The Fall of the Roman Empire (28 page)

Rome, not only reminds us once again that Rome deserved the German onslaughts - because in earlier days it had persecuted the Christians - but that these attacks will actually be beneficial, 'although this may involve the crumbling of our Empire'. Presbyter Salvian, who believed the same, added two realistic comments. First, the Empire was
already
dead, or breathing its last. Secondly, most Romans lacked the imagination to realize the supreme peril they were in: and if they did happen to possess such discernment, they lacked the nerve to do anything about it.

For the existence of this inertia - which is a very accurate diagnosis - the suggestion of Augustine that human endeavour could be of no consequence, either in this situation or any other, bore a share of the blame; or at least he very accurately represented a prevailing feeling which fell all too readily into line with the numerous other tendencies conspiring to bring about Rome's fall.

Appendix 1

Some Religious Disunities

CATHOLIC AGAINST ORTHODOX

The separation and friction between the Western and Eastern Empires, described in Chapter 8, helped to bring about the most important internal division in the history of Christianity: the split between the Catholic and Orthodox churches.

The bishopric of Rome, described subsequently as the papacy, had enjoyed particular respect from the earliest beginnings of the faith. Christians in the Eastern provinces admitted the special prestige of the Roman church, yet were reluctant to agree that it had the right to dictate to them or legislate on their behalf. They also maintained that ecclesiastical authority was not vested in any one person, but (with the reservations that certain sees were entitled to precedence of honour) was assigned by the Scriptures to all bishops, who expressed this authority corporately through their general councils. For the Greeks of the East did not share the legal, centralized, autocratic approach which the Romans of the West owed to their legal tradition and metropolitan location; while the Romans, for their part, felt little sympathy for the Hellenizing, philosophical tendencies with which Eastern Christianity had become imbued.

Another factor that perpetuated these failures of mutual comprehension was the continuing, widening, cultural gulf between the Latin and Greek-speaking peoples of the Empire. Bilingualism was becoming increasingly rare in either region: after the 230’s AD, spokesmen for the Greek point of view were no longer to be found in the church at Rome, while few Eastern ecclesiastics possessed any knowledge of Latin. Nor did they feel any inclination to acquire any, since the language of the New Testament was Greek. Moreover, the continual absences of successive third-century Emperors from Rome gave its bishops, especially in times of persecution, ever greater opportunities for accepting independent responsibility on their own account and thus enhancing their own status.

But after Constantine had founded his new capital at Constantinople, a fresh situation arose. For although previously the Roman bishops or Popes had hitherto felt more independent when the Emperor was away, it now became clear that his decision to reside permanently at Constantinople was going to elevate the bishop of that city (known as the Patriarch, as elsewhere in the East) to a powerful position which might eventually rival Rome. For Constantine, desirous that Christianity should create a universal bond linking the whole Empire together, hoped that his foundation of Constantinople would play a special part in this process. In the words of St Gregory of Nazianzus in Cappadocia (eastern Asia Minor), the new capital was to be 'a bond of union between East and West to which the most distant extremes from all sides were to come together, and to which they look up as the common centre and emporium of their faith'.

However, what happened was exactly the opposite. Far from contributing to the union of the two parts of the Empire, the new capital led to their increasing religious polarization. This became apparent at the Council of Serdica (Sofia, 343), when a vigorous dispute on theological matters rapidly turned into a split between the Eastern and Western governments. Then, after the political division between the two territories in 364, the difficulties affecting their relations soon extended to the ecclesiastical sphere. For one thing, the growing power of the Roman Popes inspired those dignitaries to make increasingly far-reaching claims for their own universal authority. And Western Emperors were naturally not averse to these claims - though they caused tension with the Eastern Patriarchs.

Meanwhile, Latin religious scholarship was flourishing. Hitherto Latin Christian literature had been far inferior to Greek, but an immense step towards remedying this was Jerome's translation of the Bible from Greek into Latin, the Vulgate, originating from a commission by Pope Damasus to revise the old Latin texts of the Gospels. Augustine's treatise
On the Trinity,
too, showed that at last Latin theological skill had reached a level unrivalled by any contemporary Greek. These achievements increased the ecclesiastical prestige of the West.

Before long the relations between the churches of Rome and Constantinople had deteriorated further, with ill effects on the general political relationship between West and East. In 404 an Eastern church council, jealous of the popular, progressive John Chrysostom, Patriarch of Constantinople, ordered his deposition and sent him into exile. This angered the Western administration of Honorius, who twice wrote to deplore that this hasty sentence had been passed without awaiting any decision from the head of the Roman church, Pope Innocent 1, who, according to Honorius, should have been consulted. Further friction occurred over the religious control of the Balkan provinces, after most of these had been transferred from the West to the East. For Pope Siricius, in spite of this change, declared that the bishop of Thessalonica (Salonica), the capital of the area, remained dependent upon himself. Subsequently the Eastern Emperor Theodosius II issued the counter-claim that all ecclesiastical disputes in the transferred territory should be judged by the bishop of Constantinople, 'which rejoices in the prerogatives of the old Rome'. But when Honorius protested, he gave way.

In 451, the Council of Calchedon (Kadikoy) in Bithynia (western Asia Minor) further embroiled the Western and Eastern churches. The Council voted to confirm the precedence of the Patriarch of Constantinople over other Eastern bishops, and added three dioceses to his jurisdiction. The papal envoys, however, who had played a prominent role at the Council, protested, and Pope Leo 1 himself, in subsequent letters, objected categorically to this explicit promotion of Constantinople to the second place in the hierarchy. But what he probably disliked most was the allocation of the three additional dioceses to the bishop of Constantinople, whose residence in the Eastern capital, where he could easily obtain the support of its Emperors, seemed to make him a serious rival to Rome. Leo was also worried because the offending clause made no specific mention of the Apostolic, Petrine character of the Roman see, which his delegates had stressed on every occasion. In consequence, Leo delayed his acquiescence for two years, and even thereafter, although Constantinople effectively controlled its three new dioceses, the clause was not officially accepted at Rome until the sixth century.

Although it was not apparent at the time, much the most far-reaching and long-lasting feature of the rift between the Western and Eastern Empires was taking substantial shape. Later stages of this growing breach between Catholic and Orthodox can be identified in one subsequent century after another. But the estrangement had already begun during the concluding period of the ancient Roman Empire.

The initial divergences which set them apart were largely theological. But these differences were enhanced by the general political tensions between the Western and Eastern Empires -tensions which they in their turn made even more acute.

STATE AND CHURCH AGAINST TWO HERESIES

In Chapter 11 it was explained how the government of the later Western Empire allied itself with the ecclesiastical authorities, and, with the approval of Augustine, persecuted those who failed to conform, including the deviant Christian sects. These sects, however, although denounced comprehensively as heresies, differed greatly in character. One, Pelagianism, was discussed in Chapter 13. Two others of special importance, Arianism and Donatism, will be briefly described here.

The earliest of the important heretics of the Christian Empire was Arius, probably a Libyan by birth, who became a religious teacher at Alexandria. Like Unitarians in recent times, he was accused of stressing the humanity of Jesus at the expense of his divinity. Among Alexandrian Christians brought up in the classical tradition, such opinions already had a long and complex past. These philosophically minded men could not tolerate the
duality
of God the Father and God the Son, for it seemed to them that only one God was possible. Their views culminated in Arius, who concluded that Jesus could not be God, since, being the Son, he derived his being from the Father, and was therefore both younger and inferior.

After the death of Arius in 336, some Emperors supported his followers, but most did not, deploring their depreciation of Jesus' Godhead: and finally, in 381 and 388, their sect was proscribed and all its office-holders banished. Though it continued to prevail in the German tribes and nations, as far as Romans and provincials were concerned it came to an end. However, the damage was done, since this relentless controversy had plagued the Imperial church during its critical, formative, period -dooming Constantine's hopes of a united Christendom to failure.

The second major heresy which Constantine immediately encountered was longer-lived, and even more destructive and divisive - although limited to North Africa. This was the Donatist sect. It was named after Donatus who, in 313, had been set up as a rival candidate for the bishopric of Carthage, since the official appointee, Caecilian, was accused of softness to those members of the clergy who, during the recent pagan persecutions, had surrendered sacred scriptures and vessels and otherwise betrayed their flocks. But this protest stood for a much more deeply rooted disharmony. For the Donatists completely spurned traditional, classical, urban culture, and rejected the sovereignty of Constantine's official church which they identified with this sort of hated background. After prolonged discussions, Constantine imposed confiscations and banishment upon them. These coercive measures, it is true, were soon called off. But meanwhile the sect had already begun to draw up its own proud list of martyrs.

Their founder, with his chief supporters, was exiled to Gaul in 347, and died there some eight years later. Yet the Donatists in North Africa continued to flourish. Moreover, it was becoming ominously apparent that they could command an underground army. Such African fighters, known as
circumcelliones
('those who wander about from shrine to shrine'), were seasonal labourers on the local olive plantations; and they were rapidly joined by debtors and other fugitives. Taking advantage of the religious tension, these desperate men, dressed in the costume of monks, moved around in bands, intimidating the local populations with their olive-staffs, and from time to time breaking into Catholic churches, and beating up money-lenders and others whom they had reason to dislike. 'None', declared Bishop Optatus of Milevis

(Mila), 'could be safe on his estates.. . . What landowner was not compelled to fear his own slaves?' Certain proprietors, indeed, felt it more prudent to turn a blind eye to these terrorist activities.

Some of the adherents of Donatism, who were mainly poor but came from every social class, found this sort of violence frightening. But on the whole those thugs served them effectively enough as the shock troops of their faith. Indeed, Augustine complained that a Donatist bishop could whistle them up any time he felt inclined.

Under Julian, surviving Donatist exiles returned home in triumph, and the neutrality of Valentinian I likewise operated in their favour; their cathedrals were some of the largest in Roman Africa. Yet before long they found themselves accused of supporting a local rebellion, led by the Mauretanian chieftain Gildo in 397. This gave Augustine a plausible reason to attack them, and a series of punitive official edicts against the sect was greeted by him as an act of Providence.

The outcome of a congress summoned at Carthage in 411 was utterly unfavourable to the Donatists, and the denial of all their rights was confirmed. In the following years, several further laws followed, while Augustine returned again and again to the assault, accusing them of currying favour with Rome's external enemies.

Yet these tough puritans still survived, and even flourished. At the time of the Vandal invasions of North Africa, their attitude once again caused grave anxiety. There is no evidence that they supported the invaders, although
circumcelliones
certainly joined their cause. Nevertheless the Donatists, in whose movement theological, egalitarian and even to some extent nationalist sentiments were perilously combined, had already made their contributions to the disunities which were shattering the Western Empire. This was not altogether their own fault. For it was persecution by the authorities that had blown up a doctrinal difference into an uncontrollable resistance movement.

Appendix 2

Why Did the Eastern and Not the Western Empire Survive?

It is no use claiming to detect a complete explanation of the fall of the Western Empire in any factor which applied to the Eastern Byzantine Empire as well, since the latter did not collapse in the fifth century AD, but instead remained in existence for a much greater length of time, until 1453 (with only a short interlude between 1204 and 1261). It is therefore necessary to speculate on the reasons why the two Empires had these quite separate and different experiences and fates.

Above all else, the Western Empire was far more vulnerable to external attack owing to its geographical location. In the words of A. H. M. Jones: