But Satan had other plans.
Chateaubriand first introduces the elderly widower Demodocus, the last male descendant of Homer, and his daughter, Cymodocée, born in the sacred grove where the interlocutors of Plato’s Laws dialogued. Chateaubriand reminds his readers of the close relation of laws, religion, and epic poetry, observing that “the ancients placed the cradle of Lycurgus near that of Jupiter” on the border of Messenia, where father and daughter live, and Laconia, “to teach us that religion and the laws have one common origin, and that to destroy their mutual union is both impious and unnatural.” (I.39). “The augurs, therefore, declared that the daughter of Demodocus would one day be renowned for her wisdom” (I.33)—very much his father’s daughter, inasmuch as “wisdom had taught” Demodocus “the full knowledge of the human heart” (I.36). Chateaubriand takes care to present the best of the pagans first; he emphasizes the very real virtues seen amongst them. Demodocus serves as the high priest at a temple to Homer, who sang of the “warlike life” and “pastoral moeurs” (I.34). [2]
Like all fathers, Demodocus wants his daughter to marry well, but she has the misfortune to have attracted the vile Hierocles, “the favorite of Galerius,” an equally vile ambitieux who serves, restively, under Diocletian; worthy suitors have been scared off. The opposite of pious Aeneas, “this impious Roman” disgusts Cymodocée, and Demodocus “could not risk her happiness with a barbarian suspected of many crimes, and who, by his inhuman treatment, had hurried his first spouse to an early tomb” (I.35). To shield her from his attentions, he consecrates her “to the services of the Muses,” making her the pagan equivalent of a cloistered nun. “Familiarized in the learned society of the Muses with all the noble recollections that antiquity inspires, each day Cymodocée unfolded new charms”; at the same time, Demodocus moderated “the effects of this divine education,” which might lead to hubris, “by inspiring in her a taste for simplicity” (I.36). Rather, he tells her, “let us beseech Minerva to grant us Reason for our guide; from her we shall learn that moderation, the sister of Truth, without whose aid our passions will hurry us into every extreme” (I.36).
On a journey to attend the festival of Lymnaean Diana, Cymodocée gets separated from her nurse-chaperone, loses her way, and discovers a sleeping youth next to an altar dedicated to the Naiad of a sacred spring. She “really imagined that in this youth she beheld the lover of Diana,” Endymion, who had been cast into sleep by Jupiter because he “had the insolence to solicit Juno” (I.40). She prays to Diana to protect her from the “arrows” of this huntsman (I.40). But upon his awakening, her misrecognition proves even more radical: he rejects her polytheistic beliefs, testifying that “There is but one God, master of the universe; and I am but a mortal, full of weakness and misery” (I.41). Eudore [Eudorus] means “good gift.” In the Iliad, Eudorus is a demigod, an ally of Achilles; in later Greek history, Eudorus of Alexandria was a Neoplatonic monotheist. This Eudore, however, is a Christian, who prays that “heaven guard your virgin honor,” a concern that should be second only to “the fear of God,” the beginning of wisdom (I.41). “The language of this man confounded Cymodocée,” as “the gravity of his language,” his Christian words, coincide with “the grace of his person,” his classical beauty (I.41). “He seemed to belong to a different race of men, more noble and serious than that with which she was acquainted” (I.41). “I am a descendant of Homer, a name immortalized in song,” she tells him, only to be told, “I know a book more valuable than his” (I.41-42). After hearing the story of her wandering, he determines to return her to her father. Along the way, looking up at the night sky, she invokes the stars that are, she believes, gods and goddesses; Eudore “see[s] nothing but the stars, which declare the glory of the Most High,” a claim that “filled the priestess of the Muses with fresh confusion,” raising the possibility that he might be “some impious demon,” or maybe a pirate (I.42). Yet he “bend[s] compassionately over a slave, whom they found helpless and abandoned by the roadside, call[ed] him brother, and threw his mantle over him to cover his nakedness” (I.42).
When he returns her to her desperate father, Demodocus asks, tellingly, “what god hath restored thee”? (I.44). He won’t learn that for a long time, but he exhibits the nobility of pagan self-sacrifice, saying that he would have thrown himself at the feet of Hierocles to beg her return at the price of his own life, had she been captured by his “partisans,” as he had feared (I.44). It happens that he knows the family of Eudore, whose father, Lasthenes, is a prominent citizen of Arcadia, “a descendant of a race of heroes and of gods” [3]; Eudore “has borne away laurels of triumph in the field of Mars”—a point of respect, indeed, for a priest of the Homeridae (I.46). He determines to visit the young man, bringing gifts: “O my daughter! May heaven preserve us from the crime of ingratitude!” (I.48). “The gods chose Egypt for their birthplace, because the Egyptians were the most grateful of all mankind” (I.48). [4] Once in Lasthenes’ palace, Demodocus gives Eudore “an urn of inestimable value” (“I will accept your offering,” Eudore replies, “if it has not been used in your sacrifices”) goes so far as to say that he would agree to a marriage between the young man and his daughter, had she not already “been consecrated to the Muses.” (II.53).
As the two fathers converse, Demodocus learns that Lasthenes’ servants are not slaves, as “my religion forbids slavery, and I have given them their liberty”; that his religion is Christianity; that his fields and flocks prosper because his family submits “to the will of him, who is the only true God”; that his wife is humble, chaste, and faithful; that “no happiness she can enjoy will equal my wishes”; and that they “have grown old together” (II.54). While Cymodocée “listened and admired”—moeurs “so amiable touched the very soul of the young infidel”—Demodocus wonders: “Your words breathe all the wisdom of ancient times, and yet I have not met with them in Homer,” and if “your sentiments have not the grace of Euripides, they possess the solemnity of Plato” (II.55). He blesses the Christian patriarch.
Cyril, Bishop of Lacedaemon, enters as an honored guest of the household. He explains to Demodocus that he is “no king,” carrying a scepter, “but a shepherd,” carrying “a crook with which I conduct my flock,” a worshipper of the God who was “born among shepherds” (II.58). He has come to hear Eudore’s story of penance, his confession, a practice unknown to the pagans. They move outdoors, near the Alpheus River (legendarily re-routed by Hercules in order to cleanse the Augean Stables), where Cyril quietly humbles himself not before a mythical hero but before the divine wisdom that created the river and the mountains surrounding the river valley. Cymodocée sings Homeric hymns while playing the lyre; Cyril hopes that “these ingenious fictions of antiquity” may one day “be considered as fictions only” in the songs of poets,” since “now they obscure the mind, and keep it, even in this life, in a state of slavery that is disgraceful to reason, and after death, they will destroy the soul” (II.62). No hater of music itself (“ours is a religion of harmony and love”), the Bishop asks Eudore to sing while playing not a Greek lyre but a Hebrew kinnor, the instrument associated with the shepherd David (II.64). The young man of course obliges, singing of “the vanity of life” and “the false vanity of the wicked,” reserving a song of praise for “the honest poor and the virtuous woman” and, finally for the praise of God (II.64). “Demodocus and his daughter were too much astonished to give utterance to their emotions,” although Cymodocée “remembers[s] the praise of the virtuous woman and resolved to attempt the song on her own lyre” (II.65). After all retire for the night, Cyril dreams of a young couple, martyred.
Cyril, who had already offered to lead Demodocus to the knowledge of God, “if you wish”—the God who demands only the sacrificial “offering of your heart” (II.58)—delivers a sermon on the next day. Tacitly contrasting the City of God with the Roman Empire (“Away, monuments of earth! ye compare not with the monuments of the Holy City” [III.67]), he contrasts earthly happiness with the true happiness of the Christian. Christian happiness in no way denies “the delightful condition of a mortal who has just done a virtuous or heroic action, of a sublime genius who gives birth to a great thought, of a man who feels the transports of lawful love or of friendship long tried by misfortune”; “noble passions are not extinguished but only purified in the hearts of the just,” with human loves and friendships now “concentrated in the bosom of the Divinity itself, imbib[ing] something of the grandeur and eternity of God” (III.69-70). It is especially the eternity of Christian happiness that Cyril praises, an eternity often vindicated by the Mother of God, the “Queen of Mercy,” who intervenes on behalf of suffering human beings with her Son, their Savior. Nonetheless, there are times when God the Father decrees martyrdom, not earthly prosperity, for His people. Now, in Diocletian’s time, “the Christians, unconquerable by the fire and sword” of earlier persecutions, “have grown enervated amid the delights of peace” (III.74). “To try them better, providence suffered them to know riches and honors; they have been unable to resist the persecution of prosperity” (III. 74). And so, they have angered God, who will purify them with suffering, unchaining Satan to afflict them. Cyril’s dream was prophetic: chief among the martyrs will be Eudore and Cymodocée, although Cyril does not know that they will be the young couple he dreamed of. It will be a long time before Cymodocée converts to Christianity.
It is only after delivering what amounts to a theological introduction that Cyril urges Eudore to begin to tell the story of his struggles. A descendant of Philopoemen, whose descendants were punished by the Romans for resisting Rome’s conquest of Greece, Eudore had reported to Rome at age sixteen, as per the ancient peace treaty, which stipulated that elder sons of Greek families be held in Rome for a time as hostage-guarantors against any future Greek rebellion. His family “was the first in Greece to embrace the law of Jesus Christ” and he had passed his childhood learning “the hard lessons of adversity” in accordance with “the simplicity of Arcadian moeurs“; this enhanced and prolonged the natural “innocence of childhood” (IV.84) He saw the difference between his own upbringing and that of the other young conscripts on the way to Rome. As they passed the Greek cities, “once so flourishing, now present[ing] nothing to the eye but heaps of ruins,” “skeletons of their former magnificence,” he considers how “personal evils,” such as conscription, “sink into insignificance when compared with those calamities that strike whole nations” (IV.86). The others were “quite insensible” to this reflection, and the difference “rose from our religion”: “paganism develops the passions too prematurely, and thus retards the progress of reason,” whereas Christianity, “while it prolongs the infancy of the heart, accelerates the manhood of the mind,” teaching it to “respect the dignity of man” (IV.86). “My young companions had heard nothing but of the metamorphoses of Jupiter,” manifestations of the god’s erotic adventurism, while “I had already been seated with the prophets on the ruins of desolate cities, and had learnt from Babylon what judgment to form of Corinth.” (IV.86-97). And he too felt the pull of pagan lightness, a festive procession traveling from Athens to Delos, the celebrants chanting “verses from Pindar and Simonides”; “my imagination was enchanted by this spectacle”—the “first time that I witnessed a pagan ceremony without horror” (IV.87). And the seductive beauty of Greece soon gave way to the seductive grandeur of Rome, where everything “bears the mark of dominion and duration”—the ‘Eternal City’ vying with the invisible City of God (IV.89.
He began classes taught by a former student of Quintilian, where he met Augustine, Jerome, and Prince Constantine, son of then-caesar, future emperor Constantius, under the Emperor Diocletian. One of Constantius’ three fellow-caesars was Galerian, hater of Christians, and Galerius’ “favorite,” Hierocles, a student of the sophists and currently governor of Achaia. Glancing at the Enlightenment philosophes of France, Chateaubriand has Eudore describe the sophists as “disciples of a vain philosophy” who “attack the Christians” and sponge off the rich while praising moderation; among them, there are those who “advocate a republic in the bosom of monarchy,” “pretend[ing] that it is necessary to overturn society in order to remodel it on a new plan” (IV.95). “Inflated with vanity, persuaded of the sublimity of their own genius, and boldly superior to vulgar doctrines, there is no folly, however contemptible, of which these sophists are not guilty, no system, however monstrous, which they do not bring forward and support” (IV.95). “The words liberty, virtue, science, the progress of intelligence, the good of mankind, are perpetually in Hierocles’ mouth; but this Brutus is a mercenary courtier; this Cato the slave of passions the most shameful; this apostle of toleration is the most intolerant of men, and this worshipper of humanity the most bloody minded of persecutors” (IV.96). Hierocles “is corrupting, under the name of enlightenment, a man who reigns over mankind” (IV.96). “Such is the deformity of man, when left alone with his body, after renouncing his soul” (IV.96). With his sophistical revolutionism and false enlightenment, Hierocles embodies not only decadent imperial Rome but the Jacobins of Chateaubriand’s youth.
When visiting Christians in Rome, Eudore saw, “in the midst of this evangelical poverty,” the civility, “cheerfulness tempered with gravity,” simplicity and dignified language, “good taste and solid judgment” that recalled “the best days of Augustus and Maecenas (IV.98). “It seemed as if this obscure retreat had been destined by heaven to prove the cradle of another Rome, and the last asylum of arts, of letters, and of civilization” (IV.98). This notwithstanding, he confesses to his listeners, in Rome “the illusions of my youth took from me the love of truth” (IV.98). The Christian pontiff Marcellinus attempted “to bring me back to God,” failed, and excommunicated him as one “who violates by his corrupt moeurs the purity of the Christian name” (IV.98-99). “I now believed my return to Christianity impossible, and abandoned myself to my pleasures with thoughtless indifference” (V.102).
His companions were only slightly more serious—Jerome preoccupied with natural philosophy, Augustine with the poetry of Virgil, Constantine with Roman history—Constantine being Eudore’s best friend among the three, a travel companion, fellow dreamer of amours, and drinking buddy. But, Eudore advises his listeners, “think not that we were happy in the midst” of their “deceitful pleasures”: “an inquietude, which I have no words to define, incessantly tormented us” (V.108). [5] “In vain we expected to find constancy and truth” in love; “we met with nothing but deceit, tears, jealousies and indifference”; “betraying or betrayed, our affections were ever varying” (V.108). “We had abandoned those virtuous thoughts which are the true food of the soul, and had lost all relish for that celestial beauty which alone can fill the immensity of our desires” (V.108).
Jerome was the first to voice frustration with their life. In front of the tomb of courageous Scipio Africanus, said to have spent his latter days at a rural villa, far from the ingratitude of the Rome he had defended as a general, Jerome asked, “Does not the whole life of Scipio condemn our conduct?” (V.109-110). He and Augustine concurred: only Christianity offers the hope of a soul at peace with itself. The Church has no gladiatorial combats, no spectacles of human beings thrown to their death in the jaws of wild animals, no “blood of victims,” no “orgies,” only vigils and prayers (V.112-113). Eudore wasn’t quite ready to return to what Jerome calls “the religion of my infancy” (V.110), but he did listen to a Christian hermit who overheard their conversation, who recalled his own “wild and dissipated” youth and the way its pleasures eventually palled. He had been a celebrated rhetorician, as they aspired to be, but now he asks (rhetorically),”What is this literary fame, which is disputed during life, uncertain after death, and often the portion of mediocrity and of vice?” (V.112). Eudore considers him no longer a rhetorician but a “Christian philosopher” (V.114). “My young friends, it is a great evil for a man to attain prematurely the summit of his desires; and to pass, in a few years, through the illusions of a long life” (V.112). One might suspect that the celebrated author of Atala and René speaks through the mouth of old Thraseus. [6]
The friends part and Eudore returns to Rome, where he wandered into the Catacombs, seeing the Empress Priscia and her daughter, Valeria, at prayer, accompanied by Sebastian, soon to be martyred, and Dorotheus, whose name means ‘God’s gift.’ “A mingled sensation of shame, repentance, and rapture filled my soul” (V.119). “Oh, the power of that religion which could induce the spouse of a Roman emperor to steal like an adulteress from the imperial couch to visit the rendezvous of the unfortunate, to seek Jesus Christ at the altar of an obscure martyr, in the midst of tombs, and among men the objects of contempt and proscription!” (V.119). God rebuked Eudore for his apostasy by allowing him to be falsely accused by Christians and Romans alike. Knowing of his excommunication, the Christians suspected him of being a Roman spy, while Hierocles, who had himself sent spies into the Catacombs, invented the story that Eudore had guided the imperial wife and daughter to that place. Hierocles then brought his lie to Galerius, who informed Diocletian, accusing Hierocles’ rival of treason. Eudore escaped punishment only because Constantine intervened in his defense before the emperor. Exiled, he joined the army of Caesar Constantius, then stationed along the Rhine, fighting the rebellious Franks, that “restless nation” which “is always harassing the frontiers of the empire” (V.124). “From the bosom of luxury, and of polished society, I passed to a hard and perilous life, in the midst of a barbarous people”—the “most fierce” of all the barbarians, their weapons “always in their hands,” regarding “a life of peace as a life of the most grievous servitude” (V.124). All of this “awakened a new train of ideas” in him (V.126): “I was here fighting the battles of barbarians, the tyrants of Greece,” his native land, “against other barbarians from whom I had never received an injury”—not unlike the conscript foreign soldiers who fought alongside the French in the Napoleonic Wars (V.127). “The love of my country revived with ardor in my bosom, and Arcadia arose to my view arrayed in all her charms” (V.127). Before his love of God returns, his love of country does; Chateaubriand considers the one love as precedent to the other.
Wounded in battle, Eudore was rescued by a Christian priest who had exchanged himself for a Christian captured by the Franks and is now a slave, evangelizing among them. Harold, “his name among the Franks,” returned accompanied by Clothilde, the wife of his master, Pharamond, who had interceded on Eudore’s behalf with her husband (VII.146). “I doubt not that you will prove an obedient slave, and repay her kindness by your fidelity and gratitude” (VII.146). [7] Harold descended from the Roman patriot, Cassius (his given name is Zacharius); his ancestors were “banished from Rome for having arisen in defense of liberty,” then converted to Christianity, “the only asylum of true independence”—still another association of patriotism and Christianity (VII.149). He asks Eudore, “Will you be less sensible than [the] Franks to the charms of the Gospel?” only to be told, “I am of the same religion as yourself”; “I am a Christian” (VII.153-154). He does not admit his excommunication, however. A day later, Clothilde joins them, praying to God and converting. “Thus I beheld the origin of Christianity among the Franks” (VII.154).
His enforced residence among the Franks enabled Eudore to describe their political institutions and moeurs to his listeners. They live under a monarchic regime; although they divide rule among several kings, they unite behind one when in danger. This is Pharamond, chief of the Salian tribe. The Franks assemble once a year to bring their complaints to their king, who “renders justice with impartiality” (VII.156). They hold property in common, assigning plots to families that cultivate them for one year, returning it to the tribe after the harvest. “The same simplicity marks the rest of their character,” each wearing the same types of clothing, inhabiting the same types of huts, sleeping on the same beds of animal skins as the warrior-kings. According to one chieftain, Chloderic, “We forbid our children to read or write; we wish them not to learn the arts of servitude: we wish nothing but the sword, battle, and blood” (VII.162). [8]
Eudore won his freedom after he saved his master’s son’s life from a wolf. The Franks tasked him with bringing a peace overture to the Romans. “It is my hope that this rude season of my life, thus passed in the family of a barbarous master, will render me one day like this lily in the eyes of God: in order to develop all its powers, the soul requires to be buried for a season under the rigors of adversity” (VII.164). [9]
Having spoken for nine hours, Eudore paused his narration. Bishop Cyril “admired this picture of the church in its first progress through the world” while reflecting on the perfidy of Hierocles, knowing that a new persecution was then being plotted by that man and his superior, Galerius, at court in Rome (VIII.165). Eudore himself “was far from feeling tranquil,” troubled by his passion for Cymodocée, whose “mild and timid looks” were “incessantly fixed upon him” during his narrative (VIII.166). As for the priestess of Homer, “the ignorance of her mind vanished before the light of Christianity” even as “the ignorance of her heart [vanished] before that of the passions,” feeling, “at the same moment, the anxieties of love and the delights of wisdom” (VIII.166). “It was thus that heaven first united two hearts, that were to add fresh triumphs to the cross” (VIII. 167).
Satan hoped otherwise, “groan[ing] at the loss of his power” during this time of Christianity’s advance but “resolv[ing] at least not to yield the victory without a struggle” (VIII.167). Having determined to punish the complacent Christians under hitherto tolerant Diocletian, God “left him free to accomplish his dark designs” (VIII.167). Chateaubriand has given himself the opportunity to depict the caesars of Hell, whom Satan convened for a parley, rather as the rebellious Franks do, when under assault from Rome. The demon Homicide argued for the extermination of all Christians. The demon False Wisdom, with his “deadly hatred of true reason,” the “father of Atheism, an execrable phantom whom Satan himself did not father,” who “became enamored with Death as soon as she appeared in hell” and “proud of his enlightenment” [!], spoke up as the pacifist of the lot, deploring violence and insisting that “we shall only obtain the victory by reasoning, gentleness, and persuasion” (VIII.174). Let us disseminate among the Roman sophists and “among the Christians themselves” the “principles that dissolve the bonds of society and undermine the foundations of empires,” deploying Hierocles as our point man (VIII.175). But with “her mild glances” and “the charms of her voice and smile,” concealing her “perfidy and venom,” the demon Voluptuousness intervened with still another plan: “To conquer the disciples of an austere law, neither violence nor wisdom is needed,” only “the tender passions,” which are sure to soften “these austere servants of a chaste God” (VIII.176). She reminded her colleagues that Hierocles is not only a sophist but a spurned lover of Cymodocée. “I know how to continue my work, excite rivalries, overturn the world with the greatest ease, and bring men, through delight, to partake of your misery” here in Hell (VIII.177). Ever the conciliator among his caesars, Satan assured them that all these strategies can be used, along with those of the demons Idolatry and Pride, with Ambition to beckon “the soul of Galerius” and Superstition “the heart of Diocletian” (VIII.177). “With all these evils combined, let us stir up against the Christians a terrible persecution” (VIII.177). All of this reminds readers of the Jacobin persecution of Christians.
Continuing his account, Eudore recounted his embassy to Rome, where he found the emperor senile, Galerius primed to replace him, with Hierocles his confidant. The truce was established, and he visited the Gauls before returning to Arcadia. “Never did any country present such a diversity of manners and religions, such a mixture of civilization and barbarity” (IX.183), Eudore observes, as Chateaubriand glances at the France of his own time (IX.183). He witnessed a Druid ceremony presided over by a mysterious woman who goads her listeners to rebel against the Romans. Velleda “was truly a remarkable woman,” her character “a strange mixture of dignity and of wildness, of innocence and of art” (X.195). “Pride was her ruling passion, and the elevation of her sentiments often bordered on extravagance”—traits not unknown in modern society ladies (X.195-196). Against her claims of supernatural powers, Eudore soberly protested, “I am unacquainted with any such power,” sensibly asking, “How can you reasonably believe yourself possessed of a power that you have never exercised?” (X.196). “I could but pity the lovely maniac,” but that pity, and perhaps her loveliness, proved his undoing, given the “lukewarmness” of his Christian faith at the time—a condition that “deserved to meet its punishment” (X.197). Having developed a passion for him, Velleda eventually breached his none-too-formidable defenses, leading him to conclude, “I am not strong enough to be a Christian” (X.207)—true, because no one is, without the grace of God. After falling at her feet, “I felt myself stamped with the seal of divine reprobation” and “doubted the possibility of my salvation, and the omnipotence of the mercy of God” (X.207). But Velleda committed suicide after her father was killed in a skirmish with the Romans. A Christian priest, Clair (i.e., “Light,” genuine Enlightenment) hears Eudore’s “full confession of all the inequities of my past life” (XI.211). Eudore resolved “to abandon the army and the world,” writing to Constantius and asking to be decommissioned (XI.211).
Heading to Diocletian’s court, temporarily in Africa, he visited the library at Alexandria, “this depository of the bane and the antidote of the soul,” evil and good books (XI.216). The city is shaped in the form of a Macedonian cuirass, perhaps as a way “to perpetuate the memory of its founder”: “the spear of Alexander could bid cities spring up amidst the desert, as the lance of Minerva called for the olive from the bosom of the earth” (XI.217). (In all the lands Napoleon had conquered, in how many did he establish a library?) The Egyptians themselves have lost their learning, as the successors of priests once “renowned for their knowledge of the wonders of the sky, and the records of the earth,” were now only “impostors, who enveloped truth as they did their mummies, in a thousand strange and fantastic folding,” no longer understanding the hieroglyphics their ancestors etched in their obelisks (XI.218). Recognizing Eudore’s services to Rome and perhaps also those to his son, the emperor granted his request to return, remarking that “you will be the first of your family that ever returned to the roof of his fathers, without leaving a son as a hostage to the Roman nation” (XI.219).
He then visited a grotto once occupied by Paul the Apostle. The anchorite, a hermit, told him, “Your faults have been great; but there is no stain that the tears of penitence cannot efface” and, moreover, “it is not without some design that providence has made you a witness of the introduction of Christianity into every land”: “Soldier of Jesus Christ, you are destined to fight and to conquer for the faith” (XI.224). In their long conversation, the anchorite said, “Behold this eastern clime, where all the religions, and all the revolutions of the earth, have had their origin,” including the “elegant divinities” worshipped in Eudore’s Greece, the “monstrous and misshapen gods” of Egypt, Jesus Christ himself, and (he prophesied) “a descendant of Ishmael,” Muhammad, who “shall reestablish error beneath the Arab’s tent” (XI.226). “It is worthy of your attention, that the people of the East, as if in punishment for some great rebellion of their forefathers, have almost always been under the dominion of tyrants; thus, a kind of miraculous counterpoise, morality and religion have sprung up in the same land that gave birth to slavery and misfortune” (XI.226). In “future ages” Egypt will see armies as huge as those of Sesostris, Cambyses, Alexander, and Caesar; Chateaubriand is thinking of Caesar and Napoleon, but had he been gifted with prophecy, he might have added Rommel and Montgomery, even Moshe Dayan. “All the great and daring efforts of the human species have either had their origin here, or have come hither to exhaust their force,” as “a supernatural energy has ever been preserved in these regions wherein the first man received life; something miraculous seems still attached to the cradle of creation and the source of light and knowledge” (XI.226). And even now, the desert saints of the Thebaid preserve Christianity against “luxury and effeminacy” (XI.227). Egypt remains a land of spiritual warfare, of Christian saints struggling against “the ancient worship of Osiris,” a false deity they will someday conquer, since “the Lord gathers about him Egypt, as a shepherd fathers round him his mantle” (XI.227). In parting, the anchorite adjured Eudore to stand fast in “the ranks of the soldiers of Jesus Christ,” who will conquer not only Egypt but Rome itself, “this mighty empire, so long the terror and the destroyer of the human race” (XI.228). Eudorus returned to his father while Demodocus urged his daughter to “imitate Eudorus,” for whom “adversity has but augmented [his] virtues” (XI.232). The priest of Homer commends the virtues of the young Christian.
Here, at the midpoint of his epic, Chateaubriand undertakes a new beginning. He turns from depicting Christian heroism overcoming personal sins and errors to depicting martyrdom, Christian triumph in sacrifice. For the depiction of heroism he had invoked the Celestial Muse, the muse of poetry, of beauty. For the depiction of martyrdom, he invokes the Holy Spirit, the God of sublimity: “I have need of thy aid” (XII.233). “Thou regardest the perpetual commotion of the things of earth, this human society in which everything, even to principle, is subject to change, in which evil becomes good and good becomes evil,” looking “with pity on the dignities that inflate our hearts and the vain honors that corrupt them,” menacing injustice and consoling “the calamity purchased by virtue” (XII.233). More than the Celestial Muse, the spirit of poien, of making, You are the “Creative Spirit,” Maker of something out of nothing, life out of death (XII.233).
The first element of martyrdom arose in the demons’ conspiracy against the Church. While Diocletian “was a prince blessed with wisdom and moderation,” to “clemency in favor of his people,” in his advancing senility superstition and avarice overcame him (XII.234). Urged on by Galerius, “he suffered himself to be seduced by the hope of extorting treasures from the Christians” (XII.234). A demonically inspired pagan soothsayer told him that Christians seek to overthrow him because they are “the enemies of our gods” (XII.236). As with so many false prophecies, the soothsayer mixed his lie with truth: the Christians were indeed the enemies of the Romans’ gods but have no intention to overthrow any earthly kingdom. Fulfilling his part of the demons’ plan, Hierocles set off for Greece and Cymodocée. While he was motivated by the demon Voluptuousness, Eudore was inspired not by eros but by agape, by “the angel of holy love” for Cymodocée. “For the first time, Eudore felt his bosom glow with the flames of genuine love” (XII.239). He hopes to convert her to Christianity, “at once throw[ing] open to her the portals of heaven and those of the nuptial chamber”: “What a happiness for a Christian!” (XII.239). From this collision of false and true doctrines, false and true fears, false and true loves will come the triumph of the martyrs.
Notes
- For an account of Chateaubriand’s discussion of Christian poetry in The Genius of Christianity, see “The Poetic of Christianity” on this website under Bible Notes. For further accounts of the book, see “Chateaubriand’s Defense of Christianity,” “Christianity and the Liberal Arts,” and “Christian Forms of Worship,” also on this website.
- Chateaubriand takes Demodocus’ name from a poet in the court of that “mighty man,” Alcinous, in Homer’s Odyssey. Demodocus’ song of the Trojan War causes Odysseus to weep. Cymodocea, whose name means “wave gatherer,” appears in Greek mythology as a Nereid, a sea-nymph; Chateaubriand’s Cymodocée will traverse the Mediterranean from Greece to Rome to Jerusalem, then back to Rome.
- Chateaubriand borrows Lasthenes’ name from that of a liberty-loving first-century AD Cretan general, who led a rebellion against the Roman Empire.
- The ancient Egyptian religion centered on ma’at, which means harmony—the order of the universe including the family and the political community. Ingratitude, and especially ingratitude to the gods, is the first sin because it disrupts that order, which was given and is maintained by the gods; conversely, gratitude faithfully affirms the divinely ordained cosmic order.
- Readers of Tocqueville will recognize this sentiment, shared by both men, although Tocqueville attributes its prevalence in modern times to civil-social democracy, whose constant turmoil prevents the mind from resting.
- Thraseus was the name of a Roman senator, a member of the “Stoic Opposition” to the tyrannical Emperor Nero; another Thraseus was a Christian martyr who died in the second century AD. Chateaubriand’s opposition to Napoleon is the likely political parallel; this book, on Christian martyrdom, is the religious parallel.
- Thanks to her association with Harold, “the natural violence and cruelty of her disposition have become softened into gentleness and compassion,” although she was not yet a Christian (VII.152). In history and legend, Saint Clothilde was the wife of Clovis I, the first king of the Franks, who led her husband to God. Pharamond was a later Frankish king. Like his hagiographic sources, Chateaubriand does not hesitate to mix names and dates in poetic invocation of Christian figures.
- The historical Chloderic murdered his father at the instigation of Clovis (before his conversion to Christianity, one hastens to add), then was killed by Clovis’ men. Clovis then incorporated Chloderic’s tribe into his own alliance, becoming the king of the Franks.
- Chateaubriand thus combines Christ’s parable of the lily of the field, which does not toil or spin, flourishing without effort, with His parable of the seed which must die, like Christ Himself and the martyrs who would follow Him, in order to germinate.
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