The influence of Basil’s essay on Western education was profound. It was read, reread and copied fervently for centuries. It would have affected what was read, studied—and crucially, what was preserved—in schools in Byzantium.24 And what was not. It was so important that this was—somewhat ironically—one of the first works translated from Greek during the Renaissance. The Jesuits placed it on their international syllabus, the Ratio Studiorum, where it would have had an influence on Jesuit education worldwide.25 Later generations would present Basil as a liberal intellectual. One twentieth-century edition of this essay described Basil’s attitude to pagan literature as “that of an understanding friend, not blind to its worst qualities, but by no means condemning the whole.”26 Another twentieth-century edition of Basil’s Address explains that this was “not the anxious admonition of a bigoted ecclesiastic, apprehensive for the supremacy of the Sacred Writings. Rather, it is the educational theory of a cultured man.”27 That is nonsense. Supremacy was precisely what Basil wanted—and he got it. However honeyed the words, however beguiling the simile, this was censorship.
It wasn’t just Basil. The editing of the classical canon would continue for a millennium and more. Open an 1875 edition of the Latin poet Martial and many of his more explicit poems will have been translated not into English but into Italian—evidently considered a suitable language for sexual deviancy.28 Elsewhere poems were omitted entirely, or glossed in Greek, a language that not only looked erudite and respectable but that had the benefit of being understood by even fewer people than Latin. The opening lines of Catullus’s “Carmen 16” were, as the academic Walter Kendrick has pointed out, still causing trouble well into the twentieth century: they were left out of a 1904 Cambridge University Press edition of his Collected Poems altogether. Discreetly sparing the readers’ blushes (or perhaps their interest) the poem was described as merely “a fragment.”29 Open the 1966 Penguin edition and you will find that the first line has, equally discreetly, been left in the original Latin. “Pedicabo et irrumabo,” it declares, percussively but impenetrably.30 “Carmen 16” would have to wait until almost the end of the twentieth century to find a translation that rendered it correctly—though such was the richness of Latin sexual slang that five English words were needed for that single Latin verb irrumabo.31
In this new, ever-watchful Christian era, the tone of what was being written began to change. Polytheist literature had discussed and mocked anything and everything, from the question of whether mankind can have free will in an atomic universe, to the over-credulity of the Christians, to the use of urine to clean one’s teeth (a process that was considered effective, but revolting). After Christianity, what was seen as worth recording on the pages of parchment changed. Unlike the centuries before Constantine, the centuries afterwards produce no rambunctious satires or lucidly frank love poetry. The giants of fourth- and fifth-century literature are instead St. Augustine, St. Jerome and St. John Chrysostom. All are Christian. None are easily confused with Catullus.
The writings of John Chrysostom provide a rich taste of the tone of this new literature. “Let there be no fornication,” he declared in one of his many fiery speeches on the topic of lust.32 A beautiful woman was, he warned, a terrible snare. A (non-exhaustive) list of other snares that the work of this revered speaker warned against includes laughter (“often gives birth to foul discourse”); banter (“the root of subsequent evils”); dice (“introduces into our life an infinite host of miseries”); horse-racing (as above); and the theater, which could lead to a wide variety of evils including “fornication, intemperance, and every kind of impurity.”33 The index of a collection of his sermons gives a taste of the whole. Under the word “Fear” one is offered:
needful to holy men, 334;
a chastisement for carelessness, 347;
of the Lord true riches, 351;
a punishment, 355;
awakens conscience, 363;
of harm from man ignoble, 366;
a good man firm against, 369;
without the fear of hell death terrible, 374;
of hell profitable . . .
And so on, for twenty-five references, before ending in the nicely conclusive: “purifies like a furnace.” Look under “Happiness” and the eager reader would be greeted with rather scant offerings. Here, one is merely offered:
in God alone, 460 34
This was a new literary world and a newly serious one. “The extent to which this new Christian story both displaced and substituted for all others is breathtaking,” writes the modern academic Brent D. Shaw. “The power of this Christian talk was produced by many things, among them a remorseless hortatory pedagogy, a hectoring moralising of the individual, and a ceaseless management of the minutiae of everyday life. Above all, it was a form of speech marked by an absence of humour. It was a morose and a deadly serious world. The joke, the humorous kick, the hilarious satires, the funny cut-them-down-to-size jibe, have vanished.”35 And in the place of humor came fear. Christian congregations found themselves rained on by oratorical fire and brimstone. For their own good, of course. As Chrysostom observed with pleasure: “in our churches we hear countless discourses on eternal punishments, on rivers of fire, on the venomous worm, on bonds that cannot be burst, on exterior darkness.”36
But however threatening Christian preachers might have found the easy classical talk about sex, abortions, buggery and the clitoris, there was another aspect of classical literature that presented an even more alarming prospect: philosophy. The competing clamor of Greek and Roman philosophical schools provided a panoply of possible beliefs. Classical philosophers had variously argued that there were countless gods; that there was one god; that there were no gods at all; or that you simply couldn’t be sure. The philosopher Protagoras had neatly summed up this attitude to divine beings: “I cannot know either that they exist or that they do not exist.”37
Even philosophers like Plato, whose writings fit better with Christian thought—his single form of “the good” could, with some contortions, be squeezed into a Christian framework—were still threatening. Perhaps even more so: Plato would continue to (sporadically) alarm the Church for centuries. In the eleventh century, a new clause was inserted into the Lenten liturgy censuring those who believed in Platonic forms. “Anathema on those,” it declared, “who devote themselves to Greek studies and instead of merely making them a part of their education, adopt the foolish doctrines of the ancients and accept them as the truth.”38
For many hard-line Christian clerics, the entire edifice of academic learning was considered dubious. In some ways there was a noble egalitarianism in this: with Christianity, the humblest fisherman could touch the face of God without having his hand stayed by quibbling scholars. But there was a more aggressive and sinister side to it, too. St. Paul had succinctly and influentially said that “the wisdom of this world is foolishness with God.”39 This was an attitude that persisted. Later Christians scorned those who tried to be too clever in their interpretation of the scriptures. One writer railed furiously at those who “put aside the sacred word of God, and devote themselves to geometry . . . Some of them give all their energies to the study of Euclidean geometry, and treat Aristotle . . . with reverent awe; to some of them Galen is almost an object of worship.”40
In Christian eyes, Galen was not to be worshipped, God was. Gnosticism, a highly intellectual second-century movement (the word “gnostic” comes from the Greek word for “knowledge”) that was later declared heretical, didn’t help. Heretics were intellectual, therefore intellectuals were, if not heretical, then certainly suspect. So ran the syllogism. Intellectual simplicity or, to put a less flattering name on it, ignorance was widely celebrated. The biography of St. Antony records with approval that he “refused to learn to read and write or to join in the silly games of the other little children.” Education and silly games are here bracketed together, and both are put in opposition to holiness. Instead of this, we learn, Antony “burned with the desire fo
r God.”41 That this wasn’t quite true—Antony’s letters reveal a much more careful thinker than this implies—didn’t much matter: it appealed to a powerful ideal. No need to read: give up both books and bread and you will win God’s favor. Even intellectuals were susceptible to this pretty picture: it was hearing about how the simple, unlettered Antony had inspired so many to turn to Christ that led Augustine to start striking himself on the head, tearing his hair and asking, “What is wrong with us?”42 Ignorance was power.
Some Christians, evidently deciding that the project of assimilation was impossible, simply shut their Homer and Plato and never opened them again. One Christian author sold all his books of literature and philosophy upon conversion: poverty was a virtue and books were expensive. Besides, the true Christian had no need of philosophy anymore: they had God. As the Christian orator Tertullian put it: “What indeed has Athens to do with Jerusalem?” He went on: “What concord is there between the Academy and the Church? . . . Away with all attempts to produce a mottled Christianity of Stoic, Platonic, and dialectic composition! We want no . . . inquisition after enjoying the gospel! With our faith, we desire no further belief.”43 No need for knowledge, for the philosophy of the Stoics, or the Platonists or indeed anything else. One had faith; that was enough.
Out of all this exuberant illiteracy there arose a problem, however. While storming the gates of heaven might be achieved with no education at all, storming the gates of the elite villas of Rome required a little more sophistication. Educated Romans and Greeks such as Celsus and Porphyry had long looked at the literature of Christianity with the utmost disdain—and writers such as Augustine and Jerome knew it. Part of the problem was the Bible: not only what it said but the way in which it said it. Today, robed in the glowing English of the King James Version, it is hard to imagine the language of the Bible ever causing problems. In the fourth century it had no such antique grandeur. The gospels of the old Latin Bible were written in a distinctly demotic style, rich in grammatical solecisms and the sort of words that grated on educated ears.44 The loss of meaning was negligible—the ancient equivalent of saying “serviette” rather than “napkin.” The loss of status was intolerable. If this was the word of God, then God seemed to speak with a distinctly common accent.
And this society had an acute ear for accents. Augustine grew up knowing that grammatical error was more frowned on than moral error and that one might be more despised for saying “’uman being” than one would for being the sort of human being who judged another on his accent.45 Aitches in Latin, as in Victorian England (and indeed modern Britain), were often a giveaway of class, and the ability to know where to put them was the mark of a gentleman. The upper-class Catullus had sneered mercilessly at a man who, anxious to sound more aristocratic than he was, managed to misplace his aitch.46 In this aspirational world the language of the Bible was deeply embarrassing.
Augustine, well aware of this, launched into a defense of the Bible’s register: what did it matter, he asked hotly, if one used the wrong word or the incorrect grammatical case? Everyone understood what was being said anyway, whatever words or cases it was said with. What did it matter, when you were beseeching God to pardon your sins, “whether the word ignoscere (to pardon) should be pronounced with the third syllable long or short?”47 God might pardon such grammatical sins: Roman aristocrats would not. The simplicity of Christian texts repelled many who might otherwise have considered converting, and shamed many who already had. To convert was, in the words of that telling Augustine phrase, to enter the intellectual world less of a Plato or a Pythagoras than of your concierge. The upper classes simply weren’t going to countenance that; and as long as they stood firm against Christianity then many below them would too. This disdainful elite was, Augustine said, the “ramparts of a city that does not believe, a city of denial.”48
Christianity was caught in an impossible situation. Greek and Roman literature was a sump of the sinful and the satanic and so it could not be embraced. But nor could it entirely be ignored either. It was painfully obvious to educated Christians that the intellectual achievements of the “insane” pagans were vastly superior to their own. For all their declarations on the wickedness of pagan learning, few educated Christians could bring themselves to discard it completely. Augustine, despite disdaining those who cared about correct pronunciation, leaves us in no doubt that he himself knows how to pronounce everything perfectly. In countless passages, both implicitly and explicitly, his knowledge is displayed. He was a Christian, but a Christian with classical dash, and he deployed his classical knowledge in the service of Christianity. The great biblical scholar Jerome, who described the style of sections of the Bible as “rude and repellent,”49 never freed himself from his love of classical literature and suffered from nightmares in which he was accused of being a “Ciceronian, not a Christian.”50
And so, in part from self-interest, in part from actual interest, Christianity started to absorb the literature of the “heathens” into itself. Cicero soon sat alongside the psalters after all. Many of those who felt most awkward about their classical learning made best use of it. The Christian writer Tertullian might have disdained classical learning in asking what Athens had to do with Jerusalem—but he did so in high classical style with the metonymy of “Athens” standing in for “philosophy” and that prodding rhetorical question. Cicero himself would have approved. Everywhere, Christian intellectuals struggled to fuse together the classical and the Christian. Bishop Ambrose dressed Cicero’s Stoic principles in Christian clothes; while Augustine adapted Roman oratory for Christian ends. The philosophical terms of the Greeks—the “logos” of the Stoics—started to make their way into Christian philosophy.51
Not all attempts at assimilation were so successful. One poet rewrote the Gospel of John in the style of a Homeric epic. Another scholar, during the reign of Julian the Apostate—who forbade anyone who didn’t believe in the old gods to teach works such as Homer that contained them—redrafted the entirety of biblical history in twenty-four books of Homeric hexameter and recast the Epistles and the gospels into the form of Socratic dialogues. Fanciful intellectual genealogies were invented to defend Christianity’s favorite philosophers. Long-dead thinkers who happened to have any resemblances to Christianity in their writings found themselves adopted as unwitting ancestors in the tradition. The whiff of Christianity hung around Plato? Ah, that was because he had visited Egypt and, while there, he had perhaps read a copy of the first five books of the Bible that Moses had, conveniently, left behind. He was, really, one of us. Socrates was a Christian before Christ.52
Classical scholars had been reading Homer allegorically for centuries; now better-read Christians started to do the same with the Bible—much to the disgust of non-Christian critics who felt that this was a cowardly intellectual cheat. As Celsus observed with irritation, the “more reasonable Jews and Christians are ashamed of these things and try somehow to allegorise them.”53 Some Christians would remain suspicious of the habit. Another writer raged at those Christians who “avail themselves of the arts of unbelievers” to smooth over scriptural bumps.54
Less than a hundred years after the first Christian emperor, the intellectual landscape was changing. In the third century, there had been twenty-eight public libraries in Rome and many private ones.55 By the end of the fourth they were, as the historian Ammianus Marcellinus observed with sorrow, “like tombs, permanently shut.”56 Was Christianity’s rise cause or mere correlation in this? Christian emperors would later struggle to increase literacy to ensure that the state even had enough literate functionaries. Certain fields of inquiry started to become not only off-limits but illegal. As a law of AD 388 announced: “There shall be no opportunity for any man to go out to the public and to argue about religion or to discuss it or to give any counsel.” If anyone with “damnable audacity” attempted to then, the law announced with a threat no less ominous for being vague, “he shall be restrained with a due penalty and proper punishment.”
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Philosophers who wished their works and careers to survive in this Christian world had to curb their teachings. Philosophies that treated the old gods with too much reverence eventually became unacceptable. Any philosophies that dabbled in predicting the future were cracked down on. Any theories that stated that the world was eternal—for that contradicted the idea of Creation—were, as the academic Dirk Rohmann has pointed out, also suppressed. Philosophers who didn’t cut their cloth to the new shapes allowed by Christianity felt the consequences. In Athens, some decades after Hypatia’s death, a resolutely pagan philosopher found himself exiled for a year.
The stated aims of historians started to change too. When the Greek author Herodotus, the “father of history,” sat down to write the first history he declared that his aim was to make “inquiries”—historias, in Greek—into the relations between the Greeks and the Persians. He did so with such even-handedness that he was accused of tipping over into treachery, of over-praising the Greeks’ enemies and being a philobarbaros—a “barbarian lover,” a viciously insulting word.58 Not all historians were so even-handed, but impartiality was an aim that endured. The last of the pagan historians, Ammianus Marcellinus, struggled to achieve it: posterity, he wrote, ought to be an “impartial judge of the past.”59
Christian historians took a different view. As the influential Christian writer Eusebius—the “father of Church history”—wrote, the job of the historian was not to record everything but instead only those things that would do a Christian good to read. Uncomfortable truths, such as the awkward fact that many Christian clerics, rather than leaping onto the Great Persecution’s pyres, had instead scuttled away from them with undignified haste, were not to be dwelt on. Instead, he crisply announced, “I am determined therefore to say nothing even about those . . . I shall include in my overall account only those things by which first we ourselves, then later generations, may benefit.”60 Herodotus had seen history as an inquiry. The father of Church history saw it as a parable.
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