Closing of the Western Mind, The
Charles Freeman
Number of quotes: 228
Book ID: 205 Page: 5
Section: 3C1
What Thomas now upholds is the final solution to the issue, the doctrine of the Trinity. God the Father, Jesus the Son and the Holy Spirit are distinct persons within a single Godhead. It is a doctrine, as Thomas himself wrote in his other great work, the Summa theologiae, that cannot be upheld by reason, but only through faith.
Quote ID: 4787
Time Periods: ?
Book ID: 205 Page: 5
Section: 4B
With the elaboration of Christian doctrine, faith came to mean acquiescence in the teachings of the churches--to be seen as virtue in itself.
Quote ID: 4788
Time Periods: 45
Book ID: 205 Page: 39
Section: 5C
By 307 all pretence of a regency had vanished, and those commanders who survived the vicious infighting declared that they themselves were kings. Eventually three new dynasties emerged: the Ptolemies in Egypt, the Seleucids in Asia and the Antigonids in Macedonia. Later, in Asia Minor, the Attalids carved themselves out to a kingdom round the commanding site of Pergamon.
Quote ID: 4789
Time Periods: 0
Book ID: 205 Page: 40
Section: 5C
The Attalids of Pergamon chose that traditional protectress of cities, Athena.
Quote ID: 4790
Time Periods: 0
Book ID: 205 Page: 42
Section: 5C
The Attalids made Pergamon into one of the great showcase cities of the eastern Mediterranean, and one of them, Attalus II, also honoured Athens with a resplendent new stoa (roofed colonnade).
Quote ID: 4791
Time Periods: 0
Book ID: 205 Page: 45
Section: 5C
Pergamon, high on its rock, survived only because water from a spring twenty-five metres higher on a neighbouring hill was piped down and then up again into the city through some 240,000 linked lead pipes.
Quote ID: 4792
Time Periods: 0
Book ID: 205 Page: 52
Section: 5C
The Hellenistic kingdoms of the Antigonids (northern Greece), Seleucids (much of western Asia), Ptolemies (Egypt) and Attalids (Pergamon in western Asia Minor) were all now under Roman control. Rome’s empire embraced the entire Mediterranean.
Quote ID: 4793
Time Periods: 0
Book ID: 205 Page: 55
Section: 1A,4B
With Augustus, Rome came of age as a city where the predominant culture, in architecture and literature in particular, was Greek, albeit used towards Roman ends and for the celebration of the glory of Augustus’ regime.
Quote ID: 4794
Time Periods: 0
Book ID: 205 Page: 55/56
Section: 1B
In every aspect of culture, Greek models were copied but transformed, so as to celebrate the new age. The poet Propertius makes his own debt to Greek literature explicit. He wrote: "I write with a special purpose, to make thoroughly Italian, in manner and matter, this double Greek inheritance."
Quote ID: 4795
Time Periods: 0
Book ID: 205 Page: 57
Section: 2C
Augustus had agreed with the Senate that he would be governor for the life of the more vulnerable border provinces of the empire. He had the right to appoint deputies (legates) in these provinces.
Quote ID: 4798
Time Periods: 0
Book ID: 205 Page: 57
Section: 2B2,4B
In the west, where city life was relatively undeveloped, new elites had to be created from the Celtic peoples, many of whom had been shattered by the campaigns of Julius Caesar. It helped enormously that the Romans were tolerant of local deities and that these could be absorbed into the Roman pantheon, as the gods and goddesses of Greece had been some centuries earlier.
Quote ID: 4799
Time Periods: 12
Book ID: 205 Page: 58
Section: 4B
The Romans proved deeply ambivalent towards Judaism. While they always respected antiquity in any spiritual belief (’Jewish rites, whatever their origins, are sanctioned by their antiquity,“ as the historian Tacitus put it), the Romans felt threatened by the exclusivity of monotheism.
Quote ID: 4800
Time Periods: 012
Book ID: 205 Page: 66
Section: 5C
The most significant figure in medicine at this time was Galen (who was born in A.D. 129 and lived at least until the end of the century), a physician from Pergamon.
Quote ID: 4801
Time Periods: 2
Book ID: 205 Page: 68/69
Section: 2B2
Often, over time, these local gods would become assimilated with the Roman deities. A local god of thunder might be Zeus, “in disguise” as it were, and the Romans would willingly make the connection by incorporating the local god into their rituals.
Quote ID: 4802
Time Periods: 12
Book ID: 205 Page: 69
Section: 2B
By the second century A.D. it was increasingly commonplace to see the divine world as subject to one supreme god, with the other gods being either manifestations of his divinity or as lesser divinities. The Egyptian goddess Isis, for instance, spreads across the empire as a mother goddess with many concerns. “I am the single manifestation of all gods and goddesses that are.” Apuleius’ novel The Golden Ass (c. A.D. 160)
Quote ID: 4803
Time Periods: 2
Book ID: 205 Page: 69
Section: 2B
What is central to these cults is their flexibility. The device of allowing different gods to be assimilated into a supreme deity was an effective one. “It makes no difference,” wrote the second-century Platonist Celsus, “whether we call Zeus the Most High or Zeus or Adonis or Sabaoth or Amun like the Egyptians, or Papaeus like the Scythians.”17 It is possible even to go so far as to say that a belief in an overriding deity was, by this period, the most widespread belief of pagan religion.17. The quotation, which comes from Origen’s Contra Celsum 5:41, is to be found in the introduction to Athanassiadi and Frede, eds., Pagan Monotheism, p. 8. See also the quotation from the so-called Theosophy of Tubingen in Mitchell, Anatolia, vol. 2, p. 44:
There is one god in the whole universe, who has set boundaries to the wheels of heavenly rotation with divine ordinances, who has distributed measures of equal weight to the hours and the moments, and has set bonds which link and balance the turnings of the heavens with one another, whom we call Zeus, from whom comes the living eternity, and Zeus bearer of all things, life-providing steward of breath, himself, proceeding from the one into the one.
Quote ID: 4804
Time Periods: 23
Book ID: 205 Page: 70
Section: 2B2
All these groups accepted that there was at the apex of the hierarchy of divine forces one higher being, even if the form of this being was conceptualized in different ways and addressed by different names in different cultures. As the sophist Maximus of Madaura put it in A.D. 390 (in a letter for the Christian Augustine):That the supreme God is one, without beginning, without offspring as it were the great and august father of nature, what person is there so mad and totally deprived of sense to deny? His powers diffused through the world that is his work we invoke under various names, because we are obviously ignorant of his real name. For the name “God” is common to all religions. The outcome is that while with our various prayers we each honour as it were his limbs separately all together we are seen to be worshipping him in his entirety.
Quote ID: 4805
Time Periods: 34
Book ID: 205 Page: 70
Section: 2B
“Pagan monotheism,” write Athanassiadi and Frede in summing up their own survey, “was a deeply rooted trend in ancient philosophy which developed under its own momentum, broadening sufficiently to embrace a good part of the population.” They go on to argue that Christianity, with its supreme God and his surrounding entourage of divine forces--Jesus, the Holy Spirit, the Virgin Mary, angels, saints and martyrs--should be seen as an integral part of this trend, not as a force outside it.
Quote ID: 4806
Time Periods: 0123
Book ID: 205 Page: 73
Section: 2B,4A
If Plato was right and the Forms existed eternally, then others living before Plato might have been able to grasp them. Philo went so far to argue that Moses had been a Platonic philosopher who had understood the Forms in the way Plato had hoped his followers would. Moses’ Old Testament God was none other than “the Good” of Plato. (The later Platonis Numenius second century A.D. went so far as to claim, “Who is Plato, if not Moses speaking in Greek?”)
Quote ID: 4807
Time Periods: 2
Book ID: 205 Page: 73
Section: 2B1
The influence of Plato on Philo was so pronounced that, despite his Jewish background, Philo rejected Old Testament portrayals of God which talk of his face, his hands and his emotional power. As an entity who was beyond all human attributes and even beyond human understanding, he could not be classified in such an anthropomorphic way.PJ: Three in one.
Quote ID: 4808
Time Periods: 01
Book ID: 205 Page: 74
Section: 4A
Philo knew nothing of Christianity, but he was to prove enormously important in bridging the gap between Judaism and Greek philosophy in representing God of the Old Testament as a Platonic God, thus enabling Greek philosophers to find a home with the Jewish and, later, the Christian tradition.
Quote ID: 4809
Time Periods: 12
Book ID: 205 Page: 76
Section: 2B1
These in their turn project outwards to a “world soul,” which exists as a composite of all animate beings in the world although appearing as an individual soul in each human being. Each of the three entities exists as “lower” than the one above, but “the One’ does not lose anything of its goodness during the procession of nous--any more, said Plotinus, than the brightness of a lamp is diminished when it gives out light. ”The One,“ the nous and the world share a single substance (ousia), but each maintains in distinct nature, its hypostasis, or personality. Plotinus went on to argue that the ”lower“ states would always be attracted back to the "higher."PJ: Three in one.
Quote ID: 4811
Time Periods: 3
Book ID: 205 Page: 77
Section: 2B
Nevertheless, there clearly existed a wide range of spiritual possibilities, any of which could be followed without any sense of impropriety, and, even though there existed some degree of competition between the different movements for adherents, none excluded other beliefs. The traditional gods of the state might be offended by neglect, but they were not jealous of other cults. It is certainly too simplistic to argue, as many histories of Christianity have done, that spiritual life in the empire had reached some kind of dead end and that Christianity provided a solution all had been yearning for.
Quote ID: 4812
Time Periods: 234
Book ID: 205 Page: 80
Section: 4B
The sons of chieftains could be brought up within the imperial court and then sent back as “Romans” keen to maintain contact with the empire.
Quote ID: 4813
Time Periods: 014
Book ID: 205 Page: 84
Section: 3B,4B
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.
Quote ID: 4814
Time Periods: 34
Book ID: 205 Page: 85
Section: 3A1
In the unsettled conditions for 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.
Quote ID: 4815
Time Periods: 3
Book ID: 205 Page: 86/87
Section: 3A2,3A4,3C
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. This was to be the achievement of Constantine.
Quote ID: 4816
Time Periods: 4
Book ID: 205 Page: xv
Section: 4A
If the sun rises every day of our existence, we might assume that it will always rise, but there is no certainty of this. The Greeks recognized this as well as grasping that theories must always be the servants of facts. Describing what he has observed about the generation of bees, Aristotle notes that “the facts have not been sufficiently ascertained, and if they are ever ascertained, then we must trust perception rather than theories.”
Quote ID: 4778
Time Periods: 0
Book ID: 205 Page: 142/143
Section: 4A
Christian Justin Martyr (c. 100-c. 165), a Platonist by training, was among the first to argue that Christianity could draw on both scriptures and Greek philosophy and could even appropriate philosophy for its own ends. “Whatever good they the philosophers taught belongs to us Christians.” He was echoed by Clement of Alexandria (c. 150-c. 215), who claimed that God had given philosophy to the Greeks as “a school-master” until the coming of the Lord as ... a preparation which paved the way towards perfection in Christ.”
Quote ID: 4817
Time Periods: 2
Book ID: 205 Page: 144/145
Section: 4A
Platonism became entwined with Christianity.This was a question of grafting Platonism onto Christianity rather than the creation of a new philosophy. One problem lay in reconciling the Hebrew concept of God with the single pure unity of the “the Good” of Plato. Imaginative thinking was needed.
Quote ID: 4818
Time Periods: 23
Book ID: 205 Page: 151
Section: 4B
Christians lost that respect and were derided (by the second-century historian Tacitus, for instance) for their creation of a religion without tradition.
Quote ID: 4819
Time Periods: 12
Book ID: 205 Page: 156
Section: 3C
If Constantine’s legitimacy depended on the support of the gods, then his own conception of the divine becomes crucial for understanding his reign. His early allegiances were entirely conventional. When in 307 he married, as a second wife, Fausta, the daughter of Maximinian, who had abdicated as Augustus in 305, he adopted Maximinian’s favoured protecting god, Hercules. By 310, when he asserted his descent from Claudius Gothicus, he claimed that Apollo had appeared to him in a vision (clearly Constantine’s favoured method of receiving divine messages), offering him a laurel wreath and promising that he would rule for thirty years.
Quote ID: 4820
Time Periods: 4
Book ID: 205 Page: 156/157
Section: 2B2,3C
The sun, as the source of light and heat, had traditionally been integrated into an enormous variety of spiritual and philosophical contexts. Apollo had been associated with the sun since the fifth century B.C., while in the fourth century B.C. Plato had used the sun as a symbol of supreme truth, “the Good,” the apex of the Forms. The cult of Sol Invictus had been imported from Syria in the third century. It had proved popular among soldiers, and the emperor Aurelian (270-75) had built a massive temple to the cult in Rome. So when Constantine began using the sun as a mark of imperial power, often portraying himself on coins or statues with rays coming from his head....
Quote ID: 8168
Time Periods: 034
Book ID: 205 Page: 157
Section: 3C
Constantine announced that his victory was due to the support he had received from “the supreme deity,” by which Christians such as Eusebius claimed he meant the God of the Christians. The earliest account we have is from two or three years after the battle. Lactantius, a convert to Christianity, reported that Constantine had had a dream the night before the battle in which he was commanded to place the ’heavenly sign of god,“ the chi-rho sign, on his soldiers’ shields, and he did so. Many years later Constantine, apparently under oath, told his biographer Eusebius a somewhat different version of the story. At some point before the battle, it is not clear when, a cross of light had appeared in the skies above the sun. (The placing of the cross by the sun in Constantine’s memory seems significant.) It was inscribed ”By this sign, conquer,“ and this command had been confirmed in a dream when Christ himself had appeared to Constantine and asked him to inscribe a cross on his standards as a safeguard against his enemies.
Quote ID: 4821
Time Periods: 4
Book ID: 205 Page: 158
Section: 3A4C,3C
The adoption of Christianity was not, however, to prove entirely straightforward. Constantine knew so little about Christianity that he immediately ran into difficulties. First, Christ was not a god of war. The Old Testament frequently involved God in the slaughter of his enemies, but the New Testament did not. Constantine would have to create a totally new conception of Christianity if he was to sustain the link between the Christian God and victory in war.
Quote ID: 4822
Time Periods: 4
Book ID: 205 Page: 159/160
Section: 3C
Three years after his victory at the Milvian Bridge, Constantine was honoured by a grand triumphal arch in the centre of Rome (it still stands by the Colosseum) The imagery of the arch contains no suggestion of the influence of Christianity. There are, in fact, reliefs of Mars, Jupiter and Hercules, all traditional gods of war, and Constantine’s victory at the Milvian Bridge is associated with the power of the sun and goddess Victory. The battle itself shows no sign of the Christian visions or Christian symbols on the soldiers’ shields.
Quote ID: 4823
Time Periods: 4
Book ID: 205 Page: 160
Section: 2B2,3C
Constantine was still issuing coins bearing images of Sol Invictus as late as 320, and in the great bronze statue he later erected to himself in the Forum in Constantinople he was portrayed with the attributes of a sun-god, with rays emanating from his head.One reason why this pagan association was so successful in maintaining the emperor’s status was that the sun was also used in Christian worship and symbolism. The resurrection was believed to have taken place on the day of the sun, the most important day of the week for Christian worship (as the English word “Sunday” still suggests). A third-century fresco from the Vatican Hill in Rome even shows Christ dressed as the sun-god in a chariot on his way to heaven.
Quote ID: 4824
Time Periods: 34
Book ID: 205 Page: 161
Section: 3C,2E4,2E3
In the fifth century, Pope Leo was to rebuke Christians at St. Peter’s for turning their backs on St. Peter’s tomb and standing on the front steps of the basilica to worship the rising sun. Remarkably, the main festival of Sol Invictus was the day of winter solstice, December 25, adopted by Christians in the fourth century as the birthday of Christ. In short, the sun was a symbolic image through which Constantine could be presented effectively to both Christian and non-Christian audiences, thus maintaining his neutral position between opposing faiths.
Quote ID: 4825
Time Periods: 5
Book ID: 205 Page: 161
Section: 3C
Liebeschuetz suggests that imperial panegyrics, or at least those written Latin, are, after 321, “written in terms of a neutral monotheism which would be acceptable to Christians and pagans alike.” Later in his reign Constantine authorized the city of Hispellum on the Flaminian Way in Umbria to build a temple “in magnificent style” to the cult of his family, another indication of his reluctance to abandon traditional worship.
Quote ID: 4826
Time Periods: 4
Book ID: 205 Page: 161/162
Section: 3C
He may have felt that only a powerful gesture such as tax exemption would succeed in allaying the distrust of Christians after so many decades of persecution by the state. However, he may not have foreseen the consequences. He appears to have been genuinely surprised at the number and diversity of communities calling themselves Christian, and soon after his victory he had to face the dilemma of whether to give patronage to all of these or to privilege some communities more than others.
Quote ID: 4827
Time Periods: 4
Book ID: 205 Page: 163/164
Section: 3C1
Few areas of church history have been so completely rewritten in the past twenty years as the “Arian controversy.” Traditionally church historians have suggested that an “orthodox” understanding, which accepted Jesus the Son as divine and fully part of the Godhead, was already in place by the 320s and that Arius challenged this “orthodoxy” with his claim that Jesus had been created as “Son” thus distinct from a pre-existing god and subordinate to him as Father. This tradition relied heavily on the main contemporary source for Arianism, the polemical anti-Arian writings of Athanasius, bishop of Alexandria from 328 to 373.
Quote ID: 4828
Time Periods: 4
Book ID: 205 Page: 164
Section: 3C1
Recently, however, historians have begun to decode Arianism. They have found that the movement Athanasius dubbed “Arian” was much broader and more complex than Athanasius had suggested and had a great deal of scriptural and theological backing.
Quote ID: 4829
Time Periods: 4
Book ID: 205 Page: 165
Section: 3C1
As Richard Hanson has written: “Indeed, until Athanasius began writing every single theologian, east and west, had postulated some form of Subordinationism...it could, about the year 300, have been described as a fixed part of catholic the word being used here in the sense of universal theology.
Quote ID: 4830
Time Periods: 4
Book ID: 205 Page: 166
Section: 3C1
So when Arius challenged Alexander, he believed he was representing a theological position that could be cogently justified, with philosophy and tradition backing the scriptures.
Quote ID: 4831
Time Periods: 4
Book ID: 205 Page: 166
Section: 3C1
This was the controversy facing Constantine, threatening his dreams of political stability. Used to the more fluid spiritual allegiances of the Roman world, he could not believe that such “idle and trivial” speculations could cause so much unrest.
Quote ID: 4832
Time Periods: 4
Book ID: 205 Page: 167
Section: 3C1
Constantine had to act if he was to achieve any stable support from the Christians, and so he took the initiative in calling a council of bishops at which he could enforce an agreed definition of Christian doctrine to be backed by the state. So was initiated the process by which church doctrine was decided in councils of bishops called under the auspices of the emperor; all church councils up to the eighth century conformed to this model.
Quote ID: 4833
Time Periods: 4
Book ID: 205 Page: 167
Section: 3C1
With almost no exceptions they were easterners--such debates had largely bypassed the Latin-speaking Christians. The bishop of Rome was represented only by observers.
Quote ID: 4834
Time Periods: 4
Book ID: 205 Page: 168
Section: 3C1
Plotinus had indeed used the word ousia, substance, to describe the common attributes of “the One,” the nous, and world-soul, but it seems only to have been later in the century, in the writings of the Cappadocian Fathers (see below, pp. 188-89), that Plotinus’ terminology entered Christian theology.
Quote ID: 4835
Time Periods: 34
Book ID: 205 Page: 171
Section: 3C1
When Constantine himself was finally baptized it was at the hands of an Arian bishop, Eusebius of Nicomedia (not be be confused with the Eusebius who was Constantine’s biographer).
Quote ID: 4836
Time Periods: 4
Book ID: 205 Page: 171
Section: 3C1
Those impressed by Constantine’s adoption of a Christian God might have hoped that he would have adopted Christian ethics. However, he appears to have shown no interest in the message of the Gospels. Rather, he attempts to use Christianity as a means of bringing order to society.
Quote ID: 4837
Time Periods: 4
Book ID: 205 Page: 172
Section: 3A2A,3C
According to the pagan historian Zosimus (writing much later), Crispus was suspected of having an affair with Fausta, his stepmother. Crispus was disposed of, but Constantine’s mother, Helena, took the death of her grandson so badly that to appease her, Constantine had Fausta killed as well, drowned in an overheated bath. The event shocked non-Christians as much as it did Christians. One pagan source even suggests that it drew Constantine closer to Christianity because the Christians offered forgiveness for an offence no pagan would condone.
Quote ID: 4838
Time Periods: 4
Book ID: 205 Page: 173
Section: 3C2
As its name suggests, Constantinople was Constantine’s city. This is an important point because there has been considerable debate over whether Constantinople was founded as a Christian city or not. The issue arose because of Eusebius’ misleading claim, in his attempt to assert the Christian commitment of Constantine, that Constantinople was always wholly Christian and without a single pagan temple. For its founder this was not relevant; this was the city of Constantine, not of Christ.
Quote ID: 4839
Time Periods: 4
Book ID: 205 Page: 173
Section: 3C2
Pagan statues and monuments were brought from all over the empire to grace the public spaces.
Quote ID: 4840
Time Periods: 4
Book ID: 205 Page: 173
Section: 3C2
Jerome tells of whole cities being stripped of monuments--among those known to have been taken by Constantine were the column commemorating the Greek victory over the Persians in 479 B.C. from Delphi (the base survives today in Istanbul), statues of Apollo, one of them possibly also from Delphi, and of the Muses from mount Helicon in Boeotia.
Quote ID: 4841
Time Periods: 45
Book ID: 205 Page: 173/174
Section: 3C2
In fact, Constantine recognized that Byzantium’s protecting goddesses had to be respected. The most ancient of these was Rhea, the mother of the Olympian gods. Another important deity was Tyche, the personification of good fortune, who was believed to be able to protect and bring prosperity to cities. Constantine honoured them both with new temples.
Quote ID: 4842
Time Periods: 4
Book ID: 205 Page: 174
Section: 3C2
In the circular forum, on one of the highest hills of the city, Constantine erected a great porphyry column twenty-five metres high and arranged for it to be crowned by a gold statue of himself; the column still stands, in battered form, today. Here the emperor was again associated with the sun, whose rays spread from the statue’s head. All this was dedicated on a great day of celebration in May 330, as much a celebration of Constantine as of his city. Among the events that followed one stood out: the arrival in the hippodrome of a golden chariot carrying a gilded statue of the emperor. The statue held a smaller figure of Tyche. For the next 200 years, the ritual drawing of the statue and chariot through the hippodrome was to be re-enacted on the anniversary of the dedication. Where did Christianity fit into all this? In the original celebrations hardly at all. Space was, however, reserved in the centre of the of the city for churches, but their titles--Hagia Sophia, Holy Wisdom, Hagia Eirene, Holy Peace, and Hagia Dynamis, Holy Power--suggest that Constantine was once again deliberately using formulas that were as acceptable to pagan world as to the Christian.
Quote ID: 4843
Time Periods: 4
Book ID: 205 Page: 175
Section: 3C2
It was keeping the consensus which was important: the only saints honoured with churches were local martyrs, and it was not until the end of the century that Constantinople could be seen as a fully Christian city.
Quote ID: 4844
Time Periods: 4
Book ID: 205 Page: 175
Section: 3C
His position and his strategy required that he keep his distance from the institutional church. It is remarkable that there is no evidence that Constantine ever attended a church service. (The records suggest that bishops were summoned to attend him in his palaces.) After his death his sons issued a coin to commemorate their own consecratio. On one side it bore Constantine’s veiled head and an inscription, “The deified Constantine, father of the Augusti”’; on the other, Constantine is seen ascending to heaven in a chariot with God’s hand reaching out to welcome him, a portrayal similar to those of his pagan predecessors. His links to the traditions of pagan Rome were preserved to the last.
Quote ID: 4845
Time Periods: 4
Book ID: 205 Page: 175
Section: 3C
However, by bringing Christianity so firmly under the control of the state, even to the extent of attempting to formulate its doctrine at Nicaea, Constantine was severing the traditional church from its roots.
Quote ID: 4846
Time Periods: 4
Book ID: 205 Page: 175/176
Section: 3A4C
However, the problem of how to present Jesus, the man of peace, in this new Christian world, persisted. The ultimate response was to transform him, quite explicitly, into a man of war. By the 370s Ambrose, bishop of Milan, is able to state in his De Fide that “the army is led not by military eagles or the flight of birds buy by your name, Lord Jesus, and Your Worship.”
Quote ID: 4849
Time Periods: 4
Book ID: 205 Page: 176
Section: 3A4C
In his Ecclesiastical History, Eusebius refers to Constantine as “God’s Commander-in Chief.” So a new element enters the Christian tradition.
Quote ID: 4847
Time Periods: 4
Book ID: 205 Page: 176
Section: 3A4C
As late as 1956, Pope Pius XII refused the right to conscientious objection, acknowledging in effect the overriding power of the state. “A Catholic may not appeal to his conscience as grounds for refusing to serve and fulfill duties fixed by law.” Constantine would have approved.
Quote ID: 4848
Time Periods: 4
Book ID: 205 Page: 177
Section: 3A4C
This extraordinary transformation of Jesus’ role is a mark of the extent to which Constantine forced Christianity into new channels. (A step further is taken when, on the eleventh-century bronze doors of San Zeno Maggiore in Verona, Christ is shown being nailed to the cross by Jews rather than by soldiers.)
Quote ID: 4850
Time Periods: 4
Book ID: 205 Page: 179
Section: 3A2,3C
Once Constantine had provided tax exemptions for Christian clergy, eventually including exemptions for church lands, it became imperative to tighten up the definition of “Christian.” As Constantine had put it in a law of 326, “The benefits that have been granted in consideration of religion must benefit only the adherents of the Catholic e.g., ”correct“ faith. It is our will, moreover, that heretics and schismatics shall not only be alien to those privileges but shall be bound and subjected to various compulsory public services.” The definition of “Catholicism” and heresy took on a new urgency for the state.
Quote ID: 4851
Time Periods: 4
Book ID: 205 Page: 182
Section: 3C2
Julian’s survival to manhood was in itself remarkable, in that most of his family had been eliminated by Constantine’s three sons. His father and seven immediate members of his family were executed in 337, when Julian was only six. His teenage years had been spent with his half-brother Gallus on a remote estate in Asia Minor, but Gallus himself was executed by Constantine in 354.
Quote ID: 4852
Time Periods: 4
Book ID: 205 Page: 182/183
Section: 3A2A
Julian knew Christianity well--he had been brought up as a Christian and served as a lector--but he had been dismayed by the vicious infighting he saw around him. “Experience had taught him that no wild beasts are so dangerous to man as Christians are to one another,” wrote Ammianus Marcellinus, who went on to suggest that Julian believed that the Christians left to themselves would simply tear each other apart. The roots of Julian’s distaste for Christianity may well lie in the brutal treatment of his close relations by Christian emperors.
Quote ID: 4853
Time Periods: 4
Book ID: 205 Page: 183
Section: 3C2,4A
The clergy lost all their exemptions, and in 362 they were forbidden to teach rhetoric or grammar. It was absurd, declared Julian, for Christians to teach classical culture while at the same time pouring scorn on classical religion--if they wished to teach, they should confine themselves to teaching the Gospels in their churches.
Quote ID: 4854
Time Periods: 4
Book ID: 205 Page: 185
Section: 3C2
He reintroduced blood sacrifices as part of his enthusiasm for the old gods but by doing so offended the more sophisticated pagans.
Quote ID: 4855
Time Periods: 4
Book ID: 205 Page: 186
Section: 3C1
His professional career was one of some turmoil. Appointed bishop in 428, he is known, from Egyptian papyri, to have enforced his authority with violence and to have been challenged on his right to hold his see. On no less than five occasions, and for a total of fifteen of the forty-five years he was bishop, he was in exile, sent there by emperors (including, as we have seen, Constantine, who took exception to his anti-Arian intransigence) and his fellow bishops.
Quote ID: 4856
Time Periods: 45
Book ID: 205 Page: 187
Section: 3C1
However, for many years Athanasius, like his fellow theologians, avoided using the charged word homoousios to describe the relationship, and it does not appear in his work until about 356.
Quote ID: 4857
Time Periods: 4
Book ID: 205 Page: 187
Section: 3C1
He created an elaborate distinction between the human body of Jesus, which appears to suffer, as when on the cross, and the divine logos, which is somehow inside the human body but does not suffer. So, for instance, the mind of Jesus, which he allocated to the logos rather than to his body, could not feel anything and was not even subject to moral dilemmas. “He was not subject to moral law, he did not weigh two choices, preferring one, rejecting another,” as Athanasius put it. This goes as far as suggesting that Jesus lacked free will.
Quote ID: 4858
Time Periods: 4
Book ID: 205 Page: 188
Section: 3C1
In the west the Nicene cause was furthered by a number of formidable protagonists, of whom Hilary of Poitiers was the most celebrated.
Quote ID: 4859
Time Periods: 4
Book ID: 205 Page: 188
Section: 3C1
He developed his ideas in De Trinitate, probably the first full defence in Latin (Athanasius wrote only in Greek) of the doctrine of God the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit as a single Godhead.
Quote ID: 4860
Time Periods: 5
Book ID: 205 Page: 188/189
Section: 3C1
The challenge for those who wished to revive the Nicene formula was to find a means of differentiating the Father and the Son that did not compromise their sharing of the same substance. It was the so-called Cappadocian Fathers, Basil of Caesarea (d. 379) and his brother Gregory of Nyssa (d.c. 395), together with another Gregory, of Nazianzus (d. 390), who came up with a solution that eventually was to be accepted. There is one Godhead, of uniform substance, ousia (in other words, the Cappadocians accepted the homoousios), but the Godhead has three distinct hypostaseis, or personalities.
Quote ID: 4861
Time Periods: 4
Book ID: 205 Page: 188
Section: 3C1
In the west the Nicene cause was furthered by a number of formidable protagonists, of whom Hilary of Poitiers was the most celebrated.Duplicate of quote 4859.
Quote ID: 4863
Time Periods: 4
Book ID: 205 Page: 188
Section: 3C1
He developed his ideas in De Trinitate, probably the first full defence in latin (Athanasius wrote only in Greek) of the doctrine of God the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit as a single Godhead.
Quote ID: 4864
Time Periods: 5
Book ID: 205 Page: 188/189
Section: 3C1
The challenge for those who wished to revive the Nicene formula was to find a means of differentiating the Father and Son that did not compromise their sharing of the same substance. It was the so-called Cappadocian Fathers, Basil of Caesarea (d. 379) and his brother Gregory of Nyssa (d.c. 395) together with another Gregory, of Nazianzus (d. 390), who came up with a solution that eventually was to be accepted. There is one Godhead, of uniform substance, ousia (in other words, the Cappadocians accepted the Homoousios), but the Godhead has three distinct hypostaseis, or personalities.
Quote ID: 4865
Time Periods: 4
Book ID: 205 Page: 189
Section: 4A,3C1
The Cappadocian Fathers are an attractive trio. All were steeped in classical philosophy, Gregory of Nazianzus declaring that Athens, where he and Basil had studied, was “a city truly of gold and the patroness of all that is good.”
Quote ID: 4862
Time Periods: 4
Book ID: 205 Page: 189
Section: 4A
Their works, orations and letters present a fascinating example of the way in which classical philosophy could be yoked to Christian theology to formulate doctrine.
Quote ID: 4867
Time Periods: 2
Book ID: 205 Page: 189
Section: 3C1
Although this remains a matter of scholarly dispute, Basil’s inspiration for the terminology of the Trinity appears to have been the Neoplatonist philosopher Plotinus. As we have seen, Plotinus had proposed three entities in his metaphysical system: “the One”; nous, or Intellect, which presents the Platonic Forms to the material world; and the World-Soul. In his Enneads, published early in the fourth century, parts of which Basil of Caesarea is known to have studied in detail, Plotinus had argued that each one of these three entities had a distinct hypostasis, or personality, although they also shared a likeness, “as light is from the sun” (“the ousia of the divine extends to the three hypostases, namely the supreme god, the nous, the world soul“). As we have noted, Plotinus even used the word homoousios to describe the relationship of identity between the three.
Quote ID: 4868
Time Periods: 4
Book ID: 205 Page: 190
Section: 3C1
Thus Greek philosophical terms, in themselves complex, were adapted and adopted to produce a solution that allowed the Nicene formula to be reasserted and the Holy Spirit integrated into the Trinity without reverting to Sabellianism. The doctrine of the Trinity is embedded so deeply in the Christian tradition that it is easy to forget how precarious was its birth. To the Cappadocians, in fact, it seems to have been a compromise formula.
Quote ID: 4869
Time Periods: 4
Book ID: 205 Page: 190
Section: 3C1
One can understand why the concept of the Trinity was so difficult for many to accept. There is comparatively little in scripture that can be used to support the idea in its final form. The terminology of Father and Son used in the Synoptic Gospels, in fact, suggests a Jesus who saw himself as genuinely distinct from his “Father.”
Quote ID: 4870
Time Periods: 4
Book ID: 205 Page: 190/191
Section: 3C1
Basil had to fall back on “the unwritten tradition of the fathers” and “reason” to make his case. One particular challenge was that the only use in scripture of the term hypostasis in a context in which the Father was related to the Son refers to the Son as “a perfect copy of his God the Father’s hypostasis” (Hebrews 1:3), in other words denying the distinction between them which the Cappadocians had so painstakingly formulated.
Quote ID: 4871
Time Periods: 4
Book ID: 205 Page: 191
Section: 3C1
Was it acceptable, however, simply to manipulate pagan philosophical concepts in this way to create Christian truth? Even Thomas Aquinas--himself highly ingenious in finding reasoned support for Christian doctrine--admitted that “it is impossible to arrive at a cognition of the Trinity of the Divine Persons by means of natural reason.” It must, Thomas continues, be taken as a revelation from God. When challenged themselves, the Cappadocians fell back on claims of the ultimate mystery of these things. As Gregory of Nazianzus retorted to one critic who had asked him to explain “proceeding”: “You explain how it was impossible for the Father to be generated and I will give you a biological account of the Son’s begetting and the Spirit’s proceeding--and let us go mad the pair of us for prying into God’s secrets!” Basil argued that ultimately faith must be given primacy.
Quote ID: 4872
Time Periods: ?
Book ID: 205 Page: 192
Section: 3C1
Pelikan shrewdly remarks, the formulation of the doctrine of the Trinity did not lead to any greater knowledge of God. It just increased the extent to which he was unknowable!
Quote ID: 4873
Time Periods: ?
Book ID: 205 Page: 192
Section: 3D1
The first widespread conversion of the Goths came at the hands of the missionary Ulfila, a descendant of a Roman taken prisoner by the Goths. Ulfila was a remarkable man, fluent in Latin, Greek and Gothic and clearly an inspired missionary. He was consecrated bishop in 341 and worked with the Goths beyond the borders through the 340s. However, persecution drove him back into the empire with many of his flock, and Constantius gave him shelter. Ulfila supported the Homoean creed and in particular had great reverence for the scriptures, which he himself translated into Gothic (probably creating “the Gothic alphabet” in the process). The Goths’ adherence to Homoean Christianity was consolidated when Valens insisted that Goths who entered the empire convert to his favoured formulation of Christianity; soon homoean Christianity became inextricably associated with the ethnic identity of all the Gothic groups.
Quote ID: 4874
Time Periods: 4
Book ID: 205 Page: 192
Section: 3D1
When Valens died, however, homoean Christianity lost its main supporter. His successor, Theodosius, was pro-Nicene. Why is not clear. The traditional view is that his beliefs derived from his aristocratic Spanish background. In February 380, while in Thessalonika, which he was using as a base for his campaigns, he announced that the Nicene faith as supported by the bishops of Rome and Alexandria would be the orthodoxy and the alternatives would be punished as heresies.
Quote ID: 4875
Time Periods: 4
Book ID: 205 Page: 193
Section: 3D1
Theodosius then made for Constantinople. His arrival in late 380 was greeted with anger in a city where, in so far as tax exemption would be linked to the new orthodoxy, the majority of Christian communities stood to lose heavily through the imposition of a Nicene solution.
Quote ID: 4876
Time Periods: 4
Book ID: 205 Page: 193
Section: 3D1
In January 381 Theodosius issued an imperial decree declaring the doctrine of the Trinity orthodox and expelling Homoeans and Arians from their churches: “We now order that all churches are to handed over to the bishops who profess Father, Son and Holy Spirit of a single majesty, of the same glory, of one splendour, who establish no difference by sacrilegious separation, but the order of the Trinity by recognizing the Persons and uniting the Godhead.”
Quote ID: 4877
Time Periods: 4
Book ID: 205 Page: 193/194
Section: 3D1
At the end of the council a new imperial edict vigorously enforced the creed as orthodoxy.We authorise the followers of this law to assume the title of orthodox Christians; but as for the others, since in our judgment, they are foolish madmen, we decree that they shall be banded with the ignominious names of heretics, and shall not presume to give to their conventicles the names of churches. They will suffer in the first place the chastisement of divine condemnation, and in the second the punishment which our authority, in accordance with the will of heaven, shall decide to inflict.
This council, together with the imperial edicts that accompanied it, was the moment when the Nicene formula became part of the official state religion (if only for the moment in the eastern empire.) All those Christians who differed from it--Homoeans, Homoiousians, Arians and a host of other minor groups--were declared to be heretics facing not only the vengeance of God but also that of the state. The decision of Constantine to privilege one Christian community over another was consolidated in that a “truth” was now defined and enforced by law, with those declared heretical to be punished on earth as well as by God. It was unclear on what basis this “truth” rested, certainly not one of exclusively rational argument, so it either had to be presented as “the revelation of God,” as it was by Thomas Aquinas, or accepted that “truth”was as defined by the emperor.
Quote ID: 4878
Time Periods: 4
Book ID: 205 Page: 194
Section: 3D1
The Nicenes spoke of their beliefs as traditional but they were countered by Palladius, bishop of Ratiaria, the most sophisticated of the Homoean bishops of the day, who claimed that it was the Homoean view that was the tradition and the Nicenes who were the innovators.
Quote ID: 4879
Time Periods: 5
Book ID: 205 Page: 194
Section: 3D1
In effect, the edict finally confirmed the emperor as the definer and enforcer of orthodoxy.
Quote ID: 4880
Time Periods: 4
Book ID: 205 Page: 194/195
Section: 3D1
“Orthodoxy” was now associated with tax exemptions for clergy as well as access to wealth and patronage and the high status enjoyed by the state church, while “heretics” lost all these. The commanding position exercised by the emperor in the definition of orthodox doctrine may well have rested on the need to control the numbers of those able to claim exemptions and patronage.
Quote ID: 4881
Time Periods: 4
Book ID: 205 Page: 195
Section: 3D1
Every subsequent attack by the Goths on the empire could be characterized as the assault of evil on the true faith. It is possible to see the rise of Christian intolerance as essentially a defensive response to these threats.
Quote ID: 4882
Time Periods: 5
Book ID: 205 Page: 195
Section: 3D1
The expulsions of Homoean bishops were met with riots in many parts of the empire.
Quote ID: 4883
Time Periods: 4
Book ID: 205 Page: 195
Section: 3D1
A rare instance of popular gossip from Constantinople recorded by Gregory of Nyssa even suggests continuing sympathy for and from full-blown, traditional Arianism: “If you ask for change, the man launches into a theological discussion about begotten and unbegotten; if you enquire about the price of bread, the answer is given that the Father is greater and the Son subordinate; if you remark that the bath is nice, the attendant pronounces that the Son is from non-existence.
Quote ID: 4884
Time Periods: 4
Book ID: 205 Page: 196
Section: 3D1
The problem underlay the entire Arian debate in that the adoption of homoousios threatened the primacy of the scriptures in the making of doctrine, not only because the term could not be found in the scriptures but because a Jesus “one in substance” with the Father seemed incompatible with the recognizably human Jesus of the Synoptic Gospels. The differences between the Arians, Homoeans and their supporters on one side and the Nicenes on the other were intensified by what seemed to be an abandonment of the scriptures by the Nicenes.
Quote ID: 4885
Time Periods: 4
Book ID: 205 Page: 196/197
Section: 3D1
So when Ambrose of Milan produced his De Fide, a defence of Nicene doctrine, he was countered by Palladius, who wrote tellingly: “Search the divine Scriptures, which you have neglected, so that under their guidance you may avoid the Hell towards which you are heading on your own.
Quote ID: 4886
Time Periods: 4
Book ID: 205 Page: 197
Section: 3D1
“Generally speaking, throughout all his writings Ambrose tends to produce interpretations of the Bible whose undoubted poetic quality may charm the uncritical thinker but which in fact represent little more than fantastic nonsense woven into a purely delusive harmony.” As we have seen, it required considerable ingenuity for the Cappadocians to equate the Father and Son of the Gospels with the Father and Son of the Trinity.{53.} Hanson, The Search for the Christian Doctrine of God, pp. 672-73
Quote ID: 4887
Time Periods: 4
Book ID: 205 Page: 197
Section: 3D1
Maximinus, a bishop who claimed that his faith rested on the creed accepted in 360 at Constantinople, engaged in public debate with Augustine in hippo in the 420s and put the Homoean (and the literalist) position well: “We believe in the Scriptures and we reverence those divine Scriptures; and we do not desire to pass over a single iota, for we dread the punishment which is to be found in the Scriptures themselves.” Forcefully making the point that the pro-Nicenes distort scripture, he taunted Augustine: “The divine Scripture does not fate so badly in our my emphasis teaching that it has to receive improvement.” Maximinus’ accusation against Augustine was that he was “improving” the scriptures to suit his orthodox case. Augustine would not have disagreed. He fully accepted that scripture should not be left open to individual interpretation but to the Church: “I would not believe the Gospel unless the authority of the Catholic Church moved me,” he writes in one of his tracts against the Manicheans. This is, on the face of it, an astonishing assertion, but it is one which reflects the consolidation of Church authority. Now that the doctrine of the Trinity had been proclaimed, scripture had to be reinterpreted to defend it.{57.} Fitzgerald, ed., Augustine Through the Ages, p. 80. The article on “authority” in this excellent survey of Augustine and his time gives a number of quotations from Augustine illustrating his adherence to orthodoxy when interpreting the scriptures. His insistence that the scriptures he interpreted to support the doctrine of the Trinity comes from his De Trinitate 1.11.22. One prominent Italian scholar has summed it up as follows: “The whole development of Catholic doctrine is based on the interpretation of a certain number of passages in Scripture in the light of particular needs” (M. Simonetti, Profilo storico dell’esegesi patristica [Rome, 1980], quoted in D. Janes, God and Gold in Late Antiguity [Cambridge 1998]).
Quote ID: 4888
Time Periods: 34
Book ID: 205 Page: 198
Section: 2E3
Picture: One of the major developments of fourth-century Christianity was the adoption of the pagan custom celebrating God through magnificent buildings, many of them of great beauty, as the simple basilica of Santa Sabina (top) in Rome (c.420) suggests (credit:Scala). In a lovely seventh-century mosaic in her church outside Rome (above), Saint Agnes has been transformed by her martyrdom into a Byzantine princess and set against a background of gold (credit: Scala). Two of the popes responsible for building her church (one of the most atmospheric in Rome) surround her.
Quote ID: 4889
Time Periods: 457
Book ID: 205 Page: 199
Section: 3D1
The transformation of Christ from the man of the Synoptic Gospels to the God of the Trinity was accompanied by a transformation in the way he was represented. A good place to see the result is in the church of S. Pudenziana on the Esquiline Hill in Rome. The apse mosaic of Christ in Majesty, the earliest known mosaic on this theme, dates from about 390, only a few years after the proclamation of Theodosius.
Quote ID: 4890
Time Periods: 4
Book ID: 205 Page: 199
Section: 3D1
Only Christ survives fully in his original form. He sits on a purple cushion on a throne facing down the basilica, wearing robes streaked with gold.
Quote ID: 4891
Time Periods: 4
Book ID: 205 Page: 199
Section: 3D1
What is striking about the mosaic is the degree to which Christ has been adopted into traditional Roman iconography. The fully frontal pose echoes the cult statues placed in pagan temples (it is comparable to the traditional representation of the robed and seated figure of Jupiter.
Quote ID: 4892
Time Periods: 4
Book ID: 205 Page: 202
Section: 3C
He the emperor does not bring you liberty by casting you in prison, but treats you with respect within his palace and thus makes you his slave. Hilary, Bishop of Poitiers, on the new status of Bishops, mid fourth century1.Quoted in Philip Rousseau, Ascetics, Authority and the Church in the Age of Jerome and Cassian (Oxford, 1978), pg. 84.
Quote ID: 4893
Time Periods: 4
Book ID: 205 Page: 202/203
Section: 3A1,3A4B,2E2
The emperor’s desire to bring the bishops into the fabric of the state involved a dramatic reversal of their status. Enormous patronage became available to those bishops ready to accept the emperor’s position on doctrine, and those who took advantage of it came to have access to vast wealth and social prestige. Rome was earmarked for the bishop’s household, so that by the end of the fourth century Ammianus Marcellinus was able to describe the extravagant lifestyle of the bishops of Rome: “Enriched by the gifts of matrons, they ride in carriages, dress splendidly and outdo kings in the lavishness of their table.”This was not the whole story as Ammianus himself recognized. As we shall see, many Christians were sufficiently repelled by the new wealth of the Church to be drawn to asceticism; even if they did not make for the desert themselves, many bishops turned to austerity and gave their wealth to the poor to reinforce their Christian authority. Whether they succumbed to the financial temptations or not, however, bishops were now men with a stake in good order, and when the traditional city elites and, in the west, the structure of government itself collapsed, it was to be they who took control.
Quote ID: 4894
Time Periods: 4
Book ID: 205 Page: 203
Section: 5D
the bishops had always been based in the cities. (The derogatory word “pagan” has the connotation of one who lives in the country.)
Quote ID: 4895
Time Periods: ?
Book ID: 205 Page: 203
Section: 3C,3A1
After Constantine’s reign the hierarchy of bishops began to mirror the political hierarchy. The capital city of each province, the seat of the provincial governor, became the seat of the metropolitan bishop, who exercised some authority over the other bishops of the province.
Quote ID: 4896
Time Periods: 4
Book ID: 205 Page: 204
Section: 2C,3C
However, just how closely the power of the church mirrored that of the state can be seen in the decision of the Council of Constantinople in 381 to elevate the bishop of the city “next after the bishop of Rome because Constantinople is the new Rome.”
Quote ID: 4897
Time Periods: 4
Book ID: 205 Page: 204/205
Section: 3A4B
The authority of the bishops within the state was consolidated by tying them into the structure of the legal system. Constantine has extended to bishops the longstanding right of all the magistrates to free slaves. They could also hear civil cases if both sides agreed.
Quote ID: 4898
Time Periods: 4
Book ID: 205 Page: 205
Section: 3A4B,3D
In 407 the emperor Honorius gave bishops the specific right to ban pagan funeral rites, and in the same legislation their right to enforce the laws aimed at Jews, pagans and heretics was reaffirmed. In the following year bishops were given equal status to the praetorian prefects in that there was no appeal from their judgments. Sitting in the courts now became a major part of a bishop’s life. Augustine would complain that he had so many cases he often had to sit through the whole morning and into the siesta. His time was filled with property disputes, cases of adultery, inheritance cases and the enforcement of laws against pagans and Donatists.
Quote ID: 4899
Time Periods: 45
Book ID: 205 Page: 206
Section: 2E3,3C,4B
It was an ancient tradition that a city should glorify itself through its temples. Aristotle suggested in his Politics that a quarter of the revenues of a city’s territory ought to be dedicated to the gods; others proposed as much as a third. Since Hellenistic times kings and emperors had showered their patronage on favoured cities. Many temples were crammed with gold and silver statues, and imperial patronage was a means of raising support for the gods.
Quote ID: 4900
Time Periods: 014
Book ID: 205 Page: 206
Section: 2E3,3C,4B
Constantine followed in this tradition and concentrated his patronage on the building and adornment of churches. As, unlike pagan temples, which were primarily designed to house cult statues, churches needed to house congregations, Constantine adopted the basilica as the most appropriate form. Yet as basilicas were now also used as the audience halls of the emperors (that surviving at Trier, although stripped of its original opulent decoration, gives some idea of the model), it is arguable that Constantine was stressing in yet another way the close links between the state and Christianity. It is hard for us to grasp the sheer scale of this imperial patronage. It was so lavish that Constantine had to strip resources from temples to fund it.
Quote ID: 4901
Time Periods: 4
Book ID: 205 Page: 207
Section: 2E3,3C
Everything in these new churches had to be of the highest quality. While early Christian decoration, in the catacombs or house churches, for instance, had consisted of painted walls, now nothing less than mosaic was appropriate.
Quote ID: 4902
Time Periods: 4
Book ID: 205 Page: 208
Section: 2E3,3C
The gold of churches was necessary to give the believer a stepping stone to a full appreciation of the glories of heaven. Once a rationale had been created to divert the most precious of materials and the finest of buildings to Christian use, the old reservations were largely dissolved.
Quote ID: 4903
Time Periods: 4
Book ID: 205 Page: 208
Section: 2E3,3C
If a church had now become a symbol of heaven, how were figures to be shown? The answer was to model them on the imperial court, the closest model for heaven on earth.
Quote ID: 4904
Time Periods: 4
Book ID: 205 Page: 208
Section: 2E3,3A1,3C
Sabine MacCormack notes how once Christ was represented with such imperial imagery, the emperors ceased to make use of it: “Once an image of majesty had been applied to Christ it was impossible to apply it again to the emperor.”{15.} S. MacCormack, Art and Ceremony in Late Antiquity (Berkely and London, 1981), p. 130
Quote ID: 4905
Time Periods: 4
Book ID: 205 Page: 208/209
Section: 3A1
In the mosaiced figures of the apses and walls of the churches of the subsequent centuries God, Christ, the Virgin Mary, the disciples and saints and martyrs are dressed as emperors of the imperial court.
Quote ID: 4906
Time Periods: 4
Book ID: 205 Page: 209
Section: 2A3
The martyr who challenged the Roman empire and was extinguished by it now appears in mosaic as if he were one of its own grand officials. The point could not have been made better than in the case of St. Agnes, martyred in Rome after she resisted the advances of a praetor’s son. According to Prudentius, she trampled on all the vanities of the world, pomp, gold, silver garmets, dwellings, anger, fear and paganism through the acceptance of her martyrdom. Her reward, in the depiction of her against a gold background in the apse of her basilica on the outskirts of Rome, is to become an empress draped with gems in heaven. Having rejected treasures on earth, she finds them with Christ.
Quote ID: 4907
Time Periods: 4
Book ID: 205 Page: 209
Section: 3C,4B
While it was the emperors who initiated the massive patronage required to build these churches, it soon became a badge of faith for wealthy Christians to contribute.
Quote ID: 4908
Time Periods: 4
Book ID: 205 Page: 210
Section: 4B
One act of patronage encouraged another.
Quote ID: 4909
Time Periods: 5
Book ID: 205 Page: 210
Section: 4B
In Ravenna, the seat of government of the Goth, and hence Homoean, Theodoric the Ostrogoth, Homoeans and Nicenes struggled to outdo each other in the decoration of their churches.
Quote ID: 4910
Time Periods: 5
Book ID: 205 Page: 210
Section: 4B
It is clear, too, that church building was now also a matter of civic pride. “Other benefactions contribute to the decor of a city, while outlays on a church combine beauty with a city’s renown for godliness...for wealth that flows out for holy purposes becomes an ever-running stream for its possessors,” as one proud Christian put it.
Quote ID: 4911
Time Periods: 5
Book ID: 205 Page: 211
Section: 2A3
When the state condemned (in a law of 386, for instance) the unseemly practice of breaking up and distributing parts of dead bodies, Christians took no notice. It was argued that each part of a martyr’s body, however small, retained the sacred potency of the whole.
Quote ID: 4912
Time Periods: 4
Book ID: 205 Page: 211
Section: 3A4B
Inevitably, the more effective bishops absorbed the traditional responsibilities now increasingly evaded by the city elites. There are even cases of bishops--Synesius of Cyrene is a good example--securing the removal of an unpopular local governor.
Quote ID: 4913
Time Periods: 45
Book ID: 205 Page: 212
Section: 3A1
Basil of Caesarea, for instance, fought against attempts by the imperial government to limit the number of clergy in a diocese who could claim tax exemption, arguing that the church should have an absolute right to decide for itself who should and should not be clergy.
Quote ID: 4914
Time Periods: 4
Book ID: 205 Page: 212
Section: 3A4
Soon bishops were drawn into keeping law and order themselves. A later bishop of Antioch excused his late arrival at the Council of Ephesus in 431 on the grounds that he had been suppressing riots, another bishop wrote to a colleague, “It is the duty of bishops like you to cut short and restrain any unregulated movements of the mob.” Synesius organized the defence of Cyrene and its surrounding estates from the incursions of desert nomads, and sometimes bishops even had to quell bands of enthusiastic monks who had come to desecrate papan temples.
Quote ID: 4915
Time Periods: 45
Book ID: 205 Page: 212
Section: 3A4B
The men who could perform such roles were necessarily drawn from the traditional elites, and it was accepted that they would already be land-owning men of authority and education. “The cultural and social milieu which nurtured the urban upper classes of late antiquity did not distinguish future bishops from future bureaucrats,” as one scholar puts it, a point that could equally be made of eighteenth-century French bishops and nineteenth-century English bishops, so enduring was the transformation of the bishop’s status.{23.} Quoted in Hunt, “The Church as a Public Institution,” p. 265. An anonymous Catholic priest writing in the April 2000 edition of the magazine Prospect (London) tells the story of how a Vatican representative sent to Britain after the Second Vatican Council (1962-65) brought the message that English Catholic bishops should be of the appropriate class, public school and Oxbridge educated, so that they would be socially fitted to develop ecumenical links with the Anglican bishops!
Quote ID: 4916
Time Periods: 457
Book ID: 205 Page: 213
Section: 3A4B
Well might Gregory of Nyssa complain that the Church’s leaders were consuls, generals and prefects, distinguished in rhetoric and philosophy, and no longer the ordinary men who had been Christ’s disciples.
Quote ID: 4917
Time Periods: 4
Book ID: 205 Page: 213
Section: 3A3
The poor had always been of concern in large cities due to their propensity to riot at times of famine; the larger cities, such as Rome, had long made use of “bread and circuses” programmes in place to placate them. In offering help to the poor, a bishop was thus sustaining a traditional “pagan” role while at the same time acting as a pastor to his flock.This was recognized by Constantine, who distributed largesse for the poor of major cities through the bishops. Those entitled to help were entered on poor lists kept by the church and only through a licence given by the bishop could anyone beg. This was one of the ways that he used the bishops for the state ends.
Quote ID: 4918
Time Periods: 34
Book ID: 205 Page: 214
Section: 3A1,3A4
In short, the bishops combined the roles of spiritual leader, patron, estates manager, builder, overseer of law and order, city representative, and protector of the poor among others.
Quote ID: 4919
Time Periods: 34
Book ID: 205 Page: 215
Section: 3A2
The case of Cyril of Alexandria, bishop for 412-444, illustrates the point well. His obsession was to discredit the rival bishop of Constantinople, Nestorius, through having the latter declared a heretic for his views on the two natures of Christ. Having manipulated a council held at Ephesus to uphold his view, he had to convince the emperor Theodosius II to support him. This involved, as a document sent secretly by Cyril to agents in Constantinople reveals, massive bribery at court.
Quote ID: 4920
Time Periods: 5
Book ID: 205 Page: 215/216
Section: 3A2A
This strategy worked. Nestorius was deposed and forced into exile, and in 435 Theodosius ordered the burning of all his writings.
Quote ID: 4921
Time Periods: 5
Book ID: 205 Page: 216
Section: 1A
the original message of Christianity, proclaimed as it was by a spiritual leader who had suffered the most humiliating punishments the empire could administer, could be seen as a threat to that empire.
Quote ID: 4922
Time Periods: 1
Book ID: 205 Page: 216
Section: 3A1
By tying the bishops into the imperial administration and at the same time giving them access to wealth and status (which they could, of course, use in a variety of ways so long as these did not subvert the social order), the state had achieved a major political transformation from which there would be no turning back.One consequence was that the balance of power between church and state had shifted so that the more confident and determined bishops were even prepared to assert church authority over the state. The prime example of this is Ambrose of Milan.
Quote ID: 4923
Time Periods: 4
Book ID: 205 Page: 217
Section: 3A1
Ambrose, bishop of Milan between 374 and 397, is perhaps the most fascinating example of how a bishop survived in the tricky and unsettled political climate of the late fourth century. His success meant that he is seen as one of the cornerstone figures of late-fourth-century Christianity, elevated together with his contemporaries Augustine and Jerome as on the “Doctors of the Church.”
Quote ID: 4924
Time Periods: 4
Book ID: 205 Page: 218
Section: 3A4B
Ambrose, the local provincial governor, was summoned to keep order. To his surprise, he found himself acclaimed by the crowd and then accepted by the emperor Valentinian as the new bishop. He was not even a baptized Christian at the time, but within a week he had been baptized and installed. His sudden elevation is an example of just how far political needs, above all the need to keep good order, now predominated in church appointments.
Quote ID: 4925
Time Periods: 4
Book ID: 205 Page: 218
Section: 3A1
He was highly able, an effective orator with impressive administrative skills and flair for manipulating situations to his politcal advantage. He was not, however (again like most of the class he came from), an original thinker, and although he knew Greek, he never fully penetrated the intricacies of the theologies he now diligently set to absorbing. His most famous pastoral work, On the Duties of Ministers, was largely a reworking from a Christian perspective of Cicero’s On Duties, and when he began plagiarizing Greek works he earned himself a stern rebuke from the scholarly Jerome for “decking himself out like a crow with someone else’s plumes.”
Quote ID: 4926
Time Periods: 45
Book ID: 205 Page: 220
Section: 2C
When a group of senators travelled up from Rome with the traditional robes of the pontifex maximus, Gratian refused to accept them, the first emperor to make such a decisive break with the pagan world. (Ironically, the popes were later--in the fifteenth century-- to adopt the title pontifex maximus as on the their own.)
Quote ID: 4927
Time Periods: 47
Book ID: 205 Page: 221
Section: 3D1
Theodosius’ imposition of Nicene orthodoxy applied only in the east.
Quote ID: 4928
Time Periods: 4
Book ID: 205 Page: 221
Section: 3D
Like most of the grander bishops of his day, Ambrose was an enthusiastic builder responsible for a number of large churches in Milan, among them the Basilica Ambrosiana, destined to be the city’s new cathedral, outside the city walls, where he himself planned to be buried under the altar. His pretensions were criticized--the bones of martyrs, or Apostles if they could be found, were more appropriate founding relics for a church than those of the builder.
Quote ID: 4929
Time Periods: 4
Book ID: 205 Page: 221/222
Section: 3D
Sometime after Easter of 386, Ambrose, as he tells the story in a letter to his sister, had a presentiment that he knew where two local martyrs, Protasius and Gervasius, were buried. Sure enough, when the earth in the chosen spot was scraped away, two complete bodies were found. Their excellent preservation after perhaps some hundred years underground (there was even blood around their severed heads, Ambrose reported to his sister) might have cast doubt on the identification, but Ambrose hurriedly announced that this was the evidence that they were indeed the martyrs, miraculously preserved by God.
Quote ID: 4930
Time Periods: 4
Book ID: 205 Page: 223
Section: 3D
In 388 a Christian mob, led by their own bishop, had destroyed a synagogue in Callinicum, a remote town on the Euphrates. Theodosius, who knew the importance of maintaining order on the borders and subjecting all equally to the laws, ordered the local governor to punish the criminals and compensate the victims. (Compare the edict from the Theodosian Code quoted earlier, p. 212.) Ambrose raised the issue directly in a letter to the emperor. Surely a Christian could not be responsible for re-creating a house “where Christ was denied”? and what if the bishop refused as a matter of conscience? Was Theodosius to make a martyr of him? Even more chillingly for the modern reader, Ambrose said that he himself would be happy to take responsibility for the burning: “I declare that I burned down the synogogue; at least that I gave the orders that there would be no building in which Christ was denied.”
Quote ID: 4931
Time Periods: 4
Book ID: 205 Page: 224
Section: 3D
Rioting in Thessalonika had resulted in the death of the garrison commander, one Butheric. Theodosius, far away in Milan, ordered retaliation, and the accounts suggest his temper got the best of him and he requested no quarter be given; thousands apparently died in the ensuing massacre.
Quote ID: 4932
Time Periods: 4
Book ID: 205 Page: 224
Section: 3D
Who was using whom is not easily established. In all the surviving historical accounts the massacre and Theodosius’ penance are associated, suggesting that contemporaries saw the emperor as successfully redeeming himself. In other words, Theodosius extricated himself skillfully from a difficult situation. Ambrose, however, presented a completely different slant on the matter. Here was the emperor, deep in sin, coming to church to be purged of it--effectively an emperor was accepting the supremacy of the church over state matters.
Quote ID: 4933
Time Periods: 4
Book ID: 205 Page: 225
Section: 3D
When Pope Gregory VII excommunicated the emperor Henry IV in the 1070s, it was Ambrose’s action against Theodosius that he called on to enforce his ultimate supremacy (successfully in that Henry came to seek penance).
Quote ID: 4934
Time Periods: 47
Book ID: 205 Page: 225
Section: 3D
Within a few weeks of his public penance, Theodosius had passed laws that in effect banned all expressions of cult worship at pagan shrines. Encouraged by the initiative, Christian mobs now began destroying the great shrines of the ancient world. Nearly twelve hundred years after their inauguration, the Olympic games were held for the last time in 395.
Quote ID: 4935
Time Periods: 4
Book ID: 205 Page: 225
Section: 3D
In a masterly funeral oration, Theodosius was woven by Ambose into the fabric of the Church and installed in glory in heaven:Relieved therefore of the doubt of conflicts, Theodosius of worshipful memory now enjoys everlasting light and eternal tranquillity, and for the deeds which he performed in this body, he is recompensed with fruits of divine reward. And it is because Theodosius of worshipful memory loved the Lord his God, that he deserved the company of saints.
Quote ID: 4936
Time Periods: 4
Book ID: 205 Page: 230
Section: 3A1B
When Gratian died in 383 and was succeeded by the boy emperor Valentinian II, the senators tried again, and it was Symmachus himself, now prefect of the city, who wrote an eloquent and powerful letter to Valentinian. It was not just the removal of the altar that he deplored but the denigration of all that it symbolized, the diverse spiritual world of paganism and the freedom of thought it allowed. “What does it matter,” he wrote, “by which wisdom each of us arrives at the truth? It is not possible that only one road leads to so sublime a mystery.” Ambrose saw the letter and replied, “What you are ignorant of, we know from the word of God. And what you try to infer, we have established as truth from the very wisdom of God.” Again, Ambrose prevailed and Valentinian refused Symmachus’ request.
Quote ID: 4937
Time Periods: 4
Book ID: 205 Page: 230
Section: 3D
Yet Theodosius did not permit the return of the Altar of Victory, and, in the 390s, under the influence of Ambrose, he passed the first comprehensive laws banning pagan worship.
Quote ID: 4938
Time Periods: 4
Book ID: 205 Page: 233
Section: 2E2
A clean body and clean clothes betoken and unclean mind.The Ascetic Paula, A Roman Aristocrat, To Her Nuns
{1.} Quoted in J. Kelly, Jerome (London, 1975), p.132
Quote ID: 4939
Time Periods: 45
Book ID: 205 Page: 235
Section: 3C,4B
This sense of guilt could only have been reinforced by the new wealth of the church and what the historian Eusebius was to call the “hypocrisy of those who crept into the church” in order to enjoy its benefits.
Quote ID: 4940
Time Periods: 4
Book ID: 205 Page: 235
Section: 3C,2E2
Cassian, who brought monasticism from east to west, and who, unlike (as we shall see) Jerome, had a relatively balanced and perceptive view of asceticism, put it more prosaically:As their [the early Christians’] fervour cooled, many combined their confession of Christ with wealth; but those who kept the fervour of the apostles, recalling that former perfection, withdrew from the cities and from the society of those who thought this laxness of living permissible for themselves and for the church, to spots on the edges of towns, or more remote places and there practised privately and in their own groups the things they remembered the apostles had instituted for the whole body of the church.
{6.} R.A. Markus, The End of Ancient Christianity (Cambridge, 1990), p.166
Quote ID: 4941
Time Periods: 45
Book ID: 205 Page: 238
Section: 2E2
While the Egyptian ascetics were the most celebrated, those of the Syrian desert ran them close. Here the custom was for ascetics to ascend pillars (hence their name, Stylites, from stulos, a pillar) in the hope of coming to heaven. Some would stay up there for decades, with their lower limbs festering through inactivity. The faithful would be hauled up in baskets for consultations.
Quote ID: 4942
Time Periods: 34
Book ID: 205 Page: 238
Section: 2E2
The archetype of the desert ascetic was Anthony.
Quote ID: 4943
Time Periods: 34
Book ID: 205 Page: 239
Section: 2E2
Anthony’s life was written up either by Athanasius or someone close to him, in about 357, and this “vibrant ascetic odyssey,” as Peter Brown has described it, caught the imagination of Christians throughout the empire. Anthony, wrote its author, “possessed in a very high degree apatheia--perfect self-control, freedom from passion--the ideal of every monk and ascetic striving for perfection. Christ, who was free from every emotional weakness and fault, is his model.”
Quote ID: 4944
Time Periods: 4
Book ID: 205 Page: 242
Section: 2D2
It is only the fourth century that sees the development of a cult of Mary as perpetually virgin--Athanasius was among the first to use the term “ever virgin.”
Quote ID: 4945
Time Periods: 4
Book ID: 205 Page: 242
Section: 2D2
Doctrinally, the cult reached its climax with the declaration that Mary was Theotokos, Mother of God (still her preferred title in eastern church), which was proclaimed at the Council of Ephesus in 431.
Quote ID: 4946
Time Periods: 5
Book ID: 205 Page: 242
Section: 2D2
The idea that she might have died and her body become corrupted became unimaginable, hence her “assumption” into heaven, noted in apocryphal sources for the first time in the late fourth century. In the east the emphasis was on “a dormition” (a falling asleep). Mary came to absorb the attributes of pagan goddesses. Vasiliki Limberis shows how the goddesses Rhea and Tyche, to whom temples had been built by Constantine in Constantinople, gradually became transformed into Mary, the Virgin Mother of God, as Christianity ousted the remnants of paganism in the city in the fourth century.
Quote ID: 4947
Time Periods: 4
Book ID: 205 Page: 243
Section: 2D2
A good example of how the apocryphal stories about Mary were adopted by the church hierarchy can be seen in the fifth-century mosaics of S. Maria Maggiore in Rome. The basilica was built by Sixtus III in the 430s in celebration of the declaration of the Council of Ephesus that Mary was the Mother of God. In the Annunciation scene, which presents Mary in great splendour arrayed as a Byzantine princess, she is shown to have been spinning--drawing on an apocryphal story that she was in service in the Temple where she wove a veil for the Holy of Holies. Here Sixtus has appropriated a story with no scriptural support at all in order to make contact with popular devotion.
Quote ID: 4948
Time Periods: 5
Book ID: 205 Page: 243/244
Section: 2E2
One such was Jovinian, a monk from Rome who became an ascetic himself but subsequently renounced asceticism as spiritually meaningless. Its rationale seems to have simply dissolved for him. Why should a virgin be given prominence in the eyes of God over a married person? he asked. Why should not one eat and drink freely so long as one offered thanks to God for one’s good fortune? What was important was baptism followed by a life committed to faith and true repentance after sin.
Quote ID: 4949
Time Periods: 4
Book ID: 205 Page: 244
Section: 2E2
Naturally, Jerome, now in Bethlehem, was outraged and was impelled to write one of his most vicious counter-attacks--he described Jovinian’s book as “vomit which he has thrown up” and its writer as a debauchee who gambolled in mixed baths (a particular place of iniquity for the ascetic) while true Christians fasted. Jovinian was declared a heretic, ordered to be flogged with leaden whips and forced to leave Rome for Milan.
Quote ID: 4950
Time Periods: 4
Book ID: 205 Page: 245
Section: 2E2
Cassian, who had originally seen that solitary life as an ideal, began to realize its drawbacks, not least in that personalities which were already deranged could become far worse in solitude. “The more it a vice is hidden as when as ascetic goes off on his own, the more deeply will that serpent foment in the sickening man and incurable disease,” he shrewdly noted.{29.} Rousseau, Ascetics, Authority and the Church, pg. 187.
Quote ID: 4951
Time Periods: 4
Book ID: 205 Page: 246
Section: 2E2
In these early days solitude was still regarded as the aim of the true ascetic, and Pachomius’ monasteries were seen as a sort of halfway house, providing, as it were, an initial training where the believer could learn to live in silence and good order before retreating into a more remote setting. Eventually, however, to live in a monastery became an end in itself.
Quote ID: 4952
Time Periods: 34
Book ID: 205 Page: 247
Section: 2E2
As Cassian put it, echoing Basil, “the first proof that you possess humility is this; that you submit to the judgment of the elders, not only what you are to do, but also what you are to think sic.” It is in the very discipline of living that the monk comes close to God. Order brings its own reward.
Quote ID: 4953
Time Periods: 4
Book ID: 205 Page: 250
Section: 3D
It is hard to find a Christian of the period who has found serenity, and the most committed, Jerome and Augustine, for instance, appear to be the most tortured.
Quote ID: 4954
Time Periods: 45
Book ID: 205 Page: 250
Section: 4B
The only true way to secure a rest from tension on earth is to escape completely from the exercise of moral responsibility; here is the “virtue” of obedience becomes crucial. William James, in his celebrated study The Varieties of Religious Experience, makes the point, quoting the response of a Jesuit:"One of the great consolations of the monastic life is the assurance that we have that in obeying, we can commit no fault. The Superior may commit a fault in commanding you to do this or that, but you are certain that you commit no fault so long as you obey," because God will only ask you if you have duly performed what orders you received, and if you can furnish a clear account in that respect, you are absolved entirely
Here the abdication of the power to think for oneself is complete.
Quote ID: 4955
Time Periods: 7
Book ID: 205 Page: 253
Section: 3A2A,3E
The emperor Justinian, faced by similar riots, the Nika revolt of 532, was encouraged by his wife, Theodora, to send in troops. Between 30,000 and 50,000 citizens are believed to have been massacred.
Quote ID: 4956
Time Periods: 6
Book ID: 205 Page: 253
Section: 3A2A,3E
In any case, as the contemporary historian Procopius put it in another context, “Justinian did not see it as murder if the victims did not share his own beliefs.”
Quote ID: 4957
Time Periods: 467
Book ID: 205 Page: 253
Section: 4B
A law of Theodosius II of 438 speaks of “the thousand terrors” of the laws “that defend the boundless claim to honour” of the Church. Punishments were harsh, including, for example, capital punishment for the making of a sacrifice. For the first time in the history of the Roman empire, correct religious adherence became a requirement for the full enjoyment of the benefits of Roman society.
Quote ID: 4958
Time Periods: 5
Book ID: 205 Page: 260
Section: 3A1
Muddled by these vague formulas and distortions, the debate degenerated into a power struggle, and it was here that the determined Cyril triumphed over the less politically adept Nestorius. At the Council of Ephesus, called in 431 by the emperor Theodosius II to settle the matter, Cyril arrived early with a large group of strong men (they were euphemistically referred to as “hospital attendants”), overawed the imperial commissioner sent by Theodosius to preside, completed the business before the supporters of Nestorius had even assembled and then used massive bribery to keep Theodosius and his court on his side. Nestorius was condemned as a heretic. Theodosius was stunned by the controversy and bargained with the Alexandrians that the divisive anathemas be withdrawn for the debate in return for the condemnations of Nestorius, whose works were ordered by imperial decree to be burned in 435.
Quote ID: 4959
Time Periods: 5
Book ID: 205 Page: 261
Section: 2A3
When he [PJ: Cyril] died in 444, one opponent suggested that a heavy stone be placed on his grave to prevent his soul from returning to the world when the inmates of hell threw it out as too evil even for there!
Quote ID: 4960
Time Periods: 5
Book ID: 205 Page: 264
Section: 2B1
Even if, after 381, Christ and the Holy Spirit were fully incorporated into the Godhead, Christianity could provide a mass of figures who had some form of “divine” status in the afterlife as companions of God, such as the Virgin Mary, the saints and the martyrs. Then there were the angels and demons whose combined presence filled the Christian world with as many supernatural presences as there had been in earlier times. It needs to be remembered that Christians continued to believe in the existence of the pagan gods--as demons. None of this world have been alien to pagans. G. W. Bowersock describes a number of instances, from Syria and Mesopotamia in particular, of gods being worshipped in groups of three.PJ: Three in one.
Quote ID: 4961
Time Periods: 0123
Book ID: 205 Page: 264
Section: 2B2,3C
So a conversion to Christianity need not have been abrupt. Often pagans compromised with Christianity by linking a particular martyr with and existing pagan festival so that the celebrations and rituals could continue as before.
Quote ID: 4962
Time Periods: 34
Book ID: 205 Page: 264/265
Section: 2A3
Jerome was rebuked by one earnest Christian for allowing a martyr’s tomb to be surrounded by a mountain of candles even in daylight, as the tomb of a pagan deity might be. Jerome replied lamely that the candles were to provide light for all-night vigils, but “what used to be done for idols, and is therefore detestable, is now done for martyrs, and on that account is acceptable. Candles are still, of course, to be found before the images of saints in both Catholic and Orthodox churches.
Quote ID: 4963
Time Periods: 45
Book ID: 205 Page: 265
Section: 2A4
Cyril of Alexandria, aware that many locals were still attending a shrine of Isis at a nearby town and recognizing that “these districts were in need of medical services from God,” promoted two local martyrs, John and Cyrus, to fulfill the role, creating a new shrine in their honour for the sick to attend.
Quote ID: 4964
Time Periods: 45
Book ID: 205 Page: 265
Section: 3F
Gregory the Great showed the same shrewdness during the conversion of the Angles. He ordered the idols to be taken from the existing British temples, holy water sprinkled over the shrines to purify them, then altars built and relics put in place “so that the Angles have to change from the worship of the demons to that of the true God” without having to change their place of worship.
Quote ID: 4965
Time Periods: 6
Book ID: 205 Page: 266
Section: 3A2
Now, with its new status as representative of the state in religious affairs, the church could take the initiative against its enemies. What strikes the modern reader is the passion and conviction with which Christians laid into their adversaries.
Quote ID: 4966
Time Periods: 45
Book ID: 205 Page: 267
Section: 2E3
In the early fifth century laws were passed transferring the income from properties owned by temples to the church, which thereby consolidated its economic position. By the end of the century gifts or bequests to temples were forbidden altogether, resulting in a natural atrophy as buildings fell into disrepair. The process was hastened by deliberate destruction.
Quote ID: 4967
Time Periods: 5
Book ID: 205 Page: 267
Section: 4B
The elimination of paganism was accompanied by a dampening-down of emotions, dance, and song so effective that we still lower our voices when we enter a church.
Quote ID: 4968
Time Periods: 7
Book ID: 205 Page: 268
Section: 3A2
When Cyril became bishop of Alexandria in 412, he asserted himself with some energy. His “shock troops, ” the parabalani, were viewed with such terror that the emperor himself had to ask that their numbers be limited to 500. Virtually every tension in the city was exacerbated by Cyril’s intrusions. The city prefect Orestes, who was attempting to resist the encroachment on his secular powers, was injured by a mob of monks, Jewish synagogues were seized, but most shocking of all was the murder by a Christian mob of Hypatia, a philosopher and mathematician (who had written commentaries, now lost, on Diophantus and Apollonius). She was attacked on the streets and her body pulled to pieces.
Quote ID: 4969
Time Periods: 5
Book ID: 205 Page: 268
Section: 3A2,3E
It was, however, only under Justinian, emperor 527-65, that the full weight of the law was enforced against paganism. One of his laws of the 530s signals the end of the imperial toleration extended to all religions by Constantine in 313:All those who have not yet been baptised must come forward, whether they reside in the capital or in the provinces, and go to the very holy churches with their wives, their children, and their households, to be instructed in the true faith of Christianity. And once thus instructed and having sincerely renounced their former error, let them be judged worthy of redemptive baptism. Should they disobey, let them know that they will be excluded from the state and will no longer have any rights of possession, neither goods nor property: stripped of everything, they will be reduced to penury, without prejudice to the appropriate punishments that will be imposed on them.
Quote ID: 4970
Time Periods: 6
Book ID: 205 Page: 272
Section: 3A2B
In the dispute over the Altar of Victory in the Senate house in the 380s, it was Ambrose in Milan, where he had direct access to the emperor, a vital consideration so far as ecclesiastical power was concerned, who masterminded its removal, rather than Damasus the bishop of Rome.
Quote ID: 4971
Time Periods: 4
Book ID: 205 Page: 272
Section: 2D1
Rome’s political position within the empire atrophied over the centuries and received a further blow when the first Christian emperor himself set up his new capital at Constantinople. Then, at the Council of Constantinople of 381, Constantinople was made second in honour only to Rome as a Bishopric. What hurt Rome in particular was that this move implied that a bishopric’s authority was based as much on its political importance as on its Christian origins. This was the situation when the empire was split in 395.
Quote ID: 4972
Time Periods: 4
Book ID: 205 Page: 272
Section: 4A
The first significant theologian to write in Latin was Tertullian, the son of a centurion, born in the north African trading city of Carthage.
Quote ID: 4973
Time Periods: 2
Book ID: 205 Page: 273
Section: 2D1
his attempt to formulate his own theology led him to devise specific Latin terms for Greek concepts. One of these was the word Trinitas. (In “his” Trinity the divine logos exists in the mind of God from the beginning of time but is “shot out” at the moment when the cosmos begins.)
Quote ID: 4975
Time Periods: 4
Book ID: 205 Page: 273
Section: 2D1
He passes from the scene (his last known writings date from A.D. 212) and the date of his death is unknown but perhaps as late as 240.
Quote ID: 4976
Time Periods: 23
Book ID: 205 Page: 277/278
Section: 2D
Augustine has come to be seen as the cornerstone of the western Christian tradition.
Quote ID: 4977
Time Periods: 45
Book ID: 205 Page: 278
Section: 2D
Augustine’s works were the earliest to be printed after the Bible.
Quote ID: 4978
Time Periods: 45
Book ID: 205 Page: 294
Section: 3A2
Once again the state had come to the rescue of the orthodox church. In 405 honorius issued an edict ordering the unity of both churches, branding the Donatist as heretics, partly on the grounds of their insistence on rebaptism, thus making them subject to the rigour of the law. Their property was to be confiscated, their services forbidden and their clergy exiled. Augustine ejected the Donatists from Hippo and, taking over their bare churches--they did not believe in decoration and white-washed their church walls--he posted his own anti-Donatist texts on the walls.
Quote ID: 4979
Time Periods: 4
Book ID: 205 Page: 295
Section: 3A2A
Donatism in itself became a criminal offence (only just over a hundred years previously, of course, the last edicts of Diocletian treated Christianity as a whole in a similar way) and Donatists were now actively compelled to join the orthodox church.
Quote ID: 4980
Time Periods: 4
Book ID: 205 Page: 295
Section: 3A2,3C1
However, the works of Athanasius and the edicts of 380 and 381 enforcing Trinitarian orthodoxy were loaded with condemnation of “heretics.” It was Augustine who developed a rationale of persecution.
Quote ID: 4981
Time Periods: 45
Book ID: 205 Page: 296
Section: 3A2A
By the thirteenth century a papal legate reported on the extermination of the Cathars, a sect which preached a return to the ascetic ideals of early Christianity: “Nearly twenty thousand of the citizens were put to the sword regardless of age and sex. The workings of divine vengeance have been wondrous.
Quote ID: 4982
Time Periods: 7
Book ID: 205 Page: 296
Section: 2A2
Augustine was forced to argue in reply that the quality of the minister was not essential to the sacrament. It was a direct expression of the grace of God and passed from God to the recipient without losing its purity (as water passed down a stone channel). So long as the sacrament was administered in the name of Christ and the correct form was used, it was valid.
Quote ID: 4983
Time Periods: 5
Book ID: 205 Page: 297
Section: 3C2
Augustine rejected Eusebius’ claim that Constantine had inaugurated a Christian state. The state, however Christian it may appear, can only be a community in which saints and sinners are mingled.
Quote ID: 4984
Time Periods: 34
Book ID: 205 Page: 298
Section: 3A1,3A4
The Christian can, and should, participate in the state’s activities, as a soldier or administrator, and Augustine expected the Christian to uphold the authority of the state and play an active part in supporting its values. (“What is more horrible than the public executioner? Yet he has a necessary place in the legal system, and he is part of the order of a well governed society.”) War was to be avoided if possible, but Augustine accepted it as part of life: Christians should not shrink from it if their state was threatened or if it would secure peace and safety for human society. Once Christians were in the army, it was not wrong to kill in the obedience of orders, even if they were unjust. Hierarchy, where those below have the duty of obey those above them, is the natural way of things, whether in church, state or family. Even at its best, however, the state can only be an echo of the “City of God.”
Quote ID: 4985
Time Periods: 5
Book ID: 205 Page: 298
Section: 3A1,3A4
The City of God proved to be the foundation document of Christian political thought, though it presents a view of society which seems radically different from that of the Gospels.
Quote ID: 4986
Time Periods: ?
Book ID: 205 Page: 300
Section: 3A3,3A4
It was, however, in this context, with imperial authority crumbling in the west, that the role of the bishops of Rome gradually expanded.
Quote ID: 4987
Time Periods: 3
Book ID: 205 Page: 300
Section: 4B
One by one, the ancient senatorial families of Rome had converted to Christianity; in the city we can see the shift in patronage from the old and now decaying ceremonial centre to the great new basilicas which were being built around it.
Quote ID: 4988
Time Periods: 45
Book ID: 205 Page: 300
Section: 2D1
Leo, one of only two popes to be termed “the Great.” He interpreted the Roman law of succession to suggest that he had even assumed the legal personality of Peter by virtue of the unbroken line of bishops of Rome since Peter’s time, an interpretation reflected in his confident dealing with bishops in Africa, Italy, Spain and Gaul.
Quote ID: 4989
Time Periods: 5
Book ID: 205 Page: 300
Section: 3A3,3A4
Shrewdly, Leo also tied the authority to the state by acting through Valentinian III (emperor of the west 425-55) in civil affairs. He asserted his own authority in the secular sphere in 452, when he personally led a delegation from Rome to confront Attila the Hun, whose armies were ravaging northern Italy. When Attila withdrew, possibly because of a lack of resources, Leo successfully took the credit.
Quote ID: 4990
Time Periods: 5
Book ID: 205 Page: 302
Section: 3F
The new world that was emerging in the west was symbolised by Gregory the Great, bishop of Rome 590-604, “the harbinger,” as Judith Herrin puts it, “of a purely Latin and clerical culture of the medieval west.” He became pope (the term was now in use with specific reference to the bishop of Rome) in 590.
Quote ID: 4991
Time Periods: 67
Book ID: 205 Page: 302/303
Section: 3F
Gregory was not an original thinker; he relied heavily on his forerunners in the western theological tradition--Augustine (and hence Paul), Ambrose and, in monastic affairs, Cassian. He distrusted secular learning, and for him the deadliest of the seven deadly sins was pride, by which he meant intellectual independence. “The wise, ” he said, “should be advised to cease from their knowledge,” to be “wise in ignorance, wisely untaught.”
Quote ID: 4992
Time Periods: 67
Book ID: 205 Page: 303
Section: 3F
It is in Gregory that one finds an early definition of purgatory, a halfway house where sins are purified before the sinner progress to heaven.
Quote ID: 4993
Time Periods: 67
Book ID: 205 Page: 304
Section: 2D1
“Rome’s world became radically simplified; and the Roman see emerged as the single, isolated, religious centre of the barbarian west.” The history of western Christianity was rewritten so successfully to reflect this fact that many western Christians are hardly aware of the predominantly Greek nature of the early church. In fact, it is still possible to read of the eastern churches “breaking away” from Catholicism. Though the story is necessarily complicated, it seems rather to have been one of “the final detachment of the papacy from Byzantine political allegiance and the creation of a new western empire” in the eighth century.
Quote ID: 4994
Time Periods: 7
Book ID: 205 Page: 305
Section: 3A1
The rare depictions of crucifixion in the fifth century show no sign of Christ’s humiliation and suffering--perhaps christians still found it difficult to accept the degradation of crucifixion. The words “who was crucified for us” were added to the litany for the first time in the 470s in Antioch. By 1300 his suffering is shown in prurient detail.
Quote ID: 4995
Time Periods: 5
Book ID: 205 Page: 305
Section: 3A1,3A3
Yet at the same time, what was now the Roman Catholic Church was assuming responsibility for the poor and unloved. The tradition of learning was narrow, particularly by comparison with the classical world, but in so far as education was preserved it was through the Church, as was a system of health care. These centuries were also a time when imperial authority had disappeared and the Church in the west began to fill the vacuum. The Church preserved Roman law and the bishops a structure of institutional authority.
Quote ID: 4996
Time Periods: 345
Book ID: 205 Page: 313
Section: 3D
As we have seen, Theodosius was outmanoeuvred by Cyril, who pushed through a doctrine for which he then attempted to gain the support of the imperial authorities through massive bribery.
Quote ID: 4997
Time Periods: 45
Book ID: 205 Page: 313
Section: 3F
Gregory the Great consolidated a rationale of papal supremacy that once again stressed the bishop of Rome’s precedence in both west and east. Inevitably much tidying up of Christianity’s turbulent past needed to be done to give it ideological coherence. The doctrines of orthodox Christianity, it was now said, had been known throughout the ages. Even the patriarchs, who had lived before the time of Moses, “knew that one Almighty God is the Holy Trinity,” though Gregory admitted that “they did not preach very much publicly about the Trinity whom they knew.”
Quote ID: 4998
Time Periods: 67
Book ID: 205 Page: 313/314
Section: 3F
As orthodox doctrine was now presented as though it had been settled and accepted from the beginning of time, heretics were consequently accused of “bringing forth as something new which is not contained in the old books of the ancient fathers.” So, whatever inspection of the historical record might suggest, it became impossible to see Christian doctrine as the product of a process of evolution.
Quote ID: 4999
Time Periods: 567
Book ID: 205 Page: 314
Section: 2D1,3F
Isolated in the west and free of the imperial presence, Gregory was free to proclaim papal supremacy. When new disputes arose, it was to be the pope, as successor of Peter, who would have the final say, even if a council had made its own decisions: “Without the authority of consent of the apostolic see Rome, ” said Gregory, “none of the matters transacted by council have any binding force.” The supremacy of the pope in all matters of doctrine was now fully asserted.
Quote ID: 5000
Time Periods: 67
Book ID: 205 Page: 320/321
Section: 2B2
Two martyrs from Asia Minor, Damian and Cosmas, who went through a particularly brutal martyrdom in which their bodies were cut up, re-emerge as patron saints of surgery. Similarly, St. Apollonia, whose teeth were knocked out during her martyrdom, is the patron saint of toothache. St Margaret of Antioch had been swallowed by a dragon. Making the sign of the cross while inside its belly, she was miraculously delivered and subsequently became a patron saint of childbirth.
Quote ID: 5001
Time Periods: 34
Book ID: 205 Page: 322
Section: 4B
The last recorded astronomical observation in the ancient Greek world was one by the Athenian philosopher Proclus in A.D. 475, nearly 1100 years after the prediction of an eclipse by Thales in 585 B.C., which traditionally marks the beginning of Greek science. It would be over 1,000 years--with the publication of Copernicus“ De revolutionibus in 1543--before these studies began to move forward again.
Quote ID: 5002
Time Periods: 5
Book ID: 205 Page: 337
Section: 4B
The texts of a Jerome or an Athanasius are marked by invective at the expense of reasoned argument. This was not only deeply unfortunate for Christianity but became a major hindrance to a state which was hoping to use a docile church to support its authority. Hence the imposition of authority, an imposition which, backed by Christian suspicions of scientific argument, crushed all forms of reasoned thinking.
Quote ID: 5003
Time Periods: 57
Book ID: 205 Page: 339
Section: 3A1
In conclusion, it is worth asking why the political dimension to the making of Christian doctrine has been so successfully expunged from the history of the western churches. It is virtually ignored in most histories of Christianity.
Quote ID: 5004
Time Periods: 47
Book ID: 205 Page: 339
Section: 3A1
History still has to be rewritten in the west, but the process is complete by the time of Gregory the Great [PJ: c. 540–604]. His immediate concern was to establish his own authority over the remains of an empire in which traditional imperial authority had disintegrated. There was no one to prevent him from rewriting the history of Christian doctrine as if the emperors had never played a part in it, and so he did.
Quote ID: 5005
Time Periods: 56
Book ID: 205 Page: 339
Section: 3A1
It is only recently that scholars have begun to appreciate the extent to which the emperors actually made, in the words of Hilary of Poitiers [saw it in the 4th century!], the bishops their slaves. It is simplistic to talk of the Greek tradition of rational thought being suppressed by Christians. It makes more sense to argue that the suppression took place at the hands of a state supported by a church which it had itself politicized (and, in the process, removed from its roots in the Gospel teachings).
Quote ID: 5006
Time Periods: 4
Book ID: 205 Page: 340
Section: 4B
I would reiterate the central theme of this book: that the Greek intellectual tradition was suppressed rather than simply faded away.
Quote ID: 5007
Time Periods: 47
Book ID: 205 Page: 340
Section: 4B
Whether the explanations put forward in this book for the suppression are accepted or not, the reasons for the extinction of serious mathematical and scientific thinking in Europe for a thousand years surely deserve more attention than they have received.
Quote ID: 5008
Time Periods: 47
Book ID: 205 Page: 392
Section: 2E6
The evidence for Peter’s presence in Rome is flimsy, but no other city (outside Antioch, where by tradition he was the first bishop, and, of course, Jerusalem) lays claim to his presence, and so most scholars are prepared to accept that he did travel to Rome.
Quote ID: 5010
Time Periods: 13
Book ID: 205 Page: 392
Section: 2E6
The legend that he was bishop of Rome (if that was the position he held when in the city) for twenty-five years seems to have been a third-century invention.
Quote ID: 5011
Time Periods: 13
Book ID: 205 Page: xxi
Section: 2C
Some terms need further mention here. The word “pagan” as used nowadays is often one of abuse, associated with witches, hedonistic living and minority spiritual ideas. Even the most cursory knowledge of the wide variety of pagan thought and movements in the Roman empire shows that to use the term in a derogatory sense is inappropriate.
Quote ID: 4783
Time Periods: 4
Book ID: 205 Page: xvii
Section: 4A
The Greek intellectual tradition did not simply lose vigour and disappear. Rather, in the fourth and fifth century A.D. it was destroyed by the political and religious forces which made up the highly authoritarian government of the late Roman empire.
Quote ID: 4780
Time Periods: 4
Book ID: 205 Page: xvii
Section: 4A
The imposition of orthodoxy went hand in hand with a stifling of any form of independent reasoning. By the fifth century, not only has rational thought been suppressed, but there has been a substitution for it of “mystery, magic and authority,”
Quote ID: 4782
Time Periods: 5
Book ID: 205 Page: xxii
Section: 4B
Pagans were normally tolerant of each other. So long as public order was not threatened, an individual could follow his, or in many cases her, spiritual instincts wherever they led.
Quote ID: 4784
Time Periods: 04
Book ID: 205 Page: xxii
Section: 2C
From the time of Gregory in the late sixth century. It was at about this time that the word “pope” was first used as a title for the bishop of Rome.
Quote ID: 4785
Time Periods: 6
Book ID: 205 Page: xviii
Section: 3C
When Constantine gave toleration to the churches in the early fourth century, he found to his dismay that Christian communities were torn by dispute. He himself did not help matters by declaring tax exemptions for Christian clergy and offering the churches immense patronage, which meant that getting the “right” version of Christian doctrine.
Quote ID: 4781
Time Periods: 4
Book ID: 205 Page: xxiii
Section: 2C
I have tended to use the term “Nicene orthodoxy” rather loosely to describe those in the west who saw Father and Son as being of equal grandeur.
Quote ID: 4786
Time Periods: 4
End of quotes