NOTES
Preface
1 For details, see Select Bibliography.
2 Callahan shows how, in particular, Psalm 68, Verse 31: ‘Ethiopia shall stretch out her hands under God’ has inspired dreams of the return of black evangelicals to Africa.
Introduction
1 In ‘Christian Accounts of the Religious Legislation of Theodosius I’, R. Malcolm Errington carries out a meticulous analysis of Theodosius’ legislation as it was recorded by contemporary historians. He suggests that its impact has been exaggerated by modern historians. The point is taken, but the cumulative effect of church and state policies against heretics and pagans does seem to mark a significant turning point, and this is the argument made in this book.
Chapter One: Disaster
1 For a standard comprehensive history of the empire, see Mackay.
2 A fine narrative overview of the fourth and fifth century crisis can be found in Peter Heather’s
Fall of the Roman Empire. Heather, who is an acknowledged expert on the Goths, sees the appearance of the Huns as the crucial factor that tipped the balance against the Romans. I have used Heather as my main background source for this chapter. See also Potter.
3 For Ammianus Marcellinus’ fuller assessment of Valens’ character, see his
The Later Roman Empire, tr. Walter Hamilton, London, 1986, Book 31:13.
4 Potter (pp.536—7) specifically notes the remarkable stability of the upper echelons of the civil service of the two regimes.
5 Ammianus Marcellinus, op.cit., Book 31:2, for his description of the Huns.
7 Ibid., Book 31:12—13, for Ammianus Marcellinus’ graphic description of the battle and the death of Valens.
8 For Theodosius’ background and early life see Friell and Williams, Chapter Two.
Chapter Two: The Divine Emperor
1 I have drawn heavily on Sabine MacCormack’s
Art and Ceremony in Late Antiquity, for this chapter. On the accession of the members of the House of Valentinian, see Section II, Part One: 5. Themistius’ words come from his Oration 5:64 b—c and are quoted in Garnsey and Humfress, p.25.
2 Quoted in MacCormack, pp.206—7. The quotation comes from Themistius’ Oration 15.
3 See Cameron and Hall. The quotation comes from 1:6 of this work. For the Oration in Praise of Constantine (often referred to as the Laus
Constantini), see Drake, Chapter Ten, ‘The Fine Print’. See also Van Dam, ‘The Many Conversions of the Emperor Constantine’, pp.127—51.
4 Themistius is quoted in MacCormack, p.210. Themistius, Oration 15:189 b-c. For the quotation on rhetoric, see Cameron, p.132. Discussing the plea for clemency made by the Bishop of Antioch, Flavianus, to Theodosius when tax riots broke out in Antioch in 387, Cameron notes how one is surprised by ‘the boldness of Christian writers, who unblushingly placed the emperor in the role of God himself’.
5 Ammianus Marcellinus,
The Later Roman Empire, tr. Walter Hamilton, London, 1986, Book 16:10.
6 Quoted in Cameron, p.129. Synesius (died AD 413) is interesting because his surviving speeches show him as a sceptical Christian who remains deeply attracted to Greek philosophy. When asked to become a bishop, for instance, he hesitates because he is uncertain whether the resurrection actually happened or not. See the opening chapters of Cameron and Long.
7 I was not the only one to be reminded of this famous quotation when President Bush was commenting on the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in July 2006. It comes from Tacitus’
Agricola, as does the quotation about the Britons being seduced by bathhouses.
8 A long quotation from Aelius Aristides’ panegyric to Rome can be found in Lewis and Reinhold, pp.135—8.
9 600,000 is the figure given for the fourth-century Roman armies by Ward-Perkins, p.41.
10 The separation of Illyricum reflected moments when the security of the important Danube border was under particular threat, but it was an unwieldy administrative area as it was split between Latin- and Greek-speaking communities, and in 395 it was to be permanently divided along the linguistic boundary.
11 Garnsey and Humfress, Chapter Three, ‘Emperors and Bureaucrats’, provide a succinct introduction to the administration. See also Christopher Kelly, and Chapter Three, ‘The Limits of Empire’, of Heather. Specifically on law, see Matthews,
Laying Down the Law, Chapter Two, ‘Emperors, Laws and Jurists’; Errington,
Roman Imperial Policy from Julian to Theodosius; and Honoré.
12 There are reconstructions in Friell and Williams, and in Chapters Two and Four of Heather.
13 Quoted in Heather, p.186.
14 Theodoret,
Ecclesiastical History, Book 4:30. Available in the Select Library of Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers of the Christian Church, second series, Volume Three, Oxford, 1892, or through the Internet.
15 Quoted in Friell and Williams, p.53. The original is found in the Theodosian Code, 16:1, 2.
16 Sozomen,
Ecclesiastical History, 7:4:5.
17 For this see Matthews,
Western Aristocracies, especially Chapter IV, ‘The Accession of Theodosius’, and Chapter VI, ‘Provincial Upper Classes: Evangelism and Heresy’; and Sauer, especially, for the west, Chapters Five and Six.
Chapter Three: Free Speech in the Classical World
1 This is Themistius’ Oration 5. It is to be found, with commentary, in Heather and Moncur, Chapter Three. The ancient post of consul, held by two men for a year, was the most senior of the magistracies, and emperors would use it to boost either their own status or that of senior officials they wished to honour.
2 The quotation comes from Book III:43 of Thucydides,
The Peloponnesian War, Rex Warner translation, Harmondsworth, 1954.
3 Aristotle, the opening sentence of his
Metaphysics (I.1.980a21—7). The opening paragraphs of the
Metaphysics are often quoted as the direct opposite of the view put forward many centuries later by Augustine that curiosity is ‘a disease’. Aristotle’s view was championed by Thomas Aquinas, who sought to bring the power of reason and delight in learning back into European thought. See further Chapter Fourteen.
4 See Lloyd,
Magic,
Reason and Experience and
The Revolutions of Wisdom, for studies in the evolution of Greek philosophy and science.
5 Geoffrey Lloyd. In one of his more recent studies,
Ancient Worlds,
Modern Reflections, Lloyd shows how in China in these same centuries, the state was, in the last resort, the only employer of intellectuals and thus there was a premium on conformity.
6 See ‘Rhetoric’ in Brunschwig and Lloyd, pp.465—85. The quotation from Gorgias is on p.474.
7 Aristotle,
Metaphysics II. 1. 993a0—34.
8 See Bobzien for an excellent example of how debates within Stoicism remained at a high level.
9 Cicero,
Tusculanae disputationes, 2.2.7. Quoted in Snyder, p.93. This is an excellent introduction to the issue discussed here.
10 These are well covered in Ehrman.
11 Quoted in Grafton and Williams, p.63.
12 For the following discussion of Porphyry and Lactantius I have drawn heavily on Digeser.
14 The decree is printed in full in Lewis and Reinhold, pp.602—4. For comment on its importance, see Drake, p.195.
15 Liebeschuetz,
Continuity and Change in Roman Religion, p.300.
Chapter Four: The Coming of the Christian State
1 See Richard Norris, ‘Articulating Identity’, Chapter Eight in Young, Ayres and Louth. This is useful for many of the themes discussed in the early part of this chapter.
2 Quoted in Ehrman, p.141.
3 The concept of apostolic succession is well dealt with in Pelikan,
The Christian Tradition pp.108—20.
4 Quoted in Markus,
Gregory the Great and his World, p.7.
5 A good introduction to early Christian texts can be found in Ehrman.
6 The name Tanakh derives from the three parts of the Jewish scriptures: the Torah, the five books of Moses; the Nevi‘im, the Prophets; and the Kethuvim, the Writings (which include the Psalms, the Book of Job, the Song of Songs and Ecclesiastes).
7 For Marcion, see Pelikan,
The Christian Tradition, pp.72—81.
8 Quoted in MacMullen,
Christianising the Roman Empire, p.40.
9 Quoted in Rives, pp.285—307 for this theme. The quotation is from Cyprian’s
De Unitate, 17.428.
10 Quoted in Ehrman, p.137.
11 Liebeschuetz,
The Decline and Fall of the Roman City, p.140.
12 The quotation from Jerome’s Letter XXII is to be found in
Select Letters of St Jerome, translated by F. A. Wright, London, 1933. The quotation from Dante comes from the
Inferno, Canto XIX, lines 115—117, translated by Barbara Reynolds. The degree to which European architecture was revolutionised by this building programme is still often unrecognised, but see Janes.
13 Cameron and Hall, Book One:38.
14 This is the central argument of Drake. The developments described below can be followed in this book.
15 For a balanced assessment of the dispute and Arius’ ideas, see Williams.
16 Socrates,
Ecclesiastical History, 1.23.6. An English translation is to be found in the Select Library of Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers of the Christian Church, second series, Oxford and New York, 1891.
17 For accounts of the Council, see Hanson,
The Search for the Christian Doctrine of God, Chapter Six, and Drake, pp.251—8.
18 Hanson,
The Search for the Christian Doctrine of God, p.168.
19 Quoted in Drake, p.311. It comes from a letter written in
c. 335 to the bishops.
Chapter Five: True God from True God?
1 See MacMullen,
Voting About God in Early Church Councils, pp.30—1.
2 Origen,
On First Principles, 2.6. Quoted in Ford and Higton, p.87.
3 Catechetical Orations, number 14.
4 For examples, see Vaggione, pp.107—8, and Hanson,
The Search for the Christian Doctrine of God, pp.106—9.
5 Philo,
Quis Rerum Divinarum Heres Sit, 205.
6 Quoted in Hanson,
The Search for the Christian Doctrine of God, pp.344—5.
8 From Arius’
Thalia (320s), quoted in Ford and Higton, pp.86-7.
9 Richard Vaggione provides full details of Eunomius’ life and thought. Although it has been customary to denigrate Eunomius, he played a vital part in the debate by producing reasoned objections to the Nicenes that forced them to clarify their own views.
10 Ayres, p.160. ‘We should be careful of assuming that this preference [for Nicaea] reveals a detailed understanding of Nicaea: it probably reflects a growing suspicion that those who pushed the Dated creed understood its somewhat vague terminology in subordinationist senses they found unacceptable. Nicaea was the obvious alternative, the most appropriate cipher for their own sensibilities.’ Ayres’ is a meticulous study of the process by which the Nicene Trinity achieved a broader acceptance. He is more sensitive than earlier commentators to the different paths (‘trajectories’ as he terms them), which coalesced to bring greater (but certainly not total) acceptance of Nicaea in the second half of the century.
11 Hanson,
The Search for the Christian Doctrine of God, p.380.
12 Quoted in Wiles, p.28.
13 Ammianus Marcellinus,
The Later Roman Empire, tr. Walter Hamilton, London, 1986, Book 22:5.
14 For the quotation from Ammianus Marcellinus, see ibid., Book 23:3. See MacMullen,
Voting about God in Early Church Councils, Chapter Five, ‘The Violent Element’, for his thoughts about the high level of religious violence in these years.
15 An excellent introduction to Athanasius is to be found in David Brakke, ‘Athanasius’ in Philip Esler, Volume Two, pp.1102—27. The quotation comes from p.1120. Richard Hanson notes, on p.422 of
The Search for the Christian Doctrine of God, that Athanasius ‘is no favourer of Greek philosophy’ and decries it in his work
Contra Gentes. He preferred to root his theology specifically in the scriptures, although he was also a somewhat obsessive defender of
homoousios, even though the word is unscriptural.
16 As David Potter puts it: ‘As Athanasius’ extensive discourse on his woes dominates the later historiographic traditions of the church, it is now very hard to see the history of the period in any way but his.’ It is only recently that scholars have begun to recover the many tangled strands that made up the thinking of both Nicene and subordinationist groups. Potter, p.420. The quotation from Athanasius comes from his
Against the Arians, discourse II, para. 58.
17 Quoted in Pelikan,
Christianity and Classical Culture, p.175. For Gregory of Nazianzus’ life, see McGluckin.
20 Quoted in Ayres, p.205.
21 It is discussed in ibid., Chapter Fourteen.
22 See McGrath,
Christian Theology, p.331.
23 Ammianus Marcellinus, op.cit., Book 30:9.
24 Sozomen,
History of the Church, VI:7:2. An English translation is to be found in the Select Library of Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers of the Christian Church, second series, Oxford and New York, 1891.
25 A good summary of the relationships of Valentinian and Valens with the churches can be found in Errington,
Roman Imperial Policy from Julian to Theodosius, Chapter VII.
26 MacMullen,
Voting About God in Early Church Councils, p.32.
Chapter Six: The Swansong of Free Speech: the Theological Orations of Gregory of Nazianus
1 The transition is described in Limberis.
2 McGluckin, Chapter Five, ‘An Invitation to Byzantium’, and Chapter Six, ‘Archbishop of Constantinople’, cover the main events in this chapter and the next. Gregory’s own account survives as well as two poems that describe his fears as he sets out for his appointment in Constantinople.
3 Quoted in Van Dam,
Kingdom of Snow, p.139.
4 Lines 696 ff. in Carolinne White’s translation of
De Vita Sua, which contains the sad story of Gregory’s time in Constantinople.
5 Oration 21 in the accepted numeration - this numeration does not necessarily follow the chronological sequence in which the orations were given. See McGluckin, pp.266—9, for a summary and analysis.
6 ‘There were certainly Eunomian theologians, as well as Homoian clergy of Demophilus in attendance at these orations, and Gregory knew that he was expected to give the performance of his life.’ Ibid., p.277. MacMullen,
Voting About God in Early Church Councils, discusses how popular involvement in city assemblies was transferred into Church councils (Chapter Two, ‘The Democratic Element’), and he has further comments, p.51 ff.
7 I have used Norris here. The translations of the orations are by F. Williams and I. Wickham.
8 See the discussion in Vaggione, beginning on p.234.
Chapter Seven: Constantinople, 381: the Imposition of Orthodoxy
1 King has the full versions of the edicts/decrees with comment. I have also drawn on Errington,
Roman Imperial Policy from Julian to
Theodosius, from which this quotation is taken (p.222). Errington sees the decree as focused on Illyricum alone, where there were substantial Homoian populations.
3 A full account is given by McGluckin, pp.350—69.
5 Ibid., lines 1704—9. For the interference of the emperor, see Hanson,
The Search for the Christian Doctrine of God, pp.814—15.
6 Epistle 130, quoted in Ruether, p.48.
7 Sozomen’s comments are in his
History of the Church, Book VII:8; Socrates’ in his
Ecclesiastical History, V:8.
8 Sozomen, op.cit., VII:9.
9 Flavian was consecrated but Paulinus’ supporters refused to give in. Paulinus went off to a council in Rome in 382, where he was endorsed by the western bishops. The eastern bishops seem to have split over the issue, leaving an awkward void in this important part of the empire.
10 Socrates, op.cit., V:8.
11 Theodoret,
Ecclesiastical History, Book V:9. Available in the Select Library of Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers of the Christian Church, second series, Volume Three, Oxford, 1892, or through the Internet.
12 Sozomen, op.cit., VII:12.
14 Hanson,
Studies in Christian Antiquity, ‘The Doctrine of the Trinity Achieved in 381’. The quotation is on pp.243—4.
Chapter Eight: Ambrose and the Politics of Control
1 Julian,
Contra Galilaeos, 113D (Wilmer Wright translation, London, 1961).
3 Gregory of Nazianzus, Oration 21:35.
5 ‘I never heard the Nicene creed until I was exiled’, from Hilary’s De
Synodis, 91. See Hanson,
The Search for the Christian Doctrine of God, Chapter Fifteen, for an account of Hilary’s ideas.
7 Jerome, Epistle 69
:9. Quoted in Chadwick, p.434.
8 A balanced biography of Ambrose is by N. McLynn. I have drawn heavily on it for this chapter.
10 Hanson,
The Search for the Christian Doctrine of God, pp.672—3.
11 J. N. D. Kelly, p.143. The metaphor originates in one of Aesop’s Tales but is also found in the works of the poet Horace.
12 Quoted in McLynn, p.114.
13 Symmachus,
Relatio (‘Official Dispatch’), 3:5, 8, 10, to be found in Croke and Harries, pp.37—8. See Matthews,
Western Aristocracies, pp.203—11, for discussion of the conflict.
14 Croke and Harries, Chapter Two, for the text of Ambrose’s reply.
Chapter Nine: The Assault on Paganism
1 McLynn, pp.298 ff. for the Callinicum affair.
3 Eunapius of Sardis,
Vitae Sophistarium, vi.11(
c.395); quoted in Rousseau, p.9.
4 Libanius, Oration 30:
Pro Templis. A good discussion of this oration can be found in Sizgorich, pp.75—101. For the archaeological evidence, see Sauer.
5 Friell and Williams, pp.65—7.
6 The long-term results of the confrontation, if such it was, were important. A hundred years later, the imperial structure of the western empire collapsed with the abdication of the boy emperor Romulus Augustulus in 476. The Church hierarchy was, however, to survive, and under the papacies of Leo I (440—461) and Gregory the Great (590—604), the bishops emerged as secular rulers, defending Rome and dealing directly with kings and chieftains, both Christian and non-Christian. Ambrose’s interpretation of the events of 390, that an emperor had recognised the supremacy of the Church, became embedded in Catholic ideology now that there was no alternative secular tradition left to challenge it. In the tortuous tussle for supremacy between Hildebrand, Pope Gregory VII (1073—85), and the Holy Roman Emperor Henry IV, Gregory was able to rely on the precedent of 390 with some success.
7 Friell and Williams, Chapter Six,
‘Contra paganos’, for the outline of the measures against pagans. The law on the status of lapsed Christians is to be found in Salzman, p.196.
8 Quoted in Rousseau, p.119.
9 Theodoret,
Ecclesiastical History, V:24, describes the battle, but he is already mythologising it as a Christian versus pagan conflict. See the comments of Errington in
Roman Imperial Policy from Julian to Theodosius, pp.253—8. Augustine,
The City of God, Book V, Chapter Twenty-Six, tells how ‘Soldiers who took part in the battle have told us that the javelins were wrenched from their hands as they aimed them when a violent wind blew from the side of Theodosius towards the enemy and not only whirled away with the utmost rapidity the missiles discharged against the emperor’s forces but even turned them back on to the bodies of the foes.’ It was accounts such as this that allowed stories of miracles to emerge and become consolidated.
10 Edward Gibbon,
The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Volume 3, Chapter 26.
11 Bede,
The Ecclesiastical History of the English People, Book 2, Chapter Two.
12 Ehrman and Jacobs, pp.57—67, reprint the funeral oration.
13 Quoted in Cameron, p.136.
14 Errington,
Roman Imperial Policy from Julian to Theodosius, p.249.
Chapter Ten: Epiphanius’ Witchhunt
2 A succinct introduction to Origen can be found in Chapter Twenty-One of Chadwick. See also Chapter Eleven of Ayres, Young and Louth, ‘The Alexandrians’ by Ronald Heine.
6 Bynum is the place to start. Origen is dealt with in Chapter Two. Origen’s later critics, who insisted on an actual material body being reconstituted, got themselves involved in absurd discussions as to how this body would be, whether it would still have sinful genitals or not, and so on.
8 Jerome’s respect for Origen was so widely known that even at the height of the controversy that followed, Augustine was able to write to Jerome from the west to ask for more translations of Greek works, ‘especially that Origen you mention in your writings with particular pleasure’. J. N. D. Kelly provides a good narrative account of this controversy.
9 The scene is described in Jerome’s letter
Against John, which can easily be accessed in translation on the Internet.
10 Letter 82. The quotation is from J. N. D. Kelly, p.208.
11 Even though he had been declared a heretic, some of Origen’s works survived, and they were to be championed in the sixteenth century by the great humanist scholar Erasmus. What attracted Erasmus to Origen was his belief in free will and reason. Origen’s belief that one should be curious, sceptical and confident of the possibilities of human creativity appealed to Renaissance humanists. Erasmus saw Origen’s approach to theology as far superior to the narrow pessimism of Augustine, who had openly derided what he called ‘the disease of curiosity’ and portrayed humanity as sunk in sin. Yet like their Catholic counterparts, the Protestant Reformers would later choose Augustine over Origen and warn their flocks of their sinfulness and the inevitability of their eternal damnation. See Diarmaid MacCulloch, pp.113—14.
12 For Greek and classical views on the afterlife, see Segal, Chapter Five. MacMullen provides an unusual overview of the contrast between pagan and Christian views of the afterlife in his
Voting About God in Early Church Councils, p.47:
Non-Christians in the Greco-Roman world, so far as we can enter their thoughts, evidently accepted the possibility of superhuman beings at work in great events, earthquakes or military disasters; but the possibility had little reality, it was little considered. Minor events causing loss or pain also might be blamed on superhuman agents, invoked by magic. That too was a reality off the side, so as to speak, a rare thing, forbidden, a resort for only wicked and credulous people. In fact, superhuman beings were beneficent. So the philosophers said, and common piety agreed ... To blame evil on the gods was deeply impious and it made no sense.
Into this Greco-Roman thought world, Christianity introduced an alternative view: one of opposing forces, God’s and Satan’s, alike able to smite and confound. It established itself in step with Christianity itself, and was as universally spread about as other Christian beliefs, through the preaching of the churches’ leaders and the elaboration of stories about the church’s heroes. They too were able to hurt as to heal.
13 Bremmer notes (p.57) that ‘the New Testament has very little to say about the existence of heaven, hell or purgatory’, although the apocalyptic sayings of Jesus in the synoptic gospels do suggest a division into saved and unsaved. I have used Bremmer’s account for the background material here unless otherwise cited. It is significant that
The Cambridge History of Christianity: Origins to Constantine (ed. Margaret M. Mitchell and Frances Young, Cambridge, 2006) has no entry for ‘hell’ in its index.
14 See Lloyd,
In the Grip of Disease, p.233
. 15 See Augustine’s
The City of God, Book XXI, Chapter 12 (from which the quotation is taken) onwards. See also the entry on ‘hell’ in Fitzgerald.
16 This is perhaps one explanation why intellectual life in the pagan world was so much livelier and unrestrained than it was under Christianity in the years following Theodosius’ law. It is hard to find anything positive to say about the doctrine of hell as it was developed in the fourth century and elaborated in increasingly extravagant language in the centuries to come. Perhaps the most eloquent sermon made on the subject is that by the American preacher Jonathan Edwards, in his ‘Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God’ (1741). The most notorious passage runs as follows (Marsden):
The God that holds you over the pit of hell, much as one holds a spider, or some loathsome insect, over the fire, abhors you, and is dreadfully provoked; his wrath towards you burns like fire; he looks upon you as worthy of nothing else, but to be cast into the fire; he is of purer eyes than to bear to have you in his sight; you are ten thousand times so abominable in his eyes as the most hateful venomous serpent is in ours. You have offended him infinitely more than ever a stubborn rebel did his prince: and yet ‘tis nothing but his hand that holds you from falling into the fire every moment: ‘tis to be ascribed to nothing else, that you did not go to hell the last night ... but that God’s hand has held you up; there is no other reason to be given why you haven’t gone to hell since you have sat here in the house of God, provoking his pure eye by your sinful wicked manner of attending his solemn worship; yea, there is nothing else to be given as a reason why you don’t this very moment drop down into hell.
Oh sinner! Consider the fearful danger you are in.
Edwards implies that he himself will not suffer this dreadful fate, but it is unclear on what grounds he excludes himself. Contemporary accounts suggest that Edwards’ congregation was very disturbed by this sermon.
Chapter Eleven: Enforcing the Law
1 See Vaggione, Chapter Eight, ‘Troglodyte’, and Chapter Nine, ‘Heretic’, for these events.
3 Ibid., p.140. For the trial of Priscillian, see Matthews,
Western Aristocracies, pp.160—71.
5 Theodosian Code XVI.5.65. Quoted in Millar,
A Greek Roman Empire, p.151.
6 Quoted in Chadwick, p.591.
7 Humfress, p.140. The
codex first appears in the first century AD. About 1.5 per cent of the texts at the great rubbish dump of Oxyrynchus from this century are
codices and the first literary reference to a text written on a
codex is a work by the poet Martial at the end of the century. Christians favoured the
codex over the scroll, perhaps to distance themselves from the scroll literature of the Jews, and by the fourth century it was the most popular method of producing texts.
8 Martin of Deacon’s
Life of Porphyry is most easily accessed at
www.fordham.edu/halsall/basis/porphyry. This is an important source for showing the resilience of paganism and the violent means necessary to destroy the ancient buildings that housed pagan cults.
9 Quoted in Garnsey and Humfress, pp.152—3. The law is to be found in the Theodosian Code at XVl.10.24.
10 Theodosian Code XVI.10.25. Quoted in Millar,
A Greek Roman Empire, p.122.
11 This comes from a fuller exposition of some of Theodosius’ laws, the
Novellae, and is quoted in ibid., p.121.
12 Ibid., p.128, for both quotes. See also Millar,
The Greek World, pp.457—86, ‘Christian Emperors, Christian Church and the Jews of the Diaspora in the Greek East, AD 379—450’.
13 Garnsey and Humfress, p.75. See also Rapp, pp.242—52, ‘Episcopal Courts’. A good overview from which the Syrian example is taken is Dossey.
15 See Stead, Chapter Sixteen, ‘Christ as God and Man’.
16 Quoted in Millar,
A Greek Roman Empire, p.39, from Socrates’
Ecclesiastical History VII.29.5.
17 Millar,
A Greek Roman Empire, p.176. The law is to be found in the Theodosian Code XVI.5.66.
18 Quoted in ibid., p.180.
19 This is a point made by Gray. I have depended heavily on his account. See Wessel, which shows how Cyril skilfully exploited Athanasius to win support.
20 Quoted from varied original sources in Millar,
A Greek Roman Empire, p.186.
22 In one of the most remarkable letters to survive from this period, Galla Placidia, the daughter of Theodosius I, who was now married to the emperor of the west, Constantius III, passed on Leo’s concerns to Theodosius II’s pious sister, Pulcheria, who exercised great influence in the eastern court: ‘Therefore, may your clemency, in accordance with the Catholic faith, once again, now in this same way share in our objectives, so whatever was done at that disorderly and most wretched council [of Ephesus in 449] should by every effort be subverted.’ She put in a special plea that the authority of the Bishop of Rome be respected in doctrinal matters. Millar,
A Greek Roman Empire, p.38. It is to be found in the Letters of Leo, 58.
23 Stead, pp.193—4. This book provides an excellent introduction to some of the major philosophical issues exposed by the coming of orthodoxy.
26 Quoted in MacMullen,
Voting About God in Early Church Councils, p.32.
27 Quoted in Chuvin, p.133.
28 See Fouracre, pp.104—5.
30 For the Council of Constantinople, see Davis, Chapter Six, with background discussion in Gray, Chadwick, etc.
31 For a discussion of the deteriorating position of Jews in this period, see Lange.
32 Quoted in McGinn, p.113.
34 Gray (p.235) sums up the results of Justinian’s religious policy: ‘Byzantine theology would never be the same. It would never again have the range of inquiry possible in a church that accepted both Antiochene and Alexandrian interpretations of scripture. The affair of the Three Chapters had effectively consolidated control of exegesis in the hands of the one person whose job it was to represent the mind of the church (and an exceedingly single-minded church it had become) - the emperor. The often fallible and brawling bishops of history became the sainted and infallible authorities for a monolithic, unchanging Christian tradition. Thinking that departed from them in the area of dogma, especially on the Trinity and on Christology, became impossible.’
Chapter Twelve: Augustine Sets the Seal
1 It proved a profound shock when ‘the unmediated urgency of the angular street-Greek’ of Paul reached the west for the first time, after centuries in which Jerome’s elegant translation had reigned supreme. MacCulloch, p.83. MacCulloch says of the discovery of Paul’s original Greek text: ‘if there is any one explanation why the Latin West experienced a Reformation and the Greek-speaking lands to the east did not, it lies in this experience of listening to a new voice in the New Testament text’.
2 I am indebted to Froehlich, pp.279—99.
3 Quoted in Ayres, Young, and Louth, Chapter Twenty-Seven, David Hunter, ‘Fourth Century Latin Writers: Hilary, Victorinus, Ambrosiaster, Ambrose’, p.305.
4 Hill, Introduction, p.39.
7 Poem ‘On the Providence of God’, Gaul, 416. Quoted in Ward-Perkins, p.29.
9 Quoted in Fitzgerald, p.621 (article by Fredriksen on Paul).
10 For the debate with Pelagius, see any standard life of Augustine, such as Brown,
Augustine of Hippo, or Lancel. Augustine’s theology is covered in Harrison, and in Rist.
11 See the whole debate in
Arianism and Other Heresies, Volume 18 of the Works of Saint Augustine, with introduction and notes by Roland Teske SJ, New York, 1995, pp.175—338.
12 Augustine,
The City of God, Book XIX, Chapter 4.
13 Augustine,
Confessions, Book XIII, 12.
14 Letter 169.1. Lancel, Chapter Thirty, is very good on the background to
De Trinitate. 15 Gunton, p.39. It was argued by I. Chevalier in his
Saint Augustin and la Pensée Grecque: Les Relations Trinitaires, Fribourg, 1940, that Augustine read Gregory of Nazianzus’
Theological Orations around 413, when he was already deep in his work. However, recent scholarship has failed to confirm this - see the article on the Cappadocians in Fitzgerald, pp.121—3, especially p.123.
17 See the critique of Augustine’s approach in David Brown, Chapter Seven, ‘The Coherence of the Trinity’.
18 Hill, Augustine,
The Trinity, Introduction, p.56.
19 McGrath,
Christian Theology, pp.333—4.
20 Hill, Augustine,
The Trinity, Introduction, p.19.
21 McGrath,
Christian Theology, Chapter Ten, on the difficulties.
22 He writes in the introductory comments to
The Trinity (London, 1970, pp.10—11): ‘Despite their orthodox confession of the Trinity, Christians are, in their practical life, almost mere “monotheists”. We must be willing to admit that, should the doctrine of the Trinity have to be dropped as false, the major part of religious literature could well remain virtually unchanged.’
23 Catechism of the Catholic Church, London, 1994, para. 237 (p-56).
25 Confessions, Book X:35. See the article on ‘Curiosity’ by N. Joseph Torchia in Fitzgerald.
27 Quoted in Drake, p.407.
28 Quoted in Rist, p.215.
30 Augustine,
The City of God, Book XIX, Chapter 13.1.
31 Ibid., Book XIX, Chapter 15.
32 Laurence Brockliss, ‘The Age of Curiosity’, Chapter Five in Bergin.
Chapter Thirteen: Collapse in the Christian West
1 I have relied heavily on Ward-Perkins for this chapter. It is particularly good on the archaeological evidence for the collapse of the Roman economy, and is supplemented by McCormick. There have been two recent general studies of the centuries after the collapse of the empire, both of which have received high acclaim. They are Smith and Wickham. Both stress the diversity of responses during the period. Smith, in particular, makes the point that the period is one between the two Romes, classical and papal, and this allowed greater expression than would have been otherwise the case. However, neither book dispels the picture of low living standards and dislocated trade that Ward-Perkins and McCormick detail.
2 See Moorhead for an assessment.
3 Markus,
Gregory the Great and his World, p.4.
4 See Peter Brown’s classic,
The World of Late Antiquity, Chapters Nine and Ten.
5 See Jones, Chapter Two, for a survey of Italy after 500.
7 Quoted in Markus,
Gregory the Great and his World, p.52.
12 Markus,
Gregory the Great and his World, pp.39-40.
15 See Lapidge’s conclusions, ibid., pp.126-32. To give a comparison with an eastern monastery at this period, one can cite the library on the Greek island of Patmos in 1201, where only sixteen of the 330 texts did not deal with theological issues.
16 For Reichenau, see the evocative visit made by Judith Herrin recorded in the ‘Afterword’ to her
The Formation of Christendom. 17 See Thucydides’ analysis of the Melian dialogue, Book V. 84-118 of his
The Peloponnesian War, or Tacitus’ report of the riposte of a British chieftain to a Roman general, ‘You create a wasteland and call it peace’, in his
Agricola. 18 Thacker, p.463. Chris Wickham, the author of the widely acclaimed
Framing the Early Middle Ages, puts it more vigorously (p.343): ‘The faith of many historians in the reliability and importance of every line of Bede’s account often seems excessive, given the degree to which he manipulated known sources such as the
Vita Wilfridi.’ It certainly has been a feature of Anglo-Saxon scholarship to give enormous prominence to Bede, understandably so perhaps as there is so little written material surviving. To be fair to the man, he might have achieved much more if he had lived in an age where he had had access to a wider variety of sources and been able to look beyond a purely Christian perspective.
19 Markus,
The End of Ancient Christianity, p.149.
20 Van Dam,
Saints and their Miracles in Late Antique Gaul, has both commentary and texts.
21 I have relied on McCormick. His analysis of the European slave trade is in Chapter Nine, ‘Traders, Slaves and Politicos’, especially pp.2.44-54.
22 Jones,
passim. For the rise of the universities in these towns, see pp.449-53 .
Chapter Fourteen: Faith, Reason and the Trinity
1 See Moore, especially Chapter One.
2 See Roach, especially Chapter Four.
3 Brower and Guilfoy reflects the renewed interest in Abelard’s intellectual achievements. Chapter One, ‘Life, milieu and intellectual contexts’, by John Marenbon is especially useful.
5 Abelard,
Theologica Christiana, 3.164. Quoted in Chapter 7, ‘Trinity’, by Jeffrey E. Brower, in Brower and Guilfoy, p.226.
6 The first quotation is from Roach, p.53. See ibid., pp.52-6, for the conflict between Abelard and Bernard. The quotation of Bernard’s about ‘scanning the heavens’ is to be found in Clanchy, p.25.
7 Quoted in David Luscombe, ‘Thought and Learning’, Chapter Twelve in Luscombe and Riley-Smith, p.496.
9 An extract on this theme from Aquinas’ first major theological work
Summa Contra Gentiles, 1-47, is to be found in Helm, p.106.
10 It was the fifth century BC philosopher Protagoras who had said, ‘Concerning the gods, I am unable to discover whether they exist or not, or what they are like in form: for there are many hindrances to knowledge, the obscurity of the subject and the brevity of human life.’ The contrast with the orthodoxy that evolved in Christianity was obvious, notably in the rise of the concept of ‘faith’ as an accepted body of doctrine that could not be supported by human reason.
11 These ideas and quotations are drawn from Davies, Chapter Ten, ‘The Eternal Triangle’.
12 Dante,
The Divine Comedy, Paradise, Canto XXIV, lines 139-41 in the translation by Charles Sissons, Oxford, 1980.
14 Diarmaid MacCulloch, pp.184-8.
15 Quoted in Bainton, p.24.
16 Israel, p.63. For the revival of religious toleration, see in particular Chapter Six, ‘Locke, Bayle, and Spinoza: A Contest of Three Toleration Doctrines’.
Conclusion
1 An excellent introduction to Torrance is McGrath,
T. F. Torrance. The first quotation is from a lecture given by Torrance entitled ‘The Christian Doctrine of Revelation’ and quoted in ibid., p.135. The second quotation comes from Torrance, p.153.
3 See ibid., pp.236-42. In their attempts to rebut charges that they were teaching three gods, the Cappadocians created ‘a damaging distinction between the Deity of the Father as wholly underived or “uncaused” and the deity of the Son and the Spirit as eternally derived or “caused”’ (p.238).
4 Ibid., pp.244-7. As Athanasius died in 373 and there is no record that Epiphanius attended the Council of Constantinople, the process by which those meeting at Constantinople might have taken over Epiphanius’ ‘credal statement about the Holy Spirit’ and incorporated it into their creed is not clear. Note also the view of many scholars that ‘the credal statement’ is a later insertion.
5 See ‘Orthodox Catholicism in the West’, pp.349-57 in Pelikan,
The Christian Tradition. 8 See, for instance, the essays in Buxton.
9 Of course, one can take this challenge back to the re-emergence of Aristotle in the thirteenth century, but Aristotle was absorbed as one more form of authoritarian dogma while Galileo and Newton, inter alia, were genuinely able to extend the scope of what could be known. In his
Aristotelean Explorations, Geoffrey Lloyd shows how Aristotle always accepted the provisionality of knowledge. New facts could always challenge old theories. While Aristotle would doubtless have been glad to have been brought back into the western intellectual tradition by Aquinas and others, he would have been disappointed by the way his thought had become dogmatic. Galileo got it right when he suggested that Aristotle would have welcomed the way he, Galileo, challenged some of Aristotle’s assertions. This was the true spirit of scientific enquiry.