X. The Relation of the Art of Teaching to the Anthroposophical Movement

Call to mind the Mystery of Golgotha. Only a hundred years after the Mystery of Golgotha, the most brilliant Roman writer, Tacitus, writes about Christ as if he were someone almost unknown, who had met his death over in Asia. At that time therefore, in the height of Roman civilisation, of Roman spiritual and cultural life, where people were living in the traditions of the previous several thousand years, even there nothing was known of Christ. And it is possible to paint a word-picture of a significant fact: There above is the Roman civilisation—in the arenas, in brilliant performances, in everything that takes place in Roman social life, in the life of the state. Below, underground, are those regions known as the catacombs. There many people gather together, gather by the graves of those who, like themselves, were believers in the Mystery of Golgotha. These people must keep everything secret. What goes on under the earth only comes to the surface on those occasions when, in the arena, a Christian is smeared with pitch and burned as an entertainment for those who are civilised citizens. Thus we have two worlds: above, the life of Roman civilisation, based on old, resplendent traditions; below, what is developing in secret under the earth. Let us take the brilliant writer of this epoch. He was able to write what amounts to no more than a brief reference in his notes to the coming into being of Christianity, while his writing table in Rome may well have stood over one of the catacombs without his knowing anything whatsoever about what was taking place beneath him.