The further shrinkage of the already decreasing population to which this detestation of sexuality must lead was freely admitted by Christians. Their spokesman Eusebius explains that this aversion to sex made them reluctant to have children. For example, Saint Melania the elder - another of Jerome's friends -although she got married, felt no desire whatever to have children, and once they were born she left the last survivor without apparent remorse. Ambrose had been aware of evergrowing accusations that he and his co-religionists, by their praise of the pure unmarried state, were depriving Rome of the sons and daughters it needed. His reply was: 'Since when have men been complaining that they could not find a wife?'
Nevertheless, the opposite view had some right on its side, and the proliferation of monks and hermits and nuns, whatever their moral influence for good, tended to splinter a profoundly divided society still further, creating yet another disunity. So the assertion of Alexander Pope that 'the monks finished what the Goths began' contains a measure of truth. They had dropped out of the world, because they found society more than they could endure.
11
The State against Free Belief
In spite of its warning noises, the state did not take forcible steps to bring back into society the men and women who had opted out to become monks and nuns and hermits. But it practised violent coercion on those who did not adhere to the same religion as itself - and even to the same branch of the same religion. This coercion was a major mistake. For instead of cementing the unity that had been hoped for, it added a worse and more crippling disunity to all the rest.
This ancient coercion proved possible because of a close alliance between church and state. Until the early fourth century AD, the official religion of the Roman world had been pagan. The ancient paganism of the Roman state was willing to be all things to all men. Being polytheistic, it was multiple and versatile. It was very far from exclusive. Nor was it generally intolerant. True, it had developed intolerance towards the Christians, because the Christians, since they owed loyalty to a Higher Master, seemed to be denying the sufficient minimum of loyalty to the Emperor and the nation. But the Christians remained, for a long time, a small and exceptional minority.
Then came the conversion of Constantine the Great to Christianity, and his gradual conversion of the Empire to the same faith. These events were astonishing because the Christians were still a small minority, and not a very influential one at that. Constantine's revolution, declared the English historian J. B. Bury, was 'perhaps the most audacious act ever committed by an autocrat in disregard and defiance of the vast majority of his subjects'.
The Emperor took this surprising action because he felt an impulsive inner need for divine support; and the Christian faith, with its most satisfying of Redeemers, a Redeemer who had actually dwelt among mankind, gave a better promise of providing this aid than the various pagan saviours who had never been seen upon the earth. And so Constantine, looking around him, and noting all the grievous internal disharmonies which threatened to bring the Empire down, decided that the best possible unifying factor was Christianity. Under his guidance, it would bring everyone together, effectively counterbalancing all the many divisive trends. State and church, he planned, were to work together in the closest possible association. But the state was, at first, the controlling partner. Under Valentinian I, Bishop Optatus of Milevis (Mila) in Algeria admitted this, declaring 'The State is not in the Church, but the Church is in the State.'
Nevertheless Valentinian's policy of toleration could not fail to encourage the idea of ecclesiastical independence. He did not even prevent the scandal of the age, the papal election of 366 in which 137 corpses were left on the pavement of a Roman basilica. The successful candidate was Damasus, who thereafter worked for a Concordat in Which the importance of the Pope would be enhanced. A leading pagan, Praetextatus, commented on his grandeur with the remark, 'Make me Bishop of Rome, and I will be a Christian at once.'
Yet it was a bishop not of Rome but of Mediolanum (Milan), now the Imperial residence, who raised the power of the church to a new peak. This was Ambrose, who occupied the bishopric from 374 until his death in 397. Ambrose declared, in contradiction to earlier doctrines, that 'the Emperor is not above the church, but in the church. ... If one reads the Scriptures, one sees that it is bishops who judge Emperors. ... A good Emperor does not spurn the assistance of the church: he seeks it.' These words were addressed to Valentinian II, who employed their author on important political missions.
Next, Ambrose had two immensely famous clashes with Theodosius I - from both of which the churchman emerged victorious. First, in 388, when an Eastern bishop had ordered a Jewish synagogue at Nicephorium Callinicum (Raqqa) in Syria to be burnt, and Theodosius instructed that it should be rebuilt and its destroyers punished, Ambrose, speaking from the pulpit, ordered the Emperor to repent, and would not enact the Mass until the Imperial instruction had been revoked. Then, two years later, after the army commander at Thessalonica had been lynched for imprisoning a popular charioteer, and Theodosius, as a punishment, had 7,000 people massacred, Ambrose refused to admit him to Mass until he had done penance. These were moments of decision. By bowing to Ambrose's instruction on both occasions, Theodosius had deferred in spectacular fashion to the power of the church.
After Ambrose's death, the spiritual initiative returned from Milan to Rome, where Pope Innocent I (401-17) made it clear that this new ecclesiastical authority was going to be vested not in a Milanese bishop but in himself. When Alaric approached Rome with his Visigoths, Innocent was the only national leader with sufficient prestige to negotiate with him. Later Pope Leo 1 (440-61) likewise treated with Attila, scoring a triumphant success. It was Leo's view that collaboration between state and church was a bargain beneficial to both, like the contractual arrangements familiar to every Roman jurist.
Some contemporary thinkers, including Jerome and Salvian, deplored the tendencies of churchmen to join the comfortable establishment. But many others were delighted with this union of the spiritual and secular powers, declaring it to have been by no means fortuitous that the births of Jesus and of the Empire had coincided in date.
And indeed this union might well, as was its intention, have proved a factor cementing the disunited Roman world together. But it turned out to be exactly the opposite, because of the excessive zeal with which the civil authorities, carrying out the requests of their ecclesiastical partners, sought to enforce conformity upon all who did not agree with the doctrines of the official church. For by such means they transformed differences of opinion and doctrine into irremediable hostilities.
This willingness to use forcible methods was based on a disastrous interpretation of a text in the Gospel according to St Luke, in which Jesus was declared to have said, 'Go out into the highways and hedges, and compel them to come in, that my house may be filled.' In the later Roman world, this sentence, as well as utterances by St Paul, was used by church and state as an invitation to the fatal policy of coercion.
The problem arose in an acute form as early as the lifetime of Constantine himself. When he boldly converted the state to Christianity, the overwhelming majority of his subjects were still pagans. Although this was an obstacle to harmony which would, he believed, eventually be overcome, he initially announced that he was going to 'permit those who are in error to be free to enjoy the same peace and tranquillity as those who believe'. But, in the end, the strength of the opposition compelled him to sharpen this moderate attitude. Pagan temple treasures were confiscated, and finally pagan sacrifices were banned. Then his son Constantius II, whose personal devoutness was intensified by a terror of sorcery, stepped up this fight against paganism, passing laws in 346 and 356 of a strongly repressive nature.
His cousin and successor Julian the Apostate (361-3) reacted strongly against his Christian upbringing, and restored official paganism. At first he appeared to favour religious neutrality, and after the model of Constantine proclaimed a general willingness to permit
any and every cult. However, after reinstituting pagan worship, he deprived the Christian churches and clergy of their privileges, and forbade Christian professors to teach the classics. But then he was killed in battle; and pagan historians declared this the most disastrous event in Roman history, an event which directly presaged the downfall of Rome. After his death Christianity was restored as the state religion.
Such was the situation which Valentinian I inherited - a situation in which the relationship between the two faiths, except among a few intellectuals, had become characterized by violent hostility and antipathy.
Although a Christian believer himself, Valentinian, in 371, decided to launch a policy of universal toleration. 'I do not', he said, 'consider any rite permitted by our ancestors to be criminal': and the pagan Ammianus, although willing enough to criticize Valentinian in other respects, hails this policy with proper admiration. The Pope of the time, Damasus, had connections with the pagan aristocracy, and this made it easier for Valentinian to damp down the growing intransigence of some of the other bishops.
Valentinian's liberal attitude was one of the few triumphs of the age. In opposition to the general feeling and practice, he felt that unity would better be achieved by tolerance, and this decision stands out as a beacon during a millennium and a half in which, for the most part, rulers of the leading nations continued to think and act otherwise.
Gratian at first adopted a similar policy, because he was initially under the influence of the poet Ausonius, whose Christianity was not obtrusive. But a new phase began when, in 397, Gratian appointed Theodosius i as his Eastern co-Emperor.
First, Gratian abandoned the old traditional pagan chief priesthood, and his new colleague never assumed it. Then Gratian decided to remove the pagan statue of Victory from the Senate-house. Seized upon by influential pagans as a decisive menace to their tradition and faith, this action provoked, over a period of three years, a series of famous oratorical duels between Symmachus, the foremost pagan of the day, and the most outstanding Christian, Ambrose, bishop of Mediolanum (Milan).
The discussion was conducted with decorum. 'Everyone', declared Symmachus, 'has his own custom, his own religion. The love of habit is great. We ask for the restoration of the cult in its former condition, which has been beneficial to the Roman state for so long. One cannot reach so great a secret by one way alone.' This explicit denial of the Christian claim to universality was duly refuted by Ambrose, who insisted that the Emperor should 'do what he knew would be profitable to his salvation in the sight of God'. His view prevailed, and the statue was excluded from the Senate-house. It was the worst setback for paganism so far.
Ambrose also attacked marriages between Christians and pagans, citing the union of Samson and Delilah. And at the same time Symmachus had to contend with the lyrical Prudentius, whose forward-looking, rejuvenated, Christian Rome created a more vigorous impression than his own somewhat melancholy and nostalgic attitude. Besides, Prudentius ingeniously met his opponent's defence of traditionalism by arguing that change did not mean the negation of Rome's genius. It was a constructive approach, and Prudentius, a Christian with a profound appreciation of old Rome, sometimes seems nearer than anyone else to a genuine understanding between Christians and pagans. But no such understanding was allowed to develop. For the Christian regime did not feel that its vigilance could be allowed to drop for a single moment.
One danger that it had constantly in mind was apostasy from the faith, the subject of six severe enactments within fifteen years. The fiercest measures were the work of the intensely devout Theodosius i. In gratitude for his reconciliation with Ambrose, he forbade any pagan worship whatever, and in 381 even visits to temples were prohibited. Then, in the following year, on the death of Theodosius' fellow-Emperor Valentinian II, events occurred which intensified this severity. For a usurper, Eugenius, was set up in the West, and although nominally a Christian he was such a lukewarm believer that his accession put fresh heart into the pagans of Rome.
Theodosius 1 retaliated with drastic edicts. Every sort of pagan observance was even more emphatically forbidden, and judges, town councillors and chief citizens were made responsible for all evasions, under the threat of dire penalties. The Code of Theodosius 11 includes no less than twenty-five laws, drawn up by his predecessors and himself, directed against paganism in all its forms. The influence of Ambrose had indeed been effective-at least upon legislation, if not, perhaps, upon its enforcement, since even after this strongly anti-pagan law the Emperors still felt it necessary to issue thirteen more edicts to the same effect.
Theodosius 1, in a spirit of deliberate vengeance, seems to have interpreted his role as the precise counterpart and reversal of the old pagan persecutions of the Christians. The opposing view was expressed by a pagan writer, Eunapius of Sardis (Sart), who declared, with the Christians in mind, that 'our age has risked being wholly kicked about by jackasses'. Meanwhile, in 394, the upstart Eugenius was suppressed, and, owing to the discomfiture of his pagan supporters, this was the time when the Christians first achieved a decided majority in the Senate. The age of ambivalence, of possible latitude of thought, was gone from the ancient Roman world for ever.
Nevertheless, when Theodosius I died in the following year, the regents of his sons Arcadius and Honorius at first adopted a moderate policy towards the pagans, seeking to assert the state's authority against the anti-pagan excesses of the clergy. But in North Africa religious riots broke out in 399 among the pagans because their shrines had been closed, and in consequence the bishops of the region, two years later, asked the Western government for new laws to 'extirpate the last remnants of idolatry'.
Augustine, bishop of Hippo Regius - now Annaba in Algeria -found himself actively caught up in this situation, and came out in favour of coercion of the pagans by the state. They must be compelled to change their ways. And apostates, too, must be forcibly returned to the fold as the Imperial edicts so rightly insisted, since Christ, like a general who brings back deserters recognized by the brand on the back of their hands, is entitled to use military methods to recall his own deserters to his army.
Augustine exulted over the destruction of pagan temples. A philosopher who belonged to the old religion, Nectarius, tried to bring home to him, in human terms, the hardships that these persecutions caused. But all such efforts to change his mind proved vain. And they became more useless still after Alaric had captured Rome. For this event frightened the Christians, since it gave paganism a new lease of life. Look, said the pagans, what has happened to Rome, now that it is Christian and has abandoned its ancestral gods! And that was the case Augustine's City of God sought to refute. Although this great work branched out in many directions, its immediate stimulus came from the need to stem this new pagan revival, made possible by the traumatic events of 410.
Until the death of Stilicho two years earlier, there had still been hopes of a more conciliatory official attitude towards the pagans. For he himself, during the period when he was virtually controlling the Empire, had urged a certain measure of religious toleration and balance. Nevertheless, even Stilicho had felt it necessary to burn the Sibylline books, the most sacred documents of paganism. For that, he was posthumously assailed, in 417, by the pagan poet Rutilius Namatianus, who reiterated firmly once again that it was because of the Romans' desertion of the gods that disaster had overtaken them; and he derided the Christian saints for failing to save the city.
Stilicho's death was immediately followed by a law excluding pagans from the army - since their loyalty was no longer regarded as secure. Thereafter, acts of repression against the pagans continued well on into the 430s. Then the beginning of the next decade witnessed the accession of Pope Leo 1, who declared that 'Truth, which is simple and one, does not admit of variety'. In the same spirit, in 448, Theodosius 11 started to burn pagan books: 'all the volumes that move God to wrath and that harm the soul we do not want to come to men's hearing'. The pagan cult was evidently still active enough, even at that
late date, to prompt such stringent precautions.
After that, it did little more than linger on. One of the last eminent pagans was the Greek historian Zosimus, who wrote his New History at about the turn of the sixth century. Like Rutilius Namatianus, he looked back upon Theodosius I'S forced Christianization of the Empire as the direct cause of Rome's downfall - because it had obviously provoked divine retribution. Ironically enough, the results of that forcible official policy had been the disastrous reverse of what Constantine intended, when he saw Christianity as the potential unifying element of his Empire.
The men who originated and developed this idea, of which the Greco-Roman world had hitherto been free, that people should be coerced because of their opinions, bear a heavy load of responsibility for the persecutions that followed throughout medieval times, and subsequently. And meanwhile, these coercions had helped to destroy the Roman Empire, by intensifying the very disunities they were designed to eliminate.
Equally divisive and equally destructive were the conflicts within Christianity itself. When Constantine had made the Christian faith his state religion, he was no doubt prepared for objections from the pagan majority. But the savage enmities which rapidly developed among the Christians themselves took him by surprise. 'The very persons', he wrote to Bishop Chrestus of Syracuse in Sicily, 'who ought to display brotherly harmony and concord are estranged from one another in a way that is disgraceful if not positively sickening'.
The Fall of the Roman Empire Page 17
