19

19. On freedom of conscience

[Freedom of conscience – freedom of worship and association granted to a rival sect of Christians claiming to be the one true Church – was a new idea, only reluctantly accepted by the Kings of France (or, indeed, of England). Montaigne regards it as a pis-aller, forced on the government by the condition of France, exhausted by the Wars of Religion. Montaigne’s concern to present fairly the anti-Christian Emperor Julian the Apostate (which raised some eyebrows in the Vatican) shows how we can be just even to enemies of our religion. In fact Montaigne’s judgement is that of the Christian poet Prudentius, whose childhood was spent under Julian. This chapter continues the reflections of the previous one on the great Ancients’ indifference to invective. It ends with a quip borrowed from Montaigne’s favourite writer of Latin comedies, Terence. It had long been going the rounds in a Pasquinade; here it applies to the stalemate which led to the proclamation of Henry III and of Catherine de’ Medici in 1576, tolerating the Huguenots, except in Paris – since they could not be crushed.]

[A] It is quite normal to see good intentions, when not carried out with moderation, urging men to actions which are truly vicious. In the present quarrel which is driving France to distraction with its civil wars, the better and more wholesome party is certainly the one upholding the religion and constitution of our country. Now among the men of honour who support it (for I am not talking about people who use it as a pretext for settling private scores, satisfying their greed or courting the favour of princes but about those who support it out of true zeal for their religion and a sacred desire to defend the peace and good estate of their homeland) even among such men as these you can find many who, once passion drives them beyond the bounds of reason, take decisions which are unjust, violent and rash.

It is certain that, in those early days when our religion began to be backed by the authority of law, zeal provided many with weapons to use against all sorts of pagan books, causing the learned public to suffer staggering losses. I reckon that this inordinate zeal caused more harm to literature than all the fires started by the Barbarians.

Cornelius Tacitus can bear witness to this. His kinsman the Emperor Tacitus expressly commanded all the libraries of the world to be furnished with copies of his Histories, yet not a single one of them wholly escaped the meticulous search of those who sought to destroy them simply because they contain five or six wretched sentences hostile to our religion.1

They went further, heaping false praise upon all the Emperors who favoured us and completely condemning all the actions of our adversaries. That can readily be seen from the case of the Emperor Julian, dubbed the Apostate. He was a truly great and outstanding person, appropriate enough for a man whose mind was steeped in philosophical argument by which he claimed to order all his activities. And indeed he left behind examples of model behaviour in every single field of virtue.

As for his chastity, his whole life affords clear testimony of it. A similar characteristic is ascribed to him as to Alexander and Scipio: he did not even want to look at any of the many beautiful women he captured. And that was in the flower of his manhood, as when the Parthians killed him he was only thirty-one.2

As for justice, he took care to hear the contending parties himself. He was curious about what religion was professed by those who appeared before him and asked them about it; yet the hatred he bore against our own never turned the scales of his justice. He personally enacted several good laws and severely pruned the taxes and imposts raised by his predecessors.

We have two good historians who were eye-witnesses of his actions. One of them, Ammianus Marcellinus, bitterly reproaches him several times in his History for barring Christian rhetoricians and grammarians from the institutes of learning and forbidding them to teach. Marcellinus said that he could wish that deed were buried in silence. It is probable that if Julian had done anything harsher against us Marcellinus would not have overlooked it, since he was well disposed towards our side.

Julian was an enemy harsh towards us, it is true, but not cruel. Even our own side tell the following tale about him: when he was walking one day near the town of Chalcedon the local bishop, Maris, dared to rail at him as a traitor to Christ. He simply replied, ‘Go away, you wretched man, and lament the loss of your eyesight!’ The bishop retorted: ‘I thank Jesus Christ for having taken away my sight; it stops me seeing your insolent face!’

Julian, so they say, was simply acting the patient philosopher.

In any case what he did then cannot be squared with the cruelties he is said to have used against us. According to Eutropius, my other witness, he was an enemy of Christianity but without shedding blood.

To return to his justice: the only reproach to be made against it is the severe treatment he meted out at the beginning of his reign to those who supported the party of Constantius, his predecessor.

As for sobriety, he always lived a soldierly life. Even in times of total peace he dined as though he were in training and accustoming himself to the austerities of war. He was so watchful that he divided the night into three or four parts, giving only the smallest of them over to sleep. The remainder he devoted either to checking up in person on his army and his Imperial guard, or else to study. Among his other rare qualities he greatly excelled in all branches of literature.

It is said of Alexander the Great that when he lay down for a rest he kept sleep from debauching his thinking and studies by having a basin placed beside him; he then held one of his hands outside the couch clasping a little copper ball. If he fell asleep his fingers let go of the ball which clanged into the basin and woke him up.3 Julian’s mind was so intent on what he was about and (thanks to his exceptional abstemiousness) so unclouded, that he could do without such tricks.

As for his competence in military matters, he was astonishingly endowed with all the requisites of a great general. He spent most of his time engaged in fighting, mostly together with us here in France against the Germans and the Franks.

There is hardly a man on record who experienced more danger or who risked his own life more often. His death was something like that of Epaminondas, since he was struck by a dart and tried to pull it out.4 He would have done so, only the edge was sharp, cutting his hand and weakening his grasp. He kept insisting that he be carried as he was into the thick of the fray to encourage his soldiers. Even without him they fought that battle most courageously until nightfall parted the armies.

To philosophy he owed his remarkable contempt for his own life and for all things human. He firmly believed in the immortality of the soul.

In matters of religion he was altogether vicious.5 He was named the Apostate for having abandoned ours, but the most likely opinion seems to me to be that he never took it to his heart, merely pretending to do so and obeying the law until he had the Empire under his thumb. In his own religion he was so superstitious that even his contemporaries laughed at him: they said that if he had managed to gain victory over the Parthians his sacrifices would have exhausted the world’s entire stock of bulls!

He was besotted with the art of divination, lending his authority to every sort of augury. As he lay dying he said, among other things, that he was grateful to the gods for not wanting death to take him by surprise (having long since warned him of the place and time of his end) and for not giving him a soft relaxed death more suitable for idle delicate people, nor yet a death which was long, languishing and painful; he thanked them for having found him worthy of dying in that noble fashion, in the flush of his victories and the flower of his glory. He had a vision such as that of Marcus Brutus: it first came to threaten him in Gaul and appeared to him again in Persia when he was on the point of dying.

[C] These words have been attributed to him as he was struck down: ‘Thou hast conquered, Nazarean!’ or sometimes, ‘Be satisfied, Nazarean!’6 But if my authorities had believed that, they would not have overlooked them: they were present in his army and noted the slightest of his final words and gestures. Nor would they have overlooked certain miracles now associated with his death.

[A] To get back to the theme of my subject: Marcellinus says that Julian had long nursed paganism in his heart but dared not disclose this fact, since his army was made up of Christians. When at last he found himself strong enough to dare to proclaim his intentions, he ordered the temples of the gods to be reopened and he assayed every means of restoring the worship of idols.

Finding the laity of Constantinople torn apart and the bishops of the Christian Church divided, to achieve his purposes he made them appear before him in his palace, warned them to damp down the civil strife at once and commanded that every person, without let or fear, should follow his own religion.7

He urged his case strongly, hoping that the licence he gave them would increase their divisions and schismatic plottings, so preventing the people from uniting together and strengthening their resistance to him by their harmony and unanimity. He had assayed from his experience with some of the Christians that no beast in the world is more to be feared by Man than Man.8

Those are approximately his very words.

It is worth considering that, in order to stir up the flames of civil strife, the Emperor Julian exploited the self-same remedy of freedom of conscience which our kings now employ to stifle them.

On the one side you could say that to slacken the reins and allow the parties to hold on to their opinions is the way to sow dissension broadcast: it is all but equivalent to lending a hand to increase it, since there is no obstacle to bar its course and no legal constraint to rein it back.

For the other side you could say that to slacken the reins and allow the parties to hold on to their opinions is to soften and weaken them by ease and laxity; it blunts the goad, whereas rareness, novelty and difficulty sharpen it.

Yet for the honour and piety of our kings I prefer to believe that, since they could not do what they wished, they pretended to wish to do what they could.9