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
- 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.
- 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.
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