Page:Georges Sorel, Reflections On Violence (1915).djvu/224

210 and denied that any one had the right to fly from persecution.

P. Allard combats Harnack's proposition with arguments which seem to me somewhat weak. He is unable to understand the enormous difference which probably exists between the reality of the persecutions and the conceptions which the persecuted formed of them. "The Christians," says the German professor, "were able to complain of being persecuted flocks, and yet such persecution was exceptional; they were able to look upon themselves as models of heroism, and yet they were rarely put to the proof; and I call attention to the end of this sentence: "They were able to place themselves above the grandeurs of the world, and yet at the same time to make themselves more and more at home in it."

There is something paradoxical at first sight in the situation of the Church, which had its followers in the upper classes, who were obliged to make many concessions to custom, and who yet could hold beliefs based on the idea of an absolute cleavage. The inscriptions on the catacomb of Priscilla prove "the continuance of the faith through a series of generations of the Acilii, among whom were to be found not only consuls and magistrates of the highest order, but also priests, priestesses, even children, members of illustrious idolatrous colleges, reserved by privilege for patricians and their sons." If the Christian system of ideas had been rigorously based on actual facts, such a paradox would have been impossible.

The statistics of persecutions therefore play no great part in this question; what was of much greater importance than the frequency of the torments were the remarkable occurrences which took place during the scenes of