The Closing of the Western Mind: The Rise of Faith and the Fall of Reason

by Charles Freeman

  So began the so-called crisis of the third century, which saw a series of attacks and border raids by both Sassanids and German tribes over a period of some fifty years (234–84). On the German borders the raids were small in scale; they were nevertheless often humiliating because of both the distance the raiders were able to cover once the frontier had been breached and the major cities that proved vulnerable to the raiders. The Goths reached Ephesus in 253; in 260 the Alamanni assaulted Milan. In 267 Athens was sacked by the Heruli (a people of whom there is no other record), its celebrated Hellenistic stoas destroyed in the onslaught. Some raiders even reached Spain. The Sassanids also had their successes. In 253 or 254 they sacked Antioch, one of the great cities of the eastern empire, and in 260 they inflicted the most profound humiliation of all, the capture of the emperor Valerian, whom Shapur is said to have used as a footstool from which to mount his horse. The triumph of the Sassanids over the Romans was celebrated throughout the Sassanid empire on rock reliefs in which the humbled Roman generals are shown pleading with Shapur for their release.

  The defeats either caused or coincided with a rapid turnover of emperors. Eighteen are known in these fifty years, with average reigns of under three years. The emperor’s authority was heavily dependent on victory in battle; on several occasions defeated emperors were killed by their own men. On the other hand, several victorious generals were to be tempted to declare themselves emperor, turning the Roman armies against each other just at a time when unity was most necessary. Not all the emperors of this period were military failures. Gallienus (260–68) and Claudius II (268–70) had great victories; Claudius’ triumph over the Goths was to become legendary (and was later to be exploited by Constantine for his own ends). Aurelian (270–75) defeated the Alamanni and left a permanent mark on Rome by constructing a vast wall around the city, much of which still stands. Unsurprisingly, the building of walls now became a central preoccupation for cities, and other building projects faltered as a result. There is not a single dedicatory inscription at Olympia dating from after 265. Some emperors proposed innovatory solutions to the crisis, suggesting that the empire’s defence be shared among several emperors ruling concurrently, or the creation of cavalry forces that could respond to raids more rapidly than the infantry legions.

  By the 280s, however, stability seemed no closer. Aurelian and his successor Probus were both killed by their own men. Their successor Carus launched a successful invasion of Persia but died while campaigning. His son Numerian, who was with him, was declared emperor of the east, but was found dead in his litter while the army was returning home. His supposed murderer, the praetorian prefect Aper, was himself killed in front of the army by Diocles, one of his senior officers. Diocles then defeated Carus’ other son, Carinus, and in 284 declared himself sole emperor with the name Diocletian. Remarkably, he was still in power twenty years later, presiding over a settled and reinvigorated empire.3

  Diocletian, like many of the most successful soldiers of the period, was from the Balkans. His background was humble; he may even have been a freed slave or the son of one, and his rise to power showed how much talent counted in these difficult times. Diocletian was tough, an effective general, but an even more remarkable organizer and statesman. He had both the vision to appreciate the necessity for a major reorganization of the empire and the skills to effect it. His achievement was staggering. To enable the empire to respond to attack more swiftly and buttress the stability of the imperial office, he appointed a deputy, Maximian, a fellow commander from the Balkans, as co-emperor with the title of Augustus. Then he appointed two junior “Caesars,” Galerius and Constantius, the intention being that they should succeed the Augusti when either died (the system is known as the Tetrarchy, “a rule in four divisions”). Meanwhile, each of the four was to play an active role in defending the empire. Constantius was sent to the west, to Britain and Gaul; Maximian presided over Italy and the African provinces; Galerius was in charge of the Danube, while Diocletian remained in the east (although Galerius was later to assume command there). Under the Tetrarchy, Rome began to fight back, gradually consolidating its borders. In 297 Galerius’ defeat of the Sassanids resulted in a decades-long peace on the eastern border.

  These victories allowed resources to be released for long-term defence, and a programme of border fortification began. New forts were built, walls and barriers were strengthened and gateways narrowed, enabling them to be held more easily. The army, now some 400,000 strong, appears to have been divided into smaller units to allow it to respond more rapidly to attacks. To finance these developments Diocletian divided the empire into smaller provinces, depriving their governors of their traditional combined role of commander and tax collector. Henceforth in each province a civilian governor concentrated on collecting taxes while a military leader (dux ) was responsible for defence. To increase the efficiency of the tax system, land was assessed according to its productivity and a fixed sum (reviewed every five years) was levied on it. For the first time it was possible for there to be an imperial budget and even some elementary long-term planning. Diocletian tackled the debilitating inflation (arising from the frequent debasing of the coinage) that had accompanied the crisis by introducing a standard gold coin, but when inflation continued (probably as a result of the large numbers of bronze coins still being minted) he attempted an empire-wide Edict of Prices (A.D. 301), which set out an approved price for every kind of produce and fixed rates for each kind of professional service. (A shipwright working on a seagoing ship was to be paid sixty denarii a day, teachers of Greek and geometry 200 denarii per pupil per month, a bathhouse attendant two denarii per bather.) It was far too ambitious an undertaking for a still undeveloped economy and, as socialist-planned economies showed 2,000 years later, only encouraged black-market activity. Despite severe penalties for evasion, the edict became moribund, but it remains a fascinating record of an assessment of comparative values of goods and activities in the empire and, of course, a symbol of Diocletian’s determination.

  The third century saw emperors increasingly distance themselves from their subjects. No longer could an emperor be accosted by an old woman, as Hadrian had been 150 years earlier. The figure of the emperor now emerged as a stage-managed presence, addressed not by name but by abstractions—Your Majesty, Your Serenity. Supplicants had to prostrate themselves and kiss the emperor’s robes before making their petitions. These were frequently conveyed to the emperor and then relayed back through a series of officials so as to preserve his inaccessibility. Emperors dressed in purple, a dye so rare that 1,200 murex shells yielded only 1.6 grams of it. (The Edict of Prices valued purple-dyed wool as equal to its weight in gold, 50,000 denarii a pound.) The emperors displayed themselves in great audience halls; that used by Constantius in the northern border city of Trier still survives, though it has long been stripped of its mosaics and marble wall veneers.

  The distancing saw the emperor linked ever more closely with the gods. The panegyrics, the speeches of praise offered to an emperor on formal occasions, proclaimed that the very fact that Diocletian had come to power confirmed that he was favoured by the gods, a much more explicit recognition of his semi-divine status than had been customary. (The term used to refer to the emperor’s adoption by the gods was consecratio, “a making sacred.”) Diocletian claimed a particular affinity with Zeus, while Maximian preferred Hercules, who had long been associated with commanders, including Alexander the Great. This was a significant development in the ideology of imperialism because it suggested that it was divine favour rather than either human support (of the army or Senate, for instance) or descent that provided the emperor with legitimacy. The emperor was divine by virtue of his successful accession. In the arch of Galerius in Thessalonika, built when Diocletian and Maximian were still alive, they are shown enthroned above the earth and sky.4 Perhaps this marks the moment when the Hellenistic concept of kingship, initiated by Alexander, had been fully absorbed by imperial Rome. The monarch is removed and im
bued with mystery— no longer would an emperor lower himself to engage in debate with philosophers. Imperial authority is clothed with a divine aura.5

  In contrast to Alexander, this did not involve the neglect of administration. If there was a theme to Diocletian’s programme it was to centralize the state so that it could function more coherently and effectively. He built on earlier developments. In 212, for instance, all subjects of the empire except slaves had been made Roman citizens so all could be taxed equally. Diocletian took this further by stressing that a common citizenship meant accepting common responsibility for the state, and so those whose allegiances were questionable suddenly found themselves more vulnerable. Prominent among these were the Christians, who, through their resolute rejection of paganism, found themselves in open defiance of the state, “the whore of Babylon,” and its traditional gods, and thus were unable to take part in any public ceremonies or sacrifices. The Christians were well organized, with a clear structure of authority (the bishops); an evolving theology based on worship of the Christian God, drawn from the God of Judaism, and a “saviour,” Jesus Christ, who was believed to have been some form of manifestation (exactly what kind of manifestation remained vigorously disputed) of God in human form; its own calendar, which evolved around its own feast days; initiation rites that distinguished believers from non-believers; and, like the schools of philosophy, its own ethical demands. In the unsettled conditions of the third century, Christians provided secure communities, and even army officers and state officials were now converting. Some of the eastern cities may have had a Christian majority by 300.

  The state had always been uneasy about Christians. They posed the classic political dilemma: how far can one show tolerance to a group that itself condemns the tolerance of the state in allowing pagan worship to continue? Christians did not deny the existence of the pagan gods, but they saw them as demons and believed pagans would suffer eternal punishment after death. Up to the third century, persecution of Christians had been erratic, dependent on the whim of individual provincial governors; the crisis of the third century induced the first empire-wide persecution, under the emperor Decius in 250–51, during which bishops in particular were a target. (It has been argued, none the less, that Decius’ objective, as outlined in his edict, was the restoration of traditional cults rather than the persecution of Christians per se.) 6 It remained possible for Christianity to survive; persecutions waxed and waned, and in practice the desperate need for talent in the army and the administration allowed Christians to remain in prominent positions. In many cases a senior official or soldier was dismissed or executed only after every possible means of making him offer a token sacrifice to the state had been tried. By the fourth century, however, Diocletian had to face up to the logic of his centralizing reforms: a large community that refused to show any allegiance to the gods of the empire could no longer be tolerated. Yet Diocletian was a shrewd politician. He was reluctant to become involved in a politically unwinnable campaign against a determined minority. Although in previous persecutions many Christians had capitulated, others had resisted to the point of martyrdom, willingly accepting their reward in heaven in preference to a life stuck in the misery of the material world. Jesus and several of his immediate followers, including Peter and Paul, had died at the hands of the state, so one might say that the readiness to suffer martyrdom was intrinsic to Christian commitment. While Galerius, who had much of the fanatic about him, wished to launch a devastating persecution, Diocletian was more cautious. He consulted widely and even sent to the oracle at Didyma on the coast of Asia Minor for advice.

  When Diocletian finally decided to move against the Christians, his actions were marked by their restraint. His first edict (303) was directed at Christian property—buildings, texts, sacred vessels—rather than Christians themselves. Many bishops ordered their congregations to give up property, believing the faith would survive without it, but other congregations, notably in north Africa, refused to surrender anything and condemned those who had. So the persecutions led to a major and enduring schism. As tensions rose, any chance of compromise with the authorities receded. A fire in Diocletian’s palace at Nicomedia was blamed on Christians, and uprisings in the east were also seen as Christian in inspiration. Diocletian might still have held back, but his own health was deteriorating and power was shifting towards Galerius (who was to become Augustus in the east when Diocletian abdicated in May 305). New decrees now demanded that all Christian clergy be imprisoned until they were prepared to sacrifice to the gods of the state and then, in April 304, that all Christians should be required to sacrifice on penalty of death.

  Subsequent events depended on the vigour of the local emperors and their governors. In the west Constantius used persecution very sparingly, concentrating only on property belonging to Christians, while in the east Galerius was able to unleash his hatred for Christians. In some provinces the legal process broke down completely as Christians were rounded up, tortured and executed, although even in the east, other governors were able to deflect the legislation, claiming that all local Christians had sacrificed. One way of sidestepping the edicts was simply to ask Christians to affirm the existence of a supreme deity and not require any confirmation as to whether this was Zeus or the Christian God. There is evidence that in Alexandria many Christians were sheltered by pagans.

  The impetus behind the orgy of bloodletting soon faltered, and by 310 persecution had become haphazard and without fervour. Galerius was desperately ill with bowel cancer. The Christian writer Lactantius revelled in describing the symptoms that God had sent him in punishment for the persecution he had instigated: “His bowels came out, his whole anus putrefied . . . the stench filled not just the palace but the whole city . . . his body, in intolerable tortures, dissolved into one mass of corruption.” He died in 311. 7 Christianity survived. While the stress of persecution had divided Christian against Christian, the faith itself had proved highly resilient in the face of oppression.

  Christianity and the new authoritarian empire of Diocletian were clearly incompatible, but there was an alternative to destructive and debilitating persecutions, and that was to absorb the religion within the authoritarian structure of the state, thus defusing it as a threat. Whatever his motives, personal or political, in first tolerating and then supporting Christianity, this was to be the achievement of Constantine. Before exploring his transformation of Christianity, however, we must make some attempt to understand how this religion, which had been a response to the execution of an apparent enemy of the empire by one of its provincial governors, had survived at all.8

  8

  JESUS

  The past thirty years have been especially fruitful for the study of early Christianity. This is partly because the churches appear more to be relaxed about the uncertainties of research findings but also because the available sources, particularly the range of Jewish texts, preeminent among them the Dead Sea Scrolls, have expanded enormously. We are better able to set Jesus within a historical context than at any time since the first century. If we can sum up the rich diversity of modern scholarship, it is distinguished both by the acceptance of the essential Jewish-ness of Jesus and by a fuller understanding of what it means to say that Jesus was Jewish in the first century of the Christian era. While traditional interpretations of Jesus have seen him as somehow apart from Judaism, his mission always focused on the outside world, it is now argued not only that he preached and taught within Judaism but even that he was advocating a return to traditional Jewish values. Nevertheless, the continuing lack of Jewish sources for Jesus’ life means that any interpretation of his role and mission has to be made with caution. 1

  There are only a few historical references to Jesus outside the New Testament, and one of these, by the Jewish historian Josephus, may have been rewritten by Christians at a later date.2 The earliest New Testament sources are Paul’s letters, written in the 50s, not much more than twenty years after Jesus’ crucifixion, but they say virtually no
thing about Jesus’ life. Later than Paul, but drawing on earlier material, are the four surviving Gospels, written for early Christian communities in the Gentile (Greco-Roman) world. As Luke reminds his readers in the opening verse of his Gospel, there were many other accounts of Jesus’ activities (scholars suggest that there may have originally been some twenty Gospels), but these are now all lost apart from the odd fragment; the four we know were accepted as canonical (authoritative) during the second century. Other later non-canonical texts, such as the Gospel of St. Thomas, which does survive (in part) from the second century, and the mass of material from the Nag Hammadi library (a collection of papyrus codices of works from the third to fifth centuries discovered at Nag Hammadi in modern Egypt in 1945–46, some of which draw on second-century sources), are probably too late to be of much historical value. All four Gospels, as well as Paul’s letters, were originally written in Greek, although on occasion they preserve Jesus’ words in their original Aramaic. There is no account of Jesus’ life written from a Jewish perspective, unless one interprets Matthew’s Gospel in this light (see below). Also lost is a rich oral tradition—it is known that until about A.D. 135 many Christian communities preferred to pass on their knowledge of Jesus by word of mouth. Only a tiny proportion of what was originally recorded, whether orally or in writing, about Jesus has survived; some texts simply disappeared, others were suppressed as interpretations of Jesus evolved in the early Christian communities. The very fact that there are four different accounts of Jesus’ mission and that these reached their final form some decades after his crucifixion suggests that a coherent historical (and, equally, a coherent spiritual or divine) Jesus will be difficult to recover. 3

  Most scholars now assume that Mark is the earliest of the surviving Gospels, perhaps written about A.D. 70, forty years after Jesus’ death. It is the shortest of the canonical Gospels and begins with Jesus’ baptism by John the Baptist and ends in its original version with the discovery of his empty tomb. (In other words, there are no birth stories and the resurrection accounts were added later.) It is believed to have been written for a Christian community in Rome and composed to be read aloud to them. Then follow Luke (after 70) and Matthew (between 80 and 90), drawing on a common (lost) source (known as “Q,” from the German Quelle, or “source”) as well as on Mark. There is no agreement among scholars as to where Luke’s Gospel was written, but there is a degree of consensus in the belief that Matthew’s was written for a community in Antioch in Syria. These three are known as the Synoptic Gospels (the word “synoptic,” “with the same eye,” reflecting their shared perspective on Jesus’ life). The last of the canonical Gospels, that of John, dated from about A.D. 100, is very different from the earlier three and is a more considered theological interpretation of Jesus’ life in which, for the first time, he is presented as divine. In one or two instances, the accounts of Jesus’ trial, for example, John appears to draw on an independent witness and in some ways his Gospel, though the most removed from events, may in fact be the most historically accurate.