menu_book Chapter 21

CHAPTER IX. THE CHURCH AND THE EMPIRE. Ecclesiastical councils were already summoned in the previous period, but when the church was under the protection of the empire, they assumed a more regular and systematic character. There arose a regular gradation of parochial, provincial, diocesan, or patriarchal, and finally ecumenical councils. In the first place, a bishop assembled around him for deliberation on matters of common interest the presbyters of his parochia, the modern diocese.

at these councils deacons and laymen also attended with what powers it is not quite certain secondly a metropolitan held councils of all the bishops of his province the council of nicaea enjoined that a provincial council should be held twice every year to receive appeals from the judgment of individual bishops with regard to excommunications and other matters it was also a court for the trial of charges against bishops of the province though in troubled times it not unfrequently happened that it was unable to make its authority respected by influential offenders supported perhaps by the civil power a yet more important assembly was the council of a patriarchate a diocese in the old sense of the word such a synod assembled in constantinople constituted and ordained flavian bishop of antioch such were the legislative and judicial assemblies which in ordinary times sufficed for the needs of the church but when the whole empire was divided and agitated by dogmatic questions of the highest importance it was felt that nothing short of a representative assembly of the church of the whole empire could give an authoritative decision

to such a general or ecumenical council the bishops of the whole church were summoned by the emperor the bishop had always been the constitutional organ of his church in its relations with other churches and no one could be more truly representative of each church than the man whom his fellow churchmen had chosen to be their head others than bishops were however not unfrequently present as athanasius then a deacon at the first council of nicaea and it was scarcely possible that such bodies should be called together without at least the assent of the civil power in the time of which we are treating religious questions were debated with the most eager animosity the empire was as keenly excited over the question of our lord's divinity or the double procession of the holy spirit as england is during a general election which is to decide the most momentous political measures for the sake of maintaining the peace of their dominions it was necessary for the emperors to exercise some control over the councils which so largely influenced their subjects and as members of the church they were bound to consider its welfare it was says eusebius as set up by god to take the general oversight of the church that constantine assembled councils of the ministers of god and constantine himself addressing assyrian synod tells them that he had sent dionysius a consular

both to care for the orderly conduct of the council and to admonish those bishops who were bound to attend that they would incur the emperor's highest displeasure if they failed to obey his summons similarly at a later date the tribune marcellinus was deputed to regulate and preside over the conference between the catholics and the donatists in africa the imperial commissioners generally had the place of honor in the midst before the altar-rails were first named in the minutes took the votes arranged the order of the business and closed the sessions in an ecumenical synod the emperor either in person or by a representative took the seat of honor as constantine himself did at the opening of the council of nicaea and this imperial presidency was sometimes more than formal the emperor marcian in person presided with great applause over the sixth session of the council of chalcedon proposed the questions and conducted the business it was however unusual for an emperor to preside in person and it is a matter much controverted who were the actual presidents in the earlier general councils that certain members of the synod were presidents is clear but by whom they were appointed is very doubtful

at chelcedon however one of the legates of rome is repeatedly said to have presided and their names stand first among those who signed the decrees and emperors ratified the decrees of the councils which they had called constantine commended the decrees of nicaea to his subjects and the fathers of constantinople supplicated theodosius as he had honored them by sending out letters of summons to complete the graciousness of his act by giving authority to their conclusions athanasius however repudiates in the strongest terms the notion that the emperor's sanction added anything to the decrees of a council when he asks did a decision of the church receive its binding force from the emperor the earlier assemblies of the faithful had contented themselves with condemning erroneous doctrine general councils often found themselves compelled to define the true hilary of poissetier looked regretfully back to the time when men were content simply to receive the word of god and lamented the necessity which was laid upon his own age of defining the infinite and expressing the inexpressible

it is indeed to be feared that in some cases the combatants fought somewhat at random when once a partisan spirit was aroused men were apt to forget that the proper object of their contention was truth and not merely victory it might have been supposed that the conclusions of so imposing a body as an ecumenical council would have made strife to cease in the end this was no doubt the case the principal dogmatic statements of the great councils have been received into the life of the church but at the time when the councils sat a defeated and disappointed party could always find grounds for cavilling at their decrees and the emperors were invoked not always in vain to overrule ecclesiastical synods the defeated arians sought the help of the arian constantius and athanasius makes that emperor address an assembly of bishops at milan in the words what i will let that be taken for a fixed rule obey or ye shall be driven from the empire but it was not without indignation that men saw the interference of the emperor in the affairs of the church leontius bishop of tripolis though an arian reproached constantius with deserting his proper province the superintendence of the state and the army to interfere with matters which properly belonged to the bishops alone

while the church was spreading growing and organizing itself under its new circumstances the old heathenism was declining and withering away when constantine came into power heathenism still covered the empire its adherents however inferior in all that gives life to religion were probably greatly superior in numbers to the servants of christ in the time of justinian it did but drag on a feeble existence in some carefully concealed den in a great city or among the rude dwellers in some mountain fastness how was this brought about it was not by a sudden and violent suppression the emperor constantine whatever were his real sentiments with regard to religion proceeded very cautiously with regard to paganism he used his power against it only so far that in the east he converted some almost disused temples into christian churches and suppressed certain worships which like those of aphrodite and of some oriental and egyptian deities were morally offensive to acknowledge himself personally a christian was one thing to attack the ancient religions of the empire was another even on the earliest of his coins the christian symbol cai ro appears on his helmet as a kind of personal badge

but it was not until the year three twenty three that the image of mars the tutelary deity of the roman armies and the inscription soli invicto comiti vanished from the imperial coinage in their place appeared allegorical figures with inscriptions such as space publica beata tranquilitas which were not distinctly either pagan or christian in his new city of constantinople he endeavoured to preserve from the contamination of paganism though even here the old goddess rhea and the fortune of rome had shrines at the end of his life he is said to have formerly forbidden adultery his son constantius alludes to this in a law of the year three forty one and it seems to be confirmed by the words of eusebius and theodoret still it is remarkable that no such law is to be found in any collection and some have consequently supposed that it was almost immediately repealed others that it related only to immoral forms of idolatry against which the emperor had already begun to wage war certainly it was never carried into execution and the pagan rhetorician libanius many years later

could appeal to the fact that constantine had not interfered with the legal ceremonies of the old religions constantine left three sons the eldest of whom constantine the second fell in battle against his brothers the two remaining very inferior to their father in the art of ruling divided the heritage constans becoming emperor of the west constantius of the east neither of them kept towards the old religions the same moderation which their father had done they joined in issuing a severe edict against paganism but constance had to act in his own government with caution and discretion as paganism still retained a firm hold on the people of the west thus he forbade the destruction of heathen temples outside the city walls as being often rather adjuncts of public games than special supports of paganism a traveller who visited rome in three forty seven found there seven bestals still remaining and the worship of jupiter of the sun and of the mother of the gods still carried on constantius was less fettered and in his portion of the empire paganism was less powerful and when in three fifty the death of his brother left him sole emperor he proceeded against heathen superstitions with great rigor

as the edicts hitherto issued failed to put down heathen practices in the year three fifty three he forbade he told heathenish ceremonies under pain of death and confiscation of goods prefects who did not enforce the law were to be liable for the same punishments only to rome and alexandria it was not applied the emperor himself saw without emotion the old ceremonies still maintained in rome and did not interfere with the customs which he found there but he saw danger to the state in the continued existence of paganism while the christians approved of his measures against it and urged him to further efforts one effect of the severe laws against paganism was that many persons came into the church who convinced perhaps of the weakness of the heathen deities who endured such insults had no very solid belief in christ nor much disposition to practise christian virtues and some perplexed by the ceaseless strife of conflicting parties attempted to frame a religion on the ground of the great truths recognized by all such were the mausoleans or praying people described by epiphanius as gathering together from the time of constantine

in simple places of prayer often mere open enclosures to worship the one god whom they called the all-sovereign or again in other places meeting at dawn and at sunset with abundant kindling of lights uttering chants and songs of praise made by earnest men of their own brotherhood these worshippers were found principally in palestine and phoenicia a kindred sect existed about the same time in cappadocia of which we have some account in gregory nazianzen's funeral sermon for his father who had belonged to it in his youth these too worshipped only the all-sovereign the most high but in their practices they seemed to have mingled parsism and judaism they rejected idols and sacrifice but honoured fire and lights they reverenced the sabbath and observed the mosaic prescriptions as to clean and unclean meats while they rejected circumcision the worshippers of heaven who appeared at the end of the fourth century in africa were probably a kindred sect the pagans were now in the condition in which the christians had been a generation or two earlier they were persecuted by the civil government as was natural they attacked the church with such weapons as were at their command

they spoke and wrote against christianity what was good and true in it was they said borrowed from the old philosophers what it had of its own was superstition nay sacred things were even burlesqued in the theatres and the disputes among christians about matters which were to the heathen unintelligible did not incline them to look favourably on their religion heathenism long kept its hold on the schools and on literature heathens taught rhetoric at athens and philosophy at alexandria the principal orators of the time were still heathens like labanius the teacher of john chrysostom neoplatonism sought to rejuvenize paganism to defend it philosophically to cover its immoral myths with a decent cloak of allegory in this way unstable spirits were sometimes attracted and drawn aside in the latter half of the fourth century the hopes of the pagans experienced a sudden revival julian the son of julius constantius younger brother of the great constantine had been brought up as a christian among men whose christianity was little likely to attract a very imaginative boy it was probably his dreamy temperament as it seemed unlikely to lead him to strive for pre-eminence in the empire which saved him from the watchful jealousy of his cousin constantius who christian as he thought himself had no scruple in removing any one who stood in his way

when in early manhood he studied at athens his fellow-student gregory of nazianzus foreboded the misery which he was destined to bring on the empire while the pagan teacher labanius thought that his profession of christianity hung upon him like an ass's skin on a lion julian was evidently fascinated by the beauty and naturalness of the greek classical literature much as many italian princes of the renaissance were but we must not suppose that he adopted the myths and opinions of popular paganism it was hardly possible in that age and with his training it was with paganism as it appeared in the allegories of the neoplatonists and in the mysteries which were the delight of the initiated that he was in love a paganism which gave its main worship to one supreme deity and regarded the gods of the pantheon as mere personifications of his varied attributes the christianity of the house of constantine repelled him as indeed it could scarcely fail to do sent still young and inexperienced to preside in gaul then torn by intestine divisions and harassed by the teutonic tribes on the frontier in four years he pacified the country and secured it for a time from external invasion

his success while it endeared him to the provincials and the army excited the jealousy of his cousin the emperor and to save his own life he was compelled to lead his army against that of constantius the mastership of the empire hung in doubt when constantius fell sick and died in the neighborhood of tarsus julian the next heir was generally accepted as his successor and in december of that same year made his entry into constantinople as ruler of the roman world julian could not but help give effect to the convictions which had mastered him even on his march through illyria against his cousin he had caused the temples of the national deities to be opened and their worship resumed fairly on the throne he proclaimed general freedom of worship and exhorted every one frankly to confess the fate that was in him and to live in accordance with it but with all his professed regard for religious equality he looked upon himself as chosen by the gods to restore the old religions of the empire he was too wise to proceed against christianity by the method of blood and iron which had already so signally failed but he set in motion a more light-handed persecution which might in time have produced important effects

paganism was restored to almost all its old privileges an edict was issued for the restoration to the temples of their confiscated endowments most of which had been transferred to christian churches much trouble and litigation ensued the christian clergy lost its privileges payments to christian churches from the public funds were withdrawn the philosophic emperor alleging that heeded the christians no wrong in conferring on them the blessing of poverty he forbade the use of classical literature in christian schools on the ground no doubt ironical that it was unseemly that books written by men who served the old heathen deities should be expounded by those who believed the gods of greece to be mere evil demons misleading the minds of men as christianity had not yet produced a philosophic literature of its own he was aware that this edict if carried into effect would separate the rising generation of christians from the highest culture of the time he had a great contempt for much that he saw in the christianity of his time but he had not lived in the midst of it without finding something in it which was lacking in heathendom he was conscious of a moral and spiritual power in the religion of christ which he would fain to have transferred to paganism

he recommended in the strongest terms to his pagan subjects brotherly love and mutual helpfulness the priests of his religion in particular he exhorted to lead pure and beneficent lives but he rejected with scorn the galilean who was the source of the virtues which he admired the effect however of julian's proceedings was probably much less than he had expected the pagans doubtless walked with a prouder step and it is to be feared that some professing christians joined the religion of the court The fierce dissensions among Christians no doubt encouraged their enemies to hope that the time of their dissolution was at hand. But in fact, the restoration of paganism had little progress. Julian himself complained that few offered sacrifice, and those only to please him.

There was no love for the old gods, and in truth the emperor's own personality did not give dignity and impressiveness to his religion. He was no pagan of the old type, vigorous and healthy in mind and body. He was rather an ascetic professor, careless about his dress and his person, but with an odd manner which suggested nervous disorder. But what he might have effected in a long reign must remain unknown.

In the midst of his reforms he marched against the Persians, carrying on a war which Constantius had bequeathed to him, and fell in battle, bravely fighting and encouraging his hard-pressed troops, when he had reigned little more than a year and a half. With him fell the hopes of a pagan revival.

The Galilean had indeed conquered. Well had the banished Athanasius prophesied of Julian that he would pass away like a cloud. A kind of awe fell upon the army at the death of Julian. None of the pagan generals were willing to succeed him, and the army chose Jovian, a Pannonian, who was so zealous a Christian

that his religion had brought him into discredit with the late emperor. He, however, died before he reached Constantinople, and another Pannonian, Valentinian, was chosen by the soldiery to succeed him. He, with their assent, shared the imperial dignity with his brother Valens, to whom he entrusted the command of the eastern portion of the empire,

while he himself took charge of the west. Valentinian was too much occupied with the wars and troubles of his times to interfere much with the affairs of religion, but Valens, a decided Arian, was guilty of great cruelty towards those who opposed him. Valentinian was succeeded in the empire of the West by his two sons, Gratian and Valentinian II,

the latter a child of four years old. The real control rested, of course, with the former, who after the death of Valens associated with himself the Spaniard Theodosius, a worthy fellow countryman of Trajan, as emperor of the East. Gratian was under the influence of the greatest prelate of the west, Ambrose of Milan. First of the Roman emperors, he renounced the dignity of Pontifex Maximus, and withdrew from the Vestal Virgins, on whom the very existence

of the city was thought to depend, the privileges and the endowments which the Christian emperors had hitherto respected. After Gratian's death, Valentinian caused the altar of victory to be removed from the vestibule of the Senate House at Rome. This venerable altar, with its statue of the winged victory, had been placed there by Augustus, and before it for many generations the senators had taken their oath of fealty to the state. It had been removed by

Constance, but Julian had restored it to its place. The removal of an object so long venerated, and associated with so long a line of successes, could not fail to rouse the deepest emotion in the adherents of the old faith. These had a worthy representative in the councillor Symmachus, the prefect of the city, who addressed the emperor in words which were not without a certain pathos, begging him earnestly to leave to the senate-house its chief ornament, to permit senators who had

now grown old to hand on to their descendants the emblem of good fortune which had been committed to them in their youth, to leave undisturbed the form of worship under which they had driven Hannibal from their walls, and, in victory after victory, subdued the world. The humility of Symmachus' appeal shows the great change which had come over the great city. The once dominant and arrogant heathenism pleads for the toleration of a single observance. It pleaded in vain.

Ambrose insisted that the Christian faith forbade the restoration of the altar, and the emperor decided that what the Christian faith required should be done. Theodosius I, one of the greatest rulers of the declining empire, did much to complete the work which was begun under Constantine. When he, after the death of Valentinian II, became sole ruler of the empire, he forbade in the most emphatic terms all sorts and conditions of men to offer sacrifice

to senseless idols, or even to practice private worship before the domestic shrines. To pour a libation of wine to the tutelary genius, or to hang a garland before the pennates, was made criminal, though heathen worship still lingered in Rome and Alexandria, but the zeal of Christian mobs had outrun the legislation of the emperors. Already many temples had been destroyed. Some few were turned into churches, but generally Christians had too great a horror of spots once dedicated

to the worship of demons to permit such a transformation. The statues of the deities were broken to fragments. In vain Labanius pleaded with his countrymen to spare the temples as monuments of art and ornaments of the towns, the destruction went on. St. Martin of Tours was especially active in promoting the destruction of temples in his neighborhood, not without vigorous opposition from the inhabitants, and the African bishops in the year 399 supplicated

the emperors to remove the remains of idolatry from Africa, and to destroy at any rate those temples which, being in remote places, served no purpose of ornament. But the emperor Honorius, dreading perhaps the wrath of the pagans who were still numerous and attributed every public misfortune to the neglect of the ancient deities tried to restrain the zeal of the christians and put forth two edicts to the effect that popular festivals were not to be interfered with and that temples which had been cleared of superstitious objects were not to be destroyed the goths however under alaric who had none of the old roman respect for antiquity destroyed ruthlessly it was when arcadius was emperor that the vandal stilicho caused the sibylline books to be burned the rome of the sibyl was indeed near its end as was natural heathendom lingered longest among the country folk pagani of remote districts slow to receive new ideas and so the word paganist came to be equivalent to heathen

but it was not only among unlettered laborers that christianity was slow to find admission many old families prided themselves on belonging still to their ancestral religion in the last agony of the western empire when alaric was before the walls of rome the pagans in the senate determined to sacrifice on the capital and in other temples a proceeding connived at says a pagan historian by pope innocent himself and many of the philosophic class clung to the new paganism or at any rate refused christianity one of the most famous of these is hypatia daughter of the philosopher theon this lady was a distinguished teacher of the neoplatonic school at alexandria and was thought to have great influence with orestes the prefect of the city who was not on good terms with cyril the bishop whatever may have been the immediate cause she was seized one day by a rabble of christians and dragged from her carriage into a neighboring church where she was killed with potsherds and her body torn limb from limb carried out and burnt this deed says socrates a christian witness brought grievous shame on cyril and the church in alexandria where all men respected the talent and modesty of

until the reign of justinian nothing was added to the laws against paganism sacrifice remained forbidden and either ceased altogether or was celebrated in secrecy and silence pagan celebrations were no longer public and national but the mysteries of adepts in rome itself however heathen practices long retained a kind of publicity even in the middle of the fifth century salvian complained that the sacred fowls were still kept by the councils and auguries still sought from the flight of birds and at a yet later date the festival of the lupercalia perhaps as old as the city itself and intended as a purification of the primitive settlement on the palatine was still celebrated and was thought to give fertility to the land to its flocks its herds and its human inhabitants pope galasius issued a decree against it the romans dreaded the curse of infertility if the usual propitiations were unperformed but the bishop was resolute and threatened to excommunicate the whole city if his decree was disobeyed the rude festival came to an end and it has sometimes been supposed that the christian feast of the purification held in the same month was designed to take its place justinian resolved to put an end to whatever remained of heathenism

for this purpose he sought to crush the non-christian philosophy which nourished pagan modes of thought he closed the philosophic schools of athens which had been for centuries a kind of university many of the philosophers took refuge under the more tolerant sway of the persian king who when he was able to make terms with the emperor stipulated that they should be allowed to return to their own country the schools however remained closed but justinian was not satisfied with forbidding pagan observances he ordered that his subjects should be baptized on pain of confiscation and exile a violation of the rights of conscience which had hitherto been unknown the patrician photius sought death itself rather than submit to the christian right one of the few martyrs of paganism if a suicide may bear that name from this time there was in the empire but little open and avowed paganism whether in east or west An important part of the empire, however, including Macedonia, Thessaly, Hellas, and the Peloponnesus,

was soon under Justinian's time overrun by a swarm of Salvanic tribes, who introduced their own form of paganism and maintained it until the 9th century. And the Mainotes of Peloponnesus, secure in their mountains and their poverty, continued to worship Poseidon and Aphrodite, until Basil the Macedonian in the 9th century compelled them to conform to Christianity.

In Sicily, in Sardinia, and in Corsica, there were many heathens at the end of the 6th century, and for these even Gregory the Great did not hesitate to recommend such methods of conversion as flogging and imprisonment. But, in general, it may be said that under the time of Justinian, heathen practices either vanished altogether or were disguised under Christian names. It was in the great crash of the Roman world, when Alaric and his ghosts were ravaging the West,

when men's hearts were failing them for fear, and many said that the desertion of the old gods, under whose auspices Rome had conquered the world, was the cause of the present misfortunes, that Augustine wrote his great work on the city of God. Of this he himself gives the following account. It consists of twenty-two books. In the first five he sought to refute those who asserted that temporal prosperity depended on the due payment of worship to the many gods of the Gentiles.

In the next five, those who, admitting that no form of religion could avert the misfortunes which were the lot of humanity, contended that polytheism was necessary to secure happiness in the world to come. In the remaining books, he passes from refuting his adversaries to developing the positive side of his faith in God's government of the world.

In the first four books of this second part, he describes the rise of the two kingdoms, the kingdom of God and the kingdom of this world. In the next four, their spread and progress. In the last four, the purposes which they severally subserve. The heathen, he indignantly observes,

far from complaining of Christianity, ought to be grateful to it for the protection which it had given them, when, in the whole history of the pagan world, had it been heard that the victors had spared the vanquished for the sake of the gods of the vanquished.

But in the sack of Rome the Christian shrines had been found a safe refuge from the Gothic soldiery. they were not to think that a catastrophe such as the fall of rome was to be regarded with despair it was but the passage from the old order to the new the painful birth of a better age the same god who had caused the romans still pagan to rise to such a height of empire could under the yoke of christ give them a better kingdom and orosius who at augustine's instigation wrote a sketch of the history of the world with the intention of vindicating the ways of god to man saw even more clearly than his master that the barbarians were beginning a new era and that future generations would look back to rude warriors of that day as kings and founders of kingdoms salvian saw the manifest judgment of god in the success of the teutonic tribes they increase he said day by day we decrease they are lifted up we are cast down they flourish we are withered and he found a reason for this superiority in the greater social purity of the ghosts and vandals

what hope he exclaims can there be for a roman state when the barbarians are more chaste and pure than the romans nay rather when there is chastity among the barbarians and none among ourselves such were some of the thoughts called forth by the fall of heathendom and of the great heathen city which had been enabled for so long a time to rule the nations faithful souls saw in the calamities which then fell upon the earth at once the punishment of sin and the hope of better things to come End of chapter 9