The Triumph of Christianity

by Bart D. Ehrman

  This level of violent intolerance is not found everywhere in the Christian tradition of the mid- to late fourth century, any more than in the pagan tradition decades earlier, before the conversion of Constantine. In both periods sincerely devout people, both pagan and Christian, lowly citizens and powerful governmental officials, supported religious nonviolence, freedom of religion, and tolerance. Thus, one of the leading Christian theologians of the fourth century, Gregory of Nazianzus, bishop of Constantinople, writing somewhat after Firmicus’s day, said quite plainly: “I do not consider it good practice to coerce people instead of persuading them.”14

  THE TERMS OF THE DISCUSSION

  It is impossible to know which side of the tolerance-intolerance divide most Christians occupied. We simply have no record of the views of 99.9 percent of the Christian world at the time. Even so, the intolerant strain within Christianity took on a new cast when Christian leaders appeared with political power at their disposal and the will to use it in order to impose their religious preferences on others.

  It should be clear from everything I have said that religious intolerance is not the same thing as exclusivity. Exclusivity involves the commitment to adhere to only one particular set of religious beliefs and practices. Throughout history, large numbers of people have held exclusive views and commitments without insisting they had the one and only path to truth. In Roman antiquity most Jews were both exclusivist when it came to themselves and tolerant of those outside their Jewish community.

  Intolerance is a different matter. It is the principled rejection of other beliefs and practices as wrong, dangerous, or both. One might unreflectively consider intolerance merely a particularly virulent offshoot of strict exclusivity, but it patently is not that, for the simple reason that adherents of more inclusive traditions such as Roman paganism were also sometimes intolerant, as the worshipers of Bacchus and the followers of Christ both discovered with exquisite clarity.

  In those cases the intolerance involved violent suppression. But there is no reason that intolerance needs to produce violence: it can just as well involve a purely mental state. However, when it does turn violent, and when that violence is designed not only to penalize but also to convert—that is, to change the victim’s religious views and practices by force—that would be coercion. Both pagans and Christians were guilty of attempted coercion in antiquity, with some late-fourth-century Christians engaging in acts of violent intolerance that their parents in the faith would have abhorred just decades earlier.

  ACTS OF CHRISTIAN INTOLERANCE

  When enacting religious violence, Christians could claim to be following the injunctions of Scripture, as Firmicus Maternus and others pointed out, including the terse command of Exodus 34:13–14: “You shall tear down their altars, break their pillars, and cut down their sacred poles, for you shall worship no other god, because the LORD, whose name is Jealous, is a jealous God.” Luckily for pagans, only rarely were the requirements of Deuteronomy 17:2–5 followed and idolaters executed by the community. But pagan practices were disrupted, temples closed, and cult statues destroyed. Not everywhere, and possibly not in most places. But in some times and some places. Acts of violence occasionally came through state officials but more frequently on the local level as Christians exercised their newly won power in full awareness of the religious proclivities of the ultimate authorities.

  In an enlightening if sometimes disheartening recent study, Troels Myrup Kristensen recounts numerous instances of Christian violence against pagan sites and objects.15 A particularly intriguing example comes from an archaeological discovery made in 1904 in the city of Ephesus, an inscription on the base of a statue of the city protectress, the goddess Artemis. The inscription reads: “Having destroyed a deceitful image of demonic Artemis, Demeas set up this sign of truth, honoring both God, the driver-away of idol, and the cross, that victory-bringing immortal symbol of Christ.”16

  What this otherwise unknown man Demeas had done was destroy the statue of the goddess and replaced it with a (probably wooden) cross, which itself has not survived the ravages of time. Did he expect that by destroying the statue he had robbed the goddess of her power? That he had driven away the demon? Throughout Ephesus, other statues were defaced and the name of Artemis erased from inscriptions. In Kristensen’s words: “It would seem that Demeas’s response was rather typical of his time, and erasure of images and inscriptions an ordinary method of publicly denouncing paganism and calling forth a new Christian image.”17

  Throughout the empire one can find numerous cult statues not merely destroyed but systematically defaced, subject to bodily mutilation. These mutilations deliver an obvious message. By removing the statue’s eyes, ears, mouth, and nose the Christian antagonist showed in graphic terms that the pagan god could not see, hear, speak, or sense in any way. Hands were lopped off to show the god could not do anything; genitals were mutilated to show it could provide no fertility. The ideology behind such mutilations goes back to biblical times. In the Hebrew Bible we read that idols “have mouths, but they speak not; eyes have they, but they see not; they have ears, but they hear not; neither is there any breath in their mouths” (Psalm 135:16–17).

  But Christian attacks were not limited to destruction. There was also the matter of replacement. Demeas replaced Artemis with a cross. Sometimes Christians who mutilated a statue then scratched the sign of the cross on its forehead. Now the pagan idol had become a witness to Christ. So too with sacred buildings. Christians built a church within the temple precinct of Artemis in Ephesus, allowing them to usurp “one of the most revered pagan cultic places in Asia Minor.”18

  At other times, statues were simply desacralized, moved from cultic sites and redeployed as objects of art, as seen with Constantine’s decoration of his New Rome and as poetically embraced by the Christian author Prudentius (348– 413 CE):

  Of bloody sacrifices cleansed

  The marble altars then will gleam

  And statues honored now as gods

  Will stand, mere harmless blocks of bronze.19

  Violence against pagan sacred places and objects became increasingly pronounced during the reign of Theodosius I. Even though the laws he passed against pagan practices and the cultic use of pagan temples lacked empire-wide enforcement clauses, they had their effect because of both imperial action and local acts of violence.

  Most famous from the imperial level was the energetic mission of one of Theodosius’s most high-ranking officials, the Spaniard Maternus Cynegius, dispatched to the eastern provinces to close temples. Cynegius did not have a systematic plan of attack; he visited important sites and with military backing shut down sacred shrines. In some ways, more important than his sporadic actions was the precedent he set. Some scholars think his incendiary activities promoted the mob violence decried especially by Libanius, the pagan rhetorician we met earlier. If anything, local turbulence proved more destructive than official imperial actions.

  This much is suggested in one of Libanius’s surviving orations, addressed to Theodosius as a plea to bring a halt to marauding monks who had run wild among pagan religious sites, bringing destruction in their wake. These unruly and uneducated Christians, robed in black, were wreaking vengeance on sacred temples:

  This black-robed tribe, who eat more than elephants and, by the quantities of drink they consume, weary those that accompany their drinking with the singing of hymns . . . hasten to attack the temples with sticks and stones and bars of iron, and in some cases, disdaining these, with hands and feet. Then utter desolation follows, with the stripping of roofs, demolition of walls, the tearing down of statues and the overthrow of altars, and the priests must either keep quiet or die. After demolishing one, they scurry to another, and to a third, and trophy is piled on trophy, in contravention of the law. (Oration 30.8–9)

  The monks did more than destroy property: “I forebear to mention the numbers they have murdered in their riotings in utter disregard of the name they share” (Oration 30.20). Bu
t the major damage was done to sacred sites: “In estate after estate, shrine after shrine has been wiped out by their insolence, violence, greed, and deliberate lack of self-control” (Oration 3.21). Country shrines “great and small alike, in which the weary used to find repose, have all been demolished” (Oration 30.24).

  From other sources we learn that where pillaging monks destroyed, Christian bishops appropriated, taking over pagan holy sites and making them Christian, baptizing them, as it were, into the new faith. In addition to the temple of Artemis in Ephesus were the “Pan-Hellenic temples” in Achaea, called this because they served not merely their own localities but all of Greece. Most of these major sacred sites actively sponsored pagan celebrations at the end of the third century, but two hundred years later, in the words of Amelia Robertson Brown, “every major sanctuary in Achaea contained at least one Christian basilica.”20 Sometimes this appropriation of pagan holy sites for the Christian cause involved other forms of profanation as well, as in the case of the sanctuary of Zeus in Gaza. When the site was destroyed in 402, the Christian bishop Porphyry used blocks from the temple to pave the atrium of the new church, so that they would be walked over not only by Christian worshipers but also by the dogs and swine. In the words of Porphyry’s biographer: “This pained the idolaters more than the burning of the temple.”21

  As with Libanius, many of the pained idolaters lodged official protests, but usually to no avail. In the early fifth century, the most prestigious pagan temple in the city of Carthage was converted into a church. Pagans erupted in protest. The imperial officials dealt with the problem by having the place destroyed.

  VIOLENCE IN ALEXANDRIA

  To wrap up this brief catalog of violent intolerance, I focus on two incidents that occurred in the city of Alexandria, Egypt. Both left a black eye on the Christian cause. The first involved the destruction of one of the great architectural structures of Roman antiquity, the other the murder of one of its great scholars.22

  The Destruction of the Serapeum

  The magnificent temple of the Egyptian god Serapis was known as the Serapeum. Ancient authors likened its glories to the Acropolis of Athens. It took a hundred steps from ground level to reach the site, on which were located lattice gates, enormous columns, stoas (long-roofed colonnades), and storehouses. The roofs of the stoas were made of gold. The capitals of the columns were in bronze and plated with gold. There were two stone obelisks on the site. In the words of one ancient author from the second half of the fourth century, “The beauty surpasses the telling.” An anonymous writer of 359 CE maintained: “Nowhere in the world is found such a building or such an arrangement of a temple or such an arrangement of a religion.”23

  Our principal source of information for the destruction of the site is the Christian historian Rufinus, who had spent eight years in Alexandria (373–80 CE). He indicates that inside the temple building itself

  was an image of Serapis, so huge that its right hand was touching one wall, while its left touched another—a monstrous object said to have been made from all sorts of metals and woods. The interior walls of the shrine were covered at first by gold plates, then by silver plates above these, and finally by bronze plates to protect the more precious metals (Church History 11.23).24

  Nothing suggests that either the official activities of Maternus Cygenius or the reckless violence of Christian monks played any role in the destruction of the Serapeum. It was a local affair, resulting from a series of accidents and missteps in 391 CE.25 During the renovations of a basilica in Alexandria, workmen discovered an underground sanctuary, probably devoted to the god Mithras. Inside were sacred cult objects. The powerful bishop of Alexandria, Theophilus, decided to have these items publicly paraded through the marketplace in order to mock their religious significance and, by implication, the people who might have revered them. Many devout pagans were not amused.

  They responded by attacking Christians and retreating into the Serapeum, which functioned as an enormous fortified structure. From there they occasionally ventured out, taking Christians captive and forcing them to sacrifice on altars. Christians who refused were tortured to death, crucified, or thrown into caverns with their legs broken.

  To resolve the standoff, an appeal was made to the emperor Theodosius, who responded by offering amnesty to the pagans holed up in the Serapeum but ordering, as well, the suppression of pagan cults. Out of fear of reprisal, the pagan instigators fled the site and escaped by merging with the crowds. Christian soldiers entered the precincts and decided to wreak damage in retribution. We are told that one went straight to the center of the temple to attack the statue of Serapis. At first he hesitated, aware of prophecies of divine retribution for anyone who dishonored the god. But he took courage, grabbed an axe, and struck the jaw of the statue. No supernatural vengeance ensued, and so the soldiers hacked the statue to pieces and took parts to different areas in the city to be burned. They incinerated the trunk of the statue in the public theater.

  The bishop Theophilus converted some of the buildings of the Serapeum complex into churches; two of these were later made to house the alleged relics of John the Baptist and the prophet Elijah. The emperor Theodosius, rather than maligning the violation of the pagans’ sacred space, issued an edict further restricting pagan activities: “No person shall be granted the right to perform sacrifices; no person shall go around the temples; no person shall revere the shrines . . . . [I]f any person should attempt to do anything with reference to the gods or the sacred rites, contrary to Our prohibition, he shall learn that he will not be exempted from punishment by any special grants of imperial favor.”26

  The penalty clause is strikingly vague, but its intent is clear enough. Pagans were no longer allowed to practice their religions. What followed was a widespread destruction of other images of Serapis throughout the city. The head of the god was paraded around, while, in the words of one ancient Christian source, Christians “mocked the weakness of him to whom they had once bowed the knee.”27 As one modern historian has argued, “the violence of 391 proved to be the linchpin that initiated the downfall of public paganism throughout Egypt.”28 Usually the ensuing violence was not officially sanctioned, but, as another scholar has pointed out: “Providing that law and order was not unduly compromised, it was understood that the civil authorities would either turn a blind eye to the activities of the bishops, or even go so far as supply them with edicts to fit their requirements.”29

  Destruction was not carried out systematically. When looked at in hindsight, pagan religions in Alexandria may have been on the defensive and in clear decline, but it was not yet the end. This is evident from the fact that another horrific act of violence occurred there twenty-four years later.

  The Murder of Hypatia

  Hypatia was that rarity of antiquity, a highly trained, well-known, and revered woman philosopher. Daughter of Theon, the most famous mathematician of the day, Hypatia was an expert in algebra, geometry, and astronomy, and was even more famous as a Neoplatonic philosopher. She remained unmarried and celibate and had a large following in Alexandria as a public intellectual and a teacher who had men as her students.

  A sense of her commitment to the views of Plato, as interpreted by other philosophers of her time, can be seen in a rather amusing anecdote handed down to us in a tenth-century encyclopedia known as the Suda. There we learn that Hypatia was not only incredibly learned but also unusually beautiful. One of her young male students fell in love with her. She, however, was focused on matters of the mind rather than the body, and she—good Platonist that she was—thought that real beauty could be found only in the truths uncovered through intellectual endeavors, not in sexual attractions. Thus, she tried to repulse her would-be lover’s advances, but with little success. As a last-ditch effort she brought out some of her used sanitary napkins, threw them at his feet, and declared, “You love this, O youth, and there is nothing beautiful about it.” Platonic reality won the day.30

  Hypatia’s life woul
d prove a fascinating study if only we had extensive sources of information. Regrettably, we are informed most fully about her death.31 It came at the hands of a Christian mob, at the end of a rather complex set of incidents. The year was 415 CE. The prefect of Egypt—that is, the senior civil authority—was a Christian named Orestes, who had a running political battle with the local Christian bishop, Cyril, successor of Theophilus. Their contretemps came to a head over violence that had erupted between Christians and Jews in the city. The issue, at bottom, involved a contest over authority for handling the crisis, the civil authority appointed by the state or the bishop appointed by the church.

  Cyril had a large band of Christian strongmen who supported him, engaged in his charitable work, and carried out even his uncharitable orders. In the midst of the difficulties, these men confronted Orestes in public and accused him of being a pagan. One of their number hurled a stone that bloodied Orestes’s head. He responded by ordering the man captured and tortured to death.

  Orestes, naturally enough, had his own supporters, and it was widely thought that Hypatia was a particularly close advisor. Cyril’s mob decided to make an example of her. They found her in public riding in her chariot. Pulling her down, they dragged her to a church, tore off her clothes, and murdered her with fragments of pottery found at hand. They hauled her body outside the city and burned it on a pile of sticks.

  One of the questions historians have always puzzled over is the degree to which Cyril was responsible for Hypatia’s death. Our sources give varying accounts. Were his strongmen acting on his orders, or was this simply their own bright idea? Possibly a mediating position is best: that Cyril was not directly or legally responsible for what happened but that he had incited his passionate followers to wreak vengeance on those who sided with Orestes. In either event, the fifth century as a result lost one of its most brilliant intellectuals in the murder of a pagan philosopher at the hands of a Christian mob.