Christianity grew—in the crowded cosmopolitanised seaports7 and cities of the Roman empire—in Antioch, Alexandria, Thessalonica, Cyrene, Byzantium, Rome. Its highway was the sea. Though partly Jewish in origin, it yet appears from its earliest days essentially8 as a universal and international religion. Therefore we may gain some approximate knowledge of its origin and antecedents by considering the religious condition of these various great towns at the time when Christianity began to spring spontaneous in their midst. We can arrive at some idea of the product itself by observing the environment in which it was evolved.
Once more, Christianity grew—for the most part among 363the lower orders of the cosmopolitan5 seaports. It fashioned itself among the slaves, the freedmen, the Jewish, Syrian, and African immigrants, the Druidical Gauls and Britons of Rome, the petty shopkeepers, the pauperised clients, the babes and sucklings of the populous9 centres. Hence, while based upon Judaism, it gathered hospitably10 into itself all those elements of religious thought and religious practice that were common to the whole world, and especially to the Eastern Mediterranean12 basin. Furthermore, it gathered hospitably into itself in particular those elements which belonged to the older and deeper-seated part of the popular religions, rather than those which belonged to the civilised, Hellenised, and recognised modifications13 of the state religions. It was a democratic rather than an official product. We have to look, therefore, at the elder far more than the younger stratum14 of religious thought in the great cities, for the influences which went to mould Christianity. I do not deny, indeed, that the new faith was touched and tinged15 in all its higher parts by beautiful influences from Neo-Platonism, Alexandrian Judaism, and other half-mystical philosophic16 systems; but for its essential groundwork we have still to go to the root-stratum of religious practice and belief in Antioch and Alexandria, in Phrygia and Galatia, in Jerusalem and Rome. It based itself above all on sacrament, sacrifice, atonement, and resurrection. Yet again, Christianity originated first of all among the Jewish, Syrian, or Semitic population of these great towns of the empire, at the very moment of its full cosmopolitanisation; it spread rapidly from them, no doubt at first with serious modifications, to the mixed mass of sailors, slaves, freedwomen, and townspeople who formed apparently17 its earliest adherents18. Hence, we must look in it for an intimate blend of Judaism with the central ideas of the popular religions, Aryan or Hamitic, of the Mediterranean basin. We must expect in it much that was common in Syria, Asia Minor19, Hellas, and Egypt,—something even from Gaul, Hispania, Carthage. Its first o w great 364apostle, if we may believe our authorities, was one Saul or Paul, a half-Hellenised Jew of Semitic and commercial Tarsus in Cilicia, and a Roman citizen. Its first great churches sprang up in the busy ports and marts of the Levant. Its very name of Christian1 was given to it first in the crowded and cosmopolitan city of Antioch.
It is here, then, in these huge slave-peopled hives of Hellenised and Romanised commerce, that we must look for the mother-ideas of Christianity.
Antioch was quite undoubtedly20 in the earliest times the principal cradle of the new religion. I do not mean that Jerusalem was not very probably the place where men first began to form a small sect4 of esoteric Christ-worshippers, or that Galilee was not the region where the Christ himself most largely lived and taught, if indeed such a person ever really existed. In those matters the traditions handed down to us in the relatively21 late Gospels may be perfectly22 correct: and again, they may not. But Christianity as we know it, the Christianity of the Pauline epistles and the later writings, such as the Gospels and the works of the Fathers, must have been essentially a cult23 of wider Syrian and Gentile growth. It embraces in itself elements which doubtless lingered on in secluded24 corners more or less among the mass of the people even in Jud忙a itself, though discountenanced by the adherents of the priestly and official Jahweh-worship; but which were integral parts of the popular and even the recognised religion throughout the whole of northern Syria.
Antioch, where Christianity thus took its first feeble steps, was a handsome and bustling25 commercial city, the capital of the Greek Seleucid kings, and the acknowledged metropolis26 of the Syrian area. At the time of Paul (if there was a Paul), it probably contained half a million people; it was certainly the largest town in Asia, and worthy27 to be compared with Rome itself in the splendour of its buildings. Many things about its position are deserving of notice. It stood upon the banks of the Orontes, a 365sacred stream, ensconced in a rich agricultural plain, fourteen miles from the river’s mouth. Its Ostia was at Selucia, the harbour whence flowed the entire export trade of Syria and the east towards Hellas and Italy. The Mediterranean in front connected it with Rome, Alexandria, Asia Minor, Greece; the caravan28 routes across the Syrian desert in the rear put it in communication with the bazars of Mesopotamia and the remoter east. It was thus the main entrep么t of the through trade between two important worlds. The Venice of its time, it lay at the focal point where the highroads of Europe and of Asia converged29.
Scholars of repute have pointed30 out the fact that even earlier than the days of Paul, Buddhist31 ideas from India seem to have dribbled32 through and affected33 the Syrian world, as Zoroastrian ideas a little later dribbled through and affected the thought of Alexandria: and some importance has been attached to this infiltration34 of motives35 from the mystical east. Now, I do not care to deny that budding Christianity may have been much influenced on its ritual and still more on its ethical36 side by floating elements of Buddhist opinion: that the infancy37 of the Christ may have been nursed by the Magi. But on the whole I think the facts we have just been considering as to the manufacture of artificial human gods and the nature and meaning of piacular sacrifices will suffice to show that Christianity was chiefly a plant of home growth. The native soil contained already every essential element that was needed to feed it—the doctrine38 of the Incarnation, the death of the Man-God, the atoning39 power of his Blood, the Resurrection and Ascension. So that, while allowing due weight to this peculiar40 international position of Antioch, as the double-faced Janus-gate of Europe and Asia, I am not inclined to think that points peculiar to Buddhism41 need have exercised any predominant influence in the evolution of the new religion. For we must remember that Buddhism itself did but subsume into its own fabric42 ideas 366which were common to Peru and Mexico, to Greece and India, to Syria and Egypt, and which came out in fresh forms, surging up from below, in the creed43 of Christendom. If anything is clear from our previous researches it is this—that the world has never really had more than one religion—“of many names, a single central shape,” as the poet phrases it.
The Syrian people, Semites by race and cult, had fallen, like all the rest of the eastern world, under the Hellenic dominion44 of the successors of Alexander. A quick and subtle folk, very pliable45 and plastic, they underwent rapid and facile Hellenisation. It was an easy task for them to accept Greek culture and Greek religion. The worshipper of Adonis had little difficulty in renaming his chief god as Dionysus and continuing to practise his old rites46 and ceremonies to the newly-named deity47 after the ancestral pattern. The Astarte whom the east had given to Hellas under the alias48 of Aphrodite, came back again as Aphrodite to Astarte’s old sanctuaries49. Identifications of gods and cults50 were but simple matters, where so many gods were after all essentially similar in origin and function. Thus the easy-going Syrian had few scruples51 about practising his primitive52 ceremonies under foreign titles, or admitting to the hospitality of his Semitic temples the Hellenic deities53 of the reigning54 Antiochi.
The Seleucids, however, did not fare so well in their attempt to impose the alien gods on the fierce Jehovistic zealots of the southern mountains. Antiochus IV. endeavoured in vain to force the cults of intrusive55 Hellenism on his new kingdom of Palestine. He reckoned without his hosts. The populace of Jerusalem would not away with his “idolatrous” rites—would not permit the worship of Zeus and Pallas, of Artemis and Aphrodite, to usurp56 a place in the holy city of Jahweh. The rebellion of the Maccabees secured at least the religious independence of Jud忙a from the early Seleucid period down to the days of Vespasian and Titus. Lower Syria remained true in her arid57 hills 367to the exclusive and monotheistic cult of the God of Israel. And at the same time the Jew spread everywhere over the surrounding countries, carrying with him not only his straw and his basket, but also his ingrained and ineradicable prejudices.
In Antioch, then, after the Roman absorption of Syria, a most cosmopolitan religion appears to have existed, containing mingled58 Semitic and Hellenic elements, half assimilated to one another, in a way that was highly characteristic of the early empire. And among the popular cults of the great city we must certainly place high those of Adonis and Dionysus, of Aphrodite-Astarte, and of the local gods or goddesses, the Baalim and Ashtareth, such as the maiden59 who, as we learnt from Malalas, was sacrificed at the original foundation of the city, and ever after worshipped as its Tyche or Fortune. In other words, the conception of the human god, of the corn and wine god, of the death of the god, and of his glorious resurrection, must have all been perfectly familiar ideas to the people of Antioch and of Syria in general.
Let us note here, too, that the particular group of Jah-weh-worshippers among whom the Christ is said to have found his personal followers60, were not people of the priestly type of Jerusalem, but Galil忙an peasants of the northern mountains, separated from the most orthodox set of Jews by the intrusive wedge of heretical Samaritans, and closely bordering on the heathen Phoenician seaboard—“the coasts of Tyre and Sidon.” Here Judaism and heathenism marched together; here Jahweh had his worshippers among the fishers of the lake, while Hellenism had fixed61 itself in the statelier villas62 of Tiberias and Ptole-mais.
Alexandria was another of the great cosmopolitan seaport6 towns where Christianity made its earliest converts, and assumed not a few of its distinctive63 tenets. Now, in Alexandria, Hellenism and the immemorially ancient Egyptian religion found themselves face to face at very close 368quarters. It is true, the town in its historical aspect was mainly Greek, founded by the great Macedonian himself, and priding itself on its pure Hellenic culture. But the mass of the lower orders who thronged64 its alleys65 must surely have consisted of more or less mongrel Egyptians, still clinging with all the old Egyptian conservatism to the ideas and practices and rites of their fathers. Besides these, we get hints of a large cosmopolitan seafaring population, among whom strange faiths and exotic gods found ready acceptance. Beside the stately forms of the Greek pantheon, and the mummified or animal-headed Egyptian deities, the imported Syrian worship of Adonis had acquired a firm footing; the annual festival of the slaughtered66 god was one of the principal holidays; and other Syrian or remoter faiths had managed to secure their special following. The hybrid67 Serapis occupied the stateliest fane of the hybrid city. In that huge and busy hive, indeed, every form of cult found a recognised place, and every creed was tolerated which did not inculcate interference with the equal religious freedom of others.
The Ptolemaic family represents in itself this curious adaptability68 of the Gr忙co-Egyptian Alexandrian mind. At Alexandria and in the Delta69, the kings appear before us as good Hellenes, worshipping their ancestral deities in splendid temples; but in the Thebaid, the god Ptolemy or the goddess Cleopatra erected70 buildings in honor of Ptah or Khem in precisely71 the old Egyptian style, and appeared on their propyla in the guise72 of Pharaohs engaged in worshipping Amen-Ra or Osiris. The great Alexander himself had inaugurated this system when he gave himself out as the son of “Zeus Ammon”; and his indirect representatives carried it on throughout with a curious dualism which excused itself under the veil of arbitrary identifications. Thus Serapis himself was the dead Apis bull, invested with the attributes of an Osiris and of the Hellenic Hades; while Amen-Ra was Zeus in an Egyptian avatar.
The large Jewish colony at Alexandria also prepared the way 369for the ultimate admixture of Neo-Platonism in the Christian faith; while the Egyptian belief in Triads of gods formed the groundwork for the future doctrine of the Trinity, so doggedly73 battled for by the Alexandrian Athanasius. It is true that Amp猫re and Preller have strenuously74 denied any Egyptian admixture in the philosophy of Alexandria; and their reasoning may be conclusive75 enough as to the upper stratum of thought: but it must at least be admitted that popular belief in the city of the Ptolemies must have been deeply coloured by the ideas and creeds76 of its Egyptian substratum. Now, in the growth of Christianity, it was the people who counted, not the official classes, the learned, or the philosophic. We must not attribute to the population of the East End of London the theology of Pusey or the evolutionism of Herbert Spencer.
Christianity would seem also to have taken part at least of its form in Rome. And as Roman influence extended likewise over every portion of the vast empire, I must say a very few words here about the origin and growth of the Roman religion.
That religion, as it comes upon us in the few glimpses we get of its early Italic and pre-Hellenised form, was one of the rudest and most primitive type, almost savage78 in its extreme simplicity79. It knew hardly any great gods by name: the few deities it possessed80, it expressed only for the most part by adjectival names. Few, I say, as to type, for as to number of individuals, their name indeed was legion; they pervaded81 the whole, world in that reckless multiplicity which distinguishes the simple ghosts or spirits of early hunting or pastoral peoples. With the Romans, this multiplicity, ubiquity, and vagueness survived into a relatively settled and civilised agricultural condition. A vast number of small departmental gods, with few or no great ones—that is the first state of the Roman pantheon.
The central point of old Roman religion was clearly the household; the family ghosts or lares were the most honoured 370gods. We may instructively compare Mr. Chalmers’s account of the theology of New Guinea. Beside these ancestral shades, or almost identical with them, came the p茅nates or practical deities of the store-room, perhaps the representatives of the victims slain82 as foundation-ghosts at the first erection of the building. Of these two, the Lares were undoubtedly the departed ancestors of the family; they lived near the spot where they were first buried (for the old Romans were buriers), and they still presided over the household as in life, like its fathers and senators. They were worshipped daily with prayers and simple offerings of food and drink; their masks or busts83 which hung on the wall were perhaps the representatives, or in ancient days the coverings, of the old oracular heads or skulls84; for the skulls themselves may have been preserved in wax, as so often elsewhere at an earlier period. * The Penates, which were worshipped with the Lares, seem to have stood for the family spirit in a more generalised way; they represent the continuity and persistence85 of its Fortune; and therefore, if we may trust the analogy of the Fortune of a town, they are probably the ghosts of the foundation or renewal86 victims. In judging of all this, we cannot attach too great importance to the analogy of Negritto and Polynesian customs.
* To this use of the oracular head I would venture also to
refer the common employment of small masks as amulets87: an
employment which, as Bottiger rightly remarks, explains “the
vast number of such subjects met with in antique gems88.”
Other deities are more public. But most of them seem to belong to the simplest and most immediately ghost-like stratum. They had to do with sowing, reaping, and vintage—in other words, were corn or wine gods. Or else they had to do with the navigable river, the Tiber, and the port of Ostia, which lay at its mouth—in other words, were spring and river gods. Or else they had to do with war and expeditions—in other words were slaughtered campaign gods of the Iphigenia pattern, Bellonas and battle-victims.
Among 371this dim crowd of elder manufactured deities, Saturnus, the sowing god, was most likely an annual corn-victim; his adjectival name by itself suggests that conclusion. Terminus, the boundary god, is already familiar to us. About these two at least we can hardly be mistaken. A red-haired man (as in Egypt) no doubt preceded as yearly corn-victim the red-haired puppies still slaughtered for the crops within the ken77 of Festus. Seia, Segetia, Tutilina, the successive corn-deities, we have already considered. They seem to equate89 with the successive maidens90 slain for the corn in other communities, and still commemorated91 in our midst by the corn-baby and the corn-wife. At each stage of age in the corn, a corresponding stage in the age of the human victim was considered desirable. But how reconcile this idea with the existence of numerous petty functional92 deities—gods of the door and the hinge?—with the Cunina who guards the child in the cradle, and the Statina who takes care of him when he begins to stand? I answer, all these are but adjectival gods, mere93 ghosts or spirits, unknown in themselves, but conceived as exercising this particular function. “The god that does so-and-so” is just a convenient expression, no more; it serves its purpose, and that was enough for the practical Roman. How readily they could put up with these rough-and-ready identifications we know in the case of Aius Locutius and of the Deus Rediculus.
Each Terminus and each Silvanus is thus the god or protecting ghost of each boundary stone or each sacred grove—not a proper name, but a class—not a particular god, but a kind of spirit. The generalised and abstract gods are later unifications of all the individuals included in each genus. The Janus, I take it, was at first the victim once sacrificed annually94 before each gate of the city, as he is sacrificed still on the west coast of Africa: as the god of opening, he was slaughtered at the opening of every new year; and the year conversely opened its course with the month sacred to the god of opening. Perhaps he was also slain 372as fortune at the beginning of each war. The Vesta is the hearth-goddess; and every house had its Vesta; perhaps originally a slaughtered hearth-victim. Every man had in like manner his Genius, an ancestral protecting spirit; the corresponding guardian95 of the woman was her Juno; they descend96 to Christianity, especially in its most distinctive Roman form, as the guardian angels. Mars was a corn-spirit; only later was he identified with the expeditionary god. His annual expulsion as the human scapegoat97 has already been considered. The Jupiter or Jovis was a multiple wine-god, doubtless in every case the annual victim slain, Dionysus-wise, for the benefit of the vineyard. Each village and each farm had once its Jovis, specially11 worshipped, and, I doubt not, originally slaughtered, at the broaching98 of the year’s first wine-cask in April. But his name shows that, as usual, he was also identified with that very ancient Sky-god who is common to all the Aryan race; the particular Jovis being probably sacrificed, himself to himself, before the old Sky-god’s altar, as elsewhere the Dionysus-victim at the shrine99 of Dionysus.
These identifications, I know, may sound fanciful to mere classical scholars, unacquainted with the recent advances in anthropology100, and I would not have ventured to propound101 them at an earlier stage of our involved argument; but now that we have seen and learned to recognise the extraordinary similarity of all pantheons the whole world over, I think the exact way these deities fall into line with the wall-gods, gate-gods, corn-gods, wine-gods, boundary-gods, forest-gods, fountain-gods, and river-gods everywhere else must surely be allowed some little weight in analogically placing them.
The later Roman religion only widens, if at all, from within its own range, by the inclusion of larger and larger tribal102 elements. Thus the Deus Fidius, who presided over each separate alliance, I take to be the ghost of the victim slain to form a covenant103; just as in Africa to this day, when 373two tribes have concluded a treaty of peace, they crucify a slave “to ratify104 the bargain.” The nature of such covenant victims has been well illustrated105 by Professor Robertson Smith, but the growth of the covenant-gods, who finally assumed very wide importance, is a subject which considerations of space prevent me from including in our present purview106. The victim, at first no doubt human, became later a theanthropic animal; as did also the Jo vis-victim and the representatives of the other adjectival or departmental deities. The Roman Mars and the Sabine Ouirinus may readily have been amalgamated107 into a Mars Ouirinus, if we remember that Mars is probably a general name, and that any number of Martes may at any time have been sacrificed. The Jovis of the city of Rome thus comes at last to be the greatest and most powerful Jupiter of them all, and the representative of the Roman union. Under Hellenising influences, however, all these minor gods get elevated at last into generalised deities; and the animal victims offered to them become mere honorific or piacular sacrifices, hardly identified at all with the great images who receive them.
The Hellenising process went so far, indeed, at Rome that the old Roman religion grew completely obscured, and almost disappeared, save in its domestic character. In the home, the Lares still held the first rank. Elsewhere, Bacchus took the place of Liber, while the traits of Hermes were fastened on the adjectival Roman bargain-spirit Mercurius. Yet even so, the Roman retained his primitive belief in corn and wine gods, under the newer guises108; his Ceres he saw as one with the Attic109 Demeter; his rural ceremonies still continued unchanged by the change of attributes that infected and transfigured the city temples. Moreover, the Romans, and later the cosmopolitan population of Rome, borrowed gods and goddesses freely from without in ever increasing numbers. In very early days, they borrowed from Etruria; later, they borrowed Apollo from Greece, and (by an etymological110 blunder) 374fixed upon their own Hercules the traits of Heracles. On the occasion of a plague, they publicly summoned Asclepios, the Greek leech-god, from Epidaurus; and at the very crisis of the life-and-death conflict with Hannibal, they fetched the sacred field-stone known as Cybele, the Mother of the Gods, from Pessinus in Phrygia. The people of Pessinus with strange compliance111 let their goddess go; and the whole orgiastic cult of Attis was thus transported entire to Italian soil. The rites of the great festival were carried on at Rome almost as they had been carried on before in Phrygia; so that an Asiatic worship of the most riotous112 type found a firm official footing in the centre of the empire. The priest, indeed, was still an Asiatic, or at least not a Roman; but the expulsion of Hannibal from Italy which followed on this adoption113 of a foreign god, must have greatly increased the prestige and reputation of the alien and orgiastic deity.
The luxurious114 Aphrodite of Eryx in Sicily arrived in Rome about the same time with Cybele. Originally a Semitic goddess, she combined the Hellenic and oriental ideas, and was identified in Italy with the old Latin Venus.
Later still, yet other gods were imported from without. New deities flowed in from Asia and Africa. The population of the city under the early empire had almost ceased to be Roman, save in the upper strata115; a vast number of slaves from all parts of the world formed the lowest layer in the crowded vaults116: the middle rank was filled by Syrians, Africans, Greeks, Sicilians, Moors117, and freedmen—men of all places and races from Spain or Britain to the Euphrates and the Nile, the steppes and the desert. The Orontes, said Juvenal, had flooded the Tiber. Among this mixed mass of all creeds and colours, subfusk or golden-haired, a curious mixture of religions grew up. Some of these were mere ready-made foreign importations—Isis-worship from Egypt; Jahweh-worship from Jud忙a; strange eastern or northern or African cults from the remotest parts of Pontus or Mauritania. Others were intermixtures 375or rationalisations of older religions, such as Christianity, which mingled together Judaism and Adonis or Osiris elements; such as Gnosticism, which, starting from Zoroastrian infiltrations, kneaded all the gods of the world at last into its own supreme118 mystic and magic-god Abraxas.
Looking a little deeper through the empire in general, we see that from the time of Augustus onward119, the need for a new cosmopolitan religion, to fit the new cosmopolitan state, was beginning to be dimly felt and acknowledged. Soldiers, enlisted120 in one country, took the cult and images of their gods to another. The bull-slaying Mithra (in whom we can hardly fail to see a solar form of the bull-god, who sacrifices a bull, himself to himself, before his own altar) was worshipped here and there, as numerous bas-reliefs show, from Persia to Britain. The Gaul endeavoured to identify his own local war-gods with the Roman Mars, who had been Hellenised in turn into the duplicate presentment of the Greek Ares. The Briton saw his river-gods remodelled121 in mosaic122 into images like those of Roman Tiber, or provided with the four horses who drag the Roman Neptune123, as Neptune had borrowed the representation at least from the Greek Poseidon. And this was all the easier because everywhere alike horses were sacrificed to sea or river, in lieu of human victims; just as everywhere corn-gods were dressed in green, and everywhere wine-gods wore coronals of vine-leaves on their holy foreheads. Men felt the truth I have tried to impress, that everywhere and always there is but one religion. Attributes and origin were so much alike that worship was rapidly undergoing a cosmopolitanisation of name, as it already possessed a similarity of rites and underlying124 features. Language itself assisted this unifying125 process. In the west, as Latin spread, Latin names of gods superseded126 local ones; in the east, as Greek spread, Hellenic deities gave their titles and their beautiful forms to native images. An artificial unity127 was introduced 376and fixed by a conventional list of Greek and Roman equivalents; and in the west, as Greek art gained ground and spread, noble Greek representations of the higher gods in ideal human form became everywhere common.
But that was not enough. As the government was one, under a strong centralised despotism, it was but natural that the religion should be one also, under the rule of a. similar omnipotent128 deity. Man makes his heaven in the image of earth; his pantheon answers to his political constitution. The mediaeval hall of heaven had an imperial God, like the Othos or the Fredericks, on his regal throne, surrounded by a court of great barons129 and abbots in the angels and archangels, the saints and martyrs130: the new religions, like spiritualism and Theosophy, which spring up in the modern democratic world, are religions of free and independent spirits, hardly even theistic. The Roman empire thus demanded a single religion under a single strong god. It tended to find it, if not in the Genius of Trajan or Antonine, then in some bull-slaying Mithra or some universal Abraxas. Materialists were satisfied with the worship of the Emperor or of the city of Rome: idealists turned rather to Isis or to Christ.
One religion there was which might have answered the turn of the empire: the pure and ideal monotheism of Jud忙a. But the cult of Jahweh was too local and too national; it never extended beyond the real or adopted sons of Israel. Even so, it gained proselytes of high rank at Rome, especially among women; as regards men, the painful and degrading initiatory131 ceremony of Judaism must always have stood seriously in the way of converts. Yet in spite of this drawback, there were proselytes in all the cosmopolitan cities where the Jews were settled; men who loved their nation and had built them a synagogue. If Judaism could but get rid of its national exclusiveness, and could incorporate into its god some more of those genial132 and universal traits which he had too early shuffled133 off—if 377it could make itself less austere134, less abstract, and at the same time less local—there was a chance that it might rise to be the religion of humanity. The dream of the prophets might still come true and all the world might draw nigh to Zion.
At this critical juncture135, an obscure little sect began to appear among the Jews and Galil忙ans, in Jerusalem and Antioch, which happened to combine in a remarkable136 degree all the main requirements of a new world-religion. And whatever the cult of Jesus lacked in this respect in its first beginnings, it made up for as it went by absorption and permeation137.
It was a Catholic Church: it stood for the world, not for a tribe or a nation. It was a Holy Church: it laid great stress upon the ethical element. It was a Roman Church: it grew and prospered138 throughout the Roman empire. It made a city what was once a world. Whence it came and how it grew must be our next and final questions.
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1
Christian
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| adj.基督教徒的；n.基督教徒 | |
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disciples
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| n.信徒( disciple的名词复数 )；门徒；耶稣的信徒；（尤指）耶稣十二门徒之一 | |
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teeming
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| adj.丰富的v.充满( teem的现在分词 )；到处都是；（指水、雨等）暴降；倾注 | |
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sect
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| n.派别，宗教，学派，派系 | |
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cosmopolitan
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| adj.世界性的，全世界的，四海为家的，全球的 | |
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seaport
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| n.海港，港口，港市 | |
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seaports
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| n.海港( seaport的名词复数 ) | |
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essentially
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| adv.本质上，实质上，基本上 | |
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populous
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| adj.人口稠密的，人口众多的 | |
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hospitably
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| 亲切地，招待周到地，善于款待地 | |
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specially
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| adv.特定地；特殊地；明确地 | |
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Mediterranean
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| adj.地中海的；地中海沿岸的 | |
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modifications
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| n.缓和( modification的名词复数 )；限制；更改；改变 | |
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stratum
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| n.地层，社会阶层 | |
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tinged
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| v.（使）发丁丁声( ting的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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philosophic
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| adj.哲学的，贤明的 | |
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apparently
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| adv.显然地；表面上，似乎 | |
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adherents
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| n.支持者，拥护者( adherent的名词复数 )；党羽；徒子徒孙 | |
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minor
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| adj.较小(少)的，较次要的；n.辅修学科；vi.辅修 | |
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20
undoubtedly
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| adv.确实地，无疑地 | |
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21
relatively
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| adv.比较...地，相对地 | |
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perfectly
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| adv.完美地，无可非议地，彻底地 | |
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23
cult
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| n.异教，邪教；时尚，狂热的崇拜 | |
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secluded
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| adj.与世隔绝的；隐退的；偏僻的v.使隔开，使隐退( seclude的过去式和过去分词) | |
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25
bustling
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| adj.喧闹的 | |
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26
metropolis
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| n.首府；大城市 | |
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27
worthy
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| adj.(of)值得的，配得上的；有价值的 | |
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28
caravan
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| n.大蓬车；活动房屋 | |
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29
converged
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| v.（线条、运动的物体等）会于一点( converge的过去式 )；（趋于）相似或相同；人或车辆汇集；聚集 | |
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30
pointed
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| adj.尖的，直截了当的 | |
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31
Buddhist
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| adj./n.佛教的，佛教徒 | |
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32
dribbled
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| v.流口水( dribble的过去式和过去分词 )；（使液体）滴下或作细流；运球，带球 | |
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33
affected
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| adj.不自然的，假装的 | |
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34
infiltration
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| n.渗透；下渗；渗滤；入渗 | |
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35
motives
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| n.动机，目的( motive的名词复数 ) | |
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36
ethical
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| adj.伦理的，道德的，合乎道德的 | |
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37
infancy
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| n.婴儿期；幼年期；初期 | |
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38
doctrine
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| n.教义；主义；学说 | |
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39
atoning
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| v.补偿，赎（罪）( atone的现在分词 )；补偿，弥补，赎回 | |
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40
peculiar
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| adj.古怪的，异常的；特殊的，特有的 | |
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41
Buddhism
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| n.佛教（教义） | |
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42
fabric
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| n.织物，织品，布；构造，结构，组织 | |
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43
creed
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| n.信条；信念，纲领 | |
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44
dominion
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| n.统治，管辖，支配权；领土，版图 | |
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45
pliable
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| adj.易受影响的；易弯的；柔顺的，易驾驭的 | |
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46
rites
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| 仪式，典礼( rite的名词复数 ) | |
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47
deity
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| n.神，神性；被奉若神明的人(或物) | |
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48
alias
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| n.化名；别名；adv.又名 | |
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49
sanctuaries
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| n.避难所( sanctuary的名词复数 )；庇护；圣所；庇护所 | |
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50
cults
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| n.迷信( cult的名词复数 )；狂热的崇拜；（有极端宗教信仰的）异教团体 | |
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51
scruples
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| n.良心上的不安( scruple的名词复数 )；顾虑，顾忌v.感到于心不安，有顾忌( scruple的第三人称单数 ) | |
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52
primitive
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| adj.原始的；简单的；n.原(始)人，原始事物 | |
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53
deities
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| n.神，女神( deity的名词复数 )；神祗；神灵；神明 | |
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54
reigning
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| adj.统治的，起支配作用的 | |
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55
intrusive
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| adj.打搅的；侵扰的 | |
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56
usurp
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| vt.篡夺，霸占；vi.篡位 | |
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57
arid
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| adj.干旱的；(土地)贫瘠的 | |
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58
mingled
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| 混合，混入( mingle的过去式和过去分词 )； 混进，与…交往[联系] | |
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59
maiden
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| n.少女，处女；adj.未婚的，纯洁的，无经验的 | |
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60
followers
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| 追随者( follower的名词复数 )； 用户； 契据的附面； 从动件 | |
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61
fixed
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| adj.固定的，不变的，准备好的；(计算机)固定的 | |
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62
villas
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| 别墅，公馆( villa的名词复数 )； （城郊）住宅 | |
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63
distinctive
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| adj.特别的，有特色的，与众不同的 | |
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64
thronged
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| v.成群，挤满( throng的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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65
alleys
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| 胡同，小巷( alley的名词复数 )； 小径 | |
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66
slaughtered
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| v.屠杀，杀戮，屠宰( slaughter的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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67
hybrid
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| n.(动，植）杂种，混合物 | |
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68
adaptability
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| n.适应性 | |
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69
delta
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| n.（流的）角洲 | |
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70
ERECTED
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| adj. 直立的，竖立的，笔直的 vt. 使 ... 直立，建立 | |
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71
precisely
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| adv.恰好，正好，精确地，细致地 | |
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72
guise
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| n.外表，伪装的姿态 | |
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73
doggedly
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| adv.顽强地，固执地 | |
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74
strenuously
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| adv.奋发地，费力地 | |
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75
conclusive
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| adj.最后的，结论的；确凿的，消除怀疑的 | |
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76
creeds
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| （尤指宗教）信条，教条( creed的名词复数 ) | |
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77
ken
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| n.视野，知识领域 | |
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78
savage
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| adj.野蛮的；凶恶的，残暴的；n.未开化的人 | |
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79
simplicity
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| n.简单，简易；朴素；直率，单纯 | |
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80
possessed
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| adj.疯狂的；拥有的，占有的 | |
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81
pervaded
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| v.遍及，弥漫( pervade的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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82
slain
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| 杀死，宰杀，杀戮( slay的过去分词 )； (slay的过去分词) | |
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83
busts
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| 半身雕塑像( bust的名词复数 )； 妇女的胸部； 胸围； 突击搜捕 | |
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84
skulls
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| 颅骨( skull的名词复数 )； 脑袋； 脑子； 脑瓜 | |
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85
persistence
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| n.坚持，持续，存留 | |
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86
renewal
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| adj.(契约)延期，续订，更新，复活，重来 | |
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87
amulets
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| n.护身符( amulet的名词复数 ) | |
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88
gems
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| growth； economy； management； and customer satisfaction 增长 | |
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89
equate
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| v.同等看待，使相等 | |
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90
maidens
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| 处女( maiden的名词复数 )； 少女； 未婚女子； （板球运动）未得分的一轮投球 | |
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91
commemorated
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| v.纪念，庆祝( commemorate的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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92
functional
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| adj.为实用而设计的，具备功能的，起作用的 | |
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93
mere
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| adj.纯粹的；仅仅，只不过 | |
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94
annually
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| adv.一年一次，每年 | |
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95
guardian
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| n.监护人；守卫者，保护者 | |
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96
descend
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| vt./vi.传下来，下来，下降 | |
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97
scapegoat
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| n.替罪的羔羊，替人顶罪者；v.使…成为替罪羊 | |
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98
broaching
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| n.拉削；推削；铰孔；扩孔v.谈起( broach的现在分词 )；打开并开始用；用凿子扩大（或修光）；（在桶上）钻孔取液体 | |
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99
shrine
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| n.圣地，神龛，庙；v.将...置于神龛内，把...奉为神圣 | |
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100
anthropology
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| n.人类学 | |
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101
propound
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| v.提出 | |
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102
tribal
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| adj.部族的，种族的 | |
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103
covenant
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| n.盟约，契约；v.订盟约 | |
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104
ratify
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| v.批准，认可，追认 | |
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105
illustrated
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| adj. 有插图的，列举的 动词illustrate的过去式和过去分词 | |
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106
purview
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| n.范围；眼界 | |
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107
amalgamated
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| v.（使）（金属）汞齐化( amalgamate的过去式和过去分词 )；（使）合并；联合；结合 | |
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108
guises
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| n.外观，伪装( guise的名词复数 )v.外观，伪装( guise的第三人称单数 ) | |
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109
attic
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| n.顶楼，屋顶室 | |
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110
etymological
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| adj.语源的，根据语源学的 | |
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111
compliance
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| n.顺从；服从；附和；屈从 | |
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112
riotous
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| adj.骚乱的；狂欢的 | |
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113
adoption
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| n.采用，采纳，通过；收养 | |
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114
luxurious
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| adj.精美而昂贵的；豪华的 | |
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115
strata
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| n.地层（复数）；社会阶层 | |
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116
vaults
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| n.拱顶( vault的名词复数 )；地下室；撑物跳高；墓穴 | |
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117
moors
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| v.停泊，系泊（船只）( moor的第三人称单数 ) | |
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118
supreme
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| adj.极度的，最重要的；至高的，最高的 | |
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119
onward
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| adj.向前的，前进的；adv.向前，前进，在先 | |
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120
enlisted
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| adj.应募入伍的v.（使）入伍， （使）参军( enlist的过去式和过去分词 )；获得（帮助或支持） | |
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121
remodelled
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| v.改变…的结构[形状]( remodel的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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122
mosaic
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| n./adj.镶嵌细工的，镶嵌工艺品的，嵌花式的 | |
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123
Neptune
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| n.海王星 | |
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124
underlying
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| adj.在下面的，含蓄的，潜在的 | |
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125
unifying
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| 使联合( unify的现在分词 )； 使相同； 使一致； 统一 | |
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126
superseded
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| [医]被代替的，废弃的 | |
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127
unity
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| n.团结，联合，统一；和睦，协调 | |
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128
omnipotent
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| adj.全能的，万能的 | |
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129
barons
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| 男爵( baron的名词复数 )； 巨头； 大王； 大亨 | |
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130
martyrs
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| n.martyr的复数形式；烈士( martyr的名词复数 )；殉道者；殉教者；乞怜者（向人诉苦以博取同情） | |
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131
initiatory
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| adj.开始的；创始的；入会的；入社的 | |
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132
genial
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| adj.亲切的，和蔼的，愉快的，脾气好的 | |
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133
shuffled
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| v.洗（纸牌）( shuffle的过去式和过去分词 )；拖着脚步走；粗心地做；摆脱尘世的烦恼 | |
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134
austere
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| adj.艰苦的；朴素的，朴实无华的；严峻的 | |
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135
juncture
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| n.时刻，关键时刻，紧要关头 | |
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136
remarkable
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| adj.显著的，异常的，非凡的，值得注意的 | |
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137
permeation
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| 渗入，透过 | |
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138
prospered
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| 成功，兴旺( prosper的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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