Hugh of St. Victor: Didascalicon.  Books IV-VI. Jerome Taylor translation. New York: Columbia University Press, 1991.

 

Much as he admires the writings of philosophers, Hugh ranks them far below the Sacred Scriptures. “Like a whitewashed wall of clay,” philosophers’ writings “boast an attractive surface all shining with eloquence,” but beneath that surface is nothing but error, the stuff idols’ feet are made of. The Sacred Scriptures instead resemble a honeycomb, “for while in the simplicity of their language they seem dry, within they are filled with sweetness,” containing “nothing contrary to truth.” 

He begins with a list of the Sacred Books in the right order, so that “the student may know what his required reading is.” The list includes the Old and New Testaments, of course, but also the Decretals and the writings of the holy Fathers and Doctors of the Church: Jerome, Augustine, Gregory, Ambrose, Isidore, Origen, Bede, “and many other orthodox authors.” The Decretals are helpful because “they were set up in order that by their means we might discover and know which of the Evangelists said things similar to those found in the others, and unique things as well.” The canon law, which “sets straight what is distorted and corrupted,” provide the needed moral compass for the student as he reads the Sacred Books. This pair of right books and right conduct parallels his advice in the first three books of the Didascalicon. [1]

How to read these books? The student must understand their three dimensions: history, allegory, tropology. This takes effort, but honey too is “more pleasing because enclosed in the comb, and whatever is sought with greater effort is also found with greater desire.” More than merely pleasing, however, Sacred Scriptures consist of “the voice of God speaking to men.” While “the philosopher knows only the significance of words,” the reader of Sacred Scripture learns the Word, the word of “Nature”—that is, the word of Jesus as Creator of “what philosophers call nature.” The Word of God “is a resemblance of a divine idea,” through which we “arrive at the truth,” God Himself. “Because certain less well instructed persons do not take account of this,” remaining within the dimension of history, “they suppose that there is nothing subtle in these matters on which to exercise their mental abilities and they turn their attention to the writings of philosophers precisely because, not knowing the power of Truth, they do not understand that in Scripture there is anything beyond the bare surface of the letter,” the literal meaning. So, for example, Old Testament law “ought to be understood not only in a historical but also in a spiritual sense: for it is necessary both to remain faithful to the historical sense,” the ‘letter of the law,’ “and to understand the Law in a spiritual way.”

To read Scripture in a spiritual way requires a soul prepared for spiritual perception. As with the liberal arts, profitable reading requires work and also method, as “whoever does not keep to an order and a method in the reading of so great a collection of books wanders as it were into the very thick of the forest and loses the path of the direct route.” Like the philosophers derided by Paul the Apostle, they are always learning yet never reaching full knowledge. Students face three obstacles: “carelessness, imprudence, and bad fortune.” Carelessness prompts hastiness, omission of some of “those things which are there to be learned.” It can be addressed by admonishment. Imprudence “arises when we do not keep to a suitable order and method in the things we are learning,” perhaps because we are then inclined to read on a whim. It can be corrected by instruction. Bad fortune means poverty, illness, or “some non-natural slowness.” “A scarcity of professors” is another instance of bad fortune. A student afflicted with bad fortune “needs to be assisted.” 

The reading of the right books by a student practicing right conduct will fortify both his knowledge, which “has more to do with history and allegory,” and his conduct, which “has more to do with tropology.” “Although it is clearly more important for us to be just than to be wise, I nevertheless know that many seek knowledge rather than virtue in the study of the Sacred Word.” Both purposes “are necessary and praiseworthy,” so Hugh will “expounds what belongs to the aim of each,” beginning with a description of “the man who embraces the beauty of morality.”

To correct his morals, the student should “study especially those books which urge contempt for this world and inflame the mind with love for its Creator.” The study of the lives of the saints provides moral examples. The study of any of the Scriptures will provide instruction, so long as the student reads not only to be stirred “by the art of their literary composition,” the aim of a person who, centuries later, would be called an esthete, but “by a desire to imitate the virtues set forth”—the “beauty of truth” rather than the beauty of style. Nor should he read animated “by an empty desire for knowledge,” studying “writings which are obscure or of deep meaning, in which the mind is busied rather than edified,” never inclined to good works. As Jerome Taylor remarks, Hugh’s figure of “the Christian philosopher” recalls the Socratic turn from natural philosophy to moral philosophy (p.220-221 no.27). [1] Reading should “feed good desires, not kill them.” He recalls “a man of praiseworthy life who so burned with love of Holy Scripture that he studied it ceaselessly,” beginning “to pry into every single profound and obscure thing and vehemently to insist upon untangling the enigmas of the Prophets and the mystical meanings of sacred symbols.” This exhausted his human, all-too-human mind, paralyzing him for useful and “even necessary tasks.” That is, he “lacked the moderating influence of discretion.” God’s grace saved him, commanding that he read “the lives of the holy fathers and the triumphs of the martyrs and other such writings dictated in a simple style,” which brought him “internal peace,” at last. And so, Student, since “the number of books is infinite,” “leave well enough alone.” “Where there is no end in sight, there can be no rest. Where there is no rest, there is no peace. Where there is no peace, God cannot dwell.”

For a monk, simplicity “is his philosophy.” If you aspire to be a teacher, bear in mind that “it is inexpensive dress, the simplicity expressed in your countenance, the innocence of your life and the holiness of your behavior [that] ought to teach men.” Instruction is for beginners; graduate to practice. Study should serve as the prelude to meditation, meditation to prayer, prayer to performance, and performance, finally, to the contemplation of God—a “foretaste, even in this life, of what the future reward of good work is.” In this sequence, prayer serves as the indispensable link between man and God, once the Holy Spirit has informed man’s soul. “The counsel of man is weak and ineffective without divine aid”; therefore, “arouse yourself to prayer and ask the help of him without whom you can accomplish no good thing.” God’s grace enlightens the path for your feet along “the road of peace.” “It then remains for you to gird yourself for good work, so that what you have sought in prayer you may merit to receive in your practice.” In this, God does not force you “but you are helped. The principle is straightforward: “If you are alone, you accomplish nothing; if God alone works, you have no merit.” Ergo work with God, neither without nor against Him.

Hugh emphasizes that because God enlightens your path that does not mean He smooths it. “The instability of our life is such that we are not able to hold fast in one place.” Watch how you walk. “We are forced often to review the things we have done, and, in order not to lose the condition in which we now stand, we now and again repeat what we have been over before.” Pray for continued vigor in right action; “meditate on what should be prayed for, lest [you] offend in prayer”; if not confident in your self-counsel, seek advice in reading. “Thus it turns out that though we always have the will to ascend, nevertheless we are sometimes forced by necessity to descend—in such a way, however, that our goal lies in that will and not in this necessity.” The descent is for the sake of continued ascent.

The problem arises when readers of Scripture descend and stay there, when they “seek knowledge of Sacred Scripture either in order that they may gather riches or in order that they may obtain honors or acquire fame,” in either case instances of “perversity.” Others “delight to hear the words of God and to learn of His works not because these bring them salvation but because they are marvels,” “turning the divine announcements into tales,” as if they were attending the theater, but “in vain do they gape at God’s power when they do not love his mercy.” “Their will is not evil, only senseless.” The right intention respecting Scripture is to ready oneself to understand and defend the faith, to “forthrightly demolish enemies of the truth, teach those less well informed, recognize the path of the truth more perfectly themselves, and, understanding the hidden things of God more deeply, love them more intently.” Of these three types of readers, “the first are to be pitied, the second to be helped, the third to be praised.” 

The third type of reader, who may or may not start out as one of the other two, requires understanding the order of study and the method of study. By “order” Hugh means, first, the order of the “disciplines,” second, the order in which the books of the Bible should be read, third, the order in which they should be read as narrative, and fourth, the order in which they should be read for “exposition,” i.e., for understanding the meaning of Scripture. Exposition includes the literal meaning of a passage, its “sense,” and its “deeper meaning.” By “method” Hugh means two things: analysis and meditation. 

As to the order of the disciplines, Scripture consists of history, which he likens to the foundation of a building, allegory, which he likens to the structure of a building, and “tropology” or the moral teaching, which he likens to the decoration of a building, although this might more accurately be described as the building’s purpose. That is, the reader should undertake to discipline himself in an ‘architectonic’ manner. “You have in history the means through which to admire God’s deeds, in allegory the means through which to believe His mysteries, in morality the means through which to imitate His perfection.” The central point is indeed ‘central’: allegorical interpretation makes what is otherwise unbelievable believable.

“First, you learn history and diligently commit to memory the truth of the deeds that have been performed,” remarking the person who acts, the acts committed, their time, and their place. Without understanding the history—that is, the narrative of the course of events—you cannot properly move to the next step, allegory. So, “do not look down” upon the narrative’s details, as “the man who looks down on such smallest things slips little by little.” “I know that there are certain fellows who want to play the philosopher right away,” but “the knowledge of these fellows is like that of an ass.” “I myself never looked down on anything which had to do with education, but I often learned many things which seemed to others to be a sort of joke of just nonsense.” Move “step by step” instead of attempting “a great leap ahead,” which will cause you to fall on your face.  Admittedly, “there are indeed may things in the Scriptures which, considered in themselves, seem to have nothing worth looking for, but if you look at them in the light of the other things to which they are joined, and if you begin to weigh them in their whole context, you will see that they are as necessary as they are fitting.” Continuing the architectural metaphor, these seemingly unimportant things might be likened to the building blocks of the building; remove one, and the structure will so much the less sound. Or, in Hugh’s new metaphor, the literal meaning is the honeycomb or structure that contains the honey of allegory, of spiritual wisdom.

Allegory “demands not slow and dull perceptions but matured mental abilities”; it is “solid stuff, and, unless it be well chewed, it cannot be swallowed.” Whereas history requires the discipline of attention to detail and memorization, allegory requires the discipline of intellectual restraint, so that “while you are subtle in your seeking, you may not be found rash in what you presume.” Allegorical interpretation seeks the meaning of the several mysteries: the Trinity and creation ex nihilo; God’s gift of “free judgment” to man, “the rational creature,” His grace, so that creature “might be able to merit eternal beatitude”; then, the way God “strengthened [men] so that they might not fall further,” after they did fall; the origin of sin, what sin is, and what its punishment; the “mysteries He first instituted for man’s restoration under the natural law”; His Divine Law; God’s incarnation; “the mysteries of the New Testament”: and, finally, “the mysteries of man’s own resurrection.” The “great sea of books” and “manifold intricacies of opinions” on these mysteries “often confound the mind of the student,” who accordingly needs “some definite principle which is supported by firm faith and to which all [these mysteries] may be referred.” That principle of interpretation consists of taking “those things which you find clear” and seeing which of these eight categories of mystery they belong to. As to “doubtful things,” interpret them “in such a way so that they may not be out of harmony” with the clear things. As for the obscure passages, “elucidate if you can,” but if you can’t, “pass them over so that you may not run into the danger of error by presuming to attempt what you are not equal to doing.” Do not dismiss them; “be reverent toward them,” since God “made darkness His hiding-place” (Psalms 17:12). Seek advice from “men more learned than yourself,” unless you have “learned what the universal faith, which can never be false, orders to be believed about it,” and so can weed out any false conjectures you might entertain. Above all, “it is necessary both that we follow the letter in such a way as not to prefer our own sense to the divine authors, and that we do not follow it in such a way as to deny that the entire pronouncement of truth is rendered in it.”

For the study of allegory, Hugh recommends an order of study: the Genesis creation account; “the last three books of Moses on the mysteries of the law”; the Book of Isaiah; the beginning and end of the Book of Ezekial; the Book of Job; the Psalter; the Song of Songs; the Gospels of Matthew and John; the Epistles of Paul; the Canonical Epistles; the Book of Revelation; and “especially the Epistles of Paul, which by their very number show that the contain the perfection of the two Testaments”—that is, fourteen or seven times two, seven being the number symbolizing perfection as seen in the Genesis creation account’s seven days. 

Finally, tropology or morality pertains more to “the meaning of things than the meaning of words.” Morality is practice. The meaning of the tropological things lies in “natural justice, out of which the discipline of our own morals, that is, positive justice, arises.” “By contemplating what God has made we realize what we ourselves ought to do” because every natural thing, including man himself, has an “essential form” to which it must conform if it is to be a good specimen of what it is. God “made everything else for the rational creature”; in all His works He “must have followed a plan especially adapted to the benefit and interest” of that creature. “The rational creature itself was first made unformed in a way proper to it”—a physical body made of clay, not yet human—and only then “formed by conversion to its Creator,” brought to life by the divine breath. This demonstrates “how great was the distance between mere being and beautiful being,” thereby “warned not to be content with having received mere being from the Creator through its own creation, but to seek beautiful and happy being,” “turning toward” God “with love.”

For the study of morality, the right order of reading differs from that appropriate to history or to allegory, since “history follows the order of time” and allegory “belongs more to the order of knowledge” (beginning with clear things, progressing to the obscure things). To learn the moral truth of Scripture, begin with the New Testament, “in which the evident truth is preached,” then move to the Old Testament, “in which the same truth is announced in a hidden manner, shrouded in figures,” that is, in symbolic terms prefiguring the teachings of the New Testament. “It is the same truth in both places, but hidden there open here, promised there, shown here.” “Unless you know beforehand the nativity of Christ, His teaching, His suffering, His resurrection and ascension, and all the other things which He did in the flesh and through the flesh, you will not be able to penetrate the mysteries of the old figures.”

The fourth and final discipline, exposition, includes the letter, the sense, and the sententia or “deeper meaning” of the text. Words taken in the literal sense may be “perfect,” as in a sentence in which “nothing more than what has been set down needs to be added or taken away,” such as “All wisdom is from the Lord God” (Ecclesiastes 1: 1). Others are “compressed,” leaving something “which must be supplied,” as in a salutation such as “The Ancient to the lady Elect” (2 John 1:1). And some are “in excess,” repeating the same thought or adding an “unnecessary one,” as seen a sentence with “many parenthetical remarks” (Romans 16: 25-27). Literal meaning gives the reader the construction of sentences and of series of sentences, continuity.

Sense or the meaning of Scripture in the straightforward, human way of understanding can be “fitting,” explicit, or “unfitting,” whether incredible, impossible, absurd, even false. Metaphors come under this category, since a sentence might read “They have devoured Jacob” (Psalms 78:7) without saying that they cannibalized him. A more complex problem occurs when “there is a clear meaning to the words” but they seem to make no sense, as in Isaiah 4:1, a passage beginning “Seven women shall take hold of one man,” saying “let us be called by thy name” without reproach. This and similar passages must be “understood spiritually,” reading the seven women as “the seven gifts of the Holy Spirit,” the one man as Christ, the name as ‘Christians.’ What a passage like this “may mean to say literally what you do not understand” (italics added to the cautionary “may”), but it also may have a literal meaning, so that it might refer to the destruction of the people, leaving one man for every seven women, the women desperate for husbands, but justifiably unreproached because they want to obey the commandment “Be fruitful and multiply, replenish the earth.”

In contrast to the human meaning, “the divine deeper meaning can never be absurd, never false,” never self-contradictory. Interpretation of the deeper meaning requires even more discipline, more caution, interpretation of the human meaning. “Let us not plunge ourselves into headlong assertion” of such matters, lest we embroil ourselves while “battling not for the thought of the Divine Scriptures but for our own thought.” Rather than “wish[ing] the thought of the Scriptures to be identical with our own…we ought rather to wish our thought identical with that of the Scriptures.”

As to the method of parsing a text, this “consists of analysis,” separating into parts “things which are mingled together,” thereby “open[ing] up things which are hidden.” His brief account of analysis or “method” completes Hugh’s presentation of how to read Scripture, but there is another thing to do: to think about it. “We are not here going to speak of meditation,” since “so great a matter requires a special treatise,” being “a thing truly subtle and at the same time delightful,” both “educat[ing] beginners and exercis[ing] the perfect.” To guide future meditation, Hugh ends with a prayer, asking “Wisdom” to “deign to shine in our hearts and to cast light upon its paths for us, that it may bring us ‘to its pure and fleshless feast.'” That final quotation comes from a text titled Asclepius, whose title alludes to Socrates’ final words, “I owe a cock to Asclepius,” the god of healing, the god said to have the power even to revive the dead. A figure of Christ, then? 

 

Note

1. It is noteworthy that the twentieth-century Christian Personalist, Emmanuel Mounier, identifies the Socratic turn as crucial to resisting the impersonal historicist philosophic doctrines of that arose in the nineteenth century. See “Personalism,” on this website under the category, “Bible Notes.”

 

 

 

Note

1. See “Reading with Hugh of St. Victor,” on this website under the category, “Philosophers.”

François-René vicomte de Chateaubriand: The Martyrs. Chapters 13-24. O. W. Wright translation. New York: Derby and Jackson, 1859. Originally published in 1809.

 

Chateaubriand’s turn from an invocation of the Muses to an invocation of the Holy Spirit mirrors the turn in the love between Eudore and Cymodocée. She came upon him while he prayed to God to resolve his love for God and his love for her. “He was no longer the cold, severe, and rigid Christian, but a man full of indulgence and of tenderness; one who wishes to draw a soul to God, and to gain a spouse whose virtues may endear her to his heart” (XII.241). Ready to convert to his religion, she wondered if there is a Christian Venus, and if “her cart [is] drawn by doves” (XII.242). Well, no: your gods, he explained, are nothing more than “the personified passions”; they were endangering her innocence (XII.243). He firmly set down the terms of a Christian marriage. “Adam was formed for authority and for valor, Eve for submission and gracefulness; greatness of soul, dignity of character, and powers of reason, were the portion of the former; to the latter were given beauty, affection, and invincible charms. Such, Cymodocée, is the model of a Christian spouse.” (XII.243). “If you consent to imitate it…I shall rule over you,” since “man is made to command,” but my rule will consist of “an alliance of justice, of pity, and of love” (XII.243). That suited Cymodocée just fine because Christianity “teaches to love more fervently” (XII.244). Without yet understanding Christian terms, she could feel that Christianity added something to the love paganism valorized, somehow intensifying it. “Her bosom labor[ing] with strange sensations,” it was “as if a bandage had fallen suddenly from her eyes, and that she discovered a distant and divine light,” a light that unites “wisdom, reason, modesty, and love” (XII.245). What it didn’t unite was Christianity and paganism. “If you judge me worthy to become your spouse,” Eudore said, holding a crucifix, “it is upon this sacred image alone, that I can receive the testimonials of your faith” (XII.245). There would be no syncretism. She agreed both to marry him and to be taught Christianity by him.

Their next task was to inform their fathers. Cymodocée told Démodocus, “Among all our divinities we have not one so full of sweetness and compassion” (XIII.248). That is, Christianity appealed to the virtuous pagan woman because it appealed to her God-given affection and gracefulness. That, one might say, is one reason why Christianity finally triumphed over the gods of Rome. Her father, being a father, “reflected with anguish that his daughter was about to abandon her paternal divinities, to dishonor the worship of her divine ancestors, and to be guilty of perjury against the Muses”; contrarily, he recognized in Eudore “an illustrious and honorable son-in-law,” one who can be “a powerful protector” against Hierocles because his best friend was the son of the emperor—a prefiguration of the alliance between the Roman emperors and Christianity that Constantine would inaugurate (XIII.249). “How can I refuse, and yet how consent to thy demands?” (XIII.249). She quickly assured him that as a Christian she will continue “to recite with thee the verses of my divine ancestor,” Homer (XIII.249). Démodocus consented, so long as “thy new God may never tear thee from thy father’s embraces” (XIII.250). As for Eudore, his father consented to the marriage so long as Cymodocée was confirmed in the Christian faith; Bishop Cyril agreed to teach her the elements of Christian doctrine. She regretted her abandonment of “those heroes and divinities who formed a part of her family,” having “been nourished with the nectar of the Muses” and inspired by Homer, revering “the mighty genius of the father of fiction” (XIII.260). Still, she chose Eudore and his God, following the Biblical injunction to leave her father and cleave to her future husband. At the same, she could tell Démodocus, truthfully, “that the God of the Christians, who commands me to love my father, that my days may be prolonged here upon earth, is more worthy of homage than those gods who never speak to me concerning thee” (XIV.264).

Hierocles arrived, intent on persecuting Christians and taking Cymodocée; Satan summoned the demon Voluptuousness to attack Eudore but the angel of agapic love protected him: “To the allurements of the senses he opposed the allurements of the soul; to the affection of the moment, an eternal affection” (XIV.254). Démodocus responded to Hierocles’ threats by telling his daughter that Eudore “is he who must now protect thee” (XIV.256). Father and daughter fled to Lacedaemon, Hierocles now seeing that Cymodocée loved his rival while misinterpreting her love as an admiration for Eudore’s military glory. He hoped to seize her anyway and to throw Eudore into a dungeon, while “dar[ing] not [to] openly attack a man who had merited the honors of a triumph” and “know[ing] well the moderation of Diocletian, who was always an enemy to violence” (XIV.258). Accordingly, he fell back to scheming and lying, reporting to Rome that Eudore had fomented a rebellion in Arcadia. Spurred by the demon Jealousy, he additionally resolved to “destroy, if need be, the entire race of Christians,” suspecting that they would only stand in his way as he pursued his other schemes (XIV.266).

At a church in Lacedaemon, presided over by Cyril, the pagan attendees compared the bride to Venus, the Christians to Eve. They give her the Biblical name of Esther. Cymodocée noticed the contrast between the pagan women, “whose loose apparel, and every look and motion, bespoke that wantonness and dissipation, which is acquired in the dances at the festivals of Bacchus and Hyacinthus,” and the Christian virgins, “in chaste attire,” rivaling Helen of Troy in beauty but “surpass[ing] her by the charms of their modesty” (XIV.269). “It seemed as if two distinct peoples composed this kindred race” of Lacedaemonians, “so much may men be changed by the power of religion” (XIV.269). Cyril accepted her confirmation in the faith, just before Hierocles’ soldiers arrived to arrest Eudore, who, protected by his guardian angel, escaped with Cymodocée. In Rome, Diocletian temporized upon receiving Hierocles’ false report, listened to his son’s correction of it, and recalled Eudore to Rome. Recognizing the danger of his circumstance, Eudore sent Cymodocée to Jerusalem, where she would enjoy the protection of the Empress, a Christian convert.

At Rome, where bishops had been martyred, a debate among the Sophists, the Christians, and the priests of Jupiter was staged at the Senate in front of the Emperor Diocletian, with Hierocles speaking for the Sophists, Eudore for the Christians, Symmachus for the pagans. Symmachus argues for religious toleration, asking, “Why should we persecute men who fulfil all the duties of good citizens?” (XVI.299). Christians “pursue the useful arts,” adding to state revenues; they “serve with courage in our armies,” as Eudore had done; they “offer advice full of wisdom, justice, and prudence” in Rome’s public councils (XVI.299). Admittedly, they deride our gods—the “only crime that can justly be laid to their charge”—but the answer is not to persecute them but to defend “the power and goodness of our paternal gods” (XVI.300). It is our failure genuinely to believe in them that prevents us from doing so, forgetting that Jupiter must be powerful because Rome rose from a “feeble origin” while its citizens worshipped him (XVI.301). Symmachus imagined what the Genius of Rome would say to the emperor: “This religion has subjected the universe to my laws. Her sacrifices have driven Hannibal from my walls and the Gauls from the Capitol…. Have I been preserved from the most formidable enemies, only to behold myself dishonored by my children in my old age?” (XVI.301). That is, the pagan priest spoke for a mild civil religion, appealing to the ancestral and (as he supposes) providential gods of the ancient city, calling his listeners to strengthen their own faith instead of persecuting the new one.

Armed with “all the artifices of Athenian eloquence” and “every species of sophism” in the command of “the demon of False Wisdom,” Hierocles the Sophist did just the opposite (XVI.303). The rationalist (or pseudo-rationalist), the Roman equivalent of an Enlightenment philosophe (“I must save my emperor; I must enlighten the world,” he was the real fanatic, here [XVI.304]), he began with an attack on religion, seasoned with a nasty attack on Jews, who, under the direction of “a certain imposter named Moses,”  “cruelly butchered” the inhabitants of “barren Judea,” and then, “secluded within their den…distinguished themselves by naught but their hatred of the human race,” living “in the midst of adulteries, cruelties, and murders” (XVI.305). Having been “deceived by their fanatical priests” to expect a monarch who would “subject the whole world to their dominion,” this “execrable” race produced “a race still more execrable—the Christians, who, in their follies and their crimes, have surpassed the Jews, their fathers” (XVI.305). As for Jesus, “whom they call their Christ,” his morality is alleged to have been pure, “but did it surpass that of Socrates?” (XVI.305). Arrested for “his seditious discourses,” executed on a cross (“the vilest of punishments”), his body “stole[n] away” by a gardener, his religion appealed to “the dregs of the populace” and eventually resulted in “the most vile and ferocious” moeurs that a sect meeting in secrecy “must naturally engender” (XVI.306). “Seated at an abominable feast, after swearing an eternal enmity of gods and men, and renouncing every legitimate pleasure, they drink the blood of a man that has just been sacrificed, and devour the palpitating flesh of a murdered infant: this they call their sacred bread and wine!” (XVI.306). 

Wherever these blackguards “insinuate themselves”—in the army, where “they entice our soldiers from their allegiance” to Rome, in our families, where “they carry disunion” by “seduc[ing] credulous virgins” (such as Cymodocée), and “set the brother in variance against the brother, and the husband against his spouse” (this, glancing at Diocletian)—they refuse to sacrifice at the altars of Rome’s gods (XVI.306). Truly, “let it not be supposed that I am defending those gods, who might, in the infancy of society, have appeared necessary to discerning legislators” (XVI.307). Answering Symmachus, he openly admits that “we no longer feel the necessity of such resources,” as “reason had commenced her reign; henceforth altars shall be erected to virtue alone,” rather as they were during the Jacobin phase of the French Revolution. “The human species is making daily advances toward perfection,” and soon “all men shall submit to the dominion of reason and guide themselves by her light alone” (XVI.307). If we must cling to some religion for the time being, let it be the old one, the one that has precedence. “This new worship is an evil which must be extirpated with fire and sword” (XVI.307). The Sophists cheered Hierocles upon the completion of this peroration, and Satan himself, having “animat[ed] these prejudices and hatreds…flattered himself that he should reach his end more surely by atheism than by idolatry” (XVI.308). “Diocletian alone appeared unmoved; his countenance expressed neither anger, hatred, nor love” (XVI.308).

Inspired by the Four Apostles, witnesses in Heaven, Eudore respectfully bowed before the Roman authorities God had placed in office and thanked Symmachus “for the moderation that he has shown toward my brethren” while forthrightly observing that the Roman heroes “were not accounted great because they adhered to the worship of Jupiter but because they departed from the morality and the examples of the divinities of Olympus,” while in Christianity, “on the contrary, the more nearly we imitate our God, the greater progress do we make toward perfection” (XVI.309). [1] He flatly contradicted Hierocles, exclaiming, “How salutary is the influence of religion upon the soul, of whatever description that religion may be!” then adding, “Hierocles, is it under the robe of a philosopher that you carry the seeds of desolation, which you wish to sow throughout the empire” by call[ing] down destruction upon several millions of Roman citizens?”(XVI.309). He recalled his listeners to the matter at hand, which was not the origin of the world or of civil society but of “whether the existence of the Christians is compatible with the safety of the state; whether their religion is offensive to morals or laws; whether it militates in any respect against that submission which is due to the chief of the empire: in a word, whether morality and sound policy find anything to reprehend in the religion of Jesus Christ” (XVI.310). Contrary to Hierocles’ animadversions, Moses brought the Israelites to Jerusalem “the center of a barren region,” because as a founder he “wished to form of them a people that could resist the effects of time and preserve the worship of the true God amidst the universal spread of error and idolatry, and find in their institutions a power which they had not in themselves: he therefore enclosed them among the mountains,” giving them laws “adapted to this state of isolation,” with “but one temple, one book, and one sacrifice” (XVI.310-311). The result: “Four thousand years have rolled away, yet this people still exists the same; let Hierocles point out elsewhere an example of legislation as miraculous in its effects” (XVI.311). The Emperor “was struck by this political reasoning presented by the defender of the faithful” (XVI.311). And the Emperor wasn’t alone. The moderates among the senators, especially Galerius’ rival, Publius, prefect of Rome, and the people, impressed by “such powers of reasoning, united to youth and elegance of person,” esteem him, as well (XVI.311) And his fellow soldiers, “when they beheld their former general forced to the necessity of defending his life against the accusations of a sophist,” did not withhold their “generous sentiments” (XVI.311). Against the charge of Machiavelli and the Enlightenment philosophes, that Christianity undermined Rome, leading it to destruction, Chateaubriand has Eudore identify false philosophy as the cause of Rome’s downfall, a downfall that prefigured France’s ruin under the Jacobins and, at least potentially at this point, under Napoleon.

Christian prophecies have been verified, Christian miracles seen by “numerous witnesses”; Jesus Christ’s “sublime virtues” have been acknowledged by emperors and philosophers; Christian ceremonies in honor of Him exhibit none of the “cruelty and debauchery” of pagan spectacles and mysteries (XVI.312). Christianity did indeed have its origin among “the lowest class of the people,” but that is “her glory and her excellence,” having cared for the poor and improved their moeurs (XVI.312). Hierocles charged that “we hate mankind,” but before executing us, visit the hospitals, where the infants born of the prostitutes you have impregnated are nursed by Christian women; “the milk of a Christian mother has not poisoned them,” and “the mothers according to grace shall, ere they die, restore them to the mothers according to nature” (XVI.313). Far from ruining Rome, “the genius of Rome rises, but not to reclaim these impotent gods; she rises to claim Jesus Christ, who will establish among her children, purity, justice, moderation, innocence of manners, and the reign of every virtue” (XVI.313). Christ “will not sanction infanticide, the pollution of the nuptial couch, and the spectacles of human bloodshed”; he preserves “knowledge of literature and the arts” and “wishes to abolish slavery from the earth” (XVI.313). Against Hierocles’ charge of sedition, Eudore challenged him to name a single instance of conspiracy against Diocletian, despite the persecutions undertaken nine times against them. “I once had the good fortune to merit a civic crown by saving you from the hands of barbarians; shall I now be unable to shield you from the sword of a Roman proconsul!” (XVI.314). Christians’ “language does not differ from their conduct; they do not receive benefits from a master while cursing him in their hearts” (XVI.314). They ask only to be afforded “Christian liberty”—the right to worship their God in peace (XVI.315). 

“For the first time in his life Diocletian appeared moved,” and “God availed himself of this Christian eloquence to scatter the first seeds of faith in the Roman senate” (XVI.315). Galerius answered by threatening civil war, as Hierocles declaimed that “these rebels to the state had refused to sacrifice to the emperor” (XVI.316). This terrified Diocletian, and Satan seized the chance to play on his “superstitious mind” by causing the shield of Romulus to fall from the roof of the Capitol, injuring Eudore (XVI.316). “You see, O Diocletian, that the father of the Romans is unable to endure the blasphemies of this Christian!” Galerius shouts (XVI.316). The Emperor consented to what would become known as the Great Persecution, on condition that the sibyl of Cumae sanctioned it. God prevented the sibyl from doing so, but Hierocles stepped in to ‘interpret’ his judgment in a way that convinced Diocletian to proceed, a decision hastened and confirmed by a false report that the Christians had set fire to the imperial palace. That is, having failed in his ‘theoretical’ appeal—his ‘enlightened’ claims about the purely human origin of political society—Hierocles succeeded with an appeal to an immediate (if lying) threat to the Emperor’s property, an appeal to panic, to passion rather than to reason. He quickly urged Galerius to “profit by this moment of fear” by urging “the old man that it is time for him to taste the sweets of repose” and leave the imperial crown to him (XVIII.334). Diocletian, aged but far from senile, rejected the appeal and the threats that followed but informed the ambitious caesar that he was “too weary of governing men to dispute this mournful honor with you” (XVIII.335). When Diocletian told him that his ambitions will only provoke the laughter of the Romans, Galerius replied, “I will make them weep; they must either serve my glory or die” (XVIII.335-336). Like the Jacobins, “I will inspire terror to save myself from contempt” (XVIII.336). Diocletian warned, “a violent reign cannot be long” because “there is in the principle of things a certain degree of evil which nature cannot pass” (XVIII.336). (“In depicting the calamities of the Romans,” Chateaubriand later interjects, “I should depict the calamities of the French” [XVIII.344].) He had no sense of providence, of course, but he understood the natural law. On Eudore’s advice, young Constantine fled; his father, also a caesar, will save the Christians and the empire. “You shall reign one day over the world, and men shall owe to you their happiness. But God still withholds your crown in His hands and wishes to try his Church,” with Galerius as His unwitting instrument. (XVIII.340). Galerius forced children “by the violence of torture to depose against their fathers, slaves against their masters and women against their husbands” (XVIII.346), in a vicious parody of Jesus’ injunction, “I bring not peace but the sword.” “Intoxicated with his power, Hierocles had no longer any command over his passions”—an advisor to the ruler of the world who could not rule himself (XVIII.347). 

Escorted by the Christian monk, Dorotheus (“God’s gift”), Cymodocée escaped to Jerusalem and to Helena, Diocletian’s Christian wife, who addressed her as Esther. “You have never known a mother; I will be one for you” (XVII.323). She intended to restore Jerusalem, especially to “rescue the tomb of Jesus Christ from the profanations of idolatry” (XVII.322). They met Eudore’s old friend, Jerome, the former Epicurean and now a Christian hermit, who baptized Cymodocée in the waters of the Jordan River. “The new Christian, bearing Jesus Christ in her heart, resembled a woman who, become a mother, finds that strength for her son which she had not for herself” (XIX.361). She would need that strength, as Hierocles pursued her. With Eudore in prison and Helena too arrested, she had no protectors except, possibly, her father. Dorotheus advised her to return to him, and she returned to Italy, only to be arrested by Hierocles’ subordinates and brought to Rome, where Hierocles “now exercis[ed] absolute power over the Roman world” through Galerius (XX.375). Only the prestige of Dorotheus among the people (“at this moment he reaped the fruits of his virtues”) protected him (XX.376). 

But not Cymodocée. Summoned before Hierocles, she begged him to return Eudore to her, recalling that “Demodocus, my father, has often told me that philosophy raises mortals above those whom we call our gods” (XX.379). (The priest of Homer evidently has discerned philosophy in this poet.) But of course Hierocles was no philosopher. The Sophist replied, “Do you not see that your charms destroy the effect of your prayers? Who could ever yield you to a rival?” (XX.380). Invoking Rousseau well avant la lettre, he aphorized, “True wisdom, lovely child, consists in following the dictates of your heart”—the heart, which Christians consider unknowable in its wickedness (XX.380). He invoked the practice of exotericism. “Do not believe a savage religion which seeks to command our senses. Precepts of purity, modesty and innocence are, without doubt, useful to the crowd; but the philosopher enjoys in secret the bounties of nature. (XX.380). She refused the offer; he raged and threatened to execute Eudore; she replied, “There is no punishment threat Eudore would not rather suffer than to see me thine; feeble as he is, my husband laughs at your power” (XX.381). God intervened, freezing Hierocles “to the spot,” giving a crowd of the people, including her father, the chance to clamor for her release. [2] They hated Cymodocée for her Christianity, but they hated Hierocles for his tyranny even more, and they acknowledged that Demodocus was a citizen of Rome, with parental rights. To resolve this tension, they turned her over to Publius, the prefect of Rome, Hierocles’ enemy. Publius calmed the crowd, then reported to Galerius that his trusted advisor didn’t deserve to be trusted, adroitly suggesting that “this Greek”—no Roman—who is “indebted to your bounty for everything he possesses, pretends that you are indebted to him for the purple” (XX.384). With this he “touched a secret wound” in the soul of the Emperor (XX.385). He resolved to send Hierocles away, to make him governor of Egypt. That would not happen, however, because Publius would discover that the Sophist had embezzled funds from the imperial treasury, a capital offense. 

That was quite satisfactory to Publius. No friend of Christianity, now having effectively maneuvering himself into Hierocles’ position as chief advisor to the Emperor, he recommended that Eudore be tried not as a traitor but as a Christian along with Cymodocée and “the rest of the unbelievers” in the gods of Rome (XX.385). The Great Persecution would continue.

In his farewell letter to Cymodocée, Eudore commended resignation before Providence. She was his bride, but still a virgin: “If our loves have, alas! been short, they have at least been pure!” (XX.389). Like Mary, “you preserve the sweet name of wife, without having lost the beautiful name of virgin” (XX.389). He then turned to Bishop Cyril. who presided over a Mass of Reconciliation. Eudore’s fellow Christians recognized the “chosen martyr in their midst, who, like a Roman consul chosen by the people, was soon to display the marks of his power” (XXI.392). By this, Chateaubriand means that “this crowd of obscure men, condemned to perish beneath the hand of the executioner,” had been “destined” by God “to cover the earth” and “to spread the reign of the cross throughout the world” (XXI.392).

The Romans tortured Eudore, but “what are the pains of the body when contrasted with the torments of the soul?” (XXII.403). “The just is tormented in his body, but his soul, like an impregnable fortress, remains tranquil when all is ravaged without”—exactly the opposite of the wicked man, who “seems to enjoy peace” while “the enemy lurks within” (XXII.403). So it was with Eudore and with Hierocles, respectively, as Satan, “the prince of darkness, trembled with rage” (XXIII.414). He caused the persecution to intensify; Eudore and many others would be sacrificed in the Colosseum. 

At the beginning of his final chapter, Chateaubriand invokes the Muse once again, bidding him to return to the heavens. “To chant the hymn of the dead I have no need of thy aid”: “Where is the inhabitant of France,” the France that has endured the Revolution and Bonaparte’s wars, “who has not heard in our days the funeral song?” (XXIV.433). “I must quit the lyre of my youth” and, without forgetting what the Muse has taught him, will “let the volume of Poetry be closed, and open…the pages of History. I have consecrated the age of illusions to the smiling pictures of imagination; I will employ the age of regrets to the severe portraiture of truth.” (XXIV.434).

Cymodocée joined Eudore in the Colosseum, where he put a wedding ring on her finger. “The multitude, who beheld the two Christians on their knees, thought they were begging for life” (XXIV.446). The Roman crowd “remained absolute masters only in the direction of their pleasures; and as these same pleasures served to enchain and corrupt them, they possessed, in fact, nothing but the sovereign disposal of their own slavery” (XXIV.446). “Brutalized by slavery” within the soul and under the emperors, “blinded by idolatry,” they called for the deaths of Eudore, Cymodocée (“the more beautiful the victim, the more acceptable is she to the gods”), and Dorotheus (XXIV.447). 

Stricken by God with a mortal disease, Galerius learned that Constantius had died and Constantine, “proclaimed Caesar by the legions, had, at the same time, declared himself a Christian, and was preparing to march toward Rome” (XXIV.448). Galerius died, “blaspheming the Eternal,” as Constantine entered Rome, dispersing the enemies of Christians and seeing Démodocus baptized so that he might “rejoin his well-beloved daughter” in Heaven (XXIV.451). The legions that Constantine led from Gaul, the same Gauls whom Eudore had led to victory, gathered around his funeral monument. France will be Christian. “On the tomb of the young martyrs, Constantine receives the crown of Augustus, and on this same tomb he proclaims the Christian religion the religion of the empire” (XXIV.451). In modern France, Napoleon, then at the height of his power, might well have noticed the parallel between Galerius and himself, and that between Constantine and the surviving Bourbon heir, the brother of Louis XVI, who did in fact become the next king of France a scant five years later.

 

Notes

1. Marcus Furius Camillus was renowned for his moderation and adherence to law, Scipio Africanus for his concern for and popularity among the common people and for his incorruptibility; Plutarch lauds Lucius Aemilius Paullus for his moral strictness. Jupiter exhibited none of these virtues.
2. In Greek drama, the deus ex machina was deployed as a plot device. Chateaubriand does exactly the same thing in his epic, but with the omnipotent and providential God of the Bible.

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

1. 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.
2. 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.
3. Chateaubriand borrows Lasthenes’ name from that of a liberty-loving first-century AD Cretan general, who led a rebellion against the Roman Empire.
4. 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. 
5. 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.
6. 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.
7. 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.
8. 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.
9. 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.