Mór Jókai - A Christian But a Roman

Mór Jókai's novella, A Christian But a Roman is a solution in search of a problem. It is set during the tumultuous time in Ancient Rome when the Christian church, still perceived by many as a sect out to do harm, had not yet grown into the immensity of power it would soon attain. Jókai's interest in Christianity, and his passion for romance and tragedy, are well served with A Christian But a Roman. The primary protagonist, Mesembrius, is a weak character, thinly told. His daughters do not love him, or if they do, their love is small in comparison to the frenzy they feel for Christianity. Mesembrius is bitter and old, but he is a father and must do what is right.

In Rome, or at least, in Jókai's Rome, we have two primary factions. On the one hand there are old gray-beards, men at the height of their political power, who use their influence to push away the Christian and keep them on the fringes of society. On the other side are the Christians themselves, meeting at nighttime in shadow, their identities cloaked. It is inevitable that a collision is in order, and indeed it is – and that's the story. It's flimsy, but it's there only as dressing for Jókai's grander argument, which is that the Romans were brutal to the Christians, and that the Christians were just and pure and, though their means may not have been as admirable as their ends, the forces of righteousness and justice were on their side.

The problem of the novella, its unmanageable and fatal fracture, is that Christianity, we all know, won the war, and Jókai's conceit of forcing his characters into lengthy, ominous speeches concerning the inevitable fall of Rome as the Romans know it, seems useless. Why go to all the effort? He cannot convince us, the reader, for we are already convinced – we know the ending to this story. And his characters, necessarily, cannot be convinced either – for they must disagree for there to be a plot, which then unfolds into a novella. What we have, then, are sophomoric arguments dressed up with portentous language, all to defend and exult a destination we are supposed to perceive as grand but also improbable, when we know it is merely inevitable.

Another difficulty is that, really, Christianity did not have to emerge victorious. History says it did, and we know that to be true – but it didn't have to happen. Yet Jókai treats the concept as though it is something of which we still need to be convinced. Not the rightness of Christianity, no, nor the beauty of its teachings. Agree with Christianity or not, that is besides the point. No, Jókai is not attempting to win atheists to Christian, or Muslims to God – instead, he is trying to convince us that the Romans would one day become a Christian nation. And of course this is true! It's there, and we know it. The dramatic tension does not exist for us, but it oozes from every character. Consequently the whole thing smells a bit off, and no character escapes the tarred brush of the ridiculous.

Consider the following exchange:

"We are worshipping God!"

"May you be accursed when you utter that word! You have committed deeds for which even the darkness of night is no protection. You disturb by your diabolical songs the dead resting beneath the earth; you kill human beings and force one another to drink their blood, and when your nerves are roused to execrable excitement by this blood, you extinguish your touches and commit sins whose bare thought inspired horror."

What are we to take from this? The second paragraph is, in a nutshell, the position of the Roman senators. Whether a reader of Jókai is a Christian or not, or approves of the religion or doesn't, it is mostly pointless to read that the Romans believed such a thing about them, and that they used it as their argument. Presented as above, we can do nothing but side with the Christians, who merely wish to believe in peace.

A novel of ideas must, if it is to be taken seriously, present both or all of its ideas fairly, else it is simply a rant, and can be discarded. Jókai is fighting a battle already won, and one that hasn't mattered in two thousand years.

Stepping away from the central argument, plot, and motive for the characters a moment, let's look at Mesembrius once more. He has no use for the new religion, until he does, and he does when his daughter's become embroiled within it. As the conscience of the novella, his shift from Roman to Christian is supposed to occur along with our own, as we first sympathise with one mindset, and then the other. As it stands, Mesembrius is instead simply a father unwilling to lose his daughters, and while this is (somewhat) admirable, it stands outside of Jókai's primary argument, which is the positive of Christianity against the brutality of the Romans. His climactic scene, as Rome burns, is fitting for him, but Jókai is never really able to properly convey his sudden change of heart to us, the reader.

Given all that, A Christian But a Roman is actually a reasonably pleasant novella to read. Jókai is a capable author, and his hand is sure, even pretty, when turned away from the melodrama of his central conflict. In one passage, he writes,

The religion of the poets, the dreamy groves, the flower-strewn shore, the chosen deities of the sunlit island worlds, who in the enthusiasm of this artistic nature rose from the foam of the sea, were pervaded by the fragrance of flowers, immortalized as stars.

And this is rather lovely. Later, there is a scene explaining the sudden popularity of freckles amongst the Roman Senate, and this is rather wittily told, and reveals in a page more about the Romans than any number of bellowing proclamations. Whatever else it is, A Christian But a Roman is enjoyable to read, and the length is short enough that it won't outstay its welcome. It is undeniably flawed, and will likely only interest those already curious about Hungarian literature. But it is, at the same time, accessible and readable, and the flashes of loveliness do much (but not nearly enough, it must be admitted), to counteract the staggering problems within the work.

Author	Mór Jókai
Title	A Christian But a Roman
Nationality	Hungarian
Publisher	Project Gutenberg
Published	1900 (English)
Pages	95
Availability: ---Amazon (US)