Evangelicalism and Empire: Rudyard Kipling on the Roman Cult of Mithras and Christianization

Abstract

Among the works of Rudyard Kipling, there are several short stories set in the Roman World that feature characters who are members of the cult of Mithras. These stories also involve Christian characters, but while the Mithraic initiates are loyal servants of the Roman Empire, the Christians create and attract disorder. The aim of this article is to explore why Kipling chose to make the heroic characters of these stories Mithraic initiates, and present the Christians in a less positive light. It will be argued that Kipling was attacking Christian evangelicals, who he disliked due to his experiences at the hands of one as a child, and also because of the difficult relationship between Christian missionaries and British imperial administrators, especially in the aftermath of the 1857 Indian Mutiny. In contrast, Kipling’s Mithras cult acknowledges that there are ‘many ways to the light’, and, moreover, by inferring that there are many similarities between the cult of Mithras and Christianity, Kipling hoped to urge evangelical Christians to moderate their behaviour and use his depiction of the Mithras cult as an example of how to better approach religious diversity within the Empire.

As one of the most influential British authors of the past 200 years, and arguably the most prominent literary figure from the twilight of the British Empire, Rudyard Kipling has attracted significant interest from scholars in a variety of fields. Given that a number of stories written by Kipling were set in the Roman World, it is unsurprising that he has been the subject of studies by various classicists and archaeologists (Rivet 1978; Hingley 2000: 43, 44, 57, 69, 177; 2012: 213–20; Burton 2007; Adler 2015). Often, these studies have focused on how Kipling presented a Roman Empire that his readers know is destined to fall, and how this reflected Kipling’s own thoughts on the state of the British Empire, which was experiencing a growing sense of self-doubt about its own longevity.

However, one theme in Kipling’s works that has rarely been studied in any depth is his representation of religious movements in the Roman World. In particular, Kipling had a notable interest in the cult of Mithras, which featured in his short stories set in Roman Britain collected in Puck of Pook’s Hill (1906), as well as his fictionalized account of St Paul’s Letter to the Galatians, ‘The Church That was at Antioch’ (1929). In both cases, the central protagonists, Parnesius and Valens respectively, are members of the cult of Mithras, and both must deal with obstructive, and occasionally violent, Christians. Only an article by A. J. C. Tingey (1962) has concentrated on Kipling’s interest in the cult of Mithras, but unfortunately this contained a number of incorrect observations, partly because he confused the Mithras cult with that of Magna Mater, including erroneously claiming Mithraic initiates bathed in bull’s blood. That such elements of Kipling’s stories have not attracted wider attention is regrettable, as his considerable influence is likely to have affected subsequent representations of the cult of Mithras and its relationship with Christianity, in not only the works of later authors who idolized Kipling, such as Rosemary Sutcliff and Neil Gaiman, but also those of scholars who grew up with Kipling’s works. As Hingley (2000: 57) has observed, echoing Rivet before him, we cannot ‘ … assume that the influence of the images created by popular fiction are restricted to children and their teachers, as they also influence academics through the process of their education as children’. We certainly should not underestimate the impact that the publication of the Puck stories had on the general public’s perception of life in late Roman Britain, especially as this was when Kipling was at the peak of his fame, winning the Nobel Prize for Literature the following year. For many, reading Puck of Pook’s Hill would have been the first and only time they ever heard of the cult of Mithras, given that prior novels set in Roman Britain, such as Church’s The Count of the Saxon Shore (1887) and Henty’s Beric the Briton (1893) did not feature the cult, while the discovery of the London Mithraeum, which caused a media sensation, would not occur until the 1950s.

Subsequently, this article seeks to address Kipling’s representation of the Mithras cult: why did he choose to make heroic figures in some of his stories of Mithraic initiates? Where did his information come from? How does he represent the relationship between Christianity and the Mithras cult? As will be observed, Kipling projected onto the Mithras cult his own religious ideals, which had developed partly via his membership of the Freemasons, and also from a childhood that left a strong aversion to evangelical Christianity. Furthermore, it will be argued here that the contrasts between the Christians and Mithraic initiates in Puck of Pook’s Hill and the ‘The Church That was at Antioch’ reflected the often tense relationship between Christian missionaries and the British imperial administration, which grew even worse after the Indian Mutiny of 1857, and that Kipling was firmly in the camp of the latter when the two groups came into conflict. Indeed, evangelical forms of Christianity are depicted in Kipling’s stories as a threat to the stability of the Roman Empire, contrasting with the Mithraic initiates who attempt to maintain order and protect the empire’s frontiers.

The cult of Mithras: a brief overview

Before exploring Kipling’s representation of the cult of Mithras, it is worth providing a brief overview of what the cult consisted of, not only for those unfamiliar with it, but also to expel some persistent urban myths. The cult of Mithras spread across the Roman Empire from the first century CE until the early years of the fifth century (Clauss 2012: 27–29, 161). Like most cults of the Roman Empire, it did not forbid its followers from worshipping other deities, but unusually it admitted only males, appealing particularly to soldiers and custom-officials, although as time progressed a significant number of civilians, both slave and freed, joined its ranks. Evidence for the cult stretches from Hadrian’s Wall to the Syrian Desert, although the majority of this is located close to the Rhine and Danube frontiers in the western half of the Empire. Rome and its port of Ostia were also hubs of Mithraic activity, with a combined total of nearly forty extant Mithraic temples. These temples, often referred to by the modern term mithraea (mithraeum in the singular), were small in size and largely follow a set plan, in which one would first enter an anteroom and then subsequently pass into an inner chamber. The inner chamber would contain two parallel benches, which flanked a central aisle that led to the central image of the cult: Mithras stabbing a bull (Clauss 2012: 48–53).

Unfortunately, there are no extant Mithraic texts to explain why mithraea adopted such a layout and what the central image meant. In fact, it is possible that there never were any Mithraic texts and that the cult’s doctrine was transmitted orally and supplemented by its iconography. However, various external sources provide information concerning the cult, most notably the third-century philosopher Porphyry, who explains that the Mithraic cave was intended as an analogy of the cosmos (De antr. nymph. 4.5-6, 9-10, 24). Based upon Porphyry’s description and the extant remains of mithraea, Beck (2007) has argued that the layout of a mithraeum acted as a ‘star-map’, with certain fittings and iconography associated with celestial bodies, and that movement across the mithraeum represented passage across the cosmos.

Through a combination of surviving frescoes, archaeological materials, and textual sources, it is apparent that in order to join the cult one had to participate in an intense initiation ceremony. This appears to have consisted of the initiate being stripped naked, blindfolded, and having their hands bound, and then having either a sword, a torch, or a bow and arrow waved in their face, although the elements involved certainly varied among Mithraic congregations. When the initiates had endured enough, the blindfold would be removed to reveal the image of Mithras, lit by a candle or lamp behind it. It is possible that members underwent such ceremonies multiple times, for the cult’s hierarchy consisted of seven grades (although again this would probably have varied among congregations), the highest of which was the pater (father), and a worshipper may have been required to undertake an initiation ceremony each time they moved from one grade to another (Clauss 2012: 98–102, 124–33). Particularly when discussing Kipling’s representation of the Mithras cult, it is important to highlight that the cult’s hierarchy served to reinforce social norms, not subvert them. The upper grades would be held by those with the most senior rank in the secular world: a slave could not lead a congregation of freedmen, nor a common soldier be pater to centurions. This appears to have been reflected in the cult’s ritual practices as well, for, when the Mithraic initiates acted out the feast of Sol and Mithras, the lower grades served the Pater and Heliodromos (the second highest grade), who filled the roles of Mithras and Sol respectively (Vermaseren 1960: no.1896). That dedications were often made for the health of the emperor and his family in Mithraic contexts, despite little evidence of any emperors actually joining the cult, also illustrates how the cult operated within the established structure of Roman society (Walsh 2018: 10–11).

Many elements of the cult outlined thus far were generally understood in Kipling’s time, largely due to efforts of the Belgian scholar Franz Cumont, whose work on the Mithras cult included his monumental Textes et monuments figurés relatifs aux Mystères de Mithra, published in two volumes in 1894 and 1896, followed by Les Mystères de Mithra (1900) and Les Religions orientales dans le paganisme romain (1905). However, Cumont’s views on the origins and end of the cult were markedly different from the modern consensus. For Cumont, the cult of Mithras was a direct import from Persia, and part of a wider diffusion of ‘eastern’ cults into the Roman World, which also included those of Isis and Magna Mater. In reality, the ‘direct import’ model cannot be substantiated, for while the image of Mithras evidently drew upon the deity Mithra from Persian Zoroastrianism, who is depicted as a young-man in a Phrygian cap, the Roman cult’s iconography, particularly the scene with the bull, and the architecture of mithraea find no parallel in Persia. In fact, the earliest attestations to the Roman cult come from Italy and date to the end of the first century CE, suggesting that its origins lie in the Italian peninsula (Bowden 2010: 194–96).

Concerning the end of the cult, Cumont ascribed this to the violent Christianization of the Roman Empire in the fourth and fifth centuries CE. As Cumont (1956: 203) observed: ‘The ruins of mithraeums [sic] bear witness to the violence of [the Christians’] devastating fury’. This belief arose in part because several Christian authors wrote disparagingly about the cult, including St Jerome (Jerome, 1996) who described how a Prefect of Rome attacked a mithraeum in the city (Ep. 107), and Tertullian who believed that Mithraic rituals served as demonic counterparts to those of the Christians (De praescr. haeret. 40.3–4). The quote from Tertullian in particular led several scholars to suggest that the cult of Mithras and Christianity were highly similar, and that these close parallels brought them into conflict. For example, Ernest Renan (1882 : 579) commented ‘if the growth of Christianity had been arrested by some mortal malady, the world would have been Mithraic’, while for Cumont (1956: 190), the ‘struggle between the two rival religions was the more stubborn as their characters were more alike’. Such emphasis on these apparent similarities has led to other erroneous claims, most notably that the 25th December was originally the birthday of Mithras (Frazer 1922: 358), for which there is no evidence; rather, the 25th appears to have connected with the cult of Sol Invictus. In actuality, as this brief introduction has hopefully demonstrated, there were few close parallels between the cult of Mithras and Christianity. Moreover, given the considerable corpus of Mithraic material that has been uncovered, there is little to substantiate claims of a conflict between Christianity and the Mithras cult, with only several mithraea producing clear evidence of Christian desecration, and this usually dates to after the mithraeum was abandoned. In reality, there were likely to have been a myriad of reasons as to why the cult disappeared, including changes in settlement patterns and social structures, particularly in relation to the army and administration as Rome’s hegemony dwindled in the fifth century, along with other events such as barbarian incursions and natural disasters (Walsh 2018: 68–93).

Kipling and the Roman empire

Kipling had been exposed to the classical world from a young age, learning Latin and some Greek at school. Although he was enthusiastic about neither, he did later comment that he thought them important for a boy’s education: ‘I don’t pretend that I liked it, any more than I should have liked anything else that purported to be education, but looking back at it now, it strikes me as valuable. I believe in the importance of a man getting some classics ground into him in his youth … ’ (Kipling 1928: 93). For Kipling, learning Latin was not only about language, but about educating boys in the key virtues expected of the Roman citizen, which would serve them well as agents of British imperialism. This is most clearly communicated in ‘Regulus’ (A Diversity of Creatures, 1917), a later addition to the Stalky and Co. stories, in which the actions of a boy named Winton, who must undergo corporal punishment, echo those of the Roman general Marcus Atilius Regulus, who sacrificed himself for the good of the Roman state, and who featured in Horace's Ode 3.5 that Winton and his classmates had been translating (Plotz 1993, Eastlake 2019: 30–32, 43–47).

However, it was only when Kipling stumbled upon various archaeological materials during the renovations of his Sussex home, followed by some prompting from his cousin Ambrose Poynter, that he decided to write a tale set in Roman Britain (Kipling 1937: 185). This would eventually take the form of three short stories, ‘A Centurion of the Thirtieth’, ‘On the Great Wall’ and ‘The Winged Hats’, collected in Puck of Pook’s Hill, which constitute a trilogy following the life of the fourth-century Romano-British soldier Parnesius, as imparted by Parnesius to the Edwardian children Dan and Una. As Parnesius explains to them, he and his friend Pertinax are members of the Mithras cult, who were stationed on Hadrian’s Wall and charged by the usurper Magnus Maximus, and later the emperor Theodosius, with defending Britannia from the Picts and Saxons. Parnesius also recalls meeting a third Mithraic initiate in the form of a Saxon washed up on the shore during a coastal raid, whom he recognizes by a medallion he wears, and so lets him escape. Alongside these stories, Puck features the poem ‘A Song to Mithras’. The cult also appears in Kipling’s short-story ‘The Church That was at Antioch’ (1929), set in the mid-first century CE, in which the young soldier and Mithraic initiate Valens must deal with rising tensions between the city’s Jewish and Christian communities concerning the consumption of kosher food. The Christian community in Antioch is led by Saints Peter and Paul, who engage Valens in a discussion about their respective beliefs, and they are later present at Valens’ death after he is stabbed during a disturbance.

As noted, scholarly works that have discussed Kipling’s representation of the Roman World have tended to focus on his allusions to the precariousness of empire; in Puck, for example, Parnesius recounts how the once seemingly unending empire of Rome had begun to unravel as its leaders placed personal glory ahead of the common good, a fate that Kipling felt might befall the British Empire (Collingwood 1923: 15; Rivet 1978; Hingley 2000: 33). Such sentiments were made clear in A School History of England (1911: 22), co-written by Kipling and Charles Fletcher, in which they observed how the Roman Empire declined due to ‘too much power, too much prosperity, too much luxury. What a lesson for us all to-day!’. Furthermore, Kipling’s decision to set the Parnesius stories on Rome’s northern frontier was clearly designed to elicit comparisons with the British Empire’s own ‘frontier’ in India, which Kipling had experienced first-hand as a young journalist. Kipling was not alone in his views, and his narratives would have found an appreciative audience among many of his contemporaries, who also feared that the British Empire was following a similar trajectory to that of Rome (Hingley 2000: 43–48).

However, Kipling’s stories were not entirely pessimistic about the fate of the British Empire, for he felt that the British had the good fortune to not only be the inheritors of Rome, but a range of migrants to Britain, which instilled in them a number of qualities that would help them succeed where Rome failed. In the Puck stories, while Parnesius’ family have lived in Britain for generations, they originally hail from Italy, and Pertinax is of Gallic stock, but both feel a strong commitment to defending the province. Indeed, Parnesius recalls his father telling him that although Rome is lost, Britain is still worth protecting. Such sentiments are echoed in Kipling and Fletcher’s A School History of England (1911: 19), in which Roman soldiers and administrators are described as coming to love Britain as much as they did Rome. The book also describes how, alongside their Roman heritage, the Edwardians could also claim descended from the Anglo-Saxons, who despite being ‘stupid’ were also ‘brave, patient and cool-headed … He honoured his wife and his home … He never knew when he was beaten’. To Saxon and Roman genes were later added those of the Normans, ‘the cleverest, strongest and most adventurous race alive’ (Kipling and Fletcher 1911: 28–29, 43). In highlighting the positive qualities of the ancestors of the modern British, Kipling’s works, both fiction and non-fiction, served a didactic purpose by encouraging his contemporaries to develop these qualities in their children; that is how the Empire would be preserved. As we shall see, among these qualities was the attitude taken towards different religious beliefs by the Roman soldiers who followed Mithras.

Kipling and Mithras

It is unlikely that Kipling was exposed to much information about the cult of Mithras as part of his classical education. Cumont’s pioneering studies of the cult were still years away, and the passages relating to cult from the likes of Jerome and Tertullian would not have been part of the curriculum. When did Kipling first encounter the Mithras cult? Correspondence with the Oxford classical scholar Gilbert Murray in 1905 reveals that they discussed the cult while Kipling was writing Puck of Pook’s Hill, but no details are provided as to what information was exchanged (Pinney 1996: 191–192). However, it is evident that Kipling drew upon works of Cumont, which is best illustrated via the repetition of an error from Cumont’s account, whereby the grade title nymphus, mentioned in a letter of St. Jerome (Ep. 107), was erroneously interpreted as gryphus (Metzger 1945). How well known the Mithraic evidence from Britain was to Kipling is also unclear. Kipling almost certainly visited the Roman fort of Housesteads, and possibly Rudchester, on Hadrian’s Wall, where Mithraic temples had been discovered, given that he frequently stayed at Stagshaw House near Corbridge (Rivet 1978: 7). Furthermore, he may have been acquainted with the report on the Housesteads Mithraeum, which was published in 1904, and/or drawn on descriptions of the site written by Hodgson in the 1820s, which were partially reproduced in Cumont’s works (1896: 393–94). However, even if Kipling were familiar with these archaeological sites, mithraea are conspicuously absent from his stories, and are just mentioned in passing as a ‘temple in the dark’ and a ‘cave’ (Kipling 1906 [1994]: 133–34).

It is not difficult to see why Kipling found the cult of great interest, given the apparent parallels it had with Freemasonry, parallels which had already been observed by Cumont (1956: 162). Kipling had joined the Freemasons in 1885 while in India, and in his memoir he reflected on how he had been impressed with the diversity of the Lodge he had joined, where he met ‘Muslims, Hindus, Sikhs, members of the Arya and Brahmo Samaj, and a Jew tyler … so yet another world opened up to me which I needed’ (Kipling 1937: 52–53). It has been argued by Thrall (2004: 47) that the Freemasons closely aligned with Kipling’s own ideas regarding what a religion should consist of, and in the Mithras cult Kipling found what he believed was a religious version of Freemasonry. Like the Freemasons, the Mithras cult was relatively secretive, required an initiation to join, male-only, appealed to people from a range of occupations and social circles, and did not oppose its followers engaging with different belief systems. As Parnesius comments, ‘those who worship Mithras are many and of all races’ and when he encounters the Saxon Amal, who wears a Mithraic amulet, Parnesius refers to him as ‘brother’ and protects him, despite the ongoing conflict between Rome and the Saxons. The feeling is mutual, for when Amal and a group of Saxons come to the Wall to speak with Parnesius, Amal declares his respect for the Roman centurion and urges his companions to listen to him (Kipling 1906 [1994]: 152). In ‘The Church That was at Antioch’, Valens comments, ‘I eat with any initiate … Mithras also tells us … to share a bone covered with dirt, if better cannot be found … we are all His children’ (Kipling 1932: 100). For Kipling’s initiates, their membership of the cult makes them part of a wider brotherhood that emphasizes working together for mutual benefit. In fact, that the Mithras cult, as with Freemasonry, was a ‘brotherhood’ also held significant appeal for Kipling, as like many of his contemporaries he was deeply misogynistic and strongly opposed enfranchising women (Mallett 2003: 154, 155). As Parker (1899: 14) observed, religions in Kipling’s works are ‘almost exclusively masculine’, and in the case of the Mithras cult, he had found a religious group that came ready-made in this regard.

The Mithras cult and Christianity in Kipling’s works

Kipling’s relationship with Christianity was complex (Allen 2013). During the three years he spent in Lahore he only attended church once, and in his forties, he referred to himself as a ‘God-fearing Christian atheist’. Kipling’s writings occasionally suggest a disdain for Christianity, such as in Plain Tales from the Hills (1888 [1923]: 1), which includes the poem:

Look, you have cast out Love! What Gods are these

You bid me please?

The Three in One, the One in Three? Not so!

To my own gods I go.

It may be they shall give me greater ease

Than your cold Christ and tangled Trinities.

In an earlier letter, he had also dismissed concepts of eternal punishment or reward, and while he regarded the Trinity ‘reverently’, he found it difficult to believe in the concept (Carrington 1955: 107).

Kipling’s problematic relationship with Christianity, particularly Evangelicalism, can be traced back to his childhood. As a boy under the protection of the Holloways, Kipling suffered greatly at the hands of Sarah Holloway, whose strict religious fervour he despised. As Kipling later recalled (1937: 6): ‘It was an establishment run with the full vigour of the Evangelical as revealed to the Woman. I had never heard of Hell, so I was introduced to it in all its terrors’. This experience may also go some way to explaining his aforementioned desire to present religions in his works in a generally masculine light, given that his relationship with Sarah’s husband, Pryse Agar, had been much better (Mallett 2003: 3). Kipling’s contempt for evangelicals, who sought to foist their beliefs onto others while ignorant of what they may learn from other religions, would manifest itself in his novels, such as in Kim, which contains the rather telling description of a priest who ‘looked at him with the triple-ringed interest of the creed that lumps ninth-tenths of the world under the title of “heathen”’ (Kipling 1901 [1987]: 136), while Mahbub Ali observes how: ‘creed is like horseflesh. The wise man knows horses are good – that there is profit to be made from all’ (Kipling 1901 [1987]: 191). Kipling’s fierce opposition to Home Rule in Ireland also stemmed from a fear it would lead to the Protestants being suppressed by the Catholic majority. As he wrote in his poem Ulster: ‘We know the hell prepared, for such as serve not Rome … ’ (Kipling 1922: 267; Mallett 2003: 156).

One may suppose that such sentiments would put Kipling at odds with wider contemporary perceptions of evangelical Christians in the British Empire, given that the efforts of empire-builders and missionaries have often been seen as mutually beneficial, and this sentiment was expressed by contemporary observers (Hobson 1902; Goldman 1905) as well as later scholars (Madden 1959; Pannikar 1959; Visvanath 2000). However, recent scholarly consensus has moved away from this model, with the relationship between the British administration and Christian missionaries increasingly viewed as problematic, with the two groups just as likely to undermine each other as to provide support (Stanley 1990; Porter 2004). Such studies have pointed to a number of issues that created tensions between British expansion and the missionary cause, including that missionaries were often active in places prior to annexation by British authorities, that they regularly opposed the annexation of new imperial dominions, and how doubts among Christian groups regarding notions of white European superiority led some of their members become the most vocal critics of Empire.

In the case of India, Copland (2006) has argued that after the 1857 Mutiny the relationship between missionaries and the imperial administration in the country became particularly tense, as both sought to blame the other for stoking the fires of revolt. For missionary groups, according to a statement made by the Church Missionary Society in The Times on the 7 October 1857, the failure of the administration to support efforts for mass conversion in India had left ‘vast tracts of the country lying in unbroken heathenism’, and the Mutiny was sign from God that efforts must be increased (Copland 2006: 1044). The government, however, did not see it this way; rather, it was the view of imperial administrators that the overbearing approach of Christian missionaries had created tensions that contributed to the uprising. In 1858, parliament voted to wind-up the East India Company and take direct control of its territories, while a proclamation issued by the Queen that same year made it clear that conversion was not an official part of the British Empire’s modus operandi: ‘we do strictly charge and enjoin all those who may be in authority that they abstain from all interference with the religious belief of our subjects on pain of our highest displeasure’ (Larson 1978: 33). Copland argued that there is truth to the claims that the missionaries did contribute to the growing discontent that led to the Mutiny, as they had become an increasing source of antagonism for local elites, who, while happy to allow missionary schools to be set up so that their children could access a British education, and restrained preaching to be undertaken, did not take kindly to the more confrontational approach of some evangelicals, including their adoption of stray children. Moreover, when Indians did convert from Hinduism to Christianity, rarely was it from among the elites and middle-class, rather it was those from the lower classes and margins of society, and such events were frequently marked by outbursts of violence against the converts and their Christian associates. Subsequently, as Copland concluded:

…one can easily see why the Raj was loath to lend official backing to the Christian missionary: groups who had the capacity to make a substantial difference in this respect—Parsi industrialists, the Hindu intelligentsia, the north Indian Muslim nobility—were precisely those groups most strongly opposed to Christian proselytizing ([2006]: 1053).

Growing up in India as a child of the British administration a decade later, and then working in the country as a young journalist in the early 1880s, Kipling would have observed the tensions between the British administration and Christian missions first-hand in the period following the Mutiny. Given his own negative experiences at the hand of the evangelical Sarah Holloway, and his doubts that Christian dogma provided all the answers, it is not difficult to conclude which side of the fence Kipling would fall regarding who should have shouldered the greater responsibility for the outbreak of the Mutiny.

Thus, it is not on a whim that the main protagonists in the Parnesius stories and ‘The Church That was at Antioch’ are not Christians. Particularly in the case of the former, it would have been entirely plausible to have made the soldiers Christians, given that by this time the Roman Empire had become a Christian state, while it would also have strengthened the continuity Kipling wished to emphasize between the Romano-British and the Edwardian era. Instead, in both the Parnesius stories and ‘The Church That was at Antioch’, the heroes are obstructed, and even threated, by Christian evangelicals intent on imposing their views on others. To begin with, there is the Christian who makes an appearance in the Parnesius story ‘On the Great Wall’:

… a wandering philosopher had jeered at the Eagles. I was able to show that the old man had deliberately blocked our road, and the magistrate told him, out of his own Book, I believe, that, whatever his God might be, he should pay proper respect to Caesar (Kipling [1994]: 129)

The reference to Matthew 22:21 makes the man’s Christian status evident, but he is presented here opposing the hero of the story. The Christian clearly has a quarrelsome nature, and the detour he requires Parnesius to make provides an obstacle to him fulfilling his duty in defending the empire. This episode adds little to the main narrative, and Kipling’s reasons for including it can only be interpreted as a desire to portray evangelical Christianity as a nuisance that obstructs the officials of the Empire (British or Roman) from conducting necessary business.

Furthermore, there are also allusions in the Parnesius stories to the supposed violent Christianization of the Roman Empire in the fourth century. In ‘A Centurion of the Thirtieth’, we find Parnesius’ father urging him to focus on protecting Britain rather than Rome as the latter has ‘forsaken her Gods’. As he goes on to say, ‘The great war with the Painted People broke out in the very year the temples of our Gods were destroyed. We beat the Painted People in the very year our temples were rebuilt’ (Kipling 1906 [1994]: 117). No explicit explanation is given as to how the temples being destroyed and rebuilt relates to incursions by barbarians, but as these events are described at the same time, the reader is inevitably led to relate the two. Why Rome has forsaken her gods and why temples were destroyed and rebuilt is also not made clear, although this provides another allusion to Horace (Odes 3.6), who warns of misfortunes that can befall the subjects of Rome if they leave temples in ruins. However, given Parnesius’ father was recounting events from the early to mid-fourth century, it is possible that Kipling is referring to the advent of Christian emperors and the introduction of ‘anti-pagan’ legislation during this period, which at the time Kipling was writing were frequently referenced as major factors in the Roman Empire’s demise. Since the 1700s, figures such as Voltaire (1764) and Gibbon (1776–1789) had argued that Christians in the fourth century were fiercely intolerant of other faiths, and were often to be found smashing statues, burning temples and murdering prominent figures, such as the philosopher Hypatia of Alexandria. Gibbon certainly influenced Kipling when he was composing the Parnesius stories, as Kipling later acknowledged in a slightly backhanded way: ‘Gibbon was the fat heifer I ploughed with’ (Lycett 2015: 518). The subsequent rebuilding of temples that Parnesius’ father describes might be attributed to the reign of Julian ‘the Apostate’ (361–363CE), during which time, it was once believed, there was a ‘pagan revival’, as Gibbon (1909: 445) stated in his Decline and Fall:

[Julian] extended to all the inhabitants of the Roman world the benefits of a free and equal toleration; and the only hardship which he inflicted on the Christians was to deprive them of the power of tormenting their fellow-subjects, whom they stigmatised with the odious titles of idolaters and heretics. The Pagans received a gracious permission, or rather an express order, to open all their temples; and they were at once delivered from the oppressive laws and arbitrary vexations …

That there was a revitalization of ‘pagan’ cults in Britain during the reign of Julian was also accepted by scholarly contemporaries of Kipling, such as the Roman archaeologist Francis Haverfield (1896: 428):

… the restoration [of the Jupiter Column], beyond question, dates from the fourth century, and there can be little doubt that it is due to some pagan revival, perhaps that of Julian, called the Apostate. The spread of Christianity had caused the monument to fall into ruin …

It is also possible that the ‘year our temples were rebuilt’ occurred under the joint rule of Valentinian I and Valens (364–375CE). The lack of ‘anti-pagan’ legislation issued during their reign contrasted with their successors and predecessors (except Julian), with military and administrative issues being a much greater concern. As Gibbon (1907: 8) observed regarding Valentinian: ‘the indiscreet and unseasonable freedom of Valentinian was the effect of military spirit rather than of Christian zeal’. This is certainly the type of approach that would have appealed to Kipling, whereby one puts defending and running the Empire ahead of religious squabbles. If so, the defeat of the Painted People may relate to the ‘Barbarian Conspiracy’ (367–368CE), when a coordinated surprise attack was launched on Britannia by various tribes from beyond the frontier, including the Picts and Saxons, and was only repulsed after significant damage had been done (Amm. 27.8, 28.3; Mattingly 2006: 235–37). For readers aware of the supposed violent Christianization of the Roman Empire that was to come, and especially the ill-treatment of Mithraic initiates, such references in the Parnesius stories would also add a sense of foreboding, for loyal soldiers such as Parnesius will eventually be persecuted by the Roman state for their beliefs, providing another example of how Rome’s decline was self-perpetuated by harming those who would protect its borders.

In ‘The Church That was at Antioch’, the threat Christian evangelism poses to maintaining law and order needs little elaboration. Here, the disputes between Christian groups and orthodox Jews over the consumption of kosher meat leads to violent riots, one of which results in the young Valens losing his life trying to quell the disturbance. St Paul, Christianity’s greatest evangelist, does not emerge from the tale in an overly positive light, exclaiming there shall be no allowances for different forms of consumption—‘There shall be but one church’—in contrast to Peter who believes it is possible to accommodate a spectrum of practices, while Peter also remonstrates with Paul for attempting to baptise the dying Valens.¹ As Coates (2011: 65) observed in his commentary on Paul’s depiction in the story, his ‘zeal reaches the borderline of presumption and spiritual bullying’.

However, this is not to say that Kipling completely dismisses Christianity as having no virtues, for the close parallels he highlights between Christianity and the Mithras cult suggests that the former has the potential to be better. Similarities between the cults are alluded to in ‘A Centurion of the Thirtieth’, when Puck explains to the children, Dan and Una, that Parnesius ‘met Pertinax in church’, while in the poem ‘A Song to Mithras’ that follows, reference is made to Mithras being resurrected from the dead: ‘Thou descending immortal, immortal to rise again’ (1994: 134, 143). Put more bluntly in ‘The Church That was at Antioch’, Valens observes, ‘there isn’t a ceremony or symbol [the Christians] haven’t stolen from the Mithras ritual’ (Kipling 1932: 91). Later, when Valens discusses Christianity with saints Peter and Paul, he is informed that:

… one day the Light and the Voice of the God broke over [Paul], and he experienced a rending change of heart—precisely as in the Mithras creed. Then he met, and had been initiated by, some men who had walked and talked and, more particularly, had eaten, with the new God before He was killed, and who had seen Him after, like Mithras, He had risen from His grave. (Kipling 1932: 101)

At the end of the story, as he lays dying, Valens asks his uncle to show mercy to his assailant, who did not know what he was doing. Peter is struck by Valens’ words, as they echo those of Christ on the cross, and dismisses Paul’s suggestion that they baptise the dying Valens, retorting, ‘think you that one who has spoken Those Words needs such as we are to certify him to any God?’ (Kipling 1932: 113). Throughout the story, Peter is presented as an elderly and failing man in comparison to the energetic and forceful Paul, yet upon hearing Valens’ final words Peter reasserts his authority (‘vast and commanding, revealed after all these years’), having been reminded that to be accepted by God, one does not need to adhere to regulations of ritual behaviour, but rather treat your fellows with respect and care whatever their beliefs. In ‘The Church That was at Antioch’, these basic tenants of Jesus’ teachings were already becoming obscured by the disputes among the Christians and the Jews over more trivial matters; this is Kipling critiquing Christian evangelists who are less concerned about the original message and more about foisting their beliefs and practices onto others. In contrast, the Mithras cult is a more inclusive and open-minded community, for as ‘A Song to Mithras’ states: ‘Many roads Thou hast fashioned: all of them lead to the Light’ (Kipling 1994: 143). However, the close similarities between the Mithras cult and Christianity observed by Valens suggest that it is not beyond Christians to adopt a similar approach. In Kipling’s stories, there is little difference between the core doctrines of the two cults; rather, it is how men act upon these that creates contrasts, with certain Christians determined to enforce their beliefs on others, which leads to them destabilizing the peaceful running of empire.

Conclusion

Rudyard Kipling was one of the foremost authors of the late nineteenth to early twentieth centuries, and his works had a tremendous impact on how a wide range of people initially developed their understanding on a variety of topics. Certainly, his works set in the Roman Empire, most famously those included in Puck of Pook’s Hill, would have exposed many people to this period of history for the first time, and within these stories they would have encountered the cult of Mithras. Often presented as the religion of the loyal servants of Empire, the cult is portrayed as a positive force, whereby members aid each other, even when on opposing sides in larger conflicts. Little reference is made to the actual structure of the cult, its rituals, or mithraea in these narratives, largely because Kipling’s aim was to replicate what he believed to be the most important aspects of religion, including a duty to your fellow man and freedom of worship, qualities that he admired greatly in Freemasonry. Indeed, to Kipling, the male-only, semi-secretive cult of Mithras appeared as a religious version of Freemasonry.

The Mithras cult lies in stark contrast to Kipling’s portrayal of Christians in these stories, as well as the Jews in Antioch, who violently clash with other groups who are not willing to embrace the ‘correct’ faith. While this is more explicit in ‘The Church That was at Antioch’, which sees an eruption of street-violence that results in the death of Valens, the Parnesius stories also provide examples of how evangelicalism can hinder the smooth running of empire; at a basic level, a Christian holds up Parnesius on his way to Hadrian’s Wall, while at its most extreme, temples are destroyed, leading Britannia to be assaulted by groups of barbarians. These stories thus serve as a warning of the instability that unchecked evangelism can generate in an empire that contains a diverse range of peoples and religions, a message particularly pertinent for the British Empire of Kipling’s day. Kipling himself had suffered at the hands of an evangelical, while he would also have been aware of the frustration that the British administration felt in India over the activities of missionaries, which they blamed for inflaming tensions leading to the 1857 Mutiny. However, Kipling’s works do not completely disregard Christianity in favour of the Mithras cult, for he depicts their teachings as being highly similar. For Kipling, if one strips away the desire to place Christianity above all other religions, and return to its basic messages, then what one is left with is beneficial. Just as Peter is reawakened by Valens’ dying words and puts the evangelical Paul in his place, so too must moderate Edwardian-era Christians restrain the overzealous evangelicals of their day.

Finally, it is undoubtedly the case that members of the public and certain scholars owe their views concerning the cult of Mithras, and the Christianization of the Roman Empire, to fictional narratives they were exposed to in childhood, including both Kipling’s stories and those of later authors he influenced. There is not the space to delve into such matters here, but the potential of this line of study can be observed in the works of two Kipling fans who became successful writers in their own right. One is self-proclaimed ‘Kipling addict’ (1960: 103) Rosemary Sutcliff, whose numerous novels set in Roman Britain include various protagonists that are Mithraic initiates, beginning with Marcus in The Eagle of the Ninth (1956). Moreover, nearly a century after Puck of Pook’s Hill was published, Neil Gaiman, a self-professed Kipling fan (2006: 9), refers to Mithras in his American Gods (2001: 223) and touches on similar themes to those expressed in Kipling’s work, whereby there are close parallels between the cult of Mithras, which is popular among the soldiers, and Christianity:

‘ … it’s not even [Jesus’] birthday, you know that? He took it from Mithras. You run into Mithras yet? Red cap. Nice kid.’

‘No, I don’t think so.’

‘Well … I’ve never seen Mithras around here. He was an army brat. Maybe he’s back in the Middle East, taking it easy, but I’d expect he’s probably gone by now. It happens. One day every soldier in the empire has to shower in the blood of your sacrificial bull. The next they don’t even remember your birthday.’

Acknowledgement

Thanks go to my two anonymous reviewers for their constructive feedback, and Mark Crittenden for his proof-reading process.

Footnotes

1

Valens is also given the moral high ground over the Jews, who instigate riots, trick the Roman authorities into arresting Christians, and it is a Jew who stabs Valens. However, for Kipling, who displayed anti-Semitic tendencies, the issues here are not religious, but racial, as he made clear in his memoir: ‘Israel is a race to leave alone. It abets disorder’ (1934: 224).