Saint Augustin by Louis Bertrand

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Notwithstanding his rodomontades, it is certain that in his heart he was
scared by Rome. He hardly dared to attack it. In the first place, it was
not at all a convenient operation for him. His army of mercenaries had no
proper implements to undertake the siege of this huge city, of which the
defence lines were thrown out in so wide a perimeter. He had to come back
to it twice, before he could make up his mind to invest it seriously. The
first time, in 408, he was satisfied with starving the Romans by cutting
off the food supply. He had pitched his camp on the banks of the Tiber in
such a way as to capture the shipping between the capital and the great
store-houses built near the mouth of the river. From the ramparts, the
Romans could see the Barbarian soldiers moving about, with their sheepskin
coats dyed to a crude red. Panic-stricken, the aristocracy fled to its
villas in Campania, or Sicily, or Africa. They took with them whatever
they were able to carry. They sought refuge in the nearest islands, even
in Sardinia and Corsica, despite their reputation for unhealthiness. They
even hid among the rocks of the seashore. The terror was so great that the
Senate agreed to everything demanded by Alaric. He was paid an enormous
indemnity which he claimed as a condition of his withdrawal.

The following year he used the same method of intimidation to force on the
people an emperor he had chosen, and to get conferred on him the title of
Prefect of the City which he had desired so long. Finally, in the year 410,
he struck the supreme blow.

The Barbarian knew what he was about, and that he did not risk much in
blockading Rome. Famine would open the gates to him sooner or later. All
who were able had left the city, especially the rich. There was no garrison
to defend it. Only a lazy populace remained behind the walls, unused to
arms, and still more enfeebled by long starvation. And yet this wretched
and decimated population, in an outburst of patriotism, resisted with
desperate energy. The siege was long. Doubtless it began before the spring;
it ended only at the end of the summer. In the night of the twenty-fourth
of August, 410, amid the glare of lightning and crashes of thunder, Alaric
entered Rome by the Salarian gate. It is certain that he only managed it
even then by treachery. The prey was handed to him.

The sack of Rome seems to have lasted for three days and three nights. Part
of the town was burned. The conquered people underwent all the horrors
which accompany such events--violent and stupid destruction, rapes, murders
of individuals, wholesale slaughter, torture, and mutilation. But in
reality the Barbarians only wanted the Roman gold. They acted like perfect
highway robbers. If they tortured their victims without distinction of age
or sex, it was to pluck the secret of their treasure-houses out of them.
It is even said that in these conditions the Roman avarice produced some
admirable examples of firmness. Some let themselves be tortured to their
last gasp rather than reveal where their treasures were hid. At last, when
Alaric decided that his army was gorged enough with spoil, he gave the
order to evacuate the city, and took to the roads with his baggage-waggons
full.

Let us be careful not to judge these doings after our modern notions. The
capture of Rome by Alaric was not a national disaster. It was plundering on
a huge scale. The Goth had no thought at all of destroying the Empire. He
was only a mercenary in rebellion--an ambitious mercenary, no doubt--but,
above all, a looter.

As a consequence of this attack on the Eternal City, one after another
caught the disease of plunder, which contaminated even the functionaries
and the subjects of Rome. Amid the general anarchy, where impunity seemed
certain, nobody restrained himself any longer. In Africa especially, where
the old instinct of piracy is always half-awake, they applied themselves to
ransack the fugitive Romans and Italians. Many rich people were come there,
seeking a place of safety in the belief that they would be more secure when
they had put the sea between themselves and the Barbarians. The report of
their riches had preceded them, exaggerated out of all measure by popular
rumour. Among them were mentioned patricians such as the Anicii, whose
property was so immense and their palaces so splendid that they could not
find purchasers. These multi-millionaires in flight were a miraculous
windfall for the country. They were bled without mercy.

Quicker than any one else, the military governor of Africa, Count
Heraclianus, was on the spot to pick the pockets of the Italian immigrants.
No sooner were they off the boat than he had very distinguished ladies
seized, and only released them when he had extorted a large ransom. He sold
those unable to pay to the Greek and Syrian slave-merchants who provided
human flesh for the Oriental harems. When the example came from such a
height, the subordinates doubtless said to themselves that they would
be very wrong to have the least shame. From one end of the province to
the other, everybody struggled to extract as much as possible from the
unfortunate fugitives. Augustin's own parishioners at Hippo undertook to
tear a donation from one of those gorgeous Anicii, whose lands stretched
further than a kite could fly--from Pinian, the husband of St. Melania
the younger. They wanted to force him to be ordained priest in spite of
himself, which, as has been explained, involved the handing over of his
goods to the Catholic community. Augustin, who opposed this, had to give in
to the crowd. There was almost a riot in the basilica.

Such were the far-off reverberations of the capture of Rome by Alaric.
Carthaginians and Numidians pillaged the Romans just like the Barbarians.

Now, how did it come about that this monstrous loot took on before the eyes
of contemporaries the magnitude of a world-catastrophe? For really nothing
was utterly lost. The Empire remained standing. After Alaric's retreat,
the Romans had come back to their city and they worked to build up the
ruins. Ere long, the populace were crying out loud that if the circus
and amphitheatre games were given back to them, they would look upon the
descent of the Goths as a bad dream.

It is no less certain that this sensational occurrence had struck the whole
Mediterranean world into a perfect stupor. It seized upon the imaginations
of all. The idea that Rome could not be taken, that it was integral and
almost sacred, had such a hold on people's minds, that they refused to
credit the sinister news. Nobody reflected that the sack of Rome by the
Barbarians should have been long ago foreseen--that Rome, deprived of
a garrison, abandoned by the Imperial army, was bound to attract the
covetousness of the Goths, and that the pillage of a place without defence,
already enfeebled by famine, was not a very glorious feat, very difficult,
or very extraordinary. People only saw the brutal fact: the Eternal City
had been captured and burned by the mercenaries. All were under the
influence of the shock caused by the narratives of the refugees. In one of
his sermons, Augustin has transmitted to us an echo of the general panic:

"Horrible things," said he, "have been told us. There have been ruins, and
fires, and rapine, and murder, and torture. That is true; we have heard it
many times; we have shuddered at all this disaster; we have often wept, and
we have hardly been able to console ourselves."

This capture of Rome was plainly a terrible warning for the future. But
party spirit strangely exaggerated the importance and meaning of the
calamity. For pagans and Christians alike it became a subject for speeches,
a commonplace of religious polemic. Both saw the event as a manifestation
of the wrath of Heaven.

"While we sacrificed to our gods," the pagan said, "Rome was standing, Rome
was happy. Now that our sacrifices are forbidden, you see what has become
of Rome...."

And they went about repeating that Christianism was responsible for the
ruin of the Empire. On their side, the Christians answered: In the first
place, Rome has not fallen: it is always standing. It has been only
chastised, and this happened because it is still half pagan. By this
frightful punishment (and they heightened the description of the horrors
committed), God has given it a warning. Let it be converted, let it return
to the virtues of its ancestors, and it will become again the mistress of
nations.

There is what Augustin and the bishops said. Still, the flock of the
faithful were only half convinced. It was all well enough to remonstrate
to them that the Christians of Rome, and even a good number of pagans,
had been spared at the name of Christ, and that the Barbarian leader had
bestowed a quite special protection and respect upon the basilicas of
the holy apostles; it was impossible to prevent their thinking that many
Christians had perished in the sack of the city, that consecrated virgins
had experienced the last outrages, and that, as a matter of fact, all the
inhabitants had been robbed of their property.... Was it thus that God
protected His chosen? What advantage was there in being Christian if they
had the same treatment as the idolaters?

This state of mind became extremely favourable for paganism to come back
again on the offensive. Since the very hard laws of Theodosius, which
forbade the worship of the ancient gods, even within the house, the pagans
had not overlooked any chance to protest against the Imperial severity.
At Carthage there were always fights in the streets between pagans and
Christians, not to say riots. In the colony of Suffetula, sixty Christians
had been massacred. The year before the capture of Rome, there had been
trouble with the pagans at Guelma. Houses belonging to the Church were
burned, a monk killed in a brawl. Whenever the Government inspection
relaxed, or the political situation appeared favourable, the pagans hurried
to proclaim their belief. Only just lately, in Rome beleaguered by Alaric,
the new consul, Tertullus, had thought fit to revive the old customs.
Before assuming office, he studied gravely the sacred fowls in their cages,
traced circles in the sky with the augur's wand, and marked the flight of
birds. Besides, a pagan oracle circulated persistently among the people,
promising that after a reign of three hundred and sixty-five years
Christianity would be conquered. The centuries of the great desolation were
fulfilled; the era of revenge was about to begin for the outcast gods.

These warlike symptoms did not escape Augustin's vigilance. His indignation
no longer arose only from the fact that paganism was so slow in dying; he
was now afraid that the feebleness of the Empire might allow it to take on
an appearance of life. It must be ended, as Donatism had been ended. The
old apostle was summoned to a new campaign, and in it he would spend the
best of his strength to the eve of his death.

II

THE CITY OF GOD

For thirteen or fourteen years, through a thousand employments and a
thousand cares, amid the panics and continual alarums which kept the
Africans on the alert in those times, Augustin worked at his _City of God_,
the most formidable machine of war ever directed against paganism, and also
the arsenal fullest of proofs and refutations which the disputants and
defenders of Catholicism have ever had at their disposal.

It is not for us to examine the details of this immense work, for our sole
aim is to study Augustin's soul, and we quote scarcely anything from his
books save those parts wherein a little of this ardent soul pulsates--those
which are still living for us of the twentieth century, which contain
teachings and ways of feeling still likely to move us. Now, Augustin's
attitude towards paganism is one of those which throw the greatest light on
his nature and character. And it may even yet come to be our own attitude
when we find opposed to us a conception of life and the world which
may indeed be ruined for a time, but is reborn as soon as the sense of
spirituality disappears or grows feeble.

"Immortal Paganism, art thou dead? So they say.
But Pan scoffs under his breath, and the Chimæra laughs." [1]

[Footnote 1: Sainte-Beuve.]

Like ourselves, Augustin, brought up by a Christian mother, knew it only
through literature, and, so to speak, æsthetically. Recollections of
school, the emotions and admirations of a cultivated man--there is what the
old religion meant for him. Nevertheless, he had one great advantage over
us for knowing it well: the sight of the pagan customs and superstitions
was still under his eyes.

That the lascivious, romantic, and poetic adventures of the ancient gods,
their statues, their temples, and all the arts arising from their religion,
had beguiled him and filled him with enthusiasm before his conversion, is
only too certain. But all this mythology and plastic art were looked upon
as secondary things then, even by pagans. The serious, the essential part
of the religion was not in that. Paganism, a religion of Beauty, is an
invention of our modern æsthetes; it was hardly thought of in that way in
Augustin's time.

Long before this, the Roman Varro, the great compiler of the religious
antiquities of paganism, made a threefold distinction of the doctrine
concerning the gods. The first--that of the theatre, as he calls it, or
fabulous mythology, adapted to poets, dramatists, sculptors, and jesters.
Invented by these, it is only a fantasy, a play of imagination, an ornament
of life. The third is civil theology, serious and solid, which claims the
respect and piety of all. "It is that which men in cities, and chiefly the
priests, _ought to be_ cunning in. It teaches which gods to worship in
public, and with what ceremonies and sacrifices each one must be served."
Finally, the second, physical or metaphysical theology, is reserved for
philosophers and exceptional minds; it is altogether theoretical. The
only important and truly religious one, which puts an obligation on the
believer, is the third--the civil theology.

Now, we never take account of this. What we persist in regarding as
paganism is what Varro himself called "a religion for the theatre"--matter
of opera, pretext for ballets, for scenery, and for dance postures.
Transposed into another key by our poets, this mythology is inflated now
and then by mysticism, or by a vague symbolism. Playthings of our pretty
wits! The living paganism, which Augustin struggled against, which crowds
defended at the price of their blood, in which the poor believed and the
wisest statesmen deemed indispensable as a safeguard of cities--that
paganism is quite another matter. Like all religions which are possible,
it implied and it _enforced_ not only beliefs, but ritual, sacrifices,
festivals. And this is what Augustin, with the other Christians of that
time, spurned with disgust and declared to be unbearable.

He saw, or he had seen with his own eyes, the reality of the pagan worship,
and the most repellent of all to our modern delicacy--the sacrifices. At
the period when he wrote _The City of God_, private sacrifices, as well as
public, were forbidden. This did not prevent the devout from breaking the
law whenever a chance offered. They hid themselves more or less when they
sacrificed before a temple, a chapel, or on some private estate. The rites
could not be carried out according to all the minute instructions of the
pontifical books. It was no more than a shadow of the ceremonies of former
times. But in his childhood, in the reign of Julian, for instance, Augustin
could have attended sacrifices which were celebrated with full pomp and
according to all the ritual forms. They were veritable scenes of butchery.
For Heaven's sake let us forget the frieze of the Parthenon, and its
sacrificers with their graceful lines! If we want to have a literal
translation of this sculpture, and find the modern representation of a
hecatomb, we must go to the slaughter-houses at La Villette.

Among the heaps of broken flesh, the puddles of blood, the mystic Julian
was attacked by a kind of drunkenness. There were never enough beasts
strangled or slaughtered to suit him. Nothing satisfied his fury for sacred
carnage. The pagans themselves made fun of this craze for sacrificing.
During the three years his reign lasted the altars streamed with blood.
Oxen by hundreds were slain upon the floors of the temples, and the
butchers throttled so many sheep and other domestic animals that they gave
up keeping count of them. Thousands of white birds, pigeons or sea-gulls,
were destroyed day by day by the piety of the prince. He was called the
_Victimarius_, and when he started upon his campaign against the Persians,
an epigram was circulated once more which had been formerly composed
against Marcus Aurelius (the philosophic emperor!) who was equally generous
of hecatombs: "To Marcus Cæsar from the white oxen. It will be all over
with us if you come back a conqueror." People said that Julian, on his
return, would depopulate stables and pasture-lands.

The populace, who gathered their very considerable profit from these
butcheries, naturally encouraged such an excess of devotion. At Rome, under
Caligula, more than a hundred and sixty thousand victims were immolated in
three months--nearly two thousand a day. And these massacres took place
upon the approaches of the temples; in the middle of the city; on the
forums; in narrow squares crowded with public buildings and statues. Just
try to call up the scene in summer, between walls at a white heat, with the
smells and the flies. Spectators and victims rubbed against one another,
pressed close in the restricted space. One day, Caligula, while he was
attending a sacrifice, was splashed all over by the blood of a flamingo as
they cut its neck. But the august Cæsar was not so fastidious; he himself
operated in these ceremonies armed with a mallet and clad in the short
shirt of the killers. The ignominy of all this revolted the Christians,
and whoever had nerves at all sensitive. The bloody mud in which passers
slipped, the hissing of the fat, the heavy odour of flesh, were sickening.
Tertullian held his nose before the "stinking fires" on which the victims
were roasting. And St. Ambrose complained that in the Roman Curia the
senators who were Christians were obliged to breathe in the smoke and
receive full in the face the ashes of the altar raised before the statue of
Victory.

The manipulations of the _haruspicina_ seemed an even worse abomination in
the eyes of the Christians. Dissection of bowels, examination of entrails,
were practices very much in fashion in all classes of society. The
pagans generally took more or less interest in magic. One was scarcely
a philosopher without being a miracle-worker. In this there was a kind
of perfidious rivalry to the Christian miracles. The ambitious or the
discontented opened the bellies of animals to learn when the Emperor was
going to die, and who would succeed him. But although it did not pretend to
magic, the _haruspicina_ made an essential part of the sacrifices. As soon
as the dismemberment was done, the diviners examined the appearance of
the entrails. Consulting together, they turned them over frequently with
anxious attention. This business might continue for a long time. Plutarch
relates that Philip, King of Macedonia, when sacrificing an ox on the
Ithomæa, with Aratus of Sicyon and Demetrius of Pharos, wished to inquire
out from the entrails of the victim concerning the wisdom of a piece of
strategy. The _haruspex_ put the smoking mass in his hands. The King shewed
it to his companions, who derived contradictory presages from it. He
listened to one side and the other, holding meanwhile the ox's entrails
in his hands. Eventually, he decided for the opinion of Aratus, and then
tranquilly gave the handful back to the sacrificer....

No doubt in Augustin's time these rites were no longer practised openly.
For all that, they were of the first importance in the ancient religion,
which desired nothing better than to restore them. It is easy to understand
the repulsion they caused in the author of _The City of God_. He who would
not have a fly killed to make sure of the gold crown in the contest of
poets, looked with horror on these sacred butchers, and manglers, and
cooks. He flung the garbage of the sacrifices into the sewer, and shewed
proudly to the pagans the pure oblation of the eucharistic Bread and Wine.

But what, above all, he attacked, because it was a present and permanent
scandal, was the gluttony, the drunkenness, and lust of the pagans. Let us
not exaggerate these vices--not the two first, at least. Augustin could not
judge them as we can. It is certain that the Africans of his time--and for
that matter, those of to-day--would have struck us modern people as very
sober. The outbursts of intemperance which he accuses them of only happened
at intervals, at times of public festivity or some family celebration. But
as soon as they did begin they were terrible. When one thinks of the orgies
of our Arabs behind locked doors!

But it is no less true that the pagan vices spread themselves out
cynically under the protecting shadow of religion. Popular souses of
eating and drinking were the obligatory accompaniments of the festivals
and sacrifices. A religious festival meant a carouse, loads of victuals,
barrels of wine broached in the street. These were called the Dishes,
_Fercula_, or else, the Rejoicing, _Lætitia_. The poor people, who knew
meat only by sight, ate it on these days, and they drank wine. The effect
of this unaccustomed plenty was felt at once. The whole populace were
drunk. The rich in their houses possibly did it with more ceremony, but it
was really the same brutishness. The elegant Ovid, who in the _Art of Love_
teaches fine manners to the beginners in love, advises them not to vomit at
table, and to avoid getting drunk like the husbands of their mistresses.

Plainly, religion was only an excuse for these excesses. Augustin goes too
far when he makes the gods responsible for this riot of sensuality. What is
true is that they did nothing to hinder it. And it is also true that the
lechery, which he flings so acridly in the face of the pagans, the gross
stage-plays, the songs, dances, and even prostitution, were all more or
less included in the essence of paganism. The theatre, like the games of
the arena and circus, was a divine institution. At certain feasts, and in
certain temples, fornication became sacred. All the world knew what took
place at Carthage in the courts and under the porticoes of the Celestial
Virgin, and what the ears of the most chaste matrons were obliged to hear,
and also what the use was of the castrated priests of the Great Mother
of the gods. Augustin, who declaims against these filthy sports, has not
forced the note of his denunciation to make out a good case. If anybody
wants to know in more detail the sights enjoyed at the theatre, or what
were the habits of certain pious confraternities, he has only to read what
is told by Apuleius, the most devout of pagans. He takes evident pleasure
in these stories, or, if he sometimes waxes indignant, it is the depravity
of men he accuses. The gods soar at a great height above these wretched
trifles. To Augustin, on the contrary, the gods are unclean devils who fill
their bellies with lust and obscenities, as if they were hankering for the
blood and grease of sacrifices.

And so he puts his finger on the open wound of paganism--its basic
immorality, or, if you like, its unmorality. Like our scientism of to-day,
it was unable to lay down a system of morals. It did not even try to. What
Augustin has written on this subject in _The City of God_, is perhaps the
strongest argument ever objected to polytheism. Anyhow, pages like this are
very timely indeed to consider:

"But such friends and such worshippers of those gods, whom they rejoice
to follow and imitate in all villainies and mischiefs--do they trouble
themselves about the corruption and great decay of the Republic? Not so.
Let it but stand, say they; let it but prosper by the number of its troops
and be glorious by its victories; or, _which is best of all, let it but
enjoy security and peace_, and what care we? Yes, what we care for above
all is that every one may have the means to increase his wealth, to pay the
expenses of his usual luxury, and that the powerful may still keep under
the weak. Let the poor crouch to the rich to be fed, or to live at ease
under their protection; let the rich abuse the poor as things at their
service, and to shew how many they have soliciting them. Let the people
applaud such as provide them with pleasures, not such as have a care for
their interests. _Let naught that is hard be enjoined, nothing impure
be prohibited_.... Let not subdued provinces obey their governors as
supervisors of their morality, but as masters of their fortune and the
procurers of their pleasures. What matters it if this submission has no
sincerity, but rests upon a bad and servile fear! _Let the law protect
estates rather than fair justice_. Let there be a good number of public
harlots, either for all that please to enjoy themselves in their company,
or for those that cannot keep private ones. Let stately and sumptuous
houses be erected, so that night and day each one according to his liking
or his means may gamble and drink and revel and vomit. Let the rhythmed
tinkling of dances be ordinary, the cries, the uncontrolled delights,
the uproar of all pleasures, even the bloodiest and most shameful in the
theatres. He who shall assay to dissuade from these pleasures, let him
be condemned as a public enemy. And if any one try to alter or suppress
them--let the people stifle his voice, let them banish him, let them
kill him. On the other hand, those that shall procure the people these
pleasures, and authorize their enjoyment, let them be eternized for the
true gods."...

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