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CATHOLICISM
 Catholicism
The Story of Catholic Christianity

Second Edition

G E RA L D O ’C O L L I N S , S . J .
AND
MA R I O F A R R U G I A , S . J .

1
 3
Great Clarendon Street, Oxford, OX2 6DP,
United Kingdom
Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford.
It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship,
and education by publishing worldwide. Oxford is a registered trade mark of
Oxford University Press in the UK and in certain other countries
# Gerald O’Collins, S.J. and Mario Farrugia, S.J. 2015
The moral rights of the authors have been asserted
First Edition published in 2015
Impression: 1
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in
a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the
prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted
by law, by licence or under terms agreed with the appropriate reprographics
rights organization. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the
above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the
address above
You must not circulate this work in any other form
and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer
Published in the United States of America by Oxford University Press
198 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016, United States of America
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Data available
Library of Congress Control Number: 2014942352
ISBN 978–0–19–104391–8
Printed in Great Britain by
Clays Ltd, St Ives plc
Links to third party websites are provided by Oxford in good faith and
for information only. Oxford disclaims any responsibility for the materials
contained in any third party website referenced in this work
 Preface to the New Edition (2014)

After Catholicism: The Story of Catholic Christianity first appeared in

English (2003) and, subsequently, in Bulgarian, Italian, and Spanish
translations, various reviewers (listed below) have presented and
evaluated our work. For our new, revised edition we want to take
up dialogue with them and respond to their main suggestions and
criticisms. This new preface will then recall some major develop-
ments that have taken place in the world and the Church since we
completed the text of this book in 2002. We will end by indicating
changes introduced into our work.
The reviewers came up with some encouraging judgements: ‘an
unusual and very useful book’ (Ker); ‘yields many nuggets of pure
gold’ (McBrien); ‘can be read with great profit . . . extremely well-
informed and very up-to-date in its research’ (MacCulloch); ‘each
chapter reads like a mini-masterpiece’ (Pereira); an ‘insightful vol-
ume’ (Vinten); ‘a book unusual in its sympathetic depth and critical
sensibility’ (Zalar).
Inevitably some reviewers mentioned topics that our book did not
introduce: limbo, Pope Pius X’s anti-modernist crusade, Pope John
Paul II’s rejection of moral ‘proportionalism’, ‘the Vatican’s resist-
ance’ to a ‘more open approach to other religions’, and, in particular,
the ‘censuring’ of Jacques Dupuis (McBrien); the condemnation of
Origen (in ancient Christianity); the contribution in modern times of
liberation theology (MacCulloch); and indulgences (Pereira).
Long before McBrien published his review on 21 February 2004, one
of us (O’Collins) had published articles in defence of Dupuis, appeared
for him at the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, and co-edited
a book honouring him on his eightieth birthday (3 December 2003).
We did not think it necessary to bang on about the Dupuis case in our
book on Catholicism. Apropos of liberation theology, we mentioned it
approvingly (p. 95) and one of us (O’Collins) has repeatedly evaluated
it with appreciation: for instance, in Retrieving Fundamental Theology:
The Three Styles of Contemporary Theology (Mahwah, NJ: Paulist
Press, 1993) and in Rethinking Fundamental Theology: Toward a
New Fundamental Theology (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011).
As regards indulgences, we mentioned them briefly in the context of
vi Preface to the New Edition (2014)
Luther’s protest and left it at that (p. 84). Vinten surprisingly claimed
that ‘the book lacks relevant statistics’. But relevant statistics turned up
constantly (e.g. pp. 4, 18, 52, 78, 79, 81, and 92). Perhaps he expected
even more statistics, and should have stated: ‘for me the book lacks
sufficient statistics’. Apropos of ‘limbo’, it appeared on p. 189.
Vinten and MacCulloch rightly wanted some account of ‘recent
catastrophic revelations about clerical child abuse’ (MacCulloch).
Vinten called this ‘the most compelling contemporary example of
grace being defeated by sin’. ‘Cover-up and denial’ did ‘nothing to
assist the victims. There was a reluctance to act in high quarters, and
it seems that it was media persistence that won through rather than
internal channels within the Church.’ This new edition will discuss
child abuse in Chapters 2 and 11.
Recent landmarks in world history, which have affected the lives of
Christians and others alike, include Barack Obama being sworn in as
forty-fourth president of the United States in January 2009 and
Vladimir Putin, who had been president of Russia 2000–2008, return-
ing as president in May 2012. In Europe, the United States, and many
other countries innumerable human beings of various faiths and of
no religious faith felt the impact of the 2007–8 global financial crisis.
They have experienced also the effects of recent economic growth
in China (the most populous country in the world) and in Brazil (the
largest Catholic country in the world).
In Africa and Asia, wars—or at least insurgency—have continued:
in Afghanistan (which since 1979 has suffered from more than three
decades of war and become the world’s largest source of refugees), the
Central African Republic (which has been plunged into anarchy),
the Democratic Republic of the Congo (where the Second Congo War
and its aftermath have caused well over 5 million deaths since 1998),
and in Syria (where since 2011 armed conflict has resulted in over
190,000 deaths and millions of refugees).
The 2003 invasion (firmly opposed by Pope John Paul II) ravaged
Iraq, and the country still does not enjoy internal peace. The same holds
true of Libya after the fall of Colonel Muammar Gaddafi in 2011. After
two decades of civil war, South Sudan gained independence the same
year, but like neighbouring Somalia does not yet have a stable peace.
After twenty-seven years of civil war, the defeat of the Tamil Tigers in
May 2009, and some massacres, Sri Lanka is free of armed conflict.
These wars have their impact on the current story of Catholic
Christianity: for instance, in the Middle East, where many members
 Preface to the New Edition (2014) vii
of ancient Catholic and other Christian communities have fled their
countries for safety. Catholics and Christians in general remain widely
involved in caring for refugees and displaced persons through such
organizations as Caritas International, the Jesuit Refugee Service, and
Malteser International. In Egypt, Pakistan, and other countries, mili-
tant Muslims continue to attack Christians and destroy their churches
and other buildings.
When we first wrote this book, the world population had recently
passed the 6,000 million mark. By mid-2013 it had risen to 7,149
million. Not only in Africa and Asia but also in Europe followers of
Islam continue to grow and are moving towards the 2,000 million
mark—still less than the total number of Christians but more than
Catholics, who in 2011 with over 1,200 million made up more than
half of all Christians.
In the North-Atlantic world and, particularly, in Europe the forces
of secular individualism continue to erode treasured Christian values
by promoting abortion, same-sex marriages, and the ‘right’ to suicide.
In 2014 Belgium offered a spectacular example of this trend by
legalising euthanasia for teenagers, and even children. Such ‘liberal’
secularism in countries where the birth rate will not replace the
current population stands in sharp contrast with the religious and
ethical commitments of fast-growing Islam.
Even if the HIV/AIDS pandemic has been partially checked around
the world, Sub-Saharan Africa remains a most affected region. In
Uganda and elsewhere, Catholics and other Christians stand tall in
working against the pandemic and assisting those already affected.
Within the Catholic Church, the death of John Paul II in April
2005, the subsequent election of Benedict XVI, his dramatic resigna-
tion in February 2013, and the election of Pope Francis, the first Latin
American pope in Catholic history, have proved major landmarks
over the past decade. These events will concern the end of Chapter 2
and some items in Chapter 11.
This new edition has corrected errata and silently changed a few
items in our text: for instance, by bringing statistics up to date. A little
bibliography has been added after each chapter, and the bibliography
at the end of the book updated. Thus we hope to serve better teachers,
students, and interested readers. We wish to thank Louis Caruana
(for some suggestions) and Miland Joshi (for some corrections).
G. O’C. and M. F.
31 July 2014
viii Preface to the New Edition (2014)
Reviews of Catholicism

M. G. Boyer, The Priest 61/11 (Nov. 2005), 53.

B. Clarot, Nouvelle Revue Théologique, 131 (2009), 142.
E. P. Costello, The Catholic Weekly, 27 November 2005.
W. C. Heiser, Theology Digest, 51 (2004), 180.
I. Ker, Times Literary Supplement, 12 March 2004, 28.
R. P. McBrien, The Tablet, 21 February 2004, 22–3.
D. MacCulloch, English Historical Review, 120 (2005), 569–70.
S. Mazzolini, Civiltà Cattolica, 157/3752 (21 October 2006), 204–5.
S. Morandini, Studi Ecumenici, 25 (2007), 311–14.
L. Pereira, New Blackfriars, 85 (2004), 471–4.
G. J. Russello, National Catholic Register, 80/32 (15–21 August 2004), 14.
T. Surlis, The Furrow, 55 (2004), 708–9.
J. Sullivan, Heythrop Journal, 47 (2006), 291–2.
A. Vanneste, Ephemerides theologicae Lovanienses, 83 (2007), 524–5.
G. Vinten, Reviews in Religion and Theology, 12 (2005), 53–6.
G. Uríbarri, Estudios eclesiásticos, 80 (2005), 193–4.
J. T. Zalar, Journal of Ecclesiastical History, 56 (2005), 749–53.
 Preface

The world’s oldest and largest institution, the Catholic Church, is not
limited to any particular class, race, or nation. With its geographical
and cultural spread, it reaches out to all humanity. It lives up to its
attribute, ‘catholic’: that is to say, it is worldwide and universal. It
embraces all nations. A Catholic can join St Augustine of Hippo
(354–430) in saying: ‘I exist in all languages: my language is Greek,
my language is Syrian, my language is Hebrew. My language is that of
all peoples, for I exist in the unity of all peoples’ (Enarrationes in
Psalmos, 147. 19).
‘Catholicity’ belongs, of course, among the characteristics of the
Church confessed by all Christians in the Nicene-Constantinopolitan
Creed, which is derived in its full form from the First Council of
Constantinople (ad 381). Used at least sometimes every year by all
Christians when they celebrate the Eucharist, this Creed declares a
common faith in the ‘one, holy, catholic, and apostolic Church’. That
is the confession of many Protestants when they profess the Creed
each Sunday, whether or not they meet for the Eucharist. Some
people would prefer us to give this book the title of ‘Roman Catholi-
cism’. After all, ‘Catholics’ are those Christians who are in commu-
nion with the Bishop of Rome; they accept the authority of the Pope
who lives in Rome and presides over the diocese of Rome. Neverthe-
less, when one speaks or writes of ‘Catholics’ or ‘Catholicism’, people
almost invariably understand a reference to Roman Catholics. That
surely was the presumption behind the request that we should write a
book on ‘Catholicism’, and not one on ‘Roman Catholicism’. At the
same time, we appreciate the motives of some readers (e.g. some
Anglican readers) who will add ‘Roman’ whenever we write of the
Catholic Church and Catholicism, and who object to the Roman
Catholic Church calling itself or being called ‘Catholic’ tout court.
In any case, many elements of Catholic Christianity are found beyond
the Catholic Church—a point to which we will return below. What is
characteristic of Catholicism need not always be uniquely Catholic.
Greek, Russian, and other Orthodox Christians share, for instance,
the same range of seven sacraments.
x Preface
Any claims by the Catholic Church to be the one, holy, catholic,
and apostolic Church are contested by Orthodox Christians; their
rival claims need to be heard by Western Catholics such as ourselves.
In what follows, and especially in the chapter on the nature of the
Church, we aim to reckon seriously with the force of the Orthodox
position. Likewise, 500 years of Protestantism have raised radical
difficulties and alternatives for anyone who endorses the Roman
Catholic claim to embody Christian and Catholic identity. We want
to express a nuanced confessionalism, address historical issues as
fairly as we can, and acknowledge critical, post-Reformation chal-
lenges that face Catholicism.
We write this book ‘from the inside’, as those who have been born
into Catholic families and have tried to serve the Catholic (and wider)
community as ordained priests and teachers of theology. Knowing
the institution intimately, sharing a common faith, and identifying
with the deep values of other Catholics, we hope to be able to
understand and explain Catholicism competently, but without
becoming biased and defensive. Some ‘insiders’ behave like that, but
certainly not all. When it comes to music and drama, insiders who
have years of study, experience, and personal commitment behind
them help us to be more accurately informed about and skilfully
guided through musical and dramatic compositions. In such areas
detached outsiders may be able to communicate a wealth of facts, but
at times the value of their judgements can be doubtful.
We draw encouragement here from The Meaning of Revelation
(New York: Macmillan, 1960), in which Helmut Richard Niebuhr
dedicates a chapter to the distinction between ‘internal’ and ‘external’
history, or history as lived from the inside and history as merely
viewed from the outside (pp. 43–90). He illustrates clearly the advan-
tages enjoyed by those who write history as they have lived it from the
inside. Yet we must remain alert to reflections on Catholicism coming
from ‘outsiders’. To be sure, they may examine or want to examine
Catholics as a purely historical rather than a spiritual phenomenon.
Nevertheless, they sometimes pick up what insiders may not see very
clearly if at all. An observer of genius such as Alexis de Tocqueville
(1805–59) discerned forces that would remain central to life in
the United States. We all need to join Robert Burns (1759–96)
in the prayer, ‘O wad some Pow’r the giftie gie us to see oursels as
others see us!’
 Preface xi
At points in this book we will relate the Catholic Church not only
to other Christian communities but also to Judaism, Islam, and
further world religions. But we cannot stop constantly to identify
what is common (and what is different). Otherwise this book would
become hopelessly long and far exceed the limits assigned to us.
Nevertheless, we gladly acknowledge that such a detailed comparison
and contrast would be eminently worthwhile, a valuable project for a
team of experts.
In writing this book we want to be useful not only to our fellow
Catholics but also to other Christians and to interested adherents of
other faiths. Any evaluation of Catholicism presupposes some know-
ledge, but one must admit that it is not always there. Early last century
an eminent Protestant scholar, Adolf von Harnack (1851–1930),
deplored the ignorance of the majority of non-Catholic graduates
about Catholicism:
I am convinced from constant experience of the fact that the students
who leave our schools have the most disconnected and absurd ideas about
ecclesiastical history. Some of them know something about Gnosticism,
or about other curious and for them worthless details. But of the Catholic
Church, the greatest religious and political creation known to history,
they know absolutely nothing, and they indulge in its regard in wholly
trivial, vague, and often directly nonsensical notions. How her greatest
institutions originated, what they mean in the life of the Church, how
easily they may be misconceived, and why they function so surely and
impressively: all this, according to my experience, is for them, apart from
a few exceptions, a terra incognita [an unknown land]. (Aus Wissenschaft
und Leben, i (Giessen: Töpelmann, 1911), 97)
Von Harnack’s judgement may have been excessively pessimistic. But
what of today? A century later would he still reproach non-Catholic
(and, for that matter, Catholic) graduates from contemporary high
schools, colleges, and universities with knowing little about the
‘unknown land’ of Catholicism? Our own hope is to guide some of
them through what may still be largely a terra incognita.
History has always been central to the life of the Catholic Church. The
sense of being a Catholic has constantly involved retrieving a 2,000-year-
old story. How should one construe the ups and downs, the fulfilments
and disappointments of Catholics through the centuries? The first two
chapters of this work offer an extended tour of that history. Then follow
chapters that describe the central beliefs of the Catholic Church
xii Preface
(Chapters 3–6), its sacramental life (Chapter 7), its constitution and
mission (Chapter 8), and its moral doctrine (Chapter 9). The book will
close by summarizing certain basic characteristics of Catholic Christian-
ity (Chapter 10) and expounding some lively issues confronting the
Catholic Church and its future (Chapter 11).
In telling the story of Catholicism, as so often elsewhere, every
attempt to generalize is beset with enough exceptions to break the
rule. But some generalizations will find much support: the coexistence
from the very beginning of holiness and sinfulness; the recurrent
tensions between the local community and a worldwide institution;
and the Catholic Church’s challenges to prevailing cultures along
with widespread assimilation of them.
We begin this book both fascinated by its challenge and daunted by
the enormous task it involves. Inevitably we will need to be constantly
selective. Also we plan to give a certain preference to signs of grace
rather than evidence of scandalous failures. In doing that, we are not
aiming to produce a sanitized version of Catholicism and thus further
some propagandistic agenda. Rather it is because we have long been
convinced by a principle to which Aristotle repeatedly appealed: one
should judge the nature of something from its best examples. More-
over, piling up stories of sinful failure always leaves the reader with
the nagging question: if the Catholic Church is that bad, how on earth
has it managed not only to survive but also to grow and flourish? Is
the only explanation that the Holy Spirit has kept it going and
spreading, despite its awful sins and deficiencies?
With deep gratitude we record our warm thanks to those whose
expertise, suggestions, corrections, and questions have enlightened us
when writing this book: Don Bolen, Ian Breward, Marcel Chappin,
James Conn, Francisco Egaña, James Gobbo, William Henn, Jerome
Hall, Brian Johnstone, Dorothy Lee, Giovanni Magnani, Margaret
Manion, Hilary O’Shea, Maev O’Collins, John Radano, Francesco
Paolo Rizzo, Philip Rosato, Jared Wicks, John Wilkins, and several
anonymous advisers for the Gregorian University and for the Oxford
University Press. We dedicate this work to the students and profes-
sors of the Gregorian University’s faculty of theology. The transla-
tions from the Bible are our own.
G. O’C. and M. F.
Gregorian University, Rome
2 June 2002
 Contents

List of Illustrations xiv

Abbreviations xvi

1. The First Thousand Years 1

2. The Second Thousand Years 53
3. Revelation, Tradition, and Scripture 102
4. The Tripersonal God and the Incarnate Son 131
5. The Human Condition: Created and Sinful 174
6. The Life of Grace and the Hope of Glory 211
7. The Sacraments 247
8. The Catholic Church and its Mission 312
9. Catholic Moral Life and Teaching 353
10. Basic Characteristics of Catholicism 387
11. Current Challenges 403

Select Bibliography 416

Index 419
 List of Illustrations

Fig. 1.1. A fifteenth-century mural of the ‘mystical supper’ from

Paleochorio (Cyprus) shows Jesus majestically celebrating
the Passover on the night before he died. # Sonia Halliday
Photographs/Bridgeman Images. 5
Fig. 1.2. An anonymous picture expresses the intensity of St
Bernadette Soubirous at prayer. Her visions of the Virgin
Mary in 1858 made Lourdes into one of the world’s most
popular places of pilgrimage. Bibliothèque des Arts
Decoratifs, Paris, France. # Archives Charmet/Bridgeman
Images. 40
Fig. 2.1. Famous for its stained-glass windows and exterior sculpture,
Chartres embodies Gothic cathedrals at their best, and
humanity rising towards God. # Sonia Halliday Photographs. 56
Fig. 2.2. Through the face and right hand of St Thomas Aquinas
(d. 1274), Sandro Botticelli (d. 1510) suggests the spiritual
strength and verbal precision of the great theologian. Abegg
Collection, Riggisberg, Switzerland. # The Granger
Collection/TopFoto. 63
Fig. 2.3. Young people holding high the cross on their annual
pilgrimage to the shrine of Maipu, Chile. # Alonso
Rojas/Andes Press Agency. 67
Fig. 2.4. Pope John XXIII is joined by 2,600 bishops and cardinals
on 12 October 1962 at the opening of the Second Vatican
Council: the most significant event in twentieth-century
Catholic history. # Topham Picturepoint. 97
Fig. 2.5. Pope Francis exchanges Christmas greetings with former
Pope Benedict XVI in the Mater Ecclesiae monastery, his
new residence, in Vatican City on December 23, 2013.
Together they went to the Chapel of the Monastery to
share a moment of prayer. # ABACA/ABACA/Press
Association Images. 100
Fig. 4.1. Birds and a rabbit join two little angels in worshipping
the Christ Child in this Chinese nativity scene from 1947.
# Missions Etrangères Paris/The Art Archive/Alamy. 163
 List of Illustrations xv
Fig. 5.1. An engraving by Albrecht Dürer (d. 1528) shows our ‘first
parents’ deceived by evil and about to fall into sin by eating
the forbidden fruit. Courtesy of the Library of Congress. 192
Fig. 6.1. A funeral Mass being celebrated in Mali, West Africa. Priest
and people face each other as they celebrate Jesus as Lord
of life and death. # Abbas/Magnum Photos. 235
Fig. 7.1. A christening in Brixton, London. The water of light of
baptism brings new life, and the Easter Candle symbolizes
the light of Jesus who will guide the newly baptized.
# Carlos Reyes-Manzo/Andes Press Agency. 256
Fig. 7.2. Caravaggio (d. 1610) catching the dramatic moment at
Emmaus when the two disciples recognize the risen
Jesus as he blesses and ‘breaks bread’. The National
Gallery, London. # FineArt/Alamy. 263
Fig. 7.3. A Catholic wedding in Kampala, Uganda in February
2002. # Carlos Reyes-Manzo/Andes Press Agency. 303
Fig. 8.1. On 25 March 1966 Pope Paul VI gives his own
episcopal ring to Dr Michael Ramsey. # Topham
Picturepoint. 337
Fig. 8.2. Pope Paul VI and Athenagoras. # Topham Picturepoint. 337
Fig. 9.1. Dorothy Day, peace campaigner and social activist, in
1968. Milwaukee Journal photo, courtesy of the Department
of Special Collections and University Archives, Marquette
University Libraries. 375
Fig. 9.2. On 3 February 1986 Pope John Paul II holds the hands
of Mother Teresa of Calcutta after visiting one of her
homes for the destitute and showing once again his deep
regard for her holiness. # Gamma-Rapho via Getty Images. 376
Picture research by Sandra Assershon.
 Abbreviations

DH Denzinger and P. Hünermann, Enchiridion symbolorum, definitionum

et declarationum (Freiburg im Breisgau: Herder, 42nd edn, 2009)
ND J. Neuner and J. Dupuis (eds), The Christian Faith (Bangalore/New York
Theological Publications in India/Alba House, 7th edn, 2001)
NT The New Testament
OT The Old Testament

(We use the terminology of Old Testament and New Testament. Here ‘old’ is
understood as good and does not imply any ‘supersessionism’, or the view
that the NT has rendered obsolete, replaced, and so ‘superseded’ the OT.)
 1

The First Thousand Years

We Catholics acknowledge readily . . . that Catholicism cannot

be identified simply and wholly with primitive Christianity, nor
even with the Gospel of Christ, in the same way that the great
oak cannot be identified with the tiny acorn.
Karl Adam, The Spirit of Catholicism
(London: Sheed & Ward, 1929)

A classic passage from an English historian, Thomas Babington

Macaulay (1800–59), recalls the coming together in Catholicism of
Greek and Roman culture, the anointing in 754 of Pepin III (714–68)
by Stephen III (pope 768–72), St Gregory the Great (pope 590–604)
sending St Augustine in 596 to become the first archbishop of Can-
terbury, and St Leo the Great (pope 440–61) confronting Attila the
Hun and his forces in 452. Macaulay’s evocation of Catholicism,
written in 1840, runs as follows:
There is not, and there never was on this earth, a work of human policy
so well deserving of examination as the Roman Catholic Church. The
history of that Church joins together the two great ages of human
civilisation. No other institution is left standing which carries the
mind back to the times when the smoke of sacrifice rose from the
Pantheon, and when camelopards and tigers bounded in the Flavian
amphitheatre [i.e. the Roman Colosseum]. The proudest royal houses
are but of yesterday, when compared with the line of the Supreme
Pontiffs. That line we trace back in an unbroken series, from the Pope
who crowned Napoleon in the nineteenth century to the Pope who
crowned Pepin in the eighth; and far beyond the time of Pepin the
august dynasty extends, till it is lost in the twilight of fable. The republic
of Venice came next in antiquity. But the republic of Venice was
modern when compared with the Papacy; and the republic of Venice
is gone, and the Papacy remains. The Papacy remains, not in decay, not
2 Catholicism
a mere antique, but full of life and youthful vigour. The Catholic Church
is still sending forth to the farthest ends of the world missionaries as
zealous as those who landed in Kent with Augustin[e], and still con-
fronting hostile kings with the same spirit with which she confronted
Attila. The number of her children is greater than in any former age.
Her acquisitions in the New World have more than compensated for
what she has lost in the Old. Her spiritual ascendency extends over the
vast countries which lie between the plains of the Missouri and Cape
Horn, countries which, a century hence, may not improbably contain a
population as large as that which now inhabits Europe. The members of
her communion are certainly not fewer than a hundred and fifty
millions; and it will be difficult to show that all other Christian sects
united amount to a hundred and twenty millions. Nor do we see any
sign which indicates that the term of her long dominion is approaching.
She saw the commencement of all governments and of all the ecclesi-
astical establishments that now exist in the world; and we feel no
assurance that she is not destined to see the end of them all. She was
great and respected before the Saxon had set foot on Britain, before the
Frank had passed the Rhine, when Grecian eloquence still flourished in
Antioch, when idols were still worshipped in the temple of Mecca. And
she may still exist in undiminished vigour when some traveller from
New Zealand shall, in the midst of a vast solitude, take his stand on a
broken arch of London Bridge to sketch the ruins of St Paul’s.1
Macaulay’s rhetoric suggests that history could be the best way into
the subject of this book. Hence our two opening chapters will review
significant events and persons who show us Catholicism in its strength
and in its weakness. Our principal aim is to illustrate the origin and
development of important Catholic beliefs and practices that are still
with us. The first chapter is structured in three major sections. It
outlines events culminating in the Christian freedom granted by
Emperor Constantine in 313, then moves on to the Council of Chal-
cedon in 451, and finally to the split between Eastern and Western
Christianity expressed by the mutual excommunications of 1054

1
Essay on Ludwig von Ranke’s History of the Popes, in Critical and Historical
Essays, iii (London: Longman, 7th edn, 1953), 100–1. The Venetian Republic origin-
ated in the fifth century (when people fled from the forces of Attila the Hun to the
safety of some islands) and was finally overthrown by Napoleon in 1797. At the end of
the first century ad, Antioch, now occupied by the Turkish town of Antakiyah, was
(after Rome, Alexandria, and Ephesus) the fourth largest city of the Roman Empire. In
June 630 Muhammad (d. 632) took over Mecca and put an end to the idolatry against
Allah that he found there.
 The First Thousand Years 3
pronounced by Cardinal Humbert of Silva Candida (d. 1061) and
Michael Cerularius, the patriarch of Constantinople (d. 1058).

BEFORE CONSTANTINE

Catholic Christianity, which began in Jerusalem with the resurrection

of the crucified Jesus (most likely in April ad 30) and the coming of
the Holy Spirit, emerged from Judaism. During his public ministry, or
what one might call the period of proto-Christianity, Jesus led a
revival movement that had some surprising features (e.g. the presence
of women who travelled in his company), but that remained largely
within Judaism itself. He gathered a core group of twelve men (all
Jews) and a wider group of disciples who seem to have included some
non-Jews (e.g. Matt. 8: 5–13; Mark 7: 26; Luke 17: 11–19).2

After Pentecost
In the post-Pentecost situation, the first Christians expected the risen
Christ’s glorious second coming, and formed a messianic, millennial
group within Judaism. They fashioned their proclamation and inter-
pretation of Jesus by putting together two elements: on the one
hand, their experience of the events in which Jesus was the central

2
Since here and in some later chapters we draw on the Gospels, we want to make
five points clear from the outset. (1) We agree with the widely accepted scheme that
there were three stages in the transmission of Jesus’ words and deeds: the initial stage
of his sayings and doings in this public ministry; the handing on, by word of mouth or
in writing, of traditions about him; the authorial work of the four evangelists. (2) We
also agree that one can use such criteria as multiple attestation or multiple (inde-
pendent) witness in arguing that the accounts of certain words and deeds go back
substantially to the first stage: i.e. to Jesus himself. (3) When we draw on the Gospels,
we will indicate whether we understand some passage to report what Jesus said or did
at stage one (e.g. in his choice of the Twelve) or whether we use the passage to
illustrate how a particular evangelist at stage three (and/or the tradition behind him at
stage two) understood Jesus’ identity or work. (4) We cannot stop every time to justify
why we and others hold some saying or action to have its historical origin in what
Jesus said or did. (5) Eyewitness testimony (of the first disciples and apostles) also
played its part in controlling the oral transmission of the Jesus tradition; see
R. Bauckham, Jesus and the Eyewitnesses: The Gospels as Eyewitness Testimony
(Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2006) and J. D. G. Dunn, ‘The Oral Gospel Tradition
(Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2013).
4 Catholicism
protagonist and, on the other, the images, concepts, expectations, and
practices that they found to be relevant and illuminating within the
Jewish scriptures. To articulate their convictions about Jesus and his
role in fulfilling the divine purposes, they depended in part upon their
Jewish background. Thus the initiation rite of baptism took over some
values from the purificatory rites of Judaism, not least from the
baptism for the forgiveness of sins practised by John the Baptist. All
Jesus’ followers continued to find in the Jewish Psalms their main
prayer book—something that was to be anathema in the second
century to Marcion, who, as we shall see, wanted to eliminate the
OT altogether. Some or even many of them continued to worship as
Jews or in the Jerusalem Temple until excommunicated from Pales-
tinian (and other?) synagogues towards the end of the first century.
At least to begin with, Jesus’ followers were unsure about the need to
observe the Torah or Jewish law (especially on circumcision and
dietary requirements) and to proclaim the good news of the risen
Christ to the Gentiles. Paul’s letters (e.g. Romans and Galatians) and
the Acts of the Apostles (e.g. Acts 10: 1–11: 18; 15: 1–39) reflect these
initial hesitations. But Jesus’ followers differed from (other) devout
Jews by administering baptism ‘in the name of Jesus’ (e.g. Acts 2: 38)
and celebrating together ‘the breaking of the bread’ or the Eucharist
(e.g. Acts 2: 42, 45) (Figure 1.1).
In the Acts of the Apostles Luke tells the story of the origins and
early spread of Christian faith. Among Jesus’ disciples the first prom-
inent figure is St Peter, who functions as the head of the twelve
apostles, the core group of public witnesses to Jesus’ life, death, and
resurrection. With his dramatic calling or conversion on the road to
Damascus around ad 36, St Paul enters the Acts of the Apostles in
chapter 9 and takes over the narrative from chapter 15. According to
that book, when Paul returns to Jerusalem in chapter 21, he meets St
James and ‘all the elders’. But there is no mention of Peter still being
in Jerusalem. Acts ends with Paul arriving in Rome several years
before he and Peter died there as martyrs, some time between ad 64
and 67. In 62 James, the leader of the Mother Church, had already
been martyred in Jerusalem.3
These first decades of Christian history featured the tension between
two ‘constituencies’, the foundational Jerusalem Church with its vision

3
On the history of Christianity from 30 to 70 ad, see J. D. G. Dunn, Christianity in
the Making, ii, Beginning from Jerusalem (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2009).
 The First Thousand Years 5

Fig. 1.1. A fifteenth-century mural of the ‘mystical supper’ from Paleochorio

(Cyprus) shows Jesus majestically celebrating the Passover on the night
before he died. # Sonia Halliday Photographs/Bridgeman Images.

of a Torah-observant community and the non-Torah-focused vision of

Paul and others. The latter vision shaped the Catholic or universal
identity of the early Church and lifted it beyond being merely a
millennial group within Judaism. Paul loved the Jerusalem community,
and showed that love by collecting money for the Mother Church from
other (local) churches (e.g. 2 Cor. 8: 1–9: 15). Nevertheless, as Ray-
mond Brown and John Meier showed, Catholic identity in Antioch,
Rome, and other centres was formed in tensional relationship with the
Jerusalem community.4
Paul spearheaded missionary activity around the Mediterranean
world, and spread faith in Jesus as Lord and Saviour. Luke under-
stands this original Christian expansion as opening up an indefinitely
long period, which will close when Jesus appears again in his glory. In
the meantime, as Acts repeatedly indicates, the risen Jesus and his

4
See R. E. Brown and J. P. Meier, Antioch and Rome (New York: Paulist Press,
1981).
6 Catholicism
Holy Spirit constantly guide and empower Christian life and mission.
But by the 60s, despite some optimistic statistics from Luke (Acts 2:
41; 4: 4), there were probably not more than 3,000 Christians.5
By then Jesus’ followers had come to be called ‘Christians’ (Acts 11:
26). Through baptism ‘in the name of Jesus Christ’ (Acts 2: 38) they
knew their sins to be forgiven, received the Holy Spirit, entered the
community of the Church, and celebrated the Eucharist (1 Cor. 11:
23–6). When praying, they used not only the Psalms but also the
Lord’s Prayer and other such prayers as the Benedictus and the
Magnificat (Luke 1: 46–55, 68–79), which were originally in Greek
like the rest of Luke’s Gospel but were subsequently known by Latin
titles. They learned the teaching of Jesus that reached them through
their apostolic leaders. The risen and exalted Jesus, now confessed as
Messiah, Lord, and Son of God, was together with God the Father,
experienced as having sent the Holy Spirit into the world. Luke names
devout people from different parts of the known world—from ‘Par-
thians, Medes, and Elamites’ to ‘Cretans and Arabs’ (Acts 2: 9–11) as
key spectators of Pentecost. Luke knows that the Spirit is offered to all
peoples; salvation no longer requires circumcision and the practice of
the Mosaic Law in all its details.
Paul’s letters likewise defend God’s gift of salvation to all alike;
justification is not gained through human efforts at fulfilling the law.
Faith and baptism incorporate people into the Church, the body of
Christ, and put an end to distinctions between Jew and Gentile, slave
and free, male and female (Gal. 3: 26–9). Faith in God the Father, in
Jesus as Son of God and divine Lord, and in the Holy Spirit brings all
believers together in the unity of baptism, the Eucharist, and a
common life. The apostle insists that sharing in the one eucharistic
bread and in the one cup entails belonging to the one body of Christ
(1 Cor. 10: 16–17). A fifth-century prayer (from the Liturgy of

5
R. Stark, The Rise of Christianity (San Francisco: HarperCollins, 1997), 185. On
the rise of Christianity, see also D. Boyarin, Dying for God: Martyrdom and the
Making of Christianity and Judaism (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press,
1999); P. Brown, The Rise of Western Christendom: Triumph and Diversity ad
200–1000 (Oxford: Blackwell, 1996); C. M. Cusack, The Rise of Christianity in
Northern Europe: 300–1000 (London: Cassell, 1998); P. F. Esler (ed.), The Early
Christian World, 2 vols (London: Routledge, 2000); H. J. Klauck, The Religious
Context of Early Christianity (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 2000); J. T. Sanders, Char-
isms, Converts, Competitors (London: SCM Press, 2000). On Stark’s book, see the
symposium in Religious Studies Review, 25 (1999), 127–39.
 The First Thousand Years 7
St Basil) expresses beautifully Paul’s desire for Catholic unity: ‘May all
of us who partake of this one bread and chalice be united to one
another in the communion of the same Holy Spirit.’6
In emphasizing the holy unity of the baptized, the apostle’s letters,
even more than the Acts of the Apostles, let us glimpse the moral
failures of early Christians. The First Letter to the Corinthians reveals
how some suffered from factionalism, indulged doubts over the
central truth of the resurrection, committed fornication, incest, and
drunkenness, and showed a selfish unconcern towards poorer Chris-
tians. The reproaches coming from Paul challenge illusions about a
hypothetical golden age of Catholic Christianity, which practised
heroic ideals on all sides. From its outset, the Church suffered from
scandals and divisions. The Book of Revelation, with its opening
letters to the seven churches, joins the apostle in testifying to the
mixture of holiness and sinfulness that characterized Christianity
from the beginning (Rev. 2: 1–3: 22). The Gospels also repeatedly
imply and even frankly point to sinful conduct to be found in the
early communities; even prophets, exorcists, and miracle-workers
could do evil and fail to follow the will of God (Matt. 7: 15–23).
Along with holiness and sinfulness, after the initial hesitations, a
missionary outreach characterized early Christianity. The Acts of the
Apostles and Paul’s letters name with respect missionaries who
spread the good news about Jesus as Saviour of the world: Barnabas,
Epaphroditus, Timothy, Titus, and, not least, Prisca (or Priscilla) and
Aquila. This married couple, when they lived in Ephesus and Rome,
gathered believers in their home, and were also known to the Chris-
tians of Corinth (1 Cor. 16: 19; Acts 18: 2–3, 26). Paul calls this couple
his ‘fellow workers’ (Rom. 16: 3). When listing other collaborators on
the mission for Christ, he names Andronicus and Junia (or Julia)
(another married couple?) as ‘distinguished among the apostles’ or
perhaps as ‘distinguished in the eyes of the apostles’ (Rom. 16: 7).
Unlike Luke, who generally identifies ‘apostles’ with the Twelve, Paul
also gives the former title to itinerant evangelists who are commis-
sioned, sent by a church, and found another (local) church, as
apparently Prisca did in Corinth with her husband Aquila.

6
On Paul, see S. Westerholm (ed.), The Blackwell Companion to Paul (Oxford:
Wiley-Blackwell, 2011).
8 Catholicism
Early Leadership and Life
In concluding his Letter to the Romans, Paul begins with ‘our sister
Phoebe, a deacon of the church’, speaks of those who ‘work’ to spread
the good news, and greets twenty-six people, twenty-four of them by
name. As much as any passage in the NT, the final chapter of Romans
raises the question: was the Church meant to be a completely egali-
tarian community, free of any kind of subordination to office-holders
and hierarchical authorities? Did the vision of Jesus and the spon-
taneous direction of the Holy Spirit exclude the institutionalized
leadership which occurred in the subsequent transmission of a three-
fold ministry of bishops, priests, and deacons? Did that historical
development betray Jesus’ original dream of a community of male
and female disciples as co-partners variously empowered by the Holy
Spirit to minister to the whole community? In its normative, first-
century period was the Church directly governed by the Holy Spirit
and did it flourish without supervisory authorities or any official
establishment? Or was there always some kind of leadership, which
rightly developed and was handed on to successive generations for the
good of all? We can put the issue in terms of the thesis proposed by
Willi Marxsen, Siegfried Schulz, and some other twentieth-century
scholars: ‘early Catholicism’, a deterioration they already detect in
Acts, the Pastoral Letters, and other NT writings. This thesis claims
that the good news proclaimed by Jesus and Paul suffered inasmuch
as a structured institution emerged to dispense salvation through
ministerial ordination, a hierarchical succession of leaders, set forms
of doctrine, and a re-established law.7 Without thinking their way
through any such sophisticated thesis as ‘early Catholicism’, some
instinctively presuppose that the earlier situation must, for that very
reason alone, be the more authentic. Some (or even many?) continue
to subscribe, unthinkingly, to the old myth of an original purity,
corrupted by a subsequent history of decline. The ‘real’ or the ‘true’
is found only at the start. On our guard against such a myth, what can
we discern about the situation of Jesus and the post-resurrection
developments?

7
See J. D. G. Dunn, Unity and Diversity in the New Testament (London: SCM
Press, 2nd edn, 1990), 341–66; G. O’Collins and D. Kendall, The Bible for Theology
(Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press, 1997), 101–16.
 The First Thousand Years 9
If we begin with the Gospels, we find multiple witness for the fact
that during his ministry Jesus chose twelve disciples from among the
wider ranks of his followers and gave them some kind of authoritative
office and leadership role.8 In so doing, Jesus revealed his intention to
reform and transform the people of Israel, understood to constitute
twelve tribes or groups descended from Jacob (Gen. 35: 22–6). Mark
attests the original call and subsequent mission of the Twelve (Mark
3: 13–19; 6: 7–13). Q, some kind of common tradition of sayings of
Jesus that both Matthew and Luke draw from,9 reflects the existence
of this core group (Matt. 19: 28 = Luke 22: 30). They are ‘in place’ to
receive a foundational appearance of the risen Christ, a fact first
attested by a traditional formula cited by Paul (1 Cor. 15: 5) and
subsequently narrated in varying ways by the Easter chapters of the
Gospels. The Twelve are given authority by Christ to lead and teach in
his name, an authoritative role for which, as Luke and (in his own
way) John indicate, they are empowered by the Holy Spirit. Their
apostolic mission shares in and comes from the mission of the Son
and the Holy Spirit.
What do the Pauline letters indicate about leadership in the
Church? A dramatic encounter with the risen Christ (and not as
such with the Holy Spirit) made Paul himself an apostle who pro-
claims the resurrection of the crucified Jesus (1 Cor. 9: 1–2; 15: 8–11;
Gal. 1: 11–12, 15–17). Paul’s forceful sense of his own apostolic
authority comes across clearly, not least in his Letter to the Galatians.
After founding communities, he exercises remote-control authority
over them through his letters and occasional visits. But how does he
understand the authority of others in the growing Church? In his first
letter Paul distinguishes between those who ‘preside’ and those who
‘defer’ (1 Thess. 5: 12). A little later he notes how, within the whole
‘body of Christ’, God has appointed various persons to be apostles,
prophets, teachers, workers of miracles, healers, helpers, administra-
tors, and speakers in different kinds of tongues (1 Cor. 12: 8–12,

8
See J. P. Meier, A Marginal Jew: Rethinking the Historical Jesus, iii (New Haven,
CT: Yale University Press, 2008), 125–97.
9
Although some NT scholars dispute the existence of such a collection of sayings,
some form of Q still seems to most the best working hypothesis about the immediate
origin of sayings that are common to Matthew and Luke but not found in Mark (on
whom both Matthew and Luke also draw). See E. B. Powery, ‘Q. Quelle’, The New
Interpreter’s Dictionary of the Bible, iv (Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press, 2009), 697;
B. Viviano, What Are They Saying About Q? (Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press, 2013).
10 Catholicism
28–30). The apostle’s language in 1 Corinthians 12 has encouraged
some to envisage a Spirit-filled community with no permanent insti-
tutions and ordained officers, a charismatic ‘pneumatocracy’ as
opposed to an institutional ‘christocracy’. But does Paul in 1 Cor-
inthians 12–14 intend to make permanent prescriptions for the
Church’s ordering, by opposing charisms to institutions and offices
or what is pneumatological and charismatic to what is christological
and institutional? It seems rather that he intends to give some prac-
tical advice to the Corinthian community and help solve some par-
ticular challenges facing them.10 The eight ministries of 1 Corinthians
12: 28 become five in another list, from a ‘deutero-Pauline’ letter or
one perhaps written by an associate of the apostle after his death: ‘his
[Christ’s] gifts were that some should be apostles, some prophets,
some evangelists, some pastors and teachers’ (Eph. 4: 11). The list
now includes the ‘evangelists’ or official messengers/preachers of the
good news (see Rom. 10: 8–17).
The foundation of many local churches by apostles and others
brought a shift in leadership, when settled pastors (called ‘overseers’,
‘elders’, and ‘deacons’) took over from the missionary apostles, the
other evangelists, and the founders among whom had been the
‘pillars’ of Galatians 2: 9. A range of NT sources reflect this movement
from missionary preachers to settled, pastoral leaders (Acts 20: 17, 28;
Phil. 1: 1; 1 Pet. 5: 1–4; the Pastoral Letters to Timothy and Titus),
even if many details about the appointment of the latter, their lead-
ership functions, and their relationship to the travelling missionaries
remain obscure.11
The Pastoral Letters, when recording a more developed organiza-
tion of ministries, speak of ‘overseers’ or ‘bishops’ and their qualifi-
cations (1 Tim. 3: 1–7; see Titus 1: 7–9), of the ‘elders’ or ‘presbyters’
to be appointed by Titus ‘in every town’ (Titus 1: 5–6; see 1 Tim. 5:
17–20), and of the qualities appropriate for ‘deacons’ (1 Tim. 3: 8–10,
12–13), and apparently also for deaconesses (1 Tim. 3: 11).12 There is

10
See E. Nardoni, ‘Charism in the Early Church since Rudolph Sohm: An Ecu-
menical Challenge’, Theological Studies, 53 (1992), 646–62.
11
On some details of life in the early Christian churches, see G. O’Collins, ‘James,
1 Peter, Hebrews, Jude, and 2 Peter’, in P. Avis (ed.), Oxford Handbook of Ecclesiology
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015), forthcoming.
12
Acts reports ‘elders’ alongside ‘the apostles’ in Jerusalem (Acts 11: 30; 15: 2, 4, 6,
22–3; 16: 4. When Paul visits Jerusalem for the last time, no ‘apostles’ are mentioned
but only ‘all the elders’ alongside James (Acts 21: 18). Acts 6: 1–6 reports the
 The First Thousand Years 11
some indication about succession in teaching authority (2 Tim. 2: 2).
Much is stated about the teaching, preaching, defence of sound
doctrine, administration, and domestic behaviour expected from
leaders. But apart from some passing regulations concerning worship
(1 Tim. 2: 1–2, 8) and several references to the ‘laying on of hands’
(1 Tim. 5: 22; see 1 Tim. 4: 14; 2 Tim. 1: 6), nothing further is said
about the liturgical life of the community and, for instance, about the
roles taken by these leaders (or others) in baptizing and celebrating
the Eucharist.
An examination of the NT supports then the conclusion: the
Christian communities, both in the apostolic situation (ad 30–70)
and in the sub-apostolic situation (ad 70–100), were characterized by
a measure of organization which, along with the basic equality of all
the baptized, comprised the leaders (with their gifts and institution-
alized offices) and the led (with their personal charisms). These
communities were not simply egalitarian. Today some Christians
read the scriptures with deep suspicion, play down the role of the
Holy Spirit in guiding the foundational period of the Church, and deny
the authority of some, especially the later, books of the NT. A sharp,
anti-Gnostic observation of St Irenaeus (c.130–c.200) may apply here:
‘When the heretics are refuted from the scriptures, they turn to accus-
ing the scriptures themselves, as if there was something amiss with
them’ (Adversus Haereses, 3. 2). Irenaeus encouraged allegiance to
the normative voice of the scriptures when facing the question of the
Church’s structure and other such critical issues. We return to him
shortly.
The last paragraph may have put matters too sharply. But we meet
here what we might call a ‘Protestant’ and ‘Catholic’ parting of the
ways. A ‘Protestant’ reading can dismiss the later NT books as
representing a regrettable decline into ‘Early Catholicism’ and appeal
to the earliest forms of Christian community, to the extent that they
can be identified and recovered. A ‘Catholic’ reading is comfortable

appointment of seven men to ‘serve (diakonein)’ in administering the Jerusalem

community. One of them, Stephen, however, works wonders and proves an outstand-
ing preacher (Acts 6: 8–10) before being put on trial and martyred. Another, Philip,
becomes a wandering preacher and miracle-worker (Acts 8: 4–40). On various
‘officials’ in the early Church, see J. A. Fitzmyer, The Acts of the Apostles (New
York: Doubleday, 1998): on ‘apostles’ (196–7), ‘overseers/bishops’ (678–9), ‘helpers/
deacons’ (345), ‘elders/presbyters’ (482–3), ‘prophets’ (481), and ‘teachers’ (496).
12 Catholicism
with the patterns of organization emerging in the later NT writings
and flowing into the post-NT developments.
We find in St Ignatius of Antioch (d. c.107) a key witness to the
emerging organization of Catholic Christianity. The first to have used
the expression ‘the Catholic Church’ (Epistle to the Smyrnaeans, 8. 2),
this martyr stressed the unity of Christians and obedience to their
monarchical or single presiding bishop. Evidently, by the early second
century bishops headed the various Christian communities in Asia
Minor. Ignatius understood the bishops not only to lead the celebra-
tion of the Eucharist and maintain (against early Gnostics) the cen-
trality of Christ’s bodily incarnation but also to approve the marriages
of Christians. He wrote in his Epistle to Polycarp: men and women
who marry should ‘enter the union with the consent of the bishop;
thus their marriage will be acceptable to the Lord and not just gratify
lust’ (5. 2).
Ignatius was put to death in Rome, where he recognized ‘a Church
worthy of God, worthy of honour’ and ‘presiding in love’ (Epistle to
the Romans, opening greeting). But he mentioned no bishop of Rome,
which—along with other evidence—may suggest that the system of a
monarchical bishop at the head of the local community had not yet
clearly developed there as the normative form of Church government.13
By the late second century, Irenaeus was to defend episcopal
succession, with bishops enjoying the sanction of apostolic authority,
on the basis of the ‘rule of faith’. His championing of a public rule
entailed (a) rejecting the new, Gnostic ‘scriptures’; (b) recognizing the
mainstream Christian scriptures (in particular, the four Gospels); and
(c) defending the episcopal office held in succession when the min-
istry of the apostles gave rise to a continuous line of ordained bishops.
Irenaeus acknowledged an authoritative continuity in the orthodox
teaching of bishops succeeding one another and proclaiming the one
faith and one tradition of the apostles. This rule of faith belonged to
the worldwide Church, in which episcopal succession could be traced
back to the apostles—something Irenaeus did for the sees of Ephesus,

13
See E. Duffy, ‘Was there a Bishop of Rome in the First Century?’, New
Blackfriars, 80 (1999), 301–8. Whatever we conclude about Rome, Ignatius of Antioch
states firmly that one cannot speak of a ‘church’ unless it has a bishop, presbyters, and
deacons (Epistle to the Trallians, 3. 1). On the development of the episcopate in the
early Church, see F. A. Sullivan, From Apostles to Bishops (Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press,
2001).
 The First Thousand Years 13
Smyrna, and Rome, ‘the greatest and oldest church’ (Adversus Haer-
eses, 3. 1–4). He criticized fiercely the secret, anti-hierarchical, and
anti-apostolic position of the Gnostics:
They oppose tradition, claiming to be wiser not only than the presbyters
[i.e. the bishops] but even than the apostles, and to have discovered the
truth undefiled. The apostles, they say, mingled with the Saviour’s
words matter belonging to the Law; and besides this, the Lord himself
uttered discourses some of which derived from the Demiurge, some
from the intermediate Power, some from the Highest, whereas they
themselves know the hidden mystery without doubt, contamination, or
admixture. (Adversus Haereses, 3. 2. 2)
In Chapter 3 we will return to the issue of scripture and tradition,
which was central in Irenaeus’ polemic against the Gnostics. His
understanding of the Holy Spirit was not yet sufficiently elaborated
to appreciate clearly the Holy Spirit as the primary bearer of the
Church’s tradition and life. His principle, ‘where the Church is,
there is the Spirit of God’ (Adversus Haereses, 3. 24. 1), formed a
sound starting-point but needed considerable filling out.
Respect for authority and concern for unity identify Catholic
Christianity from the time of Paul, Ignatius, and Irenaeus. The NT
Letter to the Ephesians celebrated the unity of first-century believers:
‘There is one Body and one Spirit, even as you were called to the one
hope which belongs to your call, one Lord, one faith, one baptism,
one God and Father of us all, who is above all and through all and in
all’ (Eph. 4: 4–6). But how were the scattered communities to remain
together in the ‘one faith’ and ‘one hope’ to which they knew them-
selves to be called? By the end of the first century ad there were
probably fewer than 10,000 Christians, who made up around fifty
communities—from Spain (perhaps), southern France (perhaps),
Italy, Greece, Asia Minor, North Africa, Egypt, the Middle East, and
beyond in Iran and India. Besides the work of such itinerants as
Prisca and Aquila, Christian leaders met the challenge of maintaining
contact and unity in basic beliefs and practice by a steady exchange of
letters. Paul had left an extraordinary example, with letters that
strikingly exceeded in length what was customary in the ancient
world. Even his shortest letter, that to Philemon (only twenty-five
verses), went beyond the average letter composed by Greek- and
Latin-speaking writers of his time. As well as the Pauline correspond-
ence, the NT contains seven letters attributed to others, one of which,
14 Catholicism
First Peter, was sent from Rome to the Christians dispersed here and
there in Asia Minor, or what is now Turkey. The author of the Book
of Revelation sent his work from the island of Patmos to seven
Christian communities, also found in what is now Turkey (Rev. 1: 9).
A few years later, on his way to be martyred in Rome, Ignatius, the
bishop of Antioch in what was then the Roman province of Syria,
wrote seven letters: six to particular Christian communities and one
to Polycarp, bishop of Smyrna, who was himself to be burned alive
about ad 156. Recalling Peter and Paul, the two great leaders mar-
tyred in Rome some forty years earlier, Ignatius pleaded with the
Roman Christians not to hinder his martyrdom: ‘Suffer me to become
the food of wild beasts; through them I can reach God. I am God’s
wheat, and I am to be ground by the teeth of wild beasts that I may
become the pure bread of Christ’ (Epistle to the Romans, 4. 1).14
Persecution and martyrdom, particularly that of leaders, began
very early in the history of Christianity. In ad 44 James the son of
Zebedee suffered martyrdom by being beheaded by Herod Agrippa
I. Paul lists the imprisonments, floggings, and other sufferings he had
already undergone by the late 50s (2 Cor. 11: 23–7). Before his
Damascus Road encounter with the risen Christ, he himself had
acquiesced in the stoning of Stephen (Acts 7: 55–8: 1). In ad 62 the
Jerusalem community lost its leader when St James was stoned to
death. In his Annals (15. 44) the Roman historian Tacitus tells the
gruesome story of Christians killed as scapegoats by the Emperor
Nero in ad 64. Right from the first centuries various authentic records
of martyrdoms have survived. The Passion of St Perpetua describes
how she and other Christians in Carthage were mauled by wild beasts
and then had their throats cut in ad 203, during a persecution under
the Emperor Septimius Severus.
When Church leaders met for the First Council of Nicaea in ad
325, not a few of them showed the marks of recent persecution on
their bodies. The hands of Paul of Neocaesarea had been paralysed by
hot irons. Hosius, the bishop of Cordoba (d. 360) who acted as
Emperor Constantine’s adviser at the Council, and St Eustathius
(bishop of Antioch 324–30) had both suffered during the cruel
persecution of Maximin Daza (d. 313). Two Egyptian bishops had
each lost an eye. One of them, St Paphnutius (d. 360), had also been

14
See P. Lampe, From Paul to Valentinus: Christians at Rome in the First Two
Centuries, trans. M. Steinhauser (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2003).
 The First Thousand Years 15
hamstrung. His scarred body evoked the veneration of the bishops
and others present; Emperor Constantine showed respect by kissing
his mutilated face.
Catholic Christianity has regularly been marked by suffering and
martyrdom. In fact, while the brutal persecution of Christians in the
Roman Empire was haphazard and often limited to their leaders, it
repeatedly proved to be much worse elsewhere and in later centuries.
In 1597 twenty-seven Japanese Catholics were crucified at Nagasaki;
in the following decades thousands of other Japanese and some
foreigners suffered death for their faith. The eighteenth- and nine-
teenth-century persecution in Vietnam resulted in thousands of mar-
tyrs. On a visit to South Korea in 1984, Pope John Paul II canonized
103 Catholic Christians who died during persecutions in 1839–46 and
1866–7. From the end of the eighteenth century through to the
middle of the nineteenth century, the Korean Catholic Church
counted up to 10,000 martyrs, headed by St Andrew Kim Taegon.
During the Ugandan persecution (1885–7) St Charles Lwanga and
twenty-one companions were burned to death or killed by the sword.
The king of Uganda executed numerous Anglican Christians as well
as these Catholics. During the fourteenth century under Mongol
rulers, especially Tamerlane (1336–1405), the Church of the East
(often called the Nestorian Church) suffered a savage persecution.
The tyranny of Joseph Stalin (1879–1953) brought death to numerous
Orthodox Christians, both in the USSR and (immediately after the
Second World War) in satellite Communist countries. Catholic
Christians have certainly not been alone in dying for their faith, but
they have done so in large numbers—not least in the twentieth
century and into the twenty-first century.15
It has often been said, and may well be true, that more Catholics
and other Christians suffered imprisonment and martyrdom in the
twentieth century than in all previous ages put together. We are still
waiting for complete martyrologies or lists of those men and women
who have given their lives for their faith in Jesus and, one must add,
for exercising their discipleship. Many laypeople, religious women,
priests, and bishops have died as ‘martyrs of charity’, followers of
Christ who, often in situations of extreme danger, continued to serve
others unselfishly. A letter written by an Italian nun, Sister Erminia

15
See J. L. Allen, The Global War on Christians: Dispatches from the Front Lines of
Anti-Christian Persecution (New York: Random House, 2013).
16 Catholicism
Cazzaniga, shortly before she was killed in September 1999 by the
militia in East Timor, spoke for these martyrs of charity. She wrote of
her determination to stay with the East Timorese people, despite the
threat of violence: ‘Today our mission consists not only in helping but
also, as St Paul says, in weeping with those who weep, sharing with
those in need, and giving much hope and confidence in God the
Father who does not abandon his children.’
Following this excursus on later martyrs, let us go back to the early
Church and sketch something of the lives of Christians in the pre-
Constantine period, and then outline the enduring contributions to
Catholic Christianity that came from five outstanding figures: Justin,
Irenaeus, Tertullian, Origen, and Cyprian.
Baptism ‘in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy
Spirit’, reported at the end of Matthew’s Gospel, rapidly became and
remained the standard formula for the basic sacrament of Christian
initiation (Matt. 28: 19). The Didache, written probably around ad 90,
and so one of the earliest Christian works outside the NT, instructs
those who baptize to do so using the trinitarian formula (7. 1–3). This
invocation of the Trinity provided the creative ground-plan for con-
structing the questions concerning the tripersonal God (‘Do you
believe in the Father?’ and so forth) and answers that encouraged
the formation of creeds. Such questions evoked the threefold baptis-
mal profession of faith in the Trinity recorded by the Apostolic
Tradition of St Hippolytus of Rome (c.170–c.236) that probably
dates from c.216 (DH 10; ND 2). Baptismal creeds (with the Old
Roman Creed crystallizing around the middle of the third century
and giving rise to other creeds) emerged in the West and in the East
and were then followed by conciliar creeds, the earliest being those
from the Council of Antioch (325) and from the First Council of
Nicaea (325). The evidence from the second and third centuries
records the faith of the catechumens and the communities that
welcomed them, when in a dramatic experience of deep personal
relevance they confessed their faith and were united to the triper-
sonal God.16
The celebration of the Eucharist on Sunday or the Lord’s Day
reaches back to the start of Christianity. Paul (1 Cor. 11: 23–6) and

16
See J. N. D. Kelly, Early Christian Creeds (London: Longman, 3rd edn, 1972);
W. Kinzig and M. Vinzent, ‘The Origin of the Creed’, Journal of Theological Studies, 50
(1999), 535–59.
 The First Thousand Years 17
Luke (Acts 2: 42; 20: 7) witness to that. The Didache seems to refer to
the eucharistic liturgy in a prayer: ‘As this broken bread was scattered
over the hills and then, when gathered, became one mass, so may
your Church be gathered from the ends of the earth into your
kingdom’ (9. 4). A few years later St Justin Martyr (c.100–c.165)
wrote a fairly detailed account of eucharistic worship on Sundays
(First Apology, 65–7). (Here he also indicated the practice of collect-
ing money for the relief of widows, orphans, prisoners, the sick, and
others in need; of this more anon.) The Apostolic Tradition of Hip-
polytus, from the beginning of the third century, includes a euchar-
istic prayer, which (with slight adaptations and the addition of the
‘Holy, Holy, Holy’ or ‘Sanctus’) became after the Second Vatican
Council (1962–5) the Second Eucharistic Prayer for Catholics of the
Latin or Western rite. Then, as now, the Eucharist comprises two
parts: the Liturgy of the Word, which followed the pattern of Jewish
synagogue services, and the Liturgy of the Eucharist, which centred
on Jesus’ words of institution at the Last Supper and included an
invocation of the Holy Spirit (the ‘epiclēsis’).
The first Christians held services in private homes or house
churches. The oldest Christian building known to be used exclusively
for religious functions is a house remodelled extensively for such
purposes around ad 235 in Dura Europos, an ancient city on the
right bank of the Euphrates, north-west of Baghdad. When public
freedom arrived with the Emperor Constantine, Christians built their
own churches or restructured former pagan temples for their wor-
ship. Christian art then developed more freely. It had begun in the
catacombs of Rome, with representations of Christ as the Good
Shepherd, of the Last Supper, of the Virgin Mary, and of the Magi
on their way to find Jesus. That earliest Christian iconography
included no scenes of the birth of Jesus or his crucifixion. It took
hundreds of years before artists directly expressed his crucifixion with
all its pain, and his resurrection into glory.
Christians defended high ideals for the family and provided a
happier, more secure way of life, especially for women. They held
the marriage bond to be sacred, excluded polygamy, divorce, and
incest, and rejected a double standard that accepted various forms of
sexual licence for pagan men. Right from the time of the Didache they
condemned abortion and infanticide (2. 2). Non-Christians limited
population by practising abortion (which often brought death to
the mother and caused infertility to those women who survived).
18 Catholicism
Domitian (Emperor of Rome 81–96), for example, made his niece
Julia pregnant and then ordered her to have an abortion, from which
she died. Pagans were also ready to kill newborn children, especially
baby girls. As Christians did not follow suit, many Christian women
survived to intermarry with pagan men and create new households of
believers.17
Right from the first century (Acts 6: 1; 1 Tim. 5: 3–16), Christian
communities respected and financially supported widows. Their
expanded sense of family and family obligations was strikingly
reflected in Paul’s letters and his concern for the poor Christians in
Jerusalem. To relieve their misery he repeatedly encouraged believers
elsewhere to contribute generously (Rom. 15: 25–7; 1 Cor. 16: 1–4; 2
Cor. 8: 1–9: 15; Gal. 2: 1–10). The Christians of Rome exercised a
notable ministry by supporting with their money needy communities
elsewhere in the Mediterranean world. This social concern extended
beyond the ranks of the believers to all those in great need (see Matt.
25: 31–46). A story about St Laurence (d. 258), one of the seven
deacons responsible for the goods of the Roman community and the
distribution of alms to the poor, enjoys legendary accretions but
expresses nicely the tradition of social service:
When the Prefect of Rome was informed of these charities, imagining
that the Christians had hid considerable treasures, he wanted to secure
them: for he was no less a worshipper of gold and silver than of Jupiter
and Mars. With this in view he sent for St Laurence and said to him,
‘Bring out your treasures; the Emperor has need of them to maintain his
forces. I am told that according to your doctrines you must render to
Caesar the things that belong to him.’ Laurence went all over the city,
seeking out the poor who were supported by the Church. On the third day
he gathered together a great number of them, and placed them in rows,
the decrepit, the blind, the lame, the maimed, the lepers, orphans, widows
and maidens; then he went to the Prefect and invited him to come and see
the treasure of the Church. The Prefect, astonished to see such an
assembly of misery and misfortune, turned to the deacon with threaten-
ing looks, and asked him what all this meant, and where the treasures
were that he had promised to show him. St Laurence answered, ‘What are
you displeased at? These are the treasure of the Church.’18

17
On the role of women in the growth of Christianity, see M. T. Malone, Women
and Christianity (Dublin: Columba Press, 2000); Stark, Rise of Christianity, 95–128.
18
H. Thurston and D. Attwater (eds), Butler’s Lives of the Saints, iii (London:
Burns & Oates, 1956), 297–8; slightly edited.
 The First Thousand Years 19
Many pagans who survived severe epidemics owed their lives to
their Christian neighbours. Two such examples, in particular, should
be recalled. By courageously caring for the sick, Christians helped to
mitigate the epidemics of 165–80 and 251–66, which destroyed up to
one-third of the population of the Roman world. These calamitous
crises became the occasion of conversions to and growth of the
Church. From probably being fewer than 10,000 in ad 100, Christians
passed the 100,000 mark around ad 180, were well over 6 million by
ad 300, and, with around 34 million adherents, had become more
than half the population of the Roman Empire by ad 350.19

From Justin to Cyprian

To complete this account of elements from pre-Constantinian times
that retain their importance for those who appreciate Catholic Chris-
tianity, we wish to retrieve some items from the witness of five writers.
We begin with Justin. Among the distinctive features of his writings,
two have shown their face in twentieth-century Catholicism. First of
all, his Dialogue with Trypho illustrates how Catholic thinking should
flow naturally towards Judaism. Justin shared the Hebrew scriptures
with the Jew Trypho and never belittled the faith of his debating
partner. For several centuries, dialogue with Jews and a mission to
the Jews were to enjoy a high priority among Christians, not least
because Jews remained a significant source of Christian converts.20 In
the third century Origen, one of the greatest Christian scholars of all
time, engaged in theological debate with Jews. A section of the De
Incarnatione Verbi (7. 33–40) by St Athanasius (c.296–373) shows how
such debate with Jews still mattered to a bishop of Alexandria, a city
that had enjoyed one of the largest Jewish communities in the ancient
world. As a hermit in the Syrian desert, St Jerome (c.342–420) learned
Hebrew from a Jewish scholar. Hence in producing what came to be
called the Vulgate, the most widely used Latin translation of the Bible,
he could translate the Hebrew scriptures directly from the original
texts. But, sadly, by the fourth century the misinterpretation of the
blood curse from Matthew 27: 25, the polemic against ‘the Jews’ in

19
On the growth of Christianity in the aftermath of the epidemics, see Stark, Rise
of Christianity, 73–94.
20
Stark, Rise of Christianity, 49–71.
20 Catholicism
John’s Gospel, some severe language from Paul (e.g. 1 Thess. 2: 14–16),
and other texts and factors had encouraged anti-Jewish attitudes
among Christians.21 With St John Chrysostom (c.347–407) anti-Jewish
polemics firmly set in; and through the centuries Catholics committed
terrible crimes against Jews or remained guilty bystanders of such
crimes. The Second Vatican Council called for repentance and
denounced ‘the hatred, persecutions, and displays of anti-Semitism
directed against the Jews at any time and from any source’ (Nostra
Aetate, 4). The thought of Justin and some of his successors deserves to
be recovered in the cause of healing religious and human relations
between Catholics and the Jewish people—as St John XXIII (pope
1958–63) and St John Paul II (pope 1978–2005) led the way in doing.
Justin also merits retrieval for a second thrust of his teaching: a
sense of the presence of the ‘generative’ Word’s ‘seeds’ that have been
‘dropped’ everywhere. In one way or another, all human beings share
in the Word (or Logos) of God. Christians have received the full
knowledge of Christ, but others enjoy the presence of the Logos at
least in fragmentary ways. Thus Justin interprets Greek history as a
prelude and preliminary to Christ and Christianity:
Plato’s teachings are not contrary to Christ’s but they are not in all
respects identical with them. This is the case with the doctrines of
others: the Stoics, the poets, and the prose authors. For each, through
his share in the divine generative Logos, spoke well, seeing what was
suited to his capacity . . . Whatever has been spoken aright by anyone
belongs to us Christians; for we worship and love, next to God, the
Logos, who is from the unbegotten and ineffable God . . . All those
writers were able, through the seed of the Logos implanted in them, to
see reality [at least] darkly. For it is one thing to have the seed of a thing
and to imitate it up to one’s capacity; far different is the thing itself,
shared and imitated in virtue of its own grace. (Second Apology, 13)
Several decades later Origen was to say something similar, as was
Athanasius in the fourth century. Justin’s theme of the seeds of the
Word returned in the teaching of the Second Vatican Council (e.g. the
decree Ad Gentes, 11), in a 1975 apostolic exhortation from Pope Paul
VI (Evangelii Nuntiandi, 53), and in further texts and documents from
Catholic leaders and theologians as they struggled with the issue of the

21
See T. L. Donaldson, Jews and Anti-Judaism in the New Testament (London:
SPCK, 2010).
 The First Thousand Years 21
Church’s mission to and dialogue with the members of other religions.
It is this context which configured Jacques Dupuis’s reflections on the
universal and powerful presence of the Word of God.22
Early intimations of themes that have remained dear to Catholics
thread through the work of Irenaeus, who preached and expounded
his faith in a largely hostile environment. He lived through cauldron
years as the second century went to its close. He took over the diocese
of Lyons, which had suffered from its bishop and others being killed
in a Roman persecution of 177. As well as being threatened by
external forces, the Church was menaced from within by such Chris-
tian heretics as Marcion and the Gnostics. Let us pick out six themes
from Irenaeus that Catholics have cherished and developed through
the centuries.23
First of all, he proudly proclaimed the worldwide unity of the one
Catholic faith. ‘Although scattered throughout the whole world even
to the ends of the earth’, the Church maintained the essential teaching
received from the apostles. ‘Although there are many different lan-
guages in the world,’ Irenaeus announced, there were ‘no different
beliefs or traditions in the churches established in Germany, or in
Spain, or among the Celts, or in the East, or in Egypt or Libya, or
among those established in the centre of the earth [either Italy or
Palestine]’ (Adversus Haereses, 1. 10. 1–2).
Second, he set his face against the aberrations of Marcion, who
rejected the Creator God of the OT as a cruel deity, not to be
identified with the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. Marcion excluded
the Jewish scriptures and accepted only an emended version of Luke’s
Gospel and ten Pauline letters. In effect, Marcion stripped the Chris-
tian scriptures of those books (for instance, Matthew’s Gospel) that
were particularly concerned to justify Christian faith in the light of
the OT history and scriptures. Against such errors, Irenaeus cham-
pioned not merely the four Gospels but also the enduring authority of
the Jewish scriptures and, in particular, their doctrine of God. There is
only one God, who created the material world and human beings
made in the divine image and likeness (Gen. 1: 27). In excluding the

22
J. Dupuis, Toward a Christian Theology of Religious Pluralism (Maryknoll, NY:
Orbis, 1997), 57–60, 70–7; Dupuis, Christianity and the Religions (Maryknoll, NY:
Orbis, 2002), 147–56.
23
See J. Behr, Irenaeus of Lyons: Identifying Christianity (Oxford: Oxford Univer-
sity Press, 2013).
22 Catholicism
Jewish God and the value of Jewish history, Marcion opened the door
to anti-Semitism; Irenaeus strenuously resisted any such belittling of
the history of salvation and creation that reached back through
Abraham to the beginning of the human story.
Third, through their sin human beings lost the divine likeness but
remained in the image of God, even if this was not yet properly
manifested until the divine Word came among us. St Augustine of
Hippo (354–430) and the Council of Trent (1545–63) were to take
further the doctrine of ‘original sin’ or the loss of grace and wounding
of nature suffered by our ‘first parents’, which affected all later
generations of men and women. At times original sin turned into a
compromised concept, especially among those who overstressed its
evil effects and even maintained the thesis of total depravity, accord-
ing to which human beings were radically corrupted by the fall into
sin. Irenaeus has always remained a secure guide: the loss of the
divine likeness by Adam and Eve was passed on to their descendants,
but their sin did not destroy the divine image. God’s loving pedagogy
was to bring our restoration through Christ.
Fourth, Irenaeus developed Ephesians 1: 9 and called this restor-
ation ‘recapitulation’. In the guise of the New Adam, the Son of God
more than restored what human beings had lost. He reunited all men
and women when he crowned and consummated the loving divine
plan for all creatures. In this unified version of creation and redemp-
tion Irenaeus saw everything as one great drama of God’s self-com-
municating goodness, a vision that in part anticipated the theology of
St Maximus the Confessor (c.580–662), Blessed John Duns Scotus
(c.1266–1308), and the optimistic, evolutionary perspective of Pierre
Teilhard de Chardin (1881–1955). Even more than Irenaeus’s unitary
view of creation and redemption, his image of Christ as Last/New/
Second Adam has prospered in Catholic Christianity. It was adopted
by Blessed John Henry Newman (1801–90) in The Dream of Geron-
tius, entered into the last and longest document from the Second
Vatican Council (Gaudium et Spes, 22), and surfaced in the teaching
of Pope John Paul II (e.g. in his 1979 encyclical Redemptor Hominis,
8). Catholic liturgy and art has repeatedly developed the same theme.
By referring twice to Adam, the Exultet or Easter Proclamation, which
has been sung for well over a thousand years at the Easter Vigil,
implies Christ’s role as Last Adam. Icons used by the official liturgy of
the Eastern Christian tradition, both Catholic and Orthodox, picture
 The First Thousand Years 23
Adam, Eve, and their descendants being released from a long bondage
to sin and death when the New Adam comes to rescue them.
Fifth, Irenaeus went beyond Paul’s teaching about the ‘Last Adam’
(Rom. 5: 12–21; 1 Cor. 15: 21–2, 45–9) and acknowledged the role of
the obedience of Mary, the Second Eve, in the story of human
salvation. Irenaeus’s interest in Mary made him one of the first
Christians to elaborate the idea of the Word’s double generation:
the eternal generation from the Father and the generation in time
from the Virgin Mary. Already present in the Nicene-Constantino-
politan Creed (ad 381), this theme of the divine and human gener-
ation of God’s Son was to be taken up very clearly by the teaching of
the Council of Chalcedon (ad 451). That Council echoed Irenaeus’s
language about the Word of God being ‘one and the same’ as the
earthly Jesus. The Chalcedonian language of one ‘person’ or ‘subsist-
ence’ was not yet available to Irenaeus, but in his simpler way he
upheld the personal unity of the incarnate Son of God, a unity that
supports the Marian title of ‘Mother of God (Theotokos)’. We return
to the question later in this chapter.
Sixth, where Marcion drastically reduced the authoritative scrip-
tures, the Gnostics added new texts, allegedly the fruit of further
divine revelation, in support of their ‘spiritualized’ version of Chris-
tianity. Gnosticism took human redemption to mean the spirit escap-
ing from the body and from the evil, material world. Against such
aberrations Irenaeus refused to downplay matter. He insisted on the
goodness of the created world in general, and of the human body in
particular. Not only its origin (in God’s creation) and its destiny (in
the resurrection to come) but also (and even more) the incarnation of
the Son of God conferred an essential dignity on human bodiliness.
Predictably the affirmation of John 1: 14 (‘the Word became flesh’)
enjoyed central importance for Irenaeus. By assuming ‘flesh’ (the
complete human condition of body and spirit), the Son of God
ratified the value of men and women created in God’s image and
likeness. When they are baptized into Christ and receive him in the
Eucharist, their intimate contact with the incarnate and risen Lord
will bring them to their own resurrection. One can trace a clear
trajectory from Irenaeus’s championing of the ‘enfleshment’ of
God’s Son and the dignity of our bodily humanity down through
the centuries, not least down to Christmas cribs in Italy and elsewhere
and Italian art’s portrayal of the child Jesus at Mary’s breast—both
24 Catholicism
forceful ways of bringing out the true (bodily and spiritual) humanity
of the incarnate Word of God.
The brilliant, lapidary expressions of Irenaeus’s younger contem-
porary, Tertullian (c.160–c.225), have become commonplaces in the
talk of Catholics and other Christians. ‘The blood of martyrs,’ he
wrote, ‘is the seed of Christians’ (Apologeticus, 50). He spoke of ‘the
flesh’ as ‘the hinge of salvation’ (De Resurrectione Carnis, 8. 2): ‘caro
cardo salutis’. The memorable statement with which he began this last
work characterized the deepest concerns of believers then and later:
‘Fiducia Christianorum resurrectio mortuorum, illam credentes hoc
sumus (The resurrection of the dead constitutes the confidence of
Christians. By believing it, we are [what we claim to be]).’ For decades
after Tertullian, Christian tombs used such figures as the three young
men surviving their stint in the fiery furnace (Dan. 3: 1–30), Daniel
rescued from the lions’ den (Dan. 6: 1–28), Susanna saved from a death
plotted by two lustful elders, Jonah emerging from the great fish, and
Lazarus resurrected by Jesus to express a hope for a glorious salvation
in the risen life to come. Tertullian’s statement and ancient Christian
sepulchral art anticipated the resurrection hope that Catholics and
other Christians would continue to express in later centuries—in
particular, through signs and symbols in cemeteries around the world.
To Tertullian we owe the language of God as ‘Trinity’ and that of
‘three persons and one divine substance’ or nature. Along with the
theological clarity of his language went a certain disparaging of
philosophy as productive of heresies. In what was to become a classic
formulation, he denounced Greek philosophers and the heirs of
Plato’s Academy: ‘What has Athens to do with Jerusalem? What
has the Academy to do with the Church? What have heretics to do
with Christians?’ (De Praescriptione Hereticorum, 7). Fortunately,
down through the ages Catholic thinkers have followed the lead of
St Basil of Caesarea (c.330–79) in his Address to Young Men on
Reading Greek Literature and respected the contributions of high
culture. They have supported St Thomas Aquinas (c.1225–74) in
letting philosophy live together with theology. The relationship
between living faith and cultivated reason need not turn sour, as the
1998 encyclical letter of John Paul II, Fides et Ratio, argued vigor-
ously. Some people regrettably continue to assume that faith is against
reason, or at least that faith should, schizophrenically, be separated
from reason. They should read Dante Alighieri and other outstanding
witnesses from the Catholic tradition, whether ancient, medieval, or
 The First Thousand Years 25
modern, who espouse faith and reason. Divine revelation should be
embraced in faith, together with the best that human learning offers.
Our next pre-Constantinian writer, Origen (c.185–c.254), by his
constant attention to the scriptures underwrote their indispensable
role for Catholic and all Christian life and thought. The Second Vatican
Council drew on Jerome for the concise statement: ‘Ignorance of the
scriptures is ignorance of Christ’ (Dei Verbum, 25). Origen had already
endorsed this sentiment and would reproach any Catholics who drifted
away from letting the scriptures constantly illumine their existence.
His interest in prayer and the spiritual life went hand in hand with
his biblical scholarship. His commentary on the Song of Solomon
initiated a lasting Catholic interest in that anthology of love poems as
an allegory of God’s relationship with the Church and individual
believers. St Bernard of Clairvaux (1090–1153) dedicated eighty-six
homilies to the Song of Solomon, and later Catholic mystics also drew
from this book when articulating their profound experiences of God.
Origen won the admiration of such leading fourth-century figures
as Athanasius of Alexandria, Basil the Great, and Gregory of Nazian-
zus. But he met with opposition and condemnation in the sixth
century (DH 298, 353 403–11, 433, 519; ND 401/1, 8; 618/2–3).
Nevertheless, it is unclear how far Origen himself was at fault, how
far he was simply exploring a variety of views, and how far false views
were ascribed to him after his death. It is difficult to decide, since
many of his works were destroyed.
In our résumé of pre-Constantinian figures, the final one to be
retrieved for his continuing Catholic relevance is St Cyprian, who
received baptism in 246, was elected bishop of Carthage two years
later, and suffered martyrdom in 258. He wrote his famous treatise on
Church unity (De Catholicae Ecclesiae Unitate) when faced with the
issue of Christians who denied their faith under the pressure of perse-
cution and then wished to be reconciled. Some rigorists such as Nova-
tian, a rival bishop of Rome at the time of St Cornelius (pope 251–3),
imposed lifelong excommunication or even rebaptism on such apos-
tates. Against such rigorous schismatics Cyprian insisted on divine
grace being mediated through the Church: ‘You cannot have God for
your Father, if you do not have the Church for your mother’ (De
Catholicae Ecclesiae Unitate, 6). The one Church communicated salva-
tion, and the unity of the worldwide Church, founded on and symbol-
ized by Peter, was incompatible with competitive bishops. Apparently
Cyprian himself left two versions of a key passage in chapter 4 of his
26 Catholicism
treatise on unity. The shorter, first version ran as follows: ‘If someone
deserts the Chair of Peter upon whom the Church was built, has he still
confidence that he is in the Church?’ The longer, second version was
apparently written not so much to challenge the rigorists as to sound
less ‘papalist’ when Cyprian was in dispute with St Stephen I (pope
254–7): ‘If someone does not hold fast to this oneness of the Church,
does he imagine that he still holds the faith? If he resists and withstands
the Church, has he still confidence that he is in the Church?’
These questions could be applied to inflexible movements that
have recurrently emerged down to the twenty-first century. In Cyp-
rian’s own case, an ironical aspect of his work on Church unity
emerged in his controversy with Pope Stephen I over baptism admin-
istered ‘outside the Church’. Like other African and some oriental
bishops, Cyprian argued that such baptism had no value. The Church
of Rome held, however, that both schismatics and heretics could
validly administer baptism. Persecution cut short the controversy
and Cyprian died a martyr in 258. In a later chapter on the sacra-
ments we return to this issue.
These last few pages have been dedicated to Justin, Irenaeus,
Tertullian, Origen, and Cyprian.24 Many Christians, and not just
Catholics, retrieve with gratitude numerous ways in which they
articulated their inherited faith. But certainly Catholics find much
to claim and reclaim in their writings and lives. It is no accident that
the 1992 Catechism of the Catholic Church frequently quotes from or
refers to them, drawing above all on Irenaeus.
So far in this chapter we have dealt with the emergence of the
worldwide Church, its early life and leadership, and five pre-Con-
stantine figures who shaped the faith and practice of Catholic Chris-
tianity in times of persecution. We turn now to Emperor Constantine
(d. 337) and the radical change he brought.

THE ROAD TO CHALCEDON

Constantine’s decisive victory of 28 October 312 on the outskirts of

Rome, either at the Milvian Bridge or further up the River Tiber at

24
For further information on them, see their entries in F. L. Cross and E. A.
Livingstone (eds), The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 3rd edn rev., 2005).
 The First Thousand Years 27
Saxa Rubra (now a centre for RAI or the Italian national television
and radio authority), made Constantine the emperor of the Western
Empire. Before engaging the forces of Maxentius, his rival for power,
Constantine reputedly saw in a dream or a vision Christ’s cross and
the words: ‘In this sign you will conquer (in hoc signo vinces).’ With
the sign of the cross on his own helmet and his soldiers’ shields, he
believed that the one, all-powerful God guaranteed the military tri-
umph. The 313 Edict of Milan, a verbal agreement reached between
Constantine and Licinius, the emperor of the Eastern Empire,
pledged religious freedom for Christian believers and the restitution
of goods confiscated from them during the severe persecution that
had been decreed by Emperor Diocletian in February 303 and con-
tinued (at least in the East) until 313.25
Christians experienced a startling reversal of fortune when Con-
stantine initiated a long series of legislative acts that they supported.
On 13 May 315, for example, he decreed financial help for poor
people so as to check the practice of abandoning newborn children
to death. That same day he proclaimed that Catholic churches would
be supported by imperial funds. On 23 June 319 he ordered that
decisions taken by the courts of bishops were to enjoy a civil effect.
On 3 March 321 he decreed Sunday to be a day of rest, and a few
months later ordered courts to remain closed on Sundays. A decree of
18 April 321 made the emancipation of slaves easier—by means of a
Church procedure. In 324 public money became available for the
construction of churches, and in 326 Constantine, encouraged by his
elderly mother, St Helena (c.255–c.330), began building the central
shrine of Christendom, the Church of the Resurrection in Jerusalem.
The Emperor had already started building St Peter’s Basilica in Rome,
sited on the place of the apostle’s martyrdom and burial, and com-
pleted in 328. A decree of 14 June 326 forbade married men to keep a
concubine at home. In late 330 bishops and priests, along with Jewish
clergy, were exempted from a range of public duties.
How deeply Christian was Constantine’s faith? To what extent did
he prove himself a political opportunist, who—in the spirit of ‘if you
can’t beat them, join them’—made an ally out of the Church, which
by his time had become a large state within the state? The very titles of

25
For ways in which art reflected the Constantinian change, see J. R. Elsner,
Imperial Rome and Christian Triumph: The Art of the Roman Empire ad 100–450
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999).
Another random document with
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 The trooper dismounted, and Gavin, obeying a signal, got into the
saddle, and in another minute he was trotting briskly down the road
with the party.
Gavin had scarcely heard the word spy, he was so distressed
and disheartened by the loss of his money and papers. The
sergeant, who rode by his side, asked him no questions, and in
perfect silence they traversed the road rapidly by the light of a
brilliant moon.
It was quite midnight before they halted at a little village, and,
riding up to one of the chief houses, dismounted. Gavin was at once
ushered into the presence of the commanding officer, Captain
Dreisel, an ill-looking man, whose appearance was not improved by
a dirty nightcap over a frowzy wig.
The sergeant, who was by nature a lover of sensations, coolly
announced that he had captured a spy. Gavin, who had paid no
attention to the man, received a sudden and terrible shock when
Dreisel said, in the coolest manner in the world:
“You must disprove what this man says, or you will be hanged as
a spy in twenty-four hours.”
“But I am in my uniform as sublieutenant of General Loudon’s
hussars! I am a prisoner of war.”
“So was my brother,” replied Dreisel, coolly lighting a huge pipe.
“Nevertheless, the Austrians hanged him. They made a thousand
explanations afterward, alleged that it was an infernal mistake, and
all that, and punished everybody connected with the affair; but it
could not bring my brother back. And, besides, you may have stolen
that uniform. At all events, I have three sublieutenants here, and we
will settle the matter for you after breakfast to-morrow morning,
without troubling headquarters with it. Meanwhile, I am going to bed.
Sergeant, watch this man;” and Dreisel sauntered into the next room.
The sergeant, leaving a couple of soldiers on guard, went out,
and Gavin sat down on a bench before the stove to rest, for he did
not think he could sleep. He was very hungry, and asking the soldier
who walked up and down outside the room door if anything to eat
was to be had, the man pointed to a cupboard. Out of it Gavin got
some bread and cheese, and then, lying down on the bench,
proceeded to sum up the situation, with the result that he considered
his chances for being hanged within the next twenty-four hours about
as certain as they well could be. But although this was his deliberate
and reasonable conclusion, it by no means followed that he actually
believed he was going to be hanged. On the contrary, it seemed
altogether an impossibility, and the conditions surrounding him
appeared to him more unreal than the wildest dream he ever had in
his life. He pinched himself to find whether he was awake. The last
time he had eaten, before getting the bread and cheese out of the
cupboard, had been at the King’s headquarters in Breslau. He noted
that the bread and cheese had no flavour to it; he only knew that he
was eating by the looks, not the taste. Yet, it must be something
portentous that could make him feel so strangely, and then he
recalled all the circumstances, which led him to believe that he had
fallen into the hands of a vengeful and desperate man, and
something very like a promise had been made him that he would be
hanged within twenty-four hours; and going over and over the whole
puzzling business, he suddenly fell asleep, his dark, boyish head
resting on his arm against the wall.
At daylight he was awake in the same strange mental state. The
soldiers who guarded him were amazed at his coolness, but it was
really the insensibility of a person too dazed and astounded to think
or even feel, to a great degree. He was given a good breakfast,
which he ate with appetite; but he might have been eating shavings,
as far as his palate went. It annoyed him the way the soldiers and
the guard looked at him. There was something pitying in their glance,
as if they expected him to be hanged—an idea so ridiculous to Gavin
that he could have laughed aloud at it. Yet it did not seem ridiculous
to them, and that was both strange and disagreeable. Altogether, it
was the most unpleasant morning of his life. He was left to himself all
the forenoon, but soon after the captain’s midday dinner he was
summoned to appear in another room. Seated at the head of the
table was Captain Dreisel. One look at his determined and savage
countenance showed Gavin that he could not appear before a worse
judge. Chance had thrown a victim in this man’s way—a man looking
for a victim. It was enough.
Three sublieutenants were seated also at the table, to give it
something the appearance of a court martial. They were all young
and beardless fellows, and what impressed Gavin as much as
anything else was the distress and agitation visible upon the
countenances of these young subalterns. They looked anxiously at
one another, and it was plain that the work before them was not to
their liking.
Gavin, after saluting, was given a chair and seated himself.
Never in his life had his soul been in such a tumult as at that
moment; yet never had he been outwardly more calm or more
entirely in possession of his senses, which presently returned to him.
Dreisel began the examination, and Gavin told clearly and frankly
all that had befallen him. But, to his consternation, he saw at every
word that the three younger officers were losing confidence in him.
Great as was their sympathy for him, his adventures, especially his
claim of having lived at the King’s headquarters for three weeks,
were too unusual to be accepted without proof. And of proof he had
not a scintilla.
The examination was done almost entirely by Dreisel, whose
artfully contrived questions were admirably adapted to put Gavin in
the worst possible light. He felt, himself, the improbable nature of
some of his replies, which, though strictly truthful, yet had an
appearance of extravagance. As he was plied thick and fast,
answering each question eagerly, it was plain that he was not
making a good impression upon the three young officers, who, he
saw, hated and dreaded the outcome. He saw glances of dismay
exchanged among them at some of his answers, and one of these
young officers, whose countenance was particularly mild, grew paler
and paler, while great drops stood out on his forehead. At last, after
an hour of torture, Dreisel said to him:
 “And you expect us to believe that you are not a spy?”
At the word spy Gavin involuntarily started. It was the first time
the word had been uttered in the presence of the other officers.
Nevertheless, he responded promptly:
“I cannot be held as a spy wearing this uniform.”
“True, according to the rules of war among civilized nations. But
my brother was hanged as a spy wearing the Prussian uniform.”
The young officer, who had shown such unmistakable marks of
distress, interposed at this:
“But the whole affair was disclaimed, sir, by the Austrian military
authorities.”
“Well, so may all our proceedings to-day be disclaimed by the
Prussian military authorities.”
Dreisel said this with a diabolical grin.

“TAKE CHARGE OF THE PRISONER UNTIL I SEND FOR HIM”

 “But I am zealous in the King’s cause; and if I hang a man
because I think him a spy, and, moreover, has designs upon the
King’s life—for that is the meaning of his skulking about the King’s
headquarters for three weeks—if he ever was there—it ought not to
go very hard with me. Let me ask each and all of you this, Do you
believe all the prisoner has told us?”
A dead silence greeted this. Dreisel called to the sergeant
outside the door, and said to him when he came in:
“Take charge of the prisoner until I send for him.”
Gavin rose without a word. Had words availed him, he would
have poured them forth; but he saw that they were worse than
useless. As he passed out, the young officer who had shown such
sympathy for him half rose from his chair, and looking at Gavin with
eyes of misery, seemed about to hold out his hand.
“You had better not, my friend,” said Gavin, unable to keep
silence any longer. “Perhaps you may be shot for shaking hands with
a prisoner of war about to be hanged.”
In the corridor leading to the room to which he was conveyed
there was a window looking straight into the window of the court-
martial room. The sentry who passed the door near which Gavin sat
also passed this window in his walk up and down the corridor.
Something of sympathy in the man’s eye as he glanced in the room
where Gavin sat, with the sergeant at his side, caused Gavin to say:
“My friend, I, too, once carried a musket before I wore a sword;
therefore, I beg of you, as a comrade, to tell me what Captain Dreisel
and his unhappy young officers are doing in that room.”
“Lieutenant von Bulow, the soft-hearted one, is standing up
speaking to Captain Dreisel,” he said in a low voice.
The man walked away, and, passing the window, returned in five
minutes to the open door. He again whispered:
“Lieutenant Reber is now talking very earnestly, and seems not
afraid of the captain.”
 The third time he passed the door the sentry’s face was ashy
pale.
“Captain Dreisel is speaking now, and Lieutenant von Bulow has
covered his face and is crying.”
“Is he?” was Gavin’s only remark. “Good Von Bulow. I suppose I
am to be hanged. Well, I will lie down on this bench and think over
things a little.”
He lay out at full length on the bench, and thoughts of all sorts
chased one another through his mind. He had the tenderest thoughts
of his mother and of St. Arnaud and Madame Ziska and her family,
and the most acute pity for himself. “No wonder Von Bulow weeps at
the thought of an innocent young man being hanged. I would weep
for Von Bulow under the same circumstances.” But he could not
perceive, much to his surprise, any sensation of fear or weakness.
He felt his pulse—it was beating with perfect steadiness—he took up
a glass of water and drank it without the tremor of a finger, and lying
calmly down again, closed his eyes. And the soldiers watching him
saw a strange thing—his breathing grew slower, his limbs relaxed,
and he was sleeping as peacefully as an infant. Gavin himself fell
into the most delicious dream—he was walking with his mother in the
gardens at Schoenbrunn; it was a lovely spring morning, and he
carried his hat in his hand to feel the soft, sweet breeze, and his
mother was saying to him:
“Now, dear Gavin, we shall be so happy together; there will be no
more separations for us.”
He was roused from this by a vigorous shaking, and St. Arnaud’s
voice saying:
“Wake up! You don’t seem to mind the notion of being hanged;
but for my part, I could give you ten good beatings for the misery and
anxiety your folly has cost me.”
 CHAPTER X
Gavin sat up, rubbed his eyes, remained silent for some minutes,
while St. Arnaud berated him, winding up with:
“Two hours later, and you would have been hanged.”
“I thought so, too,” replied Gavin. “Dreisel, the captain, was bent
on it. But how came you here?”
“By following you, of course. I left the concert early, and went to
our quarters, to find you gone and your letter on the table. I gave the
alarm immediately, not knowing what trouble you might get into. I
suspected at once that you would try the river, as there was less
chance of your being stopped, and we—Captain Bohlen and I—were
after you in a boat within an hour after you took to the water. We
found the boat and your papers in it—I have the papers with me—
and had no difficulty in tracking you to the place where you were
captured. There we had some delay. Several small bodies of men
were moving about that night, and we lost some hours in finding
which one had bagged you. As soon as we discovered that your
friend, Captain Dreisel, was the man, we lost not a moment, for he
has openly said he means to hang an Austrian officer. They were still
debating when we arrived; the young sublieutenants showed more
courage than Dreisel counted on, and threatened to refuse to obey
orders if you were sentenced to be hanged. You should have seen
them when Bohlen and I walked in on them. Dreisel was perfectly
cool and collected; he saw that he was balked, and probably ruined
for life, as Bohlen will lay the whole matter before the King. The three
lieutenants nearly had hysterics from joy. Bohlen means to ask
promotion for them, since they saved the Prussian army the disgrace
of hanging an Austrian officer. When we asked for you, behold, you
were asleep! What a fellow you are!”
 Gavin sprang up, and seizing St. Arnaud around the neck, they
kissed and embraced.
At that moment Gavin glanced up. Bohlen, Von Bulow, and the
other two lieutenants were entering the room. They crowded around
him and wrung his hand, and Von Bulow, fairly bursting into tears,
embraced him. They all laughed at Von Bulow; but every man of
them felt shaken by the crisis each had passed through. Turning to
the soldiers, especially the sentry and the sergeant, Gavin emptied
his pockets, and then with one accord all the officers went out of the
house that still sheltered Dreisel.
“I breathe better,” cried Von Bulow, snuffing the chill, clear air,
“out of the quarters of that wretch.”
“Think what we have endured since this morning,” added his
brother lieutenant. “We would have died where we sat rather than
have acquiesced in murder; but we did not know whether our men
would obey us or Dreisel.”
“Never mind, gentlemen,” quietly remarked Bohlen, “wait until I
make my report to his Majesty. Dreisel then will rue the day he was
born.”
It was late in the cold March afternoon, and the village inn looked
very inviting. In it they went, and spent a long evening together.
Great was the jollity of all of them, except Gavin, in whom all saw the
signs of a reaction. He sat silent for the most part, and his eyes,
when they met those of the others, were filled with tears of gratitude.
When they separated for the night, St. Arnaud demanded but one
room for himself and Gavin. Alone together, Gavin broke down
utterly. St. Arnaud spent the night soothing and cheering him. And
this was the man who had gone calmly to sleep while the question of
hanging him was being debated!
Next morning, St. Arnaud announced that they would return to
Breslau, for the purpose of expressing their thanks to the King and
saying farewell. As for the report of the affair, Bohlen might be
trusted to attend faithfully to that. Gavin submitted to the delay
without a word. They reached Breslau in the afternoon, went straight
to their old quarters, and at eight o’clock—the King’s usual hour for
seeing them—they were sent for. Frederick received them with more
than his usual grace; but neither St. Arnaud nor Gavin justly
appreciated until then the true extent to which this man should be
feared. He said but little of Dreisel; but the tones of his ringing voice
and the sombre fire that shone in his steel-blue eyes would have
made a braver man than Dreisel tremble. Frederick did not long
dwell on the subject, which was necessarily a painful and
embarrassing one for him, and soon turned the conversation into
lighter and more playful channels.
“Bohlen tells me you wish to start very early to-morrow morning,”
he said to St. Arnaud. “I can well believe that this young gentleman
is a vast responsibility. I wish to express to you the pleasure I have
had in the company of both, but especially of Captain St. Arnaud. I
fear that history will say of me that I took no pleasure in anything but
beating my enemy in the field. How great a mistake! I was formed for
the pursuits of a peaceful but not inactive life. The reorganization of
my country, the improvement of my people, a steady progress of the
arts and sciences, a little recreation in the way of poetry and music,
and the society of accomplished men—these would constitute my
happiness. I have known but little of it. Instead I spend my summers
in the saddle and my winters in planning for the summer campaign.
Did but the Empress Queen command her armies in the field, as I
do, she would make peace with me forever.”
St. Arnaud, not caring to discuss the only terms on which
Frederick would make peace, contented himself with replying:
“The world, your Majesty, is loath to credit a man with more than
one kind of excellence, and because you are a master of the art of
war, it will always grudgingly admit what you have done or might do
in the arts of peace. I can, sire, tell you truly, without the smallest
flattery, that the hours I have spent with your Majesty are among the
most valuable of my life; for I never failed to learn something from
you that I did not know before.”
 Frederick smiled graciously; he knew St. Arnaud to be a sincere
man, and that his phrases, although courtier-like, were from an
honest heart. And when, as they shook hands cordially, St. Arnaud
said:
“And have I no message for the Prince of Bevern?”
“None, but that I have received his letter, and I am under great
obligations to him for making me acquainted with so agreeable a
man as yourself.”
Gavin then advancing, Frederick said:
“Farewell. I have not had much speech with you, but I perceive
you to be no ordinary man.”
And Gavin, meaning to make a very conventional and correct
reply, said earnestly:
“Your Majesty, I have been in your company now several times,
and I never was ennuyéed for one single moment when your Majesty
was speaking!”
“Take care of him,” cried the King to St. Arnaud, both of them
laughing. “You have an original there, and he may either be exiled or
become Prime Minister.”
The return journey to Vienna was made rapidly, and on a
pleasant spring night their travelling chaise rattled up to the house in
the Teinfeltstrasse. They were received with open arms by Lady
Hamilton and Madame Ziska and her family. St. Arnaud and Gavin
had agreed to say nothing for the present about Gavin’s little
adventure with Captain Dreisel, and Lady Hamilton thought their
journey had been one of unmixed pleasure, except for the trifling
accident to Gavin’s leg.
Next morning they went to the palace, and were summoned
before the Empress Queen and the Emperor. St. Arnaud gave an
account of their mission, together with the ill success of it for the
poor Prince of Bevern. Marie Theresa listened with a scornful smile.
Frederick of Prussia was not only to her the enemy of her country,
but an object of the deepest personal dislike, and nothing good, in
her opinion, could be expected of him.
“The conduct of the King of Prussia in this affair does not surprise
me in the least,” she said; “and so much was it expected by me, that,
with the Emperor’s consent, I had already determined upon my
course toward the Prince of Bevern. He shall be released at once
and allowed to return to his country, with no condition beyond that of
not serving against us during the present war. If the King of Prussia
has no merciful impulses toward his officers, who, though brave,
may meet with misfortunes, I and the Emperor feel much sympathy
for them; and we will do for the Prince of Bevern what his own
sovereign refuses to do. Have you anything else of moment to tell
me?”
“Nothing, madam, except an adventure of Lieutenant Hamilton’s,
which may interest you.” And St. Arnaud, with inimitable archness,
told the story of Gavin’s bringing Frederick through the flooded
garden on his back, and the conversation that ensued.
The Empress Queen and the Emperor laughed so much that
Gavin, who was very red and embarrassed in the beginning, began
to feel seriously disconcerted. He recovered his good humour,
however, when the Empress Queen desired to see Frederick’s
memorandum, and after reading it cried:
“I cannot do less than the King of Prussia expects. You shall have
two steps in promotion instead of one!” At which Gavin only blushed
the more while stammering out his thanks.
When, a few moments after, St. Arnaud and Gavin left the
Empress Queen’s closet, St. Arnaud whispered:
“The release of poor Bevern is caused by two motives—one, to
benefit a brave but unfortunate man; the other, to chagrin the King of
Prussia.”
The next succeeding weeks were entirely different from those
which had preceded the Breslau expedition. The spring campaign
was about to open, and court and people were absorbed in
preparations for trying the fortunes of war once more with Frederick.
St. Arnaud was busy all day and all night with the affairs of his corps.
It had been in cantonments on the outskirts of Vienna during the
winter, and was to march the middle of April. Gavin’s duties as a
subaltern compelled him to take up his quarters with his regiment,
and he occupied alone the tent that was to shelter St. Arnaud and
himself on the march. He applied himself more seriously to the study
of military affairs from the point of an officer, and in this, as in
everything he had tried to study in his life, he had much assistance
from his mother. She got him books in English and French, and
helped him in his fluent but somewhat incorrect German. Nor were
his creature comforts forgotten, although Lady Hamilton never
ceased to impress upon him that the equipment of his mind must
always come before the considerations for his body. Nevertheless,
he was well supplied with many little comforts for the campaign
which had been unknown to him before.
Every day he came to the Teinfeltstrasse house to visit his
mother, if only for a few minutes, and to see his cherished friends,
Madame Ziska and her family. It was arranged that Lady Hamilton
should remain with her excellent friends until Gavin could return to
Vienna—if ever he returned. Gavin, however, had perfect confidence
in his own return, for his nature was sanguine to the last degree, and
it was always as surprising as it was unpleasant for things to go
wrong with him. Having escaped hanging by a very narrow margin
only gave him increased confidence in the future—a thing very
conducive to both happiness and success.
He did not again see his father, and really did not know whether
Sir Gavin Hamilton was still in Vienna or not. Gavin’s duties kept him
so closely with his troop, that he no longer had time to frequent
palaces or drawing-rooms, and it was not always easy for him to see
his mother once a day. St. Arnaud was equally busy, and their
thoughts and their talk were all about the coming campaign. They
congratulated themselves daily upon being under General Loudon,
the most adventurous of men, and the making the campaign with
each other was peculiarly gratifying to both.
 Daily were they expecting orders to march. Marshal Daun had
begun the concentration of his army at Koniggratz the middle of
March, and the light troops under General Loudon were expected to
be on the move to join him by the middle of April. It was known that
General Loudon was to come to Vienna to receive the Military Order
of Maria Theresa—the highest military order in the Empire, and one
justly earned by General Loudon—and after spending one day there,
he was to accompany the very last brigade to Leutomischl, about
fifty miles from Olmutz. Each day detachments were dispatched, but
St. Arnaud’s and Gavin’s regiments were not among them. It began
to be whispered abroad that their regiment would have the honour of
escorting the major-general himself.
One day, as Gavin was toiling over a muddy road, at the head of
his troop of hussars, which had been going through the sword
exercise, he met St. Arnaud galloping along alone. He rode up to
Gavin, and called out loud enough for the men to hear:
“By the day after to-morrow we shall be on the march. Not half a
mile behind me rides General Loudon, and when he comes to
Vienna it is for as short a time as he can stay; and then he goes off
like a shot, hunting for Prussians.”
The men exchanged glances of pleasure, and Gavin, bringing the
detachment down to a slow trot, and talking with St. Arnaud,
presently heard the thunder of hoofs behind them. He looked back,
and there, coming along the highroad, still muddy from the spring
rains, was a small cavalry escort, and in front rode a tall, spare, red-
haired man, whom he surmised to be the celebrated General
Loudon.
Gavin, drawing his men up on the side of the road, placed himself
slightly in advance of them, with St. Arnaud. As General Loudon
came up, he stopped and courteously saluted both officers and men,
the latter raising a hearty cheer as he approached. St. Arnaud then
introduced Gavin, pronouncing his name much better than Gavin
could.
 “Hamilton!” said General Loudon. “That is a Scotch and also an
English name. How comes Lieutenant Hamilton in my command?”
“It is a long story, sir,” responded Gavin; “but, like yourself,
although I am of Scotch and English blood, I am a true soldier, if not
a born subject, of the Empress Queen.”
General Loudon then made a few remarks; but his manner,
though polite, was awkward, and he had by no means the graceful
self-possession of St. Arnaud or the pleasant assurance of Gavin
Hamilton.
When he had ridden on St. Arnaud said to Gavin:
“Do you see how cold, how awkward, how slow he is? That man
under fire becomes animated, quicker than lightning, even graceful.
It has been said that he grows actually handsome in the light of
battle.”
“He looks like a Calvinist minister with dyspepsia,” was Gavin’s
comment; nevertheless, he knew very well General Loudon’s
reputation as the most dashing leader of light troops in Europe.
As soon as General Loudon’s arrival was known in Vienna, it was
understood that the opening of the campaign was at hand, and there
was the stir and excitement of the actual beginning of warlike events.
The announcement was made that the Empress Queen would invest
him with her great military order on the evening of the next day, and
the morning after, at sunrise, he would be on the march for
Leutomischl, with the last of the hussar regiments.
St. Arnaud and Gavin were in a fever of preparation all that day
and the next; but a duty, not to be omitted, was their presence at the
palace in the evening to see the bestowal of this splendid decoration
on their commander. The Empress Queen, consonant with her lofty
and unquenchable spirit, had commanded a splendid levee on the
occasion, that she might show to all the world the courage and high
hopes with which she renewed the struggle.
 Never had Gavin more admired his mother’s courage than during
those last two days. Smiling, hopeful, encouraging, she bore the
terrible heartache of parting, but she did not wholly hide it, even from
Gavin. For himself, he went to war as he went to a festival. He was
distressed at the thought of his mother, but he was too wholly
confident of returning to her to seriously grieve.
“Do this for me, mother—go with me to the palace to-night; let me
have the satisfaction of showing you to all those people, and,
besides, it will divert you and make you forget that I am leaving to-
morrow.”
“Very likely,” murmured Lady Hamilton.
“And as for meeting my father, I think he must have left Vienna.
No one has seen him for a month.”
“Then I will go; perhaps the being with you a few hours longer
may be an inducement,” replied his mother in a gayer tone.
“It is every one’s duty, mother, to look gay to-night; for if we meet
the Prussians with downcast hearts, we are already half beaten.”
“Quite true. And as I am the daughter of a soldier, and was the
sister of soldiers, as well as the mother of a soldier, I shall be as
brave as any. But let me tell you, Gavin, the bravest at the levee to-
night will not be the men wearing their swords, but the women who
with anxious hearts and trembling souls give their best beloved to
their country.”
Madame Ziska and Kalenga were to sit up until the return of the
party from the palace, and they were to have a farewell supper
together, for St. Arnaud and Gavin must be with their troops before
daybreak.
Madame Ziska and little Freda assisted Lady Hamilton with her
toilet—the same severely simple black satin gown she had worn
before. The two women understood and mutually comforted each
other, and by tacit agreement there was no mention of the impending
parting until just as Lady Hamilton was ready, and stood a picture of
mature and womanly grace, Madame Ziska began to weep.
“I am a fool,” she cried. “They will come back—I know they will
come back—but it is hard to let them go, for I, too, love them dearly.”
At this Freda suddenly burst into loud weeping. The mother
remained dry-eyed.
“To-morrow,” she said, “there will be time enough for tears. To-
night I will not show, so much as by the quiver of an eyelash, the
pain and fear that are gnawing at me.”
At that moment they heard Gavin and St. Arnaud in the next
room. Madame Ziska quickly dried her eyes, gently pushed the
weeping Freda out of sight and hearing in the corridor, and appeared
smiling calmly before Gavin and St. Arnaud.
“Now, this is what I wish to see,” cried Gavin—“a pleasant
parting, without any tears or fears. There is no doubt about it, we go
to beat the Prussians; we will return with increased rank and
decorations, and we will be saying among ourselves, ‘How sensible
it was to part gayly as we did!’”
“Quite true,” said his mother, smiling, and taking St. Arnaud’s arm
to lead her to the coach, while Gavin lingered to say a gay farewell to
Madame Ziska, and to call Freda, who remained weeping and
invisible on the landing of the back stairs.
In a little while they were at the palace, where a great crowd of
persons, military and civil, had assembled to do honour to the army,
through General Loudon. Kaunitz was there, superbly dressed as
usual, with his eagle eye fixed on the French ambassador, to make
sure that he noted the loyalty and enthusiasm of all present. The
young archdukes and archduchesses, from the Crown Prince, a
handsome young man of seventeen, standing behind his mother’s
chair, down to the pretty little princesses, with their governesses,
grouped in a gallery overlooking the splendid scene, were all
present.
 St. Arnaud and Gavin with Lady Hamilton secured a good place
of observation in the grand salon, where the ceremony of bestowing
the order was to take place. The Empress Queen and the Emperor
sat in gilded arm-chairs upon the same daïs that they had occupied
at the first royal levee Gavin had attended. The Empress Queen
looked even more superb than Gavin had yet seen her. Fearful as
had been the blows that had befallen her armies, she was ready
again, with lion-like courage, to meet her ancient enemy. Every heart
in Austria and Hungary might grow faint, but Maria Theresa knew not
what fear meant. She was talking with great animation to those
around her, with her fine, expressive eyes flashing, and her full, red
lips wreathed in smiles. When danger was at hand, then was she
most full of vivid life. The Emperor at her side showed equal
cheerfulness. Occasionally, the Empress Queen would turn to him
and make a smiling remark, to which he would respond in kind. At
length, a hush fell upon the company; General Loudon had entered
the hall. He was entirely unaccompanied, and dressed in a very
splendid uniform. Immediately way was made for him, and he
proceeded up the aisle thus formed to the daïs. At the sight of his
countenance an involuntary smile went around. His naturally rugged
features looked still more homely under the embarrassment of so
much notice. He ambled along with the utmost awkwardness,
glanced around desperately when he reached the foot of the daïs, as
if looking for a place to run away; and when the Empress Queen,
with her characteristic grace, pinned the magnificent decoration on
his breast, he almost fell over the royal footstool in his attempt to
kneel and kiss her hand.
“Never mind,” whispered St. Arnaud. “Wait until you see him
leading the charge up a hill, with Prussians well posted at the top. He
never falters or palters then, nor falls over anything, nor looks around
to see if there is any chance of running away.”
The air of hope and encouragement worn by the Empress Queen
was infectious. All were under the influence of excitement, and it
brought brightness to the eyes and a ringing echo to the voices of all.
Never had Gavin passed a gayer evening, nor had St. Arnaud. As for
Lady Hamilton, many mothers and wives and sisters were present
who were no less brave than she; but if she had been asked to name
one of the periods of most exquisite misery in her life, it would have
been the night of that brilliant levee, when, with a head proudly erect
and a smiling face, she walked through the stately splendours of a
palace.
Before midnight they were home again. Madame Ziska had a
delicious supper waiting for them, and Kalenga’s chair was already
drawn up to the table. Amid laughter and toasts and the most
dazzling anticipations, on Gavin’s part, of the campaign, an hour was
passed. Then they heard the tramping of horses at the door, as the
orderly brought them trotting down the stony street.
The children were supposed to be in bed, as Gavin and St.
Arnaud were giving some last messages and little presents for them,
when a door opened, and Freda and Gretchen, with the two boys, all
fully dressed, walked in.
“We knew you were going away,” cried Freda, trying not to cry;
“so after we had been put to bed we agreed to get up and dress
ourselves when you came home from the levee—and—and—”
Freda broke down, immediately followed by Gretchen and the
two little boys, who considered it a mark of affection for Gavin and
St. Arnaud to bawl at the top of their lungs. The two departing ones
hastily kissed the children all around, and Gavin was forced to gently
disentangle Freda’s arms from about his neck; and wringing
Kalenga’s hand, they went to the door, accompanied by Lady
Hamilton and Madame Ziska. Farewells, heartfelt, but silent and
swift, were exchanged, and a moment after, when Gavin and St.
Arnaud were clattering down the street, Gavin said in a low voice:
“The Prussians cannot make us suffer more than in parting from
those we love. That last kiss of my mother’s—oh, St. Arnaud, I can
never, never forget it!”
 CHAPTER XI
At sunrise, on a beautiful April morning, the last detachment of
General Loudon’s light troops, five thousand strong, took up their
march to join the army of Marshal Daun.
Every officer and man wore in his helmet a sprig of green,
according to an ancient custom of the Austrian army when beginning
a campaign. Vast crowds assembled at every point of vantage along
the highway to applaud these favourite troops; while, afar off, the
steeples, towers, and belfries of Vienna were black with people
watching as this splendid body of men unwound itself, like a great
serpent, and turned its head toward the enemy.
Gavin felt triumphantly happy as his troop, well horsed and clad,
fell in line. They were mostly new recruits, with a sprinkling of
seasoned soldiers, but they had had several months of breaking in at
the cantonments, and being originally of stout fibre—honest
peasantry, used to an outdoor life of toil—they were already fair
soldiers. If every one of them did not burn with enthusiasm, as Gavin
did, to distinguish himself, they had a fine and noble esprit de corps,
which rendered it certain that every man would do his duty to his
sovereign and his country.
St. Arnaud, as captain, had more liberty in his movements on the
march than Gavin; but Gavin, riding along contentedly at the head of
his troop, was well entertained by his own thoughts.
“If I expect promotion,” he argued to himself, “I ought to show by
the condition of the men under me how I could manage a larger
body. Now, having been a private soldier myself, I know exactly what
these fellows will do and will not do. They will not, at first, know how
to make themselves comfortable; but I, who went through two
campaigns, know a thing or two about that. Then, when a man is ill,
if he is a brave fellow, he will make out that he is well, and won’t go
to the hospital; but I will look sharp after him and see that he does.
The faint-hearted ones will imagine they are ill every time things look
a little blue. Aha! I shall catch those fellows. I will have my men so
that St. Arnaud will say to the major: ‘Do you notice Lieutenant
Hamilton’s troop? Always ninety-nine per cent. of them fit for duty.’
Then the major, reporting to the lieutenant-colonel, will say: ‘Do you
observe Lieutenant Hamilton’s excellent report?’ And the lieutenant-
colonel, talking with the colonel, will say: ‘Lieutenant Hamilton’s troop
is the best in St. Arnaud’s command, and St. Arnaud’s command is
the best in the regiment.’ And the colonel, one day, as we file past,
will say to General Loudon: ‘Will your Excellency notice Captain St.
Arnaud’s command, how well it looks and marches?’ And General
Loudon will reply: ‘True; and Lieutenant Hamilton’s troop is the best
of them.’ And so, when promotions are going, it will be said: ‘St.
Arnaud and that young Hamilton must not be left out.’ Oh, what a
stroke of good fortune it was that I got lost in the snow in Silesia!”
When they halted for the night, Gavin made good all he had said
concerning his knowledge of how to make his men comfortable. His
troopers, seeing this intimate knowledge of their wants, and that they
were attended to before their young lieutenant looked after his own
comfort, conceived an instant respect for him. After he had seen that
both men and horses were provided for, Gavin hastened to the tent
to be shared in common by St. Arnaud and himself. St. Arnaud had
been equally zealous in the performance of his duty, and it was more
onerous than Gavin’s. But presently he arrived; their servant had
provided them with a good supper, and they spent their first evening
of campaigning with the greatest merriment.
Those days of marching toward Marshal Daun were to Gavin
very happy. He loved a soldier’s life, and when he had bright spring
weather and mild April nights, with the comforts of an officer on the
march, he had nothing else to ask for in life except promotion.
They reached the neighbourhood of Leutomischl within a few
days, and found an army of fifty thousand men assembled, mostly