Constantine and the Bishops: The Politics of Intolerance
H.A. Drake
Number of quotes: 20
Book ID: 65 Page: 6
Section: 3C1
Athanasius was fortunate to have been recognized, for disrupting imperial processions was a risky gambit. Just one overzealous guard, and the voice of Nicene orthodoxy might have been stilled forever.
Quote ID: 1665
Time Periods: 4
Book ID: 65 Page: 8
Section: 3C
Here begins a process that leads to the institution of caesaropapism in the East and, in the West, to a less easy alliance, the traces of which lie but thinly beneath the contours of modern Europe.
Quote ID: 1666
Time Periods: 47
Book ID: 65 Page: 9
Section: 3C,3A2
...a religion based on love and charity adopted the instruments of its former persecutors.
Quote ID: 1667
Time Periods: 4
Book ID: 65 Page: 10/11
Section: 2E6,3C
It was this victory in 312, according to Eusebius, which led Constantine to adopt “the salutary sign” and attach himself with all the fervor of a new convert to the faith of the apostles.….
Within a year, he was working with the bishop of Rome to settle a church dispute, the Donatist controversy, and little more than a decade later he would take the unprecedented step of calling a worldwide assembly of bishops, the historic Council of Nicaea.
Quote ID: 1668
Time Periods: 4
Book ID: 65 Page: 11
Section: 3A1,3C
At the same time, Constantine endowed the bishops with unprecedented legal and juridical privileges.
Quote ID: 1669
Time Periods: 4
Book ID: 65 Page: 15
Section: 2B2,3C
...his own father, the emperor Constantius I, had “honored the one Supreme God during his whole life” and ruled with both honor and success. Thus, he realized that this One God had been “the Savior and Protector of his empire, and the Giver of every good thing.”
Quote ID: 1671
Time Periods: 4
Book ID: 65 Page: 15
Section: 3C2
What is important at the moment is the obviously political reasoning that Eusebius says went into Constantine’s decision: he wanted to find a god who would not only protect him from magical arts but also give him a secure and successful reign. Entirely missing from the story are those spiritual concerns that, to a modern reader at least, are the prime components of a conversion experience: concerns for immorality and ethical conduct, the afterlife and the fate of one’s soul.
Quote ID: 1672
Time Periods: 4
Book ID: 65 Page: 15
Section: 3C2
...the bishop’s utter duplicity in putting a pious veneer over such raw ambition— “the first thoroughly dishonest historian of antiquity,” Burckhardt called him. {15}
Quote ID: 1673
Time Periods: 4
Book ID: 65 Page: 16
Section: 3C2
...he obviously, almost embarrassingly, dotes on his subject, sees no contradiction, much less shame, in Constantine’s behavior at the moment of his conversion.
Quote ID: 1674
Time Periods: 4
Book ID: 65 Page: 21
Section: 1A,3C
Given the legacy of religious strife and bigotry that had divided Europe since the Reformation and the resistance of the church to their call for looser controls, it is understandable that they saw intolerance as a quality inherent to Christian belief, a conclusion that seemed proven by the history of the church in the Roman Empire. Gibbon shared these view, and they clearly influenced his conclusion that the fall of Rome was caused by “barbarism and religion.” {24} That intolerance was inherent to Christianity seemed beyond dispute. Not only were converts obliged to renounce belief in all other gods—an immediate contrast to the inclusive spirit of polytheism, as Gibbon so aptly noted—but also within decades of Constantine’s conversion Christian emperors began a violent suppression of variant beliefs that had continued seemingly unabated to his own day.This correlation gave the hypothesis of inherent Christian intolerance a semblance of scientific objectivity, making it a powerful paradigm that continues to be used right down to the present—so powerful, in fact, that it masks what should be an obvious flaw: for three centuries prior to Constantine, the only persecutions known to the Roman world were those that Christians suffered and pagans sponsored. Enlightenment ideology was predisposed to discount this situation...
Quote ID: 1675
Time Periods: 456
Book ID: 65 Page: 73
Section: 3A2
Over the centuries, bishops displayed a remarkable ability to absorb every kind of distinction into their corporate identity. It was the bishops who prevented the Christian community from splintering into ever more diverse and independent traditions.
Quote ID: 1676
Time Periods: 4567
Book ID: 65 Page: 107
Section: 3A1
Theoretically, the people who filled priestly offices in the Greco-Roman world did so because of some personal worth. But in that world “personal worth” pretty much was defined as a matter of station, or of birth, or both. This meant that in practice traditional priests came from the same elites who ran everything else in the ancient state.
Quote ID: 1677
Time Periods: 04
Book ID: 65 Page: 109
Section: 3C
The Christians whom Constantine knew were no little group of transplanted fishermen. Possibly influenced by the example of the bishops with whom he had to work, Constantine himself characterized the apostles not as men drawn from humble stations but as “the wisest among men” and “the best men of their age.” {61}
Quote ID: 1678
Time Periods: 4
Book ID: 65 Page: 110
Section: 3A1
In the third century, the empire would experience an unprecedented series of disasters, both natural and civic. If playing the game of empire meant commanding sufficient resources to ensure that one’s interests could not be ignored, then the disasters of that century made clear that the church was ready to become a player, and the bishops to serve as an alternative to the traditional ruling elites.
Quote ID: 1679
Time Periods: 3
Book ID: 65 Page: 127
Section: 3C2
The disclaimer did not stop Constantine’s renegade nephew, the emperor Julian, from later mocking with republican sarcasm his uncle’s love of finery. Ironically, in this case it was Julian who was out of step. Although modern scholars frequently write with admiration of Julian’s efforts to restore the simpler behavior of the Principate, contemporaries found it demeaning; while Christian writers scorned the man they called “the Apostate” for turning away from the faith, even their pagan counterparts conceded that he had failed to achieve the dignity of his office. {23}
Quote ID: 1681
Time Periods: 4
Book ID: 65 Page: 299
Section: 3C
It is never wise to separate political from religious thinking in the ancient world, particularly in the case of a figure like Constantine.
Quote ID: 1683
Time Periods: 4
Book ID: 65 Page: 443
Section: 3D
Theodosius did indeed do penance for the slaughter at Thessalonica—this much both Ambrose and his younger contemporary, Saint Augustine, confirm. {3} But neither say anything about access to the church being attempted and denied. Such confrontation as actually occurred, while equally significant, took place not on the steps of the cathedral but in carefully worded paragraphs that Ambrose sent the emperor from the prudent distance of his country estate, whence he had retired on receiving report of the tragedy. In this letter, Ambrose ever so gingerly raised the possibility of denying communion, reporting a dream in which he was “not allowed to offer the Holy Sacrifice” so long as Theodosius was in the church—and even considered these words so sensitive that he told the emperor he wrote them in his own hand (rather than dictating to secretaries) so that none but Theodosius would read them.
Quote ID: 1684
Time Periods: 4
Book ID: 65 Page: 444
Section: 3D
I dare not offer the Holy Sacrifice if you intend to be present. {4}Theodosius responded to this appeal by placing himself amid the penitents outside the cathedral, a self-inflicted punishment from which Ambrose relieved him, in what now appears to be a carefully crafted ceremony of damage control. {5}
Quote ID: 1685
Time Periods: 4
Book ID: 65 Page: 448
Section: 3D
This contrast brings out the real significance of the event depicted by Rubens and Van Dyck and the reason for musing on it here. It is a confrontation between armed might and moral strength, potestas and auctoritas. Its true title should be “Allegory of Church and State”; or, better, “Western Civilization,” for truly what happened in this confrontation, whether it occurred on the steps of the cathedral or in the graceful periods of courtly rhetoric, was that at this moment the theoretical restraints on absolute power developed through centuries of ancient philosophy and rhetoric found both voice and teeth in the institution of the Christian bishop.
Quote ID: 1686
Time Periods: 47
Book ID: 65 Page: 470
Section: 3D
The confrontation between Ambrose and Theodosius was not so much a turning point as a validation of a process that began with Constantine’s decision to use the coercive powers of the state to protect the interests of one Christian party against another. The ultimate effect of Ambrose’s ability to prevail on Theodosius over burning of Callinicum’s synagogue was that it sent forth a signal of indecision at the highest levels which in turn created openings for those Christians who burned to use such extreme measures.
Quote ID: 1687
Time Periods: 4
End of quotes