Lyceum & Book Club - Week 12 - Notes for Lecture - Transfer of Dominance to Christian Institutions
- Mar 16, 2022
- 11 min read
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It is said that the first recorded official persecution of Christians by the Roman Empire was in 64 AD by Emperor Nero who tried to use Christians as a scape goat for the Great Fire of Rome. But this was aimed at what was thought of as a sect of Judaism more than against a rising independent faith movement. It wasn’t until 96AD that the Roman government started distinguishing Christians as a body separate from Jews and not just a sect of Judaism. And at that point, Emperor Nerva modified the punitive tax code imposed on Jews to state that practicing Jews had to pay the tax, while Christians did not. At this point in time, the animosity was toward Jews and wanting to reduce them as a significant entity. We forget, but Judaism at one point in world history, was a contender for power before Christianity overwhelmed all other faith institutions it encountered. The Roman Emperors might not have liked the entity of Christianity and its followers, but it took a while for them to view Christians as more of a direct threat.
That does not mean that their persecution stopped, they were a convenient scapegoat, just as Jews were. But the persecution was for the most part localized and /or sporadic in the two and a half centuries until they had gained enough numbers and weight to swing the pendulum the other way when Christianity became a power player in its own right. At this point in the murky beginnings, all players had to make their bets which coalition would come out on top of the power struggle and who they should throw their weight (and fortunes) behind in support.
They didn’t necessarily have to become Believers, they just had to be able to garner support from any sector that had the greater (popular) energy behind its movement for its own campaign and agenda. And in doing so, give its own support and power to the movement, strengthening it - this is how synergy builds. And then they had to shape that movement so it remained in dominance over competing movements and communities and thus, they gained the quid pro quo of the movement sanctifying their divine right to rule. Repeating the same basic power dynamic of founding Rome, power intertwined between secular state and sanctified religious institutions.
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Christians ran up against the same wall that Jews did - they refused to participate in the Imperial Cult that said the office of the Roman Emperor and his rulings were approved and supported by the Gods themselves, even to assuming some of the god-like privileges and gaining deification after they died. Religion became intricately intertwined with Roman rule. (And when Christianity was adopted, it was used in the same way)
To not uphold this founding belief in the Roman system was considered an act of treason and punishable by execution.
As Roman rule fragmented, so did the weight of the faith it was intimately connected with.
From wiki:
The Romans thought of themselves as highly religious, and attributed their success as a world power to their collective piety in maintaining good relations with the gods. The Romans were known for the great number of deities that they honored. The Romans looked for common ground between their major gods and those of the Greeks, adapting Greek myths and iconography for Latin literature and Roman art. The religions of other peoples were incorporated into the Roman Empire and coexisted within the Roman theological hierarchy.
The Judeo-Christian insistence on Yahweh being the only God, believing all other gods were false gods, could not be fitted into the system. Their scruples prevented them swearing loyalty oaths directed at the emperor's divinity.
More particularly, the refusal of Christians to pay the Jewish tax was perceived as a threat not just to the state cult, but to the state itself, leading to various forms of persecution.
(You can see in this refusal on the part of the Christian population to be lumped in with Jews and paying a Jewish tax in their insistence that they were not part of “them - the Jews” and would not pay a tax that aimed against a group considered by Roman society as “outside the bounds”. Especially when Christians were in competition with Jews, trying to establish themselves, and not the faith Jesus was born into, as the legitimate owner of the waters from this well )
The emperor Decius (r. 249–251) issued edicts that imposed hard restrictions on Christians, a policy continued by his successor Valerian.
With the accession of Gallienus (r. 253–268), the Church enjoyed a period of nearly 40 years with no official sanctions against Christians, which Eusebius described as the "little" peace of the Church.
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But evolution of any change is not linear and you would have a long process of transformation in which events swung back and forth.
Persecution of Christians reached a crescendo during the last dying throes of the Empire - The Great Persecution of 303 - 311 in the reign of Diocletian.
All Christian buildings whether used for business/ revenue or personal dwellings were demolished. Their sacred books were banned, confiscated and burned.
Christians were consigned to die in gladiator games as entertainment. An active push to demonstrate and inoculate into the public mentality that Christians were acceptable to vent all the negativity and depravity a person might want to exercise. They were arrested, tortured, mutilated, burned, and starved in a frenzy of hatred against them.
It was also Diocletian who divided the Empire into East and West governing sectors. It is thought that it was actually Galerius who manipulated events to push Diocletian into this policy.
Both events (the persecution edict and the division of the Empire into 4 parts) indicate the insecurity and desperation of an ailing entity to find a target and solution for conditions that were becoming overwhelming.
In 311, Galerius published an edict officially ending the persecutions of Christians and instituting tolerance for all faith expressions, including both pagan institutions and all others. (But it did not return or reimburse Christians for lost property) Both Constantine and Licinius signed this decree and it served a political agenda as well as furthering the Christian cause.
When Constantine defeated his final rival in the West, one of the first acts he instituted was what would be called the Edict of Milan that again confirmed that all faiths should have the freedom to practice their beliefs and traditions without harassment and penalty, but he curtailed certain rituals such as pagan sacrifices and ended gladiatorial contests (which Christians had not liked since they had been the victims in those same games)
In 313, in a pact of alliance, Licinius co-signed the Edict of Milan with Constantine the Great so that both east and west now shared a common religious policy. Several months later, Licinius issued the edict in the east.
This edict went further than Galerius edict of 311 and now gave Christianity legal status, not just tolerance. And it returned all confiscated property back to the Christian owners.
It was said to be directed at their other rivals, Maxminus Daza and Maxentius, in a campaign to create public antipathy against the two and boost the campaign of Constantine and Licinius’ side.
Constantine and Licinius are still courting any and all comers in the population and leadership to back their moves.
You will note, that this edict also did not make Christianity the state religion nor remove the established state religion and its temples.
That was officially done in 380 by Thessalonica.
Constantine thought Christianity would be a single block that he could shape as a support system in the Empire, but soon found that it was anything but a monolith block that he needed it to be politically.
In North Africa, which was a growth center of the Christian movement, there arose a division. At the center of the issue were bishops who had not stood up during the time of persecution when their very lives were at risk. The Donatists sect (named after one of their members by the name Dontus that they had elected as Bishop) refused obedience to any bishops they felt had not shown a strong enough belief in the movement to sacrifice themselves for the cause - the term for these was the term - “the lapsi”. Standing against the Donatist sect were the majority of the church leadership who felt more was to be gained by forgiving such lapses. Eventually the Donatists went so far as to disavow all bishops but their own as tainted.
Mind you, the Donatists had such strength in North Africa that they remained a force for the next two centuries.
It finally reached a crescendo when the Donatists took their grievance against the Bishop of Carthage in 313, fully expecting the Christian Emperor to agree with their stance.
Constantine called a synod of bishops in Rome to decide the case. The synod ruled against the Donatists. The Donatists refused to accept their ruling. So they appealed directly to Constantine again. And again, he convened a council in 314, but an even larger one this time which again ruled against the Donatists. And again they refused to accept the judgement.
In 317, Constantine had had enough. He ordered Donatist church property confiscated and Donatist clergy sent into exile.
But his biggest problem would be the issue of Arianism, which got into the weeds on theology.
In 325, after Constantine had started making preparations for his own capital in Byzantium and was purposefully designing the city to reflect his agenda on religious issues, he invited clerics from across the empire to meet at what would be called the Council of Nicaea to forge a unified definition of what it meant to be a Christian; to define orthodoxy for the whole church. Until this time, previous councils had been local or regional that only affected the local churches. He needed a unified religious institution behind him, not one that might fracture onto competing sectors that could be used against him or to split the Empire.
He did not have a deep understanding of the theological issues at hand, but at this point he felt the Arians were the ones to boot as reflected in the condemnation of Arianism by the Council, which was the primary purpose of the council.
From wiki:
By 325 Arianism, a school of christology which contended that Christ did not possess the divine essence of the Father but was rather a primordial creation and an entity subordinate to God, had become sufficiently widespread and controversial in Early Christianity that Constantine called the Council of Nicaea in an attempt to end the controversy by establishing an empire-wide, i.e., "ecumenical" orthodoxy. The council produced the original text of the Nicene Creed, which rejected the Arian confession and upheld that Christ is "true God" and "of one essence with the Father."
However, the strife within the Church did not end with Nicaea, and the Nicene credal formulation remained contentious even among anti-Arian churchmen.
Constantine, while urging tolerance, began to think that he had come down on the wrong side, and that the Nicenes—with their fervid, reciprocal persecution of Arians—were actually perpetuating strife within the Church.
Eventually Constantine recalled Arius, the leader of the Arian movement, from exile and banished Athanasius of Alexandria, who was the chief opponent of Arianism.
From wiki:
Constantine was not baptized until he was near death (337), choosing a bishop moderately sympathetic to Arius, Eusebius of Nicomedia (a distant relative), to perform the baptism. (Constantine had made arrangements for his baptism long before his death, the timing was a choice, probably a political choice, rather than reluctance to commit from ideological reasons regarding sin and acceptance into heaven or not being fully committed to being a Believer)
During Eusebius of Nicomedia's time in the Imperial court, the Eastern court and the major positions in the Eastern Church were held by Arians or Arian sympathizers. With the exception of a short period of eclipse, Eusebius enjoyed the complete confidence both of Constantine and Constantius II and was the tutor of Emperor Julian the Apostate. After Constantine's death, his son and successor Constantius II was an Arian, as was Emperor Valens.
A number of churches (Catholic Church, the Coptic Orthodox Church, the Antiochian Orthodox Church, the Greek Orthodox Church, the Russian Orthodox Church, the Serbian Orthodox Church, upon by many other Eastern Orthodox, Nestorian Orthodox, and Oriental Orthodox Churches.) maintain that Constantine was instead baptized by Pope Saint Sylvester I.
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On Sylvester I: (from wiki)
Long after his death, the figure of Sylvester was embroidered upon in a fictional account of his relationship to Constantine, which seemed to successfully support the later Gelasian doctrine of papal supremacy, papal auctoritas (authority) guiding imperial potestas (power), the doctrine that is embodied in the forged Donation of Constantine of the eighth century. In the fiction, of which an early version is represented in the early sixth-century Symmachean forgeries emanating from the curia of Pope Symmachus (died 514), the Emperor Constantine was cured of leprosy by the virtue of the baptismal water administered by Sylvester.
The Emperor, abjectly grateful, not only confirmed the bishop of Rome as the primate above all other bishops, he resigned his imperial insignia and walked before Sylvester's horse holding the Pope's bridle as the papal groom. The Pope, in return, offered the crown of his own good will to Constantine, who abandoned Rome to the pope and took up residence in Constantinople.
"The doctrine behind this charming story is a radical one," Norman F. Cantor observes: "The pope is supreme over all rulers, even the Roman emperor, who owes his crown to the pope and therefore may be deposed by papal decree". The legend gained wide circulation; Gregory of Tours referred to this political legend in his history of the Franks, written in the 580s.
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Constantine's son and successor in the eastern empire, Constantius II was partial to the Arian party, and even exiled pro-Nicene bishops.
Constantius' successor Julian (later called "The Apostate" by Christian writers) was the only emperor after the conversion of Constantine to reject Christianity, attempting to fragment the Church and erode its influence by encouraging a revival of religious diversity, calling himself a "Hellene" and supporting forms of Hellenistic religion. He championed the traditional religious cultus of Rome as well as Judaism, and furthermore declared toleration for all the various unorthodox Christian sects and schismatic movements.
(Again - supported tolerance of Judaism, not because he felt anything positive toward Jews, but because he was trying to reduce the significance of Christians by elevating everyone else. Just as those emperors before him who elevated Christians often did so, not out of love for Christians or a wish to advance the Christian cause, but as a power move to diminish other power sectors)
Julian's successor Jovian, a Christian, reigned for only eight months and never entered the city of Constantinople. He was succeeded in the east by Valens, an Arian.
By 379, when Valens was succeeded by Theodosius I, Arianism was widespread in the eastern half of the Empire, while the west had remained steadfastly Nicene. Theodosius, who had been born in Hispania, was himself a Nicene Christian and very devout.
The Edict of Thessalonica, issued on 27 February AD 380 by three reigning Roman emperors, made the catholicism of Nicene Christians in the Great Church the state church of the Roman Empire. It condemned other Christian creeds such as Arianism as heresies of "foolish madmen," and authorized their punishment.
The edict was followed in 381 by the First Council of Constantinople, which affirmed the Nicene Symbolum and gave final form to the Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed.
The edict was issued under the influence of Ascholius, and thus of Pope Damasus I, who had appointed him. It re-affirmed a single expression of the Apostolic Faith as legitimate in the Roman Empire, "catholic" (that is, universal) and "orthodox" (that is, correct in teaching).
The Nicene Creed states: "We believe in one God, the Father Almighty ... And in one Lord Jesus Christ." It declares Jesus Christ be "consubstantial with the Father," which may be interpreted as numerical or as qualitative sameness. The creed adds that we also believe in the Holy Spirit but does not say that the Holy Spirit is homo-ousios with the Father.
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Homoousion is a Christian theological term, most notably used in the Nicene Creed for describing Jesus as "same in being" or "same in essence" with God the Father. The same term was later also applied to the Holy Spirit in order to designate him as being "same in essence" with the Father and the Son.
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The Edict of Thessalonica goes much further and declares "the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit" to be "one deity ... in equal majesty and in a holy Trinity.”
After the edict in February 380, Theodosius spent a great deal of energy trying to suppress all non-Nicene forms of Christianity, especially Arianism, and in establishing Nicene orthodoxy throughout his realm
How the Entry of Christianity as a state religion adversely affected the Roman Empire and Aided in Its Decline:
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