By Professor EM Blaiklock MA Litt D
CHAPTER NINE
ARCHAEOLOGY AND THE EARLY CHURCH
PART TWO
Mithras the Rival
The London Mithras
1954—Mithraism in the Roman army origins of Mithraism-Mithraic worship Christianity's triumph over Mithraism-the reasons conclusion.
IN the autumn of 1954 from the bombed ruins east of Saint Paul's Cathedral in London emerged a little shrine of Mithras, the virile Persian sun-god. The existence of this shrine had, indeed, been long suspected, for it is now many years since a piece of Mithraic sculpture was found not far away in Bond Court by the Wallbrook.
The fragment came from a statuette of the god, and bore the inscription: "Ulpius Silvanus, discharged soldier of the Second Legion, pays his vow."
Ulpius was no doubt up from Monmouth, where the Second Legion was quartered, and visited the shrine of the soldiers' god as a modern visitor to London might attend divine service in the Abbey or Saint Paul's. In some nearby shop in the crowded streets of the Roman town, he would buy his votive offering, and present it to the deity for life preserved. For Mithras was peculiarly the god of the legionaries, brought from the Middle East by the Syrian legions. It was probably the swelling notes of the hymn to Mithras, sung by thousands of lusty voices as the sun came up, which once chilled the hearts of a Roman army waiting to defend northern Italy.' It was
a sign that the legions from the East had marched down through the north-eastern passes, and were beneath their standards in the camp opposite. That was in A.D. 69, when the Roman occupation of Britain was recent news.
When Ulpius Silvanus paid his vow, the religion which had first found acceptance with the garrisons of the Middle East was widely disseminated through the whole Roman army. Archaeology, and quite notably in Britain, has demonstrated the fact.
The London Mithras shrine is one of a series. There is another on the Welsh border, another lies somewhere under the walls and buildings of York, still awaiting dis-covery. On Hadrian's Wall, the ruins of which still run from Newcastle to Carlisle, there are two that are known to us. One is in a valley at Borcovicium. This Roman camp sits on the crags twenty miles from Hexham, ten miles from the little village of Wall-on-Tyne. Everyone has seen pictures of the wall running in long, firm sweeps over the cliff-tops in this area. It is the best preserved portion of Hadrian's great engineering work, and it is here, on a southward-sloping hillside, that Borcovicium, or Housesteads, as it is called today, still shows its streets and walls, the foundations of its granaries, and the worn cobblestones which speak eloquently of the Roman's four centuries of sojourn in the British Isles.
On the slope below the camp is the hollow which housed the Mithras chapel of the garrison. It is buried at the moment under the meadow turf, and there is little left to indicate that the legionaries once worshipped here, but one inscription has come to light which reveals the depth to which the cult touched the soldiers' emotions. It reads:
"To the best and greatest god Mithras, the Unconquerable, Lord of the Ages, Publius Proculinus, a centurion, dedicates this, for himself and his son, in discharge of a vow willingly and rightly made."
It is the second of the two shrines on the Roman Wall which is of greater interest. Indeed its discovery was quite as striking as that of the London shrine. The shrine is at Carrawburgh, between Wall and Housesteads, and came to light accidently. The season of 1949 was quite remarkably dry, and with the shrinking of the peat in a hollow the outlines of a little place of worship came to light.
It was immediately recognized as a Mithraeum. Realizing that winter would again flood the ruins, Professor Richmond, the discoverer, made hasty arrangements for a competent team to examine it. The work was a triumph of modern archaeological research, for the shrine was, after all, not built of brick or stone. It was a modest structure of lath and plaster, and fragile remains of the sort are uncommonly difficult to interpret and explain. The archaeologists nevertheless succeeded. They were able to demonstrate the periodic destruction and restoration of the temple, according as Mithraism or Christianity won the ascendancy among the commanding officers of the local garrison. They were able to show that the building was finally destroyed in the time of Constantine, when the Empire became officially Christian. The archaeologists' uncanny sleuthing was able to show that the floor of the aisle was strewn with heather, and that chickens and geese were eaten in the ritual feasts associated with the cult.
They were able to show that pine cones were used as aromatic altar fuel. Perhaps the pine trees which line the nearby wall are descendants of trees the seed of which came from Italy in the packs of the legionaries.
Kipling's picture was true. He imagines a Roman soldier standing sentinel on some high watchtower of the Wall, that Wall which so caught the poet's imagination.
North lie the grey, dreary moors, as they lie below Borcovicium still, with their steely tarns forbidding in the heather. All manner of evil seemed to lurk in the
northern wastes which Rome never surely conquered, and the soldier's heart has fed full, in the night-watches, of those ancient fears which have ever stirred in men who grasp their weapons and peer out into the night.
The sun springs up, and the legionary lifts his spear in salutation as the trumpets ring out from guard-post to guard-post :
Mithras, God of the Morning, our trumpets waken the Wall, Rome is above the nations, but thou art over all.
In the early Persian religion, where his figure first appears, Mithras, like the Roman Jupiter, was associated with light. He is one of the powers of good, who struggled against the forces of darkness and evil. It was a natural step to associate him with the sun, especially at its rising.
Mithras, the legend said, had sprung miraculously from a rock, and first found worship among the shepherds of the countryside. After his birth, said the myth, the god set out on a series of toilsome adventures like the Greek Heracles. Chief among these was his contest with a mysterious bull, which he captured and sacrificed. Mithraic sculptures always stress this incident, and seem to imply, by the expression on the god's face, that the sacrifice was a hard and painful duty.
A Mithras shrine has been discovered at Dieburg in Germany which is decorated with a series of wall sculptures depicting scenes in Mithras' life. A pair of horses of obscure significance come first. A second curious picture appears to show the Evil One lying in wait for the hero.
The third panel is more clear. It shows the birth of the god from the rock. The doings of the god in panels four and five are again beyond interpretation. The incident of the sacred bull fills six, seven and eight. Panel ten shows Mithras making his alliance with the sun, while eleven and twelve show Mithras ascending the sun's chariot and going to Heaven. A Mithraeum in Rome develops this last theme more fully.
If Publius Proculinus from Borcovicium, or Ulpius Silvanus from Caerleon, could walk into a modern Christian church on Christmas Day they would find a few details oddly familiar. They would find some significance in the Communion service, for Mithraism had the ritual of a sacramental meal. They would recognise some forms of baptism. They would find the adoration of the shepherds in hymn and carol something within their ex-perience. The day, December 25th, would be undoubtedly their own. It was, in fact, Mithras' birthday, captured by the Christian Church. Christ was not born in Decem-ber, for shepherds do not watch their flooks by night," all seated on the ground," in midwinter Palestine. In the fourth century, with Christ's real birthday long since for-gotten, the Church placed the Nativity Feast on December 25th to overlay both Mithras and the gay Saturnalia.
There the resemblance ends. To say that the Christian Church borrowed doctrine and ritual widely from Mithraism is quite absurd, and advanced as a theory only by those who, regardless of history and established fact, find satisfaction in such argument. Christianity won the victory over Mithraism for several clear-cut reasons.
First it built up a corpus of written records. These documents, in plain and simple language, contained, as Angus, the authority on the mystery religions, has pointed out convincingly, something none of the rival cults could match, the compelling picture of an historic Christ, much more appealing in His reality than the legendary Mithras with his strange conflicts. They contained, too, a simple and relevant body of doctrine, adapted for preaching, evangelism, and the needs of daily life.
Secondly, Christianity was universal. Mithraism was for men only. Christianity brought a charter of freedom for women, children, slaves and outcasts. It had food for the hungriest hearts.
Thirdly, and this is a point quite strikingly illustrated by the discoveries at Carrawburgh, Christianity staked all on salvation by faith. In Mithraism, the devotee progressed painfully from rank to rank in the seven degrees of initiation by stern ordeals. At Carrawburgh there is a coffin-shaped stone cell beneath the altar large enough for the body of a man. Here those who sought acceptance or advancement with the god endured the ordeal of heat.
The fire blazed on the altar, and underneath the human worshipper endured the demons of claustrophobia and scorching pain. Only the determined, the fanatical, or the uncommonly dedicated, could face such stern initiation.
It would be difficult to imagine anything more fundamentally different from the religion of Christ. Mithraism appealed to the soldiers' desire for a leader, it touched their courage, and spirit of endurance, but it was more like a secret society than a faith. It left untouched the vast problem of evil, and failed to satisfy the deepest yearnings of man. Repentance, faith, and brotherly love to all men, were outside its teaching. That is why today the great uplifted cross of St. Paul's towers above the spot from which Mithras' shrine emerged.