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realm in history has forsworn violence altogether.

Pacifist elements can be found in the nonactionist doctrines of

Greek Stoicism in the Western world. A shadowy anticipation of

modern pacifism appears in the quasimillennial doctrine of a

future golden age of universal peace that emerged with the MYSTERY

CULTS of Hellenistic and Roman times. The concept was encouraged

by the dreams of a universal kingdom or empire that arose among

the Achaemenid rulers of Persia in the 6th century BC; these

dreams were inherited by Alexander the Great and his Hellenistic

successors and by the creators of the concept of the Pax Romana,

or peace of Rome. This latter idea of an imperial peace, which

reemerged in medieval times after the creation of the Holy Roman

Empire, is a peace imposed from above through benign coercion and

is therefore far from pacifistic.

A truer pacifism was to be found among the early Christians, who

were inspired by such Gospel exhortations as "Love thine enemies"

and "Blessed are the peacemakers; for they shall be called the

children of God," and perhaps also by certain pagan teachings of

the time and by the doctrines of the Jewish ESSENES, who preached

withdrawal from the realm of war and politics. Even in the first

centuries, however, Christians were divided in their attitudes

toward war and violence; the question whether a Christian could

remain a soldier was long debated. Some Fathers of the Church,

such as TERTULLIAN, took an essentially pacifist stand, and many

Christians deserted the imperial army or suffered martyrdom for

their refusal to take part in military action. For the church as a

whole to be pacifist became politically impossible after the

Emperor Constantine's conversion in the early 4th century and the

adoption of Christianity as the state religion of the Roman

Empire. In the 5th century, when Catholicism in North Africa was

threatened by the invading Vandals, who supported the rival sect

of Arian Christians, Saint AUGUSTINE devised the doctrine of the

Just War, a doctrine that has been sustained by institutional

Christianity ever since.

The pacifist strain did not entirely vanish from the Christian

tradition in the Middle Ages. It emerged in such medieval sects as

the ALBIGENSES and the BOGOMILS, some of whom renounced the use of

violence. After the Reformation, pacifism was adopted by a number

of western European sects, including the MENNONITES, the Quakers

or Society of FRIENDS, and some of the ANABAPTISTS. In

17th-century Russia the Great Schism in the Orthodox church

encouraged the emergence of radical sects such as the DOUKHOBORS

and the Molokans, who opposed participation in war and employed

passive resistance against the authorities seeking to coerce them.

Among Christian pacifists, a distinction must be made between

those who resist participation in war merely to save their

consciences, as is the case with sects that preach withdrawal from

the world in anticipation of the Second Coming of Christ, and

those who see their pacifism as part of an attempt to transform

the world here and now, as do the Quakers. In the late 17th

century the Quakers fought a painful campaign against the English

law forbidding dissenters to meet publicly; nearly 400 Quakers

died in the pestilential prisons of the time. The Quakers provide

one of the early examples of a successful nonviolent movement.

NONVIOLENT POLITICAL MOVEMENTS

Pacifism emerged from its religious context and became a political

philosophy during the 19th century. One wing of American

abolitionists, led by William Lloyd GARRISON, preached the use of

nonviolent methods in the fight against slavery. Many of the

suffragettes who struggled for women's rights in Britain and North

America adopted nonviolent resistance. Count Leo TOLSTOI, after

his conversion to a radical kind of Christianity, advocated a

pacifist rejection of war and advocated methods of CIVIL

DISOBEDIENCE as an alternative to violent revolution in books such

as The Kingdom of God Is Within You. A Tolstoian movement

developed in tsarist Russia, surviving for some time after the

Revolution of 1917.

Nineteenth-century socialists were often antimilitarist in the

sense that they opposed capitalist or imperialist wars. They took

part in the various peace organizations that held international

congresses during the century. Many socialists advocated an

international general strike should a war break out, but when

World War I began in 1914 the only resistance came from dedicated

pacifists and a few revolutionary socialists. The labor movements

on both sides abandoned their internationalism and supported their

own governments.

The horrors of World War I led to a great upsurge of pacifist

sentiment in the West. International pacifist organizations such

as the Fellowship of Reconciliation flourished. In Britain the

students at Oxford University passed a resolution pledging not to

fight "for king and country," and the Peace Pledge Union founded

in 1935 had gained a membership of 133,000 by 1937, including such

distinguished names as Aldous HUXLEY, Benjamin BRITTEN, and

Siegfried SASSOON. Most of this resistance melted when war