CHAPTER II. The Earliest Converts to Christianity. It was only natural that the first preaching of the new Gospel of Christianity should have appealed with especial force to the lower orders of society. The Apostles themselves were for the most part men of low estate, who lived by the product of the labours of their own hands. The Jews, to whom at the first the Gospel was preached almost exclusively, were everywhere, then as now, a people despised, outcast, and oppressed. As we examine the details of the Jewish colony at Rome in the first century we might almost be reading, under feigned names and changed conditions, an account of the Jewish community, as we know it in London or in any great European city of the present. There is, first, a small number of wealthy men, the leading financiers of the city, the forerunners of the Rothschilds and Hirsch of a late age, having little of Judaism about them except the names, and these, as they were among the richest, so also were among the most influential of Roman citizens. But these, as always, were but the few, and for the most part, then as now, the Jewish community was composed of the very poor. "They are a people born for slavery," says Cicero; "abominable among all the nations," says Seneca, who himself, however, was not * always wholly unsympathetic. The Satirists, too, while they find in the Jewish practice of circumcision, in their institution of the Sabbath, and in their hatred for pork, an endless opportunity for witticisms, in general describe the Jews in terms of utter contempt; as beggars and rag-pickers; bartering tapers for broken glass; dirty and odorous; with swarms of ragged children; with no possessions but a basket, and no bed to lie on but a heap of straw. If such were the conditions of the Jewish colonies of the dispersion, it is not to be wondered at that for the most part Jewish converts were not of a high rank. "Not many wise, not many noble," were chosen, as we know from St. Paul, and yet even among these some of the converts were of higher rank. A society which, like that of the earliest Church at Jerusalem, brought land and houses to be given to a common stock that the necessities of the poorer brethren might be relieved, obviously included many who were not of the poorest class, and what was true of Jerusalem was probably true also of the other cities in which the Jewish element was numerous. came. The Slaves. If we turn to the Gentiles we shall find that here again it was to the lower classes that the message first It was the fulfilment of our Lord's prophecy, the special characteristic of the Christian religion, that "the poor had the Gospel preached to them ". There was no class from whom the number of converts was larger than from the lowest social class of all—those who had no kind of political rights-the slaves of the Empire. The slave in Roman law was a mere chattel of his owner. He was just a piece of property, which must pay interest like any other, and from which profit was extracted by systematic overwork. Some masters were humane, others were not; few had any interest in their slaves except as means of profit, none troubled about their moral condition or cared to help them in any way. To such wretches as these the Christian message of a common brotherhood and equality in the sight of God made a strong appeal. They joined the Church in crowds, and found themselves within her borders almost in another world. Christian slaves were allowed to partake of the Sacrament just like Christian freemen; they had an equal place in public worship, and no longer lived in bestial concubinage, but were duly married according to the laws of Catholicism. Many of these Christian slaves, finding a new manhood and independence in the brotherhood of the Church, carried on a keen apostolate in the homes of their masters. It was a sore point with Celsus, as we learn from Origen. They stood firm under punishment and torture, and, to the astonishment of the pagans, who could not understand such independence in a slave, offered themselves rejoicingly for martyrdom. The list of slave martyrs of the first two centuries is indeed a long one. Felicitas at Carthage, Ariadne in Phrygia, Blandina at Lyons, Sabina at Smyrna, Vitalis at Bologna, Porphyrius at Cæsarea, Potamiana at Alexandria, Euelpistus at Rome; these are but a few of the many that might be quoted, but they are drawn from every portion of the Empire. When slaves could rise to martyrdom we need not wonder that they were also found worthy to occupy the highest positions in the Church. Hermas, the author of the "Shepherd," is said to have been a slave by birth, and if so, then Pius, his brother, who sat on the throne of Peter about the year 150, must have been one also. In any case it 1 is certain that this was so in the case of Callixtus a century later. He was born a banker's slave, and rose first to be Archdeacon of Rome, and then to be himself Pope on the death of his patron. In no household among the nobles and leaders of Rome did the faith make more speedy progress than in the highest of all, "the household of Cæsar". We know that St. Paul himself had found (From Marucchi's “Eléments d'Archéologie," Desclée De Brouwer et Cie.) means to reach the slaves of the Imperial household, and the torch once lighted was never again extinguished. There were Christian slaves at Court under Commodus, and also under Septimius Severus, as we know from monumental evidence. Caracalla was brought up by a Christian nurse, lacte Christiano educatus.2 The well-known graffito of the Palatine, 1" Bull. d' arch. crist.," 1863, p. 83; cf. "Inscript. Christianae," i. 9. 2 Tertullian, "Ad Scapulam," 4. |