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Above: Nero’s Torches by Henryk Siemiradzki.
Quo Vadis by Polish author Henryk Sienkiewicz is a masterful fictional retelling of the events surrounding Nero’s fire in Rome, 64 A.D. The fast-paced action depicts pagan parties, the bleak catacombs and prisons, and finally the amphitheater where countless martyrs sacrifice their lives for their Faith. The novel illustrates in fine detail the historical decay of one of the world’s finest civilizations. While the novel’s title is inspired by Our Lord’s famous words to the Prince of the Apostles on the Appian Way, the question can be put to a great many of the characters.
The first and most prominent character is Marcus Vinicius. In his literature guide, The Catholic Lifetime Reading Plan, Fr. John Hardon uses the the word “wicked” to describe this pagan man of war who has never attempted to curb any vice in his profligate nature. But a spiritual battle starts the moment that he meets the lovely foreign hostage Lygia.
Torn between forcing her to be his concubine and his desire to secure her forever though marriage, Vinicius unintentionally puts the life of the woman he loves in danger as first she escapes his plans then is forced to hide from the court of the emperor. But the search is on as Marcus vows to the gods and to himself to find her. The author shares Marcus’s determined nature by stating that he “would have chosen to see the world and the city sink in ruins than fail in his purpose.”
Little does Marcus know that a mightier force is at work inside of him as he finds not only his lost love but also the God Whom he must accept if she will ever submit to be his wife. This adventure leads Marcus through a phase where he perfects himself to be worthy of Lygia, then for the religion that she belongs, to finally the moment that he falls to his knees and begs the great Fisherman to baptize him. In the end, Marcus can say with Augustine, “To fall in love with God is the greatest romance; to seek Him the greatest adventure; to find Him, the greatest human achievement.”
Father Hardon points out that the Christians “are portrayed as virtuous persons indeed, but thoroughly human nonetheless.” Lygia is no exception. Lygia can be described as possessing a “half-childlike heart” and having “a youthful spirit, unacquainted with corruption, and confessing a lofty faith.” She though, like every girl, despite how good or wholesome she is, happily enjoys receiving attention from the handsome soldier. But after she realizes that her purity is in jeopardy, she hides with a feeling of remorse and scrupulosity. “She felt guilty, unworthy, and ruined.” Once she is reassured that love in itself can never be a sin, she resolves to convert Marcus, winning him over to the true Faith. But, as the emperor’s mad frenzy is taken out on the Christians as a whole, Marcus and Lygia’s fate takes a turn for the worst.
Petronius and Eunice’s romance is everything that Marcus and Lygia’s may have been if Lygia had not have been strong enough to resist. Marcus’ shrewd uncle, Petronius, “a man noted for effeminacy and love of luxury,” kicks the novel off by falling in love with his Spanish slave, Eunice. While these two lives are happy, they only enjoy the surface of their love, a worldly, pagan union. The one-track mind slave does not demand any higher good out of her dreamy, deep-thinking master – therefore his character undergoes no change – while Vinicus accepts Christianity during the most dangerous time in history.
It is because of the somewhat strange affection that Petronius has for Marcus that the latter is encouraged to force his suit on Lygia. But once Vinicius converts to Christianity, Petronius does his best to use his power as Nero’s friend to keep the tyrant’s wrath from falling upon Vinicius. But in the end, when Nero’s favor wears off of the “arbiter elegantarium,” despair seizes Petronius who takes his own life alongside the slave whose last wish is to die with him. The curtain falls on the romantic pair as the author seals their romance with the pathetic line, “With them perished all that was left to their world at the time—poetry and beauty.”
A third romance worth mentioning is the almost unspoken attachment of the former mistress of Nero, the faithful Acte. Nero, of course has been well represented to history but not as well as he is in Quo Vadis. “Nero, unable to be moderate in anything” is also the most unsteady character, “full of changing desires.” This cruel tyrant, whose chief trait is vanity, considers himself a divine genius, but whose lyrics are as dull as “a wretched poet of the suburbs.” Acte’s relationship with the mad emperor features a touch of pity which can be found in a wife who has been separated from her husband because life became unbearable with him. While these two were never married, she is steadfast and loyal despite his insanity. “She continued to love Nero with a sad and pained love, which lived not in hope, but only in memories.”
It is no small wonder that after the death and resurrection of Our Lord, the greatest civilization that the West had ever seen would come crashing to its pathetic demise. Sin and vice were bred and spread from the top of society until hardly a man respected even natural virtue. This is the city that Our Lord deemed worthy to be His Church’s capital. Sienkiewicz paints a colorful but dull court who blindly applaud each of Nero’s silly creations. Petronius, who really does have a sense of art, beauty and poetry, is the only man brave enough to demand more out of the emperor while still maintaining a position of power and influence.
The novel’s young protagonist thinks that women and wine are the only things that will make him happy. But this thought is challenged by his sudden attraction to what he believes to be virtue and goodness incarnate: Lygia. Realizing that he could start over and be forgiven for his wicked past, Marcus realizes that goodness is attainable for everyone remarking, “I know now that I ought to be virtuous…Who would not prefer good to evil?”
But Marcus joins the Church in one of the most dangerous times. At the height of his genius, Nero orchestrates a chance to witness a burning city in order to inspire an important epic about the destruction of Troy. While Rome famously burns, the fault is craftily shifted on the Christians. Nero then, provided with an opportunity to be dramatic, hosts splendid games featuring the most uncommon deaths of the Christians. “His deformed imagination, and deformed desires found a kind of delight in such spectacles.” In the end, Nero’s most interesting form of art were the inventive ways that he murdered innocent people.
Character depth and variety stand out in the literary epic Quo Vadis. Fr. John Hardon remarks that “Sienkiewicz was a master at character portrayal.” While the novel is above all a romance, Sienkiewicz does not simply focus on the innocent attachment of two people, but also the base, passionate lust between a master and a slave, and an emotion-driven madness as a rejected mistress endures the ruin of her one-time lover. With such memorable characters and vivid settings, readers will put Quo Vadis down agreeing with Fr. Hardon that to call the novel “fascinating would be an understatement; it is profoundly moving.”