Validation of Food Preservation

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Validation of Food Preservation
Processes Based on Novel
Technologies

EDITED BY

Tatiana Koutchma
Guelph Research and Development Center, Agriculture and Agri-Food
Canada, ON, Canada
Table of Contents

Cover image

Title page

Copyright

Dedication

List of contributors

Preface

Introduction

1 History of thermal process validation and verification

2 Nonthermal technologies and challenges of validation of novel

processes compared to thermal processing

3 Validation and verification as requirements of food safety

regulations

Further reading
Chapter 1. General principles and approaches of food process
validation

Abstract

1.1 General principles and approaches of food process

validation

1.2 Conclusions

References

Chapter 2. Validation of high hydrostatic pressure process

Abstract

2.1 History and introduction to high-pressure processing

technology for foods

2.2 Fundamentals of HHP

2.3 HHP critical product and process parameters

2.4 Packaging

2.5 HHP commercial systems

2.6 International regulatory requirements

2.7 Microbiological challenge testing

2.8 Commercial HHP trials

2.9 Responsibilities for contract of HHP facility

2.10 Future prospects and gaps in HHP technology

development
 References

Further reading

Chapter 3. Case study of validation of high hydrostatic pressure

processing of fruit and vegetable smoothies in PET bottles

Abstract

3.1 Product description

3.2 Packaging

3.3 HPP unit

3.4 Methodology

3.5 Sampling plan

3.6 Test procedures

3.7 Source of pathogens

3.8 Cultivation, enumeration, and enrichment protocols for

model microbes

3.9 HPP operation procedure

3.10 Results

3.11 Conclusion

References

Chapter 4. Validation of light-based processes

Abstract
 4.1 History and introduction to fundamentals of ultraviolet light
and pulsed light technology for food applications

4.2 Continuous UV, pulsed, and LED light sources

4.3 International regulatory requirements

4.4 Validation of UV light technologies for surface treatment

4.5 Validation of UV light preservation processes for liquid

products and beverages

4.6 Conclusion

References

Chapter 5. Case study of validation of ultraviolet light pasteurization

of sugar syrups

Abstract

5.1 Evaluation of ultraviolet dose in commercial ultraviolet

system

5.2 UV dose verification studies in commercial-scale system

5.3 UV inactivation of pathogenic and spoilage organisms in

liquid sucrose

References

Chapter 6. Overview of other novel processes and validation

approaches

Abstract
 6.1 Introduction

6.2 Radiation, regulations, and validation

6.3 Advanced radiative and electromagnetic heating

technologies

6.4 Cold atmospheric plasma

References

Conclusions

Step 1

Step 2

Step 3

Step 4

Step 5

Step 6

Step 7

Step 8

Step 9

Step 10

Step 11

Step 12
Index
Copyright
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This book and the individual contributions contained in it are

protected under copyright by the Publisher (other than as may be
noted herein).

Notices
Knowledge and best practice in this field are constantly changing.
As new research and experience broaden our understanding,
changes in research methods, professional practices, or medical
treatment may become necessary.
Practitioners and researchers must always rely on their own
experience and knowledge in evaluating and using any
information, methods, compounds, or experiments described
herein. In using such information or methods they should be
mindful of their own safety and the safety of others, including
parties for whom they have a professional responsibility.

To the fullest extent of the law, neither the Publisher nor the
authors, contributors, or editors, assume any liability for any injury
and/or damage to persons or property as a matter of products
liability, negligence or otherwise, or from any use or operation of
any methods, products, instructions, or ideas contained in the
material herein.

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A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

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ISBN: 978-0-12-815888-3

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Dedication

In the memory of my mother Nina M. Kuchma who died in 2020.

List of contributors
Larry Keener, International Product Safety Consultants, Seattle,
WA, United States
Tatiana Koutchma, Novel Food Processing Technologies,
Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada, Guelph, ON, Canada
Keith Warriner
Food Science Department, University of Guelph, Guelph, ON,
Canada
Center for Public Health and Zoonoses Canada
Preface
With the fast-growing demands in mild heat and cold food
preservation and sanitation markets, novel processing technologies
have been emerging in food production for extending products’
shelf-life and eliminating foodborne pathogens. A science-based
standardized validation process is a critical component in assessing
the efficacy of novel technologies as a microbial control measure
according to food regulations and successful commercialization.
While the longer history of validation of thermal technologies
resulted in advancing standard methodologies, the approaches for
the validation of nonthermal technologies are not established and
are currently under development. Among a number of technologies
that are presently investigated for premium food processing, high
hydrostatic pressure (HHP) and ultraviolet (UV-C) light are
nonthermal alternatives to pasteurization approved by international
regulatory agencies and recognized as the simplest and
environmentally friendly ways to destroy pathogenic and spoilage
organisms with lower impact on quality and nutrition values and
sensory attributes of many products.
Despite numerous publications that are available on scientific,
technological, and engineering aspects of nonthermal processing
applications for food treatment, no recent monograph exists that
would integrate fundamental knowledge about principles and
scientific approaches of food process validation on all stages of
process development and commercialization. The need for clear
knowledge and understanding of validation steps of nonthermal
processes is vital. This book is a first attempt to summarize existing
scientific experience of validation of traditional thermal and
nonthermal technologies, such as canning or radiation, and
recommend key activities for bench top, pilot, prototype, and
commercial validation of HPP and UV systems for the treatment of
variety of food products. The objective and focus of this manuscript
is to review definitions, principles, and practical approaches of food
process validation and summarize the experience of thermal
processing and of a few commercially available novel processes that
have been using HPP technology, recently ultraviolet light and other
novel technologies for safety and preservation operations. The
aspects explored include available process applications for liquid
and solid foods, critical product and process control parameters for
each technology, microbial challenge studies including selection and
recommendation of surrogates, and consideration for procedures to
measure and control the delivery of the required novel process,
quality, and equipment validation. In addition, sanitary design and
equipment scalability will be discussed to facilitate the
implementation of nonthermal technologies and mitigate risks
during food production.
The introduction chapter starts with reexamining the history of
thermal process validation and verification and existing practical
methods and approaches of thermal preservation process
establishment and validation. Also, new challenges of development,
validation, and commercial implementation of novel nonthermal
processes compared to thermal processing are outlined including
production benefits and review of fundamental principles.
In Chapter 1, General Principles and Approaches of Food Process
Validation, general concept and definitions, structure, key
components, and approaches to process validation are presented and
discussed in detail. This includes physical, microbiological safety,
quality, and equipment validation with elements of cleaning,
calibration and analytical parts, and validation of facilities. The
general guidelines for each key component of the validation process
are given along with the basic outline of objectives and critical
procedures of process and equipment validation. Essential role and
requirements for process authority are presented in this chapter.
 The focus of Chapter 2, Validation of High Hydrostatic Pressure
Process, is the validation of HHP process of HPP that is used for
nonthermal pasteurization. The fundamental principles of HPP
along with essential practical considerations in terms of critical
product and process parameters, packaging, microbial challenge
studies, and other testing and scaling up issues are discussed in
details to assist HPP end users to accelerate process innovation.
The goal of Chapter 3, Case Study of Validation of High
Hydrostatic Pressure Processing of Fruit and Vegetable Smoothies in
PET Bottles. Chapter 4 is to discuss Validation of Light-Based
Processes, such as continuous UV-C light, pulsed light, and LEDs,
for the treatment of surfaces and liquid products and provide
guidelines for technology implementation. Information regarding
international regulatory requirements on light technologies is
summarized and will be helpful in determining validation objectives
and scope. Chapter 5, Case Study of Validation of Ultraviolet Light
Pasteurization of Sugar Syrups, presents the methodology and
validation of microbiological efficacy of commercial UV treatment of
sugar syrups.
Chapter 6, Overview of Other Novel Processes and Validation
Approaches, is focused on the overview and brief discussion of
principles, commercial applications, and main validation approaches
of two commercially available group of technologies, such as
ionizing irradiation and advanced microwave heating and emerging
treatment using cold atmospheric plasma. Pros and cons of each
technology will be presented along with status update on regulatory
approvals and validation procedures. Due to the physical nature of
those technologies, the approaches for process validation differ and
face different technical challenges. For this reason, different
approaches can be used to demonstrate and document the targeted
performance.
Not all nonthermal technologies and validation issues were
discussed in this book. In general, the book content is aimed to assist
and provide recommendations for food processors, technology
developers, equipment manufacturers, regulatory inspectors, and
extension specialists during the commercialization of novel
 p g
technologies. Moreover, the suggestions for validation protocols and
reports can be helpful for intended audience. However, this book
represents the most comprehensive and ambitious step on the
subject of validation of novel technologies for foods that exists to
date. Also, the important step forward has been made in scientific
understanding of the needs and practical tasks for the future.
Introduction

Tatiana KoutchmaNovel Food Processing Technologies, Agriculture and Agri-Food

Canada, Guelph, ON, Canada

1 History of thermal process validation and verification

1.1 Approaches to thermal process validation
Throughout the history of food processing, the application of preservation technologies has
been traditionally associated with four fundamental concepts:

1. Application of thermal energy to elevate product temperatures to achieve long-term

or extended safety, stability, or preservation;
2. Removal of thermal energy to reduce product temperature and extend shelf-life;
3. Removal of water from product structure or to acidify foods and thus achieve an
extended shelf-life;
4. Application of packaging or a step required for maintaining of product properties
achieved after processing during storage.

The application of thermal energy to elevate the product temperature has been one of the
key processes in the food-processing industry, which often aims to produce commercially
sterile food products and pasteurized products of optimal quality.
Depending on the product type—solid or liquid—being processed and the shelf-life
required, thermal preservation can be accomplished in two ways. In the case of solid foods,
heat is applied to a filled, sealed container, and in the case of liquids, the sterilization or
pasteurization of products can take place outside of their final container and before filling
in a clean or aseptic environment.
Sterilization and pasteurization operations rely, respectively, on elimination and
reduction of the most resistant pathogens of public health significance and spoilage
microflora. Commercial sterility is defined as: the condition achieved by application of heat
which renders food free from viable microorganisms, including those of known public
health significance, capable of growing in the food at the temperatures at which the food is
likely to be held during distribution and storage (US Department of Health, 1994). The term
“pasteurization” was originally defined as a process of mild heat treatment to reduce
significantly or kill the number of pathogenic and spoilage microorganisms. The definition
of a traditional pasteurization process relied only on thermal treatment and is achieved by
exposing foods to heat for a certain amount of time. Unlike sterilization, after
pasteurization the food is not free of microorganisms since heat treatment is not severe
enough to kill heat-resistant spores that can survive the process and may be present.
Therefore additional forms of preservation such as refrigeration (e.g., milk), atmosphere
modification (e.g., vacuum packaging of meats and cheeses), addition of antimicrobial
preservatives (e.g., sodium chloride, sodium nitrite, ascorbic acid, sorbic acid, and sulfur
dioxide), or combinations of these techniques, are required for product stabilization during
distribution.
Since introducing preservation principles in food processing at the start of the 19th
century, the food industry and scientific community have accumulated critical knowledge
for the establishment and validation of thermal and other traditional processes that
includes:

1. Established organism of public health concern for different groups of products such
as low-acid products, milk, and juices;
2. Well understood and known kinetics of microbial destruction and its parameters of
thermal resistance (z), decimal reduction time (DT), and lethality;
3. Knowledge of product heating and heat transfer in given processing systems;
4. Establishing of equivalent safety of different processing systems expressed in
“lethality” terms.

Process validation is necessary to give an assurance that commercial sterility,

pasteurization, or other related food safety objectives (FSOs) that have been achieved in test
conditions also will be delivered in all subsequent production conditions. Historically, there
are two approaches to the validation of thermal processes.

1. The first approach has been to use direct microbial kill measurements involving
inoculation studies with spore or bacterial cell suspensions with known heat
destruction/resistance characteristics or other microbial challenge tests.
2. The second approach involves the collection and recording of time and temperature
data history in the tested product using specialized data-logging systems, and more
recently in-process data-logging with small data loggers that can pass through the
continuous process, and collect data for subsequent analysis and interpretation.

In both cases some form of mathematical modeling has been used to interpret the data in
the context of FSOs and/or commercial sterility. The mathematical models for interpretation
of the data are designed to reflect the appropriate death kinetics of the target marker
organisms. Mathematical models such as the application of D and z values in the
development of thermal processing have proven extremely useful. The models also provide
a way of integrating the overall lethal effect of the thermal process, enabling processes of
different times and temperature history to be compared on a common basis of lethality
equivalence. Lethality is an essential element of process establishment and validation that
has been developed for thermally processed foods. It provides the ability to express process
delivery in terms of units of lethality and to understand the equivalent safety of different
processing systems. By incorporating both the kinetics of the destruction of the organism of
public health concern and the mathematical modeling of heating curves the thermal
processing industry developed the terms of process values such as “sterilization value” (FT)
and pasteurization value (PT). When the sterilization value (FT) has a reference temperature
of 121.1°C it is called an Fo, and pasteurization value (PT) with a reference temperature of
72°C is called Po. The sterilization and pasteurization values are the measurement of the
number of minutes that would result in the same effectiveness of the process if the product
had been held at 121.1°C or 72°C/90°C, respectively. A “worst case” approach by choosing
samples that received the lowest time–temperature treatment to establish a safe process is
traditionally used in thermal processing. This approach aiming at giving a greater
assurance of process safety often results in a vast majority of overprocessed products and
leads to lower quality as a result.
The ability to understand the equivalent efficacy of thermal processes is important when
it comes to commercial applications and compliance with associated international
regulatory requirements. Also, it is evident that the validation template developed over
many years for activities such as canning, and aseptic applications could serve as a
“blueprint” for other applications of novel processing technologies.

1.2 Establishment of the preservation process

The critical product, process, and storage condition differences between target
microorganisms that are to be considered to establish pasteurization or sterilization
preservation specifications are summarized in Table 1.1.

Table 1.1

Critical product, process, and storage conditions for the establishment of

preservation specifications.
Pasteurization Sterilization
Product parameters
pH <3.5 3.5 <pH<4.6 pH>4.6 pH>4.6
Aw >0.86

Process parameters
Temperature, 65–72 >65 >65 >121
°C
Additional No Refrigeration Antimicrobials,
hurdles Aw

Target microorganisms
Pathogenic E. coli Listeria E. coli Listeria Nonproteolitic C. C. botulinum
Salmonella Salmonella botulinum spores
Spoilage Molds, yeasts Lactic bacteria, Geobacillus spp.
yeasts, Bacillus cereus
molds
Storage Ambient Refrigerated conditions Ambient
temperature
Packaging Hermetically sealed flexible containers Hermetically
sealed flexible
containers
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the absence of written documents, it is probable that this lower
division of the universe was our earth. The monuments give us with
fair certainty the Mithraic ideas as to how life was brought thither; but
they tell us little or nothing as to the condition in which the earth was
at the time, nor how it was supposed to have come into existence.
Porphyry tells us that the “elements” (στοιχεῖα) were represented in
the Mithraic chapel[886], and we find in some examples of the bull-
slaying scenes, the figures of a small lion and a crater or mixing-bowl
beneath the belly of the bull, which M. Cumont considers to be the
symbols of fire and water respectively; while the earth may be
typified, as has been said above, by the serpent, and the fourth
element or air may be indicated by the wind which is blowing
Mithras’ mantle away from his body and to the left of the group[887]. If
this be so, it is probable that the Mithraist who thought about such
matters looked upon the four elements, of which the ancients
believed the world to be composed, as already in existence before
the sacrifice of the primordial bull brought life upon the earth; and
that the work of Mithras as Demiurge or Artizan was confined to
arranging and moulding them into the form of the cosmos or ordered
world. As to what was the ultimate origin of these elements, and
whether the Mithraists, like the Gnostics, held that Matter had an
existence independent of, and a nature opposed to, the Supreme
Being, we have no indication whatever.
Of Mithraic eschatology or the view that the worshippers of Mithras
held as to the end of the world, we know rather less than we do of
their ideas as to its beginning. The Persian religion, after its reform
under the Sassanid kings, taught that it would be consumed by
fire[888]; and, as this doctrine of the Ecpyrosis, as the ancients called
it, was also held by the Stoics, whose physical doctrines were then
fashionable at Rome, it is probable enough that it entered into
Mithraism also. But of this there is no proof, and M. Cumont’s
attempt to show that a similar conflagration was thought by the
Mithraic priests to have taken place before the Tauroctony, and as a
kind of paradigm or forecast of what was to come, is not very
convincing[889]. Yet some glimpse of what was supposed to happen
between the creation of the world and its destruction seems to be
typified by a monstrous figure often found in the ruined chapels once
used for the Mithraic worship, where it seems to have been carefully
guarded from the eyes of the general body of worshippers. This
monster had the body of a man[890] with the head of a lion, while
round his body is twined a huge serpent, whose head either appears
on the top of the lion’s or rests on the human breast. On the
monster’s back appear sometimes two, but generally four wings, and
in his hands he bears upright two large keys, for one of which a
sceptre is sometimes substituted; while his feet are sometimes
human, sometimes those of a crocodile or other reptile. On his body,
between the folds of the serpent, there sometimes appear the signs
of the four quarters of the year, i.e. Aries and Libra, Cancer and
Capricorn[891], and in other examples a thunderbolt on the breast or
on the right knee[892]. The figure is often mounted on a globe which
bears in one instance the two crossed bands which show that it is
intended for our earth, and in one curious instance he appears to
bear a flaming torch in each hand, while his breath is kindling a
flame which is seen rising from an altar beside him[893]. It is possible
that in this last we have a symbolical representation of the Ecpyrosis.
Lastly, in the Mithraic chapel at Heddernheim, which is the only one
where the figure of the lion-headed monster was found in situ, it was
concealed within a deep niche or cell so fashioned, says M. Cumont,
that the statue could only be perceived through a little conical
aperture or peep-hole made in the slab of basalt closing the
niche[894].
M. Cumont’s theory, as given in his magnificent work on the
Mystères de Mithra and elsewhere, is that the figure represents that
Zervan Akerene or Boundless Time whom he would put at the head
of the Mithraic pantheon, and would make the father of both Ormuzd
and Ahriman[895]. M. Cumont’s opinion, on a subject of which he has
made himself the master, must always command every respect, and
it may be admitted that the notion of such a supreme Being,
corresponding in many ways to the Ineffable Bythos of the Gnostics,
did appear in the later developments of the Persian religion, and may
even have been known during the time that the worship of Mithras
flourished in the West[896]. It has been shown elsewhere, however,
that this idea only came to the front long after the cult of Mithras had
become extinct, that M. Cumont’s view that the lion-headed monster
was represented as without sex or passions has been shown to be
baseless by later discoveries, and that the figure is connected in at
least one example with an inscription to Arimanes or Ahriman[897]. M.
Cumont has himself noted the confusion which a Christian, writing
before the abolition of the Mithras worship, makes between the
statues of Hecate, goddess of hell and patroness of sorcerers, and
those of the lion-headed monster[898], and Hecate’s epithet of
Περσείη can only be explained by some similar association[899]. At
the same time, M. Cumont makes it plain that the Mithraists did not
regard these infernal powers Ahriman and Hecate with the horror
and loathing which the reformed Zoroastrian religion afterwards
heaped upon the antagonist of Ormuzd[900]. On the contrary the
dedications of several altars and statues show that they paid them
worship and offered them sacrifices, as the Greeks did to Hades and
Persephone, the lord and lady of hell, of whom the Mithraists
probably considered them the Persian equivalents. From all these
facts, the conclusion seems inevitable that the lion-headed monster
represents Ahriman, the consort of Hecate[901].
If we now look at the religious literature of the time when the worship
of Mithras was coming into favour, we find a pretty general
consensus of opinion that the chthonian or infernal god represented
in the earlier Persian religion by this Ahriman, was a power who
might be the rival of, but was not necessarily the mortal enemy of
Zeus. Whether Neander be right or not in asserting that the
prevailing tendency of the age was towards Dualism[902], it is certain
that most civilized nations had then come to the conclusion that on
this earth the bad is always mixed up with the good. Plutarch puts
this clearly enough when he says that nature here below comes not
from one, but from two opposed principles and contending powers,
and this opinion, he tells us, is a most ancient one which has come
down from expounders of myths (θεολόγοι) and legislators to poets
and philosophers, and is expressed “not in words and phrases, but in
mysteries and sacrifices, and has been found in many places among
both Barbarians and Greeks[903].” The same idea of antagonistic
powers is, of course, put in a much stronger form in the reformed
Persian religion, where the incursion of Ahriman into the kingdom of
Ormuzd brings upon the earth all evil in the shape of winter,
prolonged drought, storms, disease, and beasts and plants hurtful to
man[904]. But this does not seem to have been the view of Ahriman’s
functions taken by the older Magism, whence the worship of Mithras
was probably derived[905]. In Mithraism, it is not Ahriman, as in the
Bundahish, but Mithras, the vicegerent of Ormuzd, who slays the
mystic Bull, and by so doing he brings good and not evil to the earth.
Nowhere do we find in the Mithraic sculptures any allusion to
Ahriman as a god of evil pure and simple, or as one who is for ever
opposed to the heavenly powers. We do, indeed, find in several
Mithraea representations of a Titanomachia where the Titans,
represented as men with serpent legs, are depicted as fleeing before
a god like the Greek Zeus who strikes them with his thunderbolts[906].
But this is not more necessarily suggestive of two irreconcilable
principles than the Greek story of the Titans, those sons of Earth
who were persuaded by their mother to make war upon their father
Uranos, who put their brother Kronos upon his throne, and who were
in their turn hurled from heaven by Kronos’ son Zeus. Even if we do
not accept the later myth which reconciles Zeus to his
adversaries[907], the story does not go further than to say that the
Titans attempted to gain heaven and were thrust back to their own
proper dwelling-place, the earth.
It is in this way, as it would seem, that the lion-headed monster of the
Mithraic chapels must be explained. Ahriman, the god girt with the
serpent which represents the earth, has rebelled against Ormuzd or
Jupiter, and has been marked with the thunderbolt which has cast
him down from heaven. But he remains none the less lord of his own
domain, the earth, his sway over which is shown by the sceptre
which he wields while standing upon it[908]. As for the keys which he
bears, they are doubtless those of the gates behind which he keeps
the souls and bodies of men, as the Orphics said, imprisoned, until
he is compelled to release them by a higher power[909]. In all this, his
functions do not go beyond those of the Greek Hades, with whom
Plutarch equates him.
It is however, possible that he was conceived by the Mithraists as
occupying a slightly different place in the material universe from that
of his Greek prototype. The true realm of Hades was generally
placed by the Greeks below the earth, but that of the Mithraic
Ahriman may possibly be just outside it. M. Cumont shows many
reasons for supposing the lion-headed god to be connected with the
idea of destiny[910], and in one of the very few contemporary writings
which make distinct allusion to the Mithraic tenets, there is
something which confirms this view. This occurs in a fragment
embedded, as it were, in a Magic Papyrus or sorcerer’s handbook
now in the Bibliothèque Nationale at Paris[911]. The document itself is
probably not, as Prof. Albert Dieterich has too boldly asserted, a
“Mithraic Liturgy”; but it is evidently connected in some way with the
Mithraic worship and begins with a statement that the writer is a
priest who has received inspiration from “the great Sun-God
Mithras.” M. Georges Lafaye is of opinion that it narrates in
apocalyptic fashion the adventures of the soul of a perfect Mithraist
on its way to heaven, and this is probably correct, although it is here
told for no purpose of edification but as a spell or charm[912]. The
soul, if it be indeed she who is speaking, repeatedly complains to the
gods whom she meets—including one in white tunic, crimson mantle
and anaxyrides or Persian trousers who may be Mithras himself—of
“the harsh and inexorable necessity” which has been compelling her
so long as she remained in the “lower nature[913].” But the Sphere of
Destiny or necessity, as we have seen in the Pistis Sophia, was
thought to be the one immediately surrounding the earth, and
although the document in which we have before met with this idea
belongs to a different set of religious beliefs than those here treated
of, it is probable that both Gnostic and Mithraist drew it from the
astrological theories current at the time which came into the
Hellenistic world from Babylon. It is therefore extremely probable that
the Mithraists figured Ahriman as ruling the earth from the sphere
immediately outside it, and this would agree well with his position
upon the globe in the monuments where he appears. It is some
confirmation of this that, in another part of the Papyrus just quoted,
the “World-ruler” (Cosmocrator) is invoked as “the Great Serpent,
leader of these gods, who holds the source of Egypt [Qy, The Nile?]
and the end of the whole inhabited world [in his hands], who begets
in Ocean Pshoi (i.e. Fate) the god of gods[914]”; while the Great
Dragon or Outer Darkness in the Pistis Sophia is said to surround
the earth. That both orthodox Christians and Gnostics like the
Valentinians looked upon the Devil, who, as lord of hell, was
sometimes identified with Hades, as the Cosmocrator or World-Ruler
requires no further demonstration[915], and in this particular as in
others the Mithraists may have drawn from the same source as the
Gnostic teachers[916].
That they did so in a related matter can be shown by direct evidence.
Like the Ophites of the Diagram before described, the Mithraists
thought that the soul descended to the body through seven spheres
which were those of the “planets” Saturn, Venus, Jupiter, Mercury,
Mars, the Moon, and the Sun in that order, which Origen, who
mentions the fact, says that the Persian theology declared to be
symbolized “by the names of the rest of matter,” and also gave for it
“musical reasons[917].” He further describes the different qualities
which the soul in her passage receives from each sphere, and which
it seems fair to conclude she gives back to them on her reascension.
M. Cumont is no doubt right when he attributes the origin of this
tenet to the mathematici or astrologers and says that it too came
originally from Chaldaea[918]. The seven heavens are also found in
many Oriental documents of the time, including the Book of the
Secrets of Enoch[919] and the Apocalypse of Baruch[920]. According to
Origen, they were symbolized in the Mithraic chapels by a ladder of
eight steps, the first seven being of the metals peculiar to the
different planets, i.e. lead, tin, copper, iron, an alloy of several
metals, silver, and gold, with the eighth step representing the heaven
of the fixed stars[921]. The Stoics who held similar views, following
therein perhaps the Platonic cosmogony, had already fixed the gate
of the sky through which the souls left the heaven of the fixed stars
on their descent to the earth in Cancer, and that by which they
reascended in Capricorn[922], which probably accounts for the two
keys borne by the lion-headed god on the Mithraic monuments, and
for those two Zodiacal signs being displayed on his body. The other
two signs, viz. Aries and Libra, may possibly refer to the places in a
horoscope or genethliacal figure which the astrologers of the time
called the Porta laboris and Janua Ditis respectively, as denoting the
gate by which man “born to labour” enters life, and the “gate of
Hades” by which he leaves it[923]. If, as Porphyry says, the doctrine of
metempsychosis formed part of the Mithraic teaching, the keys
would thus have a meaning analogous to the Orphic release from
“the wheel[924].”
The other gods who appear on the Mithraic monuments are those
known to us in classical mythology and are represented under the
usual human forms made familiar by Greek and Roman art. By the
side of, but in a subordinate position to Jupiter, we find, if M. Cumont
be justified in his identifications, nearly all the “great gods” of the
Greco-Roman pantheon. Five of these, that is to say, Jupiter himself,
Saturn, Mars, Venus, and Mercury may be intended as symbols of
the planets which, then as now, bore these names. But there are
others such as Juno, Neptune and Amphitrite, Pluto and Proserpine,
Apollo, Vulcan, and Hercules who cannot by any possibility be
considered as planetary signs[925]. M. Cumont’s theory about these
divinities is, if one understands him rightly, that these are really
Persian or Avestic gods, such as Verethragna, represented under
the classic forms of their Greek counterparts to make them attractive
to their Roman worshippers[926]. This does not seem very probable,
because the Persians did not figure their gods in human form[927].
Nor is there any reason to think that the Mithraists confined
themselves to the theocrasia or the practice of discovering their own
gods in the divinities of the peoples around them which we have
seen so rife in Greece, Italy, and Egypt. But in the age when the
worship of Mithras became popular in the Roman Empire, all
paganism was groping its way towards a religion which should
include and conciliate all others, and there is much evidence that the
votaries of Mithras were especially determined that this religion
should be their own. Isis, as we have seen, might proclaim herself as
the one divinity whom under many names and in many forms the
whole earth adored; but the Mithraists apparently went further and
tried to show that their religion contained within itself all the rest.
They appear to have first gained access to Rome under an alliance
with the priests of Cybele, whose image, with its emasculated
attendants the Galli, was transported from Pergamum to the Eternal
City during the critical moments of the Second Punic War[928].
Externally there were many analogies between the two cults, and
Cybele’s consort Attis, like Mithras, was always represented in a
Phrygian cap and anaxyrides. One of the most impressive, if most
disgusting practices in the religion of Cybele—the Taurobolium or
blood-bath in which a bull was slaughtered over a pit covered with
planks pierced with holes through which the blood of the victim
dripped upon the naked votary below—was borrowed by the
Mithraists, and many of them boast on their funereal inscriptions that
they have undergone this ceremony and thereby, as they express it,
have been “born again.” The clarissimi and high officials of the
Empire who have left records of the kind are careful to note that they
are worshippers of “the Great Mother” (Cybele) and Attis, as well as
of Mithras[929], and a similar statement occurs so frequently on the
funereal and other inscriptions of their wives as to lead to the
hypothesis that the ceremonies of the Phrygian Goddess were the
natural refuge of Mithras’ female votaries[930]. So, too, the worship of
the Alexandrian divinities, which that of Mithras in some sort
supplanted, and which, as being as popular in the Greek world as
the last-named was in the Latin, might have been expected to be
hostile to it, yet had relations with it not very easy to be understood.
In the assembly of the gods which in some of the monuments
crowns the arch set over the Tauroctony, the central place is in one
instance taken by Sarapis with the distinctive modius on his head
instead of Zeus or Jupiter[931], the same priest often describes
himself as serving the altars of both gods, and “Zeus, Helios,
Mithras, Sarapis, unconquered one!” is invoked in one of those
spells in the Magic Papyri which contain fragments of ritual prayers
or hymns[932]. Possibly it is for this reason, that the initiating priest in
Apuleius’ story whom the grateful Lucius says he regards as his
father, is named Mithras, as if the initiate had been led to the
Mysteries of Isis through the worship of that god[933].
The same syncretistic tendency is particularly marked in the leaning
of the Mithraists to the worship of the gods of Eleusis. “Consecrated
to Liber [the Latin name of Dionysos] and the Eleusinian
[goddesses],” “Mystes of Ceres,” “priest” or “Chief Herdsman
(archibucolus) of the god Liber,” “hierophant of Father Liber and the
Hecates,” “Consecrated at Eleusis to the god Bacchus, Ceres, and
Cora” are some of the distinctions which the devotees of Mithras
vaunt on their tombstones[934]; while we learn that when the last
survivors of the two sacred families who had for centuries furnished
priests to the Eleusinian Mysteries died out, the Athenians sent for a
priest of Mithras from one of the neighbouring islands, and handed
over to him the care of the sacred rites[935]. It is even possible that
the complaisance of the Mithraists for other religions went further
than has hitherto been suspected. Not only does Justin Martyr after
describing the celebration of the Christian Eucharist say,

“Wherefore also the evil demons in mimicry have handed down

that the same thing should be done in the Mysteries of Mithras.
For that bread and a cup of water are in these mysteries set
before the initiate with certain speeches you either know or can
learn[936]”;

but we know from Porphyry that the initiate into the rites of Mithras
underwent a baptism by total immersion which was said to expiate
his sins[937]. Among the worshippers of Mithras, on the same
authority, were also virgins and others vowed to continence[938], and
we hear that the Mithraists used, like the Christians, to call each
other “Brother” and address their priests as “Father[939].” St Augustine
tells us that in his time the priests of Mithras were in the habit of
saying, “That One in the Cap [i.e. Mithras] is a Christian too!” and it
is not unlikely that the claim was seriously made[940]. During the
reigns of the Second Flavian Emperors and before Constantine’s
pact with the Church, we hear of hymns sung by the legionaries
which could be chanted in common by Christians, Mithraists, and the
worshippers of that Sun-God the adoration of whom was hereditary
or traditional in the Flavian House[941]. The Mithraists also observed
Sunday and kept sacred the 25th of December as the birthday of the
sun[942].
Of the other rites and ceremonies used in the worship of Mithras we
know next to nothing. As appears from the authors last quoted, the
whole of the worship was conducted in “mysteries” or secret
ceremonies like the Eleusinian and the rites of the Alexandrian
divinities, although on a more extended scale. The Mithraic
mysteries always took place in a subterranean vault or “cave,”
lighted only by artificial light. The ruins of many of these have been
found, and are generally so small as to be able to accommodate only
a few worshippers[943], whence perhaps it followed that there were
often several Mithraea in the same town or city[944]. The chief feature
seems to have been always the scene of the Tauroctony or Bull-
slaying which was displayed on the apse or further end of the
chapel, and was generally carved in bas-relief although occasionally
rendered in the round. The effect of this was sought to be
heightened by brilliant colouring, perhaps made necessary by the
dim light, and there were certainly altars of the square or triangular
pedestal type, and a well or other source from which water could be
obtained. The benches for the worshippers were of stone and ran at
right angles to and on either side of the Tauroctony, so as to
resemble the choir stalls in the chancel of a modern church[945]. We
have seen that the lion-headed figure was concealed from the eyes
of the worshippers, and we know that they used to kneel during at
least part of the service, which was not in accord with the practice of
either the Greeks or Romans, who were accustomed to stand with
upturned palms when praying to the gods[946]. Sacrifices of animals
which, if we may judge from the débris left in some of the chapels,
were generally birds[947], seem to have been made; but there is no
reason to believe the accusation sometimes brought against the
Mithraists that they also slaughtered human victims in honour of their
god. Lampridius tells us, on the other hand, that the Emperor
Commodus on his initiation sullied the temple by converting a
feigned into a real murder[948], and we hear from another and later
source that in consequence of this only a bloody sword was shown
to the candidate[949]. It seems therefore that somebody was
supposed to suffer death during the ceremony, perhaps under the
same circumstances as already suggested in the kindred case of the
Alexandrian Mysteries[950].
We are a little better informed as to the degrees of initiation, which
numbered seven. The initiate ascended from the degree of Crow
(corax), which was the first or lowest, to that of Father (Pater), which
was the seventh or highest, by passing successively through the
intermediate degrees of Man of the Secret (Cryphius), Soldier
(Miles), Lion (Leo), Persian (Perses), and Courier of the Sun
(Heliodromus)[951]. It would seem that either he, or the initiating
priests, or perhaps the other assistants, had to assume disguises
consisting of masks corresponding to the animals named in the first
and fourth of these degrees, and to make noises like the croaking of
birds and the roaring of lions[952]. These rightly recall to M. Cumont
the names of animals borne by initiates or priests in other religions in
Greece and Asia Minor and may be referred to totemistic times. We
also know from a chance allusion of Tertullian that on being admitted
to the degree of soldier, the initiate was offered a crown or garland at
the point of a sword, which he put away from him with the speech,
“Mithras is my crown!”, and that never thereafter might he wear a
garland even at a feast[953]. Porphyry, too, tells us that in the degree
of Lion, the initiate’s hands and lips were purified with honey. It has
also been said by the Fathers that before or during initiation, the
candidate had to undergo certain trials or tortures, to swim rivers,
plunge through fire, and to jump from apparently vast heights[954]; but
it is evident from the small size of the Mithraea or chapels which
have come down to us that these experiences would have
demanded much more elaborate preparation than there was space
for, and, if they were ever enacted, were probably as purely “make-
believe” as the supposed murder just mentioned and some of the
initiatory ceremonies in certain societies of the present day[955].
Lastly, there is no doubt that women were strictly excluded from all
the ceremonies of the cult, thereby justifying in some sort the remark
of Renan that Mithraism was a “Pagan Freemasonry[956].”
It has also been said that the true inwardness and faith of the religion
of Mithras was in these mysteries only gradually and with great
caution revealed to the initiates, whose fitness for them was tested at
every step[957]. It may be so, but it is plain that the Mithraist was
informed at the outset of at least a good many of the tenets of the
faith. The whole Legend of Mithras, so far as we know it, must have
been known to the initiate soon after entering the Mithraic chapel,
since we have ourselves gathered it mainly from the different scenes
depicted on the borders of the great central group of the Tauroctony.
So, too, the mystic banquet or Mithraic Sacrament which, if the
Heddernheim monuments stood alone, we might consider was
concealed from the eyes of the lower initiates until the proper
moment came, also forms one of the subsidiary scenes of the great
altar piece in the chapels at Sarmizegetusa, Bononia and many
other places[958]. In a bas-relief at Sarrebourg, moreover, the two
principal persons at the banquet, i.e. Mithras and the Sun, are shown
surrounded by other figures wearing the masks of crows and
perhaps lions[959], which looks as if initiates of all grades were
admitted to the sacramental banquet. One can therefore make no
profitable conjecture as to what particular doctrines were taught in
the particular degrees, though there seems much likelihood in M.
Cumont’s statement that the initiates were thought to take rank in the
next world according to the degree that they had received in this[960].
The belief that “those who have received humble mysteries shall
have humble places and those that have received exalted mysteries
exalted places” in the next world was, we may be sure, too profitable
a one for the priests of Mithras to be neglected by them. It certainly
explains the extraordinary order for the planetary spheres adopted
by Origen[961], according to which the souls which had taken the
lowest degree would go to the heaven of Saturn, slowest and most
unlucky of the planets, while those perfected in the faith would enter
the glorious house of the Sun.
Whether they were thought to go further still, we can only guess. It
should be noticed that the mystic ladder of Mithras had eight steps,
and we have seen that when the soul had climbed through the seven
planetary spheres there was still before her the heaven of the fixed
stars. The Sun seems in Origen’s account of the Mithraic faith to
have formed the last world to be traversed before this highest
heaven could be reached; and it was through the disk of the Sun that
the ancients thought the gods descended to and reascended from
the earth. This idea appears plainly in the Papyrus quoted above,
where the Mithraist is represented as an eagle who flies upwards
“and alone” to heaven and there beholds all things[962]. He prays that
he may, in spite of his mortal and corruptible nature, behold with
immortal eyes after having been hallowed with holy hallowings, “the
deathless aeon, lord of the fiery crowns,” and that “the corruptible
nature of mortals” which has been imposed upon him by “inexorable
Necessity” may depart from him. “Then,” says the author of the
fragment—which, it will be remembered, claims to be a revelation
given by the archangel of the great Sun-God Mithras—the initiate
“will see the gods who rule each day and hour ascending to heaven
and others descending, and the path of the visible gods through the
disk of the god my father will appear.” He describes the machinery of
nature by which the winds are produced, which seems to be figured
on some of the Mithraic monuments, and which reminds one of the
physics supposed to be revealed in the Enochian literature. Then,
after certain spells have been recited, the initiate sees the disk of the
Sun, which opens, disclosing “doors of fire and the world of the gods
within them.” Then follow more invocations to the gods of the seven
planetary worlds who appear in due course, and presumably give
him admission to their realms. After another invocation, in what may
possibly be some Asianic or Anatolian language very much
corrupted, the initiate beholds “a young god, beautiful, with fiery hair,
in white tunic and purple mantle, and having on his head a crown of
fire,” who seems to be Helios or Sol, the driver of the sun’s chariot
on the Mithraic monuments. He is saluted as “Mighty in strength,
mighty ruler, greatest king of gods! O Sun, lord of heaven and earth,
God of Gods!” Next appear “seven virgins in linen robes having the
heads of serpents,” who are called “the seven Fortunes of heaven”
and are, as M. Georges Lafaye surmises, the seven stars of the
constellation of the Great Bear[963]. They are followed by seven male
gods also dressed in linen robes and with golden crowns, but
equipped with the heads of black bulls, who are called “the rulers of
the Pole.” These are they, we are told, who send upon the impious
thunders and lightnings and earthquakes. And so we are led at last
to the apparition of “a god of extraordinary stature, having a glance
of fire, young and golden-haired, in white tunic and golden crown,
clothed in anaxyrides, holding in his right hand the golden shoulder
of a young bull.” This, i.e. the shoulder, we are told, is called “Arctos,
who moves the sky, making it to turn forwards and backwards
according to the hour.” But the god appears to be intended for
Mithras, and the shoulder of the bull is probably an allusion to the
bull-slaying scene which may serve to show that there were more
interpretations than one placed upon the Tauroctony. The initiate
hails this god as “Lord of water, consecrator of the earth, ruler of the
air, shining-rayed One, of primeval rays!” and the like, and continues:
 “O Lord, having been born again, I die! Having increased and
again increasing, I come to an end by life-begotten birth, and
coming into existence, and having been released unto death, I
pursue my way, as thou hast ordered from the beginning, as thou
hast ordained: And having accomplished the mystery, I am
Pheroura miouri.”

Here the fragment abruptly breaks off, and plunges into directions for
the manufacture of oracles and the other stuff common in Magic
Papyri. One is not much inclined to believe with M. Cumont that the
author of the galimatias knew nothing about Mithraism[964], and
merely introduced Mithras’ name into his opening to impress his
readers with a sense of the value of his recipes. It seems more likely
that the writer of the fragment had really got hold of some part of a
Mithraic ritual, which he had read without understanding it, and that
he was trying to work more or less meaningless extracts from it into
his spells on the same principle that the sorcerers of the European
Renaissance used when they took similar liberties with the words of
the Mass. If this view be adopted, it follows that the concluding
words given above confirm the view that the Mithraists, like the
Orphics before them, taught the metempsychosis or reincarnation of
souls[965]. Did the Mithraist think that his soul, when released from
this “dread necessity,” finally escaped from even the planetary
spheres and, raising itself into the heaven of the fixed stars, became
united with the Deity Himself? We can only ask the question without
being able to suggest an answer supported by any evidence.
With regard to the priests who acted as celebrants in these strange
mysteries, there are instances to be found in the inscriptions which
make it plain that the priestly office was not confined or attached to
any particular degree of initiation. Pater Patrum (Father of Fathers) is
a designation which occurs too frequently on the monuments for it to
mean anything but eldest or president of those who had taken the
seventh or highest degree in one congregation[966]. But Sacerdos or
Antistes indifferently is the name by which the priest of Mithras is
described by himself and others, and the holding of the office seems
not to have been inconsistent with the tenure at once of other
priesthoods and of high office in the State. Thus the clarissimus
Vettius Agorius Praetextatus, who was Urban Praetor, Proconsul of
Achaea, Prefect of the City, Prefect of the Praetorians of Italy and
Illyricum, and Consul Designate at the time of his death, was Father
of Fathers in the religion of Mithras besides being Pontiff of the Sun
and Pontiff of Vesta[967]. This was at a very late date, when probably
only a man of high civil rank dared avow on his tombstone, as did
Vettius, his fidelity to the god; but earlier, we find Lucius Septimius, a
freedman of Severus, Caracalla, and Geta, acting as “Father and
Priest of the Unconquered Mithras in the Augustan house”—
evidently a Court chaplain—, and a certain clarissimus Alfenius
Julianus Kamenius who is of consular rank, a quaestor and a
praetor, as a “father of the sacred things of the Highest Unconquered
One Mithras[968].” So, too, we find a veteran of the IVth Flavian
Legion acting as pater sacrorum, a decurion as antistes and another
as sacerdos of Mithras[969]. Evidently, the cares of the priesthood did
not occupy the priest’s whole time, and he never seems to have lived
in the temple as did the clergy of the Alexandrian divinities. There
was, on the faith of Porphyry, a summus pontifex or Supreme Pontiff
of Mithras, who like the Christian bishop in the Epistle to Timothy
was forbidden to marry more than once[970]; but this was probably a
high officer of State appointed directly by the Emperor. No proof is
forthcoming that a fire was kept perpetually burning on the altar in
the European chapels of Mithras, as perhaps was the case with the
temples of the faith in Asia Minor, or that daily or any other regularly
repeated services were held there, and such services moreover
could seldom have been attended by the soldiers with the colours,
who seem to have made up the majority of the god’s worshippers.
Prayers to the Sun-God and other deities were no doubt offered by
Mithraists, possibly at sunrise and sunset, and perhaps special ones
on the first day of the week, which they very likely held sacred to
their god. But the small size of the Mithraea, and the scanty number
of the members of the associations supporting each[971], make it
extremely unlikely that there was anything like regular
congregational worship, or that the faithful assembled there except
for initiations or meetings for conferring the different degrees. The
extremely poor execution of the bas-reliefs and other sculptures
found in the majority of these chapels all points the same way. Most
of these, together with the furniture and what are nowadays called
“articles de culte,” were presented to the chapel by private members
of the association[972]. The fact that the congregations of many
chapels must have frequently changed by the shifting of garrisons
from one end of the Empire to the other caused by the operations of
war both external and civil, also helps to account for their temporary
and poverty-stricken appearance when compared with the great and
stately temples reared to rival gods like Serapis.
Thus the truth of Renan’s comparison of the Mithraic faith with
modern Freemasonry becomes more apparent, and we may picture
to ourselves the Mithraists as a vast society spread over the whole of
the Empire, consisting mainly of soldiers, and entirely confined to the
male sex. The example of the Emperor Julian, himself a devotee of
Mithras, but actively concerned in the propagation of the worship of
other divinities, such as Apollo, Serapis, Mars, and Cybele[973],
shows that its real aim was not so much the conversion of individuals
as the inclusion of all other cults within itself. It was doubtless with
this view that Julian recalled from exile those heresiarchs who had
been banished by the Christian emperors and insisted on equal
toleration for all sects of Jews and Christians[974]. Themistius is no
doubt merely echoing the sentiments of the Mithraist emperor when
he writes to his Christian successor Jovian that no lover of wisdom
should bind himself to any exclusively national worship, but should
acquaint himself with all religions[975]. God, he says, requires no
agreement on this subject among men, and their rivalries in matters
of faith are really beneficial in leading their minds to the
contemplation of other than worldly things. But this highly philosophic
temper was not reached all at once; and it is probable that the
worship of Mithras was, on its first importation into the West, but one
foreign superstition the more, as little enlightened and as exclusively
national as the Jewish, the Egyptian, or any of the others. It was
probably its rise to imperial favour under the Antonines, when
Commodus and many of the freedmen of Caesar’s House were
initiated, that first suggested to its votaries the possibility of using it
as an instrument of government; and henceforth its fortunes were
bound up with those of the still Pagan State. Its strictly monarchical
doctrine, using the adjective in its ancient rather than in its modern
connotation, must have always endeared it to the emperors, who
were beginning to see clearly that in a quasi-Oriental despotism lay
the only chance of salvation for the Roman Empire. Its relations with
Mazdeism in the strict form which this last assumed after the
religious reforms of the Sassanian Shahs have never been
elucidated, and M. Cumont seems to rely too much upon the later
Avestic literature to explain everything that is obscure in the religion
of Mithras. If we imagine, as there is reason to do, that Western
Mithraism was looked upon by the Sassanian reformers as a
dangerous heresy[976], the Roman Emperors would have an
additional reason for supporting it; and it is significant that it was
exactly those rulers whose wars against the Persians were most
successful who seem to have most favoured the worship of the
Persian god. When Trajan conquered Dacia, the great province
between the Carpathians and the Danube now represented by
Hungary and Roumania, he colonized it by a great mass of settlers
from every part of the Roman Empire, including therein many
Orientals who brought with them into their new home the worship of
their Syrian and Asianic gods[977]. It was hence an excellent field for
the culture of a universal and syncretic religion such as that of
Mithras, and the great number of Mithraea whose remains have
been found in that province, show that this religion must have
received hearty encouragement from the Imperial Court. From its
geographical position, Dacia formed an effective counterpoise to the
growing influence upon Roman policy of the Eastern provinces, and
it might have proved a valuable outpost for a religion which was
always looked upon with hostility by the Greek-speaking subjects of
Rome. Unfortunately, however, a religion which allies itself with the
State must suffer from its ally’s reverses as well as profit by its good
fortunes, and so the Mithraists found. When the Gothic invasion
desolated Dacia, and especially when Valerian’s disaster enabled
the Goths to gain a footing there which not even the military genius
of Claudius could loosen, Mithraism received a blow which was
ultimately to prove fatal. The abandonment of Dacia to the Goths
and Vandals by Aurelian in 255 A.D., led to its replanting by a race
whose faces were turned more to Constantinople than to Rome, and
who were before long to be converted to Christianity en masse[978].
Diocletian and his colleagues did what they could to restore the
balance by proclaiming, as has been said above, the “unconquered”
Mithras the protector of their empire at the great city which is now
the capital of the Austrian Empire; but the accession of Constantine
and his alliance with the Christian Church some twenty years later,
definitely turned the scale against the last god of Paganism.
Although the Mithraic worship may have revived for a moment under
the philosophic Julian, who was, as has been said, peculiarly
addicted to it, it possessed no real power of recuperation, and was
perhaps one of the first Pagan religions to be extinguished by the
triumphant Christians[979]. In 377 A.D., Gracchus, the Urban Prefect of
Rome, being desirous of baptism, carried into effect a promise
made, as St Jerome boasts, some time before, and breaking into a
chapel of Mithras, “overturned, broke in pieces and cast out” the
sculptures which had seen the admission of so many initiates[980]. His
example was followed in other parts of the Empire, and it is probable
that some decree was obtained from the Emperor Gratian legalizing
these acts of vandalism[981]. It is in this reign, M. Cumont finds, that
most of the Mithraea were wrecked, and the very few which have
come down to us in more complete state owe their preservation to
the caution of their congregations, who blocked or built up the
entrances to them in the vain hope that a fresh turn of the wheel
might again bring their own cult to the top[982]. A conservative
reaction towards the older faiths did indeed come for a moment
under Eugenius; but it was then too late. The masses had turned
from Mithraism to Christianity, and the only adherents of the “Capped
One” were to be found among the senators and high officials who
had long connived at the evasion of the edicts prohibiting all forms of
Pagan worship. The invasions of Alaric and Attila probably
completed what the Christian mob had begun.
M. Cumont and Sir Samuel Dill are doubtless right when they
attribute the downfall of Mithraism in great measure to its attitude
towards women[983]. Mithraism was from the first essentially a virile
faith, and had little need of the softer emotions. Hence we find in it
none of the gorgeous public ritual, the long hours spent in mystic
contemplation before the altar, or the filial devotion of the flock to the
priest, that we see in the worship of the Alexandrian Gods. In spite of
the great authority of M. Cumont, whose statements on the subject
seem to have been accepted without much enquiry by later writers, it
will probably appear to the impartial student that the priests of
Mithras were more like the churchwardens or elders of Protestant
communities at the present day than the active and highly organized
hierarchy of the Alexandrian divinities and of the Catholic Church. It
is, as we have seen, most probable that they never visited their
chapels except in company with the other devotees when an
initiation into one or other of the seven degrees of the cult was to be
performed, and, judging from the scanty numbers of the
congregation, this can only have been at fairly long intervals. Hence
the daily prayers and sacrifices of themselves and their
congregations were probably rendered elsewhere, either in the
privacy of their homes, or in the temples of other gods. In neither
case would they have much need for the assistance of women in
their propaganda, who would, moreover, have probably felt little
interest in a worship from the most solemn and distinctive parts of
which they were excluded. The Mithraists therefore had to dispense
with the support of a very large and important fraction of the
community which was easily won over to the side of their rivals.
Exceptional causes such as the perpetual shifting of the legions from
one end of the Empire to the other at a time when communications
between them were many times more difficult than now, may have
prevented such considerations for some time from having their full
weight. When once they did so, the issue could not long be in doubt.
Nor was the very real, if somewhat vague, monotheism which
Mithraism taught, very likely to attract, at first sight, the enthusiasm
of a large and mixed population engaged in civil pursuits. If the
conjecture made above be correct, the Mithraist in the ordinary way
acknowledged no other god than Mithras, although he would
probably have admitted that he was but the representative and
antitype of the supreme Jupiter whom he recognized as the official
head of the State pantheon. As for the other gods, he probably
considered them as mere abstract personifications of the powers of
Nature, who were at the most the creatures and subjects of Mithras
“the friend,” and whom it might please him to propitiate by acts of
worship which the god would know how to appreciate. This is not
very far from the theories of the Stoics, always dear to the nobler
spirits in the Roman Empire, and coupled with the high Stoic ideal of
duty, forms one of the best working philosophies for the soldier ever
devised. But the soldier, removed as he is from care for his daily
necessities, and with instant and ready obedience to another will
than his own constantly required of him, has always held different
views on such subjects to the civilian; and such ideas were rather
above the heads of the crowd, sunk for the most part in abject
poverty, utterly absorbed in the struggle for daily bread, and only
anxious to snatch some passing enjoyment from a life of toil. What
they, and even more urgently, their womenfolk needed was a God,
not towering above them like the Eternal Sun, the eye of Mithras and
his earthly representative, shedding his radiance impartially upon the
just and the unjust; but a God who had walked upon the earth in
human form, who had known like themselves pain and affliction, and
to whom they could therefore look for sympathy and help. Such a
god was not to be found in the Mithraic Cave.
For these reasons, probably, Mithraism fell after a reign of little more
than two centuries. Yet for good or ill, few religions have lived in vain;
and some of the ideas which it made popular in Europe have hardly
yet died out. The theory that the emperor, king, or chief of the State
is of a different nature to other men, and is in a peculiar manner the
care of the gods, was first formulated in the West during the time that
Mithraism was in power and is a great deal more the creation of the
Persian religion than of the Egyptian, in which he was said to be the
incarnation of the Sun-God. This is fairly plain from the custom to
which M. Cumont has lately drawn attention of releasing at the
funeral or apotheosis of a Roman emperor a captive eagle,
representing the soul of the dead ruler, the upward flight of the bird
being held typical of the soul’s ascension into heaven[984]. The
connection of this practice with Mithraism is evident, since “eagle”
was one of the names given to the perfect Mithraist, or he who had
taken all the seven degrees of initiation, and had therefore earned
the right to be called pater sacrorum[985]. The Christian emperors of
Rome continued probably the practice and certainly the
nomenclature associated with it, and Constantine and his
successors were hailed by the Mithraic epithets of “aeternus,”