Section: 3A4 - Holding Public Office
Number of quotes: 56
A Public Faith: From Constantine To The Medieval World AD 312-600 Vol. 2
Ivor J. Davidson
Book ID: 10 Page: 20
Section: 3A4,3A4C,3C
The clergy were exempted from civic duties and from taxation. Bishops were allowed to adjudicate in various civil cases, and it became possible legally to free slaves before the church in the presence of a bishop. For the first time, Christian pastors were appointed as military chaplains. The church was allowed to receive legacies from rich individuals.
Quote ID: 129
Time Periods: 4
A Public Faith: From Constantine To The Medieval World AD 312-600 Vol. 2
Ivor J. Davidson
Book ID: 10 Page: 25/26
Section: 3A4,3C,4B
Constantine’s generosity brought its own problems, however. In North Africa the emperor found rival Christian claims for his favors.….
In Constantine’s world, however, differences of this kind were affected by a potent new factor – the prospect of imperial patronage for those who could persuade the civil authorities that theirs was the true position. For centuries Christians had appealed to emperors, but never before had the prospects of success involved the political rewards that were now at stake.
Quote ID: 134
Time Periods: 4
A.D. 381 Heretics, Pagans, and the Dawn of the Monotheistic State
Charles Freeman
Book ID: 11 Page: 49
Section: 3A4,3C
Bishops had not supplanted the secular authorities, the local governors and prefects, in the cities, but they had often built up impressive networks through their congregations. While a provincial governor might stay in post for three or four years, bishops would be in office for twenty, even thirty, years.… .
A bishop with popular support could be a formidable figure, even able to challenge the will of an emperor.
Quote ID: 185
Time Periods: 34
A.D. 381 Heretics, Pagans, and the Dawn of the Monotheistic State
Charles Freeman
Book ID: 11 Page: 50
Section: 3A3B,3A4,3C
We know of Constantine channelling corn and oil to the poor of Alexandria through the city’s bishop, and so, effectively merging the Christian duty to help the poor with the political need to prevent unrest by feeding the volatile population. In Constantinople, the Church was ordered to organize free funerals for the poor. Bishops were given the same rights as secular magistrates to free slaves. So the status of the bishop rose steadily.Within this framework, however, tensions between and within local Christian communities suddenly became important in a different way.
….
But now there might be two or more rival Christian communities in a city, each claiming the tax exemption and patronage of the emperor. Who were the ‘real’ Christians, and who decided this in any case?
Quote ID: 186
Time Periods: 4
A.D. 381 Heretics, Pagans, and the Dawn of the Monotheistic State
Charles Freeman
Book ID: 11 Page: 57
Section: 3A4,3C
The context within which the Church operated had been changed for ever. ‘The master narrative of Christianity would become so deeply implicated in the narrative of imperial power that Christianity and government would become inextricably linked.’20
Quote ID: 192
Time Periods: 4
Ancient Rome by Robert Payne
Robert Payne
Book ID: 16 Page: 71
Section: 3A4
The consul, leading his army on the field of battle, was far more than a general. He saw himself as a religious leader in communion with the gods, possessing powers not given to ordinary mortals, capable of calling down the lightning on his adversaries; the heavens and the earth beneath were engaged in the struggle. The general became a shaman; the enemy could be cursed into defeat on condition that the general or someone chosen by him was prepared to sacrifice his life.
Quote ID: 277
Time Periods: 014
Ancient Rome by Robert Payne
Robert Payne
Book ID: 16 Page: 252
Section: 3A4,3C
Nevertheless his new religion gave the emperor the opportunity to announce that he was “ordained by God to oversee whatever is external to the Church” - a statement that was to have awesome consequences in the Middle Ages when emperors and popes struggled for supremacy.Yet Constantine also established a foundation for the papacy’s claims to temporal power when he gave the rights and duties of magistrates to all the bishops in his empire. Many of the bishops carefully searched their consciences before they agreed to accept the post, for Christian tradition, centuries old, looked on the state and all of its work as being corrupt. But finally, with gratitude, they assented to the change and regarded it as a sign of the new era that was dawning.
Constantine . . . he finally chose the old Greek fishing port of Byzantium, the junction of all the roads between Asia and the West. There on May 11, 330, in the presence of high ecclesiastical officials, the city of New Rome was formally inaugurated with great pomp. Christian commentators, who carefully noted the presence of the Churchmen, appear to have glossed over the fact that the ceremony was also pagan and modeled on the legendary inauguration of Rome by Romulus.
Quote ID: 319
Time Periods: 047
Before France and Germany: The Creation and Transformation of the Merovingian World
Patrick J. Geary
Book ID: 40 Page: 135
Section: 3A4
The model bishop was an administrator both of his clergy and of the monasteries in his diocese, but he was above all a defender of the faith and protector of the poor.
Quote ID: 885
Time Periods: 56
Before France and Germany: The Creation and Transformation of the Merovingian World
Patrick J. Geary
Book ID: 40 Page: 135
Section: 3A4
At the Council of Orleans in 533, for example, bishops assembled primarily from northern Aquitaine enacted measures against Catholics who continued to make sacrifices to idols, a measure reaffirmed in the same city at a council eight years later. {21}….
The countryside could not be fully Christianized until the network of parishes extended into every corner of the kingdom, a development which would not take place until the ninth century.
Quote ID: 886
Time Periods: 567
Before France and Germany: The Creation and Transformation of the Merovingian World
Patrick J. Geary
Book ID: 40 Page: 230
Section: 3A4
The Merovingians had been preeminently the embodiment of local authority. Never needing election or consecration, they were kings by their very nature, quite apart from any external religious or secular authority. The election and anointment of Pippin upon papal approval or even, according to some traditions, papal directive, fundamentally altered the nature of kingship, tying it to a particular religious and institutional tradition quite apart from the old Gallo-Roman and Frankish worlds.
Quote ID: 894
Time Periods: 567
Caesar and Christ: The Story of Civilization
Will Durant
Book ID: 43 Page: 656
Section: 3A4,3C
His letters to Christian bishops make it clear that he cared little for the theological differences that agitated Christendom—though he was willing to suppress dissent in the interests of imperial unity. Throughout his reign he treated the bishops as his political aides; he summoned them, presided over their councils, and agreed to enforce whatever opinion their majority should formulate. A real believer would have been a Christian first and a statesman afterward; with Constantine it was the reverse. Christianity was to him a means, not an end.
Quote ID: 943
Time Periods: ?
Cathars: Perfect Heresy, The
Stephen O’Shea
Book ID: 261 Page: 39
Section: 3A1,3A4
As Pope Innocent III, he had now been given, in his words, “not only the universal church but the whole world to govern.”
Quote ID: 6549
Time Periods: 7
Christianizing the Roman Empire
Ramsay MacMullen
Book ID: 58 Page: 47
Section: 3A1,3A4,3C
Turning back to our point of departure, the weight of religion in Constantine’s day, we have noted that two-thirds of his government at the top were non-Christian.
Quote ID: 1442
Time Periods: 4
Christianizing the Roman Empire
Ramsay MacMullen
Book ID: 58 Page: 113/114
Section: 3A1,3A4,3C
Bishops now actually dined with Constantine himself; they used Constantius’ palace as their headquarters. They were seen riding along provincial highways in state conveyances, bent on their high affairs, as guests of the government. All the world could behold what fantastic changes had come about in the repute and position of ecclesiastical officials. What they said now had an authority acknowledged by the emperors themselves; it hardly needed miracles to rest on.
Quote ID: 1496
Time Periods: 4
Civilizations of the Middle Ages: A Completely Revised and Expanded Edition of Medieval History, The
Norman F. Cantor
Book ID: 203 Page: 55/56
Section: 3A4,3C,4B
The advance of a Christian to the imperial throne produced an inevitable reconsideration of the church’s attitude to kingship. As long as the emperor was a non-Christian, sometimes openly anti-Christian, the theoretical question of church-state relations scarcely arose; the church could take a negative attitude toward the state without any doubt or hesitation by its leaders. But the emergence of the Christian king raised a host of new problems, for which the solution was not readily apparent.The readjustment in the church’s conception of kingship was further made inevitable by the close involvement of the emperor and bishops in each other’s affairs in the fourth century. Heresies, schisms, and requests for state interference in the life of the church by Christian bishops, on the one side, and what J. B. Bury aptly called the emperor’s despotic instinct to control all social forces, on the other, brought about a close union between church and state.
Quote ID: 4671
Time Periods: 4
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: 212
Section: 3A4
Soon bishops were drawn into keeping law and order themselves. A later bishop of Antioch excused his late arrival at the Council of Ephesus in 431 on the grounds that he had been suppressing riots, another bishop wrote to a colleague, “It is the duty of bishops like you to cut short and restrain any unregulated movements of the mob.” Synesius organized the defence of Cyrene and its surrounding estates from the incursions of desert nomads, and sometimes bishops even had to quell bands of enthusiastic monks who had come to desecrate papan temples.
Quote ID: 4915
Time Periods: 45
Closing of the Western Mind, The
Charles Freeman
Book ID: 205 Page: 214
Section: 3A1,3A4
In short, the bishops combined the roles of spiritual leader, patron, estates manager, builder, overseer of law and order, city representative, and protector of the poor among others.
Quote ID: 4919
Time Periods: 34
Closing of the Western Mind, The
Charles Freeman
Book ID: 205 Page: 298
Section: 3A1,3A4
The Christian can, and should, participate in the state’s activities, as a soldier or administrator, and Augustine expected the Christian to uphold the authority of the state and play an active part in supporting its values. (“What is more horrible than the public executioner? Yet he has a necessary place in the legal system, and he is part of the order of a well governed society.”) War was to be avoided if possible, but Augustine accepted it as part of life: Christians should not shrink from it if their state was threatened or if it would secure peace and safety for human society. Once Christians were in the army, it was not wrong to kill in the obedience of orders, even if they were unjust. Hierarchy, where those below have the duty of obey those above them, is the natural way of things, whether in church, state or family. Even at its best, however, the state can only be an echo of the “City of God.”
Quote ID: 4985
Time Periods: 5
Closing of the Western Mind, The
Charles Freeman
Book ID: 205 Page: 298
Section: 3A1,3A4
The City of God proved to be the foundation document of Christian political thought, though it presents a view of society which seems radically different from that of the Gospels.
Quote ID: 4986
Time Periods: ?
Closing of the Western Mind, The
Charles Freeman
Book ID: 205 Page: 300
Section: 3A3,3A4
It was, however, in this context, with imperial authority crumbling in the west, that the role of the bishops of Rome gradually expanded.
Quote ID: 4987
Time Periods: 3
Closing of the Western Mind, The
Charles Freeman
Book ID: 205 Page: 300
Section: 3A3,3A4
Shrewdly, Leo also tied the authority to the state by acting through Valentinian III (emperor of the west 425-55) in civil affairs. He asserted his own authority in the secular sphere in 452, when he personally led a delegation from Rome to confront Attila the Hun, whose armies were ravaging northern Italy. When Attila withdrew, possibly because of a lack of resources, Leo successfully took the credit.
Quote ID: 4990
Time Periods: 5
Constantine by Ramsay Macmullen
Ramsay MacMullen
Book ID: 69 Page: 193
Section: 3A4,3C
Constantine invoked the death penalty quite freely, but so had his predecessors and so did his sons after him.
Quote ID: 1895
Time Periods: 4
Constantine’s Sword: The Church and the Jews
James Carroll
Book ID: 68 Page: 180
Section: 3A4,3C
...the Age of Constantine. For him, unification was by definition a matter of domination. And that played itself out in the wars he waged against his rivals. But military domination was only part of his agenda. At a deeper level, he wanted a spiritual domination too, and a fuller sense of that background can help us see his conversion to Christianity in 312 in a clearer light.
Quote ID: 1825
Time Periods: 4
Constantine’s Sword: The Church and the Jews
James Carroll
Book ID: 68 Page: 184
Section: 3A4,3C
Thus, while he was ordaining tolerance among religions, he was preparing to abolish tolerance within Christianity. In a letter written in 313, the year of the liberal Edict of Milan, he instructed his prefect in Africa to move against the Donatists, schismatic Christians who posited sanctity as a prerequisite for valid administration of the sacraments. “I consider it absolutely contrary to the divine law,” he wrote, “that we should overlook such quarrels and contentions, whereby the Highest Divinity may perhaps be moved to wrath, not only against the human race, but also against me myself, to whose care He has, by His celestial will, committed the government of all earthly things, and that He may be so far moved as to take some untoward step. For I shall really and fully be able to feel secure and always to hope for prosperity and happiness from the ready kindness of the most mighty God, only when I see all venerating the most holy God in the proper cult of the catholic religion with harmonious brotherhood of worship.”{26}
Quote ID: 1830
Time Periods: 4
Constantine’s Sword: The Church and the Jews
James Carroll
Book ID: 68 Page: 187
Section: 3A4,3C
His method was to tolerate diversity and share power for only as long as he had to. The unity of the empire -- under himself -- was to him the absolute political virtue. His string of successful conquests had confirmed its divinely ordained righteousness. So in turning to religion, unity of belief and practice, not tolerance of diversity, had to seem paramount.
Quote ID: 1832
Time Periods: 4
Constantine’s Sword: The Church and the Jews
James Carroll
Book ID: 68 Page: 189
Section: 3A4,3C
For Constantine, religious differences were impediments to the power that had replaced Maxentius and Licinius. In this way, the choice (“heresy”) to be religiously different became defined as treason, a political crime.
Quote ID: 1836
Time Periods: 4
Continuity and Change in Roman Religion
J. H. W. G. Liebeschuetz
Book ID: 313 Page: 293
Section: 2E2,3A4,3C
In the event, the most revolutionary aspects of Christianity proved to be Christian asceticism{1} and religious intolerance.{2} Each made a large contribution to the transformation of Graeco-Roman civilization into something else.{3}
Quote ID: 7628
Time Periods: 4
Continuity and Change in Roman Religion
J. H. W. G. Liebeschuetz
Book ID: 313 Page: 296
Section: 3A4,3C
The great expansion of Christianity owed little or nothing to force. Imperial patronage and the prestige of the imperial example were sufficient.{5} But there was one field which imperial coercive power was at least intermittently employed by Constantine. This was the suppression of discord within the Christian Church itself.
Quote ID: 7629
Time Periods: 4
Cults of the Roman Empire, The
Robert Turcan
Book ID: 209 Page: 245
Section: 3A4
In the time of Commodus (180-92), but chiefly from that of the Severi (193-235), certain Christians had acquired an influential position in the various departments of the court. In the late third century, their faith had reached the executives of the administration and even of the army.
Quote ID: 5172
Time Periods: 23
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: 49
Section: 3A4,3B
The sentiments of Mamaea were adopted by her son Alexander, and the philosophic devotion of that emperor was marked by a singular but injudicious regard for the Christian religion. In his domestic chapel he placed the statues of Abraham, of Orpheus, of Apollonius, and of Christ, as an honour justly due to those respectable sages who had instructed mankind in the various modes of addressing their homage to the supreme and universal Deity.{2} A purer faith, as well as worship, was openly professed and practised among his household. Bishops, perhaps for the first time, were seen at court; ….
Quote ID: 5195
Time Periods: ?
Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Vol. 2, The
Edward Gibbon
Book ID: 210 Page: 55/56
Section: 3A4,3B
Diocletian and his colleagues frequently conferred the most important offices on those persons who avowed their abhorrence for the worship of the gods, but who had displayed abilities proper for the service of the state. The bishops held an honourable rank in their respective provinces, and were treated with distinction and respect, not only by the people, but by the magistrates themselves. Almost in every city the ancient churches were found insufficient to contain the increasing multitude of proselytes; and in their place more stately and capacious edifices were erected for the public worship of the faithful. The corruption of manners and principles, so forcibly lamented by Eusebius,{4} may be considered, not only as a consequence, but as a proof, of the liberty which the Christians enjoyed and abused under the reign of Diocletian. Prosperity had relaxed the nerves of discipline. Fraud, envy, and malice prevailed in every congregation. The presbyters aspired to the Episcopal office, which every day became an object more worthy of their ambition. The bishops, who contended with each other for ecclesiastical pre-eminence, appeared by their conduct to claim a secular and tyrannical power in the church; and the lively faith which still distinguished the Christians from the Gentiles was shown much less in their lives than in their controversial writings.
Quote ID: 5197
Time Periods: 34
Early Christian Church, The
J.G. Davies
Book ID: 214 Page: 246
Section: 3A4
Church orderThe ferment of events that issued in the disappearance of the western empire was not without its effect upon the role of the bishop; there were indeed four factors that influenced it considerably. First, the imperial policy of centralization, which was to preserve unity and prevent anarchy, resulted in the sapping of local initiative. Second, the episcopal exercise of the power of jurisdiction, granted by the civil power, and of the right of intercession with imperial officials increased. Third, legacies and grants of property made bishops responsible for many large estates. Finally, the urban civilization of the empire was replaced, after the incursion of the barbarians, by a predominantly rural system, which had the social effect of sweeping away absentee city-dwelling landowners and their substitution by local proprietors living upon their own estates. As a consequence of these changes prominent men were drawn to the episcopate as the sole sphere within which they could find adequate scope for their talents and they became more and more the leaders of the entire local community in civil no less than in ecclesiastical affairs. Their importance was further enhanced and they acquired a position of preeminence in the countryside because of their possession of large estates. Here indeed lay the origins of the later system of feudal prelacy. Thus the function of a bishop became more general than that of the chief local minister of religion.
Quote ID: 5354
Time Periods: 5
Early Medieval Europe 300-1000
Roger Collins
Book ID: 78 Page: 24
Section: 3A4,3C
It has not been possible for subsequent generations to idealise the first Christian emperor. His treatment of defeated enemies, such as the family of Licinius, was perhaps not untypical of his age, but he was as lethal to his own family as to his foes.
Quote ID: 2145
Time Periods: 4
Europe and the Faith
Hilaire Belloc
Book ID: 84 Page: 141
Section: 3A1,3A4,4B
The last characteristic of the Dark Ages is that which has most engrossed, puzzled, and warped the judgment of non-Catholic historians when they have attempted a conspectus of European development; it was the segregation, the homogeneity of and the dominance of clerical organization.The hierarchy of the Church, its unity and its sense of discipline was the chief civil institution and the chief binding social force of the times.
Quote ID: 2275
Time Periods: 7
Growth of Church Institutions, The
The Rev. Edwin Hatch, M. A., D.D., (Reader In Ecclesiastical History In The University Of Oxford Sec
Book ID: 230 Page: 10
Section: 3A1,3A4,3D2
Here and there, on the large estates of Roman owners, there was a chapel for Christian service; but the mass of the Celtic peasantry was unconverted. The familiar word “pagan” or “villager” comes to us from this time, and indicates this feature of it. Christianity was the religion of the governing classes and their immediate dependants; it belonged to the cities and not to the country; it was almost a part of the imperial regime.Upon this state of things came the slowly rolling waves of Teutonic conquest.
Quote ID: 5769
Time Periods: 456
Growth of Church Institutions, The
The Rev. Edwin Hatch, M. A., D.D., (Reader In Ecclesiastical History In The University Of Oxford Sec
Book ID: 230 Page: 11/12
Section: 3A1,3A3,3A4,3D2,4B
The Celts and Romans still formed the mass of the population. They retained their customs and their laws. The framework of the imperial organization remained without material change. And within that framework two features, the one of German character and the other of German usage, preserved much that was old, and laid the foundation of much that was to come. The one feature was that the Germans loved the country rather than the town, and that consequently, though great estates changed hands, the cities were left for the most part to their former inhabitants. The other feature was that, following their traditional usage, they did not impose their own laws upon the inhabitants of the territories which they conquered, but allowed each race to retain, and to be judged by, its own legal code. The general result was that in the cities was gathered together almost all that survived of Rome; the schools preserved the Roman tongue, the courts preserved Roman law, the Church preserved Roman Christianity. Of all this survival of Roman life, the bishop of the civitas was the centre. Round him the aristocracy of the old Roman families naturally gathered. He symbolised to them their past glories and their ancient liberties. He was their refuge in trouble, and their chief shield against oppression. His house was not infrequently the old praetorium, the residence of the Roman governor. Even his dress was that of a Roman official. In him the empire still lived.3A
Quote ID: 5770
Time Periods: 56
Growth of Church Institutions, The
The Rev. Edwin Hatch, M. A., D.D., (Reader In Ecclesiastical History In The University Of Oxford Sec
Book ID: 230 Page: 12/13
Section: 3A1,3A4,3D2
He came to have a seat side by side with the Teutonic graf or comes, and ultimately had a jurisdiction of his own. His wealth arose partly from the practice of the Roman landowners, sometimes in default of heirs and sometimes in spite of them, bequeathing their lands to him as the head of the political party to which they belonged; and partly from the growing custom on the part of the non-Roman element in the population, of endowing the Church with property “in remedium animae,” i.e., to save their souls. The city bishop thus became in a large number of instances a great landowner. As such he not only was the dispenser of ample charities to the poor, but also had a large number of dependants in the serfs, or slaves, upon the Church lands. He was, in short, a personage of such wealth and power that the Frankish king, Chilperic, is reported to have said more than once, “Absolutely the only persons who reign are the bishops: our i.e. the royal influence has perished, and is transferred to the bishops of the cities.”{1}
Quote ID: 5771
Time Periods: 56
How the Irish Saved Civilization
Thomas Cahill
Book ID: 111 Page: 61
Section: 3A1,3A4
There was, moreover, one office that survived intact from the classical to the medieval polis: the office of Catholic bishop.
Quote ID: 2659
Time Periods: 7
Inquisition: Spanish Inquisition, The
Jean Plaidy
Book ID: 273 Page: 138
Section: 3A4
The uses of torture had been laid down by Nicolaus Eymeric, who had been Grand Inquisitor of Aragon in the fourteenth century; and he had been inspired in the work he complied by that of Bernard Gui written in the early part of that century.Torquemada must have agreed with a great deal that these two had written, for he allowed much of it to stand and form a basis for his Instructions.
Eymeric had advised Inquisitors that there should be five stages of torture and each was important, for even during the early stages a confession might be wrung from the victim.
The first of the five stages was Threat.
Quote ID: 6909
Time Periods: 7
Lands, Laws, and Gods: Magistrates and Ceremony in the Regulation of Public Lands in Republican Rome
Daniel J. Gargola
Book ID: 398 Page: 15
Section: 3A4
In practice, the elaborate system of division and definition came together around the figure of the magistrate and the body of the senate. Magistrates, not priests or jurists, were the chief actors of public life. They not only supervised seemingly secular governmental operations and presided over the courts handling private law disputes, but they also took a central role in the practices of the state religion, supervising sacrifices, festivals, games, processions, and rites of divination. The role of experts simply was to advise and assist the magistrate, the organizer and officiant of major religious observances and the implementer of policy, and to coach him in the proper procedure.{11}
Quote ID: 8480
Time Periods: 0345
Law and Life of Rome (90 B.C – A.D. 212)
J.A. Crook
Book ID: 127 Page: 33
Section: 3A4,4B
it was a part of the philosophy of the Romans that the duty of a citizen included taking this share of the burdens of the law: acting as judge, arbitrator or juror and supporting his friends in their legal affairs by coming forward as witness, surety and so on.
Quote ID: 2890
Time Periods: 03
Making of Late Antiquity, The
Peter Brown
Book ID: 251 Page: 20
Section: 3A4
The sorcerer was merely a paradigm of the supernatural power misapplied in society; and the criteria used to judge the source and exercise of such power involved issues that were far from being purely theological.Pastor John’s Note: i.e. civic duties were expected of the good.
Quote ID: 6277
Time Periods: 3
Making of Late Antiquity, The
Peter Brown
Book ID: 251 Page: 100
Section: 3A4,3C
The Christians looked to the earth alone. They claimed power from heaven; but they had made that heaven remote and they kept its power to themselves, to build up new separate institutions among upstart heroes on earth. Such institutions had been hastily thrown up by men for men.. . . .
The “stars” that held the attention of a fourth-century Christian were the tombs of the martyrs, scattered like the Milky Way throughout the Mediterranean. {76}
Quote ID: 6343
Time Periods: 4
Martyrdom and Persecution in the Early Church
A Study of a Conflict from the Maccabees to Donatus By W.H.C. Frend
Book ID: 316 Page: 485/486
Section: 3A4,3B
When it came, however, the persecution was more the outcome of the needs of military discipline than the result of intellectual conflict. Despite the adoratio, Diocletian’s court at Nicomedia was no centre for anti-Christian agitation. The Emperor’s wife and daughter and his personal attendants seem to have been pro-Christian.{75} There were plenty of Christian civil servants both at court and in the provinces, and plenty of Christians serving in the armies.{76}
Quote ID: 7678
Time Periods: 34
Papal Monarchy from St. Gregory the Great to Boniface VIII (590-1303), The
William Barry
Book ID: 342 Page: 37/38
Section: 1A,3A1,3A4
It was the duty of the Pontiff, as it had formerly been of the Emperor, to feed the people in seasons of famine; to make good the losses occasioned by earthquakes, conflagrations, risings of the Tiber, invasions of Goths or Vandals; to preside at the crowded Church festivals, which took the place of gladiatorial sports, abolished at this time; and to do what in them lay as mediators between the people and their conquerors.
Quote ID: 7928
Time Periods: 17
Romans and Their Gods in the Age of Augustus, The
R. M. Ogilvie
Book ID: 390 Page: 121
Section: 3B,3A4
In one of his most religious works, Dream of Scipio, Cicero puts this idea quite clearly: ‘To all who have saved, helped, or advanced their country, a fixed place is assigned in heaven in which they shall enjoy everlasting bliss.’
Quote ID: 8385
Time Periods: 01
Rome in the Dark Ages
Peter Llewellyn
Book ID: 191 Page: 108
Section: 1A,3A4,4B
The resources of the papacy, material and moral, represented the sole hope of Rome’s survival and fashioned the shape of its future.
Quote ID: 4319
Time Periods: 567
Rome in the Dark Ages
Peter Llewellyn
Book ID: 191 Page: 109
Section: 2C,3A4
The civil administration of Rome in the years subject to the East was overshadowed in prestige, in quality and in effectiveness by the Church’s own administration which through its management of charity, of its great estates and of a wide diplomacy, determined Rome’s survival in the declining years of Byzantine power in the West. The Roman clergy formed a tight corporation with a common identity, a common interest and common privileges - the word ’cleros’ retained its Greek connotation of a chosen group apart. Entry into the clerical ranks provided the sole opportunity for the realization of talent and ambition - whether spiritual or secular - and for learning.
Quote ID: 4320
Time Periods: 7
Rome in the Dark Ages
Peter Llewellyn
Book ID: 191 Page: 132/133
Section: 3A4
The Church to which he had been elected was a large organization. Its universal commitments in spiritual and temporal matters made necessary participation in affairs throughout Europe and the East as well as the protection of Italy and Rome.
Quote ID: 4337
Time Periods: ?
Rome in the Dark Ages
Peter Llewellyn
Book ID: 191 Page: 138
Section: 3A4
The resources of the papacy - which paid for city charities, for the upkeep of crumbling buildings and aqueducts, for tribute and levies to the Lombards, and for the stipends to its own clergy - cannot be accurately assessed.
Quote ID: 4340
Time Periods: 67
Rome in the Dark Ages
Peter Llewellyn
Book ID: 191 Page: 163
Section: 3A4
The meeting was successful; Justinian exhibited every reverence and courtesy to the pope, attended his Mass and received communion from him, and confirmed once more the privileges of the Roman Church.Pastor John’s Note: In these pages, Justinian’s incredible efforts to seize and control the Western church is described.
Quote ID: 4346
Time Periods: 7
Rome in the Dark Ages
Peter Llewellyn
Book ID: 191 Page: 272
Section: 3A4
Obedience to the Christian law was the hall-mark of the pontificate of Nicholas. To Boris of Bulgaria he laid down the details of every aspect of the Christian life; he attempted to control the private morals of the Western kings; he induced into the Greek Church a sense of Rome’s authority.
Quote ID: 4409
Time Periods: ?
Rome in the Dark Ages
Peter Llewellyn
Book ID: 191 Page: 246b
Section: 3A4
Established safely, Leo cruel and arrogant appears to have insisted on the full sovereign rights of the papacy under Roman law with no such restraint and tact as Hadrian had shown. (Note: cp. p 245 top)
Quote ID: 4389
Time Periods: ?
Rome in the Dark Ages
Peter Llewellyn
Book ID: 191 Page: 265b
Section: 3A4
The work of Rome’s defense was completed later in the century when Pope John VIII built a wall around the basilica of St. Paul . . .
Quote ID: 4401
Time Periods: 7
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