A Chronicle of the Last Pagans
Pierre Chuvin
Number of quotes: 54
Book ID: 4 Page: 7
Section: 2C
As it turns out, the best documented meaning of paganus seems to be “peasant.”
Quote ID: 23
Time Periods: 4
Book ID: 4 Page: 8
Section: 2C
A paganus is the inhabitant of a pagus, a country district, a man whose roots, unlike a soldier’s, are where he lives. A peasant is thus the paganus par excellence, although the term, from Cicero on, could denote townspeople (Pro Domo, 74).
Quote ID: 24
Time Periods: 34
Book ID: 4 Page: 9
Section: 2C
Pagani or pagans are quite simply “people of the place,” town or country, who preserved their local customs, whereas the alieni, the “people from elsewhere,” were increasingly Christian.
Quote ID: 25
Time Periods: 4
Book ID: 4 Page: 9/10
Section: 2C
Throughout Antiquity “paganism” was a mosaic of established religions linked to the political order. To be pious was “to believe in the gods of the city-state” - the duty Socrates was accused of failing to observe - and, even more than believing in them, respecting them. Ritual was thus more important than faith. Nonconformism and irreligiosity went together.
Quote ID: 26
Time Periods: 34
Book ID: 4 Page: 11
Section: 2E
When freedom of conscience disappeared under Justinian, pagans chose either a dangerous but exciting clandestine existence that promised the manifestation of supernatural powers or else a withdrawal to hinterlands as far removed as possible from the eyes of imperial authority. Justinian’s ruling of 529 that prohibited pagans from teaching shuttered the last window that enabled us to see them clearly.
Quote ID: 27
Time Periods: 67
Book ID: 4 Page: 15
Section: 3A1
Either shortly after 300, or perhaps in May 309, an assembly of bishops met in Illiberis (Elvira), in Spain, to tell the faithful what was permitted and what was not.PJ Note: I think that 3A1 can be used for making laws that concern both people and property.
Quote ID: 28
Time Periods: 4
Book ID: 4 Page: 15/16
Section: 3A1B,4B
Among the problems they had to resolve was that of Christians who were raised to local positions of honor such as that of duumvir, one of the two presidents of the municipal council, or flamen, a priest of the imperial cult. The prestige of the office was related to the holder’s generosity. At the time of his nomination, he was expected to make a bequest to the municipal treasury as well as a gift to the people and, later, to provide his fellow citizens with entertainments - plays or gladiatorial contests. He also had to preside over ceremonies that we would consider religious, or at least be present at them.The bishops decided that as long as duumvirs held office they should not attend Christian services, and that flamines who had made pagan sacrifices should be permanently excluded from the Church. Those who had offered spectacles would be treated as adulterers (because of the immorality of the theater) or murderers (because of the gladiators). Those who had merely worn the obligatory crown in such ceremonies would be readmitted to the Church after two years.
These are rigorous measures. In 314 the Council of Arles decided that governors, and in general “those who wish to concern themselves with public affairs” (hi qui rem publicam agere volunt) would still be admitted to communion on the recommendation of their bishop.
Quote ID: 29
Time Periods: 4
Book ID: 4 Page: 26
Section: 3C
Actually, Christian emblems appear on Constantine’s coins perhaps as early as 313 or at the latest 315, in striking conjunction with his portrait as conquering warrior: to the left of the imperial bust, helmeted and cuirassed, is a cross surmounted by a globe; the helmet bears the monogram of Christ; to the right is the head of a horse. Nevertheless, until 317, and again as late as 325, three-fourths of the coins minted by Constantine continued to be dedicated to “the Unconquerable Sun, his companion,” Soli Invicto Comiti, while Christian symbols occasionally appear on the reverse.{7}
Quote ID: 30
Time Periods: 4
Book ID: 4 Page: 26/27
Section: 3C
On the Arch of Constantine in Rome, which commemorates his 312 triumph, it is neither Jupiter, the old conventional patron of Rome, nor Christ, already the quasi-official Savior, but Apollo the Sun God who is in the foreground, as the god of the army and of the prince. The inscription on the arch, as ecumenical as anyone could wish, attributes the victory to “the inspiration of the divinity,” instinctu divinitatis, and, equally important, to the ruler’s noble soul.{8}The scales were thus approximately balanced.
Quote ID: 31
Time Periods: 4
Book ID: 4 Page: 28
Section: 3C
As Cyril Mango points out, around 328 Constantine had himself portrayed in his capital, on the top of a porphyry column, wearing the radiate crown of the Sun God. He went even farther, by having a Capital constructed in the city, that is, a temple dedicated to the triad Jupiter-Juno-Minerva, and the “essential symbol of Romanness.”{11}
Quote ID: 32
Time Periods: 4
Book ID: 4 Page: 29
Section: 3C,2E1
The same intention of exploiting for his own purposes the magical power of ancient statues can be seen in Constantine’s decision to use for the representation of the emperor on the top of his porphyry column a statue of Apollo from Ilium (Troy), whose head was recarved for the occasion. Apollo had been the great defender of Troy (whose heir, via Aeneas, Rome considered itself); and as the Sun God, he protected Constantine.2E1
Similarly, the palladion was transferred from Rome to Constantinople. This relic, said to have been brought to Italy from Troy by Aeneas, was a very old statue of Athena, which made impregnable any city that possessed it.{15}
Quote ID: 34
Time Periods: 04
Book ID: 4 Page: 30
Section: 4B
The old Roman law echoed Plato’s voice, forbidding the worship of “new or foreign gods, unless they have been officially accepted” (Cicero, De Legibus, II, 8).
Quote ID: 35
Time Periods: 01
Book ID: 4 Page: 32
Section: 3C
It is in this context that a pagan sanctuary in Mamre (in Judaea, near Hebron) was destroyed: the oak under which the three angels of God, or rather God Himself accompanied by two angels, appeared to Abraham was the object of a cult, like many other sacred trees, for pagans as well as Jews and Christians. Constantine ordered the pagan altar to be razed to the ground and the idols that profaned the place to be burned.{24}
Quote ID: 36
Time Periods: 4
Book ID: 4 Page: 33
Section: 3C2
Eusebius claims that Constantine ordered the army to demolish the magnificent temple of Asclepius at Aigeai in Cilicia, one of the god’s chief sanctuaries. It would seem, however, that it was the bishop of the city who, in 326, stripped the temple of its exterior colonnade in order to reuse it as the nave of a church. Julian ordered him, or rather his successor, to restore it at his own expense.{30}
Quote ID: 37
Time Periods: 34
Book ID: 4 Page: 33
Section: 3C2
Eusebius, in his concern to glorify his hero, the emperor, apparently attributed to him an initiative that was actually local.
Quote ID: 38
Time Periods: 34
Book ID: 4 Page: 34
Section: 3C2
What emerges, as Louis Robert has pointed out, is Eusebius’ veritable hatred of Asclepius, “Savior” and “philanthropos,” whom he regarded as Christ’s competitor.
Quote ID: 39
Time Periods: 4
Book ID: 4 Page: 37
Section: 3C,4B
Constantius did not hesitate to call upon the services of eminent pagans, orators in particular. In 341, at the inauguration of the “great church” that Constantius had built in Antioch, a pagan sophist, Bemarchius, delivered the official speech in praise of the edifice. We know this from his colleague and rival Libanius, who reproached him for it. Libanius’ irritation was provoked more by professional rivalry than religious scruples. At the beginning of his stay in Constantinople, he himself had offered a panegyric to Constantius, who greatly appreciated it.
Quote ID: 40
Time Periods: 4
Book ID: 4 Page: 38/39
Section: 3C,4B
In 357, during his visit to Rome, Constantius had the altar of Victory removed from the Senate.{2} The altar was erected in front of a statue of the goddess commemoration the victory of Constantine over Maxentius; that remained in place.
Quote ID: 41
Time Periods: 4
Book ID: 4 Page: 57
Section: 3C,4B
Gratian surpassed his predecessor by eliminating the pensions paid by the imperial treasury to pagan priests, and by refusing to fill vacant positions in the sacerdotal colleges. When a deputation of senators came to ask him to rescind those measures and to remind him that officially he was the chief of the State cults---probably around the beginning of 383---he refused to receive them and with great ostentation dropped the title of pontifex maximus. These gestures marked a “separation between paganism and the State.”{1}
Quote ID: 42
Time Periods: 4
Book ID: 4 Page: 58
Section: 3A4B
in 384 Ambrose declared that there were more Christians than pagans in the Curia.{3}
Quote ID: 43
Time Periods: 4
Book ID: 4 Page: 58
Section: 3A1B
Q. Aurelius Symmachus, who was prefect of the city, drafted on this occasion an official “report” (relatio) that has remained famous. Like Libanius’ speech For the Temples, written about the same time or in 389--390, it was a plea for paganism, “the religion of our fathers,” warrant of Rome’s political greatness and also one of the many paths to the divine. “What does it matter by which wisdom each of us arrives at truth? It is not possible that only one road leads to so sublime a mystery.”{4}
Quote ID: 44
Time Periods: 4
Book ID: 4 Page: 63
Section: 3D
At first, Theodosius’ position toward pagans had been cautious. From 388 to 391 he remained in the West with Valentinian II. After that, the supreme authority which they incarnated together initiated measures that treated pagan cults rudely. Why the reversal? Was it the influence of the redoubtable Ambrose, a far more difficult partner for the emperor than the Bishops in the East? Ambrose, who had first been a high official, had the stature and the knowledge of a statesman, and as early as the end of 388 he demonstrated it. At that time he prevented Theodosius from securing reparation for the Jews of Callinicum, on the Euphrates, after a band of fanatics---once again, monks instigated by the bishop---had burned their synagogue and a sanctuary attributed to some gnostics, the Valentinians.
Quote ID: 45
Time Periods: 4
Book ID: 4 Page: 77/78
Section: 3A2B
Not until 398 did Porphyrius succeed in having the temples of Gaza closed, and, even so, the Marneion continued to be used in secret. But the bishop wanted more; he wanted the temple of Marnas destroyed. Violence of that kind posed a grave political problem, and the emperor, Arcadius, was aware of it when, probably in October 400, he replied to the bishop of Gaza: “Well do I know that your city is full of idols. But it is prompt in paying taxes and contributes much to the treasury. If we were suddenly to terrorize these people, they might flee and we would lose considerable revenues.”{14} In order to achieve his goals, the bishop ingratiated himself with the empress, who was then pregnant, by predicting that she would give birth to a son, which she did shortly thereafter. It still took a good bit of maneuvering and the occasion of the little prince’s baptism for Porphyrius finally to obtain, early in 402, a decree from the emperor to demolish the temples in Gaza---eight in all, to be destroyed by imperial troops between the 12th and 24th of May of that year. The prospect of pillage encouraged the fervor of the soldiers.{15}
Quote ID: 46
Time Periods: 45
Book ID: 4 Page: 81/82
Section: 3D
Stilico was relentless in his hostility to pagan cults. It is to him that Saint Augustine attributes the authorship of the laws for Africa in 399.{24} One day in Rome his wife Serena removed from the statue of the Great Mother a beautiful necklace, placing it around her own neck. Stilico himself had the gold scraped from the doors of the temple of Jupiter on the Capitoline, probably early in 408, to pay a ransom to Alaric. {25} One of his enemies accused him of having burned the Sibylline Books, kept on the Capitoline, which contained prophecies for the whole of Roman history. This is surprising, for Christians were not fundamentally hostile to the Sibylline Books, which they counted among the precursory texts of their own faith; in much later times, the Sibyls even found a place among the frescoes of the Sistine Chapel, alongside the prophets of the Old Testament.
Quote ID: 47
Time Periods: 45
Book ID: 4 Page: 87
Section: 3A2A,3A2B
The situation deteriorated. The Jews, having agreed on an identifying sign (a ring made of palm fibers), arranged night-time sallies to beat up Christians. They might also have decided to burn, again by night, the church known as Alexander’s church. But the rumor spread, Christians ran for help, and Jews allegedly murdered every person they encountered who was not wearing a ring of palm fibers. This at least is the version told by Bishop Cyril in order to justify the ensuing reprisals he led, as he destroyed synagogues and expelled Jews from the city, confiscating their property. The event impressed his contemporaries for, Socrates reminds us with no little gravity, Jews had lived in Alexandria ever since its foundation.
Quote ID: 48
Time Periods: 45
Book ID: 4 Page: 88/89
Section: 2A3,3A2A
In the second episode Cyril tried to gain the upper hand. With the help of a cohort of five hundred monks brought from the desert monasteries south of the city (Nitrun), he fomented a revolt against Orestes. When the prefect’s chariot passed through the streets, the monks gathered crowds and accused him of being a “sacrificer” and a pagan (“Hellene”). Orestes, at first on the defensive, justified himself, declaring that he was already baptized (many Christians at that time were baptized late in life, after they considered themselves worthy of the sacrament). A particularly excited monk threw a stone at the prefect, hitting him in the head and causing blood to cover his face. That was too much. The fanatic was arrested and tortured to death by the prefectorial police. Once again the prefect and the bishop informed the emperor, while the body of the monk was exposed in a church as a martyr for the faith. Cyril gave him a new name, that of a saint. This recalls a pagan usage by which the dead were often hero-ized, becoming the object of a funerary cult, under another name. But the moderate Christians of Alexandria did not support their bishop, feeling that the victim had only paid for his crime, so the advantage this time was the prefect’s.Unable to attack his adversary directly, Cyril---and this is the third episode---avenged himself on a figure from his entourage. Some time after the attempt on the prefect’s life---during Lent, when fasting and religious exaltation encouraged violence, as it did many times in the future---Hypatia was returning from a trip when fanatics dragged her from her carriage into one of the town’s main churches, which was the seat of the patriarch. This church, though it had been dedicated to Saint Michael, was still known by the name of the pagan sanctuary whose walls it reused: the Caesareum (center of the former imperial cult in Alexandria). {39} There Hypatia was stripped, stabbed with shards of pots and crocks, then hacked to pieces. The remains of her body were paraded around the streets of the town and finally burned---a repulsive custom that was neither a Christian innovation nor peculiar to Alexandria.
Quote ID: 49
Time Periods: 45
Book ID: 4 Page: 91
Section: 3A2A
Pagans increasingly were kept out of power. An edict of November 14, 408, for the first time prohibited enemies of the Christian religion from serving the palace, which was to prove “far more decisive than rulings against the cults.”{1}Pastor John’s note: Pagans could teach, after kicked out of government. Later, excluded from that profession as well.
Quote ID: 50
Time Periods: 5
Book ID: 4 Page: 91/92
Section: 3A2A
On December 7, 416, pagans were excluded from the army, the administration, and the judiciary.{3} In 423 Honorius and Theodosius II reinvoked the old measures taken against them. Two months later they lightened the punishments provided for those caught making sacrifices (confiscation of goods and exile instead of death), and accorded their protection to pagans who “cause no trouble.”{4} This law also applied to Manichaeans, Montanists, and Jews. The pagan problem had lost its specificity.
Quote ID: 8158
Time Periods: 5
Book ID: 4 Page: 101
Section: 3A2A
At the end of the fifth century only one area remained in which pagans could still exercise a degree of power: the liberal professions, teaching in particular.
Quote ID: 51
Time Periods: 5
Book ID: 4 Page: 115
Section: 3C
[Used the Bold]Far more significant for the future was the Christian absorption of pagan culture. It took place of course in the capital, Constantinople, but found more fertile ground elsewhere.
But above all it was Gaza, not so long ago a bastion of paganism, that became a center of Christian teaching of rhetoric, thanks to one of its natives, Procopius.
Procopius was a cleric, versed in theology, who knew Plato well and argued with Procius. He was the inventor of “exegetic chains,” . . .
Quote ID: 52
Time Periods: 4
Book ID: 4 Page: 116
Section: 2E3,2E6
Procopius himself applied his pen to celebrate the beauties of their little homeland. As for the outcome of his teaching, one can understand why in the tenth century the patriarch Photius grumbled on reading what one of Procopius’ disciples wrote: “He is devoted to the true religion; he respects the rites and sacred places of Christians. Nonetheless, for whatever reason of negligence or thoughtlessness, he mixes into his writings ill-suited pagan fables and stories, at times even when treating sacred subjects.”{27}
Quote ID: 53
Time Periods: 67
Book ID: 4 Page: 117
Section: 2A4
The School of Gaza demonstrates how Christians garnered from paganism more than insipid literary ornaments: Victories brandishing the palm frond; plump-cheeked Cupids holding garlands aloft; Seasons tendering the fruits and flowers of the year. What we see surviving are the entertainments that reflect the image of a society,
Quote ID: 54
Time Periods: 23
Book ID: 4 Page: 118
Section: 1B
Seen with hindsight, 410 had become a decisive turning point. Zosimus, as compared for example with Rutilius Namatianus who had left Rome a few years after 410, was aware of the decline of the Roman Empire. He had no trouble explaining it: Christianity was to blame---an accusation with little foundation, but destined to have a very long future.
Quote ID: 55
Time Periods: 14
Book ID: 4 Page: 118
Section: 4B
The last pagans we can see clearly are to be found mainly among intellectuals, historians, philosophers, and poets.
Quote ID: 56
Time Periods: 67
Book ID: 4 Page: 119
Section: 5D
At the end of the fifth century the difference between the two former halves of the Empire was striking, at least with regard to the cities. While the Mediterranean East was rather prosperous, the West was collapsing; centuries would pass before it recovered. By admonishing his flock in 494 not to try to recover by superstition the prosperity that the East was enjoying without any lapse of faith, Pope Gelasius was in fact acknowledging the reality of the divergence.
Quote ID: 57
Time Periods: 56
Book ID: 4 Page: 123
Section: 3A2A
To be sure, religion had a role to play here, but not pagan religions. All but one of the tribes had been converted to Arian Christianity before they came into the Roman Empire. The Franks remained faithful to their Germanic cults until they embraced Catholicism, after Christ, invoked by Clovis during a battle against the Alamans, once more gave proof of his military ability.
Quote ID: 58
Time Periods: 567
Book ID: 4 Page: 124
Section: 3A1B
A quiet paganism emerges from some of the little poems collected by Naucellius, a friend of Symmachus, at the end of the fourth century. It is the same tone as the epigram in which Ampelius, proconsul of Achaia, had celebrated a half-century earlier the park he had made for him in Aegina: “And here I take all my pleasures and delight in them: countryside, villa, gardens watered by natural springs, and the lovely marbles of the odd-numbered Pierians nine Muses. Here I want to stay and live out a serene old age, re-reading the sage texts of the Ancients.”{11}Pastor John note: late 300’s
Quote ID: 59
Time Periods: ?
Book ID: 4 Page: 125
Section: 1B,2A3
Christianized nobles preserved Roman traditions. Not only did Christianity tolerate their national pride, it offered them a new manifestation of it when Pope Leo I “the Great” (440 - 461), conferring on Rome the praise attributed to the Jewish people, glorified “a holy nation, a chosen people, a priestly and royal city”
Quote ID: 60
Time Periods: 5
Book ID: 4 Page: 127
Section: 4B
Macrobius offers a clearer voice. He probably wrote his Saturnalia shortly after 431, if not between 425 and 428, at any rate later than has been thought.{21}the work contains elements of solar theology, presented in a long speech that the author places in the mouth of a venerable champion of paganism, Vettius Agorius Praetextatus, who had died some fifty years earlier (in 384). “It could scarcely have occurred to Macrobius’ Christian readers (by the 430s there would have been few pagan readers left) that there was anything anti-Christian about them,” says Alan Cameron.{22} But did Macrobius have the option to enter into a polemic if he wished his book to escape the fate accorded Porphyry’s treatise Against Christians---the pyre?
It is hard to see what interest Praetextatus’ speech could have had unless it were seen from a pagan religious view-point.
Quote ID: 61
Time Periods: 5
Book ID: 4 Page: 128
Section: 4B
The best symbol of the transfer of a heritage that was both Greek and pagan to Latin-speaking Christians, and through them to new nations, is perhaps that found in the figure of the bishop of Clermont, Sidonius Apollinaris, who was born around 430 and died between 480 and 490. Sidonius, an admirer of Neoplatonist philosophy, revised the Latin translation of the Life of Apollonius of Tyana made a century before by the pagan aristocrat Nicomachus Flavianus, who committed suicide after Eugenius’ defeat.{26} This was a work much appreciated by Jerome and Augustine, who did not regard it as hostile to Christianity.
Quote ID: 62
Time Periods: 5
Book ID: 4 Page: 129
Section: 2C,4B
In the West, a century after the definitive interdict decreed by Theodosius I and nearly a generation after the collapse of imperial power in that half of his domain, paganism, finally deserving the explanation often given today for its name, was of concern only to peasants.
Quote ID: 63
Time Periods: 5
Book ID: 4 Page: 129/130
Section: 4B
This same attitude, which was seen in connection with the statues of Menouthis, was adopted by Gregory of Tours toward the Gallic countryside.{29} Paganism was no longer worth refuting, nor even inquiring into, and for the first time a bishop referred to it “as a constituted religion.”{30}At the very end of the sixth century a series of letters by Pope Gregory the Great show him trying to convert the Barbaricini of Sardinia. Only their duke, Hospito, was a Christian. Later, Gregory discovered that the pagan peasants of that island paid the governor to be allowed to sacrifice with impunity.
Quote ID: 64
Time Periods: 6
Book ID: 4 Page: 131
Section: 4B
Amid the violent upheavals shaking the West, the paganism of intellectuals was doomed to extinction once intellectual circles became identified with clerical ones.
Quote ID: 65
Time Periods: 56
Book ID: 4 Page: 132
Section: 3E
The name of one emperor remains associated with the official extirpation of paganism, Justinian (527 - 565), builder of Hagia Sophia and temporary restorer of the Roman Empire.
Quote ID: 66
Time Periods: 6
Book ID: 4 Page: 132/133
Section: 3E
From then on he became more severe, first toward converted Hellenes relapsing into their former error, who would be sentenced to “supreme punishments,” and then toward ordinary pagans:All those who have not yet been baptized 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 Christians. 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.
This is followed by specific regulations, for professors, peasants (if landowners, their properties will be confiscated and they will be banished), those who practice pagan cults (the death penalty), young children (to be baptized without delay), older children (to receive instruction before baptism), heads of families who receive baptism without their families (they will lose their jobs), and so on. The first of these stipulations concerns professors: “We forbid anyone stricken with the madness of the impure Hellenes to teach, so as to prevent them, under the guise of teaching those who by misfortune happen to attend their classes, from in fact corrupting the souls of those they pretend to educate. They will not receive state pensions, having no license either by Sacred Scripture or earthly law, to claim for themselves any immunity whatsoever.” {4}
The word translated as “license” is parrhesia, which for more than a thousand years designated an essential attribute of the free man: freedom of speech.
Pastor John’s note: A.D. 529
Quote ID: 67
Time Periods: 6
Book ID: 4 Page: 134
Section: 2E
The freedom of conscience instituted two centuries earlier by the edict of 313 was permanently abolished, and it is not without melancholy that one rereads its language: “It seemed to us a very good and very reasonable system to refuse to none of our subjects, whether a Christian or belonging to some other cult, the right to follow the religion that suits him best. In this way, the supreme divinity, whom each of us will forthwith venerate freely, can accord to each of us his customary favor and benevolence.” {5}From Justinian on, all pagans were condemned to civil death. The laws passed against them went as far as the privacy of the family: the son who converted was removed from the authority of his father; as for the son who remained a pagan, he was incapacitated, and the inheritance passed to relatives of the orthodox confession. In short, as Justinian said on the subject of heretics, “it is more than enough [for them] merely to be alive.” {6}
Quote ID: 68
Time Periods: 67
Book ID: 4 Page: 137
Section: 2E
The Academy’s endowment was confiscated by the emperor toward the end of 531 or the beginning of 532. {16} The philosophers of Athens then sought refuge in Mesopotamia among the Persians. This is surely one of the most fabulous episodes of the period: the worshipers of the Sun marching East, taking with them the treasures of Hellenic wisdom.
Quote ID: 70
Time Periods: 6
Book ID: 4 Page: 137
Section: 2E
Chosroes, the young sovereign on the throne of the Sassanid empire, invited them to his court; he wanted scholars around him.
Quote ID: 71
Time Periods: 6
Book ID: 4 Page: 139
Section: 3E
Damascius’ disciples, especially Simplicius, did not return to Athens, although they continued to write. Tardieu has shown that Simplicius settled in Carrhae (Harran), within Roman territory but beyond the Euphrates, near the Persian border, and there established a Neoplatonist school.
Quote ID: 72
Time Periods: 6
Book ID: 4 Page: 140
Section: 3E
After the campaign of 540, during which Chosroes invaded Syria, sacking, depopulating, and partially destroying Antioch, the conqueror exempted Carrhae from paying a tribute because “a majority” of its population was faithful “to the ancient religion.” {22} Manichaeans had also taken refuge there. During the truces between Romans and Sassanians, if a clause granted some freedom of conscience, it was not to benefit a handful of vagrant philosophers. It was to guarantee border inhabitants that they would not suffer too much at the hands of their temporary master.
Quote ID: 73
Time Periods: 6
Book ID: 4 Page: 143
Section: 3A4A
On the basis of this evidence, we might get the impression that under Justinian paganism was finally eradicated. It does not seem to have survived even in the desert outposts to which it was ultimately relegated. It was pushed to the edge of the Empire and the fringe of society with the Platonists of Harran. And yet, the episodes that are vividly related in enormous detail by John of Ephesus, a monk then bishop, bring us back to the heart of the Empire and within close range of the emperor. In 542 John of Ephesus became the chargé d’affaires for pagans, super paganos, in Asia (meaning the western part of Asia Minor): Caria, Phrygia, and Lydia.
Quote ID: 74
Time Periods: 6
Book ID: 4 Page: 144
Section: 3A2A
The inquisitor himself described his campaign. He built twenty-four churches and four monasteries and destroyed “a house of idols” where the pagans held annual celebrations with their priests. John became bishop of Ephesus in 558 and in 562 unleashed new persecutions. {36} Even though his fidelity to Monophysitism had previously forced him into secrecy and imprisonment, he had the support not only of the empress Theodora (who died in 548), herself a cobeliever, but also of Justinian, who paid for the expenses and robes of the baptisms John administered and contributed one-third of gold coin (aureus) given to each of the new Christians. They then helped to destroy the temples, overturn the idols, break the altars, and “cut down the many trees they used to worship.”
Quote ID: 75
Time Periods: 6
Book ID: 4 Page: 144/145
Section: 3A2A
The great persecution, for us the final episode (there must have been numerous lesser ones that did not find their John of Ephesus to chronicle them), took place during the second year of the reign of Justinian’s successor, Tiberius (from 580 on). Tiberius, having sent a general to repress an uprising of Jews and Samaritans, ordered him to take care of the pagans in Heliopolis (Baalbek) along the way. The Bekaa Valley was subjected to a reign of terror: “He arrested many of them...humiliated them, crucified them, and killed them.” Under torture, his victims denounced their coreligionists, who were “in most of the cities of the East and particularly in Antioch.” They included Anatolius, the governor of the province, who was planning to take part in a secret ceremony to honor Zeus at the home of a pagan priest in Edessa. When the police surrounded the house, the priest committed suicide with a razor. The faithful, seeing the police arrive, stayed away, but their names were revealed by the priests’ servants, an old invalid and his aged wife, who were arrested beside their master’s body and cult objects. Anatolius, hoping to establish an alibi, rode off in travel clothes to the bishop’s house in the middle of the night, pretending that he wanted to discuss a question of Scripture with him. He was arrested as he left the bishopric.
Quote ID: 76
Time Periods: 6
Book ID: 4 Page: 146/147
Section: 3A2A
After such preliminaries the sentences of those accused during the great trial could be nothing but severe. Anatolius was not only condemned to death, he was tortured, clawed by wild animals, and finally crucified. The cadavers of the condemned were “treated like donkey carcasses,” dragged through the streets and thrown outside the walls on public trash heaps. The inquisitions continued after the death of Tiberius (582), under his successor, Maurice, the victims thrown to wild beasts and then burned. Unhappy they who observed a few rituals from the ancient religion after they were baptized! All of this seems to herald the torments inflicted, much later and with greater perseverance, on the Marranos of Catholic Spain. “And that is why every day more are denounced and they receive the just desserts of their actions, in this world and in the next,” John of Ephesus complacently concludes. {37} His extraordinary account was written while the witch hunt was still going on.
Quote ID: 77
Time Periods: 6
End of quotes