Hypatia. or New Foes with an Old Face

‘The persecutors?’

‘Ay, boy—to the times of persecution, when Christians died like brothers, because they lived like brothers. You will see very little of that now, except in some little remote county bishopric, which no one ever hears of from year’s end to year’s end. But in the cities it is all one great fight for place and power. Every one is jealous of his neighbour. The priests are jealous of the deacons, and good cause they have. The county bishops are jealous of the metropolitan, and he is jealous of the North African bishops, and quite right he is. What business have they to set up for themselves, as if they were infallible? It’s a schism, I say—a complete schism. They are just as bad as their own Donatists. Did not the Council of Nice settle that the Metropolitan of Alexandria should have authority over Libya and Pentapolis, according to the ancient custom?’

‘Of course he ought,’ said Philammon, jealous for the honour of his own patriarchate.

‘And the patriarchs of Rome and Constantinople are jealous of our patriarch.’

‘Of Cyril?’

‘Of course, because he won’t be at their beck and nod, and let them be lords and masters of Africa.’

‘But surely these things can be settled by councils?’

‘Councils? Wait till you have been at one. The blessed Abbot Isidore used to say, that if he ever was a bishop—which he never will be—he is far too honest for that—he would never go near one of them; for he never had seen one which did not call out every evil passion in men’s hearts, and leave the question more confounded with words than they found it, even if the whole matter was not settled beforehand by some chamberlain, or eunuch, or cook sent from court, as if he were an anointed vessel of the Spirit, to settle the dogmas of the Holy Catholic Church.’

‘Cook?’

‘Why, Valens sent his chief cook to stop Basil of Caesarea from opposing the Court doctrine.... I tell you, the great battle in these cases is to get votes from courts, or to get to court yourself. When I was young, the Council of Antioch had to make a law to keep bishops from running off to Constantinople to intrigue, under pretence of pleading the cause of the orphan and widow. But what’s the use of that, when every noisy and ambitious man shifts and shifts, from one see to another, till he settles himself close to Rome or Byzantium, and gets the emperor’s ear, and plays into the hands of his courtiers?’

‘Is it not written, “Speak not evil of dignities”? ‘said Philammon, in his most sanctimonious tone.

‘Well, what of that? I don’t speak evil of dignities, when I complain of the men who fill them badly, do I?’

‘I never heard that interpretation of the text before.’

‘Very likely not. That’s no reason why it should not be true and orthodox. You will soon hear a good many more things, which are true enough—though whether they are orthodox or not, the court cooks must settle. Of course, I am a disappointed, irreverent old grumbler. Of course, and of course, too, young men must needs buy their own experience, instead of taking old folks’ at a gift. There—use your own eyes, and judge for yourself. There you may see what sort of saints are bred by this plan of managing the Catholic Church. There comes one of them. Now! I say no more!’

As he spoke, two tall negroes came up to them, and set down before the steps of a large church which they were passing an object new to Philammon—a sedan-chair, the poles of which were inlaid with ivory and silver, and the upper part enclosed in rose-coloured silk curtains.

‘What is inside that cage?’ asked he of the old priest, as the negroes stood wiping the perspiration from their foreheads, and a smart slave-girl stepped forward, with a parasol and slippers in her hand, and reverently lifted the lower edge of the curtain.

‘A saint, I tell you!’

An embroidered shoe, with a large gold cross on the instep, was put forth delicately from beneath the curtain, and the kneeling maid put on the slipper over it.

‘There!’ whispered the old grumbler. ‘Not enough, you see, to use Christian men as beasts of burden—Abbot Isidore used to say—ay, and told Iron, the pleader, to his face, that he could not conceive how a man who loved Christ, and knew the grace which has made all men free, could keep a slave.’

‘Nor can I,’ said Philammon.

‘But we think otherwise, you see, in Alexandria here. We can’t even walk up the steps of God’s temple without an additional protection to our delicate feet.’

‘I had thought it was written, “Put off thy shoes from off thy feet, for the place where thou standest is holy ground.”’

‘Ah! there are a good many more things written which we do not find it convenient to recollect.—Look! There is one of the pillars of the church-the richest and most pious lady in Alexandria.’

And forth stepped a figure, at which Philammon’s eyes opened wider than they had done even at the sight of Pelagia. Whatever thoughts the rich and careless grace of her attire might have raised in his mind, it had certainly not given his innate Greek good taste the inclination to laugh and weep at once, which he felt at this specimen of the tasteless fashion of an artificial and decaying civilisation. Her gown was stuffed out behind in a fashion which provoked from the dirty boys who lay about the steps, gambling for pistachios on their fingers, the same comments with which St. Clement had upbraided from the pulpit the Alexandrian ladies of his day. The said gown of white silk was bedizened, from waist to ankle, with certain mysterious red and green figures at least a foot long, which Philammon gradually discovered to be a representation, in the very lowest and ugliest style of fallen art, of Dives and Lazarus; while down her back hung, upon a bright blue shawl, edged with embroidered crosses, Job sitting, potsherd in hand, surrounded by his three friends—a memorial, the old priest whispered, of a pilgrimage which she had taken a year or two before, to Arabia, to see and kiss the identical dunghill on which the patriarch had sat.