Power and Persuasion in Late Antiquity: Towards a Christian Empire
Peter Brown
Number of quotes: 66
Book ID: 183 Page: 4
Section: 4A
….the system of education that went by the name of paideia.
Quote ID: 4008
Time Periods: 023
Book ID: 183 Page: 4
Section: 4A
In the last decades of the fourth century, bishops and monks showed that they could sway the will of the powerful as effectively as had any philosopher.They were, in many ways, disturbingly new protagonists. But they had been able to make their debut on the stage of late Roman politics because contemporaries needed them to act according to scripts that had been written, in previous centuries, by men of paideia.
. . . .
They were “true” philosophers. They played the ancient part of the courageous and free-spoken man of wisdom, but in playing this ancient role they invested it with a heavy charge of novel meaning.
Quote ID: 4009
Time Periods: 234
Book ID: 183 Page: 5
Section: 4A
The emperor’s willingness to listen to bishops, as he had once listened to philosophers, implied his recognition of new forms of local power. This power could wear a sinister face: its non-Christian victims spoke of it, accurately enough, as a “usurped authority.”{2} The unauthorized demolition of major shrines of the old religion, unpunished attacks on Jewish synagogues, and, finally, the lynching of a leading member of the prestigious town council of Alexandria, the woman philosopher Hypatia, in 415, were acts of violence that showed that the cities themselves had changed.
Quote ID: 4010
Time Periods: 45
Book ID: 183 Page: 6
Section: 4B
A knowledge of Roman law and an ability to speak to the great in their own Latin tongue remained a sine qua non for success at the court, and in the provinces, a command of Latin conferred priceless advantages on Greek speakers faced with the perpetual, intrusive presence of a Mediterranean-wide Roman state.
Quote ID: 4012
Time Periods: 45
Book ID: 183 Page: 13
Section: 4B
The frank letters of Pliny, while governor of Bithynia, to the emperor Trajan have no late Roman equivalents.
Quote ID: 4014
Time Periods: 12
Book ID: 183 Page: 13
Section: 5D
It is best to begin with the ceremony of adventus, the solemn entry of the emperor or his representatives into a city.
Quote ID: 4015
Time Periods: ?
Book ID: 183 Page: 15/16
Section: 2D
At the council assembled at Ephesus in June 431, Cyril, acting swiftly and on his own initiative, had pushed through the condemnation of Nestorius, then patriarch of Constantinople, in the name of a Christological formula: the human and divine natures in Christ had been indissolubly and instantly linked at the very moment of his conception in the womb of the Virgin Mary. Mary must henceforth be called Theotokos, “she who gave birth to God.” To deny the formula, as elaborated by Cyril in singularly intransigent terms, was to incur the anathema of all orthodox Christians.. . . .
When John and the bishops of the East finally arrived on June 26, they found that Cyril had acted: Nestorius had already been condemned in a tumultuous assembly.
John and his retinue returned, aggrieved and unconvinced, to Antioch. It was now the duty of Theodosius II, as emperor, to command John to accept the condemnation of Nestorius and its theological corollary, the anathema declared by Cyril against all who opposed his own views. The tribune Aristolaos was, accordingly, dispatched to Antioch in the fall of 431, with instructions to impose the decision of the council.
Quote ID: 4016
Time Periods: 5
Book ID: 183 Page: 16/17
Section: 3A1
To this end, Cyril authorized his agents in Constantinople to mobilize the major figures of the court and city.. . . .
As for the officials of the palace, they were to be paid “whatever their greed demands.”
. . . .
These instructions were accompanied by a detailed list of sums of money and de luxe articles of furniture to be distributed as “blessings” from Cyril. One thousand eighty pounds of gold……., 14 ivory high-backed thrones, 36 thrones, 36 throne covers, 12 door hangings, and 22 tablecloths. A hundred pounds of gold (the equivalent of a year’s support for 4 bishops or for 1,800 members of the poor), for instance, went to the wife of the praetorian prefect, and fifty pounds went to his legal adviser.
. . . .
It was a small price to pay for the peace of the church. A man passionately committed to using the sovereign power of the emperor Theodosius II in order to ensure the victory of his own theological views, Cyril ….
Quote ID: 4017
Time Periods: 5
Book ID: 183 Page: 29
Section: 3A1,3A2A
In the same way, almost a century later the emperor Theodosius II was able to bring the upper-class residents and clergy of Constantinople to heel, by reminding them that he might look into the tax arrears of anyone who opposed the theological views of his favorite, the monk Eutyches.{109}
Quote ID: 4019
Time Periods: 5
Book ID: 183 Page: 33
Section: 1A,3A1
Nor did it represent an old-world idyll, at odds with reality. Despite the more drastic assertion of state power that characterized the fourth century, a system of government based upon collusion with the upper classes had continued to idle under a centuries-old momentum. Nor was such “concord” invariably artificial. In the words of Edward Thompson: “Once a social system has become ‘set,’ it does not need to be endorsed daily by exhibitions of power. . . . What matters more is a continuing theatrical style.” {124}
Quote ID: 4021
Time Periods: 14
Book ID: 183 Page: 34
Section: 3A1,4B
For it is only by comparing the widely accepted codes of political behavior, linked to the paideia of the civic notables, with the emergent Christian culture of the bishops and the monks that we can measure the extent and the significance of the change in “theatrical style” that came about in the last decades of the fourth century. In that crucial generation, Christian spokesmen, representing the needs of Christian congregations in the cities, began to intervene in the politics of the empire. As we shall see, however, they frequently did so by taking on roles, in their confrontation with those in power, that had originally been elaborated by men of paideia.
Quote ID: 4022
Time Periods: 45
Book ID: 183 Page: 44
Section: 4B
A man of paideia was a man who knew how to command respect, not be violent (as those who wielded official power might do), but through the potent “spell” of his personal eloquence.{47} He had “come to possess a magical device stronger than the resources of any mere administrator.”{48}
Quote ID: 4028
Time Periods: 45
Book ID: 183 Page: 44/45
Section: 4B
In Athens in the late 330s, the proconsul of Achaia, a man from the Latin West, had arrested a group of students and their professors for rowdyism. At the last moment, the young Prohaeresius, a tall Armenian of striking demeanor, was allowed to come forward. “He . . . first delivered a premium. . . . It launched out and soon slid into a pitiable account of the sufferings of the students, and he inserted an encomium of their teacher. In this premium he let fall only one allusion to a grievance concerning the proconsul’s high-handed behavior. . . . At this the proconsul was overcome by the force of his arguments, his weighty style, his facility and sonorous eloquence.”. . .
“Then up jumped the proconsul, and shaking his purple edged cloak (the Roman call it a tebennos [or toga]), that austere and inexorable judge applauded Prohaeresius like a schoolboy.”{52}
Pastor John’s note: wow
Quote ID: 4029
Time Periods: 4
Book ID: 183 Page: 45
Section: 4B
Indeed, it helped him to recognize such friends. Paideia showed itself through philia, through a carefully nurtured art of friendship, that aimed to recapture, in the midst of the cares of public life, some of the light-hearted enthusiasm of an upper-class adolescence. Charis and hémerotés, graciousness and gentle courtesy, with their all-important accompaniment, a willingness to grant favors to men of similar background, were the hallmark of the educated person.{53}
Quote ID: 4030
Time Periods: 45
Book ID: 183 Page: 48
Section: 4B
The measured speech of a cultivated speaker of Greek or Latin was “a small sot of coherence in a sea of noise.”{65} It carried with it a sense of quiet triumph over all that was slovenly, unformed, and rebellious in the human voice and so, by implication, in the human person. It was a fragile speck of order in a violent and discordant world.
Quote ID: 4033
Time Periods: 45
Book ID: 183 Page: 50
Section: 4B
So much alert attention to deportment betrays a fact almost too big to be seen. We are in a world characterized by a chilling absence of legal restraints on violence in the exercise of power. This was not a situation that had begun only with the later empire. For centuries philosophers and teachers had grappled with the intensely personal nature of power in ancient society.
Quote ID: 4034
Time Periods: 45
Book ID: 183 Page: 52
Section: 4B
Thus, a tide of horror lapped close to the feet of all educated persons. Not surprisingly, legal exemption from corporal punishment was a tenaciously defended mark of special status for even the most humble member of the class of notables.
Quote ID: 4035
Time Periods: 45
Book ID: 183 Page: 56
Section: 2A
One development in the public life of the later empire actively encouraged such appeals to decorum. It was an age of ceremony.. . . .
The huge ceremoniousness of late Roman life proved a two-edged weapon in the hands of those who wielded power. Ceremonious behavior was not only imposed from the imperial court down, but it also depended for its effectiveness on appealing to precisely the ideals of harmony and self-control associated with paideia. As a result, ceremony did not simply exalt the powerful; it controlled them, by ritualizing their responses and by bridling their raw nature through measured gestures. By so doing, ceremony insensibly worked the ideals of paideia into the texture of government. Only power wielded in a self-controlled and dignified manner carried full authority.
Quote ID: 4036
Time Periods: 456
Book ID: 183 Page: 58
Section: 4B
Throughout these centuries, emperors drawn from a wide variety of social backgrounds maintained a high level of decorum. To become an emperor was to assume, in public, a mask of upper-class dignity and self-restraint.{117}
Quote ID: 4037
Time Periods: ?
Book ID: 183 Page: 62
Section: 4A
Parrhésia, therefore, was devolved to another, notoriously eccentric, figure—the philosopher. He was a well-chosen spokesman. He almost always belonged to the notable class and shared in their paideia to a high degree.
Quote ID: 4039
Time Periods: 234
Book ID: 183 Page: 62
Section: 4A
But the philosopher’s way of life was pointedly different. He was held to owe nothing to ties of patronage and friendship. He was a man who, by a heroic effort of the mind, had found freedom from society. For that reason, he carried his right to parrhésia in his own person.
Quote ID: 4040
Time Periods: 234
Book ID: 183 Page: 62
Section: 4A
In the earlier centuries of the empire, the tranquil, bearded figure of the philosopher, with bare chest and simple cloak, carrying a leather satchel and a staff, had been the focus of clearly defined and stable expectations: owing nothing to any man, the philosopher acted as the privileged counterpoint to those who exercised power.{138} In late antiquity, this image of the philosopher had remained alive; ….
Quote ID: 4041
Time Periods: 234
Book ID: 183 Page: 63/64
Section: 4A
Hence the fourth-century image of the philosopher was double-sided. The philosopher was a man free from society. He owed nothing to his peers and positively avoided those who exercised power. If he enjoyed wealth, culture, and social status (as many did), he did not allow these material advantages to compromise his freedom.. . . .
But it was precisely in a self-created solitude that the philosopher developed the intelligence and strength of character which enabled him to intervene in the world around him. The fact that many philosophers were quite content with solitude did not mean that others did not feel obligated, even tempted, to undertake the occasional venture into public life.
. . . .
Only the philosopher, a man who had overcome anger and fear in himself, could stand in the way of the anger of others. He could brave the menacing power of the great and ensure that his voice was heard in their councils. He was expected to bring amnesty for those caught in the toils of a political system in which, as we have seen, anger was ever-present. For this reason, we find philosophers continually admired for their ability to mingle with the celsae potestates, the emperor and his entourage, as few notables would have dared to have done.
Quote ID: 4042
Time Periods: 234
Book ID: 183 Page: 64
Section: 3A2A
In the pages of Ammianus, philosophers, by contrast, show no such fear. They stand out in high relief against the terrible glow of the torture chamber.
Quote ID: 4043
Time Periods: 4
Book ID: 183 Page: 65
Section: 3A2A,3C
An acute sense of the need for physical courage led Ammianus, though loyal to the old gods, to speak with respect of the Christian cult of the martyrs. No better than executed criminals and objects of charnel horror to many others,{147} true Christian martyrs impressed Ammianus because, like philosophers, they had put their bodies “on the line” by facing suffering and death:….
Quote ID: 4044
Time Periods: 234
Book ID: 183 Page: 65
Section: 4A
Furthermore, the philosopher, precisely because he was known to be fearless, brought to bear the decisive quality of parrhésia, candid speech and good counsel offered without fear or favor. In the world we have described, this was an infinitely precious social elixir. Galen had been convinced that no civic notable, ….. could be trusted to tell the truth; …
Quote ID: 4045
Time Periods: 234
Book ID: 183 Page: 67
Section: 4B
In reality, of course, not all interventions involved the imperial wrath. The normal business of the court concerned the workings of a vast patronage system.
Quote ID: 4046
Time Periods: 56
Book ID: 183 Page: 70
Section: 4A
The conversion of Constantine to Christianity in 312 had little effect on a style of rule still based on collaboration with the local elites. When in 388 the emperor Theodosius I left Constantinople to conquer Italy from the Gallic usurper Maximus, he acted in the traditional manner. The venerable Themistius, now approaching seventy, was among those left in charge of the education of Theodosius’ son, the young prince Arcadius.. . . .
Theodosius would soon have to deal with a former provincial governor now entering his fifties, Ambrose, Catholic bishop of Milan: the encounter was to prove more drastic than any he had experienced in his dealings with the urbane Themistius. A new type of “philosopher” had emerged.
Quote ID: 4047
Time Periods: 4
Book ID: 183 Page: 71/72
Section: 4A
The monks, in reality, came from a wide variety of social backgrounds and were far from averse to reading and producing books.{3} But Christian writers consistently presented them as men untouched by paideia. The monk was the antithesis of the philosopher, the representative of the educated upper classes. Anthony had been a farmer’s son, ignorant of Greek and taught by God alone.{4}
Quote ID: 4048
Time Periods: 234
Book ID: 183 Page: 72
Section: 4A,2E2
The rise to prominence of Christian monks was a warning signal.
Quote ID: 4049
Time Periods: 4
Book ID: 183 Page: 73
Section: 4A,2E2
The monks could utter the gros mots that broke the spell of paideia. As tutor to the sons of Theodosius I, Arsenius would have known the aging philosopher Themistius, his colleague at the court. He fled from the palace of Constantinople to Egypt, to save his soul. Over a decade later he emerged from the hermitages of the Wadi Natrun...
Quote ID: 4050
Time Periods: 4
Book ID: 183 Page: 73
Section: 4A,2E2
He had once represented the prestige of paideia at the imperial court. Now he hung on the words of his spiritual guide, an elderly Egyptian: “I knew Greek and Latin learning. But I have not yet learned the ABC with this peasant.”{11}
Quote ID: 4051
Time Periods: 4
Book ID: 183 Page: 94
Section: 3A3B
For Chrysostom, these poor belonged as if “to another city.”{125} It was by stressing their relationship with the “other city” of the poor that the bishops projected a form of authority within the city that outflanked the traditional leadership of the notables quite as effectively as Christian admiration of the monks, the illiterate heroes of the desert, outflanked their claim to esteem based upon a monopoly of paideia.
Quote ID: 4052
Time Periods: 56
Book ID: 183 Page: 94
Section: 3A3B
Even if it were still a minority, in the face of polytheists and Jews, a church that was seen to reach out to the distant fringe of society, as dramatically represented by the poor, had already established a prospective moral right to stand for the community as a whole.Love of the poor also provided an acceptable raison d’être for the growing wealth of the church.
Quote ID: 4053
Time Periods: 56
Book ID: 183 Page: 95
Section: 3A3B
Care of the poor, therefore, was a potential centrifugal force within the Christian community. It favored wealthy families and could bypass the bishop and clergy. It was by a massive gift of alms to the poor that the wealthy widow Lucilla secured the election of one of her servants, Majorinus, as bishop of Carthage in 311.{129}
Quote ID: 4054
Time Periods: 45
Book ID: 183 Page: 95
Section: 4B
Yet the taint of private wealth remained. One had only to enter a church in fourth-century northern Italy and elsewhere to see the manner in which private persons displayed their wealth within the Christian community. The shimmering mosaic floors of the new basilicas were divided up into sections, each one of which bore the name of a donor, of his family, or even portraits of donors.{131} The civic ideal of euergesia, the ancient search for personal fame through well-publicized giving, had entered the church in a peculiarly blatant form.
Quote ID: 4055
Time Periods: 45
Book ID: 183 Page: 96
Section: 4B
By being taken into the hands of the bishop, as the “wealth of the poor,” the wealth of the church became public wealth. It would be displayed by the bishop in a manner calculated to put all other groups to shame.
Quote ID: 4056
Time Periods: 45
Book ID: 183 Page: 96
Section: 4B
We do not know, region by region, what the Christian church actually did for the poor in the cities of the later empire.{134} What we do know, from our evidence, is how the care of the poor became a dramatic component of the Christian representation of the bishop’s authority in the community.
Quote ID: 4057
Time Periods: 45
Book ID: 183 Page: 97
Section: 3A3A,4B
On the great feasts of the year, the poor were put on view, through processions and solemn banquets: “This word have we spoken concerning the poor: God hath established the bishop because of the feasts, that he may refresh them at the feasts.”{138}These occasions may not, in fact, have significantly alleviated the state of the poor, but they carried a clear ceremonial message that was closely watched by contemporaries. Ambrose was accused by his enemies of having scattered gold pieces to the poor.{139} His gesture of almsgiving was presented by his enemies as the usurpation of an imperial prerogative. Only the emperor, a man raised by fortune above all concern for wealth, could shower gold, the most precious of all metals, on the populace.{140}
It is significant that ceremonial rivalry of this kind came to be tolerated in the fourth century. By being made visible, the poor were also made amenable to control.
Quote ID: 4058
Time Periods: 4
Book ID: 183 Page: 97/98
Section: 4B
A potentially disruptive element on the margins of the great cities, the poor were enlisted to acclaim the bishop and the Christian rich with the same deferential fervor as that with which the démos acclaimed the civic notables. Their hands upraised in thanks in the courtyards of great churches now echoed in miniature the solemn scenes in the theater that bound the city to its benefactors.{141}Compared with the “Nile of gifts” expected of a civic notable, the sums involved on such occasions were minute.
. . . .
But these outlays happened on a regular basis, and in a more frankly face-to-face manner than was the case with the high ceremonials of a notable’s euergesia. They offered a means of fostering goodwill, broken down into smaller units and displayed more frequently, for a trifle of the cost of civic munificence.
Quote ID: 4059
Time Periods: 45
Book ID: 183 Page: 98
Section: 3A1A,3A3B,4B
The traditional solution, favored by the upperclass residents, was the all able-bodied beggars should become the slaves or the serfs (depending on their previous status) of those who denounced them to the authorities.{143} The Christian church offered a less-drastic way of stabilizing the population. It bore the cost of keeping the poor in one place. They were enrolled on the matricula, on poor rolls kept by the bishop and clergy. These rolls are referred to in cities as far apart as Hippo in North Africa and Edessa in eastern Syria.{144} In becoming the “poor of the church,” the poor were stabilized: they could not move to other cities. Begging itself came to require a permit that bore the bishop’s signature.{145}. . . .
It was perhaps for that reason (and not only to increase the appeal of Christianity) that Constantine ostentatiously fostered the expansion of poor relief in major cities. He assigned supplies of food and clothing to the poor of the churches, to be administered by the bishop alone.{146}
Pastor John’s note: Wow!!
Quote ID: 4060
Time Periods: 47
Book ID: 183 Page: 100
Section: 3A1,3A4B
For this reason, the recognition by Constantine of the bishop’s court of arbitration, his episcopalis audientia, proved decisive for the elaboration of a Christian representation of society. For this court gave reality to the subtle shift by which the bishop, as “lover of the poor,” became also the protector of the lower classes.The episcopalis audientia was not, by any means, a court open only to the humble.
. . . .
These parties could be rich landowners. Some even became Christians in order to avail themselves of the services of the bishop, as a cheap and expeditious arbitrator.{154}
. . . .
Roman law, based on careful consultation with experts, determined the bishop’s judgment.{156}
Quote ID: 4061
Time Periods: 4
Book ID: 183 Page: 102/103
Section: 3A1,3A3B,3A2
By 418, the “most reverend bishop” commanded, in effect, a hand-picked force of some five hundred men with strong arms and backs, the parabalani, who were nominally entrusted with the “care of the bodies of the weak” as stretcher-beaters and hospital orderlies.{170} The massed presence of the parabalani made itself felt in the theater, in the law courts, and in front of the town hall of Aleandria. The town council was forced to complain to the emperor of such intimidation.{171}While the patriarch of Alexandria became notorious for his use of such groups, he was by no means alone. The patriarch of Antioch also commanded a threatening body of lecticarii, pallbearers for the burial of the urban poor.{172} The extensive development of the underground cemeteries of the Christian community in Rome, the famous catacombs, from the early third century onwards, placed at the disposal of the bishop a team of fossores, grave diggers skilled in excavating the tufa rock, as strong and as pugnacious as were the legendary Durham coal miners who intervened in the rowdy elections of the nineteenth century.{173} During the disputed election in which Damasus became bishop of Rome in 366, the fossores played a prominent role in a series of murderous assaults on the supporters of his rival.{174} Throughout the empire, the personnel associated with the bishop’s care of the poor had become a virtual urban militia.
Quote ID: 4062
Time Periods: 34
Book ID: 183 Page: 103
Section: 3A1,3A2
As protector of the poor, the Christian bishop had achieved an unexpected measure of public prominence by the last decade of the fourth century.. . . .
Ambrose of Milan drew his own conclusion in 388: “The bishops are the controllers of the crowds, the keen upholders of peace, unless, of course [he added ominously], they are moved by insults to God and to His church.”{175}
Quote ID: 4063
Time Periods: 4
Book ID: 183 Page: 105
Section: 3D
Theodosius was forced to tax the cities more heavily than ever before.{182} If he was to do this, he had to make plain, to the empire at large, with which group he preferred to negotiate in order to maintain the loyalty of the townsfolk in a time of increasing unpopularity.. . . .
It was to the bishops and the monks, rather than to the grave Themistius or the cautious Libanius, that Theodosius decided to turn.
Quote ID: 4064
Time Periods: 4
Book ID: 183 Page: 107
Section: 3A2B
The monks took advantage of Cynegius’ mission to fall on temples all over Syria, the Euphrates frontier, the Phoenicia.{195} These wild men could be convincingly presented by the notables of Antioch as lower-class fomenters of violence. As Libanius wrote at the time: “This black-robed tribe, who eat more than elephants . . . sweep across the countryside like a river in spate . . . and, by ravaging the temples, they ravage the estates.”{196}
Quote ID: 4065
Time Periods: 4
Book ID: 183 Page: 108/109
Section: 3A1,3A2A
The military authorities were furious. Even Theodosius agreed: “The monks commit many atrocities.”{202} The bishop was ordered to pay for the rebuilding of the synagogue.By that time Theodosius was in northern Italy, having defeated Maximus. In a tense interview in the cathedral basilica of Milan, Bishop Ambrose refused, despite shouts of protest from the general Timasius, to begin the Eucharistic liturgy—with its solemn prayer for the emperor and his armies—until Theodosius countermanded the order.{203}
. . . .
He gave in to Ambrose.
Quote ID: 4066
Time Periods: 4
Book ID: 183 Page: 116
Section: 3A2A
The sight of so many official carriages drawn up outside the door of Hypatia’s mansion was too much for the patriarch.{248} Cyril had been elected only a few years previously, in October 412. Riots had accompanied his hurried investiture and had left his authority tarnished. With the peculiar ruthlessness of the insecure, he set about establishing his position in the city.
Quote ID: 4068
Time Periods: 5
Book ID: 183 Page: 116
Section: 3A2A
Hypatia was dragged from her coach as she drove through the city. A Christian mob, led by a lay reader and almost certainly reinforced by the dread parabalani of the patriarch, stoned her to death in the courtyard that opened up in front of the major church.{250} Her body was hacked to pieces with shards of pottery, and what was left was burned in a public square. It was a deliberate act of total annihilation, a “cleansing” of the land, similar to that achieved through the burning of the statues of the gods.
Quote ID: 4069
Time Periods: 5
Book ID: 183 Page: 119
Section: 3A1,3D
The bishops who had emerged, relatively suddenly, as new figures in local society tended, in the eastern empire, to come from backgrounds similar to that of Gregory. They were local notables, proud of their good birth and of their possession of paideia.{2}. . . .
But after the death of Theodosius I in 395 and especially in the course of the preternaturally long, faceless reign of his grandson, Theodosius II, from 408 to 450, it was plain that a new equilibrium had been reached. Like stones shaken in a sieve, the upper classes of the cities took on a new complexion: the Christian bishop and his clergy were more prominent than before. But the same stones remained, if redistributed in a different pattern.
Quote ID: 4071
Time Periods: 45
Book ID: 183 Page: 119
Section: 3D
We do not know to what extent an emperor such as Theodosius I either foresaw or thought that he could control the outcome of his repeated decisions to grant parrhésia to Christian monks and bishops. But the reshuffling of local factions that resulted from this decision could not have been more consistent with the traditions of the Roman past, even if he had planned it.
Quote ID: 4072
Time Periods: 4
Book ID: 183 Page: 119
Section: 1A
Even developments that could be presented, with good reason, as novel features of the rise of Christianity came to be expressed in a language that had not broken with the past.
Quote ID: 4073
Time Periods: 45
Book ID: 183 Page: 122/123
Section: 4B
Paideia continued to provide the bishops of the fifth century with what they needed most—the means of living at peace with their neighbors. The newly edited letters of Firmus, bishop of Caesarea, Basil’s former see (who died in 439), make this plain. Their interest lies in the fact that they are so uninteresting. They show how a bishop, whom we know to have been an active participant in the ecclesiastical maneuvering associated with the Council of Ephesus, maintained his alliances in the old manner.. . . .
Bishops such as Firmus cast the spell of paideia over what had remained a potentially faction-ridden community.
A subtle shift occurred by which the rhetorical antithesis between non-Christian paideia and “true” Christianity was defused. Paideia was no longer treated as the all-embracing and supreme ideal of a gentleman’s life. It was seen, instead, as the necessary first stage in the life cycle of the Christian public man. A traditional ornament, paideia was also a preparatory school of Christian character.
Quote ID: 4075
Time Periods: 5
Book ID: 183 Page: 124/125
Section: 2A1
“A bishop shall baptize me . . . and he of noble birth, for it would be a sad thing for my nobility to be insulted by being baptized by a man of no family.”{26}. . . .
In the conditions of the fifth century, these attitudes gave members of the upper classes room for maneuver. They needed time to make up their minds. If they had to conform to the dominant religion, they wished to feel free to do so without seeming unduly hurried. They had not submitted to brute force.
Quote ID: 4077
Time Periods: 5
Book ID: 183 Page: 125/126
Section: 3A1
In every region, the tacit alliance between potentially conflicting segments of the urban elite was sealed by the fear of alternatives. These elites knew that they lived in a threatened empire. Quite apart from determined enemies on every frontier—on the Danube, the Euphrates, and the Nile—the countryside of Asia Minor and northern Syria was racked by brigandage, based in the Taurus Mountains. In Palestine, the revolt of profoundly disaffected groups, Jews and Samaritans, remained a constant threat.Nor was the sacralized violence of the monks much to the liking of many bishops. We frequently find bishops allying with the city’s elite to keep monks out of town and to defend the ancient customs of the city.
Quote ID: 4078
Time Periods: 45
Book ID: 183 Page: 126
Section: 3D
Altogether, the closing of the ranks of a central core of Christian notables against obdurate non-Christians, on the one hand, and against the radical forces that their more ruthless predecessors had unleashed, on the other, explains the deceptively unruffled consensus of the new eastern empire of the age of Theodosius II.
Quote ID: 4079
Time Periods: 5
Book ID: 183 Page: 128
Section: 1A
Altogether, the impression conveyed by many modern scholars, that the fourth century A.D. was characterized by a widespread and fully conscious conflict between Christianity and paganism, derives, in large part, from a skillful construct first presented to the Roman world by the Christian historians of the fifth century.
Quote ID: 4080
Time Periods: 45
Book ID: 183 Page: 136
Section: 3A1
It was the flesh and bone of access to the imperial power that came to count in the fifth century. A groundswell of confidence that Christians enjoyed access to the powerful spelled the end of polytheism far more effectively than did any imperial law or the closing of any temple.
Quote ID: 4081
Time Periods: 5
Book ID: 183 Page: 139
Section: 3A4C
Having spent much of his [Synesius] time as a lay notable deploring the inertia of the military men who defended Cyrenaica against the nomads, he now found himself, as bishop, manning the walls of Ptolemais.{99} As a bishop, he was at least as successful as he would have been had he remained a civic notable. He deployed the same methods: letters to friends at court, appeals to the ancient glory of the city, and skillful invectives were more useful to him than was the novel power of excommunication.
Quote ID: 4082
Time Periods: 45
Book ID: 183 Page: 141
Section: 3A3B
Shenoute [PJ: of of Atripe] was a patron and spokesman in the grand manner. He linked Upper Egypt to Alexandria and thence to Constantinople.. . . .
In the name of Christian care of the poor, Shenoute had undertaken the feeding of the equivalent of a whole town for three months. It was what an old-fashion tropheus, a “nourisher” of the community, had once been expected to do.{111} The more tangible miracle of an imperial tax exemption for the lands of the White Monastery soon followed. It was an entirely appropriate, and traditional, return for a public service undertaken by a private person, whose scale and careful self-advertisement were worthy of the great urban benefactors of earlier times.
Quote ID: 4084
Time Periods: 45
Book ID: 183 Page: 141
Section: 3A4C
Yet further to the South, in the frontier district of Syene, the bishop, Appion, petitioned the emperor directly, to place more troops in the region under the bishop’s command in order to protect the churches and the populations that sought refuge around them: “Your philanthropy is accustomed to reach out the right hand to all who beseech you . . . and so I throw myself on the ground, before your divine and spotless footprints. . . . And if I obtain this, I shall raise up to God the customary prayers for your perpetual power.”{113}
Quote ID: 4085
Time Periods: 5
Book ID: 183 Page: 147
Section: 2E3
A few years later, armed guards entered Ambrose’s basilica and snatched an offender out from among the bishop and clergy, among whom he had taken cover.{138} Only two decades later was the sacred nature of the church building itself deemed to confer protection on a fugitive.
Quote ID: 4086
Time Periods: 4567
Book ID: 183 Page: 147/148
Section: 3A1,3A3
The system was not changed by such encounters. Ambrose ended his life disillusioned by his inability to control the unbridled avaritia, the land-grabbing and amassment of private fortunes, associated with the high officials in charge of taxation in northern Italy.{142} Preaching at Turin in the 400s, Bishop Maximus was no more optimistic. The “protection of the people” required the bishop to “raise his voice to a shout.”{143} Administrators and tax collectors were unimpressed. They turned up every Sunday, finely dressed for church. Behavior appropriate for a monk or clergyman, they said, was not to be demanded of a tax official.{144}It was, rather, on the local level, as “controller of crowds,” responsible for the peace of the cities, that the bishops consolidated the advantages that they had first gained at the end of the fourth century.
Quote ID: 4087
Time Periods: 45
Book ID: 183 Page: 149
Section: 4B,3A1
In a study of newly discovered inscriptions that record public acclamations at Aphrodisias in Caria, Charlotte Roueché has drawn attention to the increased tendency in the fifth century to use chanted slogans as a form of political and theological decision-making.{150} Such acclamations carried with them an aura of divinely inspired unanimity. In them, the crowd expressed a group parrhésia, tinged with supernatural certainty.
Quote ID: 4088
Time Periods: 5
Book ID: 183 Page: 151/152
Section: 3A3A,3A3B,3A4C
Hence in long letters of self-defense, Theodoret publicized his benefactions to the city of which he had become bishop. He also wrote with evident enthusiasm, in his History, of bishops who, like himself, acted as the defenders of their cities. The bishop of Erzerum (Theodosiopolis), for instance, constructed his own catapult, known to the locals as “Saint Thomas,” and presided over its firing from the walls.{163}All over the eastern provinces, the Christian bishop came to be held responsible for the defense of law and order. In the reign of Justinian, it was the bishop of Hadrianoupolis … who received imperial edicts against banditry and communicated them to the local landowners, assembled in the audience chamber adjoining his basilica.{164}
Quote ID: 4089
Time Periods: 56
Book ID: 183 Page: 152
Section: 3A4B
At Jerash in modern Jordan (Gerasa), Bishop Paul built a special prison for those awaiting trial. By so doing, he intervened in a manner characteristic of the age. He facilitated existing forms of criminal practice. Prolonged imprisonment before trial had not been sanctioned by Roman law. Libanius had denounced such imprisonment in 386 as an abuse by which the powerful terrorized the lower classes.{165} In building a prison sometime in the early sixth century, the bishop of Jerash acted “to the advantage of the city.” He institutionalized, by claiming to render more humane, what had begun centuries before as an illegal form of constraint upon the poor and had come to be accepted as normal in his own time.{166}Pastor John’s Notes: John has notes written on very last page of the book.
Quote ID: 4090
Time Periods: 456
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