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Paganism and Christianity under Constantine

Debates over the growth of Christianity under Constantine

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Theology: Christianity in Late Antiquity (B6)

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Was there a conflict between paganism and Christianity in late antiquity?

Ideas Was ‘paganism’ one single religion? Can we define paganism in the same way we can Christianity? Was there more conflict between Christian factions than between Christianity and paganism? Did both have an equal voice in the historical record? Can pagans and Christians be brought into conflict focused on concepts, which do not directly relate to religion? Similarity to Anglo-Saxon England in that pagan practices were banned, no wholesale ban of ‘paganism’ This was not church versus church, the pagan end was secular, as was the emperor. The church was not the state.

Pagan and Christian Historiography in the Fourth Century-Momigliano The victory of October 312 was ideologically important for Christian writers. Lactantius’ account was ‘A voice shrill with implacable hatred’ and Eusebius described the battle of the Milvian Bridge as divine justice against the persecutors of the church. The church wished to take over the Roman state, Eusebius’ Praeparatio evangelica emphasises the correlation between pax romana and the Christian message. Christians looked to exploit the miracle that happened to Constantine. Christian historiography came before the Pagan equivalent, Eusebius wrote in 312 and Lactantius in 316. The Christians were on the offensive; the Pagans were on the defensive. Histories of Judaism and Christianity in the 4th century were only written and studied by those who adopted the religion; conversion meant the discovery of a new history from Adam and Eve to contemporary events. Chronology had to satisfy elementary teaching and higher historical interpretation. The history had to be summarised and converts had to consider it their own; the church had to prove the antiquity of their religion and they had to show history as providential. Christian teaching involved broadening one’s historical horizon and seeing history as bound to the destiny of man. Christian chronology presented history in a way so that redemption could be perceived. Orthodoxy was established by listing bishops who were apostolic. A beginning and an end were calculated. Philosophy of history was not separated from the education of converts. Eusebius corrected the chronological work of his predecessors and continued to use chronology for Christian instruction. Pagans did not concern themselves with ultimate values in elementary teaching. They wanted to keep alive the Roman past. After the third century a leading class had emerged, which had difficulty remembering the Roman past. Valens commissioned Eutropius and possibly Rufius to give a brief summary of Roman history. New men from the provincial armies or from Germany had to mix with the senatorial class and thus needed an idea of the Roman past. The senators of Constantinople also needed the same thing, having little knowledge of the Latin language. Pagan breviaria contained few religious messages. Eutropius was successful in Constantinople, where the aristocracy became Christian. The Christian compiler known as the Chronographer of 354 incorporated a pagan history of Rome into his work. When St Jerome decided to continue Eusebius’ Chronicon, he used pagan writers such as Victor and Eutropius. Christian chronology exploited existing pagan histories.

Christian chronographies attempted to display a message, unlike pagan equivalents, it was easy to transform a pagan chronology into a Christian one, but not the other way around. Christian initiative also used Jewish goods; Pseudo- Philo’s Liber antiquitatum Biblicarum was originally a Jewish handbook. Were Christians greater at this form of historical writing and able to assimilate without being assimilated? The Christians invented Ecclesiastical History but did not Christianise ordinary political history; they did not provide a Christian version of Tacitus or Thucydides. High historiography of politics and military was still pagan. Eusebius wrote a new kind of history. It was the history of Christianity and Christians were a nation in his eyes. Christianity’s struggles were heresies and persecutions, Christ supported Christians and devils supported Christianity’s oppressors. Eusebius also emphasised the purity and continuity of doctrinal tradition across time. Eusebius’ Life of Constantine was more hagiography than history, it emphasised his piety and downplayed military glory, political success and concern for ordinary human affairs. Paganism and Christianity did not seem to conflict on the high historiographical level in the 4th century, their histories did not conflict. Pagan histories rarely outright criticise Christianity, they instead implicitly reject Christian values of humility and poverty. Ammianus Marcellinus criticises the Roman clergy but he praises Christian martyrdom and respects provincial bishops in the Historia Augusta. The ideal emperor Severus Alexander worships Jesus and Abraham, he emphasises that virtus, not paganism matters. Eunapius was explicitly critical of Christianity in the extant fragments; his Life of the Sophists seems to be an attempt to compete with the Christian lives of the saints. This was not associated with the pagan aristocracy of the west and was at the end of the century. Western pagan historiography rarely mentions Christianity, works are also difficult to date and to attribute to a background. The Historia Augusta was written by six authors between the reigns of Diocletian and Constantine, its date and purpose are unknown. The Origo gentis Romanae is a compilation of biographies. Aurelius Victor a friend of Julian wrote the imperial biographies. The authors seem to be pagan, but there is little reference to Christianity. Ammianus Marcellinus says little about theological controversies of his time, he talks of magic but does not analyse causation through religion. These works may not have been popular and these may not be representative of pagan writing of the period given that much is lost. Pagan worship was perhaps not as involved in writing histories, but in discussing ancient writers and customs. Contemporary pagan historians were not a worry for Christian converters; instead they sought to fight the idealisation of the past through undermining antiquarians.

Authority and the Sacred-Brown

1 Pagans saw a mundus in the heavens, with a hierarchy of divine, invisible beings, this was an everlasting universe. The Christian doctrine threatened this in that it had a creation and an end. The highest divine power was far beyond earth, humans enjoyed their influence through a host of lower spirits. For Christians Jesus was what bridged the fissure. In 4th century Rome, it appears the elite governing classes expressed power and prosperity, but they did not seem to link this to Christianity. The de luxe manuscript of a Calendar presented in 354 to Valentinus. It contained a

bleed into the other as earlier 4th century clerics thought. This represents modern ideas of Christianisation.

2 Paschoud’s perspective reflects the narrative of Christian historians of the early 5th century, the establishment of the Christian empire was a process prepared in heaven, there were delays caused by Arian heresy and Julian’s apostasy but the ultimate goal was reached under Theodosius I, having been started by Constantine. The idea of intolerance between paganism and Christianity can be seen in the New History of Zosimus. This was a reworking, in the early 6th century of the History of Eunapius of Sardis of 404. Zosimus inverted the Christian narrative into a one focused on imperial initiative and linking the fall of the western empire to the impiety of Constantine and then Theodosius I. The Theodosian Code made an implicit narrative, all laws were seen to have led up to the new Christian dispensation. Intolerance might have belonged to a slender section of the classical world. Philosophers were individuals. Often men of high-status and culture, he rejected office and the accumulation of wealth. He was not bound to the traditional custom of civic ritual. Philosophical relations to the divine were more ‘free’ in a sense. Superstition was a social gaffe committed in the presence of gods. It showed a lack of ease one would have with any other person, observance was analogous to flattery and was in a sense a social custom a tyrant sought to provoke. Classical belief was based more on a sense of tradition and civic loyalty than philosophy might indicate. There may have been a wider, peaceful co-existence, this cannot be merely ascribed to the gulf between theory and practice. Conceptions throughout the elite were slow to change, ideas of antiquity and the Roman past could not simply switch. Imperial government depended on the consensus of a widely diffused network of local elites. An appeal to shared codes of behaviour was necessary. Devotio was the loyalty expected of upper class people of the empire. Paideia was the careful grooming of young males according to a traditional canon of decorum. The later empire depended on the collaboration of local elites for tax collection and redistribution. Tax extraction was often a negotiation stretched to its limits and couldn’t fit religious intolerance in. It was easy to turn a blind eye to a pagan elites if they displayed good devotio. Story of the meeting between Libanius and Alexander of Baalbek, a pagan known for his bad temper. Libanius intervened on behalf of the Christian town-councillor of Apamea. Libanius commended Alexander for his religious zeal but told him he must show gentleness and get the job done. These pagan letters show political sense more than religious tolerance. Bishops had to adopt a similar political sensibility. The laws of January 412 equated Donatist coloni to slaves, the coloni of an estate, which fell under the tyrannical Catholic bishop Antoninus od Fussala simply told their landowner that they would leave the estate if they were not assigned to another diocese. The description of Nestorius in the Ecclesiastical History of Socrates in the 5th century shows the audience detecting his violent and vainglorious temperament. His divisive attitude on religion was an example of not being able to play the political game. A new governing class had been established during this time, stability was preferable to instability based on religious controversy.

From 379 to 395 under Theodosius I violence against pagan sites was widespread and purposeful. Libanius deplored the destruction of temples in his Oratio pro Templis. The generals in the entourage of Theodosius I were shocked on receiving the news of the burning synagogue in Callincum in 388 and attempted to shout down Ambrose when he confronted the emperor Theodosius. The bishop of Callinicum had been on the verge of making reparations for the burning but Ambrose intervened. The town council of Panopolis protested against the depredations of Shenoute of Atripe in the 420s and succeeded in bringing him to trial. Spasmodic violence at a grass roots level threatened the governing structure of the empire, violence needed to come from above in a controlled manner. Libanius portrays Christian monks ravaging temples and estates, this gave a sense of disorder and illegality, which contrasted with the desecration that was systematically carried out by the Christian Pretorian Prefect in the eastern provinces. Monks had no legal status and they did not demand respect due to rank in the same way bishops did, if Christianity was to triumph through force it was supposed to be in the hands of the bishops, monks were not their tools. The removal of statues and temples from cities, removed the intrinsic presence of paganism in civic life. We know from Augustine’s letter about the clashes between pagans and Christians in North Africa. Augustine was provoked to write a rebuke to the city because its council insisted that Christians should pay for the re-guilding of the statue’s beard as it was the city’s proudest monument (civic rather than religious conflict?)

Persecution and Martyrdom Constantine gained power as a Christian emperor following extensive Christian persecution under Diocletian, but it was not clear that he would enact God’s justice on earth. Constantine told the bishops that he considered himself a bishop of sorts, ordained by God to look over all outside of the church (Eusebius). The role of the emperor was to dispense justice and Constantine and Licinius took immediate measures to free prisoners, restore civil rights and to return confiscated property. Lactantius saw God’s judgement as having manifested itself in the fate of the persecuting emperors in his treatise On the Deaths of the Persecutors. Eusebius and Lactantius offered a particularly explicit account for the death of Galerius. Constantine did accept that God had chosen him to carry out his will (Oration to the Assembly of Saints). This helped him in punishing families, associates and supporters of his defeated rivals, for example those of Licinius. Constantine’s exhortation to the eastern provincials that ‘no one should use what he has received by inner conviction as a means to harm his neighbour’ has been interpreted as a plea that Christians don’t avenge themselves. It would have been more politically profitable for violence to come from Constantine’s government in a control manner. The schism in North Africa was the first religious issue Constantine dealt with. Constantine was offering subsidies to bishops throughout the empire but there were two parties claiming to the see of Carthage. The Donatists had to make their case, but at the 314 council of Arles they were rejected for the second time. Gallic bishops described them as ‘men of unbridled mind’ ‘neither had any rational ground of speech nor proper mode of accusation and proof’. Constantine became impatient, he complained of their arrogance and ‘rabid anger’. He worried that the controversy would provoke God. Constantine believed in his role to preserve the unity of the church. Eventually Ceacilian was accepted as bishop of Carthage.

Baptist and the prophet Elisha, digging up and burning the holy remains. Rufinus gives an account of the riots preceding the destruction of the Alecandrian Serapeum in 391. A gang of pagans forced hostage Christians to make sacrifices and tortured those who refused. This seems to fit the model of the great persecution suspiciously. Oral transmissions of these martyrdoms would have spread a sense of hatred towards the other.

A Chronicle of the Last Pagans Constantine’s legislation banned sacrifice and divination within private dwellings but allowed for rites to be practiced at public altars. Public consultations of soothsayers were allowed if light fell on the palace. These were laws were subtle, laws curbing areas of pagan practice had been promulgated long before Constantine. He ruled against the requirement of Christians to practice, yet he also prohibited them from practice in sacrifice. The temple of Aphrodite in Aphaca was known as a site of prostitution and Constantine had it razed. In Heliopolis women prostituted themselves in veneration of Aphrodite and Constantine merely urged restraint and encouraged the population to build a church. Perhaps this was a moral distinction. Constantius repeated the legal prohibitions Constantine made. A law of 342 prohibits the destruction of the temples outside the walls, because some of them are associated with Rome’s spectacles and ancient entertainments. The pagan sophist Bemarchius spoke at the 341 inauguration of the ‘great church’ at Antioch. Themustius was the first ranking pagan civil servant attending Christian emperors from Constantius to Theodosius; in 358 he was proconsul of the city of Constantinople. Following Constantius’ loss against Magnentius sacrifice was given the death penalty and the worship of statues was forbidden. In 357 Constantius had the altar of Victory remoced from the Senate. The statue of the goddess representing Constantine’s victory over Maxentius remained in place. The emperor assured the Senate of their privileges and did not touch the revenues of the temples. Constantius also maintained the role pontifex maximus, meaning he was part of the religious institution. The laws of 357-358 prohibit a more varied spread of sorcery and divination but the political implications of predictions about succession to the empire must be borne in mind. In 359 the philosopher Demetrius Cythras escaped death by claiming his sacrifices were not done to know the future. In hubs of pagan power such as Rome, the emperor seemed more lax. In 357 the prefect of the city raised a commemorative obelisk to commemorate Constantius’ visit, according to Ammiamus Marcellinus. In prefect of 359 sacrificed to the Castores in the hopes of a calm sea according to Ammiamus. Julians interventions are inconsistent. He drove Eleusius from his bishropic of Cyzicus for having destroyed temples. In Bostra, Bishop Titus tried to moderate the anti-pagan fervour of his parish assuring Julian that he was keeping order. The emperor replied in a letter to the people of Bostra encouraging them to cast the bishop out on their own initiative. Julian ordered the disinterment of Christians buried in Delphi and ordered the destruction of the tomb of Saint Babylas in Daphne for reasons of purification. He congratulated the inhabitants of Emesa for having set fire to Christian churches. Julian reinstituted the office of ‘high priest’ an equivalent to the Christian bishop, he bound a duty of charity over these priests however this was overly ambitious and mocked by contemporaries. Julian’s style of paganism was too austere and not concerned enough with festivals. His taste for

sacrifice was not matched by intellectuals who tended to make fewer offerings nor the people for whom festivals were no longer primarily about eating meat. In Lydia Julian named Chrysanthius of Sardis high priest but he was considered so moderate ‘that in Lydia, one hardy noticed the cults were being restored’. Following Julian’s death Valentinian promulgated laws allowing each individual to observe the religion with which he was imbued. In 364 he annulled the transfer of property Julian had made to the temples and prohibited night ceremonies. He also undertook measures to separate pagan and Christian religious functions and allowed no Christian to be responsible for a temple’s upkeep. In Rome the pagan prefect of the city restored the portico of the divine councillors, meaning the twelve Olympians. Valens, the co-emperor of the east treated Antioch with such tolerance that the bishops of Kyrrhos complained slaves were celebrating pagan mysteries in the agora. Ammianus Marcellinus and Libanius depict these brothers as tyrannical for their restrictions on astrology in December 370. Major trials took place in Antioch between 371 and 372 involving a case in which a poisoner revealed a high official Fidustius had tried to learn the name of Valens’ successor through astrology. Fidustius was arrested, as was Theodorus, the predicted successor of the astrology. Further arrests were made of intellectuals and other high-ranking officials, the prisoners were tortured and the guilty killed. According to Ammianus books deemed illicit were also burned and Maximus of Ephesus, Julian’s former councillor was beheaded and the philosopher Simonides was burned alive. Despite this in 372 the emperors authorised official soothsaying in the Roman Senate, prohibiting it only for harmful purposes. Under Theodosius and Gratian policy towards pagans did not seem to have been particularly affected. Theodosius renewed permission for the magistrate who directed the Olympic games in Antioch to cut a cypress in the sacred woods of Daphne and to plant others there, in the name of ‘custom’. The Pretorian prefect for the West Vettius Agorius Praetextatus was a pagan and at the height of his career during the reign of Theodosius, in Constantinople Themistius was prefect. From the 380s onwards Gratian came under the influence of Ambrose, bishop of Milan. Gratian removed the altar of Victory from the Senate once again as well as eliminating pensions paid by the imperial treasury to pagan priests. He also dropped the title of pontifex maximus separating paganism and the state. Gratian was assassinated in 384 and from this point the only stable power was in the hands of Theodosius. From 391 Theodosius began to institute harsh measures on pagan cults. On February 24th 391, an edict published in Milan stated ‘no one is to go to the sanctuaries, walk through the temples, or raise his eyes to statues created by the labour of man’. A similar edict of June 16th 391 was addressed to the prefect and to the count of Egypt regarding Alexandria. Theophilus, the bishop of the city used it to destroy the main temple, the Serapeum as well as other sanctuaries in the city. Theophilius mockingly displayed pagan objects inside an abandoned building, this caused an uprising and the Neoplatonist Olympius used the Serapeum as a fortress. Olympius fled before the fortress was breached and the temple and its contents destroyed. Ammanius, in his comparison of the Serapeum and the Capitol, emphasised the importance of its library and its symbolism of Rome’s eternity, it was held in high political and cultural regard. On Valentinian’s death in May 392, the usurper Eugenius was placed as emperor by order of the military commander Arbogast. From 392 to 394 Rome underwent a

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Paganism and Christianity under Constantine

Module: Theology: Christianity in Late Antiquity (B6)

3 Documents

Students shared 3 documents in this course

University: University of Cambridge

Was this document helpful?

Was there a conflict between paganism and Christianity in late antiquity?

Ideas

Was ‘paganism’ one single religion? Can we define paganism in the same way we

can Christianity? Was there more conflict between Christian factions than between

Christianity and paganism? Did both have an equal voice in the historical record?

Can pagans and Christians be brought into conflict focused on concepts, which do

not directly relate to religion?

Similarity to Anglo-Saxon England in that pagan practices were banned, no

wholesale ban of ‘paganism’

This was not church versus church, the pagan end was secular, as was the emperor.

The church was not the state.

Pagan and Christian Historiography in the Fourth Century-Momigliano

The victory of October 312 was ideologically important for Christian writers.

Lactantius’ account was ‘A voice shrill with implacable hatred’ and Eusebius

described the battle of the Milvian Bridge as divine justice against the persecutors

of the church. The church wished to take over the Roman state, Eusebius’

Praeparatio evangelica emphasises the correlation between pax romana and the

Christian message. Christians looked to exploit the miracle that happened to

Constantine.

Christian historiography came before the Pagan equivalent, Eusebius wrote in 312

and Lactantius in 316. The Christians were on the offensive; the Pagans were on the

defensive. Histories of Judaism and Christianity in the 4th century were only written

and studied by those who adopted the religion; conversion meant the discovery of a

new history from Adam and Eve to contemporary events. Chronology had to satisfy

elementary teaching and higher historical interpretation. The history had to be

summarised and converts had to consider it their own; the church had to prove the

antiquity of their religion and they had to show history as providential. Christian

teaching involved broadening one’s historical horizon and seeing history as bound

to the destiny of man. Christian chronology presented history in a way so that

redemption could be perceived. Orthodoxy was established by listing bishops who

were apostolic. A beginning and an end were calculated. Philosophy of history was

not separated from the education of converts. Eusebius corrected the chronological

work of his predecessors and continued to use chronology for Christian instruction.

Pagans did not concern themselves with ultimate values in elementary teaching.

They wanted to keep alive the Roman past. After the third century a leading class

had emerged, which had difficulty remembering the Roman past. Valens

commissioned Eutropius and possibly Rufius to give a brief summary of Roman

history. New men from the provincial armies or from Germany had to mix with the

senatorial class and thus needed an idea of the Roman past. The senators of

Constantinople also needed the same thing, having little knowledge of the Latin

language. Pagan breviaria contained few religious messages. Eutropius was

successful in Constantinople, where the aristocracy became Christian. The Christian

compiler known as the Chronographer of 354 incorporated a pagan history of

Rome into his work. When St Jerome decided to continue Eusebius’ Chronicon, he

used pagan writers such as Victor and Eutropius. Christian chronology exploited

existing pagan histories.

Paganism and Christianity under Constantine

Theology: Christianity in Late Antiquity (B6)

University of Cambridge

Comments

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Preview text

Paganism and Christianity under Constantine

Module: Theology: Christianity in Late Antiquity (B6)

University: University of Cambridge

Students also viewed

Related documents