Voting about God in Early Church Councils
Ramsay MacMullen
Number of quotes: 28
Book ID: 285 Page: 14
Section: 4B
After the civilities, next the demands. These easily took on a sharper, noisier quality as they were reiterated.Kratos which could prevail even against the emperor in his capital, western or eastern, could certainly prevail against one of his servants, mighty though they all were. As his agents they could claim his absolute authority as their own. They generally did so without challenge. In Antioch, however, the assembled citizens chanted their demands rhythmically and got their way; in Alexandria the governor yielded to them in disregard of he law; in western cities as well as eastern, unspecified by the jurist Ulpian, a governor might yield to shouts when he knew he should not properly do so.{10} It is a short step to the best known moment in Jerusalem (Mk. 15.8ff.; Mt.27.15ff.) where “the crowd began their demands as they usually did,” for a prisoner to be released, and he governor wanted to give them one man but agreed to release another, just to keep them quiet. It was a moment with its rules: the crowd spoke and he listened.
Quote ID: 7259
Time Periods: 047
Book ID: 285 Page: 16
Section: 3A1
The reason for calling attention to all this material is of course to prepare for a later discussion of church councils. Their participant, it will be seen, behaved as they were all used to doing in secular decision-making groups or assemblies. Their rules and procedures developed along the lines of secular equivalents. But discussion of this can wait, perhaps, while one point in particular is stressed: the fact that acclamations did really function as votes.
Quote ID: 7260
Time Periods: 456
Book ID: 285 Page: 17
Section: 2C,3A1,4B
The numbers of repetitions has been doubted, but the doubts removed by looking at accounts of other, only slightly less awe-full moments signalized by a 60-times repeated acclamation (this, for an emperor, naturally) or 23, 16, 26 . . . to a total of 159 times for successive salutes and hopes expressed in support of a mere priest. He was being appointed co-adjutor to his bishop in AD 426.
Quote ID: 7261
Time Periods: 5
Book ID: 285 Page: 19
Section: 3A1,3A2A
Nevertheless and inevitably, minorities made their appearance from time to time. They could prove stubborn, they might need steam-roller treatment, as an old hand at councils describes it--where “those who seek the truth with due care regarding some dispute should note that statements are often made by people in synods from partisan sympathy or opposition or sheer ignorance; yet no one pays attention to what is said by some minority but only by common agreement, as determined by all. If anyone chose to take seriously such contrary statements, as those people would have it, every synod would be found to contradict itself.” {26}Alternatively, minorities might be forced into the majority. Cyprian presiding at Carthage in the 250s speaks frankly of unanimity arrived at “not only by our united feelings but by threats.” {27}
Quote ID: 7262
Time Periods: 345
Book ID: 285 Page: 20
Section: 3C1
a group of recalcitrant bishops at Nicaea confronted the emperor, himself attended by his great judges and military commanders in his own palace and speaking in Latin, the language of command. He anticipated no trouble. A minority present, however, were unwise enough at first to offer their own credal text for consideration which “all the bishops tore to pieces on the spot,” making “a huge uproar.” After the ensuing debate, the emperor’s High Panjandrum, by name (in Greek) “Beloved”, then personally carried round the creed the emperor had approved for everyone to sign if they wished to be spared the penalty of exile; which, needless to say, most did--to be condemned later as hypocrites. There were 17 (or 22?) of these latter. With a little reflection, they were reduced to four; and, as they had no doubt foreseen, those four were carted off to some part of the Roman Gulag, some obscure corner of semi-desert away west or far south, there to repent. {28}
Quote ID: 7263
Time Periods: 4
Book ID: 285 Page: 20
Section: 3A1,3A2A
In this and, for later discussion, in a good number of other instances of split councils, two common assumptions are evident: first, the participants acting as demos would exercise kratos (and some would win and some would lose); second, that universal endorsement of what the majority wanted was considered of such importance, it must be extorted if need be by plain force. The two assumptions were often in conflict.
Quote ID: 7264
Time Periods: 456
Book ID: 285 Page: 24
Section: 5D
Why should Christians when they met together debate and inquire about the nature of their God? Were they acting under God’s instructions? Did God care what they thought?Perhaps only a visitor from Mars would puzzle over such questions. They find no answers in the sources because evidently they were never asked.
Quote ID: 7266
Time Periods: ?
Book ID: 285 Page: 38
Section: 3C1
Enough, except to notice one feature: the punchy, sloganeering short phrases employed. The very same may be assumed in songs by Arius, “songs,” a church historian tells us, “written for sailors, millers, travellers and all such folk” (whom the historian holds in contempt) “arranged to tunes as he thought each was best suited; and by this style he drew over the more ignorant folk to his impieties.” {44} The scene was Alexandria at about the same time as the angel’s appearance to Licinius; and what was so successful for Arius offered rewards to others arrested later in Antioch, Hippo in Africa, Constantinople, Edessa, Nisibis and Milan--that is (we may safely say) everywhere, in service to religious instruction; adapted to the teachings of every conceivable faith, too, whether Nicene or other.
Quote ID: 7267
Time Periods: 4
Book ID: 285 Page: 39
Section: 3C1
The second device by which bishops could expect to reach a wide audience, necessarily one ill-informed and not good at following any sort of complicated statement, was by personal names: Arius’ teaching were Arianism, and so forth. A good text to show how it worked is the law of AD 435, where the emperor in fulminating spirit declares, {46}Nestorius, the author of a monstrous superstition shall be condemned and his followers shall be branded with the mark of an appropriate name so that they may not misuse the title of Christians. But just as the Arians, by a law of Constantine of sainted memory are called Porphyrians from Porphyrius, on account of the similiarity of their impiety, so adherents of the nefarious sect of the Nestorians shall everywhere be called Simonians [after Simon Magus of the bible].
Quote ID: 7268
Time Periods: 45
Book ID: 285 Page: 41
Section: 3C1
At Nicaea in AD 325 some 200 bishops assemblied. The total is not certain: perhaps a little below that figure, probably a little above it. Not all who attended signed, as was not unusual at the end of the councils nor surprising at this one, given its special difficulties. The exact number doesn’t matter. {1} It was soon inflated, to 270, to 300, and so to 318 within a generation. In the Greek system of numeration by letters of the alphabet, it was noticed that a tau, iota, and eta standing for 318 began with a cross ‘T’, went on to “Jesus” (IE . . .), and recalled the number of Abraham’s servants at Genesis 14:14. In this, Hilary and others saw the significance. So at 318 the total was stabilized and became a sort of shorthand for the council and its published creed.
Quote ID: 7269
Time Periods: 4
Book ID: 285 Page: 47
Section: 3C1
Theolocical argument that went off the tracks invited God’s rebuke. The proof to ponder most fearfully was Arius. All the ancient church historians expatiate on his hideous end, his guts spilling out, with every circumstance of degradation and horror. Generally God’s vengeance was seen as striking at the victim’s genitals and bowels, with a confusion of feces and urine in the mouth, it might be, and worms pouring out of disgusting sores and orifices. Such was Arius’ fate, arch-heretic. The latrine where he died was shown as a sort of tourist point. As to his teachings, Ambrose in a council could demand a curse on them: “Are you hesitating to condemn, when after divine judgement he burst open at the middle?!”
Quote ID: 7270
Time Periods: 4
Book ID: 285 Page: 56
Section: 3A2A
Our sources for the two and a quarter centuries following Nicaea allow a very rough count of the victims of credal differences: not less than twenty-five thousand deaths. A great many, but still only a small minority, were clergy; the rest, participants in crowds. ...All those who died met their end irregularly as targets of fury, not of legal action. Of bishops who died for their faith while in the custody of secular powers, the examples can be counted on the fingers of one hand.
Quote ID: 7271
Time Periods: 56
Book ID: 285 Page: 57
Section: 3A1,3A2A
the phenomenon as a whole surpasses any other one can think of for historical significance over the course of the empire’s latter centuries. No aspect of economic history, of family or class or labor relations or mortality rates-- nothing brought such changes into people’s lives. It disrupted them not only by ending so many of them, once and for all, abruptly, but in other ways as well: through arson, wounds and injuries, displacement, losses of property, rioting, disorders, and deep abiding splits in communities.The whole matter has been quite ignored. Specialists tell us, “we know of only two occasions during the fourth century when tensions led to violence”--tensions of any sort, in Antioch. Only two secular occasions are instanced; yet the city in question was often torn apart by church disputes. Or again, “The commonest sort of factional disturbance in the late Empire . . . is the battle between partisans” at race tracks, and “the history of popular disturbances in the late Empire is in large measure the history of the Blues and Greens” (fan clubs). {2} In the face of the facts about quite another sort of violence, centered in charges of heresy and attested everywhere, the only response has been to wave it aside as the work of what in other contexts we are used to calling, dismissively, “outside agitators,” hirelings, thugs, and the like. And such bloody-minded people cannot have been Christains, for Heaven’s sake! {3}
Quote ID: 7272
Time Periods: 56
Book ID: 285 Page: 57/58
Section: 3A1,3A2A
While victims were killed in many strange ways, stabbed by styluses or burnt alive or trampled under foot, of course the most serious losses of life followed upon the use of cold steel. That mostly meant soldiers. They appear to have been stationed in every city of any size whatsoever, directly among its streets or in its suburbs. Thus there was never a problem in finding force, provided one had the authority, of one’s self, or influence over authority, to give the orders; and one could assume some friendless among the garrison rankers toward their own bishop. This is mentioned with relief by the rather anxious friends of such a person at Ephesus I. If the details of the connections are never made plain, still, a local commander would always be welcome at dinner parties among the elite, where the bishop would certainly be included. Power seeks out power.
Quote ID: 7273
Time Periods: 456
Book ID: 285 Page: 60
Section: 3A1,3A2A
Besides, what of the tongues torn out of the mouths of bishops found to have uttered blasphemous opinions? and bishops worked to death by a sentence to the mines? {14} or scarred for life by the beatings they received, sometimes a judicial flogging, sometimes a blow from a sword that missed its mark ...There is a bishop Bassianus of Ephesus [PJ: d.after 451] describing the moment of forcible deposition by the partisans of his rival: {16}
Certain persons among the ranks of the priesthood along with others as well have done terrible things, forbidden by the laws. For, despising any fear of God and the power of Immaculate Mysteries which are received from the humble hands of myself, from a merciful God . . ., they suddenly seize me and tore me away of the holy church and beat me, struck me with their swords. . . . Afterwards [when the rival had been ordained] they inflicted death and grievous wounds on many of those attached to me, whose remains were left before the doors of God’s holy church.
Quote ID: 7274
Time Periods: 5
Book ID: 285 Page: 60/61
Section: 3A1
]a bishop did need friends, sometimes. He should make his face known to the local garrison, he should walk about the town, share his views with all. Especially through his church he should build a base of respect and support. By it, he could defy even imperial commands and forces; they flinched, they didn’t dare face the size and anger of the crowds. Many surprising retreats could be instanced. {17}
Quote ID: 7275
Time Periods: 456
Book ID: 285 Page: 63
Section: 3A2A
Chrysostom recommends, no doubt to applause, that his listeners should not hesitate to give a good punch in the face to misbelievers. Equally bellicose words are heard from other bishops in eastern and western pulpits. They occasionally join as combatants in the riots they have aroused or which they have certainly directed and sustained.
Quote ID: 7276
Time Periods: 45
Book ID: 285 Page: 65
Section: 3A1,3A2A
Bishops etc. were indeed successful in generating the strongest feelings, capable of breaking all restraints and challenging all authority. The result was those deaths with which the present chapter began. Their total indicates the desperate seriousness of doctrinal disease, call it, which so repeatedly afflicted the empire’s towns and cities. Deaths, yes, the most dramatic; but another symptom was the physical destruction that went with it. Arson was generally the cause but by no means the only one. {27} The target might be a residence, a monastery, a church, or whole sections of some town.Everyone would be drawn into it, in scenes familiar from previous pages. To recall them, this last: “Troops with their swords occupied the church and ranged about everywhere in the building. Confronting them, a thoroughly aroused populace. . . . The streets outside were crammed, the avenues and the squares, every place, and from second- and third-story windows the young and old, men and women, craned down.” {29}
A crime problem, as we would say today, but a crime problem afflicting half the empire. The emperors could hardly close their eyes and ears to it; by its victims they were constantly reminded of it and of their own responsibilities, too. However, in their view much more was involved than crime. God’s anger showed. Their realm and reign together were under threat of destruction, and heresy was to blame.
To control it, public discussion could be forbidden. Laws to this effect have been cited, above. The burning of theological tracts or the minutes of misguided councils, ceremoniously in public squares, were good measures, and much resorted to from Constantine on through the period of my study.
Quote ID: 7277
Time Periods: 456
Book ID: 285 Page: 65/66
Section: 3A1
“Everyone’s decision is for sale,” for gold, toi chrysoi.In illustration, we have a letter with particularly striking figures in it. It shows that something above 200,000 gold coins, at a time when a man could live several months on one such, had been paid into the inner circle of the emperor to retrieve the throne for a deposed bishop, no less than Cyril of Alexandria.
Quote ID: 7278
Time Periods: 5
Book ID: 285 Page: 66
Section: 3A1
His agent referred to them as “blessing” and “eulogies”, two of the many euphemisms current to the period.And to make conclusions more obvious, there at councils, enthroned up front, were the emperor’s men flanked by great metropolitians--the latter with gold to offer by the ton.
Quote ID: 7279
Time Periods: 456
Book ID: 285 Page: 68
Section: 3A1
the historian Socrates, explaining that the bishop of a certain city “was especially powerful at this time because that was where the emperor was resident.” {4} The connection didn’t have to be explained. ...This much and no more is said here on very large, complicated subjects, only to introduce the word ecumenical. ...
As, for example, at Ephesus I. The party of the Alexandrian bishop met by itself but claimed to be doing so as a synod in obedience to the emperor’s summons, which underlay the claim then to be ecumenical ...
The determinant of ecumenicity was imperial initiative, which in practice meant Constantinople. Given the realities of power, armed if needed, no other view could prevail. Yet an additional factor of inclusiveness did have much weight.
Quote ID: 7280
Time Periods: 5
Book ID: 285 Page: 69
Section: 3A1,4B
Wherever there were two minds about a theological question, those two could talk it out between them. If the conversation didn’t degenerate into a shouting match, the course of it would follow reason. ...When, however, two minds explained themselves to a huge audience whom they could reach only by catch-words, slogans, and name-calling, then a merely social element could determine the winner. The winner won by insisting that “everyone” believed this or that--everyone who was someone.
It was accordingly sought out all the time. To my knowledge, no one has studied the flow of ecclesiastical business into court circles. . .
Quote ID: 7281
Time Periods: 456
Book ID: 285 Page: 71
Section: 3A1
Those hundreds of sees at stake recall the hundreds of thousands of gold coins lavished by the Alexandrian bishop on his own interests at court, in turn to affect the hundred sees subordinate to him. He had been aware of the many persons who actually had or alleged their influence over important decisions, and who stretched out a hand to receive, not to give; or not to give until they had received. ...The outcome of a church council could be determined by having the right connections in the capital, as a bishop of a small see reports rather bitterly about his adversaries: “they won over the people of the imperial court and everyone else of chief influence and so could turn to their business from a position of great superiority. They themselves were both prosecutors and jurors and executioners and everything they chose.” {10}
Quote ID: 7282
Time Periods: 4567
Book ID: 285 Page: 72
Section: 3A1,3D
In AD 410 the process was indicated for the Carthage council of the following year. Get to power and bend it to your truth --which need not be everyone’s truth.We have information about another juncture with an equally successful outcome, a generation earlier (AD 381). The bishop second in authority in Italy, perhaps in the west, was Ambrose in Milan. ...
Ambrose has thus narrowed the thing to a size he could totally control. Most of the bishops attending were subordinate to him; most, perhaps all, owed their past or future careers to his favor. It only remains unclear, whether his plan required him to have deceived the emperor or whether he and the emperor together joined in deceiving Palladius. The first explanation seems the most likely, given the evidence for such deception being tried and succeeding at other times. Absolute monarchs, walled in as they are, must submit to being misinformed so long as they insist on being absolute. {13}
Quote ID: 7283
Time Periods: 45
Book ID: 285 Page: 76
Section: 4B
Handbooks of rhetoric recommended that one should not hold back one’s tears as one spoke if it suited one’s words, or should at least let one’s emotions freely rise to the pathos of the subject. Celebrity performers set the style. {29}
Quote ID: 7284
Time Periods: 0147
Book ID: 285 Page: 78
Section: 4B
Architecture, like most other arts of Roman civilization, had always been in the hands of the very rich. They wanted show for their money and favored grandeur, whether by their gift to their cities or to themselves...
Quote ID: 7285
Time Periods: 0147
Book ID: 285 Page: 79
Section: 4B
Clergy who were not bishops were not supposed to play an active part; but occasionally they did speak out or even subscribed to a decision in their own name. They joined in shouts which amounted to votes. {3}
Quote ID: 7286
Time Periods: 47
Book ID: 285 Page: 82
Section: 3A1
Councils of particular interest, those twenty-face identified earlier as emperor-summoned, were adversarial affairs. They pitted personal ambitions and ideas about the Trinity against each other, each with their champions, each with their convictions, each louder than the other to prevail. At Constantinople in 381, the so-called second ecumenical, the man in the president’s chair heard and later recalled how“those very bishops that trumpet peace to all, in their calls to the cathedral nave, raged savagely against each other and as they shouted, gathering their allies, accused and were accused, and jumped about and almost out of their skins, seizing on anyone they could get to first, in a wild contest for supremacy and sole control. . .” {14}
Quote ID: 7287
Time Periods: 4
End of quotes