LECTURE X.

THE INFLUENCE OF THE MYSTERIES UPON

CHRISTIAN USAGES.

A. THE GREEK MYSTERIES AND RELATED CULTS.

SIDE by side in Greece with the religion which was openly professed and with the religious rites which were practised in the temples, not in antagonism to them, but intensifying their better elements and elaborating their ritual, were the splendid rites which were known as the Mysteries. Side by side also with the great political communities, and sheltered within them by the common law and drawn together by a stronger than political brotherhood, were innumerable associations for the practice of the new forms of worship which came in with foreign commerce, and for the expression in a common worship of the religious feelings which the public religion did not satisfy. These associations were known as Oiaro, ἔρανοι οι ὀργεῶνες.

I will speak first of the mysteries, and then of the associations for the practice of other cults.

1. The mysteries were probably the survival of the oldest religions of the Greek races and of the races which preceded them. They were the worship not of the gods

of the sky, Zeus and Apollo and Athene, but of the gods of the earth and the under-world, the gods of the productive forces of nature and of death.1

The most important of them were celebrated at Eleusis, near Athens, and the scattered information which exists about them has been made more impressive and more intelligible to us by excavations, which have brought to light large remains of the great temple-the largest in Greece-in which they were celebrated. It had been a cult common to the Ionian tribes, probably borrowed from the earlier races among whom they had settled. It was originally the cult of the powers which produce the harvest, conceived as a triad of divinities—a god and two goddesses, Pluto, Demeter and Koré, of whom the latter became so dominant in the worship, that the god almost disappeared from view, and was replaced by a divinity, Iacchus, who had no place in the original myth.2 Its chief elements were the initiation, the sacrifice, and the scenic representation of the great facts of natural life and human life, of which the histories of the gods were themselves symbols.3

1 For what follows, reference in general may be made to Keil, Attische Culte aus Inschriften, Philologus, Bd. xxiii. 212-259, 592622 and Weingarten, Histor. Zeitschrift, Bd. xlv. 1881, p. 441 sqq., as well as to the authorities cited in the notes.

2 Foucart, Le culte de Pluton dans la religion éleusinienne, Bulletin de Correspondance Hellénique, 1883, pp. 401 sqq.

3 The successive stages or acts of initiation are variously described and enumerated, but there were at least four: ká@aporis-the preparatory purification ; σύστασις—the initiatory rites and sacrifices; τελετή οι μύησις—the prior initiation; and ἐποπτεία, the higher or greater initiation, which admitted to the tapádoσis tŵv iepŵv, or holiest act of the ritual. Cf. Lobeck, Aglaoph. pp. 39 ff.

(i.) The main underlying conception of initiation was, that there were elements in human life from which the candidate must purify himself before he could be fit to approach God. There was a distinction between those who were not purified, and those who, in consequence of being purified, were admitted to a diviner life and to the hope of a resurrection. The creation of this distinction is itself remarkable. The race of mankind was lifted on to a higher plane when it came to be taught that only the pure in heart can see God. The rites of Eleusis were originally confined to the inhabitants of Attica: but they came in time to be open to all Greeks, later to all Romans, and were open to women as well as to men.1 The bar at the entrance came to be only a moral bar.

The whole ceremonial began with a solemn proclamation: "Let no one enter whose hands are not clean and whose tongue is not prudent." In other mysteries it was: "He only may enter who is pure from all defilement, and whose soul is conscious of no wrong, and who has lived well and justly.'

The proclamation was probably accompanied by some words or sights of terror. When Nero went to Eleusis and thought at first of being initiated, he was deterred by it. Here is another instance of exclusion, which is not less important in its bearing upon Christian rites. Apollonius of Tyana was excluded because he was a

1 An interesting inscription has recently come to light, which shows that the public slaves of the city were initiated at the public expense. Foucart, 1.c. p. 394.

2 Cf. Origen, c. Cels. 3. 59.

magician (γόης) and not pure in respect of τὰ δαιμόνιαhe had intercourse with other divinities than those of the mysteries, and practised magical rites.1

We learn something from the parody of the mysteries in Lucian's romance of the pseudo-prophet Alexander. In it Alexander institutes a celebration of mysteries and torchlights and sacred shows, which go on for three successive days. On the first there is a proclamation of a similar kind to that at Athens. "If any Atheist or Christian or Epicurean has come as a spy upon the festival, let him flee; let the initiation of those who believe in the god go on successfully." Then forthwith at the very beginning a chasing away takes place. The prophet himself sets the example, saying, "Christians, away!" and the whole crowd responds, "Epicureans, away!" Then the show begins-the birth of Apollo, the marriage of Coronis, the coming of Esculapius, are represented; the ceremonies proceed through several days in imitation of the mysteries and in glorification of Alexander.2 The proclamation was thus intended to exclude notorious sinners from the first or initial ceremonial. The rest was

1 Philostratus, Vita Apoll. 4. 18, p. 138.

2 Alex. 38.

3 Cf. Lobeck, Aglaoph. pp. 39 ff. and 89 ff.; Welcker, Griech. Götterl. ii. 530-532. "The first and most important condition required of those who would enter the temple at Lindus is that they be pure in heart and not conscious of any crime."-Professor W. M. Ramsay in Ency. Brit. s. v. "Mysteries." For purification before admission to the worship of a temple, see, in C.I.A. iii. Pt. i. 73. 74, instances of regulation prescribed at the temple of Mên Tyrannus at Laurium in Attica, e.g. μηθένα ἀκάθαρτον προσάγειν, various periods of purification being specified. Cf. Reinach, Traité d'Épigr. Grecque, p. 133, on the inser. of Andania in Messenia, B.C. 91; the mysteries of the Cabiri in Le Bas and Foucart, Inscr. du Peloponnèse, ii. § 5, p. 161; and Sauppe, die Mysterieninschr. von Andaria.

thrown upon a man's own conscience. He was asked to confess his sins, or at least to confess the greatest crime that he had ever committed. "To whom am I to confess it ?" said Lysander to the mystagogoi who were conducting him. "To the gods." "Then if go away," said he, "I will tell them.”

you will

The

Confession was followed by a kind of baptism.1 candidates for initiation bathed in the pure waters of the sea. The manner of bathing and the number of immersions varied with the degree of guilt which they had confessed. They came from the bath new men. It was a κάθαρσις, a λouTρov, a laver of regeneration. They had to practise certain forms of abstinence: they had to fast; and when they ate they had to abstain from certain kinds of food.2 (ii.) The purification was followed by a sacrifice-which was known as σwrýpia-a sacrifice of salvation: and in addition to the great public sacrifice, each of the candidates for initiation sacrificed a pig for himself.

Then

1 Tertullian, de Baptismo, 5, "Nam et sacris quibusdam per lavacrum initiantur... ipsos etiam deos suos lavationibus efferunt;" Clem. Alex. Strom. Bk. 5. 4: "The mysteries are not exhibited incontinently to all, but only after certain purifications and previous instructions." Ibid. 5. 11: "It is not without reason that in the mysteries that obtain among the Greeks, lustrations hold the first place, as also the laver among the Barbarians. After these are the minor mysteries, which have some foundation of instruction and of preliminary preparation for what is to come after; and the great mysteries, in which nothing remains to be learned of the universe, but only to contemplate and comprehend nature and things." We have thus a sort of baptism and catechumenate.

2 The fast lasted nine days, and during it certain kinds of food were wholly forbidden. Cf. Lobeck, Aglaopli. pp. 189-197.

3 There was a lesser and a greater initiation: "It is a regulation of law that those who have been admitted to the lesser should again be initiated into the greater mysteries." Hippol. 5, 8: see the whole chapter, as also cc. 9, 20.