|
|
|
Emperor Constantine
Constantine again
.
Bishop Eusebius
Julian the Apostate
.
Roman soldiers in Britannia chose Constantine as emperor of the western half of the empire. Maxentius, the son of a former vice-emperor under Diocletian, also claimed himself emperor in the west. Constantine challenged Maxentius and extended his rule to Gaul. Maxentius extended his rule to Spain and to North Africa.
Maxentius also warred against the emperor of the east, Galerius, while Constantine marked time. In 310, Galerius contacted a disease which he believed to be the retribution of the god of the Christians. As he lay dying he issued an edict ending his persecution of the Christians and asked Christians to pray for him so that he might live. He died anyway, in 311, and Constantine was impressed by what he believed was the victory of Christianity's god over Galerius.
In the spring of 312, Constantine moved against Maxentius, advancing from Gaul across the Alps and into Italy. The city of Milan surrendered to his forces, and Constantine won control over northern Italy. Maxentius and his army moved north from Rome to confront Constantine, and in October the two forces met and fought at the Milvian Bridge at the Tiber River. Like Caesar against Pompey, Constantine faced an army that greatly outnumbered his. But Constantine had trained his troops well, and his tactics were superior. His cavalry swept the left-wing of Maxentius' foot soldiers into the river. Maxentius lost many men and his own life when the pontoon bridge they were on collapsed. Surviving troops crossed over to Constantine's side, and a victorious Constantine rode into Rome with his army. There, at around the age of twenty-four, Constantine was hailed as emperor, of the western half of the empire. He was hailed as a man of boldness and a man favored and guided by the gods.
In addition to having become an emperor, Constantine took office as Supreme Pontiff. And, as Supreme Pontiff, he gave recognition to the god that had been his father's favorite: Sol Invictus, the Syrian sun god that had been brought to Rome by the boy-emperor Varius Avitus some sixty years before. Constantine's half of the empire was five or more percent Christian. His mother, Helena, was among the Christians. Constantine had become sympathetic with the god of the Christians. And perhaps he gave Jesus at least part of the credit for his victory over Maxentius.
In the eastern half of the empire, Galerius had been succeeded by his choice, his drinking companion, Licinius (pronounced Lick-IN-ee-us). At Milan in 313, Constantine came to an understanding with Licinius. The two recognized each other's rule, and they agreed that Christianity was to have full equality with other religions and that the property taken from Christians during the persecutions was to be returned. This was their Edict of Toleration.
Constantine became Christianity's champion and patron, Christianity having taken about the same length of time -- about three centuries -- that it took Buddhism to acquire the same kind of imperial support under Asoka. Constantine gave the bishop of Rome imperial property where a new cathedral, the Lateran Basilica, would rise, and he provided for the building of other Christian churches across his part of the empire. He allowed people to will their property to the Church. He exempted the clergy from taxation, from military service and forced labor - as had been granted to the priests of other recognized religions. The tax exemptions for the Christian clergy were followed by a number of wealthy men rushing to join the clergy, and Constantine corrected this by making it illegal for rich pagans to claim tax exemptions as Christian priests.
The Church was experiencing numerous ideological conflicts, and the bishops sought help from Constantine in their effort to preserve what they called true Christianity. Constantine wished Christianity to end its internal bickering and responded willingly. Like emperors before him, he saw it as his duty to suppress impiety. He put himself at the head of the Church's effort against heresy, and the bishops accepted Constantine as an authority on godly matters.
Constantine's half of the empire remained from five to ten percent Christian, and the city of Rome remained largely pagan, especially the Senate, and so too did the high command of Constantine's army. Constantine had made no break with paganism. The arch dedicated to Constantine's victory over Maxentius, erected in 315 or 316, described that victory as an "instigation of divinity" and had not credited Jesus or Yahweh. Constantine appointed pagan aristocrats to high offices in Rome while tolerating from his army the greeting "Constantine, may the immortal gods preserve you for us!" Then, in 321, in a move to spite Jews and accommodate Christianity with prevailing pagan ways, Constantine made the day of Sol Invictus a holy day and a day of rest for the Christians -- Sunday.
The emperor in the east, Licinius, grew fearful of the respect that Christians in his realm had for Constantine. He expelled Christians from his household and executed a few bishops. In 323, Constantine and his army entered Greece. Then he drove another wave of Goth invaders north and back across the Danube River. Although Constantine was still in what was officially the western half of the empire he was close enough to the east to concern Licinius. Licinius attempted negotiations with Constantine, which failed, and war erupted between the two. In late 324, Constantine's forces defeated those under Licinius, and Constantine became emperor of the entire empire. He had publicly promised to spare the life of Licinius, but he changed his mind, and the following year he had Licinius executed by strangulation.
That same year, 324, Constantine founded a new capital city in the eastern half of the empire, at Byzantium. He called the city "New Rome." Later it would be called the City of Constantine, or Constantinople. Eventually it would be called Istanbul.
Constantine had not been baptized, but he appears to have become increasingly devoted to Christianity. He wrote of his successes as an indication of favor from Christianity's god. He attributed the failures of those recent emperors who had persecuted the Christians as an indication of the Christian god's power. He began a new series in the construction of Christian churches much grander than the Christians had before his time. He granted more lands to the Church. He gave Christian bishops the authority of judges -- against whom there would be no appeal.
Constantine attempted to increase his appeal as a Christian by writing that his father, Constantius -- a vice-emperor under Diocletian -- had honored the "one supreme god," and that God had given his father "manifestations and signs" of His assistance. It was a claim that overlooked that his father had worshiped Sol Invictus, had supported, however half-heartedly, Diocletian's persecutions of the Christians, and had died a pagan.
Much to Constantine's annoyance, God's harmony continued to elude the Christian Church -- as churchmen disagreed over the exact nature of Jesus. In 325, he called for the Church's first ecumenical (general) council, which was to meet in the city of Nicaea for the purpose of deciding by committee the nature of Jesus Christ and other issues.
Of Christianity's 1,800 or so bishops, 318 attended the conference -- most of them from the eastern half of the empire. Constantine presided over the meeting. One group of bishops, led by the bishop Arius, claimed that God and Jesus were separate beings, that because Jesus was God's son there must have been a time when Jesus did not exist. Another group of bishops could not accept the notion that Jesus had been created from nothing and insisted that he had to be divine and therefore a part of God.
Constantine decided against Arius. For the sake of unity he decided that Bishop Arius and his supporters would be allowed to remain within the Church and would not be forced to recant, but those bishops who refused to sign the settlement at Nicaea were to be exiled. Constantine also ruled that various other Christian groupings who did not conform to established doctrine would be considered heretics and would have their meeting places confiscated.
With the power of the state behind them, the bishops decided to make their authority law. Cutting off the possibility of common Christians choosing their own bishop, the bishops ruled that in no province of the empire was anyone to be made bishop except by other bishops within that province. The bishops granted to the bishop of Alexandria papal authority over the eastern half of the empire, and to the bishop of Rome they granted papal authority over the western portion of the empire.
In 330, Constantine took up residence in his new capital at Byzantium: New Rome. Three years later he returned to Rome to celebrate the twentieth anniversary of his taking power there. He still held the office of Pontifex Maximus, and as Pontifex Maximus he was still the leader of the empire's pagans, but he refused to take part in the city's pagan rituals. Rome's pagan majority was offended, and Constantine returned to New Rome annoyed.
Wishing that his pagan subjects would give up their religious rites, Constantine kept the pagans fearful and cowed as he confiscated from their priests much of the wealth the pagan religions had accumulated, including their sacred icons. This brought to Constantine much wealth in the form of precious metal, which he gave to the Christian Church.
It was around this time that Constantine was experiencing domestic tensions. The source of the conflict remains unknown. His wife, Fausta, was stepmother to his eldest son, Crispus. Crispus had helped him defeat Licinius, but, for reasons unknown, Constantine ordered the execution of Crispus and forced Fausta to commit suicide.
Meanwhile, Constantine created severe penalties against adultery, concubinage and prostitution. For a variety of other crimes, people were to have their eyes gouged out or their legs maimed. Influenced by Christianity, he ended crucifixion as a form of execution. He ended branding criminals and slaves on their face - the face according to Christians having been formed in the image of divine beauty. And in keeping with Christianity's devotion to the family, he forbade the separation of a family of slaves.
But, under Constantine the old world of slavery continued. Constantine passed a law allowing masters to beat their slaves to death. Unlike Diocletian, he allowed infants born to slaves to be sold. Constantine allowed slaves who were caught seeking refuge among "barbarians" to have a foot amputated. Slaves in the public services caught attempting to leave town were to be beaten. Anyone caught sheltering a runaway slave was to be fined. With the agreement of bishops, slaves who sought refuge in Christian churches were to be returned to their masters.
And under Constantine, politics remained unchanged or was changing for the worse. In the place of the spies that Diocletian had relied on for information, Constantine revived the secret police, which was notorious for its corruption. Under Constantine taxes remained oppressive, the great landowners often paying bribes to avoid taxes or passing the burden onto their tenants. As under Diocletian, everyone was forced to follow their parent's occupation, including the sons of soldiers. The state tried to keep people working in crafts where there was a shortage of such workers. Some city officials in some cities in North Africa continued to be elected by its citizenry, but during Constantine's rule municipal government continued to decline as few people wished to serve. Local government was becoming a hereditary duty rather than inspired by any kind of civic pride.
There were still those called consul, but it was a title no longer with executive powers, and no office. In Rome, Senate seats continued to pass from father to son, but the Senate remained without powers: a prestigious club for conversation. Only a few senators, mainly those who happened to live in Rome, attended Senate meetings.
The Church had left behind its original communal sharing and its sense of equality among members. The bishops were growing in wealth and in the splendor of their dress. Having moved from simple buildings to those that were grand and imposing, the Church also made its rituals more splendid. In place of a simple table for the rite of Holy Communion -- the Eucharist -- the Church now used a massive and ornate altar of marble studded with gems.
But the bishops devoted themselves to the humble through charity -- much of this made possible by wealth from Constantine and gifts from wealthy Christians. The Church built orphanages, hospitals, inns for travelers, and it founded old age homes, all of which helped increase Christianity's prestige and popularity.
Christianity was supposed to be a matter of the heart, of conviction, and commitment to Jesus, but it was the increase in its grandeur, including the prestige gained from Constantine's support that helped the Church make great new gains in converts. Some conversions were accommodations to the belief that the emperor was a Christian -- an accommodation to state power.
Pagan habits were modified to fit Christianity. Some evangelists, Gregory the Wonder worker among them, facilitated conversions by encouraging Christians to have the feasts of their old gods celebrated as feasts of Christian martyrs. In the western half of the empire, the popular pagan feast day celebrated as the birthday of Sol Invictus and the winter solstice, December 25th, began being celebrated as the day of birth of Jesus Christ. Christians in the eastern half of the empire disagreed with this and chose instead January 6th -- the day of another great pagan festival -- as the day of Jesus' birth. This difference between western and eastern Christianity was to continue into modern times.
Among the pagan practices adopted by Christians in bringing pagans into the fold were a devotion to relics, the kissing of holy objects as an act of reverence, genuflection, and the use of candles and incense. But the object of Christianity remained the same: the worship of Jesus Christ and obedience to God's laws. The acquisition of paganism's feast dates made no real change in the substance of Christian worship. What mattered from the Christian point of view was to whom people prayed. Those who had prayed to pagan gods for rain and for bestowing fertility upon women would now be praying to Christian saints. Many peasants who had venerated a pagan female guardian of grain would transfer that veneration to a new guardian and creator of their grain: Mary, the mother of Jesus.
In his early fifties and near death, Constantine finally chose to be baptized a Christian, to prepare himself for the hereafter. Performing the baptism was the elderly bishop and a Church historian: Eusebius. Eusebius was to claim that just before his death Constantine told him that the day before his battle against Maxentius, at the Tiber River, he and his entire army saw a flaming cross against the sun and the words "conquer with this." And Eusebius claimed that Constantine told him that the night before his battle against Maxentius he had dreamed of Christ.
Eusebius' claim accompanied his opinion that Constantine was the chosen agent of God, that Constantine had been "crowned with the virtues which are inherent in God." and that Constantine "received in his soul the emanations that come from God." (The Tricennial Oration, c. 5:1.)
Eusebius was a scholar of history and theology. He wrote many books, wrestled with Porphyry's criticisms of Christianity and was the creator of a history that would serve as political ideology for the Church for generations. He developed a detailed history of the world that fit with his Christianity. History, he concluded, was a struggle between divine authority and a multiplicity of demonic influences that had taken the form of paganism. Seeing paganism as a deviation from devotion to the "One True God," he claimed that in reality paganism was atheism. Believing in the authority of One True God, Eusebius saw the existence of many states and rulers as the work of the devil. This multiplicity of rule he called "polyarchy." He described history as moving with divine purpose from polyarchy to an era in which all political authority united into a singular authority emanating from God: the authority of the Roman Emperor, Constantine.
According to Eusebius, Jewish religion, Greek philosophy and Roman law had come together to enable the Christian revelation to take root and to grow to maturity. He wrote that if Christ had been born into the world at any other time, the world would not have been able to receive Him. Before Jesus, according to Eusebius, cities were at war against cities, nations at war against nations, and life was "being wasted and spent in all manner of confusion." Eusebius wrote (in Praeparatio Evangelica, I, c, 4) that "in the days when the demons tyrannized over all the nations," humanity had "rushed madly into mutual slaughter," enslaving one another and "wasting one another's cities with sieges." Then, according to Eusebius, came the disappearance of the Jewish state and the coming of the Roman Empire, as prophesied in the Bible. According to Eusebius, Rome's rise as an empire was a part of a divine plan, as was the coming to power of Augustus Caesar, who, he wrote, brought "mastery over the nations." With Caesar, wrote Eusebius, the multitude of rulers for the most part disappeared and peace covered all of the earth, again as prophesied in the Bible. Then, according to Eusebius, Augustus prepared the way for the birth of Jesus Christ. This, he wrote (in Praeparatio Evangelica, I, c. 4) was when "the fortunes of Rome reached their zenith."
Eusebius wrote that, with Constantine, nations "found rest and respite from their ancient miseries." He wrote that government as practiced by Constantine was "a system and method of government for all states." He described equality of status and democracy as polyarchy and as "anarchy and dissension rather than a form of government." Supporting a singular political authority, he wrote that there is "one God -- not two or three or more." (Tricennial Oration, c. I:6)
Eusebius wrote approvingly of Constantine schooling his sons "into harmony with the reins of inspired unison and concord." Constantine had passed his rule to his three sons. The empire was to be divided among them, and the harmony about which Eusebius wrote would soon be tested by events.
The Emperor Constantine the Great died in 337. Each of his three sons -- Constantius II, Constantine II, and Constans -- acquired the title Augustus. Constantius II inherited rule in the eastern portion of the empire. Constans, inherited rule in Italy, North Africa and Illyricum. Constantine II inherited rule in Spain, Britannia and Gaul, and being the eldest son he claimed authority over his brothers, who were unwilling to submit, and in the year 340 he invaded Italy. Brother warred against brother, Christian against Christian. Constans won and Constantine II died.
Meanwhile, Constantius II had been occupied by war against the Sassanid emperor Shapur II, who had seen Constantine's sons fighting among themselves and, in 337, had decided to war against them. The war between Constantius and Shapur lasted twelve years and was fought mainly in Mesopotamia. In 350, Constantius left the front against Persia to confront an attempted coup by a military commander. He defeated that upstart, and in the western half of the empire another military commander rebelled and killed his brother, Constans. Constantius II crushed that uprising also and acquired rule over the entire empire. And to consolidate his rule he had members of his army murder possible rivals within his family: Constantius' half-brothers and others.
Constantius II attempted to extend his victories into the realm of religion. Unlike his deceased brothers and some others in his family, Constantius was an Arian Christian. Believing that he was advancing the cause of Christianity, he exiled numerous Trinity-believing bishops. And, to advance the cause of Christianity, he also banned the ritual sacrifices of pagans, making participation in such rituals a capital offense. Mobs of zealous Christians followed the lead of Constantius by invading pagan temples and overturning alters. And pagans across the empire responded with bitterness and rioting.
In the struggles for power within the extended family of Constantine the Great, his son, Constantius II, had led a massacre of relatives descended from the second marriage of his grandfather Constantius Chlorus and Theodora. Among the massacred was Julius Constantius, half brother of Constantine the Great and father of a five-year-old boy named Julian. Julian's mother had died soon after his birth. The elder brother of Julian's father had also been massacred by Constantius II, and Constantius II chose to rear Julian in his household. Here Julian felt oppressed by Christian strictness and the earnestness with which his guardians espoused Christianity. Secretly Julian rebelled against Christianity. He he became bookish and acquired a love for Hellenistic culture. By now, Christian bishops were proud of their Greek culture, and Julian was allowed to further his education about matters Greek. Secretly he became a neo-Platonist, while continuing an outward appearance of Christian devotion.
When Julian was twenty-three, Constantius II sent him to Gaul at the head of an army against the Franks and Alamanni who were invading Gaul. There Julian proved himself an able leader, winning a great victory in 357 on the Rhine River at Strasbourg and expelling the Franks and Alamanni from the empire. Constantius became jealous of the glory won by Julian, and he was concerned about him as a rival. He kept Julian and his army short of funds and kept him under surveillance.
The Sassanid king, Shapur II, had just contained a threat from the east by Huns, [note] and Shapur II was now ready for another confrontation with Rome. Like his great grandfather, Ardashir, he considered himself heir to the great empire of the Achaemenids, and he asked Constantius for territory that he thought rightly his. Constantius refused. Shapur moved his troops into Armenia, defeated its pro-Roman king and tried to force the Armenians to convert to Zoroastrianism. He moved troops into Roman territory in northern Mesopotamia, taking Diyarbakr in 359 and other towns. While Julian and his army were spending the winter in Gaul, Constantius sent an order that Julian's best troops were to be transferred east to counter the move by Shapur. Julian's troops mutinied against Constantius' order and proclaimed Julian emperor, and Constantius died of fever on his way to combat the rebellion.
Julian became emperor and began his rule with a policy of toleration toward all religions. Lacking the hostility felt by Christians toward Jews, he rescinded a law that forbade marriage between Jews and Christians. He rescinded the law that banned Jews from entering Jerusalem, and he allowed Jews in Jerusalem to rebuild their temple.
While maintaining the rights of Christians as citizens, including their right to worship, Julian moved to abolish privileges that had been bestowed upon the Christian clergy, including their positions as teachers. Christian hostility toward Julian grew. In 363, he led a military campaign against Shapur II, pushing Shapur's forces back to his capital, Ctesiphon, as the Persians scorched the earth in retreat. Julian's army captured many, including women and youths, and he allowed no one to molest them. Again he went into battle against the Persians, and he died of wounds from an arrow or spear. Christians rejoiced at news of his death, and they expressed their belief that Julian's death was the work of God.
With Julian's death, his army's leaders chose one among them as their commander: Jovian, a trinity-believing Christian. In becoming commander of what had been Julian's army, Jovian became emperor, and Christians in the Roman Empire celebrated the return of a Christian as head of state. The war against Shapur was still in progress, and as a military commander Jovian was outmaneuvered by Shapur's forces. God apparently not on his side and his army demoralized, Jovian felt obliged to withdraw from middle Mesopotamia, and he ended the war against Shapur by ceding to him provinces along the Tigris River and all of Armenia, all that Diocletian had gained seventy years before.
Turning his attention to domestic affairs, Jovian transferred state support from pagan temples to Christian churches, but he decreed religious toleration for pagans and for Arian Christians. Then, after only months in power, he died from the fumes of his freshly plastered and unventilated bedroom.
The army declared as emperor another Christian, a general to become known as Valentinian,, a capable commander from Illyricum. Valentinian believed that defense of the empire required at least two emperors, and he appointed his brother Valens as Emperor of the East. Valentinian continued religious toleration, declaring that no religion was to be declared criminal. He created schools throughout his realm. And to protect the poor he created offices called Defenders of the People.
Meanwhile, the world of harmony that Eusebius thought God and Constantine had created for the world proved elusive even within the Church: in the year 366, rival factions in Rome supported different men for Bishop of Rome, and the factions and their supporters clashed in the streets and churches, and hundreds died in a single day.
For two centuries, Germanic peoples had been moving into the empire and settling along its frontiers. A Germanic Christian named Ulfilas went outside the empire, among Germans called Visigoths [note] to spread the Arian version of Christianity, without much success. For Germans just outside the empire, Christianity was the faith of Roman emperors. Only after they entered the Roman Empire did they adopt Christianity. These German immigrants had been adopting Roman ways while maintaining a sense of worth about common people, including women, that was greater than that of most Roman citizens.
Germans inside the empire's frontiers were still only a small percentage of the empire's fifty to seventy million inhabitants, and the Roman Empire might have been able to absorb more German tribes, but perhaps not the numbers that were continuing to cross into the empire. Nevertheless, Rome's ability to control its borders was a problem addressed in a tract called On Matters of Warfare, written anonymously for the imperial bureaucracy. The author advocated an increase in defense spending by cutting the bonuses that the state paid to soldiers and civil servants and by increasing the taxes of those landowners in areas threatened by invasion. And the tract addressed the issue of hearts and minds: it claimed that official corruption and the rich oppressing the poor were causing disorder, and it called for increasing patriotism through social reform.
The tract was ignored. The imperial bureaucracy remained corrupt. Government positions were hereditary, honest government officials were rare, and the public continued to detest officials as they did soldiers. As for buying bigger and better equipped armies through increased taxation, already common people were over-taxed, and taxes were often taken with force, and at times with torture. Continual demands of the army and the empire's enormous bureaucracy were exhausting the empire's economy and helping to alienate its subjects, while tax evasions by the rich remained common, and the bigger landowners continued to pass their share of taxes onto their tenants. In the provinces suffering from invasions, hardly any loyalty to Rome remained, and, rather than contributing to their defense against the invaders, the people there were forbidden to bear arms. The empire remained as weak as it was against the Germans because circumstances limited the eagerness and ability of its subjects to fight to defend it.
Valentinian I, the emperor of the western half of the empire, was an effective military leader. He conscripted as best he could every year, but the wars among Constantine's sons had reduced the source of manpower for the military. Exemptions from military service were numerous, including exemptions for bureaucrats and the clergy. Farm workers remained in short supply, and landlords wished to exempt peasants whom they needed to work their lands. Great landlords could pay money, 25 gold coins, in place of each recruit they were obliged to send to the government. The landlords were supposed to send a number of recruits in proportion to the size of their land, but often they were uncooperative and would send only those men whom they wished to be rid of. Young men added to the shortage by trying to avoid military service, which offered them very low pay and hardship. Facing these shortages, the government had been recruiting Germans, who, with their warrior traditions were more willing to serve in the military than most Roman young men, especially city dwellers.
Valentinian and his army defeated German invasions three times, and he remained at the Rhine frontier for seven years, building fortifications. During this time, Rome's British province was again invaded. The invaders were Saxons, Angles and Jutes, collectively known as Anglo-Saxons. The Jutes and Angles were from Jutland, and the Saxons were from Germany. And Britannia was attacked by men from Frisia. These peoples journeyed a hundred miles in their boats along the northern coastline of Gaul to Britannia's eastern coast. There they destroyed many villages, allowing many slaves there to escape. Tribes from Scotland, called Picts, took advantage of the invasions and pushed south across Hadrian's wall, and tribes from Ireland began a series of destructive raids against Britannia's western coast. Valentinian sent his best commander to rescue Britannia, and by 369 the Roman army succeeded in re-establishing Roman authority there, protecting a network of councils that had been established by Britannia's Celts.
In 374, German tribes crossed the Danube River into Pannonia. Some tribes of Samatians also crossed into the empire. Valentinian went to the frontier to meet the challenge. There, in 375, he died of a stroke, and his sixteen year-old son, Gratian, succeeded him as emperor of the western half of the empire.
Visigoths were being driven toward and into the empire by the Huns, who were moving westward after having been diverted by Shapur II. A confederation of about 100,000 Visigoths asked for and received permission from the emperor of the eastern half of the empire, Valens, to settle within the empire -- in Moesia -- in exchange for their providing him military services. The Visigoths, who were Arian Christians, might have been peacefully integrated into the empire, but Valens' agents failed to provide food for the Visigoths as had been agreed upon, and some Romans tried to buy Visigoth women and children for the slave market. This outraged the Visigoths. Visigoth warriors revolted, and discontented miners in the area joined the Visigoths as guides for their warriors.
Valens responded to the uprising by deciding to drive the Visigoths back across the border. The emperor of the western half of the empire, Gratian (Valens' nephew), had recently won victories against invading Germans along the Rhine, and he asked Valens to wait for help from him and his armies before attacking. Valens might have easily defeated the Visigoths, but Valens was jealous of the glory that Gratian had already won, and he wanted all the glory from the coming war to himself. In 378, before Gratin and his troops arrived, he attacked the Visigoths in Thrace, in what became known as the Battle of Adrianople - a hundred miles northwest of Constantinople. The empire's infantry was no match for Visigoth cavalry units. It was a revelation for the Romans about cavalry and would lead to downgrading the use of foot soldiers for centuries to come. The Visigoths destroyed two-thirds of Valens' troops and his best generals, and Valens was killed. News of the Roman defeat signaled to the world that the Roman Empire was weak and vulnerable.
While the empire continued to be in need of healing and unity, Gratian, moved in the direction of division. A devout Christian, Gratian resented the empire's continued support of paganism. The emperor's bureaucracy still supported a pagan college of pontiffs. It supported keepers of the Sibylline books; three priests who served the gods Jupiter, Mars and Quirinus; and the six Vestal Virgins who guarded the sacred fire. Statues of the pagan gods were still available to the public, and over four hundred pagan temples still stood. In the Senate (where Christians remained a minority) was a pagan altar -- the Statue of Victory -- where Senators had long sworn to observe the laws of the empire and the emperor.
Gratian's plans to remove the Statue of Victory outraged pagans and provoked three years of debate. A senator named Symmachus pleaded for tolerance from Christians. He argued for the right of pagans to pass on Rome's great traditions to their children. He appealed to Christians by saying that heaven was common to all. He said that, whatever god one adored, all looked up to the same stars, all sought whatever truths were above the stars and that such truths were not necessarily arrived at by a single path.
Symmachus' main adversary, Ambrose, the bishop of Milan, would have none of this tolerance and diverse approach to worship. [note] He advised the emperor, Gratian, for the sake of his own salvation, to carry on with his plan. Ambrose favored forcing Christian domination on all of society, for the good of all. He denounced paganism as the path or error, suggesting that Christians were the only adherents of truth. Like the Hebrew priests who returned to Jerusalem from exile, Ambrose spoke against marriages between pagans and Christians. And regarding the Statue of Victory, Ambrose's view prevailed: Gratian had the statue removed from the Senate.
After the death of Valens, Gratian had chosen as the new emperor of the east a devout, trinity believing Christian like himself, a thirty-two year-old general named Theodosius, the son of a landowner from Spain. Theodosius vacillated between great energy and indolence, between asceticism and his attraction for splendor, and between cruel punishments and merciful pardons. He tried increasing taxes. He attempted wider military recruitment, but exemptions remained numerous. He ordered the army to accept more German recruits. He made it law that anyone mutilating himself to avoid military service had to serve anyway and that in the place of anyone who mutilated himself landlords had to supply the military with two other recruits.
Theodosius believed that the Visigoths could no longer be expelled from the empire by force. He entertained Visigoth chiefs at his palace, and in 382 he signed a treaty with them allowing them to settle in the empire as a nation and to live under their own laws. Whole tribes of Visigoths became a part of Theodosius' army, under the command of their own chieftains, who were paid by the empire.
Theodosius made the same move against rival faiths in the eastern half of the empire that Gratian had in the west. Arianism was thriving in Constantinople, and, while ignoring the Arianism of the Visigoths, Theodosius decreed that the doctrine of the Trinity was to be the official state religion and that all his subjects should adhere to it. Theodosius labeled Arianism, Manichaeanism and some other views that had been adopted by Christians as heresies. He announced that all heretics were "demented and insane," and he proclaimed that where these heretics met would not be recognized as churches. The Church hierarchy believed all this was a good idea and supported the ruling across the empire, and in Spain a bishop named Priscillian, who taught that matter was evil and took other unorthodox positions, became the first Christian executed by Christians for his religious beliefs.
Theodosius granted Christianity's clergy immunity from trial except by ecclesiastical courts. He revised laws to fit what he saw as Christian principles. He banned public and private activities of a non-religious nature on Sundays. And he made Easter and Christmas legal holidays.
Theodosius faced challenges from the Sassanid Empire and from a usurper who had taken power in the west. Troops in Britannia had declared their commander - a Christian named Magnus Maximus -- emperor. The rebels had expanded into Gaul, and many in Gaul had joyfully rallied behind them. The emperor in the west, Gratian, had gone to Gaul with an army and had been captured and beheaded. Theodosius had to deal with the Sassanid Empire first. After four years of war against the Sassanid Empire, Theodosius signed a peace treaty with its king. Then he sent an army into Italy and defeated Maximus in two battles. Theodosius had Maximus beheaded, and Bishop Ambrose saw Maximus' demise as the result of God punishing Maximus for having had a synagogue in Rome reconstructed after it had been destroyed by fire. And now with Maximus out of the way, Theodosius proclaimed Gratian's half -brother, another son of Valentinian I, as the emperor of the western half of the empire, the son becoming Valentinian II.
By now, Christians saw Judaism and Christianity as absolutely separate, and Christians viewed Judaism as the work of the devil as much as it did paganism. Moreover, they saw Judaism as a special competitor. The Jews were burdened by an odium that pagans were spared: the Jews had rejected Jesus, and Christians saw them as responsible for killing Jesus. With Jews uninfluenced by the asceticism and asexuality of Jesus, and not seeing sexuality as tainted by lust and filth as Christians did, Christians were beginning to describe Jews as carnal. At Christian torchlight meetings, among the angry slogans shouted were those against Jews and Jew lovers.
As Roman citizens, Jews were protected from attack by law, and when Christians burned a synagogue, Theodosius ordered it rebuilt, the cost to be paid by the Church. Then Bishop Ambrose intervened. Outraged, he told Theodosius that he, Theodosius, was threatening the Church's prestige, and he convinced Theodosius to withdraw his move and let the destruction of the synagogue stand. Here and there across the Roman Empire, the burning of synagogues continued. In Judea, entire villages of Jews were set ablaze. Jews living in the empire had their privileges withdrawn. They were excluded from holding any state office, from the army, and they were not to proselytize Christians or intermarry with them.
In the city of Salonika (Salonica), in northern Greece, a local military commander of German descent imprisoned a popular chariot driver for homosexuality. A crowd of outraged fans, anti-German in sentiment, lynched the military commander. Theodosius retaliated by ordering a massacre of seven thousand or so of the city's inhabitants, and the influential bishop Ambrose refused sacraments to Theodosius until he accepted penance for this deed.
Theodosius did his penance, and in gratitude for his reconciliation with Ambrose he acted on Ambrose's views as to what should be done about paganism. Theodosius banned the Olympic games -- which were considered pagan. He prohibited visits to pagan temples and forbade all pagan worship. Ordinary Christians were delighted at this move, and mobs of Christians joined the anti-pagan program by robbing pagan temples of their treasures and looting temple libraries, causing the disappearance of many writings. In the repression some of the most splendid buildings of Grecian architecture- were destroyed.
Pagans in the east tried to defend their freedom to worship, and in the west some pagans rallied in an attempt to overthrow Valentinian II. Valentinian II was assassinated. A military commander in the west, being a German and not eligible to be emperor, created an anti-Christian puppet named Eugenius, who announced that the hour of deliverance from Christianity was at hand.
In response, Theodosius cracked down harder on pagans in the eastern half of the empire. He made pagan worship punishable by death. In 394, he led an army of Visigoth cavalry and others against the reign of Eugenius, defeating Eugenius' forces at the Frigidus River, in the extreme northeast of Italy, a victory the Church was later to interpret as the work of God triumphing over paganism.
With his victory against Eugenius, Theodosius moved against paganism in the western half of the empire as he had in the east, wiping out freedom of worship across the whole of the empire. Then in 395, perhaps because of the strain of his recent military campaign against Eugenius, Theodosius died, at the age of fifty, believing that the empire had been unified by his wisdom and had become secure under the guidance of God.
The guidance of God included rule by Theodosius' two sons: an eleven year-old, Honorius, who inherited the position of emperor in the west, and Arcadius, eighteen, who inherited rule in the eastern half of the empire. Honorius was moronic and would eventually spend much of his time raising chickens. Arcadius was pious and gentle, but he was also incompetent and ill-tempered. Theodosius left as regent for Honorius his talented and energetic aide and military commander-in-chief, Stilicho, who was half-Roman and half-Vandal and married to Theodosius' favorite niece. Stilicho claimed that Theodosius left him in charge of both sons, but in the east a powerful aide and authority in Constantinople named Rufinus claimed responsibility for the eighteen year-old, Arcadius.
The empire's Visigoths distrusted Honorius, Arcadius and their advisors. The leader of the Visigoths, Alaric, had bargained for pensions and for a post in the high command of the Roman army, and he had become disappointed over promises made by Theodosius that had not been fulfilled. The Visigoths wished to better themselves economically, and before Theodosius had been dead one year, Alaric and the Visigoths started marching toward Constantinople, devastating territory into Thrace. Rufinus, in Constantinople, requested help from Stilicho. Stilicho sent troops to Constantinople as requested, and members of his army murdered Rufinus. So hated had Rufinus been by the common people of Constantinople that upon hearing of his death they came running from every quarter of the city to trample upon his corpse. Someone put the head of Rufinus on the end of a lance, and the crowd followed it in a great parade through the city.
Sensing the weakness of the new rulers and taking advantage of the disunity between the western and eastern halves of the empire, the Visigoths marched into Greece where they sacked Corinth, Argos and Sparta. Athens was spared by paying the Visigoths a ransom. In 397, Stilicho led troops against the Visigoths and drove them north into Illyricum, which the Visigoths also plundered. There the Visigoths settled with permission from the eastern emperor, Arcadius. And Arcadius made the leader of the Visigoths, Alaric, prefect of the province.
In the eastern half of the empire, Arcadius and his wife Eudoxia came into conflict with John Chrysostom, who had been drafted as Bishop of Constantinople - holy father of the eastern half of the empire. Born of noble parents, Chrysostom had been a Church deacon and a presbyter. He had been tutored by Libanius, the last of the sophists. And he had developed into a talented and popular orator.
Chrysostom was as hostile toward Jews as were other Christians. He lectured Christian crowds that wherever Jews gathered "there the cross was ridiculed," Jesus was insulted and "the grace of the spirit rejected." He called the impiety of Jews "madness, " and he attacked Jews for what he called their "extravagance and gluttony." But Chrysostom also attacked slavery. "God," he said, "has given us hands and feet that we might not stand in need of slaves." He attacked the slavery of children and the training of child slaves in sexual specialties for sale as prostitutes. And against the commonly held notion that work was degrading he told his listeners that when they see a man who fells trees, or is grimy with soot from labor, or who works with his hammer they should admire rather than despise him.
Chrysostom touched upon another major ill of the age: autocracy. He declared that the right of government belongs not to emperors alone but to the human race. "In the beginning God honored our race with sovereignty," he claimed. He saw the link between free will and self-government, and he spoke of humans as being able to choose from existing circumstances.
Chrysostom spoke against pagan tradition of public entertainments that featured prostitutes and against what he called the senseless excitement of the bloody spectator sports that involved contests between men and wild animals. And he criticized the double standard in morality between husbands and wives, including laws that allowed a married man to have intercourse with a slave, prostitute or an unmarried woman.
Chrysostom annoyed many within the Christian clergy, which had grown lax under the previous bishop of Constantinople. He annoyed the bishop of Alexandria, Theophilus, who was jealous of the greater power and influence that had been accorded Chrysostom as bishop of Constantinople. Chrysostom annoyed churches in Asia Minor by asserting his authority there, deposing some bishops who had bought their positions with money. He annoyed the emperor Arcadius by not acting merely as a court chaplain as had Constantinople's previous bishop. He annoyed Arcadius also by his attacks against greed and his talk of injustices. Chrysostom especially annoyed Arcadius' wife, the empress Eudoxia, who was violent in her likes and dislikes and who liked to flaunt her piety.
Chrysostom became involved in the controversy over the views of Origen, whose writings the Church had outlawed. He received four of Origen's supporters who had been exiled from Egypt. The Bishop of Alexandria, Cyril, retaliated by organizing a regional Church council (synod) composed mostly of Chrysostom's enemies. (Cyril was in later years to lead in the murder of Hypatia, a popular woman mathematician and neo-Platonist). The council deposed Chrysostom as Bishop of Constantinople. Arcadius' imperial court in Constantinople confirmed the decision. An earthquake and public discontent led the empress to reinstate him, but when Chrysostom continued his criticism of the imperial family he was exiled to Armenia, where he was to die in 407.
Around 395, bands of Huns invaded Armenia, and they moved into Syria and Cappadocia, where they plundered and killed. The Huns pushed against eastern Germans: Vandals, Suebi (or Suevi) and Burgundians. These Germans crossed the Danube River in great numbers, into the Roman province of Pannonia, and the Roman population there fled westward. The empire was further challenged in 399 when Alaric and his army of Visigoth warriors and civilians moved across the Alps and into Italy. Rome military leader, Stilicho strengthened his army in Italy by withdrawing troops from the Rhine frontier and from Britannia, and, in 402 and 403, Stilicho confronted Alaric and defeated him. Alaric and the Visigoths returned to Illyricum, and Stilicho and his army went north to battle invaders at the empire's frontier.
In 405, Vandals, Suevi and Burgundians united under a leader named Radagaisus. He and about a third of his force moved from Pannonia into northern Italy, destroying cities and pillaging. The western emperor, Honorius, fled from the city of Ravenna and found refuge behind the walls of Florence, forty miles southwest of Ravenna. From behind these walls the call went out for volunteers to help combat the invaders, but no force of volunteers came. Instead, Stilicho left his battle with invaders on the frontier and arrived just in time to rescue the emperor and the city of Florence. He had Radagaisus beheaded and those of Radagaisus' army who had survived sold into slavery.
Stilicho then moved against the greater part of what had been Radagaisus' army, now between the Alps and the Danube River. He forced them northward into what is now Germany. There he arranged an alliance with the Franks, and he won the neutrality of Alamanni Germans, and with the Franks he defeated the remainder of Radagaisus' army. And for this Stilicho received the title "Deliverer of Italy."
Stilicho began to prepare for an offensive against invasions into the eastern half of the empire, and he planned to put Illyricum under the jurisdiction of the western emperor, Honorius. Stilicho made an agreement with Alaric against the eastern emperor, Arcadius. Then, in the winter of 406-07 came the greatest of invasions, interrupting Stilicho's plans: Vandals, Suevi, Burgundians and Alans, with their farm animals and children, crossed the frozen Rhine River into Gaul. The frontier there had been undermanned and weakened by desertions, and soldiers in populated areas behind the frontier had been hanging around wine shops and spending their time in debauchery. The German invaders found only feeble opposition. They spread out, ravaged, burned and raped, some of them making it all the way to the Pyrenees Mountains between Gaul and Spain, while only a few towns, among them Toulouse, attempted a significant resistance.
In response to the overrunning of Gaul, Roman troops in Britannia revolted and named their commander, Flavius Constantine, emperor. Constantine and his troops left Britannia and arrived in eastern Gaul, where he was joined by troops from Spain. The withdrawal of Roman troops from Britannia left its defense to local efforts, which were weak and divided. Irish pirates sacked the towns of Chester and Caernavon, and some of the raiders seized territory in Wales and were able to settle there.
Flavius Constantine would hold out in eastern Gaul for a few years. Meanwhile, Alaric marched into Noricum (between Raetia and Pannonia) and asked Stilicho for 4,000 pounds of gold for helping him in the eastern half of the empire. An unenthusiastic Senate voted Stilicho the gold with which to pay Alaric, with many senators and others believing it disgraceful for Rome to buy a truce with an old enemy like Alaric.
In 408, Arcadius suddenly died, at the age of thirty-one, and, after a bloody conflict over who would replace him, the seven year-old son of Arcadius, Theodosius II, was named emperor of the east. In the west, an aide to Honorius who was hostile to Stilicho warned Honorius that Stilicho was preparing to put his own son on the eastern throne and was usurping powers that belonged to him, Honorius. The moronic Honorius believed the aide. The aide organized a coup against Stilicho and his supporters, who included the best military officers in the empire. These officers were largely Germans, like Stilicho. Inspired in part by hostility against Germans, Stilicho's supporters were massacred, as were the families of German soldiers serving as auxiliaries to the Roman army in the western empire. Those still alive and attached to Stilicho called on him to rally his supporters and fight back. Instead, Stilicho went to the emperor's court at Ravenna without his bodyguard to meet Honorius. Stilicho was taken prisoner, charged with treason, and without a trial he and his son were executed. The last of the great Roman military commanders was dead, and thirty thousand or so German soldiers fled from Rome's army and joined Alaric and the Visigoths.
In Gaul, Flavius Constantine was encouraged by the death of Stilicho. He invaded Italy but was defeated by the rival force sent by Honorius. Alaric and the Visigoths were also encouraged by the death of Stilicho and by the additional troops. In the autumn of 408, Alaric and the Visigoths crossed the Alps and poured into Italy, to Ravenna. After failing to break through Ravenna's walls, Alaric decided to push on to North Africa, believing that grain grew there in great abundance, and he decided that on his way he would attack Rome to gain what he could.
Romans had been keenly interested in horoscopes, but in their horoscopes they had not found advice to leave Rome. The consequence was dire. The city shut its gates as Alaric and his army approached. The Visigoths surrounded the city, cutting Rome off from outside help. As Alaric and his army continued to surround the city, the city's inhabitants grew hungry. Plague appeared within Rome, and corpses appeared in its streets. Rome's Senate decided to negotiate with Alaric and suggested it was not afraid of a fight. Alaric laughed and demanded gold, silver, moveable property and some three thousand pounds of Indian pepper in exchange for sparing the city and its inhabitants.
Alaric gave Germans and slaves in the city safe passage out, some of whom joined his ranks, increasing Alaric's forces to about 40,000. For more than a year Alaric kept Rome surrounded while waiting for his ransom. Then in August, 410, with assistance from within, his troops slipped into the city. For three days they looted and destroyed the houses of the rich. They killed some people, but being Christians they spared the Christian churches. Then Alaric and the Visigoths left for southern Italy, hoping to cross the Mediterranean Sea to North Africa.
Rome had not been overrun since the Gauls had done so seven centuries before - before Rome had been a great empire. News of the event left many across the empire believing that the end of civilization was at hand. In Palestine, the Christian scholar Jerome lamented that in the ruins of Rome the whole world had perished. Many Christians had believed that Rome would last until Armageddon, and when no Armageddon came they were bewildered.
In Rome, pagan survivors saw the sack of their city as the work of Rome's old gods -- those gods whose power had made Rome the most powerful of cities. They blamed the Christians for angering these gods. Hoping to appease their gods, some pagans called for performance of the sacred rites of the past, and the Christian authorities in Rome, wishing help from any source, approved such rites. But, distrusting the Christian authorities, none of the pagans had the courage to attempt their rites in public, where it was thought they had to be performed if they were to be effective.
Recommended Books
Roman Realities by Finley Hooper, 1979
From Alexander to Constantine; Passages and Documents Illustrating the History of Social and Political Ideas, 336 B.C. to A.D. 337, by Sir Ernest Barker
A Concise History of the Catholic Church, Fr. Thomas S. Bokenkotter, 1990
Eusebius as Church Historian by Robert M. Grant, 1980
to the top |
ancient world |
Augustine Influences Christianity
Copyright © 1998 by Frank E. Smitha. All rights reserved.
address of this article: http://www.fsmitha.com/h1/ch24.htm