BOOK II. EARLY CHRISTIAN THOUGHT

FOREWORD We now turn back chronologically to the point from which we started in our survey of classical science and magic in order to trace the development of Christian thought in regard to the same subjects. How far did Christianity break with ancient science and superstition? To what extent did it borrow from them? [Sidenote: Magic and religion.] It has often been remarked that, as a new religion comes to prevail in a society, the old rites are discredited and prohibited as magic. The faith and ceremonies of the majority, performed publicly, are called religion: the discarded cult, now practiced only privately and covertly by a minority, is stigmatized as magic and contrary to the general good. Thus we shall hear Christian writers condemn the pagan oracles and auguries as arts of divination, and classify the ancient gods as demons of the same sort as those invoked in the magic arts. Conversely, when a new religion is being introduced, is as yet regarded as a foreign faith, and is still only the private worship of a minority, the majority regard it as outlandish magic. And this we shall find illustrated by the accusations of sorcery and magic heaped upon Jesus by the Jews, and upon the Jews and the early Christians by a world long accustomed to pagan rites. The same bandying back and forth of the charge of magic occurred between Mohammed and the Meccans.[1509] [Sidenote: Relation between early Christian and medieval literature.] It is perhaps generally assumed that the men of the middle ages were widely read in and deeply influenced by the fathers of the early church, but at least for our subject this influence has hardly been treated either broadly or in detail. Indeed, the predilection of the humanists of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries for anything written in Greek and their aversion to medieval Latin has too long operated as a bar to the study of medieval literature in general. And scholars who have edited or studied the Greek, Syriac, and other ancient texts connected with early Christianity have perhaps too often neglected the Latin versions preserved in medieval manuscripts, or, while treasuring up every hint that Photius lets fall, have failed to note the citations and allusions in medieval Latin encyclopedists. Yet it is often the case that the manuscripts containing the Latin versions are of earlier date than those which seem to preserve the Greek original text. [Sidenote: Method of presenting early Christian thought.] There is so much repetition and resemblance between the numerous Christian writers in Greek and Latin of the Roman Empire that I have even less than in the case of their classical contemporaries attempted a complete presentation of them, but, while not intending to omit any account of the first importance in the history of magic or experimental science, have aimed to make a selection of representative persons and typical passages. At the same time, in the case of those authors and works which are discussed, the aim is to present their thought in sufficiently specific detail to enable the reader to estimate for himself their scientific or superstitious character and their relations to classical thought on the one hand and medieval thought on the other. Before we treat of Christian writings themselves it is essential to notice some related lines of thought and groups of writings which either preceded or accompanied the development of Christian thought and literature, and which either influenced even orthodox thought powerfully, or illustrate foreign elements, aberrations, side-currents, and undertows which none the less cannot be disregarded in tracing the main current of Christian belief. We therefore shall successively treat of the literature extant under the name of Enoch, of the works of Philo Judaeus, of the doctrines of the Gnostics, of the Christian _Apocrypha_, of the _Pseudo-Clementines_ and Simon Magus, and of the _Confession_ of Cyprian and some similar stories. We shall then make Origen’s _Reply to Celsus_, in which the conflict of classical and Christian conceptions is well illustrated, our point of departure in an examination of the attitude of the early fathers towards magic and science. Succeeding chapters will treat of the attitude toward magic of other fathers before Augustine, of Christianity and natural science as shown in Basil’s _Hexaemeron_, Epiphanius’ _Panarion_, and the _Physiologus_, and of Augustine himself. A final chapter on the fusion of paganism and Christianity in the fourth and fifth centuries will terminate this second division of our investigation and also serve as a supplement to the preceding division and an introduction to the third book on the early middle ages. Our arrangement is thus in part topical rather than strictly chronological. The dates of many authors and works are too dubious, there is too much of the apocryphal and interpolated, and we have to rely too much upon later writers for the views of earlier ones, to make a strictly or even primarily chronological arrangement either advisable or feasible.