The Martyrdom of Man by Winwood Reade (mobi ebook reader TXT) 📖

great parties were at once formed. A council of bishops

was convened at Nicaea to consult the Holy Ghost. The chair was taken

by a man who wore a wig of many colours and a silken robe embroidered

with golden thread. This was Constantine the great, patron of

Christianity, Nero of the Bosphorus, murderer of his wife and son. The

discussion was noisy and abusive, and the Arians lost the day. Yet the

matter did not end there. Constantius took up the Arian side. Arian

missionaries converted the Vandals and the Goths. Other emperors took

up the Catholics, and they converted the Franks. The court was divided

by spiritual eunuchs and theological intrigues: the provinces were laid

waste by theological wars which lasted three hundred years. What a

world of woe and desolation, what a deluge of blood, because the Greeks

had a taste for metaphysics!

 

The Arian difference did not stand alone; every province had its own

schism. Caste sympathy induced the emperors to protect the pagan

aristocracy from the fury of the bishops, but the heretics belonged chiefly

to the subject nationalities. The Nestorians were men of the Semitic race,

the Jacobites were Egyptians, the Donatists were Berbers. Of such a

nature was the treatment which these people received that they were

ready at any time to join the enemies of the empire, whoever they might

be. Difference of nationality occasioned difference in mode of thought.

Difference in mode of thought occasioned difference in religious creed.

Difference in religious creed occasioned controversy, riots and

persecution. Persecution intensified distinctions of nationality. Such

then was the state of religion in the Grecian world. In the West the

Church, overwhelmed by the barbarians, was displaying virtues in

adversity, and was laying the foundations of a majestic kingdom. But as

for the East, Christianity had lived in vain. In Constantinople and in

Greece it had done no good. In Asia, Barbary, and Egypt it had done

harm. Its peace was apathy: its activity was war. Instead of healing the

old wounds of conquest it opened them afresh. It was not enough that the

peasants of the ancient race, once masters of the soil, should be crushed

with taxes; a new instrument of torture was invented; their priests were

taken from them; their altars were overthrown. But the day of vengeance

was at hand. Soon they would enjoy, under rulers of a different religion

but of the same race, that freedom of conscience which a Christian

government refused.

 

The Byzantine empire in the seventh century included Greece and the

islands, with a part of Italy. In Asia and Africa its possessions were those

of the Turkish Empire before the cession of Algiers. There was a Greek

viceroy of Egypt: there were Greek governors in Egypt and Asia Minor,

Carthage, and Cyrene. The capital was fed with Egyptian corn and

enriched by silken manufactures—for two Nestorian monks had brought

the eggs of the silkworm from China in hollow canes. These eggs had

been hatched under lukewarm dung, and the culture of the cocoon had

been established for the first time on European soil. The eastern

boundary of the empire was sometimes the Tigris, sometimes the

Euphrates; the land of Mesopotamia, which lay between the rivers, was

the subject of continual war between the Byzantines and the Persians.

 

Alexander the Great had not been long dead before the Parthians, a race

of hardy mountaineers, occupied the lands to the east of the Euphrates,

made themselves famous in their wars with Rome, and established a wide

empire. In the third century it was broken up into petty principalities, and

a private citizen who claimed to be heir-at-law of the old Persian kings

headed a party, seized the crown, restored the Zoroastrian religion, and

raised the empire to a state of power and magnificence scarcely inferior to

that of the Great Kings. But the Greeks were still in Asia Minor and

Egypt, and it became the hereditary ambition of the Persians to drive

them back into their own country. In the seventh century Chosroes the

Second accomplished this idea, and restored the frontiers of Cambyses

and the first Darius. He conquered Asia Minor, Syria, and Egypt. He

carried his arms to Cryene, and extinguished the last glimmer of culture

in that ancient colony. Heraclius, the Byzantine emperor, was in despair.

While the Persians overran his provinces in Asia a horde or Cossacks

threatened him in Europe. Constantinople, he feared, would soon be

surrounded, and it already suffered famine from the loss of Egypt, as

Rome had formerly suffered when the Vandals plundered it of Africa. He

determined to migrate to Carthage, and had already prepared to depart

when the Patriarch persuaded him to change his mind. He obtained peace

from Persia by sending earth and water in the old style, and by promising

to pay as tribute a thousand talents of gold, a thousand talents of silver, a

thousand silk robes, a thousand horses, and a thousand virgins. But

instead of collecting these commodities he collected an army, and

suddenly dashed into the heart of Persia. Chosroes recalled his troops

from the newly conquered lands, but was defeated by the Greeks, and was

in his turn compelled to sue for ignominious peace. In the midst of the

triumphs which Heraclius celebrated at Constantinople and Jerusalem, an

obscure town on the confines of Syria was pillaged by a band of Arab

horsemen, who cut in pieces some troops which advanced to its relief.

This appeared a trifling event, but it was the beginning of a mighty

revolution. In the last eight years of his reign Heraclius lost to the

Saracens the provinces which he had recovered from the Persians.

 

The peninsula of Arabia is almost as large as Hindustan, but does not

contain a single navigable river. It is for the most part a sterile tableland

furrowed by channels which in winter roar with violent and muddy

streams, and which in summer are completely dry. In these stream-beds

at a little depth below the surface there is sometimes a stratum of water

which, breaking out here and there into springs, creates a habitable island

in the waste. Such a fruitful wadi or oasis is sometimes extensive enough

to form a town, and each town is in itself a kingdom. This stony, green-spotted land was divided into Arabia Petraea on the north and Arabia

Deserta on the south. The north supplied Constantinople, and the south

supplied Persia, with mercenary troops; the leaders, on receiving their

pay, established courts at home, and rendered homage to their imperial

masters. The princes of Arabia Deserta ruled in the name of the

Chosroes. The princes of Arabia Petraea were proud to be called the

lieutenants of the Caesars.

 

In the south-west corner of the peninsula there is a range of hills

sufficiently high to intercept the passing clouds and rain them down as

streams to the Indian Ocean and the Red Sea. This was the land of

Yemen or Sabaea, renowned for its groves of frankincense and for the

wealth of its merchant kings. Its forests in ancient times were inhabited

by squalid negro tribes who lived on platforms in the trees, and whose

savage stupor was ascribed to the drowsy influence of the scented air.

The country was afterwards colonised by men of the Arab race who built

ships and established factories on the east coast of Africa, on the coast of

Malabar, and in the island of Ceylon. They did not navigate the Red Sea,

but dispatched the Indian goods, the African ivory and gold dust, and

their own fragrant produce by camel caravan to Egypt or to Petra, a great

market city in the north.

 

The Pharaohs and the Persian kings did not interfere with the merchant

princes of Yemen. In the days of the Ptolemies a few Greek ships made

the Indian voyage, but could not compete with the Arabs who had so long

been established in the trade. But the Roman occupation of Alexandria

ruined them completely. The just and moderate government of Augustus,

and the demand for Oriental luxuries at Rome, excited the enterprise of

the Alexandrine traders, and a Greek named Hippalus made a remarkable

discovery. He observed that the winds or monsoons of the Indian Ocean

regularly blew during six months from east to west and during six months

from west to east. He was bold enough to do what the Phoenicians

themselves had never done. He left the land and sailed right across the

ocean to the Indian shore with one monsoon, returning with the next to

the mouth of the Red Sea. By means of this ocean route the India voyage

could be made in half the time. The goods were thereby cheapened, the

demand was thereby increased, the Indian Ocean was covered with Greek

vessels, a commercial revolution was created, the coasting and caravan

trade of the Arabs came to an end, the Romans destroyed Aden, and

Yemen withered up and remained independent only because it was

obscure.

 

Arabia had always been a land of refuge, for in its terrible deserts security

might always be found. To Arabia had fled the Priests of the Sun after

the victories of Alexander and the restoration of Babylonian idolatry. To

Arabia had fled thousands of Jews after the second destruction of

Jerusalem. To Arabia had fled thousands of Christians who had been

persecuted by pagan and still more by Christian emperors. The land was

divided among independent princes-—many of them were Christians and

many of them were Jews. There is nothing more conducive to an

enlightened scepticism, and its attendant spirit toleration, than the

spectacle of various religious creeds each maintained by intelligent and

pious men. A king of Arabia Felix in the fourth century received an

embassy from the Byzantine emperor, with a request that Christians

might be allowed to settle in his kingdom, and also that he would make

Christianity the religion of the state. He assented to the first proposition.

With reference to the second he replied “I reign over men´s bodies, not

over their opinions. I exact from my subjects obedience to the

government; as to their religious doctrine, the judge of that is the great

Creator.”

 

But it came to pass that a king of the Jewish persuasion succeeded to the

throne: he persecuted his Christian subjects and made war on Christian

kings, burning houses, men, and gospels wherever he could find them. A

Christian Arab made his escape, travelled to Constantinople, and, holding

up a charred Testament before the throne, demanded help in the name of

the Redeemer. The emperor at once prepared for war, and dispatched an

envoy to his faithful ally the Negus of Abyssinia.

 

The old kingdom of Ethiopia had escaped Cambyses and Alexander, and

had lost its independence to the Ptolemies only for a time. The Romans

made an Abyssinian expedition with complete success, but withdrew

from the savage country in disdain. Ethiopia was left to its own devices,

which soon became of an Africanising nature. The priests kept the king

shut up in his palace and when it suited their convenience sent him word,

in the African style, that he must be tired and that it would be good for

him to sleep; upon which he migrated to the lower world with his

favourite wives and slaves. But there was once a king named Ergamenes

who had improved his mind by the study of Greek philosophy, and who,

when he received the message of the priests, soon gave them a proof that

they were quite mistaken, and that so far from being sleepy he was wide

awake. He ordered them to collect in the Golden Chapel, and then,

marching in with his guards, he put them all to death. From that time

Abyssinia became a military kingdom. As the princes of Numidia had

used elephants after the destruction of the Carthaginian republic, so the

Abyssinians