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Handout 20 |
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Rumor |
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About 200 A.D. Minucius Felix , a Roman lawyer, wrote a dialogue in which he reported a discussion between a Christian, Octavius, and a pagan. The pagan echoed the horrible rumors which were circulating about the Christians. The passage which follows gives some indication of what they were. Octavius goes on to show the pagan calmly and persuasively who Christians really are. I hear that, persuaded by some absurd conviction, they adore the head of an ass, the basest of creatures ... The story about the initiation of new recruits is as detestable as it is well known. An infant, covered with flour, in order to deceive the unwary is placed before the one who is to be initiated into the mysteries. Deceived by this floury mass, which makes him believe that his blows are harmless, the neophyte kills the infant ... They avidly lick up the blood of this infant and argue over how to share out its limbs. By this victim they are pledged together, and it is because of their complicity in this crime that they keep mutual silence. Everyone knows about their banquets, these are talked of everywhere,...On festivals they assemble for a feast with all their children, their sisters, their mothers, people of both sexes and every age. After eating their fill, when the excitement of the feast is at its height and their drunken ardor has inflamed incestuous passions, they provoke a dog which has been tied to a lamp stand to leap, throwing it a piece of meat beyond the length of the cord which holds it. The light which could have betrayed them having thus been extinguished, they then embrace one another, quite at random. If this does not happen in fact, it does so in their minds, since that is the desire. Minucius Felix, Octavius 9,6 |
