ACCUSE CONTRO I CRISTIANI. - These are the insults and calumnies hurled by the Jews and the pagans against the followers of the religion of Jesus Christ in the first three centuries, which served as a pretext for the Roman State's persecuting policy against them.
The Jews who had persecuted and crucified Jesus showed themselves from the very beginning to be bitter enemies of his disciples. The principal accusations they leveled at the Christians can be gathered from the Dialogue of St. Justin with the Jew Trypho, according to which the Jews reproached the Christians: a) for not observing the Law, that is, that they did not circumcise themselves and did not observe the feasts and the Sabbath (Dial., 10); b) for professing a false doctrine, that is, they denied the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob (Dial., 11); c) for placing their hope in a crucified man (Dial., 10), regarding him as the promised Messiah, whereas for the Jews this one had not yet been born or was living in hiding, because Elijah had not yet returned, who was to prepare his way, give him anointing and make him known to all (Dial., 8).
The Jewish hostility soon found its counterpart in the hostile attitude and persecution of the pagans toward Christianity.
At first, that is, when the religion of Christ was considered by the pagans a sect of Judaism, the Christians, in the expression of Tertullian
(Apologeticum, 21), lived « quasi sub umbraculo insignissimae religionis certe licitae », but they did not go exempt from the less than benevolent treatment that public opinion often reserved for Judaism. Such opinion, widespread among the anti-Semites of Alexandria and Egypt, later passed into Greek and Latin literature, not only made ridiculous certain Jewish practices, such as circumcision, the Sabbath rest, abstinence from the flesh of unclean animals, etc., but openly accused the Jews: a) of venerating the image of an ass, to which they sacrificed a ram or an ox (Tacitus, Hist., V, 4); b) of being atheists, because they did not worship the gods, but despised them (Flavius Josephus, Contra Ap., II, 6; Tacitus, Hist., V, 5; Pliny, Hist. Nat., XIII, 4, 46); c) of hating the human race and of nurturing « adversus omnes alios homines hostile odium » (Tacitus, Hist., V, 5).
When the distinction between Christianity and Judaism appeared clearly - officially during the persecution of Nero (64-68) - the Christians had against them the pagans both of the common people and of the educated class.
The people accused them of atheism, of anthropophagy and of incest: « Tria nobis - writes Athenagoras, Legatio pro Christianis, 3 - affligunt crimina: atheismum, Thyesteas coenas, Oedipeos concubitus ».
The crime of atheism, already attributed to the Jews, is found imputed to the Christians during the persecution of Domitian. Dio Cassius (Hist. Rom., LXVII, 14) relates in fact that Flavius Clemens and Flavia Domitilla and many others were condemned for the crime of atheism. During the martyrdom of St. Polycarp (cf. Eusebius, Hist. eccl., IV, 15), the crowd present shouted "down with the atheists" and the judge demanded that the martyr repeat that shout. St. Justin (Iᵃ Apologia, 6) wrote: « athei appellamur » and reported concerning the Cynic philosopher Crescens (Iᵃ Apologia, 3) « ... publice testatur... atheos et impios esse Christianos, ad gratiam... plebiculae ».
In 177 the martyr Vettius Epagathus, in the name of the other martyrs of Lyons, openly demonstrated that among the Christians there existed neither atheism nor impiety (cf. Eusebius, Hist. eccl., V, 1). Athenagoras (Legatio pro Christianis, 13 and 14) affirms that the pagans « nos atheos esse criminantur » and Minucius Felix (Octavius, VIII, 2) has the pagan Caecilius Natalis say that the Christians are worse than Diagoras « cui ἀθεον cognomen adposuit antiquitas ». Lastly Tertullian (Apologeticum, 24 and 27) recalls that against the Christians is imputed the « crimen lesae romanae religionis », « crimen irreligionis », « crimen lesae divinitatis », which is also designated by the name « sacrilegium » (Apol., 10).
The crime of anthropophagy, commonly called that of "Thyestean banquets" (Athenagoras, Legatio pro Christianis, 3; Acts of the Martyrs of Lyons, in Eusebius, Hist. eccl., V, 1) and sometimes also of "Mysteries of Saturn" (St. Justin, IIᵃ Apologia, 12) or of "infanticide" (Minucius Felix, Octavius, IX, 5; XXVIII, 2; Tertullian, Apol., 2, 4, 9), is mentioned for the first time, indirectly, in the Dialogue with Trypho, 10, when St. Justin asked his interlocutor: « utrum hanc de nobis opinionem vos quoque accepitis, humanis nos vesci carnibus ». From the testimonies of the Apologists of the 2nd and 3rd cent. it results that this accusation was directed at the Christians almost everywhere: in Syria, in Asia Minor, in Greece, in Africa, in Italy. There is no doubt that the accusation of anthropophagy directed at the Christians was connected with the Eucharistic use of eating the flesh of the divine Lamb.
The crime of incest or of Oedipean unions was imputed to the Christians more or less in the same places as the crime of anthropophagy (St. Justin, Iᵃ Apologia, 26; Dial., 10; Acts of the Martyrs of Lyons, in Eusebius, Historia eccl. V, 1; Athenagoras, Legatio, 3 and 31; Theophilus of Antioch, Ad Autolycum, III, 4; Epistle to Diognetus, V, 7; Minucius Felix, Octavius, IX, 6-7; XXXI, 1; Tertullian, Apol. 4, 9).
Alongside these three accusations, there were others of lesser importance and less widespread. Such are, for example: the accusation of onolatry (Minucius Felix, Octavius, IX, 3; XXVIII, 7; Tertullian, Ad nationes, I, 11, 14; Apol. 16, it would have been Tacitus who accused the Christians; Graffito of the Palatine); the accusation of worshipping the « genitalia sacerdotis » (Minucius Felix, Octavius, IX, 4; XXVIII, 10).
In the Octavius of Minucius Felix (IX, 3-7), the pagan Caecilius Natalis sets out thus the last four accusations we have enumerated against the Christians: « Audio eos (Christianos) turpissimae pecudis caput asini consecratum inepta nescio qua persuasione venerari... Alii eos ferunt ipsius antistitis ac sacerdotis colere genitalia et quasi parentis sui adorare naturam... Iam de initiandis tirunculis fabula tam detestanda quam nota est. Infans farre conectus, ut decipiat incautos, adponitur ei qui sacris imbuatur. Is infans a tirunculo farris superficie quasi ad innoxios ictus provocato caecis occultisque vulneribus occultitur. Huius, pro nefas! sitientem sanguinem lambunt, huius certatim membra dispertiunt, hac foederantur hostia, hac conscientia sceleris ad silentium mutuum pignerantur! Haec sacra sacrilegiis omnibus taetriora. Et de convivio notum est; passim omnes loquuntur, id etiam Cirtensis nostri testatur oratio. Ad epulas sollemni die coeunt cum omnibus liberis, sororibus, matribus, sexus omnis homines et omnis aetatis. Illic post multas epulas, ubi convivium caluit et incestae libidinis ebrietatis fervor exarsit, canis, qui candelabro nexus est, iactu offulae ultra spatium lineae, qua vinctus est, ad impetum et saltum provocatur. Sic, everso et extincto conscio lumine, impudentibus tenebris nexus infandae cupiditatis involvunt per incertum sortis, etsi non omnes opera, conscientia tamen pariter incest, quoniam voto universorum adpetitur quicquid accidere potest in actu singulorum ».
The accusation of onolatry, as we have seen, had already been directed at the Jews; that of worshipping the « genitalia sacerdotis » is almost certainly in relation to the attitude of the Christians during the sacrament of penance.
The accusation of worshipping the sun, of which Tertullian (Apol. 16) and Minucius Felix (Octavius, XXVIII, 10) speak, is in relation to the position that the Christians held during prayer, which they made facing East.
St. Justin repeatedly imputes to the Jews the responsibility for having invented and put into circulation the calumnies that the pagans attributed to the Christians: "... you sent wicked men from Jerusalem into the whole world, saying that an impious heresy of the Christians had come forth, and spreading those things which are said against us by all those to whom we are unknown. And so you are the cause of iniquity not only for yourselves, but also for all other men without exception..." (Dialogue with Trypho, 17). Origen asserts the same thing, particularly with regard to the accusations of cannibalism and incest (Contra Celsum, VI, 27).
The Christians were also accused of magic, of raising winds and storms, of calling down famine and plague, of exercising malignant influences over sacrifices. Tertullian, gathering up the popular echo that presented the Christians as the cause of all evils, wrote (Apol., 40): "If the Tiber rises to the walls, if the Nile does not rise to the fields, if the sky stands still, if the earth moves, if there is famine, if there is pestilence, immediately: - Christians to the lion - is shouted." Lactantius (De mortibus persecutorum, 10) relates that the persecution of Diocletian was occasioned by the malignant influence with which the Christian officials prevented the response that the emperor expected from the auspice performed at Antioch after the offering of the sacrifice. At least this was the explanation that the chief of the haruspices, named Tagis, gave to Diocletian. Often there was insistence on the vain and terrifying fantasies spread by the Christians (Minucius Felix, Octavius, V, 6 ff.).
The educated people of the pagan world did not treat the Christians any better than the common people did, whose prejudices they did not scruple to follow when they were called upon to express their judgment.
Pliny the Younger (d. 113) judged Christianity a "superstitio prava et immodica" (Epist., X, 96, 8); Tacitus (d. 119) defined it an "exitialis superstitio" (Annales, XV, 44); Suetonius (d. 160) a "superstitio nova ac malefica" (Vita Neronis, 16, 2).
The Cynic philosopher Crescens (who lived ca. 160), an adversary of St. Justin, in his διατριβαι publicly repeated against the Christians the accusation of atheism and impiety (St. Justin, IIᵃ Apol., 3).
Fronto of Cirta (d. ca. 170), tutor of the emperor Marcus Aurelius, in a speech delivered either in court or in the Senate, repeated against the Christians the vulgar calumnies of cannibalism and incest (Minucius Felix, Octavius, IX, 6; XXXI, 2). Lucian of Samosata (d. 180), in the De morte peregrini, wishing to satirize the Cynic philosophers in general and his contemporary Theagenes in particular, chose as protagonist of his Dialogue Proteus Peregrinus, who had been a Christian, then an Egyptian ascetic, and finally a Cynic philosopher and suicide. He thus succeeded in casting ridicule on the Christians for their heroic contempt of torments and of death itself.
Celsus (d. ca. 180) wrote in 175 a great refutation of Christianity, Ἀληθής λόγος, which has been lost, but which Origen, in refuting it around 248, preserved almost half of in his text, also giving its entire plan. According to this, the work consisted of four parts: in the first, a Jew refuted the faith of the Christians in the promised and come Messiah; in the second, a pagan criticized the messianism of the Jewish people; in the third, the same pagan polemicized against Christianity, denying the incarnation of the Word, because it was contrary to Plato's theory of divine transcendence, and considering Jesus a mere man, who deserved the condemnation of death on the cross and the betrayal of his own disciples, "omni peccato nequiores"; in the fourth, Celsus defended the state religion as the principal source of the greatness of the Roman Empire and addressed to the Christians the invitation to abandon their faith and return to the religion of their fathers.
A century after Celsus, around 268, Porphyry resumed the struggle against Christianity with a great work in fifteen books, κατὰ χριστιανῶν. In its particulars it often coincides with Celsus, from whom it differs in its polemical aims and its lively concern for the destinies of the Roman Empire, foreign to the mind of Porphyry or which at least left him indifferent. To judge from the surviving fragments of the work, preserved in the Apocriticus of Macarius Magnes, Porphyry sees in Christianity nothing but obscurity, incoherence, illogicality and lies. For him a decisive struggle is underway between ancient civilization, represented by tradition and law, and the new civilization, shameless and barbarian, represented by Christianity, which threatens its very existence. Into this struggle he threw himself with all his partisan soul.
During the persecutions of Diocletian, some pagan writers joined in that great war of religion. Lactantius (Institutiones divinae, V, 7) recalls a philosopher whom he does not name, who had "vomited" three books against the "Christian name," with mediocre success. On the other hand, he judges dangerous the pamphlet of a judge who is unanimously identified with Sossianus Hierocles, governor of Lower Egypt. Internal elements of the pamphlet, entitled Λόγος Φιλαλήθης, lead one to believe that its author knew the great work of Porphyry and had skillfully made use of it.
Not a few philosophers, sophists, rhetoricians and grammarians, even after the official recognition of Christianity by the Roman State, continued in the schools with obstinacy the cult of ancient literature and of the old religion, thus contributing to its persistence in the intellectual class.
The Roman State, from the moment it succeeded in clearly distinguishing Christianity from Judaism and saw in the Christian program the destruction of paganism, that is, of the official religion of the Empire (cf. Minucius Felix, Octavius, VIII, 1: "... hanc religionem ... dissolvere aut infirmare..."), began against the Christians that bloody struggle which runs from Nero to Constantine, from 64 to 313, from which Christianity emerged victorious (v. PERSECUZIONI CONTRO I CRISTIANI). In the trials against the followers of Christ there surface a little of all the accusations that the common people and the educated attributed to them, but the one on which the Roman State based its repressive action, which denied Christianity the right to exist, is always the accusation of atheism. The refusal to sacrifice to the statues of the gods and of the emperor is the only point of conflict between State and Church, for which they found themselves irremediably at grips. Tertullian (Apol., 10) wrote: "Sacrilegii et maiestatis rei convenimur, summa haec causa, imo tota est," and consequently the Christian Apologists rightly affirmed that the "nomen ipsum" was punished with death, since experience demonstrated that the true follower of Christ would never have sacrificed: "quorum nihil posse cogi dicuntur qui sunt revera Christiani" (Pliny, Epp., X, 96, 5).
What a sad impression the accusations enumerated above left on the mind of all contemporaries is confirmed by the Apologies which in the 2nd and 3rd centuries were addressed by Christian writers to the emperors whom they esteemed more favorably disposed, or to the pagans in general, or to private persons. All were directed at erasing that bad impression, whether by describing the pure and charitable life of the Christians and their perfect loyalty, or by turning the accusation back with just and severe criticism of the pagan world.