The Closing of the Western Mind: The Rise of Faith and the Fall of Reason (39 page)

One of the great consolations of the monastic life is the assurance that we have that in obeying we can commit no fault. The Superior may commit a fault in commanding you to do this or that, but you are certain that you commit no fault so long as you obey, because God will only ask you if you have duly performed what orders you received, and if you can furnish a clear account in that respect, you are absolved entirely . . . The moment what you did was done obediently, God wipes it out of your account and charges it to the Superior [
sic!
] . . . So that Saint Jerome well exclaimed, “Oh, holy and blessed security by which one becomes almost impeccable.”
⁴²

Here the abdication of the power to think for oneself is complete.

17

EASTERN CHRISTIANITY AND THE EMERGENCE OF THE BYZANTINE EMPIRE, 395–600

In 395 the Roman empire was formally divided into two parts, each under a son of Theodosius: Arcadius in the east and Honorius, still only aged ten, in the west. The boundary was drawn so that the west was predominantly Latin speaking and the east Greek. The two parts were never reunited and were to have very different fates. While the east managed to consolidate its territory around Constantinople and so develop into the Byzantine empire, which lasted until its final overthrow by the Ottoman Turks in 1453, the western empire disintegrated. This had profound implications for Christianity, which from now on would develop within two different linguistic cultures, each with its own political context. Whatever doctrinal differences are proposed to mark the eventual divorce of the Roman Catholic and Orthodox Churches, the split was rooted in the political and linguistic division of 395. While in the Byzantine empire state and church were closely bound, so that the emperor represented God on earth and the church remained ultimately subservient to him, in the west the bishops, above all the bishop of Rome, eventually regained their independence and were able to negotiate new roles within society. Christianity was to be humbled by successful Islamic invasions in the seventh and eighth centuries, as a result of which both parts of the empire lost extensive territories, including the Holy Land, the great Christian cities of Antioch and Alexandria and the vigorous north African Christian communities.

During the fourth century the emperor had consolidated his position as absolute ruler; intrinsic to this had been an elaboration of his quasi-divine status. Diocletian had perfected the process of the elevation of the emperor above his subjects, linking himself to a favoured pagan god, Jupiter. For Constantine that god was Christian; in his
Life of Constantine
Eusebius describes the ideal of the Christian monarch, the mirror of God on earth (there are again shades of Platonism here). When Eusebius described the great banquet given by Constantine after the Council of Nicaea, for instance, it was as “an imaginary representation of the kingdom of Christ.”
¹
Eusebius gave the emperors the role of upholding Christian law and worship even if in Constantine’s specific case Eusebius seems to distort history to make his case (as with his assertion, for instance, that Constantinople was founded as a Christian city).
²
Some forty years later the Roman Ambrosiaster (whose name derives from the mistaken belief that his commentary on Paul was written by Ambrose) commented that “the King [emperor] bears the image of God, just as the bishop bears the image of Christ,”
³
while the orator Themistius proclaimed that “the emperor is an emanation of that divine nature; he is providence nearer the earth; he looks toward God from all directions, aiming at imitation of Him in every way.”
⁴
In Theodosius II’s Law Code of 438, the imperial palace, even its stables, were declared to be “sacred,” as if they were the precincts of a temple.
⁵
As we have already seen, representations of heaven in Christian mosaics were modelled on the imperial court, and when John Chrysostom searched for imagery to describe the second coming he chose to describe Christ as like an emperor arriving in the full glory of his office, weighted with gold and precious stones. While the theologians argued that there was an impassable gulf between the Creator and the created, in practice images of the world of God and that of the emperor blurred.
⁶

The image of the emperor was matched by his power. The office had always been formidable, but under Diocletian its powers had been centralized and made more coherent. As leader of the armies, controller of all foreign relations and with absolute powers of life and death, an emperor had enormous destructive force at his disposal. During the riots in Antioch in 387 over tax demands, images of the emperor Theodosius I were defaced (an awesome offence in that statues of the emperor were to be honoured as if they were the emperor in person). As the mood calmed in the city, the terrible realization struck the citizens of just how mighty the wrath of the emperor could be, and rumours even spread that Antioch might be razed to the ground. Many fled to the hills. The bishop of the city, Flavian, set out to plead with the emperor, and John Chrysostom, the city’s most popular preacher, told his congregations that they now had to throw themselves on the mercy not only of the emperor but of God. This was how the last judgment would be.
⁷
In the event the city was treated relatively leniently, although, as we have seen, three years later in Thessalonika Theodosius was not to be so restrained. A hundred and fifty years later Constantinople suffered an even worse fate. The emperor Justinian, faced by similar riots, the Nika revolt of 532, was encouraged by his wife, Theodora, to send in troops. Between 30,000 and 50,000 citizens are believed to have been massacred. It was the arbitrary exercise of this absolute power which was most unsettling; the fact that Justinian supposed himself to be a quintessentially Christian monarch made no difference. It was, after all, fully accepted that God might act punitively, and there were dozens of Old Testament texts to back the point, so why should his representative on earth be different? In any case, as the contemporary historian Procopius put it in another context, “Justinian did not see it as murder if the victims did not share his own beliefs.”
⁸

The Byzantine empire had always to be preoccupied with survival. This meant raising resources, in men and taxes, for defence while maintaining some sort of order among the burdened subjects of the empire. Christianity was increasingly interwoven with the authority of the state in that both church and state defined themselves as embattled by numerous enemies, and so, despite the very different contexts in which their fears of the outside world had evolved, they were natural allies. In legislation, the laws against Jews (“the madness of the Jewish impiety”) reached a new coherence and severity, as did those against polytheists (“the error and insanity of stupid paganism”) and non-orthodox Christians (“all heresies, all perfidies and schisms”). A law of Theodosius II of 438 speaks of “the thousand terrors” of the laws “that defend the boundless claim to honour” of the Church.
⁹
Punishments were harsh, including, for example, capital punishment for the making of a sacrifice. For the first time in the history of the Roman empire, correct religious adherence became a requirement for the full enjoyment of the benefits of Roman society. There remained, however, an immense gap between the legislations and its implementation. The empire was vast, many of its territories were outside effective imperial control and local elites jealously maintained their independence. There is little evidence, for instance, that the penalties for sacrifice were imposed, and Judaism, far from being eradicated, seems to have enjoyed fresh vigour in Palestine in the fifth century.
¹⁰
An edict from the same code quoted earlier (p. 212) suggests Jews and pagans were not to be molested by Christians if they remained law-abiding.

For the leaders of Christianity life was still seen as it had always been since the days of Paul, predominantly as a battle between the Christian way of life and a corrupt world. The mentality of Christian “weakness” persisted even when the church had in truth achieved strength. Through the life of John Chrysostom, John of “the Golden Mouth,” we can build up a picture of the tensions that beset the church in the late fourth and early fifth century, not least in the conflict between the roles of bishop as Christian leader and as imperial servant.
¹¹

John Chrysostom, born c. 347, the son of a civil servant from Antioch, one of the great cities of the eastern empire, was another of those Christians who had been educated traditionally in rhetoric (under the influential pagan teacher Libanius), and he seemed set for a career in the courts until he converted to Christianity as a young man. Like so many others in this period, he spent several years as an ascetic, and he always retained his abhorrence of sex. His treatise
Virginity
relied heavily on Paul but interpreted the Apostle’s writings in the most gloomy and grudging way. The original intention of God, John claimed, was to create Adam and Eve as an asexual couple—it was their fall which corrupted them and released the “dangers” of sex on the world. Like his contemporary Augustine, John was to take Paul as his mentor.

Whenever I hear the epistles of Paul read out in the liturgy, I am filled with joy . . . If I’m regarded as a learned man, it’s not because I’m brainy. It’s simply because I have such a love for Paul that I have never left off reading him. He has taught me all I know. And I want you to listen to what he has to teach you. You don’t need to do anything else [sic].
¹²

John’s ascetic experience permanently damaged his health, but he was eventually ordained a priest and threw himself into pastoral life in his native city. The clarity of his language, the emotional power of his rhetoric and his concentration on the everyday challenges of life quickly made him the most popular and influential preacher in Antioch. His sermons are full of vivid denunciations, of the wealthy women, even those consecrated to virginity, who come to church flaunting their pearls and luxurious dresses, and men, obsessed with chariot races, pantomimes and banquet delicacies, who recline on ornate couches while dancers and flautists (the flute, as opposed to the lyre, was always a traditional symbol of abandonment) cavort round them. In contrast are the beggars, freezing in the winter cold, who even blind their own children to earn more money, and the city’s prisoners lying in rags and chains, the open wounds of their latest scourgings still oozing blood. “Do you pay such honour to your excrements,” one congregation was told, “as to receive them in a silver chamber pot when another man made in the image of God is perishing of cold?”
¹³

Less happily, John also employed his considerable powers of invective against the Jews. It is possible from his eight surviving sermons
Against the Jews
to reconstruct a Jewish community in Antioch which, far from being abashed by the rise of Christianity, still celebrated its festivals openly and attracted Christians to them. John was furious, and his fury perhaps reflects Christian frustration at the obstinacy of the Jews in maintaining their ancestral religion when so many pagans were rejecting theirs for Christianity. How, he queried, could a Christian consort with those who had shed the blood of Christ and then come to a church and partake of that same blood at the Eucharist? Much worse was to follow. John was never restrained in his language, and he now resorted to scurrilous invective. The status of Jews was that of dogs. Their festivals were full of sensuality, their processions made up of “perverts and tarts,” their synagogues the equivalent of brothels. They should be shunned as if they were a plague threatening the whole world. Quite unabashed in doing so, John employed Old Testament verses taken out of context, as well as those New Testament texts (such as Matthew’s “His blood be upon us and our children”) that had expressed early Christian anti-Judaism, to consolidate his argument. In later sermons he becomes more directly theological—the supreme proof that Christ was truly God lay in his prediction, fulfilled in A.D. 70, that Jerusalem would be captured and the Temple destroyed. As a result of their rhetorical power, these sermons were translated into Latin and became as much part of the western Christian tradition as of the eastern. Their influence persisted long after their composition.
¹⁴

In 398, unexpectedly, John was asked to become bishop of Constantinople. For the right man this would have been an important promotion. Constantinople was an imperial city, wealthy and confident of its new status, and a sociable and politically astute bishop had the chance of enjoying considerable influence within the court and thus the empire. It was important to cultivate this influence, as the bishop was vulnerable to the intrigues of the bishops of Alexandria, who remained embittered at their demotion within the church hierarchy after the elevation of Constantinople in 381. In no other bishopric was
paideia,
the ancient art of courtesy, more essential. John was hopelessly unsuited for the post. He failed to grasp that in Constantinople more than anywhere else the church was subservient to the state—his own view that “the one appointed to the priesthood is a more responsible guardian of the earth and what transpires on it than one who wears the purple” was incompatible with his new position. Moreover, he preferred eating alone, was made uneasy by the luxury of the court (at one point referring to the empress Eudoxia as a Jezebel) and unceasing in his criticism of his clergy for their supposed laxities. He aroused enormous resentment when he inveighed against clergy who shared their homes with professed virgins in what he termed “the pretence of living together as brothers and sisters,” and monks who ventured out of their monasteries onto the streets. He also weakened his position in the wider church by taking a tour of Asia Minor, where, probably overreaching his powers of jurisdiction, he deposed several bishops.
¹⁵
His only power base lay with the people, many of whom relished his populist sermons.