Making of a Christian Aristocracy, The
Michele Renee Salzman
Number of quotes: 60
Book ID: 297 Page: 4
Section: 4B
Neither emperors nor their entourages could force religious change on the aristocracy, even if they wanted to. The same is true of the church and its bishops.
Quote ID: 7426
Time Periods: 4
Book ID: 297 Page: 5
Section: 3C,4B
By placing the senatorial aristocracy at the center of the discussion, this study tries to avoid the missteps that have caused previous scholarly approaches to falter, chief among them the persistent tendency to underestimate the autonomy and resources of the aristocracy in facing imperial and episcopal influence. The dominant model of change is problematic precisely in this regard, for it sees religion spreading from “top to bottom,” as it were, with an aristocracy accepting the religious example set by enthusiastic and powerful Christian emperors out of ambition or greed, or simply indifference to religion.PJ: She does not believe that happened.
Quote ID: 7427
Time Periods: 4
Book ID: 297 Page: 5
Section: 3C,4B
This study does not reject the idea that emperors had an impact on the aristocracy. However, because emperors were working against an imbedded and considerably autonomous senatorial culture, the emperor’s influence was more limited and more diffuse than many have argued.
Quote ID: 7428
Time Periods: 4
Book ID: 297 Page: 41
Section: 3D2
One segment of the aristocracy that grew, beginning with the reign of Constantine but especially after Valentinian’s reforms, consisted of men who arose via military service. Some of these men came from backgrounds similar to other clarissimi; the military count Theodosius and his son, an army official (dux) under Valentinian, came from a Spanish family of landowners who also included civilian office holders. But a good number of military men were of “barbarian” origins, that is, were non-Romans, from areas out-side of or on the fringes of the empire. These men and their children were generally “Romanized” within a generation or two, and so military officers often appear as barbarians in our texts “only because we are told so or guess because of their names, not because of their behaviour. {128}
Quote ID: 7429
Time Periods: ?
Book ID: 297 Page: 61
Section: 4B
But even if an aristocrat did not hold a priesthood, he or she would nevertheless be considered a supporter of the state cults; there were few atheists in the Roman empire, even among aristocrats. Aristocratic involvement in the pagan cults was simply part of the way life was organized, and therefore part of how aristocrats expressed who they were in society.
Quote ID: 7430
Time Periods: 047
Book ID: 297 Page: 63
Section: 4B
Private pagan cults also offered aristocrats avenues for augmenting social honor. They allowed aristocrats to prominently assert individual and/or family identity within an intimate, elite context. Just as families and individuals choose to join a specific church or synagogue as a means of showing who they are, so too, in antiquity, aristocrats had the freedom to choose to support any one of a number of deities as a means of expressing identity and social standing. The wealthy aristocrat could even introduce a new cult; few cities would deny such a request if a respectable and influential person were to propose the introduction of a new cult to a popular god and had the financial resources to endow it. {273}PJ: "Join the Church of your choice."
Quote ID: 7431
Time Periods: 01234
Book ID: 297 Page: 64
Section: 2B
When Aurelian instituted his new cult of Sol in 274, he chose as pontifices Solis senatorial aristocrats, and they continued in this role into the late fourth century. Indeed, holding a priesthood of Sol appears to have been associated with certain families who saw it as a point of family honor. {281}
Quote ID: 7432
Time Periods: 23
Book ID: 297 Page: 65
Section: 4B
Aristocrats continued to proclaim with pride their pagan priesthoods alongside their public offices in inscriptions into the second half of the fourth century.
Quote ID: 7433
Time Periods: 4
Book ID: 297 Page: 65
Section: 3A1B,4B
Even in the early fifth century the office of pontifex was desirable, or so it was to the consul Tertullus who addressed the senate as consul and would-be pontifex, claiming that these were “offices of which I hold the first and hope to obtain the second.” {286}But by the last decades of the fourth century there are signs that not all aristocrats were eager to hold priesthoods in the state cults;
Symmachus, however, attributed an aristocrat’s unwillingness to hold pagan priesthoods to a desire for advancement. {287}
Quote ID: 7434
Time Periods: 45
Book ID: 297 Page: 67
Section: 4B
the emperor was not the sole source of honor. The acceptance of friends and family was key in establishing aristocratic honor.
Quote ID: 7435
Time Periods: 45
Book ID: 297 Page: 67
Section: 4B
In the fourth century Christian leaders were eager to address the status concerns of senatorial aristocrats. They encouraged aristocrats to take on prestigious roles in Christian institutions as patrons and ultimately as bishops. Moreover, these roles brought with them the honor that an aristocrat coveted. The willingness to incorporate aristocrats as donors to church building is one way in which Christian leaders addressed the values and behavior patterns of this class.
Quote ID: 7436
Time Periods: 4
Book ID: 297 Page: 67
Section: 4B
In sum, any attempt to understand the conversion of the senatorial aristocracy must look at the question from the viewpoint of the aristocrats to whom status was central. Their concern would be what role the aristocracy would play in the new, state-supported religion, and how Christianity would affect their honor.
Quote ID: 7437
Time Periods: 4
Book ID: 297 Page: 140
Section: 4B
In my view, the historical evidence indicates that Christianity did not alter the fundamental dynamics of aristocratic families
Quote ID: 7440
Time Periods: 4
Book ID: 297 Page: 153
Section: 4B
by the late fourth century, Augustine claims, marriages between pagans and Christians were no longer considered sinful. {69}
Quote ID: 7441
Time Periods: 4
Book ID: 297 Page: 167
Section: 2E2
the new role that a celibate woman could play was not so “free”; husbands, fathers, and families still exerted control over celibate women. Most ascetic women in the West in the fourth and early fifth centuries still lived at home or in a home with other women where “they were still expected to follow patterns of modest domesticity.” {161}
Quote ID: 7442
Time Periods: 45
Book ID: 297 Page: 168
Section: 2E2
Similarly, Asella, possibly Marcella’s sister and thus probably an aristocrat, was dedicated to virginity by her Christian parents. {169}
Quote ID: 7443
Time Periods: 45
Book ID: 297 Page: 175
Section: 4B
Other Christian aristocratic women could gain prestige through their patronage of Christian writers and thinkers, as their pagan peers had supported pagan literati.
Quote ID: 7444
Time Periods: 014
Book ID: 297 Page: 181
Section: 3C,4B
Constantine had the most dramatic impact on late Roman society. As he ushered in legislation to make Christianity a licit religion and took on the role of patron of the church, he showed that Christianity was a viable indeed imperially favored, option. Churches and clergy became the recipients of imperial patronage in the form of land, buildings, and funding. {9}
Quote ID: 7445
Time Periods: 4
Book ID: 297 Page: 181
Section: 3A1,3C,3D
Clergy even received certain benefits that made clear their favored status. So, for instance, clergy and other Christians were granted the rather unusual right of freeing their slaves in church according to Roman law (C.Th. 4.7.1 321). This is one indication of this emperor’s willingness to use law to support the institutional prestige of the church.
Quote ID: 7446
Time Periods: 4
Book ID: 297 Page: 182
Section: 3C
With some fanfare, Constantius II supported two major missionary campaigns, one beyond the southern frontiers of the empire and one to the Goths on the Danube; although both missions served political and financial as well as religious ends, the implications of imperial involvement in such conversion efforts were not lost on contemporaries.{13}
Quote ID: 7447
Time Periods: 4
Book ID: 297 Page: 182/183
Section: 2C
Some twenty years after the death of Constantius II, the emperor Gratian’s actions occasioned the first documented public protestation by pagan senators. In 382 Gratian confiscated monies intended for maintaining public sacrifices and ceremonies, confiscated property willed by aristocrats and Vestals for the upkeep of pagan ritual, and put an end to the exemption of pagan religious officials from compulsory public duties. He also ordered the removal of the altar, but not statue, of Victory from the Roman senate. Soon after, Gratian publicly repudiated paganism by renouncing the title of pontifex maximus.{18}
Quote ID: 7448
Time Periods: 4
Book ID: 297 Page: 183
Section: 3D
In his legislation Theodosius I indicated his willingness to use force to punish those who disobeyed his restrictions on pagan rites, such as sacrifice. {22} But even Theodosius did not attempt to force conversion. Rather, he used more subtle methods, persuasion and symbolic action, to gain his ends.
Quote ID: 7449
Time Periods: 4
Book ID: 297 Page: 185
Section: 3C,4B
Nor do Valentinian’s laws show him as actively working to advance Christianity among the aristocracy. As Ammianus remarked in praise, “he remained neutral on religious differences neither troubling anyone on that ground nor coercing him to reverence this or that. He did not bend the necks of his subjects to his own belief by threatening edicts, but left such matters undisturbed as he found them.” {34}
Quote ID: 7450
Time Periods: 4
Book ID: 297 Page: 185
Section: 3C,4B
Religious tolerance did not prevent Valentinian I from taking a stand on issues pertaining to the Christian community. He did, for instance, outlaw certain groups as heretical and penalized clerics who defrauded their flocks. {36} But these laws did not advance conversion directly. Rather, this emperor and his brother Valens appear far more engaged in pursuing military goals than advancing Christianity. {37}PJ: Her biases are dulling her judgments.
Quote ID: 7451
Time Periods: 4
Book ID: 297 Page: 187
Section: 3C
In the thirteen years of Constantine’s sole rule, 324-337, my study population shows a parity of appointments to lowest offices; of twelve appointees in total, there was an even split between pagans and Christians.
Quote ID: 7452
Time Periods: 4
Book ID: 297 Page: 188
Section: 3C,4B
Given the oft-expressed view that Christian emperors of the fourth century favored coreligionists, it is noteworthy that the office-holding patterns among Roman aristocrats in this study population show that Christians were not predominant from Constantine’s time on.
Quote ID: 7453
Time Periods: 4
Book ID: 297 Page: 189
Section: 2B2,3C
Active Christianizing emperors sought the support of the aristocracy in their quest for honor. Constantius II, for example, was eager to maintain good relations with the pagan Roman senatorial aristocracy; when he visited Rome in 357, he admired the pagan temples and filled the pagan priesthood. {48}
Quote ID: 7454
Time Periods: 4
Book ID: 297 Page: 189/190
Section: 3C
Constantius II had the pagan rhetor Bemarchius give a recitation at the inauguration of a church he had built.{54}PJ: Bemarchius wrote The Works of Emperor Constantine in Ten Books. Not on Amazon.
Quote ID: 7455
Time Periods: 4
Book ID: 297 Page: 190
Section: 2B2,3C
To take an aggressive stand against pagan aristocrats could undermine the basis of imperial honor and unravel a network of relationships that worked to their mutual benefit. No wonder then that Constantius II, when in Rome, filled the pagan priesthoods rather than risk losing the support of a group whose approval he sought.
Quote ID: 7456
Time Periods: 4
Book ID: 297 Page: 193
Section: 3C
Perhaps most of all, emperors needed aristocrats as military commanders. Indeed, the centrality of the military elite to any emperor’s rule is underlined by the simple fact that the imperial dynasties of the fourth century--those of Constantine, Velentinian I, and Theodosius I-- all came from military backgrounds and acquired power through the support of the military. To survive, the emperor had to maintain the backing of the army and its generals. Even the most zealous of Christian emperors recognized this and appointed powerful pagan military leaders and ensured loyalty by making personal ties of marriage to families from the military aristocracy.
Quote ID: 7457
Time Periods: 4
Book ID: 297 Page: 193
Section: 2B2,3C
In theory, emperors had absolute control over appointments to office. If religious conversion was the sole concern, Christian emperors would have appointed only Christians. They did not; even by the end of the fourth century, when there was a larger pool of Christians to choose from, Christianizing emperors like Gratian and Theodosius continued to appoint pagan aristocrats to office (see Tables 6.1, 6.2).
Quote ID: 7458
Time Periods: 4
Book ID: 297 Page: 194
Section: 3E
Even after a 380 law that effectively made orthodox Christianity the official religion of the Roman empire (C.Th. 16.1.2), no emperor legalized force to convert pagans until Justinian’s edict in 529 (C.J. 1.11.10).
Quote ID: 7459
Time Periods: 456
Book ID: 297 Page: 195
Section: 3A1,3C
The emperors also made explicit the privileged position of the church within the state. Most important, in terms of influencing upwardly mobile local elites, were the codes granting exemptions to clergy from serving on local town councils and performing compulsory public service. {71} Pagan priests also enjoyed such exemptions. {72} But Constantine and his successors granted certain privileges to the church and its officials that went beyond those generally allowed to the pagan cults and their priests. So, for instance, bishops were prohibited from being accused in secular courts (C.Th. 16.2.12 355), and bishops were given judicial authority, deemed “sacred” and final (C.Th. 1.27.1 318). {73}
Quote ID: 7460
Time Periods: 4
Book ID: 297 Page: 196
Section: 3D
The late date of laws against the apostasy of high officials underscores the imperial unwillingness to act against aristocratic office holders. Not until 391 do we find a code concerning apostasy that singles out high office holders, even though it may well have been a problem even earlier: “If any splendor of rank has been conferred upon or is inborn in those persons who have departed from the faith and are blinded in mind, who have deserted the cult and worship of the sacrosanct religion and have given themselves over to sacrifices, they shall forfeit such rank, so that, removed from their position and status, they shall be branded with perpetual infamy and shall not be numbered even among the lowest dregs of the ignoble crowd” (C.Th. 16.7.5). {79}
Quote ID: 7461
Time Periods: 4
Book ID: 297 Page: 197
Section: 2B2,3C
The emperor was not only the head of the state; he was also the pontifex maximus, chief priest of the state religion until Gratian renounced this role ca. 382.
Quote ID: 7462
Time Periods: 4
Book ID: 297 Page: 197
Section: 2B2,3C
by the late fourth century, important imperial cult rituals, such as victory celebrations, no longer focused on sacrifice to the pagan deities. Instead, they proclaimed imperial gratitude for victories owed to the Christian God;
Quote ID: 7463
Time Periods: 4
Book ID: 297 Page: 198
Section: 3C,4B
The emperors gave monies and land to the church and its clergy, often for building projects, a conventional arena for elite patronage. Here, too, emperors varied. Constantine was extremely generous in his gifts to the church and its bishops; the Liber Pontificalis records the basilicas he funded over the western empire and the monies and lands that he bequeathed. Other emperors were not known for being as generous as Constantine, but most fourth-century emperors did support building projects or gave land to the church. {84} Such patronage made visible the new prestige of the church and its officials in society.By supporting the church and its clergy in such conventionally aristocratic ways, the emperors established themselves as models of Christian patronage that other aristocrats could follow.
Quote ID: 7464
Time Periods: 4
Book ID: 297 Page: 198/199
Section: 3C,4B
By acting according to aristocratic norms--as patron, as leaders and as participant in an increasingly prestigious religious group--the emperors infused Christian practices and understandings into traditional areas of late Roman elite society. The emperors made themselves, in essence, exemplars of how to be aristocratic and Christian at the same time. Thus they became a symbolic focus, showing how it was possible to be Christian even as they remained prestigious members of the aristocracy.
Quote ID: 7465
Time Periods: 4
Book ID: 297 Page: 200
Section: 4B
Unless we ourselves take a hand now, they’ll foist a republic on us. If we want things to stay as they are, things will have to change.---Giuseppe Tomasi de Lampedusa, The Leopard (trans. A. Colquhoun)
Quote ID: 7466
Time Periods: 7
Book ID: 297 Page: 200
Section: 3A1,3D,4B
By the 380’s and 390’s conversion may well have appeared to many late Roman aristocrats as the best way to preserve their world. Aristocrats did have to adapt in certain ways to become Christian, but what is often missed is that Christianity also adapted as it came into contact with the aristocracy.
Quote ID: 7467
Time Periods: 4
Book ID: 297 Page: 201
Section: 3C,4B
In general, Christian leaders took aristocratic status culture into account in two ways. First, they communicated through the prevailing modes of discourse; they fashioned the rhetoric of Christianity to make it pleasing to educated elite listeners. {3} Second, Christian leaders shaped the message of Christianity in public and private so as to appeal to aristocrats, achieving a fit between Christian and aristocratic social concerns and values.
Quote ID: 7468
Time Periods: 4
Book ID: 297 Page: 201
Section: 3C,4B
I am also arguing against those scholars who see in the aristocracy of the later Roman empire a growing need for salvation, a growing anxiety within its core that led this group to seek the assurances of the message of Christianity.
Quote ID: 7469
Time Periods: 45
Book ID: 297 Page: 201/202
Section: 3C,4B
The efforts of Christian leaders to adapt aristocratic status culture into a Christian framework were so successful that for the majority of fourth-century aristocrats, Christianity did not entail a radical reorientation---the classic notion of conversion---from their previous way of life. {6}
Quote ID: 7470
Time Periods: 4
Book ID: 297 Page: 202
Section: 3C,4B
Christian leaders, while acknowledging secular honors, nonetheless downplayed such honors as compared to those attained through Christianity.
Quote ID: 7471
Time Periods: 45
Book ID: 297 Page: 203
Section: 4B
The career of Paulinus of Nola shows some of the ways in which aristocrats’ concern for honor and office were assimilated into Christian ecclesiastical office.
Quote ID: 7472
Time Periods: 45
Book ID: 297 Page: 203
Section: 4B
Yet, as Paulinus devoted himself to his new patron, St. Felix, he felt, in the words of R. Van Dam, that “he had acquired a set of connections more important than the ones at the imperial court offered to him by Ausonius, for St. Felix had introduced him to the friends of the celestial Lord. As a result, in about 410 Paulinus became bishop of Nola, as well as, after the pope, the most prominent Christian leader in Italy.” {11}
Quote ID: 7473
Time Periods: 45
Book ID: 297 Page: 203/204
Section: 4B
Nor did his choice bring ruin to himself and his family, as his friends had feared. Rather, Paulinus secured the continuing prosperity of his relations; his family continued to act as influential patrons, albeit of Christian shrines, still feuded with other aristocratic families, and still enjoyed their ancestral estates near Bordeaux into the fifth century. {14} Thus the family Paulinus prospered in material terms (ecclesiastical office did not entail the loss of private income) and achieved social prestige--success in traditional aristocratic terms---but it did so by attaining ecclesiastical, not secular, office.As Paulinus’ career showed, church office could offer secure and satisfying opportunities for the acquisition and demonstration of honor. It was in many ways a better avenue to these rewards than civic office, which presented dangers of the sort noted by Paulinus in counseling one young man, Licentius, to choose the life of Christian ascetic over civic office: “Avoid the slippery dangers of exacting state service. Position is an inviting title, but it brings evil slavery and wretched end. He who now delights in desiring it, later repents of having desired it. It is pleasant to mount the summit, but fearsome to descend from it; if you stumble, your fall from the top of the citadel will be worse.” {15}
Quote ID: 7474
Time Periods: 45
Book ID: 297 Page: 204
Section: 4B
Like Paulinus, Jerome argued in favor of asceticism, but his argument appealed to an aristocrat in terms of social prestige and competition for honor:Before he began to serve Christ with his whole heart, Pammachius was a well known person in the senate. Still there were many other senators who wore the badges of proconsular rank
...."Today all the churches of Christ are talking about Pammachius. The whole world admires as a poor man one whom heretofore it ignored as rich. Can anything be more splendid than the consulate? Yet the honor lasts only for a year and when another has succeeded to the post its former occupant gives way." {16}
Pastor John’s note: FAME
Quote ID: 7475
Time Periods: 45
Book ID: 297 Page: 204/205
Section: 4B
In the 380s church leaders in Rome also tried to formulate a coherent ecclesiastical career path. {19} Both groups may well have been responding to the ethical dilemmas faced by Christian secular office holders; Paulinus, for one, emphasized the moral problems he confronted when, as magistrate, he was unwilling to condemn a man to death. {20} Increasingly, aristocrats chose to follow one track or another---secular or ecclesiastic---to acquire honor. By the mid-fifth century the bishops at Rome declared that the two paths were incompatible; no former magistrate could be ordained. {21}As ecclesiastic careers crystallized, such offices increasingly offered opportunities for bishops to acquire prestige and influence in worldly terms. Ambrose perhaps best represents the activist bishop who, as he condemned the punishment meted out by the emperor Theodosius, intervened directly in worldly affairs. {22} The growing prestige of the episcopate led the aristocratic Praetextatus to remark that he would convert immediately if Damasus would make him bishop of Rome. {23}
The growing prestige of the church, along with political upheavals that brought the collapse of imperial structures in certain parts of the empire, contributed to making ecclesiastical office attractive to aristocrats. By the 470s in Gaul---an area that suffered from a series of crises earlier in the century---Sidonius Apollinaris could claim, “Beyond question, according to the view of the best men, the humblest ecclesiastic ranks above the most exalted secular dignity.” {24} Yet the goal was familiar---honor through office.
Pastor John’s note: FAME
Quote ID: 7476
Time Periods: 45
Book ID: 297 Page: 207
Section: 4B
As Christian leaders justified wealth because it could be used for charity, they encouraged traditional patterns of expenditure on the part of aristocrats who, for centuries, had “done good for their cities” (evergetai in Greek) by contributing to public expenses. Now, these contributions---which scholars term “euergetism”---were being directed to a different use, namely the church, which was increasingly being seen as part of the public domain.
Quote ID: 7477
Time Periods: 45
Book ID: 297 Page: 207
Section: 4B
Wealthy aristocrats could turn to Christianity secure in the knowledge that their traditional way of demonstrating social preeminence---euergetism---would continue to bring them prestige and the approval of a Christian community.Simultaneously, Christian fathers tried to redefine the benefits of evergetism in spiritual, not secular, terms. They reiterated the notion that charity was the way to atone for sin. In particular, charity redeemed the sin of avarice, a vice that many bishops railed against in this period. {43}
Quote ID: 7478
Time Periods: 45
Book ID: 297 Page: 207/208
Section: 4B
Maximus worked out a contractual concept of almsgiving whereby “charitable deeds were calculated in terms of atonement and could redeem sin as a new baptism. Indeed, charity was more effective than baptism in that it could be repeated.” {46}
Quote ID: 7479
Time Periods: 45
Book ID: 297 Page: 208
Section: 4B
As B. Ramsey recognized in his study of almsgiving in the Latin church in the fourth and fifth centuries, the impetus for charity remained fundamentally donor-centered. Although injunctions to give to the poor and to practice charity with humility were frequently repeated, and some Christian fathers criticized donors who practiced charity out of a desire for popular acclaim, the texts from this period do not demonstrate any real social concern. Rather, charity was valued as a spiritual exercise that brought benefits to the giver in the form of the remission of sin.
Quote ID: 7480
Time Periods: 45
Book ID: 297 Page: 210
Section: 4B
Christian leaders claimed that they were the heirs of a literature as ancient and as eminent as that of their pagan contemporaries. They prided themselves on possessing a religion of “the word”; their claim to “bookishness” would appeal to aristocrats for whom, it has been well observed, “literate culture conveyed power.” {58}PJ: The diff between barbarians was largely literary
Quote ID: 7481
Time Periods: 45
Book ID: 297 Page: 212
Section: 3D,4B
Some Christians considered both friendship and “Christian love” largely in classical philosophical terms. The writings of Ambrose are exemplary of this position. Ambrose’s De officiis ministrorum imitates the form and accepts much of what Cicero and classical philosophers have to say about friendship. Indeed, Ambrose did not do much more than translate Cicero’s views on friendship into a Christian tract. {69} Ambrose’s text aimed at identifying biblical passages to illustrate Ciceronian ideas; so, for example, Ambrose cited the biblical examples of Jonathan and Ahimelech as men who rightly put friendship not before virtue, but before their own safety, an idea expressed in other words by Cicero. {70}
Quote ID: 7482
Time Periods: 4
Book ID: 297 Page: 214
Section: 4B
The centrality of the concept of nobilitas to the late Roman aristocrat made it a key focus for the efforts of church leaders engaged in the conversion of this group. Typically, when Christian leaders spoke of nobilitas, they recognized the traditional criteria---family and office---but claimed such were of lesser worth in determining nobilitas than Christian piety. Christian leaders most often used as their examples of Christian “nobility” men and women who were already ennobled by traditional aristocratic standards. In these ways they essentially incorporated the traditional bases for nobilitas into their Christian version, even as they sought to place it at a lower level than Christian spirituality.
Quote ID: 7483
Time Periods: 45
Book ID: 297 Page: 216
Section: 4B
By the mid-fifth century the basis for nobilitas was effectively changed, for by then it was being conferred on men who held church, not secular, office. In the words of Avitus of Vienne, “true and unblemished nobility” lay in ecclesiastical office. {101} Those Christians who held an office in the church were “the most noble”. In Italy, too, by the middle of the fifth century we find aristocrats accepting church office as a higher “nobility” than secular office. {102} In Gaul, by the fifth century it became a standard claim that a cleric was “noble by birth, more noble by religion.” {103} But, paradoxically, as in the fourth century, men already ennobled by standard aristocratic notions of family attain a higher nobility through Christian office. The aristocratic notion of nobilitas was in place, now based on ecclesiastical, not secular, office.
Quote ID: 7484
Time Periods: 45
Book ID: 297 Page: 217
Section: 4B
Romanus claims nobilitas---as a character trait---is open to men, presumably all men. If so, this passage suggests that nobilitas is a private, potentially universal virtue, apart from social class. {105} Such a view may reflect Prudentius’ own position in the world; the poet came from Spanish provincial circles and returned there, removed from the senatorial aristocracy and its old consular families.Some more determined Christian attacks on “nobility” appear in the fifth century.
Quote ID: 7485
Time Periods: 45
Book ID: 297 Page: 217
Section: 4B
However, Hilarius notes, Honoratus’ nobility did not arise from his long family stemma nor his offices but, rather, from membership in the Christian brotherhood: “We are all one in Christ, and the height of nobility is to be reckoned among the sons of God. Our glory cannot be increased by the dignity of our earthly family except by renouncing it. No one in heaven is more glorious than he who has repudiated his family ancestry and chooses to be enrolled as only a descendant of Christ.” {107}
Quote ID: 7486
Time Periods: 5
Book ID: 297 Page: 219
Section: 4B
The interaction between aristocrat’s status culture and the message of Christianity helps us to understand how Christianity came to appeal to late Roman aristocrats and how, in its efforts to convert the aristocracy, Christianity was “aristocratized.” Church leaders accepted as important certain central aristocratic ideals---such as nobilitas, amicitia, and honos---even as they attempted to redefine them to be consonant with a Christian message.
Quote ID: 7487
Time Periods: 45
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