The Triumph of Christianity

by Bart D. Ehrman

  These laws were directed to specific locales, not empire-wide, and there existed no state apparatus to ensure they were carried out. As a result, they had but little effect: paganism continued, unchecked in most places. But the laws do show the will of the emperor, and this would not have gone unnoticed. Conversions away from paganism continued apace. There was, however, one major hiccup in the triumphal march of the Christian church. It came after Constantius’s death with the brief rule of his cousin Julian.

  THE LAST PAGAN EMPEROR

  Julian probably escaped the massacre of the princes because he was just a six-year-old at the time.4 Constantius II appears to have seen him as a potential successor to the throne and made him his ward. For the next eighteen years Constantius II kept him out of public view, under careful scrutiny but at arm’s length. Much of Julian’s young life and virtually all of his education were in isolation.

  By 355 CE, barbarian invasions into Gaul had become a major problem, but Constantius II himself was occupied in the East, defending the borders from the Persians. So he appointed the completely inexperienced Julian as Caesar to deal with problems in the West. In his later writings Julian claimed he was granted no real power along with his title, but that appears not to be true. On the contrary, even though completely lacking in military field experience, he did have a good bit of textbook knowledge. Remarkably enough, it appears to have stood him in good stead. Julian had studied the commentaries of Julius Caesar in his military endeavors, and used what he learned to significant effect.

  By the end of 358 CE, Julian’s military prowess was evident to all, including the suspicious Constantius II, who kept a close watch lest his cousin’s success in the field should translate into political ambition. The breakdown in relations occurred in 360 CE. Constantius II was experiencing increasing problems with the Persians, while the situation in the West had significantly calmed. He directed his cousin to transfer to him a massive number of troops, over a third or possibly even a half of Julian’s entire army. Those western troops, many of them from Gaul, were not happy with the order, and responded by declaring their own commander Augustus. It is not clear whether this was a spontaneous and unexpected act, as Julian himself later claimed, or whether he himself had orchestrated it. In either event, since the acclamation became known to Constantius II, the two stood at irreconcilable odds. Civil war was the only option. Julian marched to confront his cousin, but as fate would have it, Constantius II died unexpectedly before he arrived, at the age of forty-four.

  Julian spent his first six months as emperor in Constantinople, and then nine unhappy and turbulent months in Antioch, before marching against the Persians. He was killed early in the conflict, having ruled the empire for a mere nineteen months. It was an eventful year and a half, however, especially for pagan-Christian relations. Upon ascending to the throne, Julian declared he had converted to paganism years earlier. (The very fact that he could understand paganism as a “religion” to which he could even convert shows just how much had changed by this time.)5 He made it one of his goals to reinstate traditional pagan sacrificial practices throughout the empire. That required him to suppress the burgeoning Christian movement.

  We do not know why, exactly, Julian became such a passionate devotee of pagan traditions. We do know that as a studious young man, in addition to reading Christian literature, he devoured the pagan classics and was drawn to the moral world they portrayed. Moreover, his bad experience with Christians may have made the difference. His ardent Christian cousin Constantius II had arranged for the murder of all his male relatives.

  In some ways Julian’s passionate devotion to the pagan cause was driven by a now-familiar motivation: he indicates that the gods “say they will give rewards for our labors, if we do not grow slack.”6 He certainly was not slack. At the beginning of his reign he reopened pagan temples, restored pagan rites, and declared universal religious tolerance. More famous than these positive steps to rejuvenate traditional religion were the negative measures he took to strangle Christianity. Julian had no intention of persecuting Christians, imprisoning them, or making them martyrs. He was a good enough student of history to know how badly that would go. But he did rescind many of the benefits afforded Christians by his predecessors and reversed several of their policies.7

  Some of his actions were subtle. For example, his Arian cousin Constantius II had exiled a number of Christian leaders who did not toe the Arian theological line that he preferred. Julian brought them back from exile. This appears not to have been an act of tolerance; on the contrary, it was almost certainly an attempt to weaken the church by reintroducing vehemently opposed spokespersons back into communities that had earlier been rid of them. A disunified Christian movement posed far fewer problems to a pagan resurgence than a unified front.

  Less subtly, Julian eliminated privileges accorded to Christian clergy since the time of his uncle Constantine: no longer were they exempt from participating in civil life or contributing their wealth to municipal causes. This move satisfied two needs: it weakened the elite clergy by draining a good bit of their resources, and it strengthened the governance of the cities. It also, of course, brought funds from the church into the municipal coffers.

  Julian sometimes refused to provide justice for Christian leaders. In December 361 an Arian bishop named George was murdered by a pagan mob in Alexandria, Egypt. When Christians howled their objections, Julian chose not to penalize the culprits and explained why: he considered George “an enemy of the gods.”8 Julian would not order the deaths of Christian leaders, but he would not object to them either.

  Possibly most insidious of all was an edict Julian published on June 17, 362, proscribing Christian instructors from teaching the pagan classics to schoolboys. Julian’s logic was that no one should teach what they did not believe; moreover, Christians were unqualified to teach the classics because they were themselves morally deficient. Christian teachers were given a choice: they could either acknowledge the gods or resign their positions. This policy may seem relatively benign but in fact it was unusually clever. No longer could Christians teach the principal subjects of instruction: grammar, rhetoric, and philosophy. That meant the next generation of elites would be trained exclusively by pagans. As ancient historian Glen Bowersock points out: “Julian knew perfectly well what he was doing. Within little more than a generation the educated elite of the empire would be pagan.”9

  In trying to devise steps to increase the attractiveness of the pagan traditions, Julian strove to make changes, particularly in light of what he considered to be the greatest appeal of the Christian tradition—its social programs: “Do we not observe that what has most of all fostered the growth of atheism [i.e., Christianity] is humanity towards strangers, forethought in regard to the burial of the dead, and an affectation of dignity in one’s life? Each of these ought, in my opinion, to be cultivated genuinely by us.”10 To provide pagan counterparts, Julian set up guesthouses in cities and free distribution of wheat and wine to the poor. Clearly these policies were not simply driven by a good-hearted nature. They were an attempt to attract converts back into paganism and thus decimate the ranks of the Christians.

  Among the many pieces of ancient literature that we greatly regret no longer having is a book, or possibly a series of books, that Julian himself wrote to attack Christianity. The work is commonly called Against the Galileans, and unfortunately it survives only in fragments quoted by a later Christian author, Cyril of Alexandria, in an effort to refute it. Julian was particularly well positioned to attack Christians, their theology, and their Scriptures. He had been raised a Christian himself and had been an active participant in the Christian churches even during the years when he was, for political reasons, disguising the fact that in his heart he was a pagan. Yet even as a pagan emperor he knew it was better to attack the Christian movement through words and arguments than through harsh measures of persecution. From his uncle Constantine he had learned to promote his views through persuasion rathe
r than coercion. Many of his successors took a different view.

  CHRISTIANITY AS THE STATE RELIGION

  When Julian was killed in a poorly conceived and even more poorly executed battle with the Persians on June 26, 363, he was succeeded by Jovian, one of his military commanders. Jovian and every Roman emperor who followed him were Christian. Many of these successors were quite vehement in the public affirmation of their Christian commitments and their resistance to traditional pagan religions. Arguably the most forceful in his views was Theodosius I, also known as “the Great,” who ruled from 379 to 395 CE and who was responsible for making Christianity, for all intents and purposes, the official state religion of the Roman Empire.

  Theodosius was born to a military commander, also named Theodosius, who served under the emperor Valentinian I but was executed in 376 CE, apparently for crimes against the state. Two years later Theodosius was elevated to one of the top military positions in the army, and in 379 CE made Augustus. As with other emperors, much of his reign involved military exploits, but what matters more for our purposes is his passionate commitment to the cause of Christianity. By the time he assumed the highest office, Christianity had grown massively, with converts arriving in droves. Theodosius sought to continue the trend. Early in his reign he provided a major disincentive for anyone inclined to revert to paganism: an apostate from Christianity would not be allowed to make a will. That is to say, anyone who de-converted could not pass on any worldly property to heirs. Moreover any apostate who already had a will was to have it nullified (Theodosian Code, 16.7.1; passed in 381 CE).

  Theodosius issued legislation that proscribed sacrifices, divination, and the use of temples to those ends (Theodosian Code 16.10.7; passed in 381 CE). In the most comprehensive law to date, he directed that “no person shall pollute himself with sacrificial animals; no person shall slaughter an innocent victim; no person shall approach the shrines, shall wander through the temples, or revere the images formed by mortal labor, lest he become guilty by divine and human laws” (Theodosian Code 16.10.10; passed in 391 CE). The law further stipulated that any judge who participated in worship in a pagan temple would be fined fifteen pounds of gold; governors of consular rank and their staff members who did so would be fined six pounds of gold. Nearly two years later came a law prohibiting pagan cults of any kind, even in the privacy of one’s home: “No person at all, of any class or order whatsoever . . . shall sacrifice an innocent victim to senseless images in any place at all or in any city. He shall not, by more secret wickedness, venerate his Lar with fire, his genius with wine, his Penates with fragrant odors; he shall not burn lights to them, place incense before them, or suspend wreaths for them.” The penalties were stiff—confiscation of property and large fines—as were the penalties for judges who connived in cases of violation: they would be fined thirty pounds of gold (Theodosian Code 16.10.12).

  Equally important for the question of religion in the empire is the particular kind of Christianity that Theodosius promoted. Unlike some of his predecessors, he virulently opposed Arian Christians and vehemently advocated the kind of orthodox Christianity that had emerged from the Council of Nicaea. Thus we have a law issued early in his reign: “It is Our will that all the peoples who are ruled by the administration of Our Clemency shall practice that religion which the divine Peter the Apostle transmitted to the Romans . . . . That is, according to the apostolic discipline and the evangelic doctrine, we shall believe in the single Deity of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, under the concept of equal majesty and of the Holy Trinity” (Theodosian Code 16.1.2). Nicene orthodox was to be the law of the land. That did not bode well for pagans.

  It might seem that such legislation would settle the matter once and for all. The empire was now Christian. Nicene Christian. In one sense that may have been true, but the reality on the ground was much different. We have repeatedly seen that Roman law was not like laws of modern developed countries, where national legislation applies to everyone, with set penalties enforced in more or less the same way everywhere. The empire was enormous and each region, each province, each city, each smaller locality, ran its affairs as well as it could. There were no national agencies that publicized, enacted, and enforced laws issued from the emperor. Many laws were never enforced at all, and many others were enforced with remarkable infrequency, depending on the time and place.

  Moreover, as both pagan and Christian authors point out on various occasions, there was simply no way that a law could ensure personal religious convictions. In the days of Theodosius, most of the inhabitants of the empire were still pagan. Pagans continued their traditional practices as the occasion arose. No evidence suggests pagans were being forced to convert en masse. That raises the question that Christian leaders had to address: Should coercion at least be attempted? It is interesting to see how different Christians answered this question, depending on the context within which they lived. Early in the fourth century, Christians were almost uniformly in favor of complete freedom of religion and, like the apologists before them, opposed efforts by the pagan state to force them to recant their faith. Toward the end of the century we find outspoken representatives opposing freedom of religion and arguing that the state should exercise its powers to force pagans to convert to Christianity against their will. It would not be the last time a group recently come to power flipped its position on an important issue.

  CHRISTIAN COERCION

  The Christian scholar Lactantius, one of our primary sources for the Great Persecution under Diocletian, was an early-fourth-century proponent of freedom of religion. Lactantius was raised pagan and trained in the classics. He became a well-known rhetorician and was appointed to be a professor of Latin rhetoric by Diocletian. Sometime after he converted to Christianity in 300 CE, Lactantius was deprived of his position; late in life he was appointed by Constantine to be the tutor of his son Crispus.

  One of Lactantius’s most famous literary works is called the Divine Institutes. This was written during the Great Persecution for Christianity’s cultured despisers, who, among other things, cast aspersions on the inferior literary quality of the Christian Scriptures. Lactantius’s defense of the faith was the most learned apology produced by a Christian to date, and included not only reasoned arguments for the superiority of the religion but also a plea for administrative tolerance.

  Lactantius argues that “there is no need of force and injury, because religion cannot be forced. It is a matter that must be managed by words rather than by blows, so that it may be voluntary.” Moreover, religious violence has only the opposite of its desired effect; echoing the claims of Tertullian from over a century earlier, Lactantius insists that “the religion of God is increased the more it is oppressed.” Christians, Lactantius maintains, never try to compel anyone to accept their religion against their will. That is because “truth cannot be joined with force nor justice with cruelty.” For that reason, “those who destroy religions ought to be punished.”11

  That Christian tune was soon to change in some circles—not all, obviously. A stark contrast to Lactantius’s appeal for tolerance comes in an equally passionate plea for forced conversions in the writings of a Christian scholar named Firmicus Maternus produced just some thirty-five years later, no longer under the rule of the pagan Diocletian but under the joint rule of the Christian sons of Constantine, Constantius II and Constans.12

  Like Lactantius, Firmicus was a convert from paganism. Two of his books have come down to us, one a work on astrology written while he was still a pagan (around 335 CE), the other a forceful Christian apology from ten or fifteen years later. In the apology he condemns the traditional religions he once practiced, demonizing them and asking Constantius II and Constans to do everything in their power to suppress them. His final plea to the emperors is chilling in its violent urgency: “But on you also, Most Holy Emperors, devolves the imperative necessity to castigate and punish this evil [pagan religion], and the law of the Supreme Deity enjoins on you that your seve
rity should be visited in every way on the crime of idolatry.”13

  He goes on to explain that Scripture itself demands the forceful destruction of pagan worship, quoting Deuteronomy 13:6–10, which says:

  If anyone secretly entices you—even if it is your brother, your father’s son or your mother’s son, or your own son or daughter, or the wife you embrace, or your most intimate friend—saying, “Let us go worship other gods,” whom neither you nor your ancestors have known, any of the gods of the peoples that are around you . . . you must not yield or heed, any such person. Show them no pity or compassion and do not shield them. But you shall surely kill them; your own hand shall be first against them to execute them, and afterwards the hand of all the people. Stone them to death for trying to turn you away from the Lord your God.

  Pitiless words that provide no exception clause. God directs his faithful to murder anyone who promotes the worship of other gods, even their own sons, daughters, or spouses. And not just relatives but whole populations. Quoting another passage in Deuteronomy, Firmicus stresses: “Even for whole cities, if they are caught in this crime, destruction is decreed: ‘Killing you shall slay all who are in the city with the death of the sword, and shall burn the city with fire.’ ” Because God himself directs rulers to slaughter those opposed to him, Firmicus makes a final terse injunction: “Therefore do what he bids, fulfill what he commands” (Error of the Pagan Religions 29). In other words, he tells the emperors: Kill the pagans.