Section: 3A2 - Coercion/Violence (general)
Number of quotes: 105
1453: The Holy War for Constantinople and the Clash of Islam and the West
Roger Crowley
Book ID: 2 Page: 27/28
Section: 3A2,3A4C
In 1204 this history of mutual suspicion and violence returned to haunt Constantinople in a catastrophe for which the Greeks have never fully forgiven the Catholic West. In one of the most bizarre events in the history of Christendom, the Fourth Crusade, embarked on Venetian ships and nominally bound for Egypt, was diverted to attack the city. An appalling massacre ensued and huge portions of the city were destroyed by fire: “more houses were burned than there are to be found in the three greatest cities of the Kingdom of France,” declared the French knight Geoffry de Villehardouin.
Quote ID: 7
Time Periods: 7
A.D. 381 Heretics, Pagans, and the Dawn of the Monotheistic State
Charles Freeman
Book ID: 11 Page: 2
Section: 3A2
The Roman legal system was adapted so as to be able to target and remove dissidents, whether pagan or Christian. With the collapse of the empire in the west, the Church took over the powers of the state in which it had acquiesced under Theodosius, and by the twelfth century, Church and state were again united in suppressing freedom of religious thought. One has to wait until the seventeenth century before the principle of religious toleration, so deep-rooted a part of ancient society, was reasserted in Europe.
Quote ID: 172
Time Periods: 47
Authority and the Sacred: Aspects of the Christianisation of the Roman World
Peter Brown
Book ID: 35 Page: 19
Section: 3A2
Yet we should not underestimate the long-term impact of a new, more drastic definition of monotheism on notions of authority among lay elites. In many provinces of the Western empire, in the course of the late fourth and fifth centuries, Christian exhortation presented the elites with a new model of power. It assumed a chain of command drawn as starkly on earth as it was in heaven. An emperor, hailed by Ambrose as militans pro Deo, on active service for the Christian God, was linked to his upper-class subjects, and, through these, to all inhabitants of the empire.
Quote ID: 686
Time Periods: 45
Authority and the Sacred: Aspects of the Christianisation of the Roman World
Peter Brown
Book ID: 35 Page: 39
Section: 3A2
There is one feature of the practice of politics that is directly relevant to the impact of religious intolerance in this period. For all its autocratic overtones, and horrendous reputation in most modern accounts of the age, it is well known that the imperial government continued to depend, to a very large extent, for its effectiveness, on the consensus of a widely diffused network of local elites. Devotio, the loyalty and prompt obedience that was expected of upper-class subjects of the empire, had to be wooed, or, at least, not allowed to go entirely off the boil – it could not be imposed by force alone.
Quote ID: 696
Time Periods: 4
Authority and the Sacred: Aspects of the Christianisation of the Roman World
Peter Brown
Book ID: 35 Page: 40
Section: 3A2
As a result, the exercise of power in a hard-driving and potentially abrasive system was not controlled, in the sense of being subject to legal restraints. But it had to be, at least, rendered dignified.
Quote ID: 697
Time Periods: 4
Authority and the Sacred: Aspects of the Christianisation of the Roman World
Peter Brown
Book ID: 35 Page: 40
Section: 3A2
Like a miraculous calm spreading across the face of a choppy ocean, the ‘serenity’ associated with the vast notional omnipotence of the emperor was mediated, throughout the imperial system, by a succession of representatives and collaborators, by means of innumerable interchanges in which courtesy, self-control and quiet confidence – the marks of innate superiority – were believed to have prevailed. As a result, among the elites, the issue of toleration was swallowed up in a specifically late Roman emphasis on civility. Paideia, not philosophy, set the limits to intolerance.
Quote ID: 698
Time Periods: ?
Authority and the Sacred: Aspects of the Christianisation of the Roman World
Peter Brown
Book ID: 35 Page: 46
Section: 3A2
Newly ordained as the bishop of Constantinople, Nestorius mounted the ambo of Hagia Sophia and turned to the emperor: ‘Give me, my prince, the earth purged of heretics, and I will give you heaven as a recompense.’ This was far worse than intolerance. It was a lapse in good taste.
Quote ID: 702
Time Periods: 45
Authority and the Sacred: Aspects of the Christianisation of the Roman World
Peter Brown
Book ID: 35 Page: 49
Section: 3A2
To a very large extent, then, the history of tolerance and intolerance in the later Roman empire is not to be sought through the examination of a few proof texts, nor can its quality be assessed through a few well-known incidents, admirable or repugnant though these may be. It belongs to the wider topic of the political and cultural factors that went to make up the basically unheroic, but tenacious, moral fibre of the late Roman local elites.
Quote ID: 705
Time Periods: 4
Authority and the Sacred: Aspects of the Christianisation of the Roman World
Peter Brown
Book ID: 35 Page: 49
Section: 3A2
Nothing illustrates this more clearly than do the wider repercussions of the incidents of spectacular violence against pagan temples and Jewish synagogues that emerge in high profile in all Christian narratives of the reign of Theodosius I, from 379 to 395. In this period, violence against pagan sites was widespread. It was purposive and vindictive.
Quote ID: 706
Time Periods: 4
Authority and the Sacred: Aspects of the Christianisation of the Roman World
Peter Brown
Book ID: 35 Page: 50
Section: 3A2
Spasmodic, largely unpredictable violence of this kind was inconsistent with the perpetual, controlled violence of a heavily governed society. If violence was to happen, it was essential that the traditional elites should not lose the monopoly of such violence. They did not want it to slip into the hands of erratic outsiders.
Quote ID: 707
Time Periods: 4
Authority and the Sacred: Aspects of the Christianisation of the Roman World
Peter Brown
Book ID: 35 Page: 53
Section: 3A2
All over the Mediterranean world, profound religious changes, heavy with potential for violence, were channelled into the more predictable, but no less overbearing ‘gentle violence’ of a stable social order.
Quote ID: 710
Time Periods: 4
Barbarian Migrations and the Roman West 376-568
Guy Halsall
Book ID: 36 Page: 100
Section: 3A2
The church was organised around imperial administrative structures. With some exceptions, each civitas became a bishopric. The bishop of a province’s capital city became a metropolitan (renamed, long after our period, an archbishop) and, though his rights and privileges were yet to be securely established, had the right to ordain the other bishops within his province.
Quote ID: 738
Time Periods: 4
Barbarian Migrations and the Roman West 376-568
Guy Halsall
Book ID: 36 Page: 101
Section: 3A2
The bishop was becoming a very powerful figure in local politics, and service in the church now provided an alternative route to the imperial presence.
Quote ID: 739
Time Periods: 4
Barbarian Migrations and the Roman West 376-568
Guy Halsall
Book ID: 36 Page: 101
Section: 3A2
....it had come to be an institution as thoroughly Roman as bureaucracy.Pastor John’s Note: The Church
Quote ID: 740
Time Periods: 4
Caesars & Saints: The Rise of the Christian State, A.D. 180-313
Stewart Perowne
Book ID: 44 Page: 64
Section: 1A,3A,3A2
“for a society which depends for its existence on obedience, nothing can be more wicked than choice.”
Quote ID: 986
Time Periods: 14567
Christianity & Paganism in the Fourth to Eighth Centuries
Ramsay MacMullen
Book ID: 57 Page: 26
Section: 3A2
From Alexandria, Severus [PJ: "of Antioch" @460–538] and Zacharias removed to Beirut to study law. There they learned of the discreet paganism of certain leading citizens, whose servants and friends could be persuaded to expose and inform against them. The first victim of the Christians’ efforts fell at their feet in terror, asserting his true Christian faith and lamenting what had only been a recent lapse from it. He convinced them of his sincerity and they let him off, but kept an eye on him. Their success encouraged them to form a small society, to elect a president, receive further denunciations, and bring charges against various fellow students before the bishop. Public hearings held by the latter and the city Recorders culminated in a second bonfire, this time of suspect books, and in the flight of the accused.
Quote ID: 1270
Time Periods: 6
Christianity & Paganism in the Fourth to Eighth Centuries
Ramsay MacMullen
Book ID: 57 Page: 30
Section: 3A2
A time would come, however, at different points in different localities, when government would have passed into the hands of Christians alone, or in such preponderance that the legal system became wholly an instrument of persecution—by 450, let us say.
Quote ID: 1272
Time Periods: 5
Christianity & Paganism in the Fourth to Eighth Centuries
Ramsay MacMullen
Book ID: 57 Page: 41
Section: 3A2
A glimpse of the irritation appears toward the year 409: at Calama in Africa Proconsularis, “at the June 1st festival, the impious ceremony of the pagans was celebrated without hindrance from anyone, with such impudent audacity was not ventured in Julian’s day: an aggressive crowd of dancers in this precinct passed directly in front of the church doors. And when the clergy attempted to prevent such an outrageous thing, the church was stoned.”
Quote ID: 1284
Time Periods: 5
Christianity & Paganism in the Fourth to Eighth Centuries
Ramsay MacMullen
Book ID: 57 Page: 42/43
Section: 3A2,3E
It is safe to say that the law was not enforced in any quite Prussian manner; yet the emperors certainly meant what they decreed. Any of their subjects who offered sacrifices should be executed, this in 352, in 356, and again in 451; should be exiled, perhaps more realistically, since before Justinian we hear of no one in fact put to death for this particular crime; should be dismissed from rank and office; or should lose all property and rights to bequeath it, thus bringing his relatives to bear upon him.
Quote ID: 1287
Time Periods: 456
Christianity & Paganism in the Fourth to Eighth Centuries
Ramsay MacMullen
Book ID: 57 Page: 74
Section: 3A2
In the 380s, Diana cult provoked the bishops of north Italian churches; again in the opening years of the tenth century the abbot Regino of Prum found somewhere in ecclesiastical records of the ninth what were there termed “great crowds” of women who, reporting on their experiences during deathlike trances, had careered about the skies with a mistress at their head named Diana. In the eleventh, the fourteenth, the sixteenth century her worshipers had nonsense phrases on their lips, strange new names for the objects of their worship, strange couplings with Satan. Bishops became more than ever disgusted; their persecution became ever more angry and particular. It was a witch-hunt.{2}
Quote ID: 1292
Time Periods: 47
Christianizing the Roman Empire
Ramsay MacMullen
Book ID: 58 Page: 91
Section: 3A2
The fact is surprising, for, whatever may be said against its persecutors, earlier, the church even quite undisturbed was not a good neighbor. Detestation of non-Christians, found in Constantine’s edicts, can also be heard in the urgings of a recent convert under the reign of his sons: “There remains only a very little for your laws to accomplish, whereby the devil may lie prostrate and overthrown before them, and the baneful contamination of a dead idolatry shall have vanished away.... Raise aloft the banner of faith! For you this is divinely appointed! . . . . Need commands you, most sacred emperors, to exact vengeance and punishment upon this evil! This is prescribed to you by the law of the supreme deity, that Your Severity should follow up on all fronts the crime of idolatry.”
Quote ID: 1481
Time Periods: 4
Christianizing the Roman Empire
Ramsay MacMullen
Book ID: 58 Page: 95
Section: 3A2
. . . later, at the turn of the century, Augustine addressed his congregation in Carthage with ringing invocations to smash all tangible symbols of paganism they could lay their hands on; “for,” he tells them, “that all superstition of pagans and heathens should be annihilated is what God wants, God commands, God proclaims!” - words uttered “to wild applause,” as one modern biographer puts it, and very possibly the cause of religious riots, with sixty dead, in a city to the south. So another biographer supposes, very reasonably.
Quote ID: 1485
Time Periods: 45
Christianizing the Roman Empire
Ramsay MacMullen
Book ID: 58 Page: 100
Section: 3A2
And the bishop of Constantinople, “learning that Phoenicia was still infatuated with the rites of its daimones, assembled monks inflamed with divine zeal and, arming them with imperial laws, sent them against the sanctuaries of idols,” there to provoke resistance and bloodshed on both sides.
Quote ID: 1493
Time Periods: 45
Christianizing the Roman Empire
Ramsay MacMullen
Book ID: 58 Page: 118
Section: 3A2
They enter the picture now, to disturb relations between Christians and non-Christians, because Christians could sense that they would get no further without armed forceYet they also began to sense their own influence. As Saint John Chrysostom says of any bishop who chooses to enter the palace, “No one is honored before him.”
Quote ID: 1504
Time Periods: ?
Christianizing the Roman Empire
Ramsay MacMullen
Book ID: 58 Page: 119
Section: 3A2
Silencing, burning, and destruction were all forms of theological demonstration; and when the lesson was over, monks and bishops, generals and emperors, had driven the enemy from our field of vision. What we can no longer see, we cannot report.
Quote ID: 1505
Time Periods: 45
Church, State, and Citizen: Christian Approaches to Political Engagement
Edited by Sandra F. Joireman
Book ID: 60 Page: 18
Section: 3A2
Since the Middle Ages, the Vatican has been a central actor in European politics (Hall 1997; Philpott 2001). More than a thousand years ago, Pepin, the king of the Franks, granted the pope the Papal States, and since that time, with only one major interruption, the popes have been temporal rulers of parts of modern-day central Italy (Graham 1959:157). During most of this time, the Catholic Church resisted the emergence and existence of the state. The Catholic Church approved of a state only when it upheld the Church’s authority and enforced the faith (Philpott 2004).
Quote ID: 1514
Time Periods: 7
Church, State, and Citizen: Christian Approaches to Political Engagement
Edited by Sandra F. Joireman
Book ID: 60 Page: 59
Section: 3A2
Calvin’s traditional view that the state bears responsibility for enforcing Christian discipline throughout society{19} has been rejected.
Quote ID: 1523
Time Periods: 7
Civilization of Europe in the Renaissance, The
John Hale
Book ID: 202 Page: 114
Section: 3A2
Earlier waves of heretical protest against Catholicism, its priesthood, its practices and some of its doctrines, had by the mid-fifteenth century been subdued or banished to remote places by church and state acting in concerted repression.
Quote ID: 4620
Time Periods: 7
Civilization of Europe in the Renaissance, The
John Hale
Book ID: 202 Page: 426
Section: 3A2
Popes and Protestant preachers endorsed violent punishments for those they pronounced to be slaves to erroneous beliefs and commended or fulminated against wars in accordance to what they judged their rightfulness to be. Secular authority itself, guardian of civility’s values, was not innocent; ‘considering its origin carefully’, Francesco Guicciardini wrote in about 1525, ‘all political power is rooted in violence.’{17}
Quote ID: 4637
Time Periods: 7
Civilization of Europe in the Renaissance, The
John Hale
Book ID: 202 Page: 471
Section: 3A2
On the whole, however, the religious reform movements seconded governments’ concern with the obedience of subjects.….
By the 1559 Elizabethan Act of Uniformity, church attendance on Sundays and the Holy Days selected by government was made compulsory. In 1583 the Archbishop of Canterbury, John Whitgift, emphasized the importance of there being ‘a settled order in doctrine and discipline’ to avoid ‘disobedience to the Queen and law’.{17}
Quote ID: 4644
Time Periods: 7
Civilization of Europe in the Renaissance, The
John Hale
Book ID: 202 Page: 471
Section: 3A2
In both Protestant and Catholic countries, pulpit exhortations had never been so open to prompting by the state. Both had long seen the church courts’ punishments for sin and the secular courts’ penalties for crime as symbiotic partners in the defence against the errant aspects of human nature. From the mid-sixteenth century this co-operation became closer than ever.
Quote ID: 4645
Time Periods: 7
Civilization of Europe in the Renaissance, The
John Hale
Book ID: 202 Page: 478/479
Section: 3A2
Help was at hand here from the higher moral standards demanded by Reform. In both Catholic and Protestant countries the old structure of church courts and clerical parish visitations was revitalized. ‘For what’, Calvin asked, ‘will be the consequence if every man be at liberty to follow his own inclinations? But such would be the case, unless the preaching of the doctrine were accompanied with private admonitions, reproofs, and other means to enforce the doctrine.’{26} And because most sins (covetousness, envy, theft, sexual licence, blasphemy – which implied disrespect for authority – murder) had social connotations, magistrates co-operated with Catholic priests and Protestant ministers.
Quote ID: 4646
Time Periods: 7
Civilizations of the Middle Ages: A Completely Revised and Expanded Edition of Medieval History, The
Norman F. Cantor
Book ID: 203 Page: 33/34
Section: 3A2
Jesus proclaimed that the kingdom of God was within and advised men and women to worry about their own souls instead of social revolution or national redemption.…
The only revolution that mattered was the revolution of the human heart. That was the essence of Jesus’ message, and he kept repeating it, although people wanted him to say much more.
Quote ID: 4649
Time Periods: 47
Clement of Alexandria, LCL 092
Loeb Classical Library
Book ID: 140 Page: 229
Section: 3A2,3A4C
Become wise and yet harmless….
Quote ID: 8768
Time Periods: 2
Closing of the Western Mind, The
Charles Freeman
Book ID: 205 Page: 86/87
Section: 3A2,3A4,3C
Christianity and the new authoritarian empire of Diocletian were clearly incompatible, but there was an alternative to destructive and debilitating persecutions, and that was to absorb the religion within the authoritarian structure of the state, thus defusing it as a threat. This was to be the achievement of Constantine.
Quote ID: 4816
Time Periods: 4
Closing of the Western Mind, The
Charles Freeman
Book ID: 205 Page: 179
Section: 3A2,3C
Once Constantine had provided tax exemptions for Christian clergy, eventually including exemptions for church lands, it became imperative to tighten up the definition of “Christian.” As Constantine had put it in a law of 326, “The benefits that have been granted in consideration of religion must benefit only the adherents of the Catholic e.g., ”correct“ faith. It is our will, moreover, that heretics and schismatics shall not only be alien to those privileges but shall be bound and subjected to various compulsory public services.” The definition of “Catholicism” and heresy took on a new urgency for the state.
Quote ID: 4851
Time Periods: 4
Closing of the Western Mind, The
Charles Freeman
Book ID: 205 Page: 215
Section: 3A2
The case of Cyril of Alexandria, bishop for 412-444, illustrates the point well. His obsession was to discredit the rival bishop of Constantinople, Nestorius, through having the latter declared a heretic for his views on the two natures of Christ. Having manipulated a council held at Ephesus to uphold his view, he had to convince the emperor Theodosius II to support him. This involved, as a document sent secretly by Cyril to agents in Constantinople reveals, massive bribery at court.
Quote ID: 4920
Time Periods: 5
Closing of the Western Mind, The
Charles Freeman
Book ID: 205 Page: 266
Section: 3A2
Now, with its new status as representative of the state in religious affairs, the church could take the initiative against its enemies. What strikes the modern reader is the passion and conviction with which Christians laid into their adversaries.
Quote ID: 4966
Time Periods: 45
Closing of the Western Mind, The
Charles Freeman
Book ID: 205 Page: 268
Section: 3A2
When Cyril became bishop of Alexandria in 412, he asserted himself with some energy. His “shock troops, ” the parabalani, were viewed with such terror that the emperor himself had to ask that their numbers be limited to 500. Virtually every tension in the city was exacerbated by Cyril’s intrusions. The city prefect Orestes, who was attempting to resist the encroachment on his secular powers, was injured by a mob of monks, Jewish synagogues were seized, but most shocking of all was the murder by a Christian mob of Hypatia, a philosopher and mathematician (who had written commentaries, now lost, on Diophantus and Apollonius). She was attacked on the streets and her body pulled to pieces.
Quote ID: 4969
Time Periods: 5
Closing of the Western Mind, The
Charles Freeman
Book ID: 205 Page: 268
Section: 3A2,3E
It was, however, only under Justinian, emperor 527-65, that the full weight of the law was enforced against paganism. One of his laws of the 530s signals the end of the imperial toleration extended to all religions by Constantine in 313:All those who have not yet been baptised must come forward, whether they reside in the capital or in the provinces, and go to the very holy churches with their wives, their children, and their households, to be instructed in the true faith of Christianity. And once thus instructed and having sincerely renounced their former error, let them be judged worthy of redemptive baptism. Should they disobey, let them know that they will be excluded from the state and will no longer have any rights of possession, neither goods nor property: stripped of everything, they will be reduced to penury, without prejudice to the appropriate punishments that will be imposed on them.
Quote ID: 4970
Time Periods: 6
Closing of the Western Mind, The
Charles Freeman
Book ID: 205 Page: 294
Section: 3A2
Once again the state had come to the rescue of the orthodox church. In 405 honorius issued an edict ordering the unity of both churches, branding the Donatist as heretics, partly on the grounds of their insistence on rebaptism, thus making them subject to the rigour of the law. Their property was to be confiscated, their services forbidden and their clergy exiled. Augustine ejected the Donatists from Hippo and, taking over their bare churches--they did not believe in decoration and white-washed their church walls--he posted his own anti-Donatist texts on the walls.
Quote ID: 4979
Time Periods: 4
Closing of the Western Mind, The
Charles Freeman
Book ID: 205 Page: 295
Section: 3A2,3C1
However, the works of Athanasius and the edicts of 380 and 381 enforcing Trinitarian orthodoxy were loaded with condemnation of “heretics.” It was Augustine who developed a rationale of persecution.
Quote ID: 4981
Time Periods: 45
Complete Sermons of Martin Luther Volume 1.1-2, The
Edited by John Nicholas Lenker
Book ID: 336 Page: 197
Section: 3A2
CONFESSION.For no one can come to God unless he come gladly and of his own free will; hence, no one can compel you to come.
Quote ID: 7845
Time Periods: 4567
Complete Sermons of Martin Luther Volume 1.1-2, The
Edited by John Nicholas Lenker
Book ID: 336 Page: 62.
Section: 3A2
SECOND SUNDAY IN ADVENT.5. I do not wish to force anyone to believe as I do; neither will I permit anyone to deny me the right to believe that the last day is near at hand. These words and signs of Christ compel me to believe that such is the case.
Quote ID: 7834
Time Periods: 7
Constantine and the Bishops: The Politics of Intolerance
H.A. Drake
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
Constantine and the Bishops: The Politics of Intolerance
H.A. Drake
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
Constantine the Great
Michael Grant
Book ID: 66 Page: 179
Section: 3A2,3C
Let those who are in error be free to enjoy the same peace and quietude as those who believe. Let no one molest another. Let each hold to that which his soul desires, and let him use this to the full.
Quote ID: 1764
Time Periods: 4
Constantine the Great
Michael Grant
Book ID: 66 Page: 183
Section: 3A2,3C
As regards the former of these groups, when he made conquests of German and Sarmatian territory, the treaty agreements that ensued regularly stipulated conversion to Christianity.
Quote ID: 1770
Time Periods: 4
Constantine’s Bible
David L. Dungan
Book ID: 67 Page: 125
Section: 3A2,3C
At the beginning of the fourth century, the Catholic Church faced a great temptation. The church of Jesus Christ, hailed as the “Prince of Peace,” was offered recourse to the imperial sword - and took it, gladly. No longer would it have to give reasoned, honest replies to difficult questions from critics and fellow theologians; now it could simply compel agreement and punish disagreement. When it began to use the sword against its enemies, the “heresies” (haireseis), the church thus became deeply twisted and lost its way. Power-hungry, greedy politicians began to take over positions of leadership.In this alien atmosphere, how could Jesus of Nazareth or the Apostle Paul or Amos, Isaiah, Jeremiah, and the prophets speak? Were not their voices almost snuffed out, encased in heavy leather bindings of the lavishly illustrated codexes, lying on cold stone altars in giant stone buildings? How could those voices speak and he heard?
Quote ID: 1807
Time Periods: 4
Constantine’s Sword: The Church and the Jews
James Carroll
Book ID: 68 Page: 211
Section: 3A2
It was the late Augustine who, no longer depending on the force of reason, justified the use of coercion in defending and spreading the orthodox faith: “For many have found advantage (as we have proved, and are daily proving by actual experiment),” he wrote in a treatise ominously entitled The Correction of the Donatists, “in being first compelled by fear or pain, so that they might afterwards be influenced by teaching.” {15}
Quote ID: 1853
Time Periods: 5
Constantine’s Sword: The Church and the Jews
James Carroll
Book ID: 68 Page: 212
Section: 3A2
The basic theme of The City of God, as Peter Brown puts it, is “that the disasters of the Roman Empire had come not from neglect of the old rites, but from tolerating paganism, heresy and immorality in the new Christian empire.” {17}
Quote ID: 1854
Time Periods: 5
Constantine’s Sword: The Church and the Jews
James Carroll
Book ID: 68 Page: 213
Section: 3A2
Saint John Chrysostom, bishop of Antioch, had delivered a series of sermons that ratcheted up homiletic attacks on Jews. Ruether calls them “easily the most violent and tasteless of the anti-Judaic literature of the period.” {18} ....Should we be surprised that not long after these sermons were preached, there were several violent outbursts against Jews in Antioch, with its great synagogue demolished?
Quote ID: 1855
Time Periods: 45
Constantine’s Sword: The Church and the Jews
James Carroll
Book ID: 68 Page: 307
Section: 3A2
Gregory IX took the Chair of Peter in 1227, little more than a decade after the Fourth Lateran Council, which had fired such a resounding warning shot at Jews. It was this Gregory who, with the aptly named constitution Excommunicamus (1231), took the fateful step of establishing the first papal Inquisition.
Quote ID: 1862
Time Periods: 7
Constantine’s Sword: The Church and the Jews
James Carroll
Book ID: 68 Page: 307/308
Section: 3A2
Gregory ordered the archbishops and kings of Europe, as well as the Franciscans and Dominicans, to expose the secrets of the Talmud, “the chief cause that holds the Jews obstinate in their perfidy.” {18} The University of Paris was especially commissioned for the task.This investigation was a matter not only of uncovering blasphemies -- indeed, certain passages in the Talmud denigrated Jesus and his mother -- but of determining whether rabbinic commentaries were heretical within the context of Judaism. The Church, in other words, was making the unprecedented claim -- “an entirely new development in the Christian theology of the Jew,” Jeremy Cohen calls it {19} -- to moral and theological authority over the content of Jewish belief.
Quote ID: 1863
Time Periods: 7
Cults of the Roman Empire, The
Robert Turcan
Book ID: 209 Page: 10
Section: 3A2
Every ancient city defended its national identity by imposing its gods.
Quote ID: 5121
Time Periods: 0
Cults of the Roman Empire, The
Robert Turcan
Book ID: 209 Page: 10
Section: 3A2,4B
‘Let no one have separate gods, either new or foreign, unless they are officially allowed’, wrote Cicero in the Laws (II, 19).
Quote ID: 5122
Time Periods: 012
Cults of the Roman Empire, The
Robert Turcan
Book ID: 209 Page: 126
Section: 3A2
One day when the bishop Theophilus had had the effrontery to close down a former Mithraeum for the benefit of his flock, the Christians taking possession of the premises had profaned it and ridiculed the remains of the religious furnishings. It would appear that skulls were exhumed in order to denounce the human sacrifices said to sully the nocturnal liturgies! Beside themselves, the pagans counterattacked. They hurled themselves on the profaners: there were blows and wounds, bloody confrontations. The affair took a nasty turn, the polytheists withdrew to the Serapeum, from where they made sorties to seize hostages whom they forced to sacrifice to the idols. Their positioin was too well fortified for them to be easily dislodged, even using troops. The philosopher Olympius, who was besieged with them, galvanized their energies.Powerless or hampered, the prefect of Alexandria and the military governor of Egypt referred the matter to the emperor Theodosius, who pardoned the pagan resistants, but advised the extirpation of the evil in other words, the destruction of idolatry. Confronted with the pagans who were downcast by this reply, the Christians exulted. Immediately roused to fanaticism by the bishop, they mounted an attack on the Serapeum, breaking, pillaging and sacking everything that fell into their hands [PJ: 391]. The doors were forced and broken down. There remained the gigantic idol whose two arms were said to touch the temple walls. If anyone dared to attack Serapis, it was believed that the earth would open and the sky fall. But Theophilus ordered that an axe should be taken to it. Even the wildest of the mob hesitated, when a soldier delivered the first blows to the jaw of the god, smashing the statue, which was made of fitted sections. At once thousands of rats fled from the worm-eaten statue, to the vengeful cries of the populace (Theodoret, Ecclesiastical History, V, 22, 5). The dismembered idol was then set on fire. And it was not the end of the world: quite the reverse, that year’s harvest was said to be better than harvests in preceding years!
As a result, a crowd of pagans appears to have been converted, perhaps terrorized by the strong-arm monks and shock-troop Christians. Ruginus (Ecclesiastical History, II, 29) tells us that the priests of Serapis themselves humbly made a pretence of recognizing in the looped cross or ankh (hieroglyphic sign for life), a prefiguration of the Christian emblem of salvation. In polytheistic circles the event had painful repercussions. It inspired Eunapius to write these bitterly ironic lines:
Quote ID: 5161
Time Periods: 4
Cults of the Roman Empire, The
Robert Turcan
Book ID: 209 Page: 127
Section: 3A2
It inspired Eunapius to write these bitterly ironic lines: "They gloried in their sacrilege and impiety. In these sacred places ‘monks’ were installed, those creatures who resemble men but live like pigs....In that period anyone who wore a black robe had despotic power! In the abode and in place of the gods, henceforward worship was rendered to the skeletons of a few wretched ex-convicts, slaves who deserved the whip: the ‘martyrs’ . . ." (Eunapius, Lives of the Sophists, revised text of 1878, ed. J.F. Boissonade, p. 472).
Quote ID: 5162
Time Periods: 4
Cults of the Roman Empire, The
Robert Turcan
Book ID: 209 Page: 128
Section: 3A2
All the busts of Serapis which adorned and were formerly supposed to protect the walls, doors and windows were systematically broken and hammered. They were replaced by crosses. Egypt rejected its god, . . .
Quote ID: 5163
Time Periods: 4
Cults of the Roman Empire, The
Robert Turcan
Book ID: 209 Page: 131
Section: 3A2
In 591, Eusebius, a merchant of Syrian race, got himself elected bishop of Paris by means of handing out many gifts; upon which ‘he sacked all his predecessor’s staff and employed Syrians of his own race to serve in the ecclesiastical palace’ (Gregory of Tours, History of the Franks, X, 26): a prime example of ‘spoils-systems’!
Quote ID: 5166
Time Periods: 6
Cults of the Roman Empire, The
Robert Turcan
Book ID: 209 Page: 340
Section: 3A2,3A4,3C
. . . the imperial cult was but one religion among others, and was in no way exclusive. A true state religion made its appearance with Constantine and the Christian Empire. Before, the expression had no meaning, so to speak. Persecutions were not carried out in the name of one religion, but of civic traditions involved in loyalty towards the emperor.
Quote ID: 5185
Time Periods: 4
Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Vol. 2, The
Edward Gibbon
Book ID: 210 Page: 421
Section: 3A2,3C
He extended to all the inhabitants of the Roman world the benefits of a free and equal toleration; and the only hardship which he inflicted on the Christians was to deprive them of the power of tormenting their fellow-subjects….
Quote ID: 8559
Time Periods: 4
Early Christian Church, The
J.G. Davies
Book ID: 214 Page: 164
Section: 3A2,3C
In these events, the precedent was set for the later handing over of heretics to be executed by the secular power, and the opposing view of Martin, that Church and State should occupy themselves with their own affairs, is clearly stated. But Martin’s dualism, while commendable in its simplicity and certainly applicable where a pagan State and the Christian Church are in opposition, is scarcely adequate where there is a Christian ruler. In such circumstances the distinction between the separate spheres becomes blurred and this was especially so in the fourth century.
Quote ID: 5318
Time Periods: 4
Early Christian Church, The
J.G. Davies
Book ID: 214 Page: 232
Section: 3A2
The situation, however, steadily deteriorated, violence becoming widespread, until the Catholics determined upon open persecution. The development of Augustine’s own thought to this point has been outlined by him in a letter to the Donatist Vicentius:“At first, it was my view that no one should be led by force into the unity of Christ, that action should be confined to words, combat to discussion, and victory to the exercise of reason, and that furthermore, we were concerned with false Catholics and not with out-and-out heretics. That was my view. It has had to give way before that of my contradictors, not before their words but before the facts they have adduced. In the first place, they opposed me with the history of my native town Thagaste, which at one time belonged entirely to the Donatist party and which, since then, has been brought over to the Catholic unity through fear of the imperial laws: . . . ”
Quote ID: 5348
Time Periods: 45
Early Church on Killing: A Comprehensive Sourcebook on War, Abortion, and Capital Punishment, The
Ronald J. Sider
Book ID: 347 Page: 13
Section: 3A2
We cannot simply assume that the early Christians accurately understood Jesus’s teaching. But it seems plausible to suppose that Christians much closer to the time of Jesus, who lived in a (pre-Constantinian) sociopolitical setting more similar to that of Jesus than Christians living after the reign of Constantine, would be more likely to understand Jesus’s teaching on loving enemies than those who lived centuries later.
Quote ID: 7988
Time Periods: 23
Early Church on Killing: A Comprehensive Sourcebook on War, Abortion, and Capital Punishment, The
Ronald J. Sider
Book ID: 347 Page: 24
Section: 3A2
First Apology. 16Justin Martyr
For we ought not to strive; neither has He desired us to be imitators of wicked people, but He has exhorted us to lead all people by patience and gentleness, from shame and the love of evil. And this indeed is proved in the case of many who once were of your way of thinking, but have changed their violent and tyrannical disposition.
Quote ID: 7991
Time Periods: 2
Early Church on Killing: A Comprehensive Sourcebook on War, Abortion, and Capital Punishment, The
Ronald J. Sider
Book ID: 347 Page: 25/26
Section: 3A2
Dialogue with TryphoPastor John’s note: by Justin Martyr
….
96. And in addition to all this we pray for you (Jews and pagans who oppose Christians), that Christ may have mercy upon you. For He taught us to pray for our enemies also, saying, “Love your enemies; be kind and merciful, as you heavenly Father is” [cf. Luke 6:35-36]. {13}
Quote ID: 7993
Time Periods: 2
Early Church on Killing: A Comprehensive Sourcebook on War, Abortion, and Capital Punishment, The
Ronald J. Sider
Book ID: 347 Page: 29/30
Section: 3A2
Proof of the Apostolic PreachingPastor John’s note: by Irenaeus
….
96. Therefore also we have no need of the law as pedagogue….For no more shall the law say:…thou shalt not kill, to him who has put away from himself all anger and enmity….Nor an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth, to him who counts no man his enemy, but all his neighbors, and therefore cannot even put forth his hand to revenge. {21}
Quote ID: 7994
Time Periods: 2
Early Church on Killing: A Comprehensive Sourcebook on War, Abortion, and Capital Punishment, The
Ronald J. Sider
Book ID: 347 Page: 31
Section: 3A2
A Plea for the ChristiansAthenagoras (d.c. 185?)
For we have learned, not only not to return blow for blow, nor to go to the law with those who plunder and rob us, but to those who smite us on one side of the face to offer the other side also, and to those who take away our coat to give likewise our cloak. {22}
Quote ID: 7996
Time Periods: 2
Early Church on Killing: A Comprehensive Sourcebook on War, Abortion, and Capital Punishment, The
Ronald J. Sider
Book ID: 347 Page: 45
Section: 3A2
Tertullian, Apology. 31Learn from them [our sacred books] that a large benevolence is enjoined upon us, even so far as to pray to God for our enemies, and to beseech blessings on our persecutors.
Quote ID: 8002
Time Periods: 2
Early Church on Killing: A Comprehensive Sourcebook on War, Abortion, and Capital Punishment, The
Ronald J. Sider
Book ID: 347 Page: 45
Section: 3A2
Tertullian, Apology. 37If we are enjoined, then, to love our enemies, whom have we to hate? If injured, we are forbidden to retaliate, lest we become as bad ourselves, who can suffer injury at our hands?
Quote ID: 8003
Time Periods: 2
Early Church on Killing: A Comprehensive Sourcebook on War, Abortion, and Capital Punishment, The
Ronald J. Sider
Book ID: 347 Page: 48/49
Section: 3A2
Tertullian, On Patience. 10….
10. How many misfortunes has impatience of this kind been accustomed to run into! How often has it repented of its revenge! How often has its vehemence been found worse than the causes which led to it!—inasmuch as nothing undertaken with impatience can be effected without violence: nothing done with violence fails either to stumble, or else to fall altogether. {62}
Quote ID: 8004
Time Periods: 2
Early Church on Killing: A Comprehensive Sourcebook on War, Abortion, and Capital Punishment, The
Ronald J. Sider
Book ID: 347 Page: 101/102
Section: 3A2
Arnobius of Sicca Against the Pagans. 1.63.Do you then see that if [Christ] had determined that none should do Him violence, He should have striven to the utmost to repel His enemies, even by directing his Power against them? Could not He, then, who had restored their sight to the blind, make His enemies blind if it were necessary?
Quote ID: 8009
Time Periods: 34
Early Church on Killing: A Comprehensive Sourcebook on War, Abortion, and Capital Punishment, The
Ronald J. Sider
Book ID: 347 Page: 108
Section: 3A2,3A4C
Lactantius, Divine Institutes. 5.18.A person who has the knowledge of good and evil abstains from committing an injury, even to his own damage, which an animal without reason is unable to do.... Now by these things it appears that he is the wisest person who prefers to perish rather than to commit an injury, that he may preserve that sense of duty by which he is distinguished from the dumb creation….
Quote ID: 8012
Time Periods: 34
Early Church on Killing: A Comprehensive Sourcebook on War, Abortion, and Capital Punishment, The
Ronald J. Sider
Book ID: 347 Page: 109
Section: 3A2,3A4C
Lactantius, Divine Institutes. 6.6.For how can a person be just who injures, who hates, who despoils, who puts to death? And they who strive to be serviceable to their country do all these things: for they are ignorant of what this being serviceable is, who think nothing useful, nothing advantageous, but that which can be held by the hand….
Whoever, then, has gained for his country these goods—as they themselves call them—that is, who by the overthrow of cities and the destruction of nations has filled the treasury with money, has taken lands and enriched his countrymen—he is extolled with praises to heaven: in him there is said to be the greatest and perfect virtue. And this is the error not only of the people who are ignorant, but also of philosophers.{167}
Quote ID: 8013
Time Periods: 34
Early Church on Killing: A Comprehensive Sourcebook on War, Abortion, and Capital Punishment, The
Ronald J. Sider
Book ID: 347 Page: 110
Section: 3A2,3A4C
Lactantius, Divine Institutes. 6.20.For when God forbids us to kill, He not only prohibits us from open violence, which is not even allowed by the public laws, but He warns us against the commission of those things which are esteemed lawful among people. Thus it will be neither lawful for a just man to engage in military service, since his military service is justice itself, nor to accuse anyone of a capital charge, because it makes no difference whether you put a person to death by word, or rather by the sword, since it is the act of putting to death itself which is prohibited.
Quote ID: 8014
Time Periods: 34
Early Church on Killing: A Comprehensive Sourcebook on War, Abortion, and Capital Punishment, The
Ronald J. Sider
Book ID: 347 Page: 115
Section: 3A2,3A4C
Lactantius, Epitome of the Divine Institutes. 64.It is an old precept not to kill, which ought not to be taken ... as though we are commanded to abstain only from homicide, which is punished even by public laws. But by the intervention of this command, it will not be permitted us to apply peril of death by word, nor to put to death or expose an infant, nor to condemn one’s self by a voluntary death.
Quote ID: 8017
Time Periods: 34
Europe after Rome: A New Cultural History 500-1000
Julia M. H. Smith
Book ID: 83 Page: 235
Section: 3A1,3A2,4B
When it came to the mutual reinforcement of political and sacral power, there was no better model than Christianity.
Quote ID: 2190
Time Periods: 7
Eusebius, NPNF2 Vol. 1, Eusebius Pamphilius: Church History, Life of Constantine, Oration in Praise of Constantine
Edited by Philip Schaff
Book ID: 668 Page: 539
Section: 3A2,3C
The Heretics are deprived of their Meeting Places.
“Forasmuch, then, as it is no longer possible to bear with your pernicious errors, we give warning by this present statute that none of you henceforth presume to assemble yourselves together. We have directed, accordingly, that you be deprived of all the houses in which you are accustomed to hold your assemblies; and our care in this respect extends so far as to forbid the holding of your superstitious and senseless meetings, not in public merely, but in any private house or place whatsoever. Let those of you, therefore, who are serious of embracing the true and pure religion, take the far better course of entering the catholic Church, and uniting with it in holy fellowship, whereby you will be enabled to arrive at the knowledge of the truth. In any case, the delusions of your perverted understandings must entirely cease to mingle with and mar the felicity of our present times; I mean the impious and wretched double-mindedness of heretics and schismatic’s. For it is an object worthy of that prosperity which we enjoy through the favor of God, to endeavor to bring back those who in time past were living in the hope of future blessing, from all irregularity and error to the right path, from darkness to light, from vanity to truth, from death to salvation. And in order that this remedy may be applied with effectual power, we have commanded, as before said, that you be positively deprived of every gathering point for your superstitious meetings, I mean all the houses of prayer, if such be worth of the name, which belong to heretics, and that these be made over without delay to the catholic Church; that any other places be confiscated to the public service, and no facility whatever be left for any future gathering; in order that from this day forward none of our unlawful assemblies may presume to appear in any public or private place. Let this edict be made public.”
Pastor John’s footnote reference: Eusebius, The Life of Constantine the Great, III.lxv.
Quote ID: 9598
Time Periods: 4
Fall of the Roman Empire: A New History of Rome and the Barbarians, The
Peter Heather
Book ID: 223 Page: 442
Section: 1A,3A2,3C
Christianity as it evolved within the structures of the Empire was thus very different from what it had been before Constantine’s conversion, and the disappearance of the Roman state profoundly changed it yet again.
Quote ID: 5617
Time Periods: 234
Final Pagan Generation, The
Edward J. Watts
Book ID: 384 Page: 4
Section: 3A2,4B
This Alexandrian event, however, seems to have fundamentally changed many people’s awareness of the threat to traditional religious institutions. For the first time, pagans understood that Christian attacks could reach the most permanent and impressive elements of the urban religious infrastructure. Christians now saw temple destructions, both within and outside of cities, as a realistic way to remake the religious topography of the empire.….
Older men did not see the world in this way. They generally shared neither their junior’s interest in creating sharply defined religious identities nor their tendency toward violent religious confrontation.
Quote ID: 8296
Time Periods: 45
First Crusade: A New History, The
Thomas Asbridge
Book ID: 340 Page: 23
Section: 3A2,3A4C
…with the conversion of the Roman Empire, it became virtually impossible to sustain the absolute rejection of violence. From the fourth century onwards, Christianity underwent a gradual but deep-seated transformation as it fused with a Roman ‘state’ for which warfare was an essential feature of existence.
Quote ID: 7868
Time Periods: 4567
First Crusade: A New History, The
Thomas Asbridge
Book ID: 340 Page: 24
Section: 3A2,3A4C
St. Augustine broke Latin Christian theology from the shackles of pacifism, and his ideas gradually filtered down into European society, helping to salve general anxieties about the relationship between faith and military service.
Quote ID: 7869
Time Periods: 5
First Crusade: A New History, The
Thomas Asbridge
Book ID: 340 Page: 25
Section: 3A2,3A4C
Between the age of St. Augustine and the council of Clermont, western Christendom gradually became acculturated to the concept of sanctified violence. This was an incremental, organic process….
Quote ID: 7870
Time Periods: 1567
First Crusade: A New History, The
Thomas Asbridge
Book ID: 340 Page: 39
Section: 3A2,3A4C
The expedition preached at Clermont represented a new form of ‘super’ penance: a venture so arduous, so utterly terrifying, as to be capable of cancelling out any sin. Participants would still have to confess their transgressions to a member of the clergy, but the crusade would replace any necessary penance.….
For the first time, fighting in the name of God and the pope brought with it a spiritual reward that was at once readily conceivable and deeply compelling: a real chance to walk through the fires of battle and emerge unsullied by sin.{36}
Quote ID: 7871
Time Periods: 7
God’s Secretaries: - The Making of the King James Bible
Adam Nicolson
Book ID: 99 Page: 39
Section: 3A2
Throughout the summer, the bishops maintained that any questioning of the doctrine and articles of the Church of England was politically subversive, dangerous and to be expunged.
Quote ID: 2522
Time Periods: 7
History of the Inquisition, The
Philip Van Limborch
Book ID: 292 Page: 2
Section: 3A2
This crime is so widely extended by the Doctors of the Church of Rome, that they esteem as Heresy every Thing that is contrary to any received Opinion in the Church, although it be merely Philosophical, and hath no Foundation in the sacred Scripture.
Quote ID: 7396
Time Periods: 7
Influence of Greek Ideas and Usages upon the Christian Church, The
Edwin Hatch
Book ID: 341 Page: 134/135/136/137
Section: 3A2
When, through the kinship of ideas, Christianity had been absorbed by the educated classes, the habit of mind which had preceded it remained and dominated. It showed itself mainly in three way:1. The first of these was the tendency to define.
…
2. The second manifestation of the philosophical habit of mind was the tendency to speculate.
….
…The holding of approved opinions was elevated to a position at first co-ordinate with, and at last superior to, trust in God and the effort to live a holy life.
Quote ID: 7887
Time Periods: 234
Influence of Greek Ideas on Christianity, The
Edwin Hatch
Book ID: 321 Page: 310
Section: 3A2,4A
...under the influence of contemporary Greek thought, the word Faith came to be transferred from simple trust in God to mean the acceptance of a series of propositions, and these propositions, propositions in abstract metaphysics.
Quote ID: 7749
Time Periods: 2
Influence of Greek Ideas on Christianity, The
Edwin Hatch
Book ID: 321 Page: 330
Section: 3A2
The importance which attaches to the whole subject with which we are dealing, lies less in the history of the formation of a body of doctrine, than in the growth and permanence of the conceptions which underlie that formation. (1) the first conception comes from the antecedent belief which was rooted in the Greek mind, that, given certain primary beliefs which are admitted on all sides to be necessary, it is requisite that a man should define those beliefs 1---that it is as necessary that a man should be able to say with minute exactness what he means by God, as that he should say, I believe in God. It is purely philosophical. A philosopher cannot be satisfied with unanalyzed ideas. (2) The second conception comes rather from politics than from philosophy. It is the belief in a majority of a meeting. It is the conception that the definitions and interpretations of primary beliefs which are made by the majority of church officers assembled under certain conditions, are in all cases and so certainly true, that the duty of the individual is, not to endeavour, by whatever light of nature or whatever illumination of the Holy Spirit may be given to him, to understand them, but to acquiesce in the verdict of the majority. The theory assumes that God never speaks to men except through the voice of the majority. It is a large assumption.
Quote ID: 7750
Time Periods: 234
Julian’s Against the Galileans
R. Joseph Hoffmann
Book ID: 123 Page: 117
Section: 3A2
You yourselves behave like the Jews who vent their rage and petulance by razing altars and destroying temples. And you slaughter us as well: not only those of us who remain true to the teachings of our ancestors, but even your own…. . . .
These are your own deeds: Nowhere did Jesus or Paul pass on rules for such actions. And why? Because never could they have imagined would have such power as they have now.
Quote ID: 2844
Time Periods: 4
Later Roman Empire, The
Averil Cameron
Book ID: 243 Page: 69
Section: 3A2,3C
The emperor’s chief duty became “piety”, which meant he was duty-bound to impose that piety in his empire. Religious persecution was now justified.
Quote ID: 6127
Time Periods: 4
Oxford Illustrated History of the Crusades, The
Jonathan Riley-Smith
Book ID: 258 Page: 15
Section: 3A2
This case is one small but revealing illustration of the medieval Church’s inability to distance itself from the violent world around it.
Quote ID: 6503
Time Periods: 7
Oxford Illustrated History of the Crusades, The
Jonathan Riley-Smith
Book ID: 258 Page: 16
Section: 3A2,3A4C,4B
The standard position, which became associated with Augustine and was refined in later centuries, was that the moral rectitude of an act could not be judged simply by examining the physical event in isolation: violence was validated to a greater or lesser degree by the state of mind of those responsible, the ends sought, and the competence of the individual or body which authorized the act.
Quote ID: 6504
Time Periods: 57
Power and Persuasion in Late Antiquity: Towards a Christian Empire
Peter Brown
Book ID: 183 Page: 102/103
Section: 3A1,3A3B,3A2
By 418, the “most reverend bishop” commanded, in effect, a hand-picked force of some five hundred men with strong arms and backs, the parabalani, who were nominally entrusted with the “care of the bodies of the weak” as stretcher-beaters and hospital orderlies.{170} The massed presence of the parabalani made itself felt in the theater, in the law courts, and in front of the town hall of Aleandria. The town council was forced to complain to the emperor of such intimidation.{171}While the patriarch of Alexandria became notorious for his use of such groups, he was by no means alone. The patriarch of Antioch also commanded a threatening body of lecticarii, pallbearers for the burial of the urban poor.{172} The extensive development of the underground cemeteries of the Christian community in Rome, the famous catacombs, from the early third century onwards, placed at the disposal of the bishop a team of fossores, grave diggers skilled in excavating the tufa rock, as strong and as pugnacious as were the legendary Durham coal miners who intervened in the rowdy elections of the nineteenth century.{173} During the disputed election in which Damasus became bishop of Rome in 366, the fossores played a prominent role in a series of murderous assaults on the supporters of his rival.{174} Throughout the empire, the personnel associated with the bishop’s care of the poor had become a virtual urban militia.
Quote ID: 4062
Time Periods: 34
Power and Persuasion in Late Antiquity: Towards a Christian Empire
Peter Brown
Book ID: 183 Page: 103
Section: 3A1,3A2
As protector of the poor, the Christian bishop had achieved an unexpected measure of public prominence by the last decade of the fourth century.. . . .
Ambrose of Milan drew his own conclusion in 388: “The bishops are the controllers of the crowds, the keen upholders of peace, unless, of course [he added ominously], they are moved by insults to God and to His church.”{175}
Quote ID: 4063
Time Periods: 4
Priscillian of Avila: The Occult and Charismatic in the Early Church
Henry Chadwick
Book ID: 378 Page: 188
Section: 3A2
From 407 onwards edicts outlawing Priscillianists begin to come from the imperial chancery. A law of that year imposes confiscation of property, ineligibility to accept any gift or legacy or to make contracts, and disqualification from making a valid will. Slaves are declared free to abandon Priscillianist masters. Any estate on which a Priscillianist meeting has been held with the knowledge of the landowner is forfeit to the Treasury. If the landowner was ignorant of it, he retains his land, but his steward or overseer is to be beaten with lashes tipped with lead and sent to the mines for life.{2} A further law of 410 forbids both the enlistment of Priscillianists in the imperial service and the granting to them exemption from any curial duty.{3}
Quote ID: 8278
Time Periods: 5
Religious Toleration And Persecution In Ancient Rome
Simeon L. Guterman
Book ID: 187 Page: 15
Section: 3A2,4B
Whereas the intolerance of the Middle Ages was religious, that is, based directly on the pretensions of the Church or of the State to regulate the religious conscience of the individuals, the intolerance of the Roman State was political and practical.
Quote ID: 4116
Time Periods: 234
Tertullian, ANF Vol. 3, Latin Christianity: Its Founder, Tertullian
Edited by Philip Schaff and Alan Menzies
Book ID: 678 Page: 99
Section: 2D3B,3A2,3A4C
Shall it be held lawful to make an occupation of the sword, when the Lord proclaims that he who uses the sword shall perish by the sword? And shall the son of peace take part in the battle when it does not become him even to sue at law? And shall he apply the chain, and the prison, and the torture, and the punishment, who is not the avenger even of his own wrongs?PJ footnote reference: Tertullian, The Chaplet, or De Corona, XI.
Pg.100 -2D3B, 3A2, 3A4C/24- …when a man has become a believer, and faith has been sealed, there must be either an immediate abandonment of it, which has been the course with many….
PJ footnote reference: Tertullian, The Chaplet, or De Corona, XI.
Quote ID: 9725
Time Periods: 24
Theodosian Code, The
Clyde Pharr, Theresa Sherrer. Davidson, Mary Brown. Pharr, and C. Dickerman. Williams
Book ID: 293 Page: 440
Section: 3A2,3D
It is Our will that all the people who are ruled by the administration of Our Clemency shall practice that religion which the divine Peter the Apostle transmitted to the Romans, as the religion which he introduced makes clear even to this day. It is evident that this is the religion that is followed by the Pontiff Damasus and by Peter, Bishop of Alexandria, a man of apostolic sanctity; that is, according to the apostolic discipline and the evangelic doctrine, we shall believe in the single Deity of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, under the concept of equal majesty and of the holy Trinity.I. We command those persons who follow this rule (5) shall embrace the name of Catholic Christians. The rest, however, whom We adjudge demented and insane, shall sustain the infamy of heretical dogmas, their meeting places shall not receive the name of churches, and they shall be smitten first by divine vengeance and secondly by the retribution of Our own initiative, (6) which We shall assume in accordance with the divine judgment.
Quote ID: 7413
Time Periods: 4
Theodosius: The Empire at Bay
Stephen Williams, Gerard Friell
Book ID: 282 Page: 51
Section: 3A2,3A4C
Many bishops positively welcomed the use of imperial authority against rivals and heretics, and only wished the emperors would go further. They seemed blind to the accompaniment, that the state was slowly turning the church into something like an arm of the imperial bureaucracy.
Quote ID: 7093
Time Periods: 7
Theodosius: The Empire at Bay
Stephen Williams, Gerard Friell
Book ID: 282 Page: 52
Section: 3A2,3C
The early Christian emperors were doubtless sincere in their faith, but they never forgot that they were Roman emperors first and foremost.….
They used the church to further their own ends, and constantly played one faction off against another or resorted to crude imperial authority to get their way.
Quote ID: 7096
Time Periods: 4
Victory Of The Cross, The
Desmond O’Grady
Book ID: 278 Page: 179
Section: 1A,3A2,3C
After Constantine, Christians had only themselves to fear.
Quote ID: 6999
Time Periods: 4
Western Society And The Church In The Middle Ages
R. W. Southern
Book ID: 286 Page: 22
Section: 3A2
In directing men along this road, the church was the sole legitimate source of coercive power.
Quote ID: 7293
Time Periods: 7
Witch Hunts in the Western World
Brian A. Pavlac
Book ID: 287 Page: 31/32
Section: 3A2
Because “orthodoxy” was the standard of belief set by religious authorities, a heresy defied established order. At the start of any argument about belief, however, it was often unclear which side would wind up as orthodox and which as heretical. Once the structures of discipline had decided the orthodox position, though, authorities marginalized and eliminated heretics as best they could. In Christian society, political authorities cooperated with ecclesiastical authorities in criminalizing, persecuting, and punishing heretics. This joint persecution had especially taken place as Christianity defined itself in the fourth through sixth centuries in fights over the Trinity. The orthodox victory over Gnostics and others was so complete that no significant religious persecution by Christians took place for centuries.
Quote ID: 7323
Time Periods: 7
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