Section: 3D - Theodosius and the following years.
Number of quotes: 223
A Chronicle of the Last Pagans
Pierre Chuvin
Book ID: 4 Page: 63
Section: 3D
At first, Theodosius’ position toward pagans had been cautious. From 388 to 391 he remained in the West with Valentinian II. After that, the supreme authority which they incarnated together initiated measures that treated pagan cults rudely. Why the reversal? Was it the influence of the redoubtable Ambrose, a far more difficult partner for the emperor than the Bishops in the East? Ambrose, who had first been a high official, had the stature and the knowledge of a statesman, and as early as the end of 388 he demonstrated it. At that time he prevented Theodosius from securing reparation for the Jews of Callinicum, on the Euphrates, after a band of fanatics---once again, monks instigated by the bishop---had burned their synagogue and a sanctuary attributed to some gnostics, the Valentinians.
Quote ID: 45
Time Periods: 4
A Chronicle of the Last Pagans
Pierre Chuvin
Book ID: 4 Page: 81/82
Section: 3D
Stilico was relentless in his hostility to pagan cults. It is to him that Saint Augustine attributes the authorship of the laws for Africa in 399.{24} One day in Rome his wife Serena removed from the statue of the Great Mother a beautiful necklace, placing it around her own neck. Stilico himself had the gold scraped from the doors of the temple of Jupiter on the Capitoline, probably early in 408, to pay a ransom to Alaric. {25} One of his enemies accused him of having burned the Sibylline Books, kept on the Capitoline, which contained prophecies for the whole of Roman history. This is surprising, for Christians were not fundamentally hostile to the Sibylline Books, which they counted among the precursory texts of their own faith; in much later times, the Sibyls even found a place among the frescoes of the Sistine Chapel, alongside the prophets of the Old Testament.
Quote ID: 47
Time Periods: 45
A.D. 381 Heretics, Pagans, and the Dawn of the Monotheistic State
Charles Freeman
Book ID: 11 Page: 1
Section: 3D
In January 381, the Christian Roman emperor Theodosius issued an epistula, a formal letter, to his prefect in the Danube provinces of Illyricum announcing that the only acceptable form of Christianity centred on a Trinity in which God the Father, Jesus the Son, and the Holy Spirit were seen as of equal majesty. Theodosius went on to condemn all other Christian beliefs as heresies that would be punished by both the state and the divine judgement of God.
Quote ID: 171
Time Periods: 4
A.D. 381 Heretics, Pagans, and the Dawn of the Monotheistic State
Charles Freeman
Book ID: 11 Page: 25
Section: 3D
So the next edict, issued from Thessalonika in January 380 by Theodosius to the people of Constantinople, was rather startling:It is Our will that all peoples ruled by the administration of Our Clemency shall practise that religion which the divine Peter the Apostle transmitted to the Romans . . . this is the religion followed by bishop Damasus of Rome and by Peter, bishop of Alexandria, a man of apostolic sanctity: that is, according to the apostolic discipline of the evangelical doctrine, we shall believe in the single deity of the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost under the concept of equal majesty and of the Holy Trinity.
We command that persons who follow this rule shall embrace the name of catholic Christians. The rest, however, whom We judge demented and insane, shall carry 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 hostility which We shall assume in accordance with the Divine Judgement.’ (I5)
Quote ID: 176
Time Periods: 4
A.D. 381 Heretics, Pagans, and the Dawn of the Monotheistic State
Charles Freeman
Book ID: 11 Page: 63
Section: 3C1,3D
But there had been no mention of the Trinity in the Nicene Creed. The assertion ‘And I believe in the Holy Spirit’ had been included, but nothing was said of the Spirit having any divine status or being related to Father and Son in any way.
Quote ID: 194
Time Periods: 4
A.D. 381 Heretics, Pagans, and the Dawn of the Monotheistic State
Charles Freeman
Book ID: 11 Page: 91/92
Section: 3D
He immediately summoned Bishop Demophilus to his palace and requested that he support the doctrine that God the Father, Jesus the Son, and the Holy Spirit were of equal majesty, a formula that equated with Nicene beliefs. Theodosius must have hoped he would capitulate, but Demophilus stuck to his principles and refused. As a result, he and many of his clergy were banned from the city. For years to come they are recorded as worshipping in the open air outside the walls. Theodosius was now forced to turn to Gregory, whom he asked to become the new bishop of the city. Gregory was delighted with the favour of the emperor but he knew only too well how unpopular with imposition was, and he was full of apprehension when Theodosius told him he would be formally installed in the Church of the Holy Apostles almost immediately, on Friday 27 November.It proved to be a tense day. Soldiers lined the route from the hippodrome to the church and crowds massed behind them. No one would dare shout abuse directly at the emperor, but here were certainly calls for Theodosius to respect their faith. It was as if, Gregory later recounted, the city had been taken by conquest and this was a parade of the victors.
….
On 10 January 381, the emperor issued a letter (epistula) to Eutropius, the praetorian prefect of Illyricum, the most unsettled area of his half of the empire, asking him to impose the Nicene faith across his provinces.
….
If there was any dispute, between rival Christian factions in the diocese, for instance, the prefect would have to restore order. The prefects also monitored the appointment of bishops and ensured that tax exemptions were correctly applied. The law of January 381 was, in effect, asking Eutropius to recognize only those of the Nicene faith as bishops.
Quote ID: 201
Time Periods: 4
A.D. 381 Heretics, Pagans, and the Dawn of the Monotheistic State
Charles Freeman
Book ID: 11 Page: 93
Section: 3D
There had to be a definition of the Nicene faith that the prefect could follow.
Quote ID: 202
Time Periods: 4
A.D. 381 Heretics, Pagans, and the Dawn of the Monotheistic State
Charles Freeman
Book ID: 11 Page: 93/94
Section: 3D
Eutropius was instructed to deal harshly with the ‘insane and demented heretics’. Not only did they have to surrender their present churches to the Nicenes, but they were not allowed even to build their own places of worship within a city, let alone claim any tax exemptions. Any disturbance or display of sedition was to be treated by expelling them beyond the walls of the city. A few months later, a further law forbade ‘heretics’ even to build churches outside a city wall. The law closed with its declared aim: that ‘catholic churches in the whole world might be restored to all orthodox bishops who hold the Nicene faith’.
Quote ID: 203
Time Periods: 4
A.D. 381 Heretics, Pagans, and the Dawn of the Monotheistic State
Charles Freeman
Book ID: 11 Page: 103/104
Section: 3C1,3D,3D1
By creating a religious barrier between Homoian Goth and Nicene Roman, Theodosius could define a fault line along which he could rally his own troops against ‘the barbarians’. In the west, in these same years, Ambrose of Milan was stressing the relationship between support for the Nicene faith and the success of the empire in war.….
In effect, the emperor’s laws had silenced the debate when it was still unresolved.
….
It is likely that he was simply frustrated by the pressures he found himself under and genuinely believed that an authoritarian solution would bring unity to the embattled empire. At the same time control of dogma went hand in hand with greater control of the administrative structure of the Church.
….
by defining and outlawing specific heresies, he had crossed a watershed. It soon became clear that once the principle of toleration was successfully challenged, as it had been by his new laws, the temptation to extend the campaign against dissidents would be irresistible.
The first non-Christian sect to be attached was the Manicheans,
….
Theodosius ordered that no Manichean of either sex should be able to bequeath or inherit any property. This excluded Manicheans passing on family wealth from generation to generation, a basic right for Roman citizens. Then in 382, the emperor decreed the death penalty for membership of certain Manichean sects and put in place an informer system. It was to be the first step to the sect’s elimination and to a wider campaign against non-Christian beliefs.
Quote ID: 205
Time Periods: 34
A.D. 381 Heretics, Pagans, and the Dawn of the Monotheistic State
Charles Freeman
Book ID: 11 Page: 107
Section: 3A2A,3D
In Rome in 366, over a hundred were killed in the street fighting that broke out on the death of Bishop Liberius before his successor, Damasus, was elected. Damasus’ use of thugs to secure his victory was repugnant to most of his fellow bishops, and his moral authority was weakened for the rest of his reign. In 374, similar tensions between Homoians and Nicenes gripped the city of Milan after the death of the Homoian bishop Auxentius. This time the state intervened in the person of the praetorian prefect, Petronius Probus, who appears to have engineered the appointment of one of his protégés, the provincial governor Ambrose.….
He had then been acclaimed by the people as the new bishop even though he was not yet a baptized Christian, Valentinian accepted this version of events and Ambrose was duly baptized and enthroned within a week.
Quote ID: 206
Time Periods: 4
A.D. 381 Heretics, Pagans, and the Dawn of the Monotheistic State
Charles Freeman
Book ID: 11 Page: 120
Section: 3D
Theodosius was welcomed to the Senate with a panegyric from a Gallic orator, Pacatus, which was so rooted in traditional formulas as to give no hint that the emperor was a Christian.
Quote ID: 8159
Time Periods: 4
A.D. 381 Heretics, Pagans, and the Dawn of the Monotheistic State
Charles Freeman
Book ID: 11 Page: xvi
Section: 3D
I stress the central role of the emperors, especially Theodosius I, AD 379-395, in defining Christian doctrine.….
It is not until the seventeenth century that the concept of religious toleration is restated, and that was only after decades of debilitating religious wars showed, in the specific context of post-Reformation Europe, the moral and intellectual bankruptcy of institutional religion.
Quote ID: 170
Time Periods: 47
Ancient Rome by Robert Payne
Robert Payne
Book ID: 16 Page: 253
Section: 3D
Although greater unity was thus achieved, a few Arians refused to accept the concept, and the Church and the empire remained divided over the question until the year 381 when the emperor Theodosius the Great made heresy a crime.In that same year Theodosius made paganism a crime too.
Quote ID: 322
Time Periods: 4
Ausonius, LCL 115: Ausonius I, Books 1-17
Several
Book ID: 133 Page: 3
Section: 2B2,3C,3D
Book I Prefatory PiecesParagraph I Ausonius to his Reader, Greeting
My father practised medicine - the only one of all the arts which produced a god;
Pastor John’s note: This is at the end of his life, long after he became a Christian.
PJ Note: Check Ausonius for J word
Quote ID: 2925
Time Periods: 4
Ausonius, LCL 115: Ausonius I, Books 1-17
Several
Book ID: 133 Page: 7
Section: 2B2,3C,3D
Book I Prefatory PiecesParagraph III A Letter of the Emperor Theodosius
The Emperor Theodosius to his father Ausonius, greeting.
My affection for you, and my admiration for your ability and learning, which could not possibly be higher, have caused me, my dearest father, to adopt as my own a custom followed by other princes and to send you under my own hand a friendly word. . .
Quote ID: 2926
Time Periods: 4
Ausonius, LCL 115: Ausonius I, Books 1-17
Several
Book ID: 133 Page: 9
Section: 2B2,3C,3D
Book I Prefatory PiecesParagraph IV To my Lord and the Lord of All, Theodosius the Emperor, from Ausonius, your Servant
If yellow Ceres should bid the husbandman commit seed to the ground, or Mars order some general to take up arms, or Neptune command a fleet to put out to sea unrigged, then to obey confidently is as much a duty as to hesitate is the reverse.
. . . .
Behests of mortals call for deliberation: what a god commands perform without wavering.
. . . .
It is not safe to disoblige a god;
Quote ID: 2927
Time Periods: 4
Ausonius, LCL 115: Ausonius I, Books 1-17
Several
Book ID: 133 Page: 17
Section: 2B1,3C,3C1,3D
Book II The Daily Round or the Doings of a Whole DayParagraph III The Prayer Line 6-12
He only may behold thee and, face to face, hear thy bidding and sit at thy fatherly right-hand who is himself the Maker of all things, himself the Cause of all created things, himself the Word of God, the Word which is God, who was before the world which he was to make, begotten at that time when Time was not yet, who came into being before the Sun’s beams and the bright Morning-Star enlightened the sky.
Quote ID: 2929
Time Periods: 4
Ausonius, LCL 115: Ausonius I, Books 1-17
Several
Book ID: 133 Page: 29
Section: 3C,3D,4B
Book II The Daily Round or the Doings of a Whole DayParagraph VIII Line 22
They say the heavenly bard {1}
. . . .
{1} sc. Virgil (Aen. vi. 282 ff.)
Quote ID: 2931
Time Periods: 4
Ausonius, LCL 115: Ausonius I, Books 1-17
Several
Book ID: 133 Page: 35
Section: 3C,3D,2A4
Book III Personal PoemsParagraph II Easter Verses Composed for the Emperor Line 1
Now return the holy rites of Christ, who brought us our salvation, and godly zealots keep their solemn fasts.
Pastor John’s note: No “J” word
Quote ID: 2932
Time Periods: 4
Ausonius, LCL 115: Ausonius I, Books 1-17
Several
Book ID: 133 Page: 37
Section: 3C,3D,2B2
Book III Personal PoemsParagraph II Easter Verses Composed for the Emperor Line 17
Thou, gracious Father, grantest to the world thy Word, who is thy Son, and God, in all things like thee and equal with thee, very God of very God, and living God of the source of life.
PJ Note: Check Ausonius for the J word.
Quote ID: 2933
Time Periods: 34
Ausonius, LCL 115: Ausonius I, Books 1-17
Several
Book ID: 133 Page: 49
Section: 3C,3D,2B2
Book III Personal PoemsParagraph V A Solemn Prayer of Ausonius as Consul-Designate, when he assumed the Insignia of Office on the Eve of the Kalends of January
Come, Janus; come, New Year; come, Sun, with strength renewed!
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
soon to behold Ausonius enthroned in state, consul of Rome. What hast thou now beneath the Imperial dignity itself to marvel at? That famous Rome, that dwelling of Quirinus, and that Senate whose bordered roes glow with rich purple, from this point date their seasons in their deathless records.
Come, Janus; come, New Year; come, Sun, with strength renewed!
PJ Note: Check Ausonius for the J word.
Quote ID: 2934
Time Periods: 4
Ausonius, LCL 115: Ausonius I, Books 1-17
Several
Book ID: 133 Page: 63
Section: 3C,3D,2B2
Book IV ParentaliaParagraph IV Caecilius Argicius Arborius, my Grandfather Line 1-3
Forsake not your sacred task, my duteous page: next after these let me celebrate the memory of my mother’s father, Arborius
PJ Note: Check Ausonius for the J word.
Quote ID: 2935
Time Periods: 34
Ausonius, LCL 115: Ausonius I, Books 1-17
Several
Book ID: 133 Page: 65
Section: 2B2,3C,3D
Book IV ParentaliaParagraph IV Caecilius Argicius Arborius, my Grandfather Line 24
When you had lived a life of ninety years, you found how to be dreaded are the arrows of the goddess Chance. . .
PJ Note: Check Ausonius for the J word.
Quote ID: 2936
Time Periods: 4
Ausonius, LCL 115: Ausonius I, Books 1-17
Several
Book ID: 133 Page: 137
Section: 2B2,3C,3D
Book V Poems Commemorating The Professors of BordeauxParagraph XXV Conclusion Line 5-6
For the living praise is a lure: to but cry their names will satisfy those within the tomb {4}.
[Footnote 4] To call aloud upon the dead was a recognised funerary rite: see Virgil, Aen. vi. 507
PJ Note: Check Ausonius for the J word.
Quote ID: 2937
Time Periods: 3
Ausonius, LCL 115: Ausonius I, Books 1-17
Several
Book ID: 133 Page: xiv
Section: 2B2,3C,3C1,3D
IntroductionFurther, the conception of the Deity held by Ausonius was distinctly peculiar - as his less guarded references show. In the Easter Verses (Domest. ii. 24 ff.) the Trinity is a power transcending but not unlike the three Emperors; and in the Griphus (1. 88) the “tris deus unus” is advanced to enforce the maxim “ter bibe” in exactly the same tone as that in which the children of Rhea, or the three Gorgons are cited: for our author the Christian Deity was not essentially different from the old pagan gods.
PJ Note: Check Ausonius for the J word.
Quote ID: 2924
Time Periods: 4
Ausonius, LCL 115: Ausonius I, Books 1-17
Several
Book ID: 133 Page: xiii
Section: 2B2,3C,3D
IntroductionWhen and how he adopted the new religion there is nothing to show; but certain of his poems make it clear that he professed and called himself a Christian, and such poems as the Oratio (Ephemeris iii.) and Domestica ii., which show a fairly extensive knowledge of the Scriptures, sometimes mislead the unwary to assume that Ausonius was a devout and pious soul. But in these poems he is deliberately airing his Christianity: he has, so to speak, dressed himself for church. His everyday attitude was clearly very different.
....
Nor does Christianity enter directly or indirectly into the general body of his literary work (as distinguished from the few “set pieces”). In the Parentalia there is no trace of Christian sentiment - and this though he is writing of his nearest and dearest: the rite which gives a title to the book is pagan, the dead “rejoice to hear their names pronounced” (Parent. Pref. 11), they are in Elysium (id. xviii, 12) according to pagan orthodoxy; but in his own mind Ausonius certainly regards a future existence as problematical (Parent. xxii. 15 and especially Proff. i. 39 ff.).
PJ Note: Check Ausonius for the J word.
Quote ID: 2923
Time Periods: 4
Authority and the Sacred: Aspects of the Christianisation of the Roman World
Peter Brown
Book ID: 35 Page: 4
Section: 3C,3D
It is this story to which we are accustomed. Put briefly: the notion that a relatively short period (from the conversion of Constantine, in 312, to the death of Theodosius II, in 450) witnessed the ‘end of paganism’; the concomitant notion that the end of paganism was the natural consequence of a long-prepared ‘triumph of monotheism’ in the Roman world; and the tendency to present the fourth century AD as a period overshadowed by the conflict between Christianity and paganism - all this amounts to a ‘representation’ of the religious history of the age that was first constructed by a brilliant generation of Christian historians, polemicists and preachers in the opening decades of the fifth century.2Pastor John’s Note: This author uses the word “representations” in a special way- in reference to the way Christian writers of the 4th/5th saw events.
Quote ID: 673
Time Periods: 4
Authority and the Sacred: Aspects of the Christianisation of the Roman World
Peter Brown
Book ID: 35 Page: 67
Section: 3C,3D
Unlike the European missionaries of a later age, the Christian holy men and women of late antiquity and the early middle ages, to use the words of Kaplan’s study of the holy men of medieval Ethiopia, ‘appeared as representatives of a power superior to that of traditional faiths, but not as purveyors of a dramatically different world view or type of religion’.23
Quote ID: 716
Time Periods: 4
Barbarians within the Gates of Rome
Thomas S. Burns
Book ID: 37 Page: 17
Section: 3D
Later, after Theodosius had subdued various groups of Goths following the Battle of Adrianople, another contemporary, Eunapius, commented that “they all claimed to be Christians and some of their number they disguised as their bishops and dressed them up in that respected garb. . .” Some even went so far as to pretend to be “monks”. According to Eunapius, this was as simple as changing clothes. He went on to report that they really worshipped their old gods, which was probably true even though they may well have included Christ in their prayers. Perhaps not all Gothic monks were mere pretenders; events will reveal their fate too.
Quote ID: 746
Time Periods: 4
Barbarians within the Gates of Rome
Thomas S. Burns
Book ID: 37 Page: 25
Section: 3D
The Gothic (Tervingi) leaders apparently had to accept Christianity, at least tacitly, as a precondition for receptio.
Quote ID: 747
Time Periods: 4
Barbarians within the Gates of Rome
Thomas S. Burns
Book ID: 37 Page: 77
Section: 3D
“On January 25, 381, Athanaric died; in the year 382 the entire Gothic people with its king delivered itself to the Roman world.” So reads the Consularia Constantinopolitana for the years 381 and 382. For some scholars, the year 382 “marks the end of the Roman Empire,” for it began the penetration of the barbarian world into the Roman one and was the beginning of the process that led to the creation of the barbarian kingdoms in the next and following centuries. In this view, the Middle Ages had begun.
Quote ID: 748
Time Periods: 4567
Barbarians within the Gates of Rome
Thomas S. Burns
Book ID: 37 Page: 83/86
Section: 3D
Theodosius, “like Achilles,” who sent out Patroclus to save the hard-pressed Greeks, sent Saturninus but with far happier results. Instead of arming his Patroclus in splendid breastplate and shield, Theodosius bestowed upon him “patience, gentleness and clemency (or a sense of humanity).” Saturninus, suitably armed for the battle of Reason over barbarism, thus triumphed as soon as he approached the enemy. His method was simple. By setting before them the fruits of friendship and service to the cause of Empire, their savagery “was tamed.” “One might almost say that he led them bound with their hands behind their backs, so that one might wonder if they had indeed been persuaded or conquered.” The humbled barbarians presented their swords in surrender and “clasped his knees” in token of submission.Elsewhere, Themistius says that he himself had seen the “bringing of the barbarians into peace.” Imperial clemency revealed itself in the granting of pardon to the barbarians for their wrongdoings. The roads and mountain passes stood open, and villas and farmsteads smiled again amid the harvest. The entire Empire, like some great organism, ceased to suffer from its many wounds and drew a collective sigh of deliverance. The great ship had safely returned to port; peace was restored. Themistius not only asks his audience to accept the fact that the Goths had not been totally crushed and humbled in the traditional Roman sense but to applaud it. The Goths had not been led off in chains but had been transformed into something better: they were now productive members of a redefined Roman Empire, an Empire for all Humanity. Themistius suggests that the question of whether the Romans could have militarily crushed the Goths into obedience was debatable, but not worth debating. More important, the barbarians were better men. Still more important, the Romans were better men and the Empire was a better Empire.
Which, then, is better: to fill Thrace with corpses or farmers? To make it full of graves of humans? To travel through wilderness or cultivated land? To count those who have perished or those who are plowing? To resettle the Phrygians and Bithynians, perhaps, or to make them live with those whom we have subdued? I hear from those who return from there [Thrace] that they are now remaking the iron from their swords and breastplates into hoes and sickles, and that they who previously were lovers of Ares are now worshiping Demeter and Dionysus.
. . . .
Clearly the peace that he had in mind was one of a higher level than any Rome could have forced upon a defeated foe. A treaty was between two groups; the peace of Themistius’s oration produced one people working together within one civilization. The peace negated the boundaries of groups and of geography and even transcended consuls and emperors.
Quote ID: 751
Time Periods: 4
Barbarians within the Gates of Rome
Thomas S. Burns
Book ID: 37 Page: 89
Section: 3D
Gratian and Theodosius had saved the Empire.
Quote ID: 752
Time Periods: 4
Barbarians within the Gates of Rome
Thomas S. Burns
Book ID: 37 Page: 164
Section: 3D
Theodosius had transferred the entire prefecture of Illyricum to the East in 392. At some later date Pannonia alone was again restored to the West, and that date is a part of our discussion. The return of Pannonia fixed the boundaries between Arcadius and Honorius, and the Roman East and West, forever.
Quote ID: 753
Time Periods: 4
Barbarians within the Gates of Rome
Thomas S. Burns
Book ID: 37 Page: 216
Section: 3D
Stilicho, not the emperor, would go to Constantinople armed with imperial letters, four legions, and a labarum, a standard carrying the sign of Christ and closely associated with the emperor on coins and in processions.
Quote ID: 767
Time Periods: 4
Barbarians within the Gates of Rome
Thomas S. Burns
Book ID: 37 Page: xix
Section: 3D
. . .Roman soil derived from the need to billet and move Roman troops and the practice of receiving barbarian peoples into the Empire - receptio.
Quote ID: 744
Time Periods: 45
Christian Initiation and Baptism in the Holy Spirit: Evidence from the First Eight Centuries
Kilian McDonnell and George T. Montague
Book ID: 53 Page: 130
Section: 3D
The ancients had a much more relaxed attitude about borrowing without attribution, but Jerome is less than honest if we remember what he had said about Ambrose’s heavy borrowing from Didymus the Blind’s treatise On the Holy Spirit. Ambrose was, in Jerome’s words, “a crow garmented in the feathers of a peacock,”{93} a bon mot which Rufinus maliciously repeated for posterity.{94} According to Jerome, Ambrose’s crime was even greater: he turned Didymus’ good Greek into Ambrose’s bad Latin.{95}….
Pastor John notes: John’s note: Oh my!
Quote ID: 1172
Time Periods: 4
Christianity & Paganism in the Fourth to Eighth Centuries
Ramsay MacMullen
Book ID: 57 Page: 35
Section: 3C,3D
By orators, careful to say only what was safe and more than safe, Christian emperors from Constantine on continued to be addressed to their face as “god-like,” divinus, or even as “god,” deus; still at the accession of Justin the Second in 565, the poet laureate rejoiced that kings offered him their bowed heads, “tremble before his name, and adore his divinity.”
Quote ID: 1276
Time Periods: 456
Christianizing the Roman Empire
Ramsay MacMullen
Book ID: 58 Page: 53
Section: 3D
It was such considerations of a material sort that often appear to have been decisive in the selection of late Roman church leaders - like Synesius, not really a Christian, or like Saint Ambrose, not even a priest, both of whom were correctly judged to be of the right circles, eloquence, vigor, and place in the world to provide strength at the summit of the community. Time of Theodosius
Quote ID: 1452
Time Periods: 45
Christianizing the Roman Empire
Ramsay MacMullen
Book ID: 58 Page: 55
Section: 3D
Ambrose intervened and supported his fellow bishop, resisting until in the end, “the authority of divine law being explained, at last and with difficulty the emperor gave in to our reasoning.”
Quote ID: 1455
Time Periods: 4
Christianizing the Roman Empire
Ramsay MacMullen
Book ID: 58 Page: 55
Section: 3D
Last, in A.D. 394, the triumphant emperor Theodosius turned from the battlefield where non-Christian arms had been defeated and addressed the stubborn center of non-Christian loyalties, Rome itself. He had before him a delegation of senators come to his palace. He made “a speech calling for the abandoning of the error in his terms that they once espoused, and the adoption of the Christian faith, the good word of which brought acquittal from every wrong doing and impiety” - a speech for conversion, in sum, and from the very throne. Yet it availed nothing. The senators could only talk about their ancestral heritage. “Theodosius then replied that the Treasury was overloaded by the costs of cult and sacrifices, he wanted to abolish them, and he did not concur in these practices. Besides, military necessities required the cash.” Against reasons of state, naturally the senators could put up no argument.
Quote ID: 1456
Time Periods: 4
Christianizing the Roman Empire
Ramsay MacMullen
Book ID: 58 Page: 56
Section: 3D
Theodosius assumed that people, at any rate some people, could be turned into coreligionists with his party and himself simply because it would cost them too much money to refuse. He was right, if he can be allowed his own notions of what was involved in becoming or being a Christian. At the very outset of the Christianizing of the monarchy under Constantine, Eusebius noted and deplored “the unspeakable hypocrisy of those accepting the church and adopting the facade, the deceitful name of ‘Christian.’” He gave the cause as “fear of the emperor’s menaces,” which we have seen mentioned already. As a Christian, however, and if otherwise well enough connected, you could line up to receive some of those confiscated estates. You could qualify better for imperial appointment, too, . . .
Quote ID: 1457
Time Periods: 4
Christianizing the Roman Empire
Ramsay MacMullen
Book ID: 58 Page: 57
Section: 3D
The penalties for not subscribing to the religion of the new Establishment by this time, from A.D. 380 or so, were thus being felt throughout the upper levels of society and, of course, much more sharply among the more vulnerable folk. They yielded a natural harvest. But all converts were to be accepted - “that they are false is not for us but for God to judge.”From the 360’s on, there were also times when the man at the top, Julian or a pretender, was non-Christian. Such moments were few and brief; yet they, too, produced their evidently insincere “converts.”
It is reasonable to guess that the bias in source-transmission has passed on to us more information about conversion or apostasy to the church than away from it. Still, it is obvious in which direction the current was flowing the more strongly.
Quote ID: 1459
Time Periods: 4
Christianizing the Roman Empire
Ramsay MacMullen
Book ID: 58 Page: 76/77
Section: 3D
Emperor-worship likewise, as is well known, continued in its more formal aspects: the appointment of provincial high priests, for instance, and the display of imperial images in the chapels of troop commanders and high civil officials. But there were popular manifestations of a genuinely enthusiastic kind that should have been intolerable but weren’t. How could Theodosius in his capital, even that self-consciously Christian monarch, officially rebuke the pious throngs that propitiated the statue of Constantine with sacrifices, lighted lamps, incense, and prayers (and expected this cult to ward off evil in return)? What minatory notice could he possibly take, from his ceremonial carriage, when crowds in a town turned out to welcome him, pagan priests at their head? Or when a no doubt highly nervous orator called him a god to his face, “What are you going to do,” as the girls asks in Oklahoma, “spit in his eye?”
Quote ID: 1470
Time Periods: 4
Christianizing the Roman Empire
Ramsay MacMullen
Book ID: 58 Page: 82
Section: 3D
. . . directly, when the families of the losers in the civil war of A.D. 394 took refuge from the battlefield in churches, though themselves non-Christians, and the victorious emperor Theodosius let them redeem their lives by becoming Christians.
Quote ID: 1472
Time Periods: 4
Christianizing the Roman Empire
Ramsay MacMullen
Book ID: 58 Page: 83
Section: 3D
In Egypt, history hardly seemed to happen outside of Alexandria. There, in the theater and the streets, non-Christians rioted against the emperor’s hostility toward their beliefs in the 380’s and 390’s.
Quote ID: 1473
Time Periods: 4
Christianizing the Roman Empire
Ramsay MacMullen
Book ID: 58 Page: 98
Section: 3D
. . . the praetorian prefect Cynegius.Theodosius had issued to him, or he had somehow obtained, a particularly harsh edict against anyone making burnt offerings. A person like the prefect, armed with such legislation, would naturally welcome and vigorously pursue charges of forbidden sacrifices brought by monks; and , Libanius laments, they used their license to rampage around the cities (of Syria, evidently) and particularly the countryside, in vandalizing mobs. They resemble Egyptian monks a generation later, whose leader, when his victims brought suit for the return of their holy images, boasted, “I peacefully removed your gods...there is no such thing as ‘robbery’ for those who truly possess Christ.”
Quote ID: 1490
Time Periods: 4
Christianizing the Roman Empire
Ramsay MacMullen
Book ID: 58 Page: 99
Section: 3D
In Alexandria, A.D. 391 produced events rather more violent and, in historical perspective, most important. The familiar elements were at work. The bishop there wanted the temple of Dionysus for a church. He asked Theodosius to assign it to him, and he got it. He used that success as a claim on all the city’s temples, took control of them and rifled the vaults of some to learn their secrets. Then, whatever would best arouse contempt and mockery he paraded through the main square. Non-Christians reacted by taking over the Serapeum en masse. They were said to have Christian captives with them, whom they tortured and crucified. After a stand-off of some little time, the bishop called in the provincial troop commander with his soldiers to conduct a sort of siege, while reports to the emperor solicited his intervention. It came in the form of a letter declaring the Christian casualties in the rioting to be martyrs in need of no avenging; but the temple itself was forfeit and, along with all the others, was condemned to destruction. As to non-Christians, their lives were safe, but the emperor’s antagonism was clear from his opening words, accusing “the idle superstition of the heathen.” Monks were called in from the desert to help in the task of demolition; they next moved on to the sacred buildings at Canopus (where they themselves afterward settled among the ruins); and the impulse to destroy spread rapidly over all Egypt.Now for the world to hear that Serapis had gone, that he was nothing, that he had been driven from his home by the Christians, exerted a powerful effect. There were conversions almost on the spot.
Quote ID: 1492
Time Periods: 4
Christianizing the Roman Empire
Ramsay MacMullen
Book ID: 58 Page: 100
Section: 3D
The February law was issued from Milan and represented the will of its bishop, Ambrose; for Theodosius - recently excommunicated by Ambrose, penitent, and very much under his influence - was no natural zealot. Ambrose, on the other hand, was very much a Christian. His restless and imperious ambition for the church’s growth, come what might for the non-Christians, is suggested by his preaching (see above, p.55 & 64), and some of the quality of the man is suggested, too, in the exchange with his sovereign over Callinicum. At issue was the outburst of that city’s bishop and monks against the local Jews. The emperor proposed to punish the offenders, Christians though they were. Ambrose would have none of that. “Perhaps that bishop did grow a little inflamed over the conflagration,” he says with an airy play on words (referring to the burning of a synagogue); “but should not the rigor of the law yield to piety?”. Theodosius for his part grudgingly conceded that, after all, the monks probably ought to be forgiven because they were always into crimes of one sort or another. From the two minds thus revealed, non-Christians could expect little concern over their “rights”.
Quote ID: 1494
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: 47
Section: 3D
It is often said that the Romans of the late empire lost their public spirit, but this is not to say that they had become corrupt. Indeed, in private morality they were more puritanical under Christian rule. However, the Roman Empire had become a burden, and when great demands were made on its constituents, the essential artificiality of the imperial structure was revealed. Many people had never been genuinely committed to Rome or involved with the empire, and they were not distressed at the prospect of its defeat.NOTE: a substandard scholar. Romans were very proud of their Romanness.
Quote ID: 4660
Time Periods: 456
Civilizations of the Middle Ages: A Completely Revised and Expanded Edition of Medieval History, The
Norman F. Cantor
Book ID: 203 Page: 61
Section: 3D
Theodosius, who had already destroyed the enemies of the orthodox Christians within the church, went further than Gratian in the matter of paganism and sought to destroy the enemies of orthodox Christianity outside the church. In 392, after he gained control of the whole empire, he issued an official proscription of paganism, forbidding anyone in any place whatsoever, even in private, to exercise any of the rites of the ancient religion.…
The victory of Theodosius thus marks the final defeat of paganism.
Quote ID: 4677
Time Periods: 4
Climax of Rome, The
Michael Grant
Book ID: 204 Page: 181
Section: 3D
St. Leo the Great (d. 461) complained that Christians still worshipped the Sun.
Quote ID: 4746
Time Periods: 5
Climax of Rome, The
Michael Grant
Book ID: 204 Page: 237/238
Section: 3D
And St Augustine, bearing in mind unsavoury aspects of Constantine’s régime, could not fully accept Eusebius’ eulogy of that ruler, reserving unqualified praise for the contemporary monarch Theodosius I (d. 395). It remained for St Ambrose to introduce a new era of intrepid churchmen by rebuking Theodosius.Pastor John notes: John’s note: Who was really in charge? Theodosius, emperor of Rome as it was, or Ambrose, emperor of Rome as it would be?
Quote ID: 4774
Time Periods: 4
Closing of the Western Mind, The
Charles Freeman
Book ID: 205 Page: 205
Section: 3A4B,3D
In 407 the emperor Honorius gave bishops the specific right to ban pagan funeral rites, and in the same legislation their right to enforce the laws aimed at Jews, pagans and heretics was reaffirmed. In the following year bishops were given equal status to the praetorian prefects in that there was no appeal from their judgments. Sitting in the courts now became a major part of a bishop’s life. Augustine would complain that he had so many cases he often had to sit through the whole morning and into the siesta. His time was filled with property disputes, cases of adultery, inheritance cases and the enforcement of laws against pagans and Donatists.
Quote ID: 4899
Time Periods: 45
Closing of the Western Mind, The
Charles Freeman
Book ID: 205 Page: 221
Section: 3D
Like most of the grander bishops of his day, Ambrose was an enthusiastic builder responsible for a number of large churches in Milan, among them the Basilica Ambrosiana, destined to be the city’s new cathedral, outside the city walls, where he himself planned to be buried under the altar. His pretensions were criticized--the bones of martyrs, or Apostles if they could be found, were more appropriate founding relics for a church than those of the builder.
Quote ID: 4929
Time Periods: 4
Closing of the Western Mind, The
Charles Freeman
Book ID: 205 Page: 221/222
Section: 3D
Sometime after Easter of 386, Ambrose, as he tells the story in a letter to his sister, had a presentiment that he knew where two local martyrs, Protasius and Gervasius, were buried. Sure enough, when the earth in the chosen spot was scraped away, two complete bodies were found. Their excellent preservation after perhaps some hundred years underground (there was even blood around their severed heads, Ambrose reported to his sister) might have cast doubt on the identification, but Ambrose hurriedly announced that this was the evidence that they were indeed the martyrs, miraculously preserved by God.
Quote ID: 4930
Time Periods: 4
Closing of the Western Mind, The
Charles Freeman
Book ID: 205 Page: 223
Section: 3D
In 388 a Christian mob, led by their own bishop, had destroyed a synagogue in Callinicum, a remote town on the Euphrates. Theodosius, who knew the importance of maintaining order on the borders and subjecting all equally to the laws, ordered the local governor to punish the criminals and compensate the victims. (Compare the edict from the Theodosian Code quoted earlier, p. 212.) Ambrose raised the issue directly in a letter to the emperor. Surely a Christian could not be responsible for re-creating a house “where Christ was denied”? and what if the bishop refused as a matter of conscience? Was Theodosius to make a martyr of him? Even more chillingly for the modern reader, Ambrose said that he himself would be happy to take responsibility for the burning: “I declare that I burned down the synogogue; at least that I gave the orders that there would be no building in which Christ was denied.”
Quote ID: 4931
Time Periods: 4
Closing of the Western Mind, The
Charles Freeman
Book ID: 205 Page: 224
Section: 3D
Rioting in Thessalonika had resulted in the death of the garrison commander, one Butheric. Theodosius, far away in Milan, ordered retaliation, and the accounts suggest his temper got the best of him and he requested no quarter be given; thousands apparently died in the ensuing massacre.
Quote ID: 4932
Time Periods: 4
Closing of the Western Mind, The
Charles Freeman
Book ID: 205 Page: 224
Section: 3D
Who was using whom is not easily established. In all the surviving historical accounts the massacre and Theodosius’ penance are associated, suggesting that contemporaries saw the emperor as successfully redeeming himself. In other words, Theodosius extricated himself skillfully from a difficult situation. Ambrose, however, presented a completely different slant on the matter. Here was the emperor, deep in sin, coming to church to be purged of it--effectively an emperor was accepting the supremacy of the church over state matters.
Quote ID: 4933
Time Periods: 4
Closing of the Western Mind, The
Charles Freeman
Book ID: 205 Page: 225
Section: 3D
When Pope Gregory VII excommunicated the emperor Henry IV in the 1070s, it was Ambrose’s action against Theodosius that he called on to enforce his ultimate supremacy (successfully in that Henry came to seek penance).
Quote ID: 4934
Time Periods: 47
Closing of the Western Mind, The
Charles Freeman
Book ID: 205 Page: 225
Section: 3D
Within a few weeks of his public penance, Theodosius had passed laws that in effect banned all expressions of cult worship at pagan shrines. Encouraged by the initiative, Christian mobs now began destroying the great shrines of the ancient world. Nearly twelve hundred years after their inauguration, the Olympic games were held for the last time in 395.
Quote ID: 4935
Time Periods: 4
Closing of the Western Mind, The
Charles Freeman
Book ID: 205 Page: 225
Section: 3D
In a masterly funeral oration, Theodosius was woven by Ambose into the fabric of the Church and installed in glory in heaven:Relieved therefore of the doubt of conflicts, Theodosius of worshipful memory now enjoys everlasting light and eternal tranquillity, and for the deeds which he performed in this body, he is recompensed with fruits of divine reward. And it is because Theodosius of worshipful memory loved the Lord his God, that he deserved the company of saints.
Quote ID: 4936
Time Periods: 4
Closing of the Western Mind, The
Charles Freeman
Book ID: 205 Page: 230
Section: 3D
Yet Theodosius did not permit the return of the Altar of Victory, and, in the 390s, under the influence of Ambrose, he passed the first comprehensive laws banning pagan worship.
Quote ID: 4938
Time Periods: 4
Closing of the Western Mind, The
Charles Freeman
Book ID: 205 Page: 250
Section: 3D
It is hard to find a Christian of the period who has found serenity, and the most committed, Jerome and Augustine, for instance, appear to be the most tortured.
Quote ID: 4954
Time Periods: 45
Closing of the Western Mind, The
Charles Freeman
Book ID: 205 Page: 313
Section: 3D
As we have seen, Theodosius was outmanoeuvred by Cyril, who pushed through a doctrine for which he then attempted to gain the support of the imperial authorities through massive bribery.
Quote ID: 4997
Time Periods: 45
Constantine and the Bishops: The Politics of Intolerance
H.A. Drake
Book ID: 65 Page: 443
Section: 3D
Theodosius did indeed do penance for the slaughter at Thessalonica—this much both Ambrose and his younger contemporary, Saint Augustine, confirm. {3} But neither say anything about access to the church being attempted and denied. Such confrontation as actually occurred, while equally significant, took place not on the steps of the cathedral but in carefully worded paragraphs that Ambrose sent the emperor from the prudent distance of his country estate, whence he had retired on receiving report of the tragedy. In this letter, Ambrose ever so gingerly raised the possibility of denying communion, reporting a dream in which he was “not allowed to offer the Holy Sacrifice” so long as Theodosius was in the church—and even considered these words so sensitive that he told the emperor he wrote them in his own hand (rather than dictating to secretaries) so that none but Theodosius would read them.
Quote ID: 1684
Time Periods: 4
Constantine and the Bishops: The Politics of Intolerance
H.A. Drake
Book ID: 65 Page: 444
Section: 3D
I dare not offer the Holy Sacrifice if you intend to be present. {4}Theodosius responded to this appeal by placing himself amid the penitents outside the cathedral, a self-inflicted punishment from which Ambrose relieved him, in what now appears to be a carefully crafted ceremony of damage control. {5}
Quote ID: 1685
Time Periods: 4
Constantine and the Bishops: The Politics of Intolerance
H.A. Drake
Book ID: 65 Page: 448
Section: 3D
This contrast brings out the real significance of the event depicted by Rubens and Van Dyck and the reason for musing on it here. It is a confrontation between armed might and moral strength, potestas and auctoritas. Its true title should be “Allegory of Church and State”; or, better, “Western Civilization,” for truly what happened in this confrontation, whether it occurred on the steps of the cathedral or in the graceful periods of courtly rhetoric, was that at this moment the theoretical restraints on absolute power developed through centuries of ancient philosophy and rhetoric found both voice and teeth in the institution of the Christian bishop.
Quote ID: 1686
Time Periods: 47
Constantine and the Bishops: The Politics of Intolerance
H.A. Drake
Book ID: 65 Page: 470
Section: 3D
The confrontation between Ambrose and Theodosius was not so much a turning point as a validation of a process that began with Constantine’s decision to use the coercive powers of the state to protect the interests of one Christian party against another. The ultimate effect of Ambrose’s ability to prevail on Theodosius over burning of Callinicum’s synagogue was that it sent forth a signal of indecision at the highest levels which in turn created openings for those Christians who burned to use such extreme measures.
Quote ID: 1687
Time Periods: 4
Constantine’s Sword: The Church and the Jews
James Carroll
Book ID: 68 Page: 200
Section: 3D
The one to give first and masterly expression to this legend was Saint Ambrose (339-397), the bishop of Milan. The son of a Roman official, Ambrose had made his first reputation curiously enough, as the provincial governor of Trier. He was a cultured man, educated in the classics, who had been serving as an imperial governor when the people of Milan spontaneously chose him as their bishop -- a signal of the century’s volatile mix of religion and politics.
Quote ID: 1844
Time Periods: 4
Constantine’s Sword: The Church and the Jews
James Carroll
Book ID: 68 Page: 206
Section: 3D
It was only after Julian, through the successive reigns of the emperors Valentinian and Theodosius, that the empire came to be formally proclaimed Christian; only then that Christian heresy was pronounced a capital crime; only then that pagan worship was officially banned; only then that the authority of the Jewish patriarchate was abolished forever....Once church and state had agreed that it was righteous and legal to execute those Christians -- Docetists, Donatists, Nestorians, Arians --who dissented from defined dogma on relatively arcane matters of theology, why in the world should stiff-necked persons who openly rejected the entire Christian proclamation be permitted to live?
Quote ID: 1849
Time Periods: 4
Constantine’s Sword: The Church and the Jews
James Carroll
Book ID: 68 Page: 207
Section: 3D
In 388, a Christian mob, led by the bishop in Callinicus, a small city on Euphrates, attacked and burned a synagogue, destroying it utterly. They also destroyed the chapel of a Gnostic sect, despite the fact that its leaders had just agreed, under pressure from the emperor Theodosius, to accept Nicene Christianity. So Theodosius ordered the Christians of Callinicus to rebuild the Gnostic chapel and the synagogue.
Quote ID: 1850
Time Periods: 4
Constantine’s Sword: The Church and the Jews
James Carroll
Book ID: 68 Page: 207
Section: 3D
Still, the action in defense of a Jewish community prompted an immediate and ferocious response from none other than Ambrose. In a direct written challenge to Theodosius -- at whose funeral most of a decade later he would recount the Helena legend -- the bishop of Milan declared himself ready to burn synagogues “that there might not be a place where Christ is denied.” A synagogue, he said, is “a haunt of infidels, a home of the impious, a hiding place of madmen, under the damnation of God Himself.” {36} To order the rebuilding of such a place, once it had been burned, was an act of treason to the Faith.Theodosius yielded, but insisted that the Christians of Callinicus had to restore the sacred articles of worship they had plundered. He would rebuild the synagogue himself. Ambrose rejected this, too. The principle had to be established that the destruction of the “vile perfidy” of Jewish worship was a righteous act, in no way to be punished. Ambrose challenged the emperor to his face, during Mass at the cathedral of Milan. Rosemary Radford Ruether describes the scene: “Coming down from the altar to face him, the bishop declared that he would not continue with the Eucharist until the emperor obeyed. The emperor bowed to this threat of excommunication, and the rioters at Callinicum went unadmonished.” {37}
Quote ID: 1851
Time Periods: 4
Continuity and Change in Roman Religion
J. H. W. G. Liebeschuetz
Book ID: 313 Page: 303
Section: 3D
These were the circumstances in which Gratian and Theodosius ended the Constantinian compromise. Not content with being Christians who happened to be emperors, they insisted on being Christian emperors.{5}
Quote ID: 7636
Time Periods: 4
Conversion
A.D. Nock
Book ID: 70 Page: 158/159
Section: 3D
It was now possible to enter the Church without any profound changes of mental furniture and spiritual orientation, and, if Julian of Eugenius was in power, to leave the Church with equal ease.Pastor John’s Note: In Eugenius’ reign (392–394)? Christian who opposed the extreme measures of Theodosius, but lost the battle.
Quote ID: 1962
Time Periods: 4
Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Vol. 3, The
Edward Gibbon
Book ID: 319 Page: 137
Section: 3D
The ruin of Paganism, in the age of Theodosius, is perhaps the only example of the total extirpation of any ancient and popular superstition, and may therefore deserve to be considered as a singular event in the history of the human mind.….
The laws of Moses and the examples of Jewish history {1} were hastily, perhaps erroneously, applied by the clergy to the mind and universal reign of Christianity.
Quote ID: 7703
Time Periods: 4
Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Vol. 3, The
Edward Gibbon
Book ID: 319 Page: 140
Section: 3D
[The first paragraph is all I have used]The altar of Victory was again restored by Julian, tolerated by Valentinian, and once more banished from the senate by the zeal of Gratian.{3} But the emperor yet spared the statues of the gods which were exposed to the public veneration: four hundred and twenty-four temples, or chapels, still remained to satisfy the devotion of the people, and in every quarter of Rome the delicacy of the Christians was offended by the fumes of idolatrous sacrifice.{4}
….
4 The Notitia Urbis, more recent than Constantine, does not find one Christian church worthy to be named among the edifices of the city. Ambrose (tom.ii Epist. xvii. p. 825) deplores the public scandals of Rome, which continually offended the eyes , the ears, and the nostrils of the faithful.
Quote ID: 7704
Time Periods: 234
Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Vol. 3, The
Edward Gibbon
Book ID: 319 Page: 143/144
Section: 3A1,3A1B,3D
…the gods of antiquity were dragged in triumph at the chariot-wheels of Theodosius{2} In a full meeting of the senate the emperor proposed, according to the forms of the republic, the important question, whether the worship of Jupiter or that of Christ should be the religion of the Romans? The liberty of suffrages, which he affected to allow, was destroyed by the hopes and fears that his presence inspired; and the arbitrary exile of Symmachus was a recent admonition that it might be dangerous to oppose the wishes of the monarch.….
The hasty conversion of the senate must be attributed either to supernatural or to sordid motives; and many of these reluctant proselytes betrayed, on every favourable occasion, their secret disposition to throw aside the mask of odious dissimulation. But they were gradually fixed in the new religion, as the cause of the ancient became more hopeless; they yielded to the authority of the emperor, to the fashion of the times, and to the entreaties of their wives and children,{2} who were instigated and governed by the clergy of Rome and the monks of the East.
Quote ID: 7706
Time Periods: 4
Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Vol. 3, The
Edward Gibbon
Book ID: 319 Page: 146
Section: 3D
…the same laws which had been originally published in the provinces of the East, were applied, after the defeat of Maximus, to the whole extent of the Western empire; and every victory of the orthodox Theodosius contributed to the triumph of the Christian and catholic faith.{1}
Quote ID: 7707
Time Periods: 4
Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Vol. 3, The
Edward Gibbon
Book ID: 319 Page: 147
Section: 3D
In Gaul, the holy Martin, bishop of Tours,{3} marched at the head of his faithful monks to destroy the idols, the temples, and the consecrated trees of his extensive diocese; and, in the execution of this arduous task, the prudent reader will judge whether Martin was supported by the aid of miraculous powers or of carnal weapons.
Quote ID: 7708
Time Periods: 4
Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Vol. 3, The
Edward Gibbon
Book ID: 319 Page: 149
Section: 3D
But in almost every province of the Roman world, an army of fanatics, without authority and without discipline, invaded the peaceful inhabitants; and the ruin of the fairest structures of antiquity still displays the ravages of those barbarians who alone had time and inclination to execute such laborious destruction.
Quote ID: 7709
Time Periods: ?
Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Vol. 3, The
Edward Gibbon
Book ID: 319 Page: 151/152
Section: 3D
At that time{2} the archiepiscopal throne of Alexandria was filled by Theophilus, {3} the perpetual enemy of peace and virtue; a bold, bad man, whose hands were alternately polluted with gold and with blood.….
Theophilus proceeded to demolish the temple of Serapis, without any other difficulties than those which he found in the weight and solidity of the materials.
….
The valuable library of Alexandria was pillaged or destroyed; and near twenty years afterwards, the appearance of the empty shelves excited the regret and indignation of every spectator whose mind was not totally darkened by religious prejudice.{2}
Quote ID: 7711
Time Periods: 45
Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Vol. 3, The
Edward Gibbon
Book ID: 319 Page: 155
Section: 3D
The temples of the Roman empire were deserted or destroyed; but the ingenious superstition of the Pagans still attempted to elude the laws of Theodosius, by which all sacrifices had been severely prohibited. The inhabitants of the country, whose conduct was less exposed to the eye of malicious curiosity, disguised their religious under the appearance of convivial meetings.
Quote ID: 7713
Time Periods: 4
Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Vol. 3, The
Edward Gibbon
Book ID: 319 Page: 156
Section: 3D
The act of sacrificing and the practice of divination by the entrails of the victim are declared (without any regard to the object of the inquiry) a crime of high treason against the state, which can be expiated only by the death of the guilty.….
The use of any of these profane and illegal ceremonies subjects the offender to the forfeiture of the house or estate where they have been performed; and if he has artfully chosen the property of another for the scene of his impiety, he is compelled to discharge, without delay, a heavy fine of twenty-five pounds of gold….
Quote ID: 7714
Time Periods: 4
Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Vol. 3, The
Edward Gibbon
Book ID: 319 Page: 157/158
Section: 3D
In the cruel reigns of Decius and Diocletian Christianity had been proscribed, as a revolt from the ancient and hereditary religion of the empire; and the unjust suspicions….….
But the same excuses of fear and ignorance cannot be applied to the Christian emperors, who violated the precepts of humanity and of the Gospel.
….
Had the pagans been animated by the undaunted zeal which possessed the minds of the primitive believers, the triumph of the church must have been stained with blood; and the martyrs of Jupiter and Apollo might have embraced the glorious opportunity of devoting their lives and fortunes at the foot of their altars. But such obstinate zeal was not congenial to the loose and careless temper of Polytheism.
….
… the ready obedience of the Pagans protected them from the pains and penalties of the Theodosian Code. {2} Instead of asserting that authority of the gods was superior to that of the emperor, they desisted, with a plaintive murmur from the use of those sacred rites which their sovereign had condemned.
Quote ID: 7715
Time Periods: 34
Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Vol. 3, The
Edward Gibbon
Book ID: 319 Page: 158/159
Section: 3D
A nation of slaves is always prepared to applaud the clemency of their master who, in the abuse of absolute power, does not proceed to the last extremes of injustice and oppression. Theodosius might undoubtedly have proposed to his Pagan subjects the alternative of baptism or of death; and the eloquent Libanius has praised the moderation of a prince who never enacted, by any positive law, that all his subjects should immediately embrace and practice the religion of their sovereign.{1}
Quote ID: 7716
Time Periods: 45
Early Christian Church, The
J.G. Davies
Book ID: 214 Page: 215
Section: 3D
With Theodosius’ victory on 6th September 394 the pagan renaissance collapsed and the unsuccessful struggle for a lost cause came to an end. Arcadius in the East and Honorius in the West promulgated laws prohibiting sacrifice and temple worship - henceforth the only religion was to be Christianity.
Quote ID: 5342
Time Periods: 45
Early Christian Church, The
J.G. Davies
Book ID: 214 Page: 216
Section: 3D
In the year 388 the Christians of Callinicum, a small town on the Euphrates, burnt down a Jewish synagogue and some monks had also fired a church belonging to a group of Valentinian Gnostics. Theodosius ordered the local bishop to rebuild the synagogue at his own expense and the monks to be punished for their disorderly conduct. Ambrose then saw fit to intervene, arguing that this was in effect a condemnation of the bishop to martyrdom, since this was the only way he could avoid the apostasy he would certainly commit were he to obey the imperial command. When Theodosius directed that the cost of the rebuilding was to be borne by the State, Ambrose was still not satisfied, declaring that in a Christian State public money should not be spent on non-Christian worship, and as for the plea that the State must maintain order, religion was more important than even that. The bishop followed this with a sermon, directly aimed at the emperor who was in the congregation, and indeed he was prepared to forbid him communion if he did not withdraw his decision. Theodosius gave way and the civil authority thus bowed to that of the Church.The second clash between Ambrose and the emperor arose in connexion with happenings at Thessalonica in 390. A charioteer, idolized by the populace, attempted to rape a Gothic officer by the name of Butheric and was cast into prison. Riots took place and Butheric was killed. Theodosius sent orders for a secret massacre; soldiers were to surround the ampitheatre when the people gathered to see the games and were then to slaughter the spectators. Although the emperor relented and sent a revocation of his order, it arrived too late and seven thousand were butchered. Ambrose accordingly excommunicated him and it was only after a penance lasting several months that Theodosius was restored to communion. In this incident many have seen the beginning of the road to Canossa, where in 1070 Henry IV was humiliated before Gregory VII, and of the claim of the medieval popes to the right to depose emperors.
Quote ID: 5343
Time Periods: 47
Early Christian Church, The
J.G. Davies
Book ID: 214 Page: 218
Section: 3D
Finally Romulus Agustulus (475-6) resigned the purple to Zeno, thus bringing the western empire to its inglorious end. It is a testimony to the strength of the Church that it survived all this turbulence and destruction and emerged in the West as the one unifying and civilizing influence, gradually converting the Semi-Arian Goths and Vandals to orthodoxy and spreading the faith among the pagan Franks and Burgundians who now lived within the bounds of the old Roman empire.
Quote ID: 5344
Time Periods: 5
Early Christian Church, The
J.G. Davies
Book ID: 214 Page: 220
Section: 3A1,3D
....the relations of Church and State in the East, where the former came to be dominated by the latter, and the contrast with the situation in the West, as evidenced by the exchanges between Ambrose and Theodosius, where the Church came to dominate the State.
Quote ID: 5345
Time Periods: 4
Early Christian Church, The
J.G. Davies
Book ID: 214 Page: 229
Section: 3D
....by the middle of the fifth century the anti-pagan writings had all but ceased; educated men were now in the main Christian, and the non-Christian barbarians required other methods.
Quote ID: 5347
Time Periods: 5
Early Christian Church, The
J.G. Davies
Book ID: 214 Page: 276
Section: 3D
Since Christianity was now the official religion of the empire, both East and West, all citizens were nominally Christians.
Quote ID: 5362
Time Periods: 4
Early Christian Church, The
J.G. Davies
Book ID: 214 Page: 279
Section: 3D
Under Honorius an eastern ascetic named Telemachus or Almachius came to Rome and, attending a show in the amphitheatre, threw himself between two contestants, only to be stoned to death by the spectators, furious at being deprived of their sport. Honorius, informed of this happening, forthwith declared that all bloody contests were to cease.
Quote ID: 5363
Time Periods: 4
End of Ancient Christianity, The
Robert Markus
Book ID: 219 Page: 115
Section: 3D
The years 399 to 401 were the climax of the forcible repression of paganism in North Africa. The tensions created in Carthage were not without parallel elsewhere. At Sufes in Byzacena a Christian mob broke up a statue of Hercules. Sixty of them lost their lives in the ensuing riot.{25}
Quote ID: 5429
Time Periods: 45
Faith and Fratricide: The Theological Roots of Anti-Semitism
Rosemary Radford Ruether
Book ID: 88 Page: 189
Section: 3A2A,3D
Theodosius I passed a blanket decree which made it a crime of adultery for any Christian man or women to marry a Jew or Jewess. Capital punishment was to be exacted for this crime.
Quote ID: 2342
Time Periods: 4
Fall of Rome: And The End of Civilization, The
Bryan Ward-Perkins
Book ID: 222 Page: 47
Section: 3D
Photo: 3.4 The emperor Honorius trying to look like a military leader, on an ivory plaque of AD 406. In elaborate armour, he holds an orb surmounted by a Victory, and a standard with the words ‘In the name of Christ, may you always be victorious’. Reality was less glorious—Honorius himself never took the field; and his armies triumphed over very few enemies other than usurpers.
Quote ID: 5484
Time Periods: 5
Fall of the Roman Empire: A New History of Rome and the Barbarians, The
Peter Heather
Book ID: 223 Page: 125
Section: 3A1,3D
Even more impressively, emperors helped set the agendas to be discussed, their officials orchestrated the proceedings, and state machinery was used to enforce the decisions reached. More generally, they made religious law for the Church – Book 16 of the Theodosian Code is entirely concerned with such matters – and influenced appointments to top ecclesiastical positions.
Quote ID: 5573
Time Periods: 4
Formation of Christendom, The
Judith Herrin
Book ID: 225 Page: 64
Section: 3A1,3D
Ambrose won a showdown with Theodosius. Forced him to do public penance for a massacre of 7,000 in reprisal for an insurrection.
Quote ID: 5650
Time Periods: 4
From Roman To Merovingian Gaul
Alexander Callander Murray
Book ID: 93 Page: 63
Section: 3D
a. 385 Year 358. Arcadius and Bauto....Priscillian, knowing he would be condemned at the Synod of Bordeaux, appealed o the emperor [Maximus]. He was tried at Trier and, along with Euchrotia, wife of Delfidius the teacher of rhetoric, Latronianus, and other partners in his error, was put to death by Euvodius, Maximus’s praetorian perfect. At Bordeaux a certain disciple of Priscillian called Urbica was stoned to death on account of her obstinate impiety by an unruly mob.
Pastor John notes: John’s note: Execution for heresy. What did she actually do?
Quote ID: 2386
Time Periods: 4
From Roman To Merovingian Gaul
Alexander Callander Murray
Book ID: 93 Page: 175/176
Section: 3D
Emperors Arcadiius and Honorius to Julian, proconsul of Africa. We decree that the Donatists and heretics, whom the forbearance of Our Clemency has protected to this point, are to feel the force of the appropriate authority. Let them recognize by a clear order that they are deprived of the right to bear witness and to make a will and of entering into contracts with someone, and must forever be branded by infamy and be separated from the gatherings of decent people and participation in civil life.Ecclesiastical property of the Donatists is to be transferred to Catholics; Donatist clergy are to be exiled. Those who harbor fugitives fleeing this penalty will have their property confiscated and suffer the same punishment as a fugitive.
. . . .
Therefore anyone who is invested with the rank of proconsul, vicar, or count of the first rank shall be compelled to pay 200 pounds of silver to be added the resources of our fisc, unless he changes his mind and accepts Catholic practice. No one should suppose this will be enough to check their determination. Let the fine be imposed as often as such a person is convicted of attending a prohibited gathering, and if, after five times he cannot be brought back from his error by fines, let him at that point be referred to Our Clemency for us to pass server judgement regarding his entire property and his status.
We apply the same kind of penalties to other dignitaries (honorati);....
Quote ID: 2396
Time Periods: 4
Gladiators
Michael Grant
Book ID: 97 Page: 123
Section: 3D
At Rome, in 399, the western emperor Honorius closed what remained of the gladiatorial schools.
Quote ID: 2499
Time Periods: 4
History of the Franks
Gregory Bishop of Tours
Book ID: 110 Page: 39/40
Section: 3D
The queen did not cease to urge him to recognize the true God and cease worshiping idols. But he could not be influenced in any way to this belief, until at last a war arose with the Alamanni, in which he was driven by necessity to confess what before he had of his free will denied. It came about that as the two armies were fighting fiercely, there was much slaughter, and Clovis’s army began to be in danger of destruction. He saw it and raised his eyes to heaven, and with remorse in his heart he burst into tears and cried: “Jesus Christ, whom Clotilda asserts to be the son of the living God, who art said to give aid to those in distress, and to bestow victory on those who hope in thee, I beseech the glory of thy aid, with the vow that if thou wilt grant me victory over these enemies, and I shall know that power which she says that people dedicated in thy name have had from thee, I will believe in thee and be baptized in thy name. For I have invoked my own gods, but, as I find, they have withdrawn from aiding me; and therefore I believe that they possess no power, since they do not help those who obey them. I now call upon thee, I desire to believe thee, only let me be rescued from my adversaries.” And when he said this, the Alamanni turned their backs, and began to disperse in flight.
Quote ID: 2647
Time Periods: 56
History of the Franks
Gregory Bishop of Tours
Book ID: 110 Page: xxv
Section: 3D
It is clear that in the sixth-century state of mind in Gaul nothing was purely secular. As far as possible all secular elements had been expelled.....
The most promising element in the situation was the Frankish state. Apparently the Frankish kingship was not to any large extent a magico-religious institution, but simply a recent development arising out of the conquest. As an institution it was not grounded in the superstitious past, and the cold hostility of the bishops kept it from the development usual in a benighted society. To this chance we may perhaps attribute a momentous result; in it lay the possibility and promise of a secular state.
In the case of King Chilperic we apparently have a premature development in this direction.
....
Chilperic used often to say: “Behold our treasury has remained poor, our wealth has been transferred to the churches; there is no king but the bishops; my office has perished and passed over to the bishops of the cities.”{3} Chilperic was thus the forerunner of the secular state in France.
Quote ID: 2644
Time Periods: 6
Jew in the Medieval World: A Sourcebook, The
Jacob Marcus
Book ID: 118 Page: 1
Section: 3D
The third selection, a law of Theodosius II (408-410), prohibits Jews from holding any advantageous office of honor in the Roman state. They were compelled, however, to assume those public offices which entailed huge financial losses and almost certain ruin, and they were not even granted the hope of an ultimate exemption. This Novella (New Law) III of Theodosius II also makes a direct attack on the Jewish religion by reenacting a law which forbade the building of new Jewish synagogues.
Quote ID: 2758
Time Periods: ?
John Calvin’s Treatise on Relics
John Calvin
Book ID: 710 Page: 440
Section: 3D
It is our will that all the peoples who are ruled by the administration of Our Clemency shall practice that religion which the divine Peter the Apostle transmitted to the Romans….
Quote ID: 9892
Time Periods: 4
John Calvin’s Treatise on Relics
John Calvin
Book ID: 710 Page: 440
Section: 3D
I. We command that 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: 9893
Time Periods: 4
Last Pagans of Rome, The
Alan Cameron
Book ID: 241 Page: 93
Section: 3D
In his continuation of Eusebius’s Ecclesiastical History, written in 402/3, Rufinus of Aquileia gives a vivid account of the confrontation between Theodosius and Eugenius by the river Frigidus.
Quote ID: 6041
Time Periods: 45
Last Pagans of Rome, The
Alan Cameron
Book ID: 241 Page: 94
Section: 3D
Most modern critics have taken Christian representations of the Frigidus more or less literally as historical narratives that describe the defeat of a dangerous pagan uprising, reflecting a perspective unique to the special circumstances of Eugenius’ rebellion. There are problems with this assumption, nor is it enough to concede (as often done) that some of the writers may have exaggerated. The distortion that must be allowed for goes much deeper than simple exaggeration. The truth is that all these accounts are stylized in ways that call into question their claim to be considered historical narratives at all in the modern sense.
Quote ID: 6042
Time Periods: 4
Last Pagans of Rome, The
Alan Cameron
Book ID: 241 Page: 195
Section: 3D
It is a mistake to see the occasional pagan prefect in the first decade or two of the fifth century as proof that paganism remained strong and anti-pagan legislation ineffective. No individual pagan could have used the nine or ten months of his prefecture to do much more for the pagan cause than restore a few statues. Indeed, pagans who accepted high office from Christian emperors were more likely to be seen as collaborators than champions of the cause. Heresy was the real worry for both church and court. As far as paganism was concerned, it was enough that there was no more sacrifice and the temples were closed. The stragglers would soon come over.
Quote ID: 6075
Time Periods: 5
Last Pagans of Rome, The
Alan Cameron
Book ID: 241 Page: 197
Section: 3D
If he remained a catechumen for many years, {115} Volusianus was no doubt a poor Christian, the despair of his pious niece. But there is no evidence that he was ever a committed pagan, much less as late as his prefecture of 428-29. As Peter Brown wrote in 1967, Volusianus was born into “a post-pagan world,” a man who at best knew the pagan cults from books, not the streets and temples. {116}
Quote ID: 6076
Time Periods: 5
Last Pagans of Rome, The
Alan Cameron
Book ID: 241 Page: 228
Section: 3C,3D
It has been plausibly conjectured that it was Drepanius himself who compiled the corpus of the Panegyrici Latini, all of which, like Drepanius, have strong Gallic connections.{89} Imperial panegyric is a highly conventional form, to start with apparently unaffected by the conversion of Constantine, who is the subject of no fewer than five of the speeches. They are characterized by “a neutral monotheism which would be acceptable to Christians and pagans alike.”{90}. . . .
Among those who came out of Emona in procession to greet Theodosius, [see symbol] 37 describes flamines venerable in their purple robes and pontifices wearing apices, the conical hat worn by various pagan priests. But no mention of Christian clergy. Section 4.5 has been generally thought to go further than most divine comparisons:
Let the land of Crete, famous as the cradle of the child Jupiter, and Delos, where the divine twins learned to crawl, and Thebes, illustrious as the nursemaid of Hercules, yield to this land. We do not know whether to credit the stories we have heard, but Spain has given us a god we can actually see” (deum…quem videmus).
Would even the most liberal Christian have followed classicizing conventions that far? In this case the answer is yes.
. . . .
Thanks to a brilliant recent discovery by Turcan-Verkerk, we now know that Drepanius (as he should be called) was not only a Christian, but the author of devotional poetry. We can now read one of his poems, an openly Christian piece titled On the Pascal Candle. {93}
Quote ID: 6089
Time Periods: 4
Later Roman Empire, The
Averil Cameron
Book ID: 243 Page: 112
Section: 4B,3D
“The Roman state at the end of the fourth century differed from its predecessor in terms of natural development, or changing external factors, rather than because of any major change of direction.”
Quote ID: 6146
Time Periods: 4
Later Roman Empire, The
Averil Cameron
Book ID: 243 Page: 172
Section: 3D
In honor of the Emperor Theodosius and others, the proconsul of Asia in the 380s restored a temple at Ephesus with reliefs showing Theodosius and other dignitaries surrounding the goddess Artemis.
Quote ID: 6170
Time Periods: 4
Livy: In Fourteen Volumes. LCL 301
Translated by Evan T. Sage
Book ID: 560 Page: 439/441
Section: 3D
When that consul was setting out with his colleague Gaius Lutatius to Sicily and the fleet, Metellus the pontifex maximus had detained him for the religious ceremonies; this praetor was prevented from going to Sardinia by Publius Licinius. Both in the senate and before the assembly the quarrel was carried on with great vigour…….
The religious argument finally prevailed; the priest was ordered {2} to obey the pontifex, and by command of the people the fine was remitted to him.
Quote ID: 9229
Time Periods: 04
Lost Christianities: The Battles for Scripture and the Faiths We Never Knew
Bart D. Ehrman
Book ID: 420 Page: 250/251
Section: 3C,3D,4B
As a result of the favors Constantine poured out upon the church, conversion to the Christian faith soon became “popular.” At the beginning of the fourth century, Christians may have comprised something like 5 to 7 percent of the population; but with the conversion of Constantine the church grew in leaps and bounds. By the end of the century it appears to have been the religion of choice of fully half the empire. After Constantine, every emperor except one was Christian.{3} Theodosius I (emperor 379-95 CE) made Christianity (specifically Roman Christianity, with the bishop of Rome having ultimate religious authority) the official religion of the state.
Quote ID: 8608
Time Periods: 4
Making of a Christian Aristocracy, The
Michele Renee Salzman
Book ID: 297 Page: 181
Section: 3A1,3C,3D
Clergy even received certain benefits that made clear their favored status. So, for instance, clergy and other Christians were granted the rather unusual right of freeing their slaves in church according to Roman law (C.Th. 4.7.1 321). This is one indication of this emperor’s willingness to use law to support the institutional prestige of the church.
Quote ID: 7446
Time Periods: 4
Making of a Christian Aristocracy, The
Michele Renee Salzman
Book ID: 297 Page: 183
Section: 3D
In his legislation Theodosius I indicated his willingness to use force to punish those who disobeyed his restrictions on pagan rites, such as sacrifice. {22} But even Theodosius did not attempt to force conversion. Rather, he used more subtle methods, persuasion and symbolic action, to gain his ends.
Quote ID: 7449
Time Periods: 4
Making of a Christian Aristocracy, The
Michele Renee Salzman
Book ID: 297 Page: 196
Section: 3D
The late date of laws against the apostasy of high officials underscores the imperial unwillingness to act against aristocratic office holders. Not until 391 do we find a code concerning apostasy that singles out high office holders, even though it may well have been a problem even earlier: “If any splendor of rank has been conferred upon or is inborn in those persons who have departed from the faith and are blinded in mind, who have deserted the cult and worship of the sacrosanct religion and have given themselves over to sacrifices, they shall forfeit such rank, so that, removed from their position and status, they shall be branded with perpetual infamy and shall not be numbered even among the lowest dregs of the ignoble crowd” (C.Th. 16.7.5). {79}
Quote ID: 7461
Time Periods: 4
Making of a Christian Aristocracy, The
Michele Renee Salzman
Book ID: 297 Page: 200
Section: 3A1,3D,4B
By the 380’s and 390’s conversion may well have appeared to many late Roman aristocrats as the best way to preserve their world. Aristocrats did have to adapt in certain ways to become Christian, but what is often missed is that Christianity also adapted as it came into contact with the aristocracy.
Quote ID: 7467
Time Periods: 4
Making of a Christian Aristocracy, The
Michele Renee Salzman
Book ID: 297 Page: 212
Section: 3D,4B
Some Christians considered both friendship and “Christian love” largely in classical philosophical terms. The writings of Ambrose are exemplary of this position. Ambrose’s De officiis ministrorum imitates the form and accepts much of what Cicero and classical philosophers have to say about friendship. Indeed, Ambrose did not do much more than translate Cicero’s views on friendship into a Christian tract. {69} Ambrose’s text aimed at identifying biblical passages to illustrate Ciceronian ideas; so, for example, Ambrose cited the biblical examples of Jonathan and Ahimelech as men who rightly put friendship not before virtue, but before their own safety, an idea expressed in other words by Cicero. {70}
Quote ID: 7482
Time Periods: 4
Nova Historia [New History]
Zosimus Historicus
Book ID: 376 Page: 168
Section: 3D
His folly was daily augmented by his voluptuous course of life;
Quote ID: 8238
Time Periods: ?
Nova Historia [New History]
Zosimus Historicus
Book ID: 376 Page: 168
Section: 3D
Add to this, that the temples of the gods were everywhere violated, nor was it safe for anyone to profess a belief that there are any gods, much less to look up to heaven and to adore them.
Quote ID: 8239
Time Periods: 456
Nova Historia [New History]
Zosimus Historicus
Book ID: 376 Page: 195/196
Section: 3D
The emperor Theodosius after these successes proceeded to Rome, where he declared his son Honorius emperor, and appointing Stilico to the command of his forces there, left him as guardian to his son. Before his departure, he convened the senate, who firmly adhered to the ancient rites and customs of their country, and could not be induced to join with those who were inclined to contempt for the gods. In an oration he exhorted them to relinquish their former errors, as he termed them, and to embrace the Christian faith, which promise absolution form all sins and impieties. But not a single individual of them would be persuaded to this, nor recede from the ancient ceremonies, which had been handed down to them from the building of their city.. . .
Theodosius, therefore, told them, that the treasury was too much exhausted by the expence of sacred rites and sacrifices, and that he should, therefore, abolish them.
. . .
By these means, the Roman empire, having been l130 devastated by degrees, is become the habitation of Barbarians.
Quote ID: 8243
Time Periods: 45
Origins of Modern Europe, The
R. Allen Brown
Book ID: 256 Page: 40
Section: 3D
Bede in England has the splendid story of King Sigeberht of Essex who was slain by his own kinsmen because, under the influence of new-found Christianity, he took to forgiving his enemies in flagrant contravention of the barbarian’s code.
Quote ID: 6474
Time Periods: 7
Orosius: Seven Books of History against the Pagans
A. T. Fear
Book ID: 165 Page: 327
Section: 3D
It was in the 17th year of the same emperor’s reign, when the Lord Jesus Christ voluntarily gave Himself up to suffer, though it was the Jews who blasphemously arrested and fixed Him to the cross.
Quote ID: 3483
Time Periods: 45
Paganism to Christianity in the Roman Empire
Walter Woodburn Hyde
Book ID: 172 Page: 211
Section: 3D
After Theodosius recovered from a severe illness at Thessalonica in 380 he was baptized by an Athanasian bishop {72} and on February twenty-seventh of that year the three Augusti issued the famous edict which imposed Catholicism on the basis of the Nicene creed on all subjects of the Empire. This edict marks the end of Roman official tolerance by making Christianity the sole religion.It is our will that all the peoples whom the government of our clemency rules shall follow that religion which a pious belief from Peter to the present declares the holy Peter delivered to the Romans....that is, according to the apostolic discipline and evangelical doctrine, we believe in the deity of the Father and the Son and the Holy Ghost of equal majesty in a holy trinity. Those who follow this law we command shall be comprised under the name of Catholic Christians; but others, indeed, we require, as insane and raving, to bear the infamy of heretical teaching; their gatherings shall not receive the name of churches, they are to be smitten first with the divine punishment and after that by the vengeance of our indignation, which has the divine approval.{72}
In January 381, further edicts forbade all assemblies of heretics and ordered that the name of the Christian God alone should be used and the Nicene creed be maintained.
Quote ID: 3798
Time Periods: 4
Paganism to Christianity in the Roman Empire
Walter Woodburn Hyde
Book ID: 172 Page: 217
Section: 3D
Theodosius in his zeal for Catholicism, a zeal in suppressing paganism likened by St. Ambrose {102} to that of Josiah king of Judah in destroying all forms of idolatrous worship, despite some redeeming qualities such as mercy and clemency to defeated enemies, had shown himself a bigoted Christian. He never questioned his religious beliefs, but regarded divergences from them as wicked.
Quote ID: 3802
Time Periods: 4
Paganism to Christianity in the Roman Empire
Walter Woodburn Hyde
Book ID: 172 Page: 218
Section: 3D
That he prized earthly honors is amply shown by his increasing the Oriental forms which had surrounded the emperor since Diocletian for under him everything became sacred: sacrum palatium, urbs sanctissima, divinae epulae (State banquets), caelestia statuta (edicts), and he allowed only a few “to touch the purple” and “adore his serenity.”{104}
Quote ID: 3803
Time Periods: 4
Paganism to Christianity in the Roman Empire
Walter Woodburn Hyde
Book ID: 172 Page: 218
Section: 3D
Much of the blame for his intolerant spirit should be laid on St. Ambrose, the master-mind behind his policies, whose narrow but strong personality dominated both Theodosius and Gratian.
Quote ID: 3804
Time Periods: 4
Power and Persuasion in Late Antiquity: Towards a Christian Empire
Peter Brown
Book ID: 183 Page: 105
Section: 3D
Theodosius was forced to tax the cities more heavily than ever before.{182} If he was to do this, he had to make plain, to the empire at large, with which group he preferred to negotiate in order to maintain the loyalty of the townsfolk in a time of increasing unpopularity.. . . .
It was to the bishops and the monks, rather than to the grave Themistius or the cautious Libanius, that Theodosius decided to turn.
Quote ID: 4064
Time Periods: 4
Power and Persuasion in Late Antiquity: Towards a Christian Empire
Peter Brown
Book ID: 183 Page: 119
Section: 3A1,3D
The bishops who had emerged, relatively suddenly, as new figures in local society tended, in the eastern empire, to come from backgrounds similar to that of Gregory. They were local notables, proud of their good birth and of their possession of paideia.{2}. . . .
But after the death of Theodosius I in 395 and especially in the course of the preternaturally long, faceless reign of his grandson, Theodosius II, from 408 to 450, it was plain that a new equilibrium had been reached. Like stones shaken in a sieve, the upper classes of the cities took on a new complexion: the Christian bishop and his clergy were more prominent than before. But the same stones remained, if redistributed in a different pattern.
Quote ID: 4071
Time Periods: 45
Power and Persuasion in Late Antiquity: Towards a Christian Empire
Peter Brown
Book ID: 183 Page: 119
Section: 3D
We do not know to what extent an emperor such as Theodosius I either foresaw or thought that he could control the outcome of his repeated decisions to grant parrhésia to Christian monks and bishops. But the reshuffling of local factions that resulted from this decision could not have been more consistent with the traditions of the Roman past, even if he had planned it.
Quote ID: 4072
Time Periods: 4
Power and Persuasion in Late Antiquity: Towards a Christian Empire
Peter Brown
Book ID: 183 Page: 126
Section: 3D
Altogether, the closing of the ranks of a central core of Christian notables against obdurate non-Christians, on the one hand, and against the radical forces that their more ruthless predecessors had unleashed, on the other, explains the deceptively unruffled consensus of the new eastern empire of the age of Theodosius II.
Quote ID: 4079
Time Periods: 5
Rise of Western Christendom, The
Peter Brown
Book ID: 265 Page: 75
Section: 3D,4B
When early medieval Christians looked back to Rome, what they saw, first and foremost, was not the “Golden Age” of classical Rome (as we would tend to do). The pagan empire did not impress them. It was the Theodosian Code which held their attention and esteem. It was the official voice of the Roman Empire at its greatest, that is, when it was the Roman Empire as God had always intended it to be – a Christian Empire. The Code ended with a book On Religion. This book, in itself, signaled the arrival of a new attitude to religion. Religious belief as such was now treated as a subject for legislation.
Quote ID: 6703
Time Periods: 47
Roman Empire, The
Colin Wells
Book ID: 266 Page: 270
Section: 3D,4B
As for Byzantium itself, though the rulers worked and thought in Greek, they thought of themselves as ‘Romaioi’, and are so remembered: ‘Banish then, O Grecian eyes, the passion of the waiting West! / Shall God’s holy monks not enter on a day God knoweth best / To crown the Roman king again, and hang a cross upon his breast?’ We find still stronger testimony to Rome’s cross upon his breast?’ We find still stronger testimony to Rome’s power over the imagination in Y Gododdin, when Celtic warriors rode out from Edinburgh to confront Germanic invaders in Yorkshire at a time when there was no longer any Roman authority in the whole island, and felt and called themselves Roman. Charlemagne had himself crowned emperor of Rome on Christmas Day 800 to found what was to become the Holy Roman Empire. Rome inspired awe: ‘What wert thou, Rome, unbroken, when thy ruin / Is greater than the whole world else beside?’ (Hildebert of Lavardin 1056-1133, trans. Helen Waddell, More Latin Lyrics, 263). By the early twentieth century, the German Kaiser and the Tsar of Russia still rejoiced in the title of Caesar, though ruling from capitals which had never been part of the Roman Empire, so strong was the imprint of Rome’s authority and the magic of her name.Latin remained for centuries the common tongue of Europe, and for several more the language of the Catholic Church. From Roman law flowed both canon and secular law codes,
Quote ID: 6736
Time Periods: 7
Rome and the Barbarians (100 B.C. – A.D. 400)
Thomas S. Burns
Book ID: 190 Page: 340
Section: 3D
Although the emperor was originally supposed to be a god, the Christian emperors had to abandon that claim. The oath recorded by Vegetius as of ca. 400 is a Christianized version, noting the new role of the emperor not as God but as God’s interlocutor on earth:So when recruits have been carefully selected who excel in mind and body, and after daily training for four or more months, a legion is formed by order and auspices of the invincible emperor. The soldiers are marked with tattoos in the skin which will last and swear an oath, when they are enlisted on the rolls. That is why (the oaths) are called the “Sacraments” [sacramenta] of military service. They swear by God, Christ and the Holy Spirit, and by the Majesty of the emperor which second to God is to be loved and worshipped by the human race.
. . . .
{44} HA, Marcus, 14.1; note especially the terminology in the phrase, “a superioribus barbaris fugerant, nisi reciperentur, bellum inferentibus.” The HA is fairly well grounded through the Life of Marcus, but afterwards fantasy reigns rather than emperors. The emphasis on the last phrase of the translation is my own. On the reliability of the HA on Roman-barbarian relations, see T. Burns 1979.
Quote ID: 4216
Time Periods: 25
The Theodosian Code and Novels and Sirmondian Constitutions, bk. xvi
Translated by Clyde Pharr
Book ID: 710 Page: 440
Section: 3D
It is our will that all the peoples who are ruled by the administration of Our Clemency shall practice that religion which the divine Peter the Apostle transmitted to the Romans….
Quote ID: 9892
Time Periods: 4
The Theodosian Code and Novels and Sirmondian Constitutions, bk. xvi
Translated by Clyde Pharr
Book ID: 710 Page: 440
Section: 3D
I. We command that 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: 9893
Time Periods: 4
Theodosian Code, The
Clyde Pharr, Theresa Sherrer. Davidson, Mary Brown. Pharr, and C. Dickerman. Williams
Book ID: 293 Page: 300
Section: 2E4,3D
On the Day of the Sun (Sunday), which our ancestors rightly called the Lord’s Day, the prosecution of all litigation and actions shall entirely cease. No person shall demand payment of either a public or a private debt. There shall be no cognizance of any contention, even before arbitrators, whether these arbitrators be demanded in court or voluntarily chosen. If any person should turn aside from the inspiration and ritual of holy religion, he shall be adjudged not only infamous but also sacrilegious.
Quote ID: 7412
Time Periods: 4
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
Theodosian Code, The
Clyde Pharr, Theresa Sherrer. Davidson, Mary Brown. Pharr, and C. Dickerman. Williams
Book ID: 293 Page: 450
Section: 3D
It is Our will, moreover, that heretics and schismatics shall not only be alien from these privileges but shall also be bound and subjected to various compulsory public services.
Quote ID: 7414
Time Periods: 4
Theodosian Code, The
Clyde Pharr, Theresa Sherrer. Davidson, Mary Brown. Pharr, and C. Dickerman. Williams
Book ID: 293 Page: 465
Section: 3D
Those Christians who have become pagans shall be deprived of the power and right to make testaments, (2) and every testament of such decedent, if there is a testament, shall be rescinded by the annulment of its foundation. (3)
Quote ID: 7415
Time Periods: 4
Theodosian Code, The
Clyde Pharr, Theresa Sherrer. Davidson, Mary Brown. Pharr, and C. Dickerman. Williams
Book ID: 293 Page: 472
Section: 3D
It is Our pleasure that the temples shall be immediately closed in all places and in all cities, and access to them forbidden, so as to deny to all abandoned men the opportunity to commit sin. It is also Our will that all men shall abstain from sacrifices. But if perchance any man should perpetrate any such criminality, he shall be struck down with the avenging sword. We also decree that the property of a man thus executed shall be vindicated to the fisc. The governors (10) of the provinces shall be similarly punished if they should neglect to avenge such crimes.
Quote ID: 7416
Time Periods: 4
Theodosius: The Empire at Bay
Stephen Williams, Gerard Friell
Book ID: 282 Page: 21
Section: 3D
Every high official lived with the knowledge that careless talk, even ambivalent political signals or innocent remarks, could suddenly cost him his position, perhaps even his life.
Quote ID: 7054
Time Periods: 4
Theodosius: The Empire at Bay
Stephen Williams, Gerard Friell
Book ID: 282 Page: 24
Section: 3D
There is another element in the story, which might also have added fuel to such a plot. Five years earlier the near-paranoid Valens had launched a series of savage trials for sorcery at Antioch. The accused had admitted under torture to seeking by divination the name of the man to succeed Valens as emperor. In this sad game a ring, suspended by a fine linen thread, moved randomly to various letters of the Greek alphabet and yielded the sequence (Greek letters) (THEOD...). As a result one Theodorus,{19} a notary, was executed together with many others at Antioch. (The prophecy of course was ultimately fulfilled, as prophecies in Roman histories usually are.)
Quote ID: 7057
Time Periods: 4
Theodosius: The Empire at Bay
Stephen Williams, Gerard Friell
Book ID: 282 Page: 26
Section: 3D
The constant invocation of a changeless, eternal Rome by the orators and historians, their effortless comparisons with the fabulous Catos and Scipios of the distant past, was more than just a natural reverence for tradition and continuity. It verged on a classical hypnotic fixation, which continued even up to the Enlightenment when Gibbon was writing. It presented Rome as a kind of inviolate essence, transcending all upheaval and change, and in doing so soothed and blunted the critical faculties of many contemporaries who had to grapple with a radically different world.
Quote ID: 7058
Time Periods: 4
Theodosius: The Empire at Bay
Stephen Williams, Gerard Friell
Book ID: 282 Page: 27
Section: 3D
Despite the recovery of the empire in the later third century, and also through much of the fourth, the problem immediately facing Theodosius as Augustus of the East was nothing less than the simple survival of the state.
Quote ID: 7064
Time Periods: 34
Theodosius: The Empire at Bay
Stephen Williams, Gerard Friell
Book ID: 282 Page: 28
Section: 3D
They were very formidable as a concentrated force, but it was immensely difficult for Fritigern to keep them concentrated, or even impose on them a general direction and purpose. They had great problems feeding themselves and their families, and readily dispersed over large areas plundering and foraging, but neither storing nor planting, and making no adequate preparations for the next year.
Quote ID: 7065
Time Periods: 4
Theodosius: The Empire at Bay
Stephen Williams, Gerard Friell
Book ID: 282 Page: 30
Section: 3D
Conventional civilian opinion doubtless expected a crushing victory to avenge Adrianople, but Theodosius had no wish to risk everything on another great set-piece battle.
Quote ID: 7066
Time Periods: 4
Theodosius: The Empire at Bay
Stephen Williams, Gerard Friell
Book ID: 282 Page: 31
Section: 3D
However, Theodosius made a full recovery by the spring, which he quite naturally attributed to the divine grace of baptism and the countless prayers and masses said on his behalf. Soon afterwards he was to throw his full imperial authority behind the Nicene bishops, and unify the doctrine and worship of the church by the force of law.
Quote ID: 7068
Time Periods: 4
Theodosius: The Empire at Bay
Stephen Williams, Gerard Friell
Book ID: 282 Page: 33
Section: 3D
Theodosius seized the opportunity and exploited it to the full. Athanaric and his band of followers were in no bargaining position: they were throwing themselves on Roman clemency. With great ostentation Theodosius and his imperial retinue met Athanaric several miles outside the city, and greeted him as an honoured royal guest. Here was a chance to demonstrate to the whole Gothic world the advantages of alliance and cooperation with Rome. Display, pomp and illusion were going to accomplish what could no longer be done by main military force. Nowhere was better equipped to do this than the fabulous capital of Constantinople.
Quote ID: 7069
Time Periods: 4
Theodosius: The Empire at Bay
Stephen Williams, Gerard Friell
Book ID: 282 Page: 33
Section: 3D
The city which was to dazzle the crusaders eight centuries later certainly had the desired effect on Athanaric, with its impression of quite limitless wealth which Rome had always presented to the Germanic imagination: ’I have now seen what I often had heard of, though I did not believe it’, declared Athanaric at the sight of the palaces, the great public squares, the hippodrome, the shimmering churches, the immaculately drilled guards, the harbour choked with shipping and the throng of peoples of all nations. ’Truly the emperor of Rome is a god on earth, and whoever lifts a hand against him is asking for death.’ This was just what Theodosius wanted all Goths to hear, and he took pains to ensure that they did.
Quote ID: 7070
Time Periods: 4
Theodosius: The Empire at Bay
Stephen Williams, Gerard Friell
Book ID: 282 Page: 34
Section: 3D
Unlike previous immigrants their tribal structure and identity remained intact. Though nominally subject to the empire they were, in effect, a foreign nation in arms established on Roman territory.
Quote ID: 7071
Time Periods: 4
Theodosius: The Empire at Bay
Stephen Williams, Gerard Friell
Book ID: 282 Page: 34
Section: 3D
Theodosius and Gratian clearly knew what they were doing. The change in policy between 378 and 382 is reflected in the altered tone of Themistius’ orations, stressing the clemency and goodwill of the emperor rather than his warlike prowess; and even more clearly by the reception of Athanaric in 381.
Quote ID: 7072
Time Periods: 4
Theodosius: The Empire at Bay
Stephen Williams, Gerard Friell
Book ID: 282 Page: 35
Section: 3D
By the end of the year it seems Theodosius had definitely regained the initiative, although the Visigoths were neither destroyed nor expelled from imperial territory, as conventional public opinion doubtless expected.
Quote ID: 7073
Time Periods: 4
Theodosius: The Empire at Bay
Stephen Williams, Gerard Friell
Book ID: 282 Page: 41
Section: 3D
A Persian embassy to Constantinople in 384 was followed by a reciprocal embassy to Ctesiphon, led by one of Theodosius’ most trusted associates, the general Flavius Stilicho.{43} Of Vandal origin but, like his Germanic military colleagues, thoroughly Romanised, he had risen rapidly through the cavalry commands.
Quote ID: 7079
Time Periods: 4
Theodosius: The Empire at Bay
Stephen Williams, Gerard Friell
Book ID: 282 Page: 44
Section: 3D
At Alexandria there had already been popular demonstrations against Theodosius, but the resentment boiled over into a far more serious explosion at Antioch in the early spring of 387.
Quote ID: 7080
Time Periods: 4
Theodosius: The Empire at Bay
Stephen Williams, Gerard Friell
Book ID: 282 Page: 44/45
Section: 3D
Unable to break into the governor’s palace, the mob tore down the panel portraits of the emperor, and then the bronze statues of Theodosius, his father and members of the imperial family, breaking them up and dragging them with abuse through the streets. These images were the most sacred political icons of the empire, the holy objects in the universal cult of the godlike Augustus, whose sanctity Christianity had never succeeded in diminishing. They stood in every law court and public place as the witness to oaths, they preceded the armies on parade and in battle, and were the palpable focus of every expression of loyalty.….
Meanwhile, the actual or presumed leaders of the mob were tried and executed, some by burning alive, despite the custom of an amnesty on executions during Lent.
….
Heads continued to roll, men were imprisoned, estates confiscated. In the meantime the city had sent bishop Flavius and the senator Hilarius to plead humbly for mercy from Theodosius.
Quote ID: 7081
Time Periods: 4
Theodosius: The Empire at Bay
Stephen Williams, Gerard Friell
Book ID: 282 Page: 52
Section: 3D
He Theodosius took the teachings of the church and the condition of his own soul very seriously indeed. Unlike Constantine he was a Nicean before he became emperor, and he had never followed any other doctrine, never weighed the pros and cons of rival gods.
Quote ID: 7097
Time Periods: 4
Theodosius: The Empire at Bay
Stephen Williams, Gerard Friell
Book ID: 282 Page: 52
Section: 3D
After assuming the purple he remained a faithful Son of the Holy Church, and in matters of religion he saw entirely through its eyes. He allowed the church a political influence that no previous emperor had done, and the church, principally in the person of bishop Ambrose of Milan, was duly appreciative:...a pious emperor, a merciful emperor, a faithful emperor, concerning whom the Scripture has spoken....What is more illustrious than the faith of an emperor whom sovereignty does not exalt, pride does not elevate, but piety bows down?{16}
Quote ID: 7098
Time Periods: 4
Theodosius: The Empire at Bay
Stephen Williams, Gerard Friell
Book ID: 282 Page: 56
Section: 3D
Among the lay governing classes in the East Christian piety was far stronger than in Constantine’s day: they now endowed churches and monasteries, revered saints and relics, invested in the futures of their souls and those of their relatives and did not generally dispute the forcible reunification of the church.
Quote ID: 7111
Time Periods: 4
Theodosius: The Empire at Bay
Stephen Williams, Gerard Friell
Book ID: 282 Page: 56
Section: 3D
Arianism would have enforced its own orthodoxy if it could.Pastor John notes: John’s note: maybe not
Quote ID: 7112
Time Periods: 34
Theodosius: The Empire at Bay
Stephen Williams, Gerard Friell
Book ID: 282 Page: 56
Section: 3D
The earlier emperor’s comparative toleration of rival Christian factions and their refusal to criminalise heresy outright had often been a matter of practical politics, but it had been toleration nonetheless. The policies of Gratian and, especially, Theodosius brought it to an end. It was a far cry from Constantine’s emphatic rejection of coercion when he first adopted Christianity:No one should injure another in the name of a faith he himself has accepted from conviction. He who is quickest to understand the truth, let him try as he may to convince his neighbour. But if this is not possible, he must desist.{35}
Quote ID: 7113
Time Periods: 4
Theodosius: The Empire at Bay
Stephen Williams, Gerard Friell
Book ID: 282 Page: 57
Section: 3D
Theodosius had brought the law centrally into differences of the Christian faith, conflated false belief with criminal intent, and obedience to the church with obedience to the state. He had reunited the split churches, made them define orthodoxy, and then used the imperial power to recall deviants to the fold or else cut them off totally. It was thus Theodosius, as much as the Council of Nicaea, who can be considered as the historic founder of the established Catholic church.Pastor John notes: John’s note: you have these last four words crossed out - CHRISTIANITY!!
Quote ID: 7114
Time Periods: 4
Theodosius: The Empire at Bay
Stephen Williams, Gerard Friell
Book ID: 282 Page: 57
Section: 3D
As a devout Catholic, Theodosius disliked this state of affairs and hoped it would diminish, but as a responsible Roman emperor he needed the support of the partly pagan ruling classes no less than the Christians.{37}
Quote ID: 7115
Time Periods: 4
Theodosius: The Empire at Bay
Stephen Williams, Gerard Friell
Book ID: 282 Page: 57
Section: 3D
Theodosius reiterated the ban on sacrifice, but went no further. Incense, votive offerings, libations and similar rites were not illegal.{39} In one of his earliest enactments he protected a sacred grove at Daphne near Antioch against tree-felling. In 382 he expressly ordered a temple to be kept open since it had come to be a proper place for public assembly. The statues of pagan gods should not, he said, be considered offensive to Christians, since they may be valued as works of art, not idols. Nor did he curtail the traditional rites of the imperial cult, provided they did not include sacrifice.{40}
Quote ID: 7116
Time Periods: 4
Theodosius: The Empire at Bay
Stephen Williams, Gerard Friell
Book ID: 282 Page: 58
Section: 3D
He acknowledges that as a Christian the emperor would like to see pagans converted, but as a wise ruler he knows this cannot be done by force. Forcible conversions, he hastens to add, are valueless, and the Christian’s own law condemns such violence.{41}Pg, 58 -3D- In the East it was becoming common for fanatical mobs of monks to attack, destroy or loot temples.
….
The great temple of Edessa, near the Persian frontier, a monumental building with many fine works of art, was destroyed.{42} At Apamea the huge temple of Zeus was in effect besieged by armed troops led by the provincial governor, Deinias.{43}
Quote ID: 7117
Time Periods: 4
Theodosius: The Empire at Bay
Stephen Williams, Gerard Friell
Book ID: 282 Page: 59
Section: 3D
As Pontifex Maximus his revenues automatically went to support the colleges of priests - the Pontiffs, Augurs, Flamens, Vestals and others - whose ceremonies had protected the Eternal City since the days of the kings. In the Senate House at Rome stood the winged statue and Altar of Victory, placed there by Augustus after the battle of Actium, not so much to commemorate that victory as to epitomise the eternal triumph of the Spirit of Rome over all its adversaries.
Quote ID: 7119
Time Periods: 4
Theodosius: The Empire at Bay
Stephen Williams, Gerard Friell
Book ID: 282 Page: 62/63
Section: 3D
From Salonica Theodosius completed his war preparations and made other dispositions for a long absence, filling the important government posts with a group of thoroughly loyal officials. Tatianus, after a long and distinguished career under several emperors, became Praetorian Prefect of the Orient,{6} and his son, Proculus, Prefect of Constantinople.{7}….
Theodosius’ preparations may have been slow and methodical, but now he moved very fast indeed and succeeded in taking his opponent off balance.
….
Finally Theodosius’ army prevailed and Maximus’ remaining troops either surrendered or retreated south.
….
When Theodosius’ advance guard arrived at the city Maximus was handed over. The small Moorish bodyguard who had remained loyal to him were executed on capture; Maximus was taken to Theodosius’ camp three miles outside Aquileia, interrogated, and beheaded on 28 August. His head then went on a tour of the provinces.
….
The incorporation of Maximus’ remaining troops into Theodosius’ army was straightforward enough, but the wider political task of securing the loyalty of Italy and the West now required much more care.
Quote ID: 7125
Time Periods: 4
Theodosius: The Empire at Bay
Stephen Williams, Gerard Friell
Book ID: 282 Page: 63/64
Section: 3D
The inexperienced, ineffective Valentinian, now seventeen, could hardly constitute a credible successor in his own right: that would be running the risk of Gratian all over again, and it was a risk Theodosius was not prepared to take, whatever he may supposedly have promised his new wife Galla (now at Constantinople in the late stages of pregnancy).
Quote ID: 7126
Time Periods: 4
Theodosius: The Empire at Bay
Stephen Williams, Gerard Friell
Book ID: 282 Page: 64
Section: 3D
It was now that Theodosius made the acquaintance of bishop Ambrose of Milan; and thus began a complex, turbulent, but also deeply personal relationship between the two men, that was to have profoundly important consequences.
Quote ID: 7127
Time Periods: 4
Theodosius: The Empire at Bay
Stephen Williams, Gerard Friell
Book ID: 282 Page: 65
Section: 3D
But this was not nearly enough to satisfy Ambrose, who considered that Jews should no more be protected by the law than heretics.….
To the astonishment and dismay of Timasius and many others Theodosius climbed down.
….
Imperial duty and Theodosius’ Christian soul were painfully at odds and Ambrose, quicker intellect and dialectician, pushed his advantage relentlessly.
Quote ID: 7128
Time Periods: 4
Theodosius: The Empire at Bay
Stephen Williams, Gerard Friell
Book ID: 282 Page: 65
Section: 3D
Even more surprising - and surely offensive to pious Christian ears - he is referred to at many points as divine, a living god, and compared with Jupiter and Hercules. Far from being offended, Theodosius rewarded Pacatus with the proconsulship of Africa.{26}Christian or not, the cult of the divine emperor was one of the roles it was absolutely necessary for Theodosius to play.
Quote ID: 7129
Time Periods: 4
Theodosius: The Empire at Bay
Stephen Williams, Gerard Friell
Book ID: 282 Page: 67/68/69/70
Section: 3D
Even Ambrose seemed to have sensed for once that he was encroaching too far, but soon afterwards, in mid-390, an event occurred at the hippodrome at Salonica which shocked both religious and civil opinion in the empire, and eventually led to an extraordinary enhancement of Ambrose’s authority over Theodosius,and indeed a zenith in the influence of Church over State.….
Whatever the reason, the garrison was outnumbered and Butheric and several other officers brutally murdered and their corpses mutilated and dragged through the streets, to the greater glory of chariot racing (and perhaps, Greek vice against barbarian rectitude, for homosexuality in general was far more shocking to Germanic sensibilities than to Greek).
….
Not surprisingly the immediate reaction of Theodosius was of volcanic anger; but this time, unlike Antioch, in his choler he threw aside any inquiry or trial, and immediately sent secret orders to the new Gothic garrison at Salonica for a terrible, salutary bloodletting of the rebellious rabble.
….
Without pity, deaf to the screams and entreaties of the people (or even enflamed by them) the troops proceeded for several hours to butcher the spectators indiscriminately. According to Theoderet 7,000 people of both sexes and all ages were slaughtered.{30} Whatever the numbers, no Roman city had experienced anything like this in living memory;...
….
The moral shock throughout the empire was, if anything, accentuated by the general reputation Theodosius had for mercy and humanity.
….
Shortly afterwards, in August 390, he issued a law requiring all capital sentences to be delayed for thirty days before execution, to allow for possible review.{32}
….
There was nothing Theodosius could do to bring the dead to life, as he ruefully admitted, but he might still make his peace with God and save his imperiled soul.
….
Again Ambrose, in sorrow rather than anger, will not administer the holy eucharist unless the emperor either avoids the church - that is, excommunicates himself - or purges himself of his sin:....
….
Thus is was that an astonished people beheld an extraordinary spectacle as the Ever-Victorious, Sacred Eternal Augustus, Lord of the World put aside his gorgeous imperial regalia, and for several months wept and groaned as a humble, prostrate penitent in the cathedral of Milan. It was all the more extraordinary in its stark, public contrast between the despotic and universal power of the emperor, and the groveling abasement of that same power before the priests.
….
No earlier bishop, such as Eusebius, would have demanded public penitence from emperors such as Constantine and Constantius for their blatant fratricidal murders.
….
But what was most striking, and a portentous sign of the times, was that his pleading was in exclusively Judaeo-Christian terms.
….
The strongest weapon of persuasion was now the dreadful threat of excommunication from the mystical lifeline of the eucharist.
If it was a victory for humanity and decency, it was every bit as much a victory for the prestige of Church against State. However sincerely they deplored the massacre at Salonica many pagans must have been deeply dismayed by the public humiliation of an emperor before a bishop, the trampling of the office of their supreme magistrate in the mud, and the clear signal that in religious matters the church could now have its way.
Quote ID: 7130
Time Periods: 4
Theodosius: The Empire at Bay
Stephen Williams, Gerard Friell
Book ID: 282 Page: 70
Section: 3D
The church was not slow to press its advantage. In February 391, barely a year since his successful rapprochement with the traditionalist senators at Rome, Theodosius obliged the church with a new and far sterner law against paganism. The ban on all sacrifice, public or private, was reiterated, and all access to temples now prohibited. It was followed by yet further laws with detailed prohibitions of purely private rituals. All this was taken by zealous monks as tacit permission for a new campaign of temple-smashing.{36}….
The face Theodosius now presented to the Western ruling classes was not the urbane ruler mixing easily with senate and people, but the persecuting fanatic, priest-ridden to the point of puppetry.
Quote ID: 7132
Time Periods: 4
Theodosius: The Empire at Bay
Stephen Williams, Gerard Friell
Book ID: 282 Page: 72
Section: 3D
Theodosius was to be the last sole ruler of a unified empire of East and West. The crises that followed soon after his premature death were so momentous, that historians, ancient and modern, have naturally traced their causes back to the weaknesses of his state, and seen them as consequences of his policies - particularly the treaty of 382 and the general policy of conciliation with the barbarians.
Quote ID: 7135
Time Periods: 4
Theodosius: The Empire at Bay
Stephen Williams, Gerard Friell
Book ID: 282 Page: 119
Section: 3D
Yet, as early as February 391, Theodosius’ apparently successful modus vivendi with pagan traditionalism was abruptly ended by his radical new law, not only reiterating the ban on all sacrifice, public or private, but for the very first time forbidding all access to shrines and temples.{5} This was followed by three others, even more repressive and aimed at erasing every vestige of pagan ritual, custom or gesture. The face Theodosius now presented to the Italian pagan senatorial classes was no longer the tolerant, urbane ruler, but the fierce, religious bigot. The whole religious balance he had carefully constructed, he now seemed to upset at a single stroke.{6}
Quote ID: 7137
Time Periods: 4
Theodosius: The Empire at Bay
Stephen Williams, Gerard Friell
Book ID: 282 Page: 120
Section: 3D
This is not Theodosius the adroit diplomatic ruler, but Theodosius subject to some other imperative. King remarks: ’It is a measure of Theodosius’ greatness, laziness or duplicity that he was able to continue a policy which held together two mutually contradictory ideas’ - namely, the broad imperial toleration of Constantine and Valentinian I, and the root-and-branch persecution advocated by Ambrose, Cynegius and the marauding monks who were illegally destroying temples throughout the Eastern provinces.{13}
Quote ID: 7138
Time Periods: 4
Theodosius: The Empire at Bay
Stephen Williams, Gerard Friell
Book ID: 282 Page: 120
Section: 3D
However, after half a century of Christian dissension and schism Theodosius had already used legal coercion to suppress heresy (and Maximus had also taken this to extremes with the execution of the heretic Priscillian and some of his followers.{14}….
Only considerations of political pragmatism held him back and, after Salonica and Ambrose, these gave way to the Will of God and his own stern duty to impose Catholic Christianity on his subjects.
Quote ID: 7139
Time Periods: 4
Theodosius: The Empire at Bay
Stephen Williams, Gerard Friell
Book ID: 282 Page: 120
Section: 3D
The first law, Nemo se hostiis polluat, firmly prohibits all sacrifices, including - for the first time - the traditional state ceremonies still practised at Rome. It goes on to rule, ’No person shall approach the shrines, nor walk through the temples, nor revere the images formed of mortal hands.’ Men of higher rank who transgressed were to be fined fifteen pounds of gold.
Quote ID: 7140
Time Periods: 4
Theodosius: The Empire at Bay
Stephen Williams, Gerard Friell
Book ID: 282 Page: 120
Section: 3D
This is the state’s adoption of the stern Mosaic view of idolatry: that these images were fetishes being worshipped in and for themselves. Every educated person who moved among the shrines, including cultured Christians like Ausonius or Petronius Probus, knew that most pagans did not literally worship artifacts, but treated them as visible symbols of their gods.{15}
Quote ID: 7141
Time Periods: 4
Theodosius: The Empire at Bay
Stephen Williams, Gerard Friell
Book ID: 282 Page: 121
Section: 3D
The laws of 9 June expressly forbids apostasy (from Christian to pagan), which is to be punishable by loss of testamentary rights. The law of 16 June repeals the February law expressly for Egypt, where Alexandria, like Rome, had long enjoyed special privileges for its cults, including sacrificial ceremonies.{16}
Quote ID: 7142
Time Periods: 4
Theodosius: The Empire at Bay
Stephen Williams, Gerard Friell
Book ID: 282 Page: 121
Section: 3D
At Rome the official state sacrifices, which had ensured the safety of the City for a thousand years, now ceased (they would have dwindled in any case, following the ending of state finance for the cults and priesthoods).
Quote ID: 7143
Time Periods: 4
Theodosius: The Empire at Bay
Stephen Williams, Gerard Friell
Book ID: 282 Page: 121
Section: 3D
Nonetheless, it was a bitter blow to the aristocratic pagan circles in Italy, who so recently had experienced the seemingly tolerant urbanities of Theodosius, and who had, in their confidence, in the last two decades attempted a conscious revival of pagan thought and worship.
Quote ID: 7145
Time Periods: 4
Theodosius: The Empire at Bay
Stephen Williams, Gerard Friell
Book ID: 282 Page: 122/123
Section: 3A2A,3D
Its central target was the great temple of Serapis, the powerful Graeco-Egyptian sky god who combined the attributes of Zeus and Osiris, and on whose favour the Nile flood depended: until recently it had contained the ceremonial Nile Cubit, measuring the annual rise. The temple was generally recognised as one of the architectural wonders of the world, as Ammianus relates:...Feeble words can only belittle it, but it is adorned with such vast columned halls, statues so lifelike they almost breathe, and so many other works of art, that second only to the Capitol, by which Rome raises herself to eternity, the world contains nothing more magnificent.{25}
….
Reportedly the pagans were dejected and the Christians jubilant when the Nile rose again in the normal way.
….
The episode of the Serapaeum was rightly seen by both sides as an important milestone. After a decade of uneasy toleration, or at least truce, paganism was again in ragged retreat in the central regions of the empire.
….
Pagans.....were powerless against determined, organised mob vandalism by bishops and monks who knew they had the tacit approval of the emperor himself.
Quote ID: 7146
Time Periods: 4
Theodosius: The Empire at Bay
Stephen Williams, Gerard Friell
Book ID: 282 Page: 123/124
Section: 3D
The fourth law, of 8 November 392, was totally uncompromising.{31} In its assault on vernacular traditions it was as if today an authoritarian atheist regime were to criminalise Easter eggs, holly, Christmas cards, Halloween pumpkins, first-footings, and even such universal gestures as the drinking of toasts.The laws declared all sacrifice and divination, by whoever of whatever rank or order, for whatever purpose, punishable by death. Every other identifiable pagan symbol, item or expression was now prohibited. The house in which they occurred was to be confiscated; decurions were ordered to inform and governors ordered to investigate each case on pain of crushing fines. Altars, votive offerings, burning lamps, the simple domestic gods of the hearth and the kitchen, hanging wreaths or garlands, placing fillets on trees - all were now forbidden, anathematised as the filthy pollution of evil spirits, instead of the harmless social customs they very largely were. In this global ideological war of Light against Darkness there were no ’harmless’ practices. Ambrose, of course, exults in this extirpation, which he ranks among Theodosius’ great achievements:
....Theodosius who, after the example of Jacob, supplanted perfidious tyrants and banished the idols of the gentiles; who in his faith wiped out all worship of graven images, and trampled down their ceremonies.{32}
As Gibbon remarks, all this was the more ironical in view of the complacent ease with which, very soon, the bishops adopted and renamed local gods as saints, shrines as reliquaries, rustic festivals as feast-days, without too much painful soul-searching.{33}
Quote ID: 7147
Time Periods: 4
Theodosius: The Empire at Bay
Stephen Williams, Gerard Friell
Book ID: 282 Page: 125
Section: 3D
Membership of the body of Christ had counted more than Roman citizenship and status for most of the persecuted church, but to the still mainly pagan upper classes under the Theodosian screw there could be no such distinction: their social standing and family identity was inseparable from their religious tradition.
Quote ID: 7148
Time Periods: 4
Theodosius: The Empire at Bay
Stephen Williams, Gerard Friell
Book ID: 282 Page: 125
Section: 3D
Theodosius, however, was moving logically towards a position where for the great mass of the population (pagan upper classes gracefully excepted) membership of the Catholic Christian church was almost coextensive with Roman citizenship.
Quote ID: 7149
Time Periods: 4
Theodosius: The Empire at Bay
Stephen Williams, Gerard Friell
Book ID: 282 Page: 125
Section: 3D
However, the last anti-pagan law of 392, issued from Constantinople when there was already a grave crisis of a different kind in the West, precipitated an untypical, perhaps despairing reaction. It has been depicted and celebrated by many historians as the Last Stand of Roman Paganism, and even been cast in similar tragic mold to the noble death-throes of the Roman Republic.{35}
Quote ID: 7150
Time Periods: 4
Theodosius: The Empire at Bay
Stephen Williams, Gerard Friell
Book ID: 282 Page: 127
Section: 3D
From the throne Valentinian handed Arbogast a letter of his own dismissal, but the general retorted that Valentinian had not bestowed on him this command, and could not therefore deprive him of it.{42}
Quote ID: 7151
Time Periods: 4
Theodosius: The Empire at Bay
Stephen Williams, Gerard Friell
Book ID: 282 Page: 127
Section: 3D
Shortly afterward, on 15 May 392, he was found hanged in his quarters. Arbogast claimed it was suicide.{43}A great deal of modern argument has gone on around this event, which has become one of history’s murder mysteries.
Quote ID: 7152
Time Periods: 4
Theodosius: The Empire at Bay
Stephen Williams, Gerard Friell
Book ID: 282 Page: 129
Section: 3D
On 22 August 392, he had a new Western emperor, Flavius Eugenius, officially proclaimed at Lyons.{51} This was still not legally treason, for there was no Augustus in the West. Almost immediately Eugenius sent a peaceful and fraternal embassy to Theodosius.
Quote ID: 7153
Time Periods: 4
Theodosius: The Empire at Bay
Stephen Williams, Gerard Friell
Book ID: 282 Page: 130
Section: 3D
By spring 393 the breach between Trier and Constantinople was complete, and in April Arbogast and Eugenius at last moved into Italy without resistance.
Quote ID: 7154
Time Periods: 4
Theodosius: The Empire at Bay
Stephen Williams, Gerard Friell
Book ID: 282 Page: 130
Section: 3D
Aware that Arbogast was a pagan, they had nothing to lose from a regime which could not in any case be resisted militarily.
Quote ID: 7155
Time Periods: 4
Theodosius: The Empire at Bay
Stephen Williams, Gerard Friell
Book ID: 282 Page: 130
Section: 3D
Ever hopeful, the senatorial pagan party in 391 had yet again petitioned Valentinian II (unsuccessfully) for the restoration of their cherished Altar of Victory, and now they petitioned Eugenius. After two refusals he finally agreed to the restoration, and other concessions followed. Although he did not formally restore state support for the official cults he provided private funds to revive the ceremonies.{54}
Quote ID: 7156
Time Periods: 4
Theodosius: The Empire at Bay
Stephen Williams, Gerard Friell
Book ID: 282 Page: 130
Section: 3D
It was only with Eugenius’ reappointment of Nicomachus Flavianus as Praetorian Prefect of Italy, that this cautious toleration became a full-blooded pagan revival, which swept Eugenius along with it.
Quote ID: 7157
Time Periods: 4
Theodosius: The Empire at Bay
Stephen Williams, Gerard Friell
Book ID: 282 Page: 131
Section: 3D
Though not by nature militant, paganism was goaded into active defiance of Theodosius. It attached itself to the open political rebellion, whose emblems were now taken over by those of the old gods.{55}
Quote ID: 7158
Time Periods: 4
Theodosius: The Empire at Bay
Stephen Williams, Gerard Friell
Book ID: 282 Page: 131
Section: 3D
Under the vigorous leadership of Flavianus (and perhaps the embarrassment of Eugenius) temples were rapidly restored and rededicated, festivals punctually celebrated, sacrifices correctly performed and the mystery cults revived.
Quote ID: 7159
Time Periods: 4
Theodosius: The Empire at Bay
Stephen Williams, Gerard Friell
Book ID: 282 Page: 131
Section: 3D
His own son, Nicomachus the younger, became Prefect of Rome and rededicated a temple to Venus. At Ostia the temple of Hercules was rebuilt.
Quote ID: 7160
Time Periods: 45
Theodosius: The Empire at Bay
Stephen Williams, Gerard Friell
Book ID: 282 Page: 131
Section: 3D
It was many years since Rome had seen such religious spectacles.{56}
Quote ID: 7161
Time Periods: 4
Theodosius: The Empire at Bay
Stephen Williams, Gerard Friell
Book ID: 282 Page: 131
Section: 3D
Ambrose of course fled the whole horrid scene, and addressed reproachful letters to Eugenius from Faventia. His charge is not Eugenius’ political treason but his apostasy as a Christian, especially in the charged matter of the Altar of Victory.
Quote ID: 7162
Time Periods: 4
Theodosius: The Empire at Bay
Stephen Williams, Gerard Friell
Book ID: 282 Page: 132/133/134/135
Section: 3D
Since Eugenius’ open celebrations of paganism Theodosius had no difficulties (in contrast to the Maximus revolt) in seeing this as a Holy War, and enlisting the full armory of fasting, prayer and ceremonies of supplication, the Christian counterpart of Flavius’ festivals in Italy.….
As he had once before, he piously sought the prophetic advice of the holy hermit John of Lycopolis, who had dwelt fifty years in a remote mountain cell in Thebais.{60}
….
John’s prophecy was double-edged: that Theodosius would be victorious after great slaughter, but that he would die in Italy. Theodosius now received a more concrete blow to his spirits (whether or not seen as a sign) when on the very eve of the war his young wife Galla died in childbirth, together with the baby. For one as warmly emotional and devoted to his family as we know him to have been, the wound must have been cruel indeed, but we are told he followed the Homeric rule and allowed himself one day’s mourning, then marched off to the war.
….
Pagan morale was also raised by the publication of an oracle explaining the advent of the ’Great Year’ at the end of each mystical cycle of 365 years, when measured human destiny enters a new epoch. Calculating from AD 29 this brought matters neatly to 394, and clearly signaled an end to the term of Christianity.{61} As he traveled off Flavianus boasted that on his victorious return he would draft monks into the army and turn the holy churches of Ambrose into stables.{62}
….
The established organization of the Christian Church could not now be abolished, and even the most zealous pagan emperor would have been mad to try. Arbogast, who had many Christians in his army, was fighting to survive and rule - not to stable his cavalry in the nave of Milan cathedral.
….
Theodoret and others, have readily given the conflict more religious significance than perhaps deserved, seeing the war as the final, unarguable decision between the old gods and the new. Thus it is Christian accounts which depict the forces of the West as the last Roman army to march under the twin images of Jupiter with golden thunderbolts and his invincible son Hercules.
….
On the afternoon of 5 September 394 Theodosius launched a frontal assault, with the Visigothic troops in the vanguard. Yet, after the fiercest fighting in which very great numbers were killed - including the general Bacurius - they failed to break Arbogast’s lines; at nightfall they retreated, mauled, from the field. They left so many Gothic dead that it created a legacy of bitterness among the federate allies, who felt, not unreasonably, that their blood was more expendable than that of the Romans.{2}
Eugenius considered the battle all but won, and the mood spread among his troops. Arbogast detached a substantial force{3} to carry out a concealed movement across the passes to take Theodosius in the rear. In Theodosius’ camp, we are told, the mood was one of near-despair, and the emperor spent much of the night in prayer to the God who seemed to have deserted him. Theodoret claims he was visited by two heavenly riders all in white, Saint John and Saint Philip, who bade him take courage.{4} More materially, the force sent to outflank the Eastern army instead signaled their readiness to desert Arbogast for a large financial consideration, which was naturally agreed instantly. Next day, the assault was renewed.
Despite Theodosius’ new advantage the bitter fighting was indecisive, until the appearance of a quite unexpected natural phenomenon. In this region, there can arise an unusual pressure effect on the cold air coming from the mountains, which produces cyclonic winds of over 60 mph. Known as the ’Bora’, this wind now blew across the battlefield directly against Arbogast’s line, pressing against their shields, blowing dust into faces and deflecting missiles back against their own line; it forced their opponents on top of them, their formation was disrupted and finally they broke.
Their fortified camp was stormed, and Eugenius captured in person.
….
Arbogast realized the hopelessness of the situation, and slew himself in noble Roman fashion.5 On learning the news Nicomachus Flavianus, faced with the devastating failure of all his gods and his cause, did the same.
….
Eugenius’ policy - of religious toleration, but with a bias in favor of paganism - was cancelled, and all anti-pagan laws which had been promulgated were enforced in so far as this was possible in the West. However, despite the great blow to its prestige, paganism did not immediately collapse with a spate of mass conversions, as some of its opponents have claimed. Among the mass population of the countryside the church and state had a free hand to suppress (or re-christen) the local gods, ceremonies and temples, a process which took a generation or more.
….
Under the influence of John Chrysostom the destruction of temples in the countryside was ordered in 399, although the more important public temples were often converted into churches or other, secular buildings. Yet, as late as 435, we find emperors still reiterating the prohibition on sacrifice, and the instructions to destroy or convert pagan places of worship.
….
The only hint of anything approaching the fierce medieval attitude is in a chilling letter of Ambrose to his friend, Pisidinius Romulus, in which he justifies the massacre in Exodus in barely coded terms, to suggest that the extermination of all pagans would likewise be justified; but his was never an acceptable political opinion, and Ambrose knew this very well.
Quote ID: 7163
Time Periods: 45
Theodosius: The Empire at Bay
Stephen Williams, Gerard Friell
Book ID: 282 Page: 136
Section: 3D
....at this meeting he put to the senators the question: should the worship of Christ or Jupiter be the state religion? According to Prudentius they voted decisively for Christ:The luminaries of the world, the ancient and revered assembly of Catos, eagerly cast off their pontiff’s togas like the skin of the old serpent, and put on the white robe of baptismal innocence, humbling the consular fasces before the tombs of the martyrs.
Zosimus state, to the contrary, that:
Not one obeyed his summons, nor chose to abandon those ancestral rites handed down since the foundation of the City....By observing those rites they had possessed a City that was unconquered for nearly twelve hundred years, and they could not imagine what might befall it if they now changed their religion.
Quote ID: 7164
Time Periods: 45
Theodosius: The Empire at Bay
Stephen Williams, Gerard Friell
Book ID: 282 Page: 136
Section: 1A,3A1,2B2,3D
Apart from the ending of the state cults, the progress of Christianity among the senatorial nobility of Rome was not, and could not have been, the result of any legislation. It required gradual and subtle compromise between the spirit of Christianity and classical culture - in effect, the Gospels rendered into Virgilian hexameters. We see this compromise again and again in the monumental art of the aristocracy –– the sarcophagus of Junius Bassus, or the mosaic art of Christ as a Helios figure in the Mausoleum of the Julii, or even the frescoes in the Via Latina where scenes from the Bible and from pagan mythology are mixed. Christianity was gradually accepted, provided that it was polite, polished and accommodating of the verities of Hellenic civilization.{9}….
Even so, the change took several generations. It was certainly helped by mixed marriages, which the church decided to tolerate, at least amongst the upper nobility.
Quote ID: 7165
Time Periods: 45
Theodosius: The Empire at Bay
Stephen Williams, Gerard Friell
Book ID: 282 Page: 137
Section: 3D
Theodosius’ great victory was a glorious event for Christianity, but in other ways it had solved little.
Quote ID: 7169
Time Periods: 4
Theodosius: The Empire at Bay
Stephen Williams, Gerard Friell
Book ID: 282 Page: 137/138
Section: 3D
The court, army and its illustrious retinue of generals traveled again to Milan. In the winter Theodosius, who had been under severe strain, fell seriously ill with the vascular disease of hydropsy. Ever since his critical illness of 379-80 he had not enjoyed perfect health, and now his attendants and court were seriously alarmed. Urgent word was sent to Honorius at Constantinople to hasten to meet his father at Milan.{14}….
The two most powerful figures in the background were, in the East, the Praetorian Prefect, Rufinus (who had shared the consulship with Arcadius - a singular honor); and in the West Flavius Stilicho, adoptive son-in-law of Theodosius, who by 393 had reached the top military rank of Magister Utriusque Militiae.{15}
….
The meeting of Theodosius and Honorius was celebrated by the usual lavish public games, over which Theodosius managed to preside for some time, but by the afternoon his place had been taken by Honorius. The eternal roars of the crowd echoed on, while immediately behind the scenes was being enacted the most fateful transaction for centuries.
Theodosius died on 17 January 395, aged only forty-eight. But before he did, we are told, he appointed Stilicho guardian (parens) of both his imperial sons: Honorius in the West and Arcadius in the East.
Pastor John notes: John’s Note: In the book his death is stated as being the year 394, you have it marked out and 395 written over. (That is how I typed it.) Also, in the margin beside the sentence about his death, you have p. 134 written in.
….
It differed radically from the form of Roman imperial funerals for the previous four centuries. It was, instead, an uncompromising Judeo-Christian apotheosis, delivered pointedly forty days after the emperor’s death.
Quote ID: 7170
Time Periods: 4
Theodosius: The Empire at Bay
Stephen Williams, Gerard Friell
Book ID: 282 Page: 139
Section: 3D
None of this prevented conventional inscriptions from elevating Theodosius to the ranks of the gods (divus), nor the poet Claudian later placing him among the stars.
Quote ID: 7171
Time Periods: 4
Theodosius: The Empire at Bay
Stephen Williams, Gerard Friell
Book ID: 282 Page: 140
Section: 3D
It is difficult to overestimate the significance of the transitions of 395, when a new and unprecedented set of conditions suddenly appeared. Never before in imperial history had both East and West found themselves ruled by such youths, and youths without any inkling of military experience.
Quote ID: 7172
Time Periods: 4
Theodosius: The Empire at Bay
Stephen Williams, Gerard Friell
Book ID: 282 Page: 140
Section: 3D
Compared with a youth like Gratian, who had been brought up by his warlike father to lead troops at the age of fifteen, both Honorius and Arcadius were unintelligent and pusillanimous.
Quote ID: 7173
Time Periods: 45
Theodosius: The Empire at Bay
Stephen Williams, Gerard Friell
Book ID: 282 Page: 140
Section: 3D
Instead, power flowed into new, untried channels of indirect rule, and the fundamental loyalty that had always been assumed between the thrones of East and West crumbled away. (Indeed, popular history is prone to cite 395 as a formal separation of East and West, as if it were a constitutional divorce.)Pastor John notes: John’s Note: Death of Theodosius = separation of East and West
Quote ID: 7174
Time Periods: 4
Theodosius: The Empire at Bay
Stephen Williams, Gerard Friell
Book ID: 282 Page: 143
Section: 3D
Stilicho had some cause to regret the untimely death of his patron, for his own ambitions plans were by no means complete by January 395. His loyalty to the dynasty of Theodosius did not prevent him from planning a far more binding web of marriage alliances between his own children and the imperial family, which would further underpin his own unique position (to be publicly confirmed by Theodosius) as Commander-in-Chief, ’regent’, and protector of that family.{3} There is no reason to suppose that Stilicho himself aspired to the purple, but he may well have had this vicarious ambition for his own son Eucherius, whom Theodosius seems to have acknowledged as his grandson, born in the purple.{4}Pastor John notes: John’s Note: Stilicho = Barbarian = Christian = son-in-law of Theodosius
Quote ID: 7175
Time Periods: 45
Theodosius: The Empire at Bay
Stephen Williams, Gerard Friell
Book ID: 282 Page: 144/145/148/149/150/152/1
Section: 3D
The Story of AlaricThe first challenge came almost immediately, from the Visigothic foederati who had only just been managed by Theodosius, but now sensed a power vacuum. They had returned promptly from the civil war, having been dismissed by Stilicho, to their allotted territories in the eastern Danube provinces, with great resentments. As they saw it, they had served loyally in the civil war and suffered great losses.{10} It was believed that Theodosius had deliberately placed them in the vanguard at the Frigidus so that Gothic blood could be sacrificed rather than Roman. It was also felt to be straining the alliance that they should twice be used in the emperor’s internal quarrels against other Romans.{11} Most of all, their leader, Alaric, had wanted a top Roman command like Stilicho, Bauto, Arbogast, Gainas and other Germanic generals.{12} Theodosius had refused this,....
….
This was not just a revolt by a section of disgruntled Gothic warriors - which had happened before - but a national movement of major proportions.{17} Although its exact aims are unclear, Alaric wanted to put pressure on the Government to give him a top command, which would have enormously strengthened his position both within the Roman ruling strata and among his own followers.
….
Alaric and his followers spent much of 396 helping themselves to the wealth that they could extract from the Greek cities, plundering extensively in the Peloponnese with no opposition from the Eastern government or it army.
….
In Greece, Stilicho engaged Alaric and blockaded his army, even diverting the water courses to force him into submission. The tactics were the same as always against the Goths since 378, and no less successful in their results and saving of lives for that. The outcome, however, was disappointing. For whatever reasons Stilicho withdrew, and Alaric moved north into Epirus.
….
At about this time, Eutropius and the East took the extreme step of declaring Stilicho a public enemy. If this happened during the campaign, it would have directly challenged Stilicho’s authority in Greece.
The main outcome of 397 was the gravest public rift between the thrones of East and West, usually signaling the outbreak of civil war along with the overthrowing of imperial statues, but the two brothers Arcadius and Honorius were not going to fight.
….
But Eutropius, Stilicho’s equal in astuteness, took the logical but unpopular step of ridding the East of one major problem by finally giving Alaric what he had continually wanted: a full Roman command. He was officially appointed Magister Militum in eastern Illyricum, in theory responsible to Arcadius, but in practice to nobody. At the stroke of a stylus the barbarian plunderer of Greece was legitimized and promoted to be its supreme military commander and supposed defender.
The timing of this promotion is uncertain, but it seems plausible that Alaric broke out of Greece after the withdrawal of Stilicho and, in the absence of any restraint on the Goths, Eutropius had to come to terms with them. They were established in a new territory, in Macedonia, where their arbitrary depredations ceased and they began to be supplied quite legitimately with the produce of the Balkan provinces and the output of its arms factories. This was a good bargain for Alaric, which he exploited fully, and the new treaty held for four years.{38}
Although Alaric appears increasingly as a dangerous volatile force which will neither be satisfied nor controlled, at this stage his ambitions were at least rational.{39} A senior military command gave him the means to supply and settle his followers, to build up and re-arm his warriors, and to consolidate his position as king. Most importantly, it offered him a respected place in the decision-making circles of the empire, which might provide the secure political guarantees for the Visigothic nation within Roman territory which had eluded Fritigern and his successors; and which had allowed - as he saw it - betrayal and exploitation by perfidious Roman allies. From the Roman point of view, to the dismay of Stilicho, Alaric now had two horses to ride: he was both king of the Visigothic federates, and Roman military commander of one of the strategically pivotal areas of the empire. There is no doubt that this represented a crucial further step in the loss of Roman ascendancy and initiative - which is why Theodosius and Stilicho had opposed it so adamantly. Stilicho, who was secure enough in the West, was further that ever from realizing his claims in the East, while Alaric was even stronger, able to play East off against West. His forces, despite some inevitable losses, had benefitted from their habitual service with the Roman army, and were tactically a more formidable weapon than those commanded by Fritigern a generation earlier; they were also, of course, much better equipped and supplied.
There were thus three rival power centers: Stilicho, Alaric and Eutropius. Eutropius’ deal with Alaric freed him from the short-term Gothic menace, and provided a useful counterweight to Stilicho.
….
Eutropius’ blunder was compounded by the substantial unpopularity of the appointment of Alaric, which must have provoked even further the simmering anti-Gothic feeling in the East. That Alaric was now legitimate commander of the Greek cities of Illyricum was the latest in a series of affronts to civilized men, stretching back beyond Fritigern to the ravages of the third century.
….
....palace rivalries at Constantinople were compounded by a split into pro- and anti-Gothic factions, which erupted violently in 400. The empress Eudoxia, who had quarreled with Eutropius, now struggled with him for control of Arcadius: as his wife, and the mother of his children, Eudoxia was in a strong position.{44}
….
Against an idealized Hellenistic background, Synesius pronounces on the true nature of kingship. The emperor should not hide away in his palace, but should avoid the oppressive court ceremonial and palace intrigues and take the field with his army, as in the days of old. Above all, he should expel the treacherous German barbarians who cannot be trusted to defend the empire in the field or in the council chamber. Citizens alone should defend their country and win their own victories. Barbarians are born to slavery, and it is a disgrace that they should parade as army commanders. Let all fair-haired men be banished from positions of power. The policy of Theodosius was a mistake, made not out of weakness but his extreme clemency to a defeated foe (it would have been unwise to criticize Theodosius directly in front of his son!), but the barbarians do not understand clemency. They should never have been granted land - they should instead be forced to work the land for us, as the Spartans did with the Messenians.{47}
….
The attitudes of Synesius were widely echoed among the upper classes and the wider population, although those in power saw the realities of the situation more clearly. The Goths were barbarians, they were illiterate and untutored (although many soldiers would have learned some Latin), they were uncouth and wore strange or un-Roman dress, they were Arian heretics, they followed the traditions of their barbaric ancestors...they were an alien virus in the body of the empire. This attitude, untypically for the period, represents a surge of the kind of hostility to outsiders that we have witnessed in our own century. It was confirmed only a year later, in 401, when Alaric decided to invade Italy.
It was now, with the threat to Italy itself, that Stilicho began to face truly grave problems. His standing had been strengthened by the prompt suppression of the Gildonic revolt and the restoration of the grain supply to Italy, and he still controlled Honorius and enjoyed the undoubted support of the army. The senatorial aristocracy could never overlook his barbarian origins, but they generally acquiesced in his rule - that is, they did not lend comfort to his enemies - provided he protected the territory of the West and their own wealth.
….
Alaric marched from Illyricum, taking advantage of Stilicho’s absence, and was in Italy by late 401 without encountering any real resistance. Some smaller cities were taken, but Aquileia held out under siege and early in 401 Alaric moved to threaten the imperial capital, Milan.{48}
….
Alaric lost his camp and baggage to the Roman army under the leadership of the Alan general Saul (who proved his loyalty to the Roman cause by dying in battle for it!), and although the main part of their forces survived intact the Goths were driven to seek refuge in a fortified position in the mountains. Negotiations began again, and Stilicho held the upper hand: Alaric agreed to move out of Italy, and his forces marched north beyond the Po.
….
For some reason Alaric halted his retreat near Verona, perhaps threatened by Stilicho searching for a more convincing victory. The battle of Verona was a major defeat for Alaric: his losses were high, his mobility lost to Stilicho’s superior cavalry forces, and his prestige was in tatters. Many of his men deserted and joined Stilicho, including senior figures (Sarus, Ulfilas) with their retinues. Defeated and blockaded by Stilicho, Alaric had no choice: he left Italy and returned to eastern Illyricum, where he was limited to ravaging those provinces in an attempt to restore his strength. A letter referring to this period (403-4), from Honorius to his brother, laments the depredations in Eastern territory, and bemoans the lack of cooperation in dealing with it. Stilicho obviously still had his interests in the East, and must also have been concerned about the possibility of Alaric again representing a threat to Italy: certainly the East was making no move to deal with the situation.{50}
Pastor John notes: John’s Note: Alaric an Eastern agent!!
….
In these circumstances lie the reasons that Stilicho now concluded an alliance with Alaric to annexe the eastern parts of Illyricum to the West, and to force a resolution to the conflict with the court in Constantinople.{52}
Pastor John notes: John’s Note: Alaric a Western agent!!
….
Before any action could be taken to follow this through, however, the plans of both Stilicho and Alaric were disrupted by a massive invasion of Goths under Radagaisus, a charismatic war leader who had attracted a huge following among the pagan Goths outside the empire (his forces were said to number 400,000!).{53}
….
Stilicho took the field against Radagaisus....
….
Radagaisus was decisively defeated in early 406 at Faesulae, and he was executed in August of that year. His huge forces were cut to pieces by the Huns as they fled, and many were taken as slaves by both Huns and Romans - the Roman slave markets are said to have collapsed under the flood of captives for sale. {54}
….
The cost of Stilicho’s victory became clear as he was planning to resume his interrupted campaign with Alaric against the East.
….
From this point on, despite the prestige of having saved Italy on more than one occasion, Stilicho was struggling against forces too many, too powerful and too complex for him to manage. He had stuck to his policy of seeking authority in the East, even resorting to using Alaric to help him secure it. His neglect of the Gallic provinces, although understandable and even necessary in the circumstances, alienated those provinces and the aristocracies who owned much of them. A barbarian general, it was murmured, was more concerned to do deals with other barbarian invaders for his own purposes than to defend Roman provinces against them. This was why he had spared Alaric time and again, when he should and could have crushed him as he had Radagaisus. We cannot trust barbarians in uniform.
….
Stilicho’s commander, Sarus, had had limited success campaigning in Gaul against Constantine in 407, after Stilicho had Honorius declare him a public enemy. Now matters were complicated by Alaric, who marched on Italy and demanded a huge sum as payment for his - unused - services under the treaty of 405 with Stilicho.
….
In May 408 Arcadius died in Constantinople, leaving the seven-year-old Theodosius II to succeed him. Stilicho, despite the obvious crisis unfolding about him must have seen this as one last opportunity to seize the initiative again, and proposed that he should go to Constantinople in person to establish his authority over the East (on behalf of Honorius, the senior emperor, of course). Honorius would remain in Italy, with Alaric to protect him and face Constantine in Gaul. Even his wife, Serena, tried to warn Stilicho, but to no avail.{60}
….
Imperial orders were then issued for his arrest, and it became clear that Honorius was under the control of Stilicho’s opponents. He sought sanctuary in a church, faced with the ruin of all his ambitious, but largely unselfish hopes. Even at the end he remained loyal, and when he was assured that he was only to be arrested he gave himself up: even his Hunnic bodyguard was not to offer resistance. He was, of course, betrayed and he was executed on 22 August 408. His son was murdered, after briefly seeking refuge in Rome. His property was confiscated, his inscriptions erased, and his adherents arrested and tortured to secure evidence of his treasonable conspiracy. They died in silence.{62} The families of his loyal barbarian troops, including those recruited from Radagaisus’ army, were massacred and most of Stilicho’s surviving barbarian forces deserted en masse to their only hope of security: Alaric. He is said to have recruited 30,000 men from Stilicho’s forces, and within two years he would sack Rome with them, while Honorius and his advisors who had overthrown Stilicho sheltered behind the marshes in Ravenna.{63}
….
This is not a work of drama. History, among other things, is about doing justice to the dead.
….
His errors, which caused his destruction, were not those of greed or personal ambition, but (and this can still be said of these politically squalid times) of idealism.
….
The dismemberment of the West was no a cataclysmic event. The sack of Rome in AD 410, to take the most hackneyed example, was quite avoidable, and was - in any case - of psychological rather than strategic importance.
….
It is ironic, perhaps, that until very late in the century the Germanic kings did not want to destroy the empire - in the sense of supplanting it with states of their own - they had no such states. What they wanted was settlement land, power and prestige within an imperial framework. Some, such as Athaulf and Wallia, were (in their good moods) decidedly pro-Roman.
….
Alaric became a third power center with the empire: so most destructively.
Pastor John notes: John’s Note: Alaric was bought by East with a title, and no punishment for his troop’s plunder of Illyricum, Greece, Macedonia.
....
In 410, having sacked Rome and plundered throughout Italy, Alaric suddenly died and was succeeded by his brother-in-law, Athaulf; he proved to be a more rational ruler after initially continuing to ravage Italy, and eventually became pro-Roman through his marriage in January 414 to Theodosius’ formidable daughter, Galla Placidia.
Quote ID: 7176
Time Periods: 45
Theodosius: The Empire at Bay
Stephen Williams, Gerard Friell
Book ID: 282 Page: 171
Section: 3D
Had the West been able to do likewise it might well have held the ring, and provided the emerging Gothic and Frankish kingdoms with a confident imperial Roman framework of law, statecraft, administration and religion within which they could have prospered, struggled and grown with a richer culture than they in fact inherited. Whether this would have been a Good Thing, in whatever sense, is of course a matter for argument. But look at the Papacy, and at Charlemagne: the successful followers of the Roman empire still wanted to be what they perceived Caesar Augustus to have once been.{10}Theodosius has been called the Great, but principally in gratitude for his establishment of Unam Sanctam Catholicam Apostolicam Ecclesiam.
Quote ID: 7177
Time Periods: 45
Valerius Maximus, Memorable Doings and Sayings, LCL 492: Maximus 1, Books 1-5
Edited by D. R. Shackleton Bailey
Book ID: 555 Page: 17
Section: 3D
The highest state power yielded to religion; for it seemed Postumius would not safely commit himself to martial conflict after abandoning Mars’ rituals.PJ footnote reference: Valerius Maximus, Memorable Doings and Sayings, I.1.2.
Quote ID: 9228
Time Periods: 04
Vigilantius and His Times
William Stephen Gilly
Book ID: 284 Page: 4
Section: 3D
The chief, among “the wise and prudent” of that day, were falling into errors, which had gradually crept into the Church: and the religion, which was at first commended to the world by the simplicity and unbending holiness of its professors, was now promoted by sophistry and false reasoning. Ambrose, who was then at the height of his reputation in the western Church; and Jerome, who was consulted as an oracle, both in that and in the eastern Church; and, even Augustine himself gave their sanction to practices and opinions, at which “the stones would have cried out,” had all who professed to be guided by the Holy Scriptures, held their peace.
Quote ID: 7194
Time Periods: 45
Vigilantius and His Times
William Stephen Gilly
Book ID: 284 Page: 266/267/268/269/270
Section: 1A,2D3B,3D
Page: 266Unhappily, for the Christian church, while Jerome talked of renouncing heathen literature, he taught and employed those unworthy artifices of rhetoric and disputation, which were learnt in the schools of heathen philosophy, {ᾠ} to the detriment of Christian simplicity and morality. Thus in his Epistle to Pammachius, in defence of his Treatsie against Jovinian, {‡} he appeals to the practice of Socrates, Demosthenes, Cicero, Plato, Theophrastus, Xenophon, Aristotle, and others, all of whom, as he said, at times spoke one thing while they meant another, and proposed things probable rather than true to secure a victory.
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. . . .
Page: 267
‘Read St. Paul’s Epistles,’ says he, ‘especially those to the Romans, the Galatians, and the Ephesians, in which he enters with all his energies into a controversy, and you will see what sort of use he makes of the contents or the Old Testament; and with what artifice, and prudence and dissimulation he wields his arguments. {*}
[Footnote *] Quam artifex, quam prudens, quam dissumulator sit ejus quod afit.’ - Hier. Op. 4. pars il. p. 236
In his Commentary {ᾠ} on the Epistle to the Galatians, the unscrupulous monk goes still farther, and argues that St. Paul did not rebuke Peter because he really thought him deserving of reprehension; but by ‘a new mode of controversy,’ {‡} to edify the Gentiles, he pretended to reprove Peter in order that ‘hypocrisy might be corrected by hypocrisy.’ {§}
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Pages 268-270:
This unworthy practice has been rightly called ‘Falsitas Dispensativa,’ fraudulent management, or license to conceal the truth, or to use falsehood as circumstances may require; and it has been vindicated and followed by the admirers of patristical antiquity in a manner which shews too plainly, that there is a proneness in the human mind, under fanatical excitement, to ‘believe a lie.’
It was this ‘Falsitas Dispensativa,’ which enabled Jerome and his contemporaries to build up that structure called the church of the fourth century, so unlike ‘The holy temple of the Lord fitly framed together on the foundation of the apostles and prophets.’ False miracles, {*p.268} dreams related in terms which led the hearers to suppose they were realities; scriptural verities withheld, under the pretext that they were too strong for weak brethren; church ordinance pronounced to be sacraments, when they were only of human authority; texts of scripture misapplied, wrested and perverted, to suit the occasion; allegories treated as facts; opinions expressed in terms of such ambiguity as would admit of retraction or confirmation, of blowing hot or cold, in the progress of development: these were the artifices and ‘the sleight of men,’ who had a system of their own to uphold, and who forgot that the fabric which has not truth for its basis, cannot be ‘an habitation of God through the Spirit.{*p.269}
Such were the corruptions, and the sad errors of many of the contemporaries of Vigilantius, over which good men mourn, and bad men exult. It is painful to have to record such instances of human infirmity, which are in reality so many proofs of want of faith. Had the fathers of the fourth century trusted more implicitly to the great head of the church to sustain his own cause, with his own right hand, they would not have had recourse to such miserable expedients. And if ‘churchmen’ of the present day would not take such pains to exalt ‘the church of the fathers’ above that of the existing generation, we should not be under the necessity of raking up the sins of past ages.
[Footnote *p.268] How can we rely on any of the patristical miracles, or any testimony of the Fathers as to the miracles of the fourth century, if they felt themselves at liberty to trifle with the truth for the promotion of the Gospel?
[Footnote *p.269] One of the most seductive arguments of infidelity grounds itself on the numerous passages in the works of the Christian Fathers, asserting the lawfulness of deceit for a good purpose. That the Fathers held, almost without exception, that, “Wholly without breach of duty, it is allowed to the teachers and heads of the Christian Church to employ artifices, to intermix falsehoods with truths, and especially to deceive enemies of the faith, provided only they hereby serve the interest of the truth and the advantage of mankind,” is the unwilling confession of Ribof.’ - (Program. de (Economia Partrum.) ‘St. Jerome, as is shown by the citations of this learned theologian, boldly attributes this management, ‘falsitatem dispensativam,’ even to the apostles themselves. But why speak I of the advantage given to the opponents of Christianity? Alas! to this doctrine chiefly, and to the practices derived from it, must we attribute the utter corruption of the religion itself for so many ages, and even now over so large a portion of the civilized world. By a system of accommodating truth to falsehood, the pastors of the church gradually changed the life and light of the Gospel into the very superstitions which they were commissioned to disperse, and thus paganised Christianity, in order to christen paganism. At this very hour Europe groans and bleeds in consequence.’ - Coleridge’s Fifth Essay in “The Friend,” vol.i.
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Quote ID: 7231
Time Periods: 45
Vigilantius and His Times
William Stephen Gilly
Book ID: 284 Page: 272
Section: 2D3B,3D
Above all we feel it a sacred duty to show that those times, so far from being ‘the holy and the happy times,’ {*} on which we are to look back with regret, did exhibit a want both of holiness and happiness amid the very scenes, where we are directed to seek for a spiritual paradise: and we are also bound to vindicate the character, and explain the mental progress, of a calumniated professor of Christianity like Vigilantius, who afterwards protested against proceedings, of the evil of which he had been an eye-witness.
Quote ID: 7232
Time Periods: 345
Vigilantius and His Times
William Stephen Gilly
Book ID: 284 Page: 372
Section: 2D3B,3D
When the destroying armies of the Goths and Vandals were ravaging Christian Europe, and sparing the house neither of God nor man, the enemies of the gospel said, that they were executing the judgments of heaven upon the professors of a false religion.. . . .
Salvian’s argument, therefore, was, that God vindicated his justice in the punishment of unworthy Christians. Mine is, that God at the same time vindicated his mercy, by raising up witnesses of his truth. Among these was Vigilantius, and though we read of him only as one who was held up to hatred for protesting and reasoning against the follies of a system, which produced laxity of morals, and shut up the great majority of professing Christians in ignorance of the pure doctrines of the gospel, yet in spite of the obloquy cast upon him, I believe that he was leading a virtuous and holy life, and that he was not merely remonstrating against error, but was actively promoting godliness.
Quote ID: 7240
Time Periods: 345
Vigilantius and His Times
William Stephen Gilly
Book ID: 284 Page: 456/457/458
Section: 1A,2D3B,3D
Until the hidden treasures of manuscript collections are fully brought to light, we must be satisfied with such statements as the following, by a distinguished ecclesiastical scholar, with whom I have the misfortune to differ on some subjects, but whose critical investigations have directed public attention to many points, which might have escaped notice; and have made me, for one, more cautious in the examination and use of authorities than I might otherwise have been.‘I have just said that if any papist should tell me that our religion was not to be found before the time of Calvin and Luther, I should be satisfied to answer him according to his folly; but I would by no means be understood to admit the truth of this statement, for I believe it to be as false as it is foolish; and feel no doubt, that, in the darkest age, there were many true, and accepted, worshippers of God. Not formed into churches, and eminently bearing their testimony in corporate capacities as churches, against the see of Rome, (for then I think we should have heard more about them); but as the sheep of Christ dispersed abroad in the midst of this naughty world - known, perhaps, by this or that name of reproach; or, perhaps, the obscure and unknown, whose names were never written any where but in heaven. I doubt not that there were such, living a life of faith, and prayer, and communion with God; overlooked in the bustle of cities, and the solitude of cottages, and even shut up in what modern systems require us to consider as the strongholds of antichrist, - the cell, and the cloister.
. . . .
● ‘Facts and Documents relating to the Ancient Albigenses and Waldenses,’ by the Rev. S. R. Maitland, page 45. Since this passage was transcribed for the press, I find that it has been the subject of allusion in Mr. Elliott’s ‘Horoe Apocalyptica,’ a work which will deservedly command as much attention as any which has been published during the present century. ‘I fully agree,’ says Mr. Elliott, ‘with the sentiment so beautifully expressed by Mr. Maitland, in his book on the Waldeneses, as to the piety of many tonsured monk, &c., only with this difference, that he would range them among the Witnesses, I among the members of the Church hidden in the wilderness,’ vol. ii. p. 815.
Quote ID: 7250
Time Periods: 345
Vigilantius and His Times
William Stephen Gilly
Book ID: 284 Page: 462
Section: 2D3B,3D
Because all Christendom was enslaved by the corruptions preached by the more eminent doctors of the church, and ‘the dominant spirit of the times may be estimated by the language of wrath, bitterness, contempt, and abhorrence with which Jerome assailed him’ {ᾠ} - I am using the language of Mr. Milman; for this very reason, I am persuaded that Vigilantius, who spoke and wrote as a believer, not as a scorner, had humbly gone to the divine oracles, and had there inquired of God after the right way, before he presumed to encounter the spirit of his age.
Quote ID: 7253
Time Periods: 345
Vigilantius and His Times
William Stephen Gilly
Book ID: 284 Page: 467
Section: 2D3B,3D
The apostasy of the professing church was in its full career at the latter end of the fourth century -that eventful century, ‘which set in storms,’ ecclesiastical and political. This apostasy was exhibited in the admission of profligate and irreligious persons into the ranks of the cross, who were received on worldly motives because of their wealth of influence, when they were notoriously defective in repentance and faith, and gave no earnest of the conversion of their hearts: in the corruption of the holy sacraments...
Quote ID: 7254
Time Periods: 345
Vigilantius and His Times
William Stephen Gilly
Book ID: 284 Page: 479
Section: 2D3B,3D
In every age there are persons who love to have the pre-eminence, and whose bold, uncompromising tone, whose use of an ecclesiastical shibboleth, whose sophistry, and language of gentleness or severity, as occasion may require, give them an advantage over those who desire to have every religious canon and custom tried by the unerring rule of the scripture. The loud voice of error is always more popular than the still small voice of the truth. Under error and clamour, Vigilantius sunk, but it does not therefore follow that his teaching fell to the ground void, and was of none effect.
Quote ID: 7257
Time Periods: 345
Voting about God in Early Church Councils
Ramsay MacMullen
Book ID: 285 Page: 72
Section: 3A1,3D
In AD 410 the process was indicated for the Carthage council of the following year. Get to power and bend it to your truth --which need not be everyone’s truth.We have information about another juncture with an equally successful outcome, a generation earlier (AD 381). The bishop second in authority in Italy, perhaps in the west, was Ambrose in Milan. ...
Ambrose has thus narrowed the thing to a size he could totally control. Most of the bishops attending were subordinate to him; most, perhaps all, owed their past or future careers to his favor. It only remains unclear, whether his plan required him to have deceived the emperor or whether he and the emperor together joined in deceiving Palladius. The first explanation seems the most likely, given the evidence for such deception being tried and succeeding at other times. Absolute monarchs, walled in as they are, must submit to being misinformed so long as they insist on being absolute. {13}
Quote ID: 7283
Time Periods: 45
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