Read The Closing of the Western Mind: The Rise of Faith and the Fall of Reason Online
Authors: Charles Freeman
Tags: #History
As far as the east was concerned, Marcian’s hopes for peace were misplaced. The debate had gone on for so long and had spawned so many different solutions that it could not so easily be subdued. Nestorius, now about seventy, had read Leo’s
Tome
and felt that it represented his position fairly, although he died soon afterwards, and it is not known whether he heard that it had been accepted, and his own approach vindicated, at Chalcedon. However, what Nestorius had actually said was no longer as important as what his opponents had said that he had said. Nestorianism was now the name of a heresy that emphasized Christ’s human nature much more than Nestorius had ever done; it was, in fact, closer to the teachings of Theodore of Mopsuestia, and as such it enjoyed considerable success in the far east of the empire and Persia.
On the other side of the debate, the Monophysites (who believed that Christ had a single nature, albeit one in which there were both divine and human elements) acclaimed Dioscorus as their inspiration even though he had been condemned at Chalcedon for his disgraceful behaviour at Ephesus—“Cast out Dioscorus the murderer” had been the cry of one group of bishops at the council. The Monophysites drew comfort from the fact that Dioscorus had not actually been declared a heretic, and they too set up independent churches (the Coptic Church in Egypt and the Jacobite Church in Syria among them), but even between the Monophysites there was acute dissension. Many felt that the declaration of Jesus’ separate human nature compromised the concept of the Trinity. Once again the masses developed a sophisticated understanding of every nuance in the debate. In the 490s there were riots in Constantinople when the news spread that a phrase suggesting Monophysitism had been added to the liturgy of the church of
Hagia Sophia.
The emperors shifted their ground in an attempt to find a consensus. A new declaration by the emperor Zeno in 482 stressed that “the Trinity remains the Trinity even after one of the Trinity, God the
logos,
becomes flesh.” Christ, it was ingeniously suggested, was “
homoousios
with the Father according to his divinity and
homoousios
with us according to his humanity” while remaining one Son. The emperor Justinian made a further condemnation of the Nestorian position at a council of Constantinople in 553. In truth, it was probably impossible to make any satisfactory reconciliation between the doctrine of the Trinity and the doctrine of a Christ with two natures, and once again the state had to declare a compromise formula that was then enforced by law.
Because the writings of John Chrysostom, Ambrose, Jerome and Augustine were preserved and given such status, and because the church and its teachings became so deeply embedded in the legal and political system, it is easy to regard Christianity as much more powerful at this stage than it really was. Yet the fulminations of the preachers against the wickedness of the world arose partly because the mass of citizens continued to live within their traditional cultures. While in the legislation of the period one sees an intensification of the Christian state, this did not necessarily mean that the subjects of the empire became orthodox Christians—or even Christians at all. Recent studies have probed behind the triumphalist writings of church leaders to suggest that there was a much more fluid pattern of relationships between Christian and non-Christian, and there was certainly no clear demarcation between an advancing Christian wave and an ever-diminishing and engulfed pagan minority. The sheer breadth of the empire, the need for the remaining pagan elites to be wooed rather than alienated by the embattled emperors and the diversity and remoteness of many of its communities meant that much remained untouched. The traditional approach to the late empire by Christian historians, which suggests that paganism had somehow lost its force and “deserved” to succumb, underestimates its depth and resilience.
If we turn from the intense debates between theologians over doctrine to Christianity as it appeared “on the ground,” we find that the boundaries between orthodox and heretic and even between Christian and non-Christian remained indistinct. The true commitment of Christians to their faith came with baptism, but many lingered for years as catechumens, in effect living in a no-man’s-land in which they would continue to attend pagan festivals. In north Africa Augustine worked hard to quell the wine drinking and dancing that had always been part of traditional festivals, but when he rebuked a crowd of catechumens who were enjoying a local celebration in Bulla Regia in 411, he received the reply that they, as mere catechumens, did not have to avoid such festivities, unlike the bishops and clergy! Even if, after 381, Christ and the Holy Spirit were fully incorporated into the Godhead, Christianity could provide a mass of figures who had some form of “divine” status in the afterlife as companions of God, such as the Virgin Mary, the saints and the martyrs. Then there were the angels and demons whose combined presence filled the Christian world with as many supernatural presences as there had been in earlier times. It needs to be remembered that Christians continued to believe in the existence of the pagan gods—as demons. None of this would have been alien to pagans. G. W. Bowersock describes a number of instances, from Syria and Mesopotamia in particular, of gods being worshipped in groups of three.
21
So a conversion to Christianity need not have been abrupt. Often pagans compromised with Christianity by linking a particular martyr with an existing pagan festival so that celebrations and rituals could continue as before. Paulinus, bishop of Nola in Campania, whose poetry and correspondence are a major source for local customs in the early fifth century, recorded how he offered the first shaving of his beard to the shrine of the Christian saint Felix and how the peasants in his diocese would bring pigs to the shrine to be slaughtered as if making a sacrifice of old. He mentions that good weather, fertility, safe childbirth and escape from enemies have become the concerns of local martyrs.
22
As Ramsay MacMullen has put it, “The principal business of the martyrs by far [by the late fourth century], as for a thousand years to come, was to restore fertility, straighten limbs, clear the sight, or untwist the mind.” In other words, the same roles that the pagan gods such as Asclepius had fulfilled for centuries.
23
The authorities helped the process either by acquiescence or direct initiative. Jerome was rebuked by one earnest Christian for allowing a martyr’s tomb to be surrounded by a mountain of candles even in daylight, as the tomb of a pagan deity might be. Jerome replied lamely that the candles were to provide light for all-night vigils, but “what used to be done for idols, and is therefore detestable, is [now] done for martyrs, and on that account is acceptable.”
24
Candles are still, of course, to be found before the images of saints in both Catholic and Orthodox churches. Cyril of Alexandria, aware that many locals were still attending a shrine of Isis at a nearby town and recognizing that “these districts were in need of medical services from God,” promoted two local martyrs, John and Cyrus, to fulfill the role, creating a new shrine in their honour for the sick to attend. Gregory the Great showed the same shrewdness during the conversion of the Angles. He ordered the idols to be taken from the existing British temples, holy water sprinkled over the shrines to purify them, then altars built and relics put in place “so that the Angles have to change from the worship of the demons to that of the true God” without having to change their places of worship.
25
When Augustine was confronted by a inquirer who said that while he was happy to accept the Christian God as a bringer of eternal life, he wished to keep with the everyday gods for day to day living, Augustine promised that God cared about everything and would even “see to the salvation of your hen.”
26
From the other side of the divide one finds pagans actually treating Christian shrines as another manifestation of the divine, not necessarily of greater or less significance than any other spiritual site. There is a story of a pagan lady from Seleucia who broke her leg and travelled first to Jewish magical healers, then to the supposed tomb of Sarpedon, a mythical hero from the Trojan war, and then to the shrine of the Christian saint Thecla in search of a cure. Bowersock shows how pagan cults, far from being curtailed or overwhelmed by Christianity, even adopted Christian images. In a series of mosaics found in the 1980s in New Paphos in Cyprus, Dionysus presides in tableaux that start with him as a baby sitting “very much like the child on the lap of the Virgin” on the lap of Hermes and ending with him portrayed in triumph.
27
Often, of course, pagans simply adapted their activities so as to avoid breaking the law. The pagan rhetorician Libanius talks of pagans sending out invitations for feasts in the name of a presiding deity, meeting together outside rather than inside a temple sanctuary, killing beasts and then eating and singing hymns to the deity together as if nothing had changed. Libanius cannot see how this can be against the law, although more wide-ranging laws passed in the early fifth century aimed at “any solemn ceremony” may have made it so.
28
Yet, however much assimilation and sharing took place, the church was bound to fit awkwardly with the surrounding cultures. Its very theology was deeply rooted in, and shaped by, rejections of Judaism, of paganism and, since the emperor had imposed an orthodox creed on the empire that was backed by law, of other “heretical” Christian groups. Now, with its new status as representative of the state in religious affairs, the church could take the initiative against its enemies. What strikes the modern reader is the passion and conviction with which Christians laid into their adversaries. Powerful imagery of heaven and hell, a range of supportive texts from the Bible and the urgings of church leaders gave intensity to their onslaughts. Much of this must have been rooted in the tensions of the age, the insecurities of continual warfare, high taxation and the brutality of the regime expressed in a religious formulation, but it probably reflects tensions with the increasingly authoritarian churches as well. Attacks against Jews, especially their synagogues, were now tolerated, or even, in extreme circumstances, seen as a badge of Christian commitment. In one instance recounted in the
Letter of Severus
(written by the bishop of Mahon in Minorca in 415), the bishop describes how he overawed the local Jewish community by bringing in Christians from neighbouring communities and demanding a public meeting with the Jews on their Sabbath. When they refused and began barricading their synagogue in self-defence, Severus ordered that the interior should be burnt out. As Severus triumphantly records, the Jews were forced into making their peace.
29
Violence and intimidation at this level and anti-Jewish legislation at state level cold-shouldered the Jews into, in the words of Nicholas de Lange, “a long period of desolation.”
30
However, Judaism survived. It was not, in this period at least, subject to a coherent campaign of elimination, unlike the Christian Donatists in north Africa, who were made subject to laws as wide ranging in scope as those used in the persecutions of Diocletian. Nor were synagogues subject to quite the same level of destruction as many pagan shrines. The Old Testament (and, of course, Paul) gave support for the overthrow of idolatrous worship. “Ye shall destroy their altars, break down their images, and cut down their groves . . . for the Lord, whose name is Jealous, is a Jealous God” (Exodus 34:13). Destruction was now urged with some vigour. “Abolish, abolish in confidence the ornaments of temples,” the emperors were petitioned by one enthusiast in 346. “Upon, you most holy emperors, necessity enjoins the avenging and punishing of this evil . . . so that your Severities [
sic
] persecute root and branch the crime of idol worship.”
31
The impetus was maintained by arguing that the pagan gods’ failure to retaliate would show that they had no power: the more statues and temples were destroyed, the more strongly the point would be made to pagans. Of course, this could backfire as it did in Rome, where, after the sack of 410, pagans argued that the disaster was the revenge of the gods on those who had destroyed them. In the early fifth century laws were passed transferring the income from properties owned by temples to the church, which thereby consolidated its economic position. By the end of the century gifts or bequests to temples were forbidden altogether, resulting in a natural atrophy as buildings fell into disrepair. The process was hastened by deliberate destruction. The archaeologist finds signs of Christian iconoclasm everywhere: the cutting out of phalluses of Amun on Egyptian temples, the carving of crosses on pagan statues, the erasure of the inscriptions of gods’ names, bathhouses that have lost their function (bathing naked was condemned) and have a cross at the door or have been converted into churches, the breaking up or melting down of statues. The quality of what was destroyed can sometimes be gauged only by what little has survived—the magnificent bronze statue of Marcus Aurelius on horse-back (which long stood on the Capitoline Hill in Rome until it was removed to the neighbouring Capitoline Museum to escape pollution), for instance, which remained intact only because it was mistakenly believed to be of Constantine. (Note its presence in the fresco of Thomas Aquinas with which this book opened.)
The process of destruction was revolutionary in that the very fabric of city life, its rituals, its very sense of community, had grown around the sacred precincts over centuries. It was the equivalent of razing to the ground the medieval parish churches of England; the impact of the destruction would have resonated far beyond their congregations. This impact was recognized at the time. As the pagan orator Libanius wrote to Theodosius I: “temples are the soul of the countryside; and the property that suffers thus [through their destruction] is destroyed along with the zeal of their peasantry, for they believe that their labours will be in vain, being deprived of the gods that direct those labours towards their needs.”
32
The elimination of paganism was accompanied by a dampening-down of emotions, dance and song so effective that we still lower our voices when we enter a church. Plato would have approved. The voices of the dispossessed, like most losers in history, have seldom survived, but in a rare text of pagan feeling from the early sixth century an Athenian philosopher describes Christians as “a race dissolved in every passion, destroyed by controlled self-indulgence, cringing and womanish in its thinking, close to cowardice, wallowing in all swinishness, debased, content with servitude in security.”
33