contradictions. At times he played the part almost of an ascetic, abstaining from wine in his repasts, and even submitting to the work and fatigues of an ordinary legionary soldier. At times his life was disfigured by the grossest excesses and debauchery.[1] His attitude towards Christianity especially concerns us. He had no religion, no faith. He was interested in all cults to a certain extent, was even initiated into the mysteries of some of the old pagan beliefs; and while he accepted nothing, he denied nothing.
His famous rescript to Serenus Granianus, now generally accepted as genuine, gives us some conception of his estimate of Christianity, at least in the earlier portion of his reign. It virtually endorses what Trajan had written to Pliny in the matter of the Bithynian Christians. They were not to be hunted out, but if legally convicted as Christians they were to suffer. Hadrian, certainly in his earlier years, even went further in the direction of toleration than his predecessor. An informer, unless he could prove the truth of his accusation, would be subject to the severest penalties of the law.
But Hadrian, like Trajan who reigned before him, and Antoninus Pius who succeeded him on the imperial throne, knew very little of Christianity. It is more than doubtful if he had ever seen a Gospel; and although his sense of justice and his perfect indifference to all religions dictated the terms and inspired the tone of the famous rescript in question, in common with all Roman statesmen he evidently disliked and even feared the strange faith which was gradually gaining ground so rapidly in the world of Rome.
This dislike of Christianity, which some historians characterize in Hadrian's case as positively hatred of the faith, was shown markedly in the latter years of his life by the deliberate insults which he offered to the most sacred Christian memories in Jerusalem after the close of the terrible Jewish war in A.D. 135. Some modern writers have pleaded that no special profanation was intended by Hadrian when the building of Ælia Capitolina on the site of Jerusalem was proceeded with
- ↑ De Champagny, Les Antonins, iii. 1, tersely and well sums up his character: "Il a tous les dons, et toutes les faiblesses, toutes les grandeurs, et toutes les puérilitées, toutes les ambitions."
