Rome: An Empire's Story (46 page)

Church historians emphasized martyrdom, but this was probably rare in many parts of the empire. There is some question how far the persecution went into effect in the western provinces apart from Africa. The few who had died for their faith, and those who had been tortured rather than surrender sacred texts, were later idolized, to the irritation of those bishops who had neither died nor been tortured. A schism broke out in North Africa between those Christians who had handed over sacred books and those who were accused of effectively seeking out martyrdom. The death in 311 of Mensurius, Bishop of Carthage, associated with those who had not taken a stand, triggered a crisis in authority. That culminated in a division between the Donatists (named for their Bishop Donatus) and those who followed Mensurius’ line. Rival bishops and congregations appeared in many cities, and the division remained until the early fifth century. How far the failure of persecution mattered to the emperors is difficult to say. But Lactantius and Eusebius represented Diocletian and other persecuting emperors as monsters, and gleefully related their horrendous deaths.

A Christian Empire

Why was persecution abandoned? If it was popular, and created an enhanced sense of loyalty and solidarity within the empire, why stop? Christian apologists claimed that persecution accelerated conversion, because the example set by the martyrs impressed persecutors and (in the arena) audiences too. Yet comparative evidence does suggest the near eradication of Christianity was not an unrealistic aim. Manichaeism was eventually persecuted out of existence in the west by the combined action of Christian Roman emperors and Zoroastrian Persian shahs. Buddhism was more or less extinguished in medieval India first by monarchs dominated by Brahmin elites, and then by Muslim conquerors. Only fragments of the Christian communities of Roman Syria, Africa, and Spain survived the rule of the Islamic caliphate, despite the fact that overt religious discrimination was in fact unusual in its territories. Perhaps Diocletian could not have completely wiped out a group growing so fast, but he might well have been able to marginalize it and reverse the progress it was making in higher-status social groups. Was persecution of Christians a failure in the Roman world because Christians were not sufficiently hated to make a suitable target? Were its enemies insufficiently organized or motivated? Or was persecution simply too expensive to promote in regions where there were no local zealots?

Whatever the reasons, Edicts of Toleration were issued by Galerius in 311, and by Constantine and Licinius at Milan in 313. Toleration, or at least a cessation of persecution, was not in itself so strange. After all, something similar had in effect happened between the reigns of Decius and Diocletian. Much more remarkable was that around 312, Constantine began to actively patronize the Christians. Almost immediately he began work on a great series of basilicas around the city of Rome: St John Lateran and St Peter’s are among them. Most were complete by the mid-320s. They were, in effect, the first monumental places of Christian worship. Yet this was more revolutionary for Christians than for emperors. Other second- and third-century emperors had paid particular attention to specific deities, and some had built them vast temples in the capital. Hadrian built the great temple of Venus and Rome on a platform between the forum Romanum and the Colosseum. Commodus had himself portrayed as Hercules and had the Neronian colossal statue of Sol remodelled as Hercules.
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Less successful was the attempt by Elagabalus to install the cult of the chief god of Syrian Emesa in Rome. But Aurelian created a vast temple of the Sun with the spoils of his war against the Palmyran secessionists, and Diocletian used Jupiter and Hercules to represent himself and Maximinus, and then the parallel adoptive dynasties they were to found. During his rise to power Constantine had been associated in much more conventional ways with Hercules, Apollo, and the Undefeated Sun. The city of Rome in Constantine’s day had not been Christianized: rather the temples of yet another emperor’s divine familiar had been added to its crowded sacred landscape.
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Christ was, however, a different kind of deity, not one recognizable to most Romans in the way that Hercules and Sol were. Nor were his worshippers influential figures whose support was worth seeking. While the tradition of imperial temple building offers one kind of context to understand Constantine’s actions, and conversion offered Christians another context, neither seems to offer a complete explanation. The polarization of the source tradition does not help us reconstruct Constantine’s designs, but sometimes it feels as if he was deliberately engaged in a complex balancing act.

Fig. 21.
The basilica, formerly Emperor Constantine’s throne room, now a Protestant church, Trier

Constantine did not require his courtiers to convert, yet by the end of the fourth century the imperial court was predominantly Christian. And there were new, powerful, figures around the emperor. Constantine gave a range of
legal privileges to Christian bishops, and some had extraordinary access to him: as always in the imperial court, access meant influence. Constantine also lavished on them the most precious resource an emperor possessed, his own time. Almost immediately he had declared his patronage of Christianity he was petitioned by members of both factions in the Donatist schism. Petitioning an emperor was a perfectly common procedure, and it is not surprising that Christians made use of it. Yet where many petitions received a short answer, or resulted in an instruction to a governor or city council, in this case the emperor did give it his genuinely personal attention. It can only be concluded that at a very early stage Constantine’s advisers had impressed on him not just the importance of unity and orthodoxy, but also that neutrality was not an option for the emperor. Was Constantine an innocent drawn into problems the complexity of which he didn’t understand? Or a zealot inspired to devote the juridical power of the emperor, as well as his wealth, to the benefit of the Church? Or was he in fact a very traditional Roman emperor, concerned to win the support of the most powerful gods for the Roman people?

Either way, his inability to orchestrate an immediate reconciliation between the African bishops did not deter him from further efforts to achieve unity. Most ambitious was the summoning of the Council of Nicaea in 324, for which bishops were given permission to use the imperial transport system. Eusebius provides a vivid account. Bishops were summoned from all over the empire and met in the imperial palace where the emperor addressed them in Latin, his words translated into Greek for the benefit of the majority. The immediate cause was another attempt at reconciliation, but this time not of a schism but of a heresy, Arianism. At the centre of this dispute was an argument over the nature of Christ, how his human and his divine natures were related, and how he stood in relation to God the Father. Constantine’s concern seems to have been to achieve unity. His biographer Eusebius claimed that he achieved it: a common account of the nature of Christ was formulated, and a common date for Easter and the Nicaean Creed were agreed. Constantine’s own proclamation also has much to say on the wickedness of the Jews. The bishops were also then entertained, and involved in the celebration of the twenty-year anniversary of his reign. Unity was not, of course, achieved. The Arian heresy remained a central source of division through the fourth century, when several of Constantine’s successors embraced it. Christian missionaries to barbarian peoples also spread Arian ideas, most seriously to Gothic and Vandal groups, so that most of the new kings of the west were divided from the eastern empire
and from their own Christian subjects on doctrinal grounds. Yet the long-term prestige Constantine gained from setting himself at the heart of the triumphant Church was enormous. On his death in 337, the position of the Church was unassailable. During the last years of his reign some Christians within Persia were looking to him as a natural ally against the Sassanian shah.
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A Persian persecution of Christians followed. Perhaps all this followed naturally from the anti-Persian polemic in Diocletian’s edict of 302 against Manichaeism. Constantine’s long reign had effected a permanent transformation. All subsequent emperors except one (Julian who ruled between 361 and 363) were Christians. The stage might seem to be set for a powerful fusion of Christian Universalism with Roman Imperial ideology, but in fact, the Christian empire came into being only by gradual stages, and it was far from unified.

For a start, traditional religion did not vanish overnight. Even if Julian’s attempted restoration was a failure, ancestral religion survived in many parts of the empire in one form or another. Publicly funded cults of the old gods continued in some cities until the end of the fourth century, and the writings of figures like Libanius of Antioch show that they still had their defenders among the elite.
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The senators of Rome were particularly tenacious supporters of the old gods, despite confrontations with the emperors over the matter as late as the 380s. The process of their conversion was a slow one that owed as much to social influence as imperial pressure.
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Emperors did not force the pace of change. Attacks on pagan temples were rare before the end of the fourth century; classical myths continued to be read—and represented in art—well into the fifth century. The philosophical schools of Athens remained open until Justinian closed them in 529. Isolated communities worshipping the old gods apparently survived in Asia Minor until the late sixth century.
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Constantine himself had set some limits on the influence of the bishops in this respect. The Edict of Milan extended toleration to all religious practice. Jewish ‘clergy’ benefited from some of the same privileges as Christian clergy, although terrifying punishments were set for those Jews who tried to convert Christians, owned Christian slaves, or circumcised them. Ancient temples were preserved in Byzantium even after it had been re-founded as Constantinople in 324. Indeed, some new temples were added, and the foundation of the city had involved astrologers and augurs. Constantine had, however, banned blood sacrifice, along with the consultation of oracles and the setting up of statues to the old gods. These were the central rituals in traditional religion. It is not surprising that none of these bans was universally accepted and that controversy continued over ritual practice until the end of the century. The fact the ban was issued, along with the legal restrictions imposed on Jews, shows Constantine had no great vision of a multi-faith imperial society, within which each religious community might pursue their own course under the benevolent and even-handed protection of a secular state. Pragmatism seems more likely from a soldier emperor who emerged from civil wars to reign for thirty years.

Fig. 22.
The head of a gigantic statue of Emperor Constantine in the Palazzo dei Conservatori at the Capitoline Museum, Rome

Constantine’s religious motivations will always be obscure, but the pattern he set for Christian emperors is clearer. Even through the hagiographic filter of Eusebius’
Life,
he emerges as an emperor whose success was in some respects highly traditional. He fought and survived civil wars and palace intrigues. He founded new cities, and patronized the Senate and people of Rome. Militarily and fiscally the empire was left in better shape at the end of his long reign than it was at his accession. The style of rule was literally spectacular, by which I mean that power was enhanced by everyday ceremonial and occasional festivities, performed on magnificent stages. The nature of his engagement with Christianity had to cohere with all this. It offered a new field of monumental building, and some new kinds of ceremonies. Ideologically it enabled him to draw implicit analogies between the divine ruler and his own rule. It brought him a new body of supporters. But if it was meant to offer new ideological solidarity, it failed. Christians, in the fourth century, all seem to have agreed on the importance of a common orthodoxy and common authority. Their ecumenical councils were quite unlike modern ecumenism that advocates tolerance of differences in belief and ritual and a loose federation of different churches. Yet fourth-century Christianity was riven by schism and heresy. As a result, the Christian empire would be more divided than what had preceded it. To a modern eye the amount of time Constantine and his successors devoted to questions of heresy and schism seems excessive. How, with the northern frontiers collapsing and relations with Persia so difficult, could they justify the energy and time they spent on the Church? Bishops of course had their own priorities, and their influence only grew over time. But emperors were neither fools nor dupes. Constantine had made a Faustian pact with Christ. The ideological support offered by Christianity and the rhetorical power of the bishops was potentially of enormous value to the embattled empire, but emperors could not afford to neglect its divisive potential.