"When I think," said Montesquieu, "of
the profound ignorance into which the Greek clergy plunged the laity, I
am obliged to compare them to the Scythians of whom Herodotus speaks, who
put out the eyes of their slaves in order that nothing might distract
their attention from their work. . . . No affair of state, no peace, no
truce, no negotiation, no marriage could be transacted by any one but the
clergy. The evils of this system were beyond belief."
Montesquieu might have added: Christianity destroyed the emperors but it
saved the people. It opened to the barbarians the palaces of
Constantinople, but it opened the doors of cottages to the ministering
angels of Christ. It had much to do with the great ones of earth. And
what is more interesting than the death-rattle of an empire corrupt to
the very marrow of its bones, than the somber galvanism under the
influence of which the skeleton of tyranny danced upon the tombs of
Heliogabalus and Caracalla! What a beautiful thing that mummy of Rome,
embalmed in the perfumes of Nero and swathed in the shroud of Tiberius!
It had to do, messieurs the politicians, with finding the poor and giving
them life and peace; it had to do with allowing the worms and tumors to
destroy the monuments of shame, while drawing from the ribs of this mummy
a virgin as beautiful as the mother of the Redeemer, hope, the friend of
the oppressed.
That is what Christianity did; and now, after many years, what have they
who destroyed it done? They saw that the poor allowed themselves to be
oppressed by the rich, the feeble by the strong, because of that saying:
"The rich and the strong will oppress me on earth; but when they wish to
enter paradise, I shall be at the door and I will accuse them before the
tribunal of God.
Pages:
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30