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The Great Sea: A Human History of the Mediterranean

Page 28

by David Abulafia


  III

  The conversion of Constantine to Christianity is traditionally supposed to have followed his victory over his rival Maxentius at the battle of the Milvian Bridge just outside Rome in October 312; it took him another thirteen years to establish himself as sole master of the Roman Empire. In fact he was baptized only on his deathbed in 337, but the Edict of Milan in 313 lifted the ban on Christian worship, and the New Rome he established at Constantinople was to be a Christian city, uncontaminated by pagan temples. He presided over a contentious Church Council at Nicaea in 325, which attempted to resolve difficult theological questions over the nature of the Trinity, mediated by the emperor (no theologian); the result was further schism in an already divided Church, even though the Nicaean Creed thereafter became the basis for Orthodox Christianity. He saw himself as ‘bishop of those outside the Church’; but he was also the pontifex maximus, the chief priest of the empire. Whether through an awareness that religious change must be gradual, or through his own confusion of pagan and Christian ideas, Constantine paid attention to pagan as well as Christian practices, even – oddly – in the ceremonies of dedication of the New Rome, where the cross of Christ was placed above the chariot of the sun-god. In the Old Rome, his heavily decorated triumphal arch, which still stands, made no reference to his new faith, to which, in any case, the Senators were averse. But he also laid the foundations for the great Christian basilica dedicated to St Peter, ruthlessly cutting across a pagan cemetery that now lies underneath the Renaissance blunderbuss of St Peter’s. To pursue the contradictions further: his coins carried the inscription SOL INVICTVS, ‘the unconquered sun’. He banned under penalty of death the private use of the haruspices, Etruscan soothsayers who read the entrails of sacrificial beasts, while also requesting that harsupices should be consulted if lightning struck an imperial palace in Rome. There were attempts to bring together pagans and Christians: the army was commanded to use a prayer addressed to the god who had brought the emperor and his god-fearing sons victory, without specifying who that god might be. There were practical reasons for moving slowly; the worship of the emperor was well developed, and a ruler who had spent nearly twenty years engaged in a struggle for power could not release his pagan followers from a cult that vividly expressed their loyalty to the deified emperor.15

  That the spread of Christianity across the Mediterranean was enormously eased by Constantine’s policies goes without saying. There were, however, some constraints. One problem faced by the imperial ‘establishment’ was the emergence of non-Orthodox factions that rejected the Nicaean compromise dictated by Constantine: Monophysites in Syria and Egypt (notably the Coptic Church); Arians among the barbarian peoples of the European landmass – alternative Churches that, in the view of the Orthodox, denied the equal status of the Father and the Son in the Trinity. And then there were countless small groups such as the Marcionites and the Donatists, whose quarrel with their Christian neighbours was rooted in events that had taken place before Constantine’s legalization of Christianity. All these movements were also represented in the Mediterranean and moved around it, sometimes in the baggage of barbarian mercenaries and invaders, sometimes with pilgrims and with fugitives from persecution, as one Church squeezed another in Carthage or Antioch or Alexandria.

  Another problem was the persistence of pagan beliefs. Only one of Constantine’s successors, the colourful Julian, abandoned Christianity. Julian studied Neo-Platonic philosophy in Athens and by the time he became emperor in 360 he had turned his back on Christianity. His aversion to it made him look favourably on Jewish requests to resume sacrifices in Jerusalem, and to demand that pagan temples be reopened.16 He aimed to establish a pagan ‘church’ with its own high priest; this was a back-handed compliment to the Christian bishops, who had shown how to organize their own cult throughout the empire.17 Julian’s reign was brief, and it was dominated by wars with the Persians in the East; but paganism did not lie down and die. It was only in the sixth century, with the suppression of the ancient schools and academies at Athens by Justinian I, that the study of philosophical texts from a pagan perspective came to an end. ‘Paganism’ is best understood not as a set of beliefs but as local cults of great variety, syncretistic, fluid, lacking any creed or divinely revealed texts.18 These paganisms, in the plural, were hard for Christianity to defeat, despite the appeal of the ethical code Christianity offered, its emphasis on charitable work, and its willingness to include ‘Jew and Greek, slave and free’. Locally, Christian cults accommodated pagan elements, as local gods were turned into Christian saints (the eastern warrior saints have more than a tinge of Herakles). The line between pagan and Christian was not a sharp one, and pagan cults remained a powerful force among local communities along the shores of the Mediterranean: they were well ensconced in North Africa and Spain at the time of the Islamic invasions, around 700.

  A robust way of dealing with non-Christians was to destroy their temples and synagogues. Around 400, Gaza was a lively port and intellectual centre that benefited from its position on the trade route linking the Mediterranean through Beersheba and Petra to the Nabataean towns of the Arabian desert.19 Imperial orders to close its temples were ignored here as elsewhere; local interests could override orders sent from Constantinople, and the great majority of Gazans remained pagan.20 Its painfully ascetic bishop, Porphyry, suffered the humiliation of having to operate from a single church, while the pagans worshipped in any number of grand temples, dedicated to the Sun, Aphrodite, Athena and a god known as Marnas, a manifestation of Zeus whose temple, the Marneion, was particularly magnificent: a circular, domed structure surrounded by two sets of colonnades. When Porphyry complained about this state of affairs to the patriarch of Constantinople, the formidable John Chrysostom, an order was issued closing the temples, but the emperor’s emissary happily accepted a bribe and permitted the Marneion to remain open. Porphyry felt obliged to petition the emperor directly; he travelled to Constantinople, where Empress Eudoxia took an interest, and troops were despatched to Gaza in 402. They spent ten vigorous days burning and demolishing the lesser temples and seizing their treasures. Then they turned their attention to the Marneion, where the pagans tried to defend the building, barricading its great doors. The imperial soldiers greased the doors with lard and pitch, and set them alight. The soldiers sacked the temple, before purging the city of all the idols they could find. Empress Eudoxia sent funds to build a church on the site of the ruined Marneion, and to the fury of the pagans marble slabs recovered from the Marneion were re-used as paving slabs, so pagans would have to walk on the remains of their sanctuary. Eudoxia provided thirty-two green marble columns from Euboia, and the church was consecrated at Easter 407. Meanwhile, many pagans converted, according to Porphyry’s hagiographer.21 The pagans also resorted to violence: on one occasion Porphyry was forced to flee across the flat rooftops of Gaza (he may have been an ascetic, but he lacked the inclination for martyrdom).22 Christianity was only one of the cults in Gaza, a city that also teemed with pagans, Jews and Samaritans, and Christians were neither the most numerous nor the most powerful. The advantage they possessed was official sanction; the advantage pagans and Jews possessed was the sheer size of the empire. What happened in Gaza or the Balearic islands was generally well out of sight of Constantinople.

  IV

  The third constraint on Christian expansion was the continuing self-assertiveness of Judaism. There is a tendency to assume that Judaism was a spent force after the destruction of Jerusalem by Titus and Hadrian, and the choice of Christianity by Constantine. Yet its antiquity continued to impress. Its ethical code was not greatly different from that of Christianity: ‘do not do to others what you would not have done to yourself; that is the whole Law and the rest is but a commentary’, as Jesus’ contemporary Rabbi Hillel observed. Converts were welcomed (including slaves, who were often made to convert), without a great fuss being made over how knowledgeable or observant the convert was.23 It is thus no surprise to find that battles
for supremacy between Judaism and Christianity continued to take place in the Mediterranean world as late as the fifth century. The Christian emperors attempted to prevent the circumcision of slaves, and to ban Jews from office-holding. Representing Judaism as a spent force, imperial legislation of the start of the fifth century denied the right of Jews to build new synagogues, though they could keep what they had.24 Judaism would literally crumble away.

  The nature of the battle for souls in the far corners of the Mediterranean is illustrated by a remarkable letter written by a friend of St Augustine of Hippo, Severus, bishop of Minorca, in which he describes the mass conversion of 540 Minorcan Jews in AD 418.25 Severus insists that the Jews were the most powerful group in Minorcan society, not that Minorca was a place of much consequence: ‘the most forsaken of all lands, due to its tiny size, dryness and harshness’. The Jews were based in the east of the island, at Magona, the modern Maó or Mahón, while the Christians were concentrated in the west at Jamona, now Ciutadella; Severus asserts that Jews were physically unable to live in Jamona – if they tried, they were struck down by disease or even by a thunderbolt. Be that as it may, the most prominent figures on the island were Jews, notably Theodorus, ‘who was pre-eminent in both wealth and worldly honour not only among the Jews but also among the Christians’ of Magona.26 Theodorus’ younger brother Meletius was married to Artemisia, the daughter of Count Litorius, a very prominent military commander who would become second-in-command to the greatest Roman general of the fifth century, Flavius Aetius, and would lead armies of Hunnish mercenaries to victory in Gaul.27 That does not mean Litorius was a Jew, especially since current imperial legislation did not countenance the granting of such high office to Jews; whatever religion he observed, his daughter adhered to Jewish rites. Severus deliberately lays emphasis on the tension between Jews and Christians on the island, and yet it is abundantly clear that relations between the communities were peaceful enough until 400. Severus talks of ‘our old habit of easy acquaintance’, and of ‘our longstanding affection’, though he insists that this behaviour was in fact sinful.28 Laws framed in Constantinople did not displace Theodorus and his Jewish family from leadership.

  This was a time of deep uncertainty in the western Mediterranean. Alaric the Goth had sacked Rome in 410, and after that Visigothic armies had invaded Spain, and other barbarian peoples – Vandals, Suevi, Alans – were also on the march in the western Roman Empire. None of these groups was yet a naval power, but even in Minorca the sense of threat was powerful. The arrival of the newly discovered relics of St Stephen on Minorca in 416 triggered an outburst of enthusiasm among the Christians of Magona, who acted as host to the bones.29 St Stephen was the ‘first martyr’ of the Christians, regarded as ‘the first to wage the Lord’s wars against the Jews’; he was engaged on a tour of the Mediterranean, from Jerusalem, where his bones had recently been found, to Spain and North Africa. Minorca was the one halt where he effected a revolution.30 Their discovery was exploited by the Christians of Jerusalem to increase pressure on the local Jews; just before the bones were found Gamaliel, patriarch of the Jews of Jerusalem, had been stripped of his traditional precedence as the equal of an imperial prefect, and ordered not to allow further circumcision of converts nor the building of new synagogues. In 414 the patriarch of Alexandria is said to have expelled the Jews from his city, and across the eastern Mediterranean there were forced conversions and seizures of synagogues.31 With the arrival of the relics of St Stephen in Minorca, the Christian population gained in confidence. Christians (including Severus) and Theodorus the Jew had dreams that the bishop knew must foretell the conversion of the Jews. There was an apocalyptic atmosphere: surely the conversion of the Jews would herald the Second Coming of Christ? Severus wrote:

  Perhaps that time predicted by the Apostle has indeed come when the fullness of the Gentiles will have come and all Israel shall be saved. And perhaps the Lord wished to kindle this spark from the ends of the earth, so that the whole breadth of the earth might be ablaze with the flame of love in order to burn down the forest of unbelief.32

  The methods the Christians employed were not subtle. The Jews were accused of hoarding weapons for use against them. On 2 February 417, the Christians gathered in Jamona and marched across the length of the island, thirty miles, but we are assured it was a painless journey, because they had in mind their glorious purpose. Severus requested admission to the synagogue to look for weapons, and he was reluctantly admitted, but before an inspection could take place violence broke out. The Christians invaded and set fire to the synagogue, while taking care to seize its precious items – its silver (which they later returned) and the Torah scrolls (which they decided to keep). The weapons proved imaginary. Severus admits that the riot against the Jews was begun by a thieving Christian, ‘drawn not by love of Christ, but by love of plunder’. The next day the first Jew, named Reuben, converted; the rest of the Jews deliberated for three days, and Theodorus tried to debate the truth of the two faiths with the Christians, but finally he was worn down by arguments that seem as much practical as theological, for Reuben urged him: ‘if you truly wish to be safe and honoured and wealthy, believe in Christ’. Theodorus was willing to convert only if the great majority of his people followed him to the font, as indeed happened.33 Some delayed longer: Theodorus’ sister-in-law Artemisia fled to a cave, intending to hold fast to her beliefs after her husband converted, but when the water her servant drew for her tasted of honey she realized that a miracle had happened, and she too conformed.34

  Since Severus is the only source of information for these events, it is difficult to penetrate below the surface of what he says. Some points are striking: the political importance of the Jews, and the prominent role of Jewish women. A hint that even the long march from Jamona to Magona may not have begun with aggressive intentions comes from the remark that the Jews joined in ‘with a wondrous sweetness’ when they heard the Christians singing Psalm 9.35 It is impossible to escape the conclusion that Jews and Christians had not just been on good terms until St Stephen arrived, but that the boundaries between Judaism and Christianity had been very permeable, which was exactly what bishops disliked. Violence prompted the Jews of Minorca to convert; but mutual familiarity lessened the shock of conversion.36 Monotheism after the model of Nicaea was beginning to triumph in the Mediterranean, but its exclusive character left not just pagans but monotheists of a different persuasion in an embattled position.

  10

  Dis-integration, 400–600

  I

  Ever since Edward Gibbon wrote his Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire the question why, when and indeed whether this great Roman Empire fell has been vigorously pursued by historians. It has been observed that at least 210 explanations have been offered, some frankly ridiculous (‘Semitization’, homosexuality, decline in manliness).1 The argument that it was the barbarian invasions that destroyed Rome – both the city and its empire – lost favour and has returned to favour.2 Some historians have insisted that the whole concept of the ‘fall of Rome’ is a misconception, and have emphasized the continuity of the Roman inheritance.3 Yet from a Mediterranean perspective, it is abundantly clear that the unity of the Great Sea had been shattered by 800. That leaves several centuries in which to place the process of disintegration, and several suspects: the Germanic barbarians in the fifth century and after, the Arab conquerors in the seventh century, Charlemagne and his Frankish armies in the eighth century, not to mention internal strife as Roman generals competed for power, either seeking regional dominions or the crown of the empire itself. Evidently there was no single ‘cause’ for the decline of Rome, and it was precisely the accumulation of dozens of problems that brought the old order to an end, rupturing the ‘Second Mediterranean’.

  During the long period from 400 to 800, the Mediterranean split apart economically and also politically: the Roman emperors saw that the task of governing the Mediterranean lands and vast tracts of Europe west of the Rhine and south of the Dan
ube exceeded the capacity of one man. Diocletian, ruling from 284 onwards, based himself in the east at Nikomedeia, and entrusted the government of the empire to a team of co-emperors, first another ‘Augustus’ in the west, and then, from 293 to 305, two deputies or ‘Caesars’ as well, a system known as the Tetrarchy.4 His residence in Nikomedeia was itself a prelude to the decision by Constantine to establish a ‘New Rome’ in 330; after looking at the site of Troy, the city from which the Roman people claimed its origins, he chose instead the emporium of Byzantion, with its fine harbour and its strategic position on the trade route linking the Black Sea to the Mediterranean. The other startling change that took place was, of course, Constantine’s official recognition of Christianity, after centuries during which it had existed as an underground religion.

 

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