Still, the lack of solid evidence makes it difficult to quantify how many Christians may have been punished or executed. Estimates of the number of Christians killed under Nero alone range from a few hundred to just under a thousand.26 Guesses as to the total number of Christians martyred under Roman rule vary radically from under ten thousand to almost one hundred thousand.27 Not surprisingly, Christian apologists (like John Foxe) have often offered inflated accounts; historians hostile to Christianity have inclined to more depreciating estimates. Edward Gibbon, with his contempt for the Christians and his admiration bordering on adulation for the Romans, treated the stories of Christian martyrs as “an undigested mass of fiction and error”;28 the Enlightenment historian wrote a long chapter drawing every possible inference that might serve to reduce the extent and severity of the persecutions.
Gibbon was explicit about his interpretive assumptions. The Romans were possessed of “the universal toleration of Polytheism”;29 their officials “were actuated, not by the furious zeal of bigots, but by the temperate policy of legislators.”30 Such a civilized people would not have been inclined to persecute: it just wasn’t in their character. (Gibbon, of course, had not lived to witness the atrocities carried out under the Third Reich in the land of Goethe, Kant, and Bach.) The Christians, conversely, were credulous and superstitious, so their own reports should be discounted.31 If Christians reported intolerance by the Romans (who we know, or at least Gibbon knew, were not intolerant), the Christians were probably misrepresenting the facts; indeed, they were probably just projecting onto their adversaries the “implacable and unrelenting zeal which filled their own breasts.”32 Gibbon did not deny that some Christians had been executed by the Romans, but he thought the number was probably much smaller than Christians themselves supposed.
Whatever the body count may have been, though, it seems clear enough that over the first three centuries of the religion’s existence, thousands of Christians, including a significant number of church leaders, were tortured, imprisoned, or killed for the offense of being Christian. Which once again raises the question: Why?
Christianity and Civic Allegiance
As we saw in the previous chapter, pagan religiosity served to secure the subjects’ support for a city deemed to be consecrated by its association with the gods. Christians had an entirely different conception: they regarded themselves as pilgrims in the world, or as “resident aliens” whose higher loyalty was not to the earthly city but rather to their heavenly abode. Despite these differences in pagan and Christian conceptions of the relation of the individual to the city, it would not necessarily follow that the conceptions were incompatible in practice. And indeed, both Christians and pagans could and sometimes did propose that peaceful coexistence should be possible on fair and mutually acceptable terms. In proposing this, however, both sides failed fully to grasp and credit the other side’s commitments.
Let us begin by considering the Christian position. Although Christians believed that their ultimate commitment was to a divine sovereign and a heavenly city, they insisted that they could still be loyal subjects of the earthly city. They could say this in complete good faith, because in fact their own Scriptures commanded as much. Albeit in cryptic fashion, perhaps, Jesus had enjoined his followers to “render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s.”33 The apostle Paul had reached a similar though seemingly even more categorical conclusion through a remarkable or at least inventive (albeit contestable) piece of logic: he had deduced the obligation to respect earthly rulers from the very fact of divine sovereignty: “Everyone must submit himself to the governing authorities, for there is no authority except that which God has established. . . . Therefore, it is necessary to submit to the authorities, not only because of possible punishment but also because of conscience. This is also why you pay taxes, for the authorities are God’s servants, who give their full time to governing. Give everyone what you owe him: If you owe taxes, pay taxes; if revenue, then revenue; if respect, then respect; if honor, then honor.”34
In the spirit of these teachings, Tertullian insisted, as we saw in chapter 1, that “without ceasing, for all our emperors we [Christians] offer prayer. We pray for life prolonged; for security to the empire; for protection to the imperial house; for brave armies, a faithful senate, a virtuous people, the world at rest, whatever, as man or Caesar, an emperor would wish.”35 In a similar vein, Athenagoras the Athenian maintained to the emperor Marcus Aurelius that “[we Christians] are of all men most piously and righteously disposed toward the Deity and towards your government.”36 Justin Martyr protested to the emperor Antoninus Pius that “everywhere we [Christians], more readily than all men, endeavour to pay to those appointed by you the taxes both ordinary and extraordinary, as we have been taught by Him.”37
Tertullian, Athenagoras, and Justin were in effect proposing terms for peaceful coexistence. Normally, Tertullian argued, addressing the “rulers of the Roman Empire,”38 you let people believe as they are so inclined, however nonsensical their beliefs may seem to you,39 so long as the believers pay allegiance to the government and do not behave subversively. All we Christians are asking for is to be treated under that benign policy. We obey the laws, take care of our own, and support and pray for the emperor and the empire. Why isn’t this enough?
Had he been preternaturally prescient, Tertullian might have tried to phrase his proposal in Rawlsian terms. Given religious and cultural diversity (which the Roman Empire had in abundance), a just political community should be grounded in an “overlapping consensus” among citizens whose “comprehensive doctrines” are significantly divergent.40 The pagan and Christian worldviews or “comprehensive doctrines” were obviously very different, but they converged in prescribing allegiance to earthly rulers and obedience to the laws adopted by those rulers. That convergence supplied the “overlapping consensus”—not at that time a “liberal” consensus, to be sure, but one supportive of imperial authority—on which a just, mutually respectful political community should be maintained.
So, could Romans accept these terms of coexistence? Sometimes they could and did, at least as a practical matter.41 Robert Wilken observes that “in most areas of the Roman Empire Christians lived quietly and peaceably among their neighbors, conducting their affairs without disturbance.”42 As we have seen, Eusebius made the same point: during much of their existence Christians were “accorded honor and freedom by all men, Greeks and non-Greeks alike.”43 But such coexistence was more a matter of pragmatic accommodation than of agreement on principles. Then, as now, people could often manage to live together precisely by not fully appreciating and forthrightly declaring their own basic beliefs, and thus by overlooking or ignoring the fundamental incompatibilities of theirs and their neighbors’ outlooks.44 In sum, pagans might often put up with Christians, but they could not truly and understandingly embrace the Christian terms of political cooperation.
We noticed briefly in the previous chapter a recent book that argues that as they got to know Christians better, pagans were able to accept Christians as fellow subjects of the empire.45 In reality, the truth is closer to the opposite. So long as Christianity remained a remote and little-understood sect, Roman authorities might have little practical reason to suspect or repress it. After all, they were used to putting up with all manner of exotic cults. But as the doctrines and commitments of the new faith were more clearly and forcefully presented, the incompatibility of Christianity with the pagan religiosity on which Rome was founded could become more conspicuous.
We can consider the reasons for this incompatibility under four general headings: allegiance, subversion, desecration, and liberty.
Ineffective Allegiance
Christians like Tertullian may have been perfectly sincere in professing their support for the empire and the emperor. But the Romans were concerned not merely with internal or subjective sincerity; they had also developed a formal and empirically verifiable way for subjects to manifest their allegiance. More specific
ally, subjects were expected to make formal, visible sacrifices to the gods and to the divine emperors. Pliny’s method of testing accused Christians drew on this practice; to exonerate themselves, indicted persons were required to make sacrificial offerings to the gods.46
The exact patterns in which sacrifices were offered seem to have varied from region to region and city to city. Following the triumph of Augustus, cults to the divine emperors proliferated; some were regional, some municipal, some even more localized.47 But in one form or another, as Steven Friessen explains, “imperial cults in Asia permeated Roman imperial society, leaving nothing untouched. So it is almost impossible to separate imperial cults from public religion, from entertainment, from commerce, from governance, from household worship, and so on.”48 Bruce Winter observes that “participation in these cultic activities in the Greek East and the Latin West in the first century provided the opportunity for everyone to express publicly undivided loyalty to those who brought them the divine blessing of pax romana.”49 But “opportunity” is not quite the right word, because the expression of loyalty was not optional. “All citizens were required to express loyalty to emperors who . . . were addressed with same titles that the Christians used of Jesus.”50
For Christians, this requirement presented a serious theological and practical problem. They of course did not believe in the gods—or rather, they believed the “gods” were in reality demons51—nor did they believe that the emperors were divine. Could they nonetheless perform the ritual sacrifices, on the assumption that no real harm was done in pretending to sacrifice to ostensible deities that were not in fact real, or at least not really deities? Some Christians drew this convenient conclusion.52 But others regarded such performances as a betrayal of the faith and a forbidden performance of idolatrous worship.53
An early Christian document of uncertain authorship seeks to describe how this process worked in the case of Justin Martyr and several companions.54 The men were brought before a Roman prefect named Rusticus and asked whether they were Christians. They answered that they were. After some follow-up examination, Rusticus then proposed that the men sacrifice to the gods.55 Justin declined, observing that “no right-thinking person falls away from piety to impiety.”56 His companions did likewise. Rusticus then pronounced sentence: “Let those who have refused to sacrifice to the gods and to yield to the command of the emperor be scourged, and led away to suffer the punishment of decapitation, according to the laws.”57 And the sentence was duly carried out. Records of the trial and execution in the next century of the influential African bishop Cyprian reveal a very similar procedure.58
In the early decades, Christians sometimes managed to be excused from the sacrificial rites by claiming an exemption that the Jews had received based on the assumption that sacrifices performed in the temple in Jerusalem could substitute for the standard sacrifices normally required of Roman subjects.59 The earliest Christians were Jews, after all, and it is likely that some early Christian leaders—the ones with whom Paul carried on a famous and fierce contention—insisted that even converted Greeks and Romans should be required to adopt Jewish customs and practices, such as circumcision, precisely so that Christians could continue to claim this Jewish exemption, thereby avoiding the requirement of sacrificing to the emperors and the other gods.60 But as the divide between Christians and Jews became more conspicuous,61 Christians forfeited their claim to the Jewish exemption, and thereby faced the daunting dilemma: to sacrifice (and thereby betray the faith) or not to sacrifice (and thereby face severe legal sanctions, including execution).
Sometimes the dilemma arose in connection with commercial activity. Bruce Winter explains that “as a prerequisite to engaging in any commercial transaction [Christians] had to give specific divine honours to the Caesars. Without doing so they would not have been able to secure provisions for their daily needs, as all goods could only be bought or sold through the authorized markets in a first-century city.”62 Subjects had to be certified for economic activity: “Then, and only then, could they sell or purchase essential commodities.”
But sanctions for noncompliance were not limited to exclusion from the marketplace; they could include exile or “summary execution.”63 Nor was it only commercial activity that placed Christians in this precarious situation. Gibbon observed that “the innumerable deities and rites of polytheism were closely interwoven with every circumstance of business or pleasure, of public and of private life; and it seemed impossible to escape the observance of them, without, at times, renouncing the commerce of mankind, and all the offices and amusements of society.” With characteristic sarcasm, Gibbon went on to observe that “the Christian, who with pious horror avoided the abomination of the circus or the theatre, found himself encompassed with infernal snares in every convivial entertainment, as often as his friends invoking the hospitable deities, poured out libations to each other’s happiness.”64
Some Christians submitted to the relentless pressure and complied with the requirements—by performing the pagan sacrifices. But others refused. To the Romans, this refusal signified a failure of allegiance; persecution and punishment predictably followed.
Subversion
But Christians did not merely fall short in their demonstration of allegiance; intentionally or not, they actively and affirmatively subverted the foundations of Roman authority.65 That is because the doctrines that Christians preached to the world fundamentally contradicted and thus undermined the basis of civic allegiance and obligation in the Roman political system. “By embracing the faith of the Gospel,” Gibbon explained, “the Christians . . . dissolved the sacred ties of custom and education, violated the religious institutions of their country, and presumptuously despised whatever their fathers believed as true, or had reverenced as sacred.”66
Pragmatic authorities, to be sure, might overlook these contradictions. They might be content to leave Christians undisturbed, so that the city could benefit from their industry and their taxes, so long as the Christians were content to leave the subversive implications of their faith implicit—in other words, so long as they were willing to practice their faith in secret or in silence. This was more or less Trajan’s advice to Pliny, as we have seen: if Christians are brought before the ruler and affirmatively accused, they “must be punished”;67 but don’t go around actively seeking them out. Cambridge historian Keith Hopkins remarks that “the very small size of Christianity helps explain why the Roman state paid so little attention to suppressing it effectively.”68
Unfortunately, Christians often were not content to remain inconspicuous. They had been commanded by their Founder, after all, to go forth and preach the gospel to every creature.69 And although the early dramatic evangelizing efforts of the apostle Paul and associates were not replicated in the immediately ensuing generations, many Christians still no doubt felt impelled to share the “good news”—the news that was surpassingly good, that is, in their perspective but that was openly destructive of pagan practices and commitments.70 Gibbon relates an incident in which a centurion named Marcellus, during a public festival, suddenly threw down his arms and accouterments, renounced war and pagan idolatry, and declared that he would obey only Jesus. The man was promptly condemned and beheaded, and Gibbon placidly remarks that “it could scarcely be expected that any government should suffer” such conduct.71
Foxe’s Book of Martyrs recounts a story taken from Jerome that (whether or not historically accurate) illustrates the problem. According to the story, Andrew, the apostle and the brother of Peter, was evangelizing in Achaia, and the governor, Aegeas, became concerned that the apostle’s work was undermining the civic religion. A confrontation ensued, in which Andrew
did plainly affirm that the princes of the Romans did not understand the truth and that the Son of God, coming from heaven into the world for man’s sake, hath taught and declared how those idols, whom they so honored as gods, were not only not gods, but also most cruel devils; enemies to mankind, teaching the people not
hing else but that wherewith God is offended, and, being offended, turneth away and regardeth them not; and so by the wicked service of the devil, they do fall headlong into all wickedness, and, after their departing, nothing remaineth unto them, but their evil deeds.72
Is it surprising that Aegeas took umbrage and ordered Andrew crucified?
A decisive vindication of pagan suspicions was ultimately provided in Augustine’s epic work, The City of God. By the time Augustine’s book was written, in the early fifth century, the empire had become officially Christian. But pagans were still plentiful, and the sack of Rome by the Goths in 410 prompted critics to argue that the city’s tragic plight was a consequence of abandoning the traditional gods. Augustine responded with a no-holds-barred attack on paganism. The pagan gods were demons.73 They had never deserved credit for Roman political or military successes, but rather had worked only to insinuate wickedness into the Roman character.74 In fact, the Roman state had never really been a true commonwealth at all in the fullest sense, because, as Cicero himself had asserted, a “true commonwealth” depends on justice, and the false pantheon of iniquitous demons had never been capable of supporting a just regime.75 As Augustine’s treatise proceeded, pointed criticisms evolved into savage mockery.76
In this ferocious condemnation of pagan religion, and of the state’s reliance on such religion, Augustine was arguably just articulating content that had been implicit or less elaborately explicit in Christian thinking all along. In fact, very similar if somewhat less extensive indictments of paganism had been made by earlier Christian thinkers, including Justin Martyr, Athenagoras, Tertullian, Origen, and Lactantius. And when articulated, those indictments were boldly and emphatically subversive with respect to the pagan foundations of the pre-Christian Roman state.77
Desecration
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