by Douglas Boin
But an unmistakable center of authority it was. By the late fourth century CE, certain Christian politicians and advisors had taken a gamble and convinced the occupants of the palace that their version of Christianity should be announced as the only legitimate state religion. In 380, Emperor Theodosius (r. 375–395 CE), raised in Spain, ruling from Constantinople, signed off on that decree. In the coming decades, the people of the Roman world would watch as a chilling legal curtain fell on practices and beliefs that had, for millennia, sustained countless families, their households, and their civic life.
To Christians who saw their beliefs as fundamentally incompatible with other people’s traditions and customs, the imperial palace had been won and with it, the right to shape the laws that came out of it. Even if many Christians disagreed, even if Christians themselves were a demographic minority in the Roman Empire, none of that mattered. Rome was not nor had it ever been a democracy. For that reason alone, there is no need for us to try to reverse‐engineer the rise of Christianity to explain the alleged growth of Christianity. However many Christians there were in the empire at this time is a fascinating question. But in trying to explain why the empire became a Christian state, it may also be a red herring. Emperors set the laws. Everyone else lived by them. A more interesting historical question may be how it came about that Christians in Rome thought it perfectly proper to use the power of the law to enact their strict, zealous vision for society.
The fifth‐century crisis
Between Spain and the Sea of Marmara, outside the Black Sea, Emperor Theodosius had seen a lot of the Roman world for himself. He had also inherited an empire that was more openly, viciously partisan than that governed by any of his predecessors. Whatever may have motivated him to make the choices that he did – wading into the politics of church councils or waging war on other Romans, Christian and non‐Christian alike, who opposed his policies – the effects of his rule are undeniably revolutionary. Nicene Christianity, based on a platform drafted by bishops in 325 CE, would forever remain the Roman Empire’s official religion. That was the substance of Theodosius’ decree in 380, and it would never be replaced or repealed. (The language of Nicaea insisted that God and Jesus were equally divine and that they had both existed from the beginning of time; Jesus may have been born later, the bishops acknowledged, but he had always existed.)
Not every Christian throughout the empire was eager to sign off on this document. Consequently, Christian wrangling over the party platform, combined with still other, more pressing geopolitical concerns, would fall to the house of Theodosius to address. The events of Rutilius Namatianus’ day – a spike in border infractions, a need for urgent diplomatic meetings, and negotiated land settlements – were the pressing issues seen by Theodosius’ sons. The two of them, Arcadius (r. 395–408) and Honorius (r. 395–423 CE), succeeded in staying true to their father’s imperial vision. In simplest terms, Rome was now a Christian state. And although their decision to share authority over the Mediterranean may seem, to us, to belie the unity of the empire they governed, Rome in the fifth century CE was no longer experiencing an existential crisis. It was now facing a territorial one.
Emperor Honorius, who was 11 years old when he was appointed to power, lived this reality every day. His palace guardian, Stilicho, was the face of the fifth‐century world. Son of a Roman mother but of a Vandal father, Stilicho had served in the Roman army and married into Theodosius’ family. For the child emperor Honorius, as for his advisors who held more traditional, stereotypical views of foreigners like “the Vandals,” there could be no more immediate sign that the idea of Rome was changing. Stilicho himself had won a consulship in 400 and 405 CE. He had also won fame by aggressively policing Rome’s borders. By 408, however, those same rising fortunes would seal Stilicho’s fate among the conservative members of the senate. Suspected of betraying Rome, he was assassinated.
One political execution, motivated by jealousy and fear, however, could not stop Rome’s borders from receding. Nor could it correct the inability or, worse, the unwillingness of its most talented politicians and diplomats to create a sustainable policy for the border. In 410 CE, authorities made the decision to withdraw the army from Britain, effectively abandoning the island – its farthest northwest possession – to local control. That year, in Italy, we have already seen how the government grappled with Alaric, the Gothic leader who forced Rome’s hand by holding the city of Rome hostage. Alaric himself was also a Christian.
The awkwardness of foreign tribes “daring” to assert their own political voices would not be resolved on the watch of Arcadius or Honorius. Much would come to the desk of Theodosius II, grandson of the dynasty’s founder, to resolve. Seven years old at the time of his elevation, Emperor Theodosius II may not have grasped the depth of Rome’s problems right away. But he would govern for nearly four decades (r. 408–450 CE), the longest ruler in all of Rome’s storied history. Before his death, he would also see the beginnings of the complicated, stunning dismantling of the Roman state.
Between 429 and 439 CE, Vandals conquered North Africa. Still other tribes were lurking beyond the frontiers. The Huns, a people of the steppes of the northern shores of the Black Sea, found their voice in a leader named Attila. By 451, Attila had led his band of Huns across northern Europe. They attacked Gaul that year – a shocking strike to the northern territories to be matched, four years later, from the south. Sailing from their base in Carthage, Vandals raided the coast of Italy in 455, even reaching Rome.
Theodosius II himself did not live long enough to see or hear about the attack in 455 CE, but his daughter and son‐in‐law experienced it first‐hand. It was Theodosius II’s daughter who was the bride at the joyful wedding in Constantinople attended by Rufius Volusianus, with which we ended the last chapter. Her husband, Emperor Valentinian III of Rome, would be murdered later that year.
Within two decades, command over the Italian peninsula was given to one of Attila’s own loyal companions. His name was Odoacer, and he was installed as king in 476 CE. Parts of the old Roman world, particularly in the northwest territory, were cut loose from the imperial map at this time. Lands in northern Gaul united under the leadership of a Frankish king, Clovis (r. 481–511 CE). In Italy itself, Odoacer’s rule proved unstable. A wealthy Goth named Theoderic, educated in Constantinople, took it from him. His victory was a defining moment for the Gothic communities of western Europe, which included Spain, southern Gaul, and now Italy. Theoderic’s “Eastern Goths” (Ostrogoths), so named to distinguish themselves from the “Western Goths” (Visigoths), would govern Rome into the sixth century. The branches of the Roman Empire, at the turn of 500 CE, had been pruned (Working With Sources 2.1: The Lost Syriac Chronicle of Theophilus of Edessa).
Working With Sources 2.1 The “Lost” Syriac Chronicle of Theophilus of Edessa
Brutal tales of war dominate the story of the sixth‐century CE Roman Empire, thanks to the authors who chronicled them. Trying to hear the events of the next century, however, can be more difficult. There are few Greek and Latin writers who wrote about the seventh century although it’s not because history grew dull. An Islamic army would soon defeat the Sasanian state; they would take Egypt, Jerusalem, and Syria from Rome, a catastrophic territorial loss.
There is one unique, contemporary witness to this key moment in history. He was an astrologer who did not write in a classical language: Theophilus of Edessa (Urfa, in modern Turkey). Theophilus composed a Chronicle of the seventh and eighth centuries in his local language, Syriac. A dialect of Aramaic, the language spoken in first‐century Judaea by Jesus and many Jews, Syriac was still used extensively in Late Antiquity by people in Roman Syria, in and around Jerusalem, and in the cities of the Roman–Sasanian frontier like Edessa, where Theophilus grew up.
Edessa was not just located near the ever‐fluctuating eastern borders of the Roman and Persian Empires. It also lay within reach of,the often disputed territory of the Armenian Kingdom. For this reason, Theo
philus likely spoke multiple languages from an early age; he is especially known for having translated several Greek works into Syriac: the epic poetry of Homer, the medical texts of Galen, and the philosophy of Aristotle. None of these texts survive, and neither does his valuable Chronicle – at least, not exactly. So how is it that this multilingual astrologer from Edessa has become such an essential source for the seventh century CE?
Many later writers, working in Syriac, Greek, and Arabic, referred to Theophilus’ work. Some, like Michael the Syrian (d. 1199 CE), acknowledge they borrowed material directly from him. Others, like the Greek writer Theophanes (d. 818), never make their citations explicit. But based on uncanny similarities that emerge when comparing these authors side‐by‐side, scholars can reconstruct the contents of Theophilus’ text.
Here is an example of how that works. These two writers are describing what happened when the Sasanian Persians captured Jerusalem in 614 CE:
“The Persians took the Jordan, Palestine, and the Holy City by force of arms and killed many people therein through the agency of the Jews. Some say it was 90,000. For the Jews bought the Christians [as slaves], each man according to his means, and killed them” (from the Greek text written by Theophanes, trans. by Hoyland [2011]). “In year six of [Emperor] Heraclius, Shahrbaraz attacked Jerusalem, subdued it, and killed 90,000 persons. The Jews, because of their hatred for them, were buying Christians from the Persians for a low price and killing them” (from the Syriac text written by Michael the Syrian, trans. by Hoyland [2011]).
Neither of these writers was familiar with the other’s work, which suggests they consulted a common, third source independently. That author is now thought to be Theophilus of Edessa.
Theophilus’ Chronicle is a tantalizing source because it gives us a non‐Muslim view of Islam’s rise and spread. In fact, Theophilus was one of the first Christian writers to incorporate early Arabic traditions about Muhammad into his history of early Islam. The fact that Theophilus had access to these Arabic texts and could read them is remarkable. It suggests that “a lot more historical material was circulating between the Muslim and Christian communities [of the seventh and eighth centuries CE] than is usually assumed” (Robert Hoyland, Theophilus of Edessa’s Chronicle and the Circulation of Historical Knowledge in Late Antiquity and Early Islam [Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2011], p. 29).
2.2 A Warning about Periodization
Dividing time into discrete periods is something historians do, but it’s also characteristic of people who think theologically. As we learned in the last chapter, many people in antiquity believed that they were living in a time of corrupt morals and decadent behavior and that their world was in urgent need of spiritual renewal. They placed their hopes in the notion that the present age would eventually come to an end and that a new chapter in the divine plan for humanity would begin – perhaps soon, in their lifetime. Whether they were Jew or Christian or neither, the people who looked at their world through these powerful lenses magnified (some would say, distorted) the social problems around them and turned them into signs with a cosmic significance.
Therein lies an important but often unaddressed problem in the study of ancient history, particularly Late Antique history. Because many people in the ancient world were eager to divide time into separate periods for theological reasons, our own, dispassionate attempt to work with the sources they left behind – to subject them to laboratory analysis and to write up the findings from our experiment – is always at risk of producing history with a theological glow. Even the apparent casualness with which historians wave their wand and change Constantine’s Roman Empire or Justinian’s Roman Empire into an entirely different state (“The Byzantine Empire”) has much to tell us about the agendas that lie behind periodization. We need to look more closely at what’s going on behind these tricks of the trade.
The attack in 410 CE and the removal of Rome from its own empire, in 476 CE, were two events that led Christians of the time to reflect more intently about God’s plan for their world. From Jerome to Orosius, Christians of the fifth century and later, in Latin and in Greek, drew upon their own hopes and fears to try to make sense of these changing circumstances, which many framed in apocalyptic terms as if it were an event trumpeting the arrival of the end of the world.
For later historians, particularly those of the eighteenth century like Edward Gibbon, it became hard to separate these doleful, biblically inspired lamentations about the “Fall of Rome” from more dispassionate descriptions of the fifth century. Gibbon’s own epic contribution to this conversation was titled The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire and the first volume in his magnum opus, published in 1776, set off an explosion of interest into causes of Rome’s “fall.” By the late twentieth century, two hundred and ten reasons had been deduced to explain what had allegedly happened that caused Rome’s empire to crumble. These explanations range from the apparently plausible to the wildly improbable: from lead poisoning to gay people (“homosexuality”) to inflation. The most frightening are still trudged out during modern political debates, particularly in America and western Europe.
In the 1960s, one scholar hit upon an ingenious way to short‐circuit this unhelpful obsession with Rome’s decline. His name was Peter Brown. Beginning with a new biography of Augustine and proceeding to write, over the course of sixty years, about the vibrant social milieu of the fourth through sixth centuries CE, Brown built a field of inquiry around a more optimistic idea, even a spiritually comforting one. This was an age of transitions and of transformations, of exciting religious dialogue and a vibrant interchange of ideas, not collapse and decay. Brown’s was a vision of the period we now call “Late Antiquity.” And for three generations, that vision has worked like a masterful check‐mate in the ongoing chess match against Gibbon and his acolytes, many of whom, for example, still equate the rise of Christianity with Rome’s decline. In this, Brown’s new approach worked at its best, drawing attention to fascinating, although usually ecclesiastical, stories of innovation that earlier historians were eager to dismiss.
Brown’s move has also, whether it was originally intended to or not, obscured one of the more troubling features of the age: the sheer number of fanatics living in the fourth, fifth, and sixth centuries who believed that the Roman world really was coming to an end. Many of these Christians thought they were living in the eye of the “end times,” that the events of their day should be seen as if they were the manifestation of God’s final plan for Jesus’ Second Coming. These people and their strange faith‐based beliefs can be rather embarrassing to twenty‐first‐century students. The ideas themselves are particularly quixotic to skeptical researchers who think that history’s door should be forceably shut on such nonsense. But the people who held these beliefs cannot be written out of history simply because they might make us feel uncomfortable.
The reasons why Christians might burn a Jewish synagogue or the beliefs that may have motivated a Christian emperor to start a war over Jerusalem – even the root of the Christian conviction that the world of old “Rome” had fallen because a new, “more Christian” Rome had stepped in to replace it – all of these extraordinary ideas shaped the history of the Mediterranean world before and after 476 CE. We will see when, how, and ask why throughout this book.
And so, even as “Late Antiquity” and the “Byzantine Empire” bring many recognizable benefits to the study of history today, helping us gerrymander the ancient Mediterranean into discrete, more manageable disciplines, we should not let either concept deflect our gaze from some of the key problems that accompany them. The reason why an individual might want to draw boundaries around a particular historical age – erect a barrier between “Old Rome” and “New Rome,” as many Christians would do; or between the “Age of Revelation” and the “Age of Ignorance” (Jahiliyyah), as many Muslims would do to characterize the period before Muhammad’s revelation – is precisely what we’re trying to capture with our historical instruments. It
is the historian’s job to describe and analyze these individuals and their behavior, not fall victim to their misdirection.
Summary
In this chapter, we met several political figures and learned about key events which shaped Mediterranean history between the third and fifth centuries CE. A broad outline of important names and dates should now be apparent. By combining Rutilius’ more personal perspective from the previous chapter with an appreciation for this larger historical context, we can now begin to look at Late Antiquity more systematically. The next chapter, the last in this introduction, discusses important interpretive tools that will be useful for our study.
Study Questions
Identify the following people. State when they lived and why they are important: Zenobia of Palmyra, Diocletian, Constantine, Theodosius, and Theoderic.
Explain why every century between the third century and the fifth century CE can be characterized as a time of “crisis.”
How has Edward Gibbon influenced the study of the later Roman Empire?
Consider the reasons why a historian might be skeptical of periodization.
Suggested Readings
Peter Brown, The Rise of Western Christendom: Triumph and Diversity, A.D. 200–1000, second edition (Oxford: Blackwell, 2003).
Averil Cameron, The Mediterranean World in Late Antiquity: AD 395–700, second edition (London: Routledge, 2012).