Constantine's surprise did not, perhaps, sufficiently take into consideration the historical background. Greco-Roman paganism had never been monolithic; it consisted of a variety of different and separate cults, only loosely associated. So to most people it was not particularly surprising that, among the Christians too, there was a wide variety of different 'heresies' (from the Greek word hairesis, choice or sect). Yet the later Empire witnessed the growing official conviction that there ought to be a single orthodoxy - and the existence of numerous heresies became a source of ferocious dissatisfaction, not only to the established church but to the Emperors. It was their persistent ambition that the brand of Christianity favoured by themselves should become Catholic, in other words universal and unifying.
That was why Constantine, in 314, wrote to a functionary in North Africa that divine favour could only be secured by united worship, which must rise above disputes and quarrels, since these were distasteful to the Highest God. For nothing, declared his ecclesiastical supporter Eusebius, so greatly infuriates God as the division of the church: it is like cutting the body of Christ into pieces.
Yet all Constantine's hopes were doomed to frustration. He spent the greater part of his reign striving to establish cooperation among the Christians he had elevated so abruptly - and he strove in vain. It was not very long before his patience was exhausted; whereupon the adherents to heresies found their churches confiscated and their bishops sent into exile. Five years afterwards, Constantine declared it better, after all, to leave their punishment to God. But it was too late: the damage had already been done, and the hateful precedent set. Christians, almost as soon as they became a power in the land, had begun to persecute other Christians.
From this time onwards, in less than a century and a quarter, successive Emperors passed no less than sixty-six decrees against heretics. In his Panarion or Medicine Chest, written in 378, Bishop Epiphanius of Constantia (Salamis) in Cyprus, listing as many as eighty heresies, prescribed remedies for their adherents just as if they had been bitten by poisonous snakes; and a characteristic coin design shows Emperors stamping upon human-headed snakes representing these dissidents.
When Julian came to the throne in 361, his reaction against the Christian faith was largely prompted by these violent quarrels within its ranks, 'since he knew from experience', as Ammianus puts it, 'that no wild beasts are such enemies to mankind as are most of the Christians in their deadly hatred of one another'. However, Valentinian 1, although official Christianity had been restored, remained as tolerant to 'heretics' as to pagans. But Gratian and Theodosius I, under the influence of Ambrose, reversed both policies alike.
In 380 Theodosius I suddenly published a very strong regulation denouncing heresies. A year later he ordained that all the church buildings of such sects were to be surrendered to Catholic bishops as defined by himself. Then, during the remaining fourteen years of his life, he issued as many as seventeen other laws against all such dissidents. From now on, laws against heresy outnumbered laws against paganism by five to one. Most remarkable of all, because of the feelings of insecurity to which it bore witness, was an edict which actually forbade the discussion of any religious question whatever - thus attempting, with complete futility, to deprive contemporaries of one of their favourite occupations.
In 407-8, heresy was once again declared a public crime, 'because offences against the divine religion are injuries to the whole of the community'. At the same time, all non-Catholics were excluded from court: though in the following year Honorius was compelled to relax these regulations, because it proved impossible to exclude or coerce every Arian German. But then in 410 and 415 came further edicts, denouncing the heretics all over again. For bishops who could boast co-religionists of the calibre of Ambrose, Jerome and Augustine were in no mood to allow the government to tolerate deviators, and all three of these outstandingly influential thinkers continued to thunder vigorously against such criminals.
We have seen how Augustine, after long and careful deliberation, came to the conclusion that it was right to request the secular authorities to suppress the pagans by force. But he spent an even greater part of his life urging similar action against heresies. For their adherents, in his belief, would be tormented for ever in hell-fire. For him, as for the Emperors, there could only be one single church. And those who stayed outside it, however eloquently they might call themselves Christians, were outside the Body of Christ.
Initially, Augustine had rejected the use of force against heretics, as he rejected it in the first place against pagans as well. But later, after prolonged thought, he changed his mind, because 'he had learnt their potential wickedness, and how they could benefit from discipline'. So he came round to a belief in coercion, convincing himself, as he had convinced himself about the pagans, that the state must be called in to compel them to conform. For this forcible method, he now explained, was really just like giving medicine to an unwilling patient - and could therefore even be described as a true work of love: 'loving with severity' was better than 'deceiving with indulgence', and Emperors, with all their array of repressive resources, could serve God in a way which private citizens could not emulate. In a letter to Vincentius, bishop of Cartennae (Tenes) in Mauretania Caesariensis (Algeria), he enlarged on the reasons for this altered attitude.
. . . For originally my opinion was that no one should be coerced into the unity of Christ, that we must act only by words, fight only by arguments, and prevail by force of reason, lest we should have those whom we knew to be avowed heretics feigning themselves to be Catholics. . . .But this opinion of mine was overcome not by the words of those who controverted it, but by the conclusive instance to which they could point. For in the first place, there was set over against my opinion my own town which, although it was once wholly on the side of Donatism, was brought over to Catholic unity by the fear of the imperial edicts. I was made to own that to this matter the word of Scripture might be understood as applying: 'Give opportunity to a wise man and he will become wiser.'
But 'opportunity' was nothing better than a euphemism for violent suppression (Appendix 1).
Later, in the City of God, Augustine added the paradoxical justification that those who could really claim to be victimized were not the heretics at all but the faithful who were their persecutors - because the very existence of such evil-doers caused loyal Christians to 'suffer persecution, not in their bodies but in their hearts'. Hence the psalmist says, 'According to the multitude of sorrows in my heart' - not 'in my body'. But that did not help the heretics, whom the government, agreeing on political grounds with Augustine's theological arguments for compulsion, was now using force to bring into line.
This systematic, active intolerance was something hitherto unknown in the Mediterranean world. It reflected the growth of dogma, which in turn reflected a decline of rational intellectual activity. And now Augustine had placed himself in the forefront of this intolerant movement. Because of his eloquence and influence, he has been declared the Prince and Patriarch of Persecutors. He has also been denounced as the forerunner and first theorist of the Spanish Inquisition. It is only fortunate that, since he lived across the sea in North Africa, he was not in a central enough position to make himself the Grand Inquisitor of the whole Roman world. But even so, the damage done by the coercion he favoured and encouraged was great. Voltaire and Gibbon were right to blame the hostility between Christian and Christian, as well as between Christian and pagan, for helping to bring down the Empire.
It remains to discuss the rifts between the Christian authorities and members of two other religions which they oppressed, religions that were neither pagan nor Christian: the Manichaeans and the Jews.
Manichaeanism is still today the faith of millions of ordinary people, if they only knew it. This forceful doctrine survived from the third to the fifteenth centuries, demanding from its adherents an absolute belief in the distinction between good and evil. Both were eternally co-existent, and therefore it upheld the wi
despread instinct that, since we cannot admit God's responsibility for the evil things of this world, they must have been created by some other agency. This dualism, known as Gnostic (from gnosis, knowledge), was reputed to go back to Simon Magus, who is denounced in the Acts of the Apostles. In the second century AD, dualist places of worship were set up over extensive areas of the Roman provinces, declaring that the creator of the world and its evil was not God but an Independent Maker (Demiurge).
But most of these sects eventually became merged in Manichaeanism, the creed Mani began to preach in c.240 in Mesopotamia. Identifying the eternal contrasts of good and evil with Light and Darkness, Mani established an elaborate, well-organized church, and his religious ambitions exceeded even the Empire-wide universalism of Constantine and his ecclesiastics, since he planned to found a spiritual community that would conquer the entire world. Within less than a century, his doctrines had spread throughout vast regions of the Roman world; and successive Imperial governments, first pagan and then Christian, treated this growth of Manichaeanism as a major threat.
Diocletian, who persecuted the Christians, introduced savage sanctions against the Manichaeans as well, apparently regarding them as potential instruments of Rome's Persian foes. Nevertheless, their devotees were now arriving in the capital itself, and before long they spread to southern Gaul and Spain. The Christian Emperors, who treated them as severely as their predecessors had, felt anxiety, in the words of the Theodosian Code, because the Manichaeans proselytized among 'persons of the lower classes'.
They must indeed have appeared to represent some quite special threat, since even the unbigoted Valentinian I felt unable to include them in his general programme of toleration, and sent out orders that their property should be confiscated. Yet this was the very time when the Manichaeans obtained their most distinguished convert, Augustine, whose nine years of adherence to their views left their distaste for the world permanently in his heart - but added zest, after he had left Manichaeanism, to his endeavours to convert to true Christianity all who had once strayed to false and heretical doctrines, as he himself had earlier done.
In 383 Gratian, Theodosius I and Valentinian II reinforced previous anti-Manichaean legislation in savage terms. And this sort of hostile attitude was soon the cause of a tragedy. For it resulted in the first Christian execution of a man for his religious views. The victim was Priscillian, a Hispano-Roman who had attracted a substantial spiritual following. Although he was elected bishop of Avela (Avila) in Spain, his extreme ascetic contempt for our sordid physical existence caused the hierarchy to suspect he was a Manichaean. In 384 therefore, with the approval of the usurper Magnus Maximus, he suffered condemnation by a church synod at Burdigala (Bordeaux), and in the following year, after being judged guilty of sorcery and immorality, he was executed.
The court that passed the death sentence was a secular one. Nevertheless, it was for his religious opinions that Priscillian was sentenced, and the precedent was deeply ominous. Disunity in the Empire had indeed reached a destructive height when the authorities, secular and ecclesiastical alike, could take the decision to kill someone for such a reason. St Martin of Tours objected strongly to the execution, declaring that church and state should each be content to occupy itself with its own affairs. Even Ambrose, who generally favoured rough treatment of heretics and schismatics, was appalled, and he and Pope Siricius excommunicated the men who had brought the fatal charges.
The persecution of the Manichaeans by Theodosius I drove them underground for a time, yet proved so ineffective, in the long run, that during the fifth century they still greatly prospered, especially in Spain and in Gaul. Pope Leo i (440-61) was alarmed to find Manichaean infiltrators in his own congregation; and another two harsh laws against them were published by Valentinian III shortly afterwards. No other sect was so severely attacked, or was rejected with such extravagant emphasis.
The Manichaeans, however, continued to live on in the East for many centuries. And in the West, too, dualism proved ineradicable, and Manichaeanism had many spiritual heirs under various different designations. A full eight hundred years after the fall of Rome, St Louis ix of France was misusing the name of 'Crusade' to try to suppress similar faiths all over again.
The Jews, too, received unfavourable treatment from the Christian rulers of West and East alike. It was now a matter of centuries since the First and Second Roman Wars or Jewish Revolts had ended in terrible failure and the suppression of the national homeland. Yet the millions of Jews of the Dispersion, throughout the Roman Empire and Persian Mesopotamia, survived and maintained their faith. In Israel itself, too, although the old Jerusalem had been obliterated and replaced by a Roman settlement, life revived among Jewish communities in other parts of the country, and these were soon granted Roman recognition once again, under their own autonomous Patriarchate and Council.
Relations with Rome flourished under the Patriarch Judah I ha-Nasi ('the Prince') (135-219), who is also traditionally regarded as the principal organiser of the Mishnah, that massive repository of Jewish tradition and belief. But then paganism ceased to be the official religion of the Empire. Why was it that Christianity, and not Judaism, took its place? They had so very much in common, including nine-tenths of their ethical background. But once again, like the pagan religions, Judaism could never win over the bulk of the population, because the world hankered after a saviour: and the Jews had no historical Messiah to offer.
Ever since the life and deeds of Jesus had first been recorded, relations between the two communities had been hostile. The Gospels contained much anti-Semitic material, designed to show to the Roman authorities that Christians had nothing to do with the First Jewish Revolt. On the Jewish side, the Toledoth Yeshu described Jesus as a sorcerer, the Son of Uncleanness.
Jews had feared the rise of Christianity as one of the ultimate plagues announcing the end of the world. And when it became the official church of the Empire, their situation duly worsened. They were attacked for having caused the death of Jesus: Bishop Severus of Antioch told his colleague at Beroea (Aleppo) that 'the whole community should be penalized for participating in that sin'. Yet it could also not be forgotten that Jesus himself had been a member of their race, and had fulfilled many of their prophecies, so that they were the witnesses, however involuntarily, to the glory of his mission.
That being so, there could be no question of suppressing the Jews by force, like pagans or Manichaeans or heretics. Nevertheless, their treatment by the Christian Emperors remained equivocal and grudging. Because they had prepared the way for Jesus and had given him human birth, they could not be forcibly stamped out. Yet since, on the other hand, they had repudiated and killed him, their lives ought to be made as miserable as possible. So the bishops demanded; and so the Emperors ordained. True, the Sabbath was legally tolerated, Jewish sacred property was declared inviolate, and rabbis enjoyed the privileges of the Christian clergy. But at the same time measure after measure was taken by Roman officialdom to lower the status of synagogues, to forbid conversions or reconversions to Judaism, to prevent intermarriage between the two communities, and to eliminate any conceivable defiance of Christian ecclesiastical domination.
Jewish hopes momentarily rose when Julian, in his attempt to depose Christianity, authorized the rebuilding of the Temple at Jerusalem, nearly three hundred years after its destruction following the First Revolt. But Julian died before his plans came to fruition. There was another comparatively favourable moment when Theodosius I endeavoured to treat the Jews with greater liberalism than he showed in the handling of pagans and heretics; and after his death his Eastern minister Eutropius maintained the same policy. Yet it was not long before the Jewish situation deteriorated again. In 415, the Patriarch Gamaliel vn was subjected to penal measures, and when he died four years later the office of the Patriarchate itself was soon abolished, and its finances annexed by the government. Then the Code of Theodosius n systematized all the numerous recent sanctions directed against
the Jewish faith. Their constant references to its foul, abominable, outrageous, lethal, sacrilegious perversity makes gloomy reading.
No doubt the Imperial bark was somewhat worse than its bite, being intended to placate the more fanatical Christian clergy. But it was perilous that such clerics were continually inciting their congregations to hold similar views. Ambrose, for example, informed Theodosius I that the reason why the usurper Magnus Maximus had fallen was because he had impiously commanded the reconstruction of a synagogue which had been burnt down at Rome - and that was why Theodosius must cancel his order to reconstruct a similar building that had been destroyed in the East.
Augustine, too, no less than twenty times in his surviving writings, strikes the old sour balance once again, declaring these obstinate people 'witnesses of their own iniquity and the Christian truth'. The fifth-century Bishop Theodoret of Cyrrhus (Kurus in southern Turkey) complained that the Jews still felt superior to the Christians; and Jerome implausibly accused them of hoping to gain supreme political control. The poet Rutilius Namatianus, in a passage full of brutal contempt for Judaism, even declared that this had already happened, and that the conquered race had subdued its conquerors - 'their belief is a plague that creeps back again after it has been rooted out'. Sidonius, on the other hand, happens to have a good opinion of a Jew, Gozolas - 'he is a man whom I should like as a person, if I did not despise his religious faith'. Yet even that grudging word of appreciation, anticipatory of the notorious saying 'some of my best friends are Jews', was exceptional. On the whole, we have a mournfully divisive picture.
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