David Matual, Wright State University, Ohio
Since the publication of Henryk Sienkiewicz’s phenomenally successful novel Quo Vadis? a century ago, much of the critical attention has been focused on the fundamental tension between the culture of pagan Rome and the primitive Christian community. Almost entirely overlooked in most studies is the role of a third religious and social force, namely, the Jewish population of ancient Rome.[1] Although far fewer pages in the novel are devoted to the Jews than to Sienkiewicz’s two principal groups, they nevertheless are a significant factor in the development of the plot—if only because the author so frequently insists on their antagonism toward Christianity and virtually accuses them of instigating the Neronian persecution. The present article will investigate and evaluate Sienkiewicz’s attitude toward the Jews in Quo Vadis? and attempt to identify some of the historical and scholarly sources which may have influenced him in his largely negative depiction of them.
Because so much of the action of Quo Vadis? is viewed through the eyes of Petronius, the unfailingly fashionable arbiter elegantiarum, and of his nephew Vinicius, the Jewish theme (as indeed the Christian) is introduced only gradually. But once Vinicius has been in the house of Plautius and Pomponia Graecina and has seen and been smitten by their adopted daughter Lygia, he begins to take an interest in the new religion to which they all reportedly adhere. In response to his curiosity, Petronius writes him that he once asked a Jew to explain the difference between Christianity and Judaism. The reply was quite simply that “the Jews have an age-old [odwieczna] religion while the Christians are a new sect.”[2] This answer is hardly surprising given the fact that Judaism was already some 2000 years old at the time of Nero’s reign. Its somewhat condescending and supercilious tone, however, serves to prepare the way for Sienkiewicz’s depiction of the Jews as fanatically opposed to the upstart religion and as deeply involved in the events that eventually lead to its violent suppression.[3]
As Vinicius delves more and more
deeply into the mystery of the “oriental superstitions” of which he has heard
so many confusing accounts, he wonders why the Christians are forced to
assemble and worship secretly (he himself will witness one of their clandestine
nocturnal meetings) while the Jews “offer sacrifices in broad daylight” (202).
Chilo, whom he has hired to learn of Lygia’s whereabouts, explains that the
Jews are the Christians’ most bitter foes (“najzacietszymi nieprzyjaciólmi”)
and informs him that even before Nero came to the throne the two religions were
so vehemently at odds with one another that the emperor Claudius felt compelled
to expel “all the Jews.” With the rescinding of the decree of banishment most
of the exiles returned to the city. Yet, according to Chilo, “the Christians
hide from the Jews and from the populace, which ... suspects them of crimes
and hates them” (202).[4] Later even more details of this interconfessional hostility are
revealed. Chilo tells Vinicius that “lately ... the Jews have begun to
persecute the Christians cruelly.” They are in a position to do so, he says,
because they feel more confident and secure “thanks to Augusta’s patronage,”
that is, because of the alleged Jewish sympathies of Poppaea, the emperor’s
wife. Though no edict has been issued against the Christians, he continues,
“the Jews accuse them before the city prefect of murdering children, of worshipping
an ass, and of proclaiming a teaching not approved by the Senate.” The matter
does not end with accusations, however. The Jews are also said to “beat them
and attack their houses of worship so fiercely that the Christians are forced
to hide from them” (430). In the end the combination of Jewish hatred and the
antipathy of the Roman mob leads to the arrest, torture, and public execution
of a sizeable portion of the Christian population of the city.
In his treatment of the Jewish role in the conflict between pagans and Christians, Sienkiewicz does not confine himself to vague allusions to social tensions or to unverified rumors of intolerance and physical abuse. He also introduces several characters into his story who are either Jewish, partly Jewish, or sympathetic to Judaism. Significantly, not one of them could be described as positive. The only exceptions are those few who have renounced the faith in which they have been born. Such, for example, is the boy Nazarius, a Jewish convert to Christianity, who has an endearingly childish attachment to the beautiful Lygia. Stung with jealousy by his adolescent attentions, Vinicius reminds his beloved that the Greeks call people like Nazarius “Jewish dogs,” to which Lygia gently replies, “I don’t know what the Greeks call them; but I do know that Nazarius is a Christian and my brother” (275). By contrast the unconverted Jews and those who show themselves favorable to them are given no part in this brotherhood.
Undoubtedly one of the most despicable characters in Quo Vadis? is Poppaea. Though not an ethnic Jew, she is frequently associated with the Jewish community. Early in the novel Petronius repeats the rumor that has been circulating throughout the city that “Poppaea supposedly professes the religion of the Jews and believes in evil spirits” (129). The truth of the rumor is confirmed toward the end of the book when, confronted with the possibility of her husband’s overthrow and concerned more for her own fate than for his, she turns for advice to her confidantes and to “the Jewish priests.” The choice of the latter is natural enough since “it was universally surmised that she had professed belief in Jehova for several years” (457). The opinion that Poppaea was on friendly terms with the Jews derives no doubt from a passage in Josephus in which he attributes to her the release of some unjustly arrested Jewish priests and adds that he himself had received “large gifts” from her.[5] Few historians today infer from this that Poppaea was friendly toward the Jews in general, much less that she was a Jew herself.[6] Indeed, the passage is far too sparse to warrant such conclusions. What, then, is the source of Sienkiewicz’s notion that the Jewish community of Rome had a fervent advocate in the imperial palace? Some possible answers will be offered later in this article. For now. suffice it to say that Poppaea’s Judaism is a potent factor in the generally anti-Jewish ethos of Quo Vadis? The fact that such an utterly immoral and unscrupulous character (indeed she manages to make even her notorious husband look appealing on occasion) professes “belief in Jehova” is the most damning comment possible on the religion of the Jews.
The compositional and ideological purpose of the amicable bonds Sienkiewicz establishes between the unsavory Poppaea and the Jewish leadership becomes manifest in one of the most crucial scenes in the novel, a scene in which the full extent of Jewish hatred of the Christians is plainly revealed. At the time of the great fire in the summer of A.D. 64, Poppaea brings two rabbis to the palace, who greet Nero with the most shamelessly unctuous flattery: “Hail, monarch of monarchs, and king of kings, hail, ruler of the world and guardian of the chosen people, caesar, lion among men, whose reign is like the brilliance of the sun, like the cedar of Lebanon, and like a spring, and like a palm, and like the balm of Jericho” (466). Eager to find a scapegoat for the guilt that is properly his, Nero asks them whether they blame the Christians for the terrible destruction wrought by the conflagration. At first their reply is cautious, but it quickly becomes a stinging condemnation: “Lord, we accuse them only of being enemies of the Law, enemies of the human race, enemies of Rome and of you, and of long threatening the city and the world with fire” (467). To be convinced of the truth of their words they refer the emperor to Chilo, “whose lips are not tainted by lies since the blood of the chosen people flowed in his mother’s veins” (467). That the unabashedly mendacious and unprincipled Chilo is partly Jewish and that he is recommended as a reliable source of information on the Christians serves only to underscore the wickedness of the rabbis who have just filled the emperor’s ears with the most vicious and ominous insinuations.
Since Quo Vadis? first appeared, there has been much discussion of the accuracy of Sienkiewicz’s depictions of life in ancient Rome and especially of his treatment of the primitive Church. In view of his scrupulous research and the careful attention he gives even to the minutest details of Roman realia, it is not surprising that the majority of literary critics have been favorably impressed by the results of his labors. Among professional historians (especially among those of the twentieth century), however, one finds little agreement even on the most fundamental assumptions underlying Sienkiewicz’s approach to his historical material. Three questions in particular are critically important in this connection: First, was Nero responsible, directly or indirectly, for the fire that destroyed much of the city of Rome in July of 64? Second, did he blame the Christians for the fire and initiate a persecution of them? And third, did the leaders of the Jewish community urge him to shift the blame to the hated “new sect”? Despite the obscure intimations found in Tacitus and the common judgment of many scholars subsequent to him, the historians of our own time are inclined to answer the first question negatively. B. H. Warmington, for example, absolves Nero of all responsibility for the fire and even makes those who believe him guilty (such as Sienkiewicz) seem naive when he comments: “It need hardly be said that the charge of arson has been universally disbelieved by modern scholars.”[7] To the second question he likewise gives a negative response, denying that the Christians were accused of the crime or that the deaths of Saints Peter and Paul or any of the other Roman martyrs had anything to do with the destruction of the city.[8] Miriam T. Griffin, who is also an authority on the reign of Nero, rejects Warmington’s revisionist reply to the second question and takes for granted the link between the great fire and the ensuing persecutions of the Christians.[9] In the same vein, Warren Carroll does not even contest the widespread belief that the Christians were blamed for the catastrophe and made to suffer the cruel penalties imposed by Nero and described by Tacitus.[10]
The third of the three questions raised above is by far the most critical to the present study: Were the Jews instrumental in the launching of the first general persecution of the Christian church? Some scholars deny that there is any credible evidence for such a conclusion.[11] Others do not even deal with the issue, as if it were thoroughly unworthy of any serious scientific investigation.[12] The number of contemporary historians who give it some consideration is exceedingly small. One of them, E. Mary Smallwood, does not rule out the possibility of a Jewish connection between the fire and the persecution.[13] W. H. C. Frend goes so far as to assert that the persecution represents the triumph of those members of the Jewish community who sought to stamp out the hated new faith.[14]
A summary of the opinions expressed and defended by the majority of twentieth-century specialists would lead to the following conclusions: First, Nero blamed the Christians for the fire whether or not he himself ordered the burning of the city; second, there was a persecution of the Christians, although it is not entirely clear that it was connected with the fire; and third, the Jews played no role in the persecution. On the third point, as we have seen, Sienkiewicz held an entirely different opinion. What, one wonders, were the sources of his information regarding the Jewish-Christian antagonism he describes so vividly in Quo Vadis? Or does his attitude stem solely from a personal quirk? If personal hostility toward the Jews did influence his portrayal of them in the novel, it is also true that his extensive research into the available historical data only confirmed whatever preconceived notions he may have had on the subject. Apart from his readings of Tacitus, Suetonius, and Petronius, Sienkiewicz studied the writings of contemporary French and Polish historians.[15] Among his French sources we find the name of Paul Allard, who, in his book Histoire des Persécutions pendant les deux premiers siècles, deals with the persecutions of the early Church. Allard cautiously posits a causal connection between Jewish enmity toward the Christians and the beginning of Nero’s persecution: “Would it be going too far to say that she [Poppaea] interceded with her coreligionists and that either she or one of her Hebrew servants [“de race hébraïque”] who proliferated [“pullulant”] at the palace steered Nero’s gaze toward the Christians...?”[16] Sienkiewicz evidently believed that Allard’s provocative suggestion would not be “going too far,” since that is precisely what happens in Quo Vadis? Poppaea, whose Judaism is reported and then affirmed, does indeed induce Nero to find a convenient target for the wrath of the crowd, and her target coincides perfectly with the interests of the Jewish priests she has befriended.
There is one striking feature shared by all three scholars—Allard, Frend, and Smallwood—who have been cited as supporters of the theory that the Jews influenced Nero in his decision to vent his fury on the Christians. Each one cites the epistle of St. Clement of Rome to the Corinthians (written in the last decade of the first century) as evidence of Jewish culpability. Indeed, Clement’s letter seems to be the primary (though not exclusive) witness of Christian antiquity in this regard. That Sienkiewicz was aware of its existence is beyond dispute. If he did not encounter it during his examination of ancient historical records, he undoubtedly knew of it from the more recent sources he consulted—from Allard in particular.
The importance of the epistle of St. Clement becomes obvious when we consider a key passage in which the author seems to allude to the persecution of the Church in his own lifetime. He is almost certainly referring to the Neronian persecution when he writes: “Let us take the noble examples of our own generation. It was due to jealousy and envy that the greatest and most holy pillars [Saints Peter and Paul?] were persecuted and fought to the death.”[17] In the section immediately following this one he expands on his remark: “These men who had led holy lives were joined by a great multitude of the elect that suffered numerous indignities and tortures through jealousy and thus became illustrious examples among us. Owing to jealousy, persecuted Danaids and Dircae suffered frightful and abominable outrages.”[18] The key words in both passages are “envy” and “jealousy.” Frend shows that St. Clement’s use of these words echoes analogous phraseology in the Scriptures.[19] The most noteworthy example of this can be found in Matthew 27:18, where the evangelist explains Jesus’ arrest in this way: “For he [Pilate] knew that they had delivered him up out of envy.” There can be no doubt that it is the Jews whom St. Matthew is accusing of envy; that is almost certainly the meaning of St. Clement’s words as well. Allard even refers to the Jews’ “selfish [“intéressée”] jealousy,” which “turned the emperor’s hypocritcal anger against the Christians, many of them of Jewish origin, who lived in the districts [of the city] that had been spared” by the fire.[20] In short, the Jews of Rome appealed to the emperor to destroy the Christians just as, only three decades before, their brethren in Jerusalem had demanded that Pilate crucify Jesus Christ. Whether or not all of this can be deduced from the remarks of St. Clement is a debatable point; but that Sienkiewicz accepted this interpretation of the historical events St. Clement describes is strongly suggested by the details of his narrative.
Though the broad conclusions Allard draws from St. Clement’s references to the religious persecutions of the first century correspond perfectly to Sienkiewicz’s own thinking on the subject, there is no clear evidence that the French scholar exerted a direct influence on the Polish novelist. On the other hand, it is possible to demonstrate the influence of another Frenchman, Ernest Renan, and especially of his book L’Antéchrist. This has been done very persuasively by the great Polish literary scholar Julian Krzyzanowski, who claims that among Sienkiewicz’s principal historical sources Renan occupied a position of honor on a par with Tacitus, Suetonius, and Dio Cassius.[21] Evidence of Renan’s influence is scattered throughout Quo Vadis?, though one curious example of it will suffice here. Renan asserts, without any substantial historical evidence, that Saints Peter and Paul were not the only apostles in Rome at the time of the Neronian persecution. According to him, Peter had come to the city “with an entire company of apostles” [“avec toute une société apostolique”].[22] Later the assertion becomes a bit more specific when Renan hints that St. John may have been in the city and may have witnessed the martyrdom of his fellow Christians (197–98). In Quo Vadis? Chilo, who has been spying on the Christians at Poppaea’s behest, reports to her that he has met not only Peter and Paul but also “the son of Zebedee, Linus and Cletus, and many others” (469). The “son of Zebedee,” of course, is St. John the Apostle, while Linus and Cletus are the first two successors of St. Peter as bishop of Rome. The identity of the “many others” can only be surmised. Lest anyone doubt the truth of Chilo’s words (and there is good reason to since he is a shamelessly obsequious liar), the narrator tells us that after having seen Jesus on the road outside Rome, Peter returns to the city and is received with joy and amazement by “Paul, John, Linus, and all the faithful” (638).[23]
On the more essential question of Jewish involvement in the roundup and persecution of the Christian community, Renan takes several positions that are faithfully reproduced on the pages of Sienkiewicz’s novel. First, he picks up the hint dropped by Josephus and assumes that Poppaea was at least sympathetic toward the Jews and concerned for their well-being: “Despite her crimes Poppaea kept in her heart an instinctive religion which inclined her toward Judaism” (133). From this premise he proceeds to his second, which is likewise shared by Sienkiewicz, namely, that the Jews “were very powerful with the emperor and Poppaea” (43). His third assumption, stated very tersely at the beginning of L’Antéchrist, is that Nero was surrounded at court by “intriguing Jews” (13). While Renan remains ambiguous concerning the claim that the Jews used their influence with the emperor and his wife to annihilate their enemies, it is obvious from the other two propositions that they were in a favorable position to do so. Combining the data culled from Renan with the accusation implicit in the epistle of St. Clement to the Corinthians and with the sinister conjectures of such contemporary historians as Allard, Sienkiewicz may easily have concluded that the great persecution that followed in the wake of the fire of A.D. 64 was the direct result of the increasingly bitter conflict between church and synagogue.
It would be easy enough to accuse Sienkiewicz of anti-Semitism in Quo Vadis? After all, there is not a single friendly reference to the Jews anywhere in the novel. What is worse, nearly every mention of them is tied to some ugly rumor or malicious deed. But it must be recalled that Sienkiewicz merely followed the received opinions of his day. While historians in our time attach little importance to the observations of Josephus regarding Poppaea and the Jews or to St. Clement’s insistence that the first general persecution was the fruit of “envy” and “jealousy” (or even to Tacitus’s account of the persecution of the Christians and his dark intimations of Nero’s guilt), the testimony of the ancients was taken much more seriously in the last century than in the present one. Renan, whom Sienkiewicz greatly respected, repeated many of the things others had already said. While the novel’s unrelieved disdain toward the Jews may indeed be attributable to Sienkiewicz’s own attitudes, its principal accusation against them—their complicity in the suppression of the “new sect”—derives from the historical evidence available to him, evidence that was accepted not only by him but by a great many others as well.
NOTES
[1]
Indeed, Aleksander Hertz claims that Sienkiewicz does not even deal with the
Jews in his writings. See The Jews in
Polish Culture, trans. Richard Lourie (Evanston, Ill.: Northwestern
University Press, 1988) 213.
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[2]
Henryk Sienkiewicz, Quo Vadis?
(Warsaw: Pan´stwowy Instytut
Wydawniczy, 1961) 163. All subsequent references to this edition will be given
parenthetically in the text. All translations are mine.
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[3]
Chilo also tells Vinicius that St. Paul is a prisoner in Rome “as a result of a
complaint lodged by the Jews” (173).
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[4]
In another passage we are told that “not long ago, when the Jews started
rioting out of hatred for the Christians, the emperor Claudius, unable to tell
one from the other, expelled the Jews” (323).
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[5]
The Life in Josephus, 9 vols. (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press;
London: William Heinemann, 1961) I: 8.
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[6]
Hans Conzelmann, for example, sees no evidence that Poppaea was pro-Jewish. See
Gentiles, Jews, Christians: Polemics and
Apologetics in the Graeco-Roman Era, trans. M. Eugene Boring (Minneapolis:
Fortress, 1992) 30.
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[7]
B. H. Warmington, Nero: Reality and
Legend (New York: Norton, 1969) 124.
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[8]
Warmington 125. Edward T. Salmon agrees that Nero was not an incendiary but
affirms that there was indeed a persecution of the Church during his reign. See
A History of the Roman World, 4th ed.
(London: Methuen; New York: Barnes & Noble, 1963) 181.
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[9]
Miriam T. Griffin, Nero: The End of a
Dynasty (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1984) 15.
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[10]
Warren Carrol, The Founding of
Christendom, vol. I of A History of
Christendom (Front Royal, Virginia: Christendom College Press, 1985)
423–25.
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[11]
See, for example, Robert Wilde, The
Treatment of the Jews in the Greek and Christian Writers of the First Three
Centuries (Washington: Catholic University of America Press, 1949) 144;
Henry J. Leon, The Jews of Ancient Rome (Philadelphia:
Jewish Publication Society of America, 1960) 28.
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[12]
See, for example, Michael Grant, Nero:
Emperor in Revolt (New York: American Heritage Press, 1970) 159-61; Gerard
Walter, Nero (London: George Allen
& Unwin, 1957) 144–74.
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[13]
E. Mary Smallwood, The Jews under Roman
Rule (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1976) 219.
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[14]
W. H. C. Frend, Martyrdom and Persecution
in the Early Church: A Study of a Conflict from the Maccabees to Donatus
(Garden City, NY: Anchor, 1967) 126.
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[15]
For Sienkiewicz’s sources, see Mieczyslaw Giergielewicz, Henryk Sienkiewicz (New York: Twayne, 1968) 127–28; Stefan
Majchrowski, Sienkiewicz (Torun´: Ludowa Spóldzielnia Wydawnicza,
1975) 206–207.
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[16]
Paul Allard, Histoire des Persécutions
pendant les deux premiers siècles, 4th ed. (Paris: J. Gabalda, 1911) 43.
All translations are mine.
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[17]
St. Clement, in Ancient Christian Writers
(New York: Newman Press, 1946) I:12.
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[18]
St. Clement, in Ancient Christian Writers
I: 13. Dirce, a mythological figure who was tied by her hair to a bull, is
also mentioned in Quo Vadis? (562).
Her importance lies in the fact that Lygia is made to endure an ordeal similar
to hers. Ernest Renan refers to this torture in his L’Antéchrist, discussed below (170).
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[19]
Frend 126.
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[20]
Allard 43.
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[21]
Julian Krzyzanowski, Twórczosc
Henryka Sienkiewicza (Warsaw: Panstwowy
Instytut Wydawniczy, 1970) 168.
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[22]
Ernest Renan, L’Antéchrist, 3d ed.
(Paris: Michel Lévy Frères, 1873) 27. All subsequent references to this edition
will be given parenthetically in the text. All translations are mine.
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[23]
In addition we are told that when St. Peter is arrested, the police find
Timothy (“an assistant of Paul of Tarsus”) and Linus in the same house (632).
It is also interesting to note that when one of Nero’s freed men is exposed as
a Christian, he is found to be carrying letters (epistles?) written by Peter,
Paul, James, Jude, and John (631).
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