Christian Persecution, Martyrdom, and Orthodoxy

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CHRISTIAN PERSECUTION, MARTYRDOM, AND ORTHODOXY

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Christian Persecution, Martyrdom, and Orthodoxy G . E . M . D E S T E . C RO I X

Edited by Michael Whitby and Joseph Streeter

1

3 Great Clarendon Street, Oxford ox2 6dp Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide in Oxford New York Auckland Cape Town Dar es Salaam Hong Kong Karachi Kuala Lumpur Madrid Melbourne Mexico City Nairobi New Delhi Shanghai Taipei Toronto With oYces in Argentina Austria Brazil Chile Czech Republic France Greece Guatemala Hungary Italy Japan Poland Portugal Singapore South Korea Switzerland Thailand Turkey Ukraine Vietnam Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University Press in the UK and in certain other countries Published in the United States by Oxford University Press Inc., New York ßThe Estate of G.E.M. de Ste. Croix 2006 The moral rights of the author have been asserted Database right Oxford University Press (maker) First published 2006 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted by law, or under terms agreed with the appropriate reprographics rights organization. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the address above You must not circulate this book in any other binding or cover and you must impose the same condition on any acquirer British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Data available Library of Congress Cataloguing in Publication Data De Ste. Croix, G. E. M. (Geoffrey Ernest Maurice) Christian persecution, martyrdom, and orthodoxy/G. E .M. De Ste. Crox; edited by Michael Whitby and Joseph Streeter. p. cm. ISBN-13: 978–0–19–927812–1 (alk. paper) ISBN-10: 0–19–927812–1 (alk. paper) 1. Persecution. 2. Martyrdom–Christianity. 3. Church history–Primitive and early church, ca. 30–600. I. Whitby, Michael. II. Streeter, Joseph. III. Title. BR1604.23.D4 2006 272’.1–dc22 2006011789 Typeset by SPI Publisher Services, Pondicherry, India Printed in Great Britain on acid-free paper by Biddles Ltd., King’s Lynn, Norfolk ISBN 0-19-927812-1

978-0-19-927812-1

1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2

Preface After the death of GeoVrey de Ste. Croix in February 2000, his widow Margaret passed a mass of academic papers to David Harvey and Robert Parker. Among these was a group of essays relating to Greek history which Ste. Croix had worked on during the 1960s and which were in reasonably good shape for publication; Harvey and Parker were able to bring these out under the title Athenian Democratic Origins and Other Essays (OUP 2004). The majority of the papers, however, related to religious and intellectual matters, primarily the Old Testament, Early Christianity, and Plato. For the most part these represented elements of two substantial publication projects on which Ste. Croix had embarked in the 1980s, a pair of volumes which were intended to present his radical views on a wide range of religious and related topics: Early Christian Attitudes to Women, Sex and Marriage, which would develop ideas from the lecture series he had given at Gregynog and Cornell, and Radical Conclusions, which was to be a rather more disparate collection of papers on some speciWc biblical passages or issues and on Early Christian topics. Unlike the Greek historical material most of these papers did not exist in clearly publishable forms, but comprised diVerent versions of lectures or seminar papers, drafts and redrafts, and working notes, some in typescript but much in Ste. Croix’s distinctive handwriting which became increasingly diYcult to decipher as his health declined during the 1990s. Credit for the Wrst and fundamental contribution to transforming this mass into what appears in the current volume belongs to David Harvey. With great patience, a clear head, and a mastery of Ste. Croix’s hand, David managed to impose some organization on the Wles and boxes of papers. The results of his eVorts were passed to Michael Whitby in summer 2002 in six substantial cardboard boxes crammed full of Ste. Croix’s characteristic lever arch Wles, folders, and notebooks.

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Thereafter administrative distractions impeded progress, but during 2003 it was possible to identify, in dialogue with Hilary O’Shea of OUP, the building blocks of a potential volume on Christian matters. At an early stage it was decided that the material on Plato was too remote in subject matter and insuYciently complete to be able to be incorporated in the project. Ste. Croix had devoted much of his last decade to working on various papers on biblical topics, and to reXect his intentions a selection of these was incorporated alongside various Early Christian pieces in the Wrst formal proposal to OUP for a Ste. Croix religious volume; a pair of sympathetic and very helpful anonymous readers indicated that the biblical papers required a great deal of work and might still not have the impact that their author had intended. As a result it seemed better not to proceed with these, and to focus instead on the Early Christian writings in a volume which brought together Ste. Croix’s seminal writings on martyrdom and persecution, a couple of related early items from the 1960s which might well have been published then and which even in unpublished format had been inXuencing academic colleagues, a digest of further work on persecution which Ste. Croix presented in lecture series during the 1970s and 1980s, a substantial piece on the Council of Chalcedon which had been frequently presented at seminars in the 1980s and was also exerting inXuence on subsequent work, and a published item on Christian attitudes to property which could represent some of the lines of inquiry pursued by Ste. Croix in the Gregynog and Townsend lecture series.1 This at least reduced the boxes of papers under active consideration to manageable proportions, although the unpublished work on Heresies and Chalcedon in particular were both represented by several diVerent drafts and 1 A Greek translation of seven of Ste. Croix’s Christian writings has just been published: ˇ`˝ˇ ˚` ˙ ˙: ˜ˆˇ; `R¯¯ ˚` ˙¨˙, ed. D. I. Kyrtatas, trans. I. Kralle (Athens, 2005). In addition to the three articles which we reprint (‘Aspects’ ¼ Ch. 1; ‘Early Christians’ ¼ Ch. 3; ‘Early Christian Attitudes’ ¼ Ch. 7) this also includes translations of three short general pieces: ‘The Religion of the Roman World’, Didaskalos, 4 (1972), 61–74; ‘Christianity’s Encounter with the Roman Imperial Government’, in A. Toynbee (ed.), The Crucible of Christianity (London, 1969), 345–51; ‘AWorm’s-Eye View of the Greeks and Romans and how they Spoke: Martyr Acts, Fables, Parables and Other Texts’, Latin Teaching, 37.4 (1984), 16– 30. The Wnal item is a seminar version of ‘Chalcedon’. We are grateful to Robert Parker for bringing this to our attention, and lending his copy for the sake of comparison.

Preface

vii

rewritings, while the thoughts on Toleration did not extend far beyond a list of relevant references. The current volume was commissioned by OUP in autumn 2003, just when Michael Whitby’s administrative duties at Warwick increased substantially. A deus ex machina appeared, courtesy of the British Academy which generously allocated one of its small grants to the project. Thanks are due to all those involved, and especially to Peter Garnsey and Doug Lee, who wrote in support of the project to the BA. This money permitted the employment of a research assistant and, thanks to a suggestion by Robert Parker, Joseph Streeter agreed to join the project in late summer 2004. The intelligence, energy, and quality of his input soon indicated that it was appropriate to upgrade him from assistant to co-editor, so that the volume assumed its Wnal form. Without his collaboration it is certain that the volume would have been far longer in the gestation and quite possible that it would have remained unpublished. The editorial challenge of the Christian papers was more varied than that of the Greek papers. Three items had already appeared in print (Chapters 1, 3, and 7), and here we have restricted ourselves to minor updating. In many respects the paper on the Fourth Edict and Elvira (Chapter 2) was similar, since this had been accepted by JTS in the late 1960s, while for Voluntary Martyrs, a topic central to all Ste. Croix’s work on persecution, the challenge was to preserve the corpus of evidence while reducing unnecessary overlap with other papers in the volume. Heresy, Schism, and Persecution and Chalcedon both presented signiWcant challenges. In the former there were several ideas and issues which might have been pursued at considerable length, so that the question was to decide where to curtail discussion, especially in the absence of clear direction as to where Ste. Croix might have taken the topic. On Chalcedon there were comparable opportunities, though here it was possible to be much more conWdent about where and how Ste. Croix wanted to develop the extant piece. Primary editorial responsibility for the material has been divided as follows, though we have both read and commented on each other’s sections: introduction to the chapters on Persecution and Martyrdom and editorial work on Chapters 1–2, 4–5, Joseph Streeter; editorial work on Chapters 3 and 6–7, plus the introductory material

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to the latter two chapters, Michael Whitby. Editorial additions to, and commentary on Ste. Croix’s material are presented in square brackets. Our work on all the papers has been greatly assisted by generous help from numerous friends and colleagues: Alan Bowman, Averil Cameron, Catherine Edwards, Peter Garnsey, Matthew Gibbs, Martin Goodman, Thomas Graumann, Caroline Humfress, Mark Humphries, Neil McLynn, Fergus Millar, Kate Nichols, John North, Christopher Parrott, Richard Price, Stefan Rebenich, and Benet Salway.

Contents Abbreviations

xi

PERSECUTION AND MARTYRDOM

1

Introduction: de Ste. Croix on Persecution Joseph Streeter

3

1. Aspects of the ‘Great’ Persecution

35

2. The Fourth Edict in the West and the Date of the Council of Elvira

79

Appendix: The Date of the Council of Elvira Joseph Streeter

99

3. Why were the Early Christians Persecuted?

105

4. Voluntary Martyrdom in the Early Church

153

5. Heresy, Schism, and Persecution in the Later Roman Empire

201

Appendix: Religious Toleration in Classical Antiquity and Early Christianity Joseph Streeter

229

CHURCH COUNCILS

253

Introduction Michael Whitby

255

6. The Council of Chalcedon with additions by Michael Whitby

259

CHRISTIANITY AND PROPERTY

321


323

7. Early Christian Attitudes to Property and Slavery

328

Index of Passages

373

Index

378


Abbreviations Abbreviations listed in the Liddell–Scott–Jones–McKenzie Greek–English Lexicon are not included. AB

Analecta Bollandiana

ACO

Acta Conciliorum Oecumenicorum

BHG

Bibliotheca Hagiographica Graeca

BHL

Bibliotheca Hagiographica Latina Antiquae et Mediae Aetatis

BZ

Byzantinische Zeitschrift

CAH

Cambridge Ancient History

CSCO

Corpus Scriptorum Christianorum Orientalium

CSEL

Corpus Scriptorum Ecclesiasticorum Latinorum

DOP

Dumbarton Oaks Papers

EHR

English Historical Review

GCS

Die griechische christliche Schriftsteller der ersten Jahrhunderte

HTR

Harvard Theological Review

JbAC

Jahrbuch fu¨r Antike und Christentum

JECS

Journal of Early Christian Studies

JEH

Journal of Ecclesiastical History

JTS

Journal of Theological Studies

NPNF

A Select Library of Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers of the Christian Church

OCP

Orientalia Christiana Periodica

PG

Patrologia Graeca

PL

Patrologia Latina

PLRE

Prosopography of the Later Roman Empire vol. i, ed. A. H. M. Jones, J. R. Martindale, and J. Morris (Cambridge, 1971) vol. ii, ed. J. R. Martindale (Cambridge, 1980) vol. iii, ed. J. R. Martindale (Cambridge, 1992)

xii PO SC

Abbreviations Patrologia Orientalis Sources chre´tiennes

TTH

Translated Texts for Historians (Liverpool UP)

TU

Texte und Untersuchungen

Vig. Chr.

Vigiliae Christianae

ZAC

Zeitschrift fu¨r antikes Christentum

Persecution and Martyrdom


Introduction: de Ste. Croix on Persecution Joseph Streeter

The Wve essays collected in this section focus on persecution. Chapters 1 to 4 look at diVerent aspects of the Christian persecutions up to the conversion of Constantine in 312. Chapter 5 examines the persecutions of pagans, Jews, and Christian heretics or schismatics in the Constantinian Empire. ‘Aspects of the ‘‘Great’’ Persecution’ and ‘Why were the Early Christians Persecuted?’ have already been published and are recognized classics of the Weld; the three unpublished essays develop themes raised therein, and overlap to a limited extent with parts of The Class Struggle in the Ancient Greek World.1 We have arranged the essays thematically: Chapter 2 complements ‘Aspects’, strengthening its arguments against the criticisms of W. H. C. Frend; Chapter 4 expands the short discussion on voluntary martyrdom in ‘Early Christians’; Wnally, Chapter 5 shows the direction of Ste. Croix’s work from the late 1960s, which focused on the late Empire and persecutions in the name of Christianity.2 There is always a complex of narratives to any long-standing historiographical problem, particularly one as ideologically charged as the early Christian persecutions. This has almost certainly been complicated by the long-standing disciplinary ambiguity of early church history, which continues to be subject to the competing claims of historians, classicists, theologians, and students of religion. 1 G. E. M. de Ste. Croix, The Class Struggle in the Ancient Greek World: From the Archaic Age to the Arab Conquests (1981; corr. imprint, London, 1983), esp. 445–52; this overlap relates mainly to Ch. 5, ‘Heresy’. 2 Perhaps the Wrst of his papers systematically to develop this notion was ‘Christianity’s Encounter with the Roman Imperial Government’, in A. Toynbee (ed.), The Crucible of Christianity: Judaism, Hellenism and the Historical Background to the Christian Faith (London, 1969), 345–51, with bibliography at 357. See also the interview between Ste. Croix and D. Kyrtatas, A. Matthaiou, and G. Pikoulas, Horos, 6 (1988), 123–33 at 130.

4


I have decided to isolate two strands, which illuminate Ste. Croix’s broader intellectual aims, and the immediate debates that he addressed. The Wrst goes back to the eighteenth century and the Wrst secular histories of Christianity: here I have singled out the work of Montesquieu and Gibbon, who attended to the intolerance of Christianity and its socially harmful consequences. The second is a more speciWc historiography dating back to the late nineteenth century, which focused on the legal basis of the persecutions and their relationship to Roman government. Ste. Croix’s inXuence has perhaps been greatest in relation to the second line: the central conclusions of ‘Aspects’ and ‘Early Christians’ are seldom disputed. However, these speciWc problems were addressed within the Wrst, broader, historical framework. Ste. Croix wanted to understand the form that Christianity developed in the Roman Empire and its historical consequences. This inquiry was guided by strong personal considerations, above all his hostility to Christianity, and must be understood with this background in mind. By juxtaposing these two lines of historiography we can examine the strengths and weaknesses of Ste. Croix’s approach to early Christian persecution, and gain a good perspective from which to consider subsequent developments, in both early church history and our understanding of the Roman Empire.

I For Ste. Croix, the salient characteristic of Christianity was intolerance, and this intolerance is the central feature in his account of the Christian persecutions. It generates persecution of Christians and persecution by Christians: in the generally tolerant Roman Empire, Christians, Gnostics apart, were persecuted for ‘their total refusal to worship any god but their own’3 and active rejection and denunciation of all other forms of worship. To quote from his lecture notes, ‘Christianity entirely refused recognition of any other religion, declining to countenance any form of paganism at all, and indeed rejected the pagan gods with disgust, either as evil demons or as 3 Ste. Croix, ‘Early Christians’ (below, Ch. 3, p. 133).

Introduction

5

altogether non existent and invented’. Throughout the essays on preConstantinian persecution, Ste. Croix looks forward to the features of later Christianity that he found so distasteful, particularly intolerance and acquiescence in the face of exploitation and state oppression.4 This chronological scope is apparent from the start: in the conclusion of ‘Aspects’, Ste. Croix postulated a causal link between the ‘atmosphere of constant menace in which Christianity had matured’ and ‘some of the deplorable features which we Wnd in the mentality of so many of the prominent churchmen and ecclesiastical writers of the fourth and following centuries—above all the readiness to persecute and the hysterical denunciation of theological opponents.’5 Christian intolerance manifested itself in other ways. In relation to the non-Christian world, perhaps its most signiWcant aspect was zeal for martyrdom. Ste. Croix located the origins of Christian martyrdom in Maccabean-era Judaism, and his account has exercised considerable inXuence through the indirect medium of W. H. C. Frend’s Martyrdom and Persecution in the Early Church.6 He considered voluntary martyrdom fairly widespread and a ‘factor which both contributed towards the outbreak of persecution and tended to intensify it when it was already in progress’.7 Equally signiWcant, in the long term, was Christian intolerance of internal dissent and argument, embodied in the twin concepts heresy and schism, which Ste. Croix believed to go ‘right back to the very beginning of Apostolic times’.8 Following the conversion of Constantine, this exclusiveness and zeal combined with imperial power to transform Christianity into ‘a persecuting force without parallel in the world’s history’, which would attack both those who claimed to be Christians and outsiders such as Jews and pagans.9 4 See Ste. Croix, Class Struggle, 398. 5 Ste. Croix, ‘Aspects’ (below, Ch. 1, p. 68). 6 W. H. C. Frend, Martyrdom and Persecution in the Early Church (Oxford, 1965), p. vii; note, however, that Ste. Croix considered Frend’s argument for the exclusively Jewish basis of Christian martyrdom too strong; see his review of Martyrdom in JTS 18 (1967), 217–21. 7 See Ste. Croix, ‘Voluntary Martyrdom’ (below, Ch. 4); also ‘Early Christians’ (below, Ch. 3, pp. 131–3). 8 See Ste. Croix, ‘Heresy’, below, Ch. 5, p. 201. 9 A phrase used in Class Struggle at 452, an unpublished paper of 1974, and, slightly modiWed, ‘Heresy’, below, Ch. 5, p. 201.

6


In the recent volume of Ste. Croix’s essays on classical Athens, the editors David Harvey and Robert Parker describe him as ‘a historian in the Enlightenment mould, as little inclined as were Sidney and Beatrice Webb or his mentor A. H. M. Jones to reconstruct cultural contexts imaginatively’.10 I shall have more to say about Ste. Croix’s methodology below, but the analogy with the Enlightenment is worth pursuing, since his account of Christian persecution shares much with the work of Montesquieu and, more particularly, of Gibbon. Christianity for them, as for Ste. Croix, was notable for its intolerance. In his Conside´rations sur les causes de la grandeur des Romains et de leur dećadence (1734),11 Montesquieu pointedly ignored the early Christian persecutions, concentrating instead on the deleterious consequences of later Christian intolerance, with particular reference to Justinian.12 In 1716 he had spoken of ‘that spirit of tolerance and softness which prevailed in the pagan world’,13 and in Conside´rations he contrasted the toleration of ‘every sort of cult’ in the thriving early Empire with the enervating bigotry of the later ‘Greek’ Empire. What I want to draw attention to here is not so much a direct inXuence on Ste. Croix as a certain discourse on Christianity’s tendency to dogmatism and intolerance, which perhaps ultimately goes back to Machiavelli, but gains Wrmer historical grounding in the eighteenth century. While Montesquieu preWgures certain of Ste. Croix’s interests, the inXuence of Gibbon’s History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman 10 G. E. M. de Ste. Croix, Athenian Democratic Origins and Other Essays, ed. D. Harvey and R. Parker (Oxford, 2004), 369. 11 See the edition of F. Weil and C. Courtney, with the commentary of P. Andrivet and C. Volpilhac-Auger, Œuvres Comple`tes de Montesquieu, ii (Oxford, 2000), 1–318 with text at 89–285. There is a translation by David Lowenthal, Considerations on the Causes of the Greatness of the Romans and their Decline (New York, 1965). On Montesquieu’s work on Roman history, see recently V. de Senarclens, Montesquieu historien de Rome: un tournant pour la re´Xexion sur le statut de l’histoire au XVIIIe sie`cle (Geneva, 2003), esp. 101–83. For a brief introduction, see J. N. Shklar, Montesquieu (Oxford, 1987), 49–66. 12 Weil and Courtney edn., 256–7; Lowenthal trans., 190–1: ‘what did most harm to the political condition of the government was his [Justinian’s] scheme for reducing all men to the same opinion in matters of religion, in circumstances which made his zeal entirely indiscreet’. 13 Montesquieu, ‘Dissertation sur la politique des Romains dans la religion’, in M. A. Masson (ed.), Œuvres Comple`tes de Montesquieu, iii (Paris, 1955), 37–50, at 45.

Introduction

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Empire is undoubtedly more direct, although it should be noted that Gibbon himself took much from Montesquieu.14 Ste. Croix regarded Gibbon as the most signiWcant British historian before A. H. M. Jones,15 and the inXuence of chapters 15 and 16 of Decline and Fall (1776) on Ste. Croix’s account of persecution is clear. Following David Hume’s contrast between tolerant polytheism and intolerant monotheism,16 Gibbon outlined an account of the persecutions in which Christian fanaticism took centre stage. It engendered persecution up to 311, and led Christians to exaggerate its extent thereafter even as ‘in the course of their intestine dissentions’ they were inXicting ‘far greater severities on each other, than they had experienced from the zeal of inWdels’.17 He suggested that the number of martyrs was not large, either before 303 or during the Great Persecution, and posited voluntary martyrdom as a common cause of those that did occur.18 On one of the most important

14 In his Memoirs, Gibbon recorded his reading habits while at Lausanne (1753–8) and his ‘delight in the frequent perusal of Montesquieu, whose energy of style, and boldness of hypothesis were powerful to awaken and stimulate the Genius of the Age’; see Gibbon, Memoirs of My Life, ed. B. Radice (Harmondsworth, 1984), 99. On Montesquieu’s inXuence on Gibbon, see A. Momigliano, ‘Gibbon’s Contribution to Historical Method’, Historia, 2 (1954), 450–63, at 457–8, repr. in his Studies in Historiography (London, 1966), 40–55, at 48; P. Ghosh, ‘Gibbon’s First Thoughts: Rome, Christianity and the Essai sur l’e´tude de la litte´rature 1758–1761’, JRS 85 (1995), 148–64; J. G. A. Pocock, Barbarism and Religion, iii: The First Decline and Fall (Cambridge, 2003), 338–60. 15 See Ste. Croix, ‘Class in Marx’s Conception of History’, New Left Review, 146 (1984), 94–111, at 97. 16 See Hume, ‘Of Superstition and Enthusiasm’ (1742) in his Essays Moral, Political, and Literary, ed. T. H. Green and T. H. Grose (London, 1889), 144–50; and ‘The Natural History of Religion’ (1757), ed. J. W. Colver, in Hume, The Natural History of Religion and Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion (Oxford, 1976), 23–98, at 58–9. On Hume’s inXuence on Gibbon, see J. G. A. Pocock, ‘Superstition and Enthusiasm in Gibbon’s History of Religion’, Eighteenth Century Life, 8.1 (1982), 83–4; D. Womersley, The Transformation of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (Cambridge, 1988), 20–38. 17 E. Gibbon, Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (ed. J. B. Bury, London, 1909–14), 580. For some of the controversy chapters 15 and 16 generated, see D. Womersley (ed.), Religious Scepticism: Contemporary Responses to Gibbon (Bristol, 1997). 18 Gibbon, Decline, 545: ‘the assurance of a lasting reputation on earth, a motive so congenial to the vanity of human nature, often served to animate the courage of the martyrs’. For the prevalence of voluntary martyrdom in the Great Persecution, see Decline, 576–9.

8


problems—why the Christians were persecuted and not the Jews— Ste. Croix followed Gibbon’s explanation that ‘the Jews were a people which followed, the Christians a sect which deserted, the religion of their fathers’.19 Other central features of Ste. Croix’s account overlap signiWcantly with that of Gibbon. Always alive to the ‘scanty and suspicious materials of ecclesiastical history’,20 Gibbon argued that when presented with Christians ‘it was esteemed the duty of a humane judge to endeavour to reclaim, rather than to punish, those deluded enthusiasts’, and attributed the familiar picture of judicial savagery to ‘the monks of succeeding ages, who, in their peaceful solitudes, entertained themselves with diversifying the deaths and suVerings of the primitive martyrs’, adding that ‘the more ancient as well as authentic memorials of the church are seldom polluted with these extravagant and indecent Wctions’.21 Although Ste. Croix was far from regarding Roman magistrates as particularly humane or under any compulsion of duty to ‘reclaim’ Christians, he did argue that the ‘sacriWce test’ was originally ‘a privilege’, whose ‘essential aim was to make apostates, not martyrs’, and shared Gibbon’s contempt for later hagiography.22 We can even see some inXuence of Gibbon’s terminology, or rather Hume’s terminology transmitted through Gibbon: towards the end of The Class Struggle in the Ancient Greek World Ste. Croix speaks, in very Humean terms, of the ‘eVects of religious enthusiasm’.23 There are, of course, many diVerences between Ste. Croix and his eighteenth-century predecessors. Both Montesquieu and Gibbon wrote in a belles-lettres, historical culture, before the professionalization of the discipline and with many modern techniques of source criticism in their infancy.24 Ste. Croix was very much a modern 19 Gibbon, Decline, 517; see also ‘Early Christians’ (below, Ch. 3, p. 135). 20 Gibbon, Decline, 446. 21 Gibbon, Decline, 538–9. 22 Ste. Croix, ‘Early Christians’ (below, Ch. 3, p. 127–8). 23 Ste. Croix, Class Struggle, 452. 24 For some of the background to Gibbon’s Decline, see J. G. A. Pocock, ‘Gibbon’s Decline and Fall and the World View of the Late Enlightenment’, in his Virtue, Commerce and History: Essays on Political Thought and History, ChieXy in the Eighteenth Century (Cambridge, 1985), 143–56; idem, Barbarism and Religion, i: The Enlightenments of Edward Gibbon, 1737–1764 (Cambridge, 1999). See also D. Kelley’s useful survey, Faces of History from Herodotus to Herder (New Haven, 1998), 217–49.

Introduction

9

historian in his comprehensive and critical grasp of source material, being unusually well read in the sources that classically trained ancient historians customarily ignored, such as martyr acts and hagiography.25 To understand the parallels between Gibbon and Ste. Croix we must look to more personal matters. Only brief mention need be made of Ste. Croix’s Marxism. His dislike of Christianity did not follow from his Marxism, and there is in any case little sanction in the works of Marx for hostility to historical forms of religion.26 Indeed, Marx’s friend and colleague Engels had even drawn parallels between the communist movement and the early Church, seeing Christianity as the (inevitably incomplete) communism of its day, and its triumph as the herald of the modern world revolution.27 Ste. Croix’s more thoroughgoing turn to Marxism followed the events of 1968, and for most of the period in which he was working on these essays, although broadly Marxist in sympathy, he did not commit himself to a Marxist framework. Ste. Croix’s hostility to Christianity developed in opposition to the beliefs of his fundamentalist Christian mother. In his lecture ‘Sex and St Paul’, he explained the personal factors that drew him towards the subject and which, he felt, gave him a special insight into its characteristic attitudes. Mentioning the early Christian belief that the Old 25 Ste. Croix’s enthusiasm for propagating these texts led him to recommend them to a colloquium for those interested in the reform of Latin teaching in schools, an address subsequently published as ‘A Worm’s-Eye View of the Greeks and Romans and how they Spoke: Martyr Acts, Fables, Parables, and Other Texts’, Latin Teaching, 37 (1984), 16–30. This contains several long translations of his favourite martyr acts, such as the Passio Fructuosi, to illustrate both the simplicity of the syntax and the interest of the content. 26 Summarizing Marx’s ideas about religion is not easy, owing to the wide variety of contexts in which he wrote on the subject. Perhaps his most famous exposition is ‘A Contribution to the Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right’, in Marx, Early Writings, trans. R. Livingstone and G. Benton (Harmondsworth, 1975), 243–57. Here he coined the oft-misunderstood description of religion as the ‘opium of the people’. Religion has social reality for Marx: ‘religious suVering is at one and the same time the expression of real suVering and a protest against real suVering’. However, the cure for this suVering cannot be eVected by denying the reality of religion, but by transforming the material conditions that create the suVering manifested in religion. 27 F. Engels, ‘On the History of Early Christianity’, originally published in Die neue Zeit, 1 (1894–5), 4–13 and 36–43, repr. in K. Marx and F. Engels, On Religion (Moscow, 1957), 313–43.

10


and New Testaments constituted ‘the very Word of God, all of it divine revelation, absolutely true, factually and historically’ he continued thus: As it happens, I feel particularly well trained to deal with this attitude, since it was imparted to me very powerfully as a child. My widowed mother (my father died when I was four) belonged to the sect of the British Israelites, one of those groups on what I hope I may be allowed to call ‘the lunatic fringe’ of Christianity. My mother accepted the Bible, every word of it, as in every respect the inspired Word of God, and for many years I was never allowed to come into contact with any other view.

The central tenet of British Israelism is that the British, or sometimes the Anglo-Saxon people more generally, descend from the ten lost tribes of Israel.28 Although it was not, strictly speaking, a sect,29 British Israelism inXuenced a number of unsavoury organizations, among them the Ku Klux Klan and Christian Identity.30 A feature of Ste. Croix’s upbringing that particularly inXuenced his views on the early Christians was the violent punishments his mother anticipated for the enemies of her sect,31 and his abhorrence of early Christian polemic is apparent at numerous points in these essays.32 He also despised the Jewish God Yahweh, whom he regarded as ‘a cruel and vicious creature, guilty of innumerable acts and commands which no 28 Although many of the ideas of British Israelism have long antecedents, not least in English Puritanism, the notion that the British are the actual descendants of Israel, and not just analogous to Israel, was most inXuentially promulgated in John Wilson’s Lectures on our Israelitish Origins (London, 1840), which went through Wve editions. See also J. Wilson, ‘British Israelism: The Ideological Restraints on Sect Organisation’, in B. R. Wilson (ed.), Patterns of Sectarianism: Organisation and Ideology in Social and Religious Movements (London, 1967), 345–76. 29 Ste. Croix’s description is a little misleading: British Israelism was not a sectarian body, with a distinct institutional structure, but a doctrine, which members of diVerent Protestant sects—by deWnition those with strong aYnities to fundamentalism and evangelicalism—might hold. The sociologist John Wilson has described it as ‘an interdenominational fellowship, recruiting in various churches—from the Church of England to the Pentecostal movement—which are hospitable to the traditions of fundamentalist, evangelical Protestantism’; see Wilson, Patterns of Sectarianism, 345. 30 On which, see M. Barkun, Religion and the Racist Right: The Origins of the Christian Identity Movement (Chapel Hill, 1994). 31 See R. Parker, ‘GeoVrey Ernest Maurice de Ste. Croix 1910–2000’, Proceedings of the British Academy, 111 (2001), 447–78, at 448–9. 32 pp. 218–19, 227–8, 301–2.

Introduction

11

one today, whether Christian, Jew, agnostic or atheist, would regard with anything but detestation’, and charged Jesus with failing to condemn his father’s excesses.33 Note that he distinguishes carefully between atheism and agnosticism, with the former a distinct doctrinal position, not an attitude of sceptical detachment. Although he confessed never to have believed in Christian doctrine, it is perhaps unsurprising that his renunciation of Christianity took such an extreme form. The early Church was always a central negative part of his life. He frequently treated early Christians as though contemporaries, attacking Paul and Augustine in particular with a ferocity worthy of early Christian polemic, and showing the ways in which institutional Christianity distorted positive Christian teachings, most notably on property and slavery, but also on toleration.34 He articulated his hostility to Christianity more explicitly over time, and in this collection it is clearest in Chapter 5. In an interview given shortly before his death, having criticized the pro-Christian bias of most scholarly work on the early Church, he boasted that the book he was then working on was going to be ‘completely antichristian’.35 Ste. Croix also considered the early Church relevant to contemporary Marxism, although in a way quite diVerent from Engels. In a number of letters written following the publication of The Class Struggle in the Ancient Greek World he compared the multiplicity of Christian heresies with the numerous varieties of Marxism. It is, however, unclear how he thought his own, rather fundamentalist, approach to the works of Marx would remedy this situation.36 Within this larger narrative, Ste. Croix addressed a number of more speciWc problems. Although he devoted much attention to the attitudes of Christians, in his view the persecutions could only satisfactorily be studied if this perspective was married with a clear understanding of the administration and religion of the Roman 33 A quote from the conclusion to Ste. Croix’s unpublished paper on Job. 34 Ste. Croix, ‘Attitudes’; ‘Heresy’ (below, Chs. 7 and 5). 35 This book was to be called Radical Conclusions; see the interview with Christy Constantakopolou, Utopia, 44 (2001), 157–70, at 168. I would like to thank Dr Constantakopolou for giving me a copy of this interview. 36 On his fundamentalism, see the reference to ‘ ‘‘Marxists’’ (genuine or not)’ in the index of Class Struggle, 718.

12


Empire, and its changes over time.37 In ‘Why were the Early Christians Persecuted?’, he divided the persecutions into three main periods on the basis of their relationship to the actions of Roman government: the Wrst up to Nero’s persecution of 64, the second from 64 to the Decian persecution of 250–1, and the third thence to either 313 or 324.38 Before 250, the persecutions were sporadic and local while after 250 they were centrally initiated. He passed over the Wrst and third periods rather brieXy, devoting more attention to the second. This required a more comprehensive examination of the legal basis of the persecutions, a subject thoroughly debated since the late 1880s and early 1890s.39 It is quite common to Wnd the terms of the debate divided into three schools, with one advocating a general law (either a senatus consultum or imperial edict), issued under either Nero or Domitian, which prohibited Christianity;40 one following Theodor Mommsen’s work on the provincial governor’s power of coercitio, which could be exercised without the need 37 Ste. Croix, ‘Early Christians’ (below, Ch. 3, pp. 113–20, 133–8). See also his review of Frend’s Martyrdom and Persecution, JTS 18 (1967), 217–21 at 221. 38 ‘Early Christians’ (below, Ch. 3, pp. 106–8). 39 For the outline of this debate, see N. H. Baynes, ‘The Great Persecution’, in S. A. Cook, F. E. Adcock, M. P. Charlesworth, and N. H. Baynes (eds.), CAH xii: The Imperial Crisis and Recovery A.D. 193–324 (Cambridge, 1939), 646–77, at 654–5; A. N. Sherwin-White, ‘The Early Persecutions and Roman Law again’, JTS 3.2 (1952), 199, repr. with minor changes in his The Letters of Pliny: A Historical and Social Commentary (Oxford, 1966), 772–87, at 772–4; A. Wlosok, ‘Die Rechtsgrundlagen der Christenverfolgungen der ersten zwei Jahrhunderte’, Gymnasium, 66 (1959), 14–32, repr. in R. Klein (ed.), Das fru¨he Christentum im ro¨mischen Staat (Wege der Forschung 267; Darmstadt, 1971), 275–301; Ste. Croix, ‘Early Christians’, n. 18 (below, Ch. 3); P. Keresztes, ‘The Imperial Roman Government and the Christian Church I: From Nero to the Severi’, ANRW 23.1 (Berlin and New York, 1979), 247–315, at 279–87. 40 Perhaps the most signiWcant exponent of this view is the Belgian scholar C. Callewaert; see particularly his ‘Les Premiers chre´tiens furent-ils persećute´s par e´dits geńe´raux ou par mesure de police? Observations sur la theórie de Mommsen principalement d’apre`s les ećrits de Tertullien’, Revue d’Histoire Eccle´siastique, 2 (1901), 771–97 and 3 (1902), 5–15, 324–48, and 601–14. Also, J. Zeiller, ‘Nouvelles observations sur l’origine juridique des persećutions contre les chre´tiens aux deux premiers sie`cles’, Revue d’Histoire Eccle´siastique, 46 (1951), 521–33, and idem, ‘ ‘‘Institutum Neronianum’’, loi fantoˆme ou reálite´?’, Revue d’Histoire Eccle´siastique, 50 (1955), 393– 9; P. Keresztes, ‘Law and Arbitrariness in the Persecution of the Christians and Justin’s First Apology’, Vig. Chr. 18 (1964), 204–14, at 204–5. For further bibliography, see Keresztes, ‘The Imperial Roman Government and the Christian Church I: From Nero to the Severi’, 279–80 n. 182.

Introduction

13

for explicit legislation;41 and Wnally one arguing that the Christians were merely persecuted for breaking existing criminal law.42 Sometimes this division is categorized by linguistic area, with the Wrst school predominantly Francophone, and the second predominantly German and Anglophone,43 although notable German and English scholars have advocated the Wrst position,44 and French scholars the second.45 In 1885 Mommsen’s Provinces of the Roman Empire was translated into English and immediately exercised a strong inXuence on British Roman historians. They were receptive to his explanation for the persecutions, and it formed the basis of W. M. Ramsay’s The Church in the Roman Empire before A.D. 170 (1893) and E. G. Hardy’s Christianity and the Roman Government (1894).46 41 T. Mommsen, ‘Der Religionsfrevel nach ro¨mischen Recht’, Historische Zeitschrift, 28 (1890), 389–429 and ‘Christianity in the Roman Empire’, Expositor 4.8 (1893), 1–7; ‘Religionsfrevel’ is reprinted in Mommsen, Gesammelte Schriften: juristische Schriften, iii (Berlin, 1907), 389–422 and ‘Christianity in the Roman Empire’, in Gesammelte Schriften: historische Schriften, iii (Berlin, 1910), 540–5 (any subsequent reference to these articles will follow the page numbers of Gesammelte Schriften); and his Ro¨misches Strafrecht (Leipzig, 1899), 35–54 and 567–80. See also E. G. Hardy, Christianity and the Roman Government (London, 1894). 42 The charges vary; L. Cezard, Histoire juridique des persećutions contre les chre´tiens de Ne´ron a` Septime-Se´ve`re (64 a` 202) (Paris, 1911), 123–4 (repr. in 1967 as vol. 15 of the series Studia Juridica), advocated high treason. More common is the notion that Christianity was prohibited as a collegia illicita; see among others E. T. Merrill, Essays in Early Church History (London, 1924), esp. 52–66. Hugh Last’s essay ‘The Study of the ‘‘Persecution’’ ’, JRS 27 (1937), 80–92, overlaps with this approach. In a critique of Mommsen’s notion of national apostasy, he argued that until the late 1st cent. ad, Romans had not persecuted on religious grounds but had merely taken action against ‘swindlers’, but that the situation changed as the collection of the Wscus judaicus diVerentiated Christianity from Judaism; see also Last, ‘Christenverfolgung II (juristisch)’, Reallexicon fu¨r Antike und Christentum, 2 (1954), 1208–28. Henri Gre´goire, while accepting Tertullian’s ‘institutum Neronianum’ as sound evidence, argued that Nero’s law was in fact an edict or rescript which merely set a precedent, and that it was based on republican prohibitions of superstitio; see H. Gre´goire, Les Persećutions dans l’Empire romain (2nd edn.) (Me´moires de l’Acade´mie royale de Belgique, Classe des Lettres 56.5; Brussels, 1964), 22–4. 43 See Sherwin-White, ‘The Early Persecutions and Roman Law again’ and Wlosok, ‘Die Rechtsgrundlagen’ as cited in n. 39 above. 44 See, for instance, E. Schwartz, Kaiser Constantin und die christliche Kirche (Leipzig and Berlin, 1913), 35; Baynes, ‘The Great Persecution’, 655. 45 See, for instance, L. Dieu, ‘La Persećution au IIe sie`cle: une loi fantoˆme’, Revue d’Histoire Eccle´siastique, 38 (1942), 5–30. 46 See Ramsay, The Church in the Roman Empire before A.D. 170 (London, 1893), 207–11; Hardy, Christianity and the Roman Government, pp. v–vi. In his preface,

14


Ste. Croix, as Sherwin-White had shortly before him, works broadly within Mommsen’s framework. One important modiWcation introduced by Sherwin-White and developed by Ste. Croix is an emphasis on the locally responsive nature of coercitio and its operation in a legal setting, rather than in direct ‘police measures’.47 Both place the trials of Christians within the procedure of cognitio extra ordinem, a nineteenth-century expression which characterizes the judicial powers bound up with the provincial governor’s imperium,48 although in a reprint of ‘Why were the Early Christians Persecuted?’ Ste. Croix accepted Fergus Millar’s correction that this expression should not be used to characterize standard procedure in Roman criminal trials, since it was not used by any ancient sources.49 Sherwin-White and Ste. Croix did not disagree in their understanding of judicial procedure, but in the charges levelled at Christians to bring them before the provincial governor. As Sherwin-White noted, this was the central question unanswered by Mommsen’s work on coercitio, in that it still remained to say why the Christians were subject to coercitio.50 Mommsen argued that the Christians were persecuted for inducing ‘national apostasy’ from the ancestral Roman religion: ‘the contempt of the dii publici populi Romani, in itself high treason, or as the Christians express it (thoughts being free but words not), the mere Christian Name . . . constitutes a crime in the eye of the law’.51 However, one of the Hardy lists those articles or books that assisted him most fully, of which all apart from J. B. Lightfoot’s The Apostolic Fathers are German. 47 See Sherwin-White, ‘The Early Persecutions and Roman Law again’, 205; Ste. Croix, ‘Early Christians’ (below, Ch. 3, p. 113–16). 48 On which, see A. N. Sherwin-White, Roman Society and Roman Law in the New Testament (Oxford, 1963), 30; J. Crook, Law and Life of Rome (London, 1967), 85; I. Buti, ‘La ‘‘cognitio extra ordinem’’: da Augusto a Diocleziano’, ANRW 2.14 (Berlin and New York, 1982), 29–59 at 30 with n. 3; W. Turpin, ‘Formula, cognitio, and proceedings extra ordinem’, Revue Internationale des Droits de l’Antiquite´, 46 (1999), 499–574, at 502 with n. 3. 49 Ste. Croix, ‘Early Christians’, repr. in M. I. Finley (ed.), Studies in Ancient Society (London, 1974), 249 n. 170, with Millar’s review of Sherwin-White’s Letters of Pliny: A Historical and Social Commentary and Fifty Letters of Pliny, JRS 58 (1968), 218–24, at 222. 50 Sherwin-White, ‘The Early Persecutions and Roman Law again’, 203. 51 Mommsen, ‘Christianity in the Roman Empire’, 542; ‘Der Religionsfrevel nach ro¨mischen Recht’, 407.

Introduction

15

characteristics of what we call Roman religion is precisely its lack of coercive apparatus,52 and no ancient source records the phrase dii publici populi Romani. Sherwin-White argued that the persecutions were based not on religion but primarily on Christian contumacia, or refusal to obey the reasonable requests of magistrates, for instance to pay homage to di nostri.53 Ste. Croix in contrast placed religion at the centre of the persecutions. Emphasizing the importance felt by the inhabitants of the Graeco-Roman world for maintaining the proper relationship to the gods, or the pax deorum, he argued that the ‘pagans were naturally apprehensive that the gods would vent their wrath at this dishonour not upon the Christians alone but upon the whole community; and when disasters did occur, they were only too likely to fasten the blame on to the Christians’.54 Ste. Croix can clearly explain the processes characteristic of Christian trials much better than Sherwin-White, and his emphasis on the widespread need to maintain divine favour allows for considerable regional variations in persecution. In the words of one recent author, religion in the Roman Empire is now often approached Wrst as a ‘local, collective endeavor to negotiate fertility, safety, health, misfortune, identity, and collective solidarity’, and it is in such a context that disputes between Christians and their neighbours arose and were referred to provincial governors.55 Nonetheless, while Sherwin-White and Ste. Croix disagreed over why the early Christians were persecuted, their work on how they were persecuted overlaps substantially. 52 On which see J. North, ‘Religious Toleration in Republican Rome’, PCPS 25 (1979), 85–103, repr. in C. Ando (ed.), Roman Religion (Edinburgh, 2003), 199–219. 53 Sherwin-White, ‘The Early Persecutions and Roman law again’, 210. 54 ‘Early Christians’ (below, Ch. 3, p. 133–8). 55 I have quoted from D. Frankfurter, Religion in Roman Egypt: Assimilation and Resistance (Princeton, 1998), 5–6; see also R. Lane Fox, Pagans and Christians (Harmondsworth, 1986), 33; J. B. Rives, Religion and Authority in Roman Carthage: From Augustus to Constantine (Oxford, 1995); H. Cancik and J. Ru¨pke (eds.), Ro¨mische Reichsreligion und Provinzialreligion (Tu¨bingen, 1997); T. Kaizer, The Religious Life of Palmyra: A Study of the Social Patterns of Worship in the Roman Period (Oriens et Occidens 4; Stuttgart, 2002). See also P. Hordern and N. Purcell, The Corrupting Sea: A Study of Mediterranean History (Oxford, 2000), esp. 403–60. Although Hordern and Purcell cover a much greater period than just the Roman Empire, in emphasizing the interaction between diverse regional ecologies (or ‘microecologies’) and the Mediterranean, they examine many issues germane to the interaction between widely distributed ‘great traditions’ and locally grounded ‘little traditions’.

16


Ste. Croix passed over his third period rather brieXy, but subjected the shorter period 303–12 to close scrutiny. Although the change from locally initiated to centrally directed persecution was signiWcant, one that Ste. Croix considered indicative of changing popular as well as elite attitudes to the Church, many aspects of his work on the earlier persecutions remain relevant. ‘Aspects’ demonstrates well the importance of persecution for Roman administrative history, providing exemplary evidence for the workings of the tetrarchy,56 showing its transformation from a loosely organized division of rule founded on the auctoritas of Diocletian, to a more fragmented and fractious state of aVairs following his abdication in ad 305. Just as in the early Empire, regional variation is signiWcant: the workings of the tetrarchy are relatively unsystematic, with enforcement of edicts dependent on the whim of the individual Caesar or Augustus as well as the provincial governor. This picture of regional variation and limited central control starts to change in his work on the post-Constantinian persecutions, indicated by his comparison between the Church and Eisenhower’s ‘military industrial complex’. He Wrst published these ideas in The Class Struggle, and they attracted mixed reactions, with a number of reviewers criticizing his overt hostility to Christianity.57 ‘Heresy, Schism, and Persecution’ is valuable primarily for the light it sheds on the larger historical preoccupations underpinning Ste. Croix’s work on persecution. SigniWcantly it ends with an extract from the thirteenth-century Life of St Louis, whose violently intolerant content he sees as a consequence of the ‘great structure of dogmatic and organizational intolerance’ imposed during the later Roman Empire.58 This emergence of institutional religious intolerance out of the relative openness of the classical Roman Empire occurred, he argues, through the fusion of Christian exclusiveness and hostility to pluralism, traced back to the Apostolic period, and the traditional Roman concern with establishing the pax deorum, or the correct relations between man and divine that guarantee the well-being 56 A point reiterated by Fergus Millar, The Roman Near East 31 BC–AD 337 (Cambridge, Mass., 1993), 198. 57 See particularly the criticisms of T. D. Barnes, Phoenix, 36.4 (1982), 363–6, at 365; Averil Cameron, Times Higher Education Supplement, 19th Feb. 1982; B. D. Shaw, ‘Anatomy of the Vampire Bat’, Economy and Society, 13.2 (1984), 208–49, at 247 n. 57; C. G. Starr, Journal of Interdisciplinary History, 13.3 (1982), 521–2, at 522. 58 Below, Ch. 5, pp. 228–9

Introduction

17

of the empire. While the need to maintain divine support was clearly important for both the pre- and post-Constantinian Empires, the latter propagated a much more comprehensive form of state intolerance by emphasizing orthodoxy of belief: adherence to ‘outward’ ritual forms, which allowed substantial freedom of belief, was replaced by adherence to articles of doctrine, with baleful consequences for human freedom. Few would disagree with the general outline of this narrative, which can be connected with what Peter Brown called the transition from ‘soft’ to ‘hard’ government.59 However, as with any grand thesis there are problems. The sense of local contingency characteristic of his work on early Christian persecution largely disappears, the emphasis shifting to the centralized implementation of Christian orthodoxy. The link between intolerant rhetoric and persecution is never explored, and he tends to assume that one necessarily follows from the other, with little attention to context.60 Although a substantial body of discriminatory legislation emerged in the late Empire, it was far from uniformly imposed, and persecutions of pagans, Jews, and heretics or schismatics were, like persecutions of Christians up to the mid-third century, sporadic, with doctrinal and organizational problems resolved as they arose in local disputes. Moreover, the central argument of this essay rests upon a number of stark contrasts between Christianity and the institutions of the classical Graeco-Roman world. Although he notes that the Roman state ‘underwent far less change after it had become Christian than many ecclesiastical historians 59 P. Brown, The Making of Late Antiquity (Cambridge, Mass., 1978), 48; on which see recently C. Kelly, Ruling the Later Roman Empire (Revealing Antiquity 15; Cambridge, Mass., 2004) and more brieXy P. Garnsey and C. Humfress, The Evolution of the Late Antique World (Cambridge, 2001), 25–51; see also M. Gaddis, There is No Crime for Those Who Have Christ: Religious Violence in the Christian Roman Empire (Berkeley, 2005). 60 See in contrast Peter Brown’s work on paideia in late antique society; Brown sees the rules of etiquette bound up with paideia as creating something roughly homologous to ‘civil society’, encompassing both pagans and Christians and providing practical limits on Christian exclusiveness. For Brown’s ideas on the signiWcance and power of paideia in late antique society, see his Power and Persuasion in Late Antiquity: Towards a Christian Empire (Madison, 1992); for more explicit applications to religious toleration, see Authority and the Sacred: Aspects of the Christianisation of the Roman World (Cambridge, 1995), esp. 29–54, and ‘Christianisation and Religious ConXict’, in A. Cameron and P. Garnsey (eds.), CAH xiii: The Late Empire, A.D. 337–425 (Cambridge, 1998), 632–64.

18


believe’,61 his separation of ‘persecution of Christians’ and ‘persecution by Christians’ posits an identity between the Christianity of the Emperor and that of the state, which seriously underplays the complexities of ‘christianization’. This contrast also renders the post-Constantinian world rather homogeneous. Intolerance and persecution were more pervasive in some parts of late antique and early medieval Europe than in others. As R. I. Moore notes, at least for the post-Roman West, persecution ‘far from being ‘‘normal’’ in medieval society . . . faded away with the Roman Empire, and did not reappear until the eleventh century’.62 Where, for the pre-Constantinian period, Ste. Croix’s hostility to Christianity is a strength, giving him a much more sceptical appreciation of Christian rhetoric than many of his peers and predecessors, here it is perhaps a weakness, impelling him to take at face value the violent rhetoric of Christian argument. Nonetheless, it remains important in showing the broader historical and ethical problems against which Ste. Croix studied the pre-Constantinian Church.63

II What inXuence has Ste. Croix’s work on persecution exercised on subsequent scholarship, and how does it stand up in the light of that 61 ‘Heresy’ (below, Ch. 5, p. 202). 62 R. I. Moore, The Formation of a Persecuting Society (Oxford, 1987), 4. 63 One might note that Ste. Croix’s interpretation of the post-Constantinian Empire, with its emphasis on intolerance and persecution, overlaps with that of a number of European scholars who lived through the Second World War. For a comparison between intolerance in the later Roman Empire and in 1930s and 1940s Europe, see F. Poulsen, Glimpses of Roman Culture, trans. J. D. Hansen (Leiden, 1952), 276. Herbert Bloch saw 4th-cent. Rome as a period ‘kindred’ with the years 1910–60, which he described as a ‘period of darkness . . . in which long-established traditions and values disintegrate, in which one crisis precipitates another’; see his ‘The Pagan Revival in the West at the End of the Fourth Century’, 193–218 in A. Momigliano (ed.), The ConXict between Paganism and Christianity in the Fourth Century (Oxford, 1963), at 193. Indeed this emphasis on conXict, since Andreas AlXoldi’s seminal work of the 1940s, for a time dominated the historiography of late antique Rome. There is little evidence of this work exerting a direct inXuence on Ste. Croix, but fascism and world war, although experienced from quite diVerent perspectives, may have rendered intolerance and repression particularly salient.

Introduction

19

scholarship? For a number of reasons, the Wrst question is not an easy one to answer. Ste. Croix’s published essays on early Christian persecutions stand up well on their own terms, and some of the diYculty in charting their inXuence lies precisely in their comprehensiveness: they have resolved long-standing problems more than they have posed new questions. Both were based on thorough mastery of source materials, and while certain details have been questioned, for the most part this has never been serious enough substantially to modify his main arguments, and, along with the work of T. D. Barnes, they are almost taken for granted, providing a basis from which historians have studied other subjects.64 The main diYculty, however, derives from changes in the disciplinary background of early church and late Roman history, and changes in the questions posed by ancient historians. The academic environment in which Ste. Croix wrote these essays diVers profoundly from that today, and here I want to review how these changes might modify some of the assumptions underlying Ste. Croix’s work on persecution, but also how his work might have contributed to these changes. Before examining these broader academic changes, it is worth reviewing some more speciWc aspects of Ste. Croix’s work on persecution that might be questioned in the light of subsequent scholarship. Perhaps most obviously problematic is his argument for Jewish inXuences on the Christian idea of martyrdom. As I have noted above, Ste. Croix’s argument for Jewish inXuences on Christian martyrdom was neither as strong nor as exclusive as that of W. H. C. Frend. Nonetheless, following Glen Bowersock’s Martyrdom and Rome, it is clear that martyrdom is a concept that overlaps with earlier examples of Jewish or pagan self-sacriWce in the face of Roman power, but also designates a distinct way of resisting, or perhaps acquiescing in, authority, one ‘absorbed into a conceptual system of posthumous recognition and anticipated reward’, bearing a distinct name (martyrdom), and coming into being at a speciWc time (c. ad 50–150).65 This should not lead us to neglect the connections 64 So, for instance, J. B. Rives, ‘The Piety of a Persecutor’, JECS 4.1 (1996), 1–25, at 18 n. 44; M. Beard, J. North, and S. Price, Religions of Rome, i: A History (Cambridge, 1998), 237 n. 87. 65 See G. W. Bowersock, Martyrdom and Rome (Cambridge, 1995), 5. Frend has defended his position against Bowersock, but misrepresents Bowersock’s argument,

20


between early Christianity and Judaism, but it should lead us to rethink how we understand ‘inXuence’. Other points of debate are Ste. Croix’s contention that the Fourth Edict was never promulgated in the West.66 Here the balance of scholarly opinion is very largely with him.67 The tetrarchy has been a fruitful Weld in recent historiography,68 but with the exception of P. S. Davies’s argument against suggesting that Bowersock, in connecting Christian martyrdom with the civic world of the Graeco-Roman Empire, is simply arguing that the inspiration for Christian martyrdom came from Graeco-Roman, and not Jewish, exemplars; Frend, ‘Martyrdom and Political Oppression’, in P. F. Esler (ed.), The Early Christian World, ii (London, 2000), 815–39, at 817–18. Bowersock’s book is vulnerable in that, having established that 4 Maccabees should not be accorded any priority to the New Testament and the letters of Ignatius, he pays little heed to the ongoing interaction between Jews and Christians; see D. Boyarin, Dying for God: Martyrdom and the Making of Christianity and Judaism (Stanford, 1999), 93–126, although Boyarin’s contention that Bowersock constitutes martyrdom as ‘an essence’ by noting its distinctiveness is puzzling, especially given Bowersock’s argument that Christian martyrdom emerges in the historically contingent setting of the Graeco-Roman city. 66 Against Ste. Croix, see Frend, Martyrdom and Persecution, 502–3; ‘A Note on the Great Persecution in the West’, in Studies in Church History, 2 (1965), 141–8, repr. in Frend, Religion Popular and Unpopular in the Early Christian Centuries (London, 1976); ‘Martyrdom and Political Oppression’, 832 and 837 n. 57; M. B. Simmons, Arnobius of Sicca (Oxford, 1996), 84–96; K. Rosen, ‘Passio sanctae Crispinae’, JbAC 40 (1997), 106–25, esp. 122–3. A. K. Bowman, ‘Diocletian and the First Tetrarchy, A.D. 284–305’, in Bowman, P. Garnsey, and Averil Cameron (eds.), CAH xii: The Crisis of Empire, A.D. 193–337 (Cambridge, 2005), 67–89, at 87; G. W. Clarke, ‘Third-Century Christianity’, in CAH xii: 589–671, at 654 states that ‘the evidence is not compelling that this edict, certainly issued throughout the east, was ever promulgated in the west: if it was, it cannot have been enforced systematically’. 67 J. H. W. G. Liebeschuetz, Continuity and Change in Roman Religion (Oxford, 1979), 249; T. D. Barnes, Constantine and Eusebius (Cambridge, Mass., 1981), 23; idem., ‘The Constantinian Settlement’, in H. W. Attridge and G. Hata (eds.), Eusebius, Christianity, and Judaism (Detroit, 1992), 635–57, at 640, repr. in his From Eusebius to Augustine (Aldershot, 1994); ‘From Toleration to Repression: The Evolution of Constantine’s Religious Policies’, Scripta Classica Israelica, 21 (2002), 189–207, at 192–3; A. Marcone, ‘La politica religiosa: dall’ultima persecuzione alla tolleranza’, in A. Carandini, L. Cracco Ruggini, and A. Giardina (eds.), Storia di Roma, iii.1: L’eta` tardoantica: crisi e trasformazioni (Rome, 1993), 223–45, at 236; S. Corcoran, The Empire of the Tetrarchs: Imperial Pronouncements and Government AD 284–324, rev. edn. (Oxford, 2000), 182 and n. 51; see also the relevant chapters in Bowman, Garnsey, and Cameron, CAH xii. 68 See recently A. Demandt, A. Goltz, and H. Schlange-Scho¨nigen (eds.), Diokletian und die Tetrarchie: Aspekte einer Zeitenwende (Millenium-Studien 1; Berlin and New York, 2004); also W. KuhoV, Diokletian und die Epoche der Tetrarchie: das romische Reich zwischen Krisenbewaltigung und Neuaufbau (284–313 n. Chr.) (Frankfurt, 2001); F. Kolb, Diocletian und die Erste Tetrarchie: Improvisation oder Experiment

Introduction

21

Galerius’ centrality to the persecutions,69 on which Ste. Croix was in any case equivocal,70 subsequent scholarship either reinforces his conclusions or, as R. Bratoz has done recently, provides more detailed study of the eVects of persecution on a distinct region.71 One potential modiWcation to Ste. Croix’s narrative of persecution is suggested if we accept the argument of G. W. Clarke, Reinhard Selinger, and James Rives, that the Decian persecution was not originally directed against Christians.72 Nonetheless, that a change in the relationship between the Christians and central government occurred around the mid-third century remains indubitable, even if the reason for this change is not entirely clear.73 The importance of in der Organisation monarchischer Herrschaft? (Berlin and New York, 1987); vols. 1 and 2 of the journal Antiquite´ Tardive (1993–4) with T. D. Barnes, ‘Emperors, Panegyrics, Prefects, Provinces and Palaces (284–317)’, JRA 9 (1996), 532–52; Corcoran, Empire. 69 P. S. Davies, ‘The Origin and Purpose of the Persecution of A.D. 303’, JTS 40 (1989), 66–94, against which Barnes, ‘The Constantinian Settlement’, 639–40, and idem, ‘Christentum und dynastische Politik (300–325)’, in F. Paschoud and J. Szidat (eds.), Usurpationen in der Spa¨tantike (Historia Einzelschriften 111; Stuttgart, 1997), 99–109, at 104; D. S. Potter, The Roman Empire at Bay AD 180–395 (London, 2004), 338. Contrary to Davies’s assertion (66 n. 2), Galerius’ centrality to the great persecution had been questioned earlier: see J. Burckhardt, Die Zeit Constantins des Grossen (Basel, 1853), 325–30, trans. by M. Hadas as The Age of Constantine the Great (London, 1949), 246–8; M. Gelzer, ‘Der Urheber der Christenverfolgung von 303’, in Theologischen Fakulta¨t der Universita¨t Basel (ed.), Vom Wesen und Wandel der Kirche (Basel, 1935), 35–44, repr. in his Kleine Schriften, ii (Wiesbaden, 1963), 378–86; Kolb, Diocletian und die Erste Tetrarchie, 128–39. 70 As was A. H. M. Jones, The Later Roman Empire, 284–602: A Social, Economic and Administrative Survey (Oxford, 1964), 71. 71 See recently R. Bratoz, ‘Die diocletianische Christenverfolgung in den Donauund Balkan-provinzen’, in Diokletian und die Tetrarchie, 115–40, although he does not cite Ste. Croix. See also K.-H. Schwarte, ‘Diokletians Christengesetz’, in R. Gu¨nther and S. Rebenich (eds.), E Fontibus Haurire: Beitra¨ge zur ro¨mischen Geschichte und zu ihren Hilfswissenschaften (Paderborn, Munich, Vienna, Zurich, 1994), 203–40, which attempts to uncover Diocletian’s motivation for persecuting Christians. 72 G. W. Clarke, The Letters of St. Cyprian, i (Ancient Christian Writers 43; New York, 1984), esp. 22–5; also ‘Third-century Christianity’, CAH xii: 625–6. R. Selinger, Die Religionspolitik des Kaisers Decius: Anatomie einer Christenverfolgung (Frankfurt, 1994), esp. 29–37, and idem, The Mid-Third Century Persecutions of Decius and Valerian (Frankfurt, 2002), esp. 63–8; J. B. Rives, ‘The Decree of Decius and the Religion of Empire’, JRS 89 (1999), 135–54, esp. 141–2. Note that this argument is not altogether new: Baynes advocated a similar position in the 1930s; see his ‘The Great Persecution’ at CAH xii: 657. 73 See R. Selinger, The Mid-Third Century Persecutions, 83–94. Drake has argued that the third century witnessed a change in the ideological basis of imperial rule,

22


this period can, perhaps, be clariWed by recent work on Christian demography and material culture. While there are many methodological problems posed by the study of Christian numbers,74 recent estimates—which date the major expansion of absolute Christian numbers to the third century—tally well with the material record, which shows the Wrst distinctively Christian remains appearing towards the end of the second century and growing substantially over the course of the third century. Attempts have been made to resurrect the general law theory,75 but this can only be entertained in deWance of modern scholarship on government in the principate, not to mention the enormous variety of punishments for Christians recorded in our sources, which range from death by burning to temporary imprisonment.76 Ste. Croix’s account remains markedly away from a system ‘anchored squarely in senatorial tradition’ to one based on divine favour, in which the threat posed by Christian ‘atheism’ was more salient: see his Constantine and the Bishops: The Politics of Intolerance (Baltimore, 2000), 148. Gaddis notes the important religious implications of the Constitutio Antoniniana of 212, which made ‘the gods of Rome . . . everyone’s gods’; There is No Crime for Those Who Have Christ, 33. 74 R. Stark, The Rise of Christianity: A Sociologist Reconsiders History (Princeton, 1996), 3–27; K. Hopkins, ‘Christian Number and its Implications’, JECS 6.2 (1998), 185–226, at 192–8. Hopkins is much more aware of the problems than Stark, who treats early Christianity as exactly the same sort of phenomenon as an American new religious movement, with no reference to contextual diVerences. 75 See particularly M. Sordi, The Christians and the Roman Empire, trans. A. Bedini (London, 1988), 29–35 and 59–65; P. Keresztes, ‘The Imperial Roman Government and the Christian Church I: From Nero to the Severi’, 279–82 and Imperial Rome and the Christians, I: From Herod the Great to about 200 A.D. (Lanham, Md., 1989), 111–20; on the latter, see the review of Barnes, JTS 42.1 (1991), 314–16. 76 A point noted by T. D. Barnes, Tertullian, rev. edn. (Oxford, 1985), 147–8. The bibliography on government in the principate is vast, and could not possibly be listed here in full. Some prominent examples include D. No¨rr, Imperium und Polis in der hohen Prinzipatszeit (Mu¨nchener Beitra¨ge zur Papyrusforschung und antiken Rechtsgeschichte 50; Munich, 1966), esp. 76–114; F. Millar, ‘Emperors at Work’, JRS 57 (1967), 9–19, repr. in idem, Rome, the Greek World, and the East, ii: Government, Society, and Culture in the Roman Empire, ed. H. M. Cotton and G. M. Rogers (Chapel Hill, 2004), 3–22; idem, The Emperor in the Roman World (31 BC–AD 337) (London, 1977), esp. 79–84; F. Jacques, Le Privile`ge de liberte´: politique impe´riale et autonomie municipale dans les cite´s de l’Occident romain (161–244) (Collection de l’Ećole Française de Rome 76; Rome, 1984); P. Garnsey and R. Saller, The Roman Empire: Economy, Society and Culture (London, 1987), 20–40; J. E. Lendon, Empire of Honour: The Art of Government in the Roman World (Oxford, 1997); C. Ando, Imperial Ideology and Provincial Loyalty in the Roman Empire (Berkeley, 2000), 49–70.

Introduction

23

more convincing, and shortly after publication was strengthened by T. D. Barnes’s comprehensive examination of the evidence for the legal basis of the persecutions, which conWrmed that up to Decius there was no general law against Christianity. Like Ste. Croix, Barnes sought an explanation for the persecutions at a local level, arguing that the Christian violation of the mos maiorum, ‘the most important source for Roman law’, was suYcient to arouse hostility.77 Fergus Millar further endorsed this in 1973, reckoning, along lines very similar to Ste. Croix, that ‘the most important conception which lay behind the persecutions was precisely the one which was to be the foundation of the Christian empire: that the world was sustained, and the earthly government of it granted, by divine favour’.78 In most speciWc details, then, Ste. Croix’s essays on early Christian persecution are valid, and continue to be standard works. However, they were written, or at least conceived, in the 1950s and 1960s, in very diVerent academic conditions from those pertaining today. Perhaps the most important change in Anglophone scholarship is the growth of interest Wrst in the ‘later Roman empire’ and subsequently in ‘late antiquity’.79 This proceeds most obviously from the work of Ste. Croix’s mentor A. H. M. Jones, although a Wgure whose inXuence on late Roman historiography is often underestimated was Sir Ronald Syme, who started working on the Historia Augusta in the mid-1960s.80 The subsequent emergence of ‘late antiquity’ as a recognized historical period, part of the mainstream of secular 77 T. D. Barnes, ‘Legislation against the Christians’, JRS 58 (1968), 32–50, at 50, repr. in his Early Christianity and the Roman Empire (London, 1984). See also his Tertullian, 143–63. 78 F. Millar, ‘The Imperial Cult and the Persecutions’, in Le Culte des souverains (Entretiens sur l’antiquite´ classique 19; Geneva, 1973), 143–65, repr. in Rome, the Greek World, and the East, ii. 298–312, at 312. See also his chapter on the relationship between emperor and church in The Emperor in the Roman World, 551–607, esp. 555–7. 79 My focus here is the Anglophone, and speciWcally English scholarly world, but it is worth noting brieXy that ‘late antiquity’, while an expression now common to all major European scholarly languages, has a complex history, emerging at diVerent times in diVerent language areas and in diVerent disciplines; see J. H. W. G. Liebeschuetz, ‘The Birth of Late Antiquity’, Antiquite´ Tardive, 12 (2004), 253–61. 80 On Jones, see J. H. W. G. Liebeschuetz (a near contemporary of Ste. Croix’s at University College London, and fellow student of Jones): ‘A. H. M. Jones and the Later Roman Empire’, Institute of Archaeology Bulletin, 29 (1992), 1–9. For Syme’s work on late antiquity, see particularly his Ammianus and the Historia Augusta (Oxford, 1968). Syme heavily inXuenced John Matthews and T. D. Barnes.

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history writing, developed particularly under the inXuence of Peter Brown.81 The magnitude of this change can be seen in the enlargement of the chronological scope of the Cambridge Ancient History. Where, in 1939, volume 12 ended with Constantine’s defeat of Licinius in 324, volume 14 of the second edition extends to the turn of the seventh century.82 Following the reception of Henri Pirenne’s Mahomet et Charlemagne, translated into English in 1939, it is not uncommon for late antiquity to extend as far as 800 and the coronation of Charlemagne.83 While there were important English scholars working on later Roman history before the Second World War,84 the emergence of late antiquity as a Weld in Anglophone scholarship owed most to the e´migre´s of European fascism who had come to England, notably Arnaldo Momigliano.85 This has also 81 See Averil Cameron, ‘The ‘‘Long’’ Late Antiquity: A Late Twentieth-Century Model’, in T. P. Wiseman (ed.), Classics in Progress: Essays on Ancient Greece and Rome (Oxford, 2002), 165–91; M. Vessey, ‘The Demise of the Christian Writer and the Remaking of ‘‘Late Antiquity’’: From H.-I. Marrou’s Saint Augustine (1938) to Peter Brown’s Holy Man (1983)’, JECS 6.3 (1998), 377–411. Cameron has noted how Brown, at least in his early works written while he was still at Oxford, still worked on ‘the later Roman Empire’, but from the 1970s turned increasingly to ‘late antiquity’ as a Weld deWned predominantly in cultural terms; see her comments on Brown’s ‘The World of Late Antiquity revisited’, Symbolae Osloenses, 72 (1997), 33–7, at 36. 82 A. Cameron, B. Ward-Perkins, and M. Whitby (eds.), CAH xiv: Late Antiquity: Empire and Successors, A.D. 425–600 (Cambridge, 2000). 83 See Cameron, ‘The ‘‘Long’’ Late Antiquity’; examples include P. Brown, The World of Late Antiquity AD 150–750 (London, 1971) and ‘Mohammed and Charlemagne by Henri Pirenne’, Daedalus, 53 (1974), 25–33, repr. in his Society and the Holy in Late Antiquity (Berkeley, 1982), 63–79; G. Fowden, Empire to Commonwealth: Consequences of Monotheism in Late Antiquity (Princeton, 1993); P. Athanassiadi and M. Frede, ‘Introduction’ to their edited volume Pagan Monotheism in Late Antiquity (Oxford, 1998), 1–20, at 3; G. W. Bowersock, P. Brown, and O. Grabar (eds.), Late Antiquity: A Guide to the Postclassical World (Cambridge, Mass., 1999). 84 The most notable of those immediately to precede A. H. M. Jones were Hugh Last and Norman Hepburn Baynes. Before that, J. B. Bury’s History of the Eastern Roman Empire: From Arcadius to Irene (395 A.D. to 800 A.D.) (London, 1889) and History of the Later Roman Empire from the Death of Theodosius I to the Death of Justinian (A.D. 395–A.D. 565) (London, 1923) were standard works. For a study of Bury, Baynes, and Arnold Toynbee in relation to British Byzantine historiography, see Averil Cameron, ‘Bury, Baynes and Toynbee’, in R. Cormack and E. JeVreys (eds.), Through the Looking Glass: Byzantium through British Eyes (Aldershot, 2000), 163–75. 85 Of the Oxford graduates of the early 1960s who went on to major careers in the subject, Alan Cameron, Averil Cameron, and Peter Brown have testiWed to the inXuence of Momigliano, then professor of ancient history at University College London. See his important edited volume The ConXict between Paganism and Christianity in the Fourth Century (Oxford, 1963).

Introduction

25

had important consequences for early church history, as sources previously read almost exclusively by theologians or patristic scholars have become central for intellectual, cultural, and social history.86 The place of later Roman and early church history in the 1950s and 1960s, when Ste. Croix started his academic career, was perhaps particularly unclear in Great Britain. At Oxford and Cambridge, where the majority of professional ancient historians were trained, early Christianity was predominantly a subject for theology or divinity. Moreover, in Oxford the classics or ‘Greats’ syllabus only covered Roman history up to the death of Trajan in ad 117, and from its inception was guided by distinct moral and aesthetic imperatives (in fact, the later Roman Empire still has a rather liminal status within the Oxford ‘schools’).87 Ste. Croix was unusual in having studied Ancient History at University College London under A. H. M. Jones, where he covered a vast period of history, from 3000 bc to the death of Heraclius in 641. After his move to Oxford to a fellowship at New College in 1953, he mainly taught classical Greek history, but encouraged his undergraduate students to explore new areas, for example by attending Peter Brown’s lectures in All Souls or reading Ammianus Marcellinus. While he was consistently interested in the Church and the history of the later Roman Empire, he focused on this almost exclusively after he had retired. It is important, though, that we do not overemphasize the uniqueness of the division between church history and Roman history in England. For example, the ‘historicalcritical’ method in church history that developed in the ‘natural-scientiWc’ environment of late nineteenth-century German 86 See in general Cameron, ‘The ‘‘Long’’ Late Antiquity’, 180, and, with respect to the study of Augustine, see R. Markus, ‘Evolving Disciplinary Contexts for the Study of Augustine, 1950–2000: Some Personal ReXections’, Augustinian Studies, 32 (2001), 189–200. On parallel processes in the USA, particularly the creation of departments of religion in the 1960s, see D. B. Martin, ‘Introduction’, in D. B. Martin and P. Cox Miller (eds.), The Cultural Turn in Late Ancient Studies: Gender, Asceticism, and Historiography (Durham, NC, 2005), 1–21, at 3–4. 87 On which, see O. Murray, ‘The Beginnings of Greats, 1800–1872 II: Ancient History’, in M. G. Brock and M. C. Curthoys (eds.), The History of the University of Oxford, vi: Nineteenth-Century Oxford, Part I (Oxford, 1997), 520–42, esp. 536–7. This was only changed in 1995, with the inclusion of a third period of Roman history going up to the death of Hadrian in ad 138, although the creation of a late antique network Wrst by John Matthews, and more latterly by Bryan Ward-Perkins, Roger Tomlin, and James Howard-Johnston, has to some extent overcome the problem.

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universities still, at least in practice, distinguished between Christian history and Roman history. It is clear in the work of Adolf Harnack, whose Mission und Ausbreitung des Christentums, published in 1902, barely mentioned a non-Christian source.88 While German Religionswissenschaft did much to broaden the context within which early Christianity was studied, this context remained, unsurprisingly, religious, with interest focusing on the origins of ritual and dogma, and not on the practicalities of life in the Roman Empire.89 Ste. Croix commented on the problems engendered by these divisions in his review of Frend’s Martyrdom and Persecution in the Early Church. He judged the treatment of martyrdom a ‘triumphant success’, but that of persecution a ‘severe disappointment’, describing Frend as ‘an ecclesiastical historian of an unusual and most welcome kind’, but ‘not a Roman historian’, and went on to lament ‘the present organization of academic studies’ which ‘makes it exceedingly diYcult for an historian of the early Church to be . . . capable of dealing both with the Church and with its secular and pagan environment’.90 Frend’s problem, in fact, was similar to Ste. Croix’s. In the preface to Martyrdom and Persecution he describes how he had originally intended to update Hardy’s Christianity and the Roman Government, but subsequently wanted to extend the subject from ‘the outlook of the Roman authorities and the legal system of the Roman Empire’ to 88 Noted by Ramsay MacMullen, Paganism in the Roman Empire (New Haven, 1981), 206 n. 16; for the relationship between Mommsen and Harnack, see S. Rebenich, Theodor Mommsen und Adolf Harnack: Wissenschaft und Politik im Berlin des ausgehenden 19. Jahrhunderts (Berlin and New York, 1997), and more brieXy his Theodor Mommsen: eine Biographie (Munich, 2002), esp. 138–9. 89 For some background to Religionswissenschaft, see S. Marchand, ‘From Liberalism to Neoromanticism: Albrecht Dieterich, Richard Reizenstein, and the Religious Turn in Fin de Sie`cle German Classical Studies’, in I. Gildenhard and M. Ruehl (eds.), Out of Arcadia: Classics and Politics in Germany in the Age of Burckhardt, Nietzsche and Wilamowitz (London, 2003), 129–60; for religious studies in relation to the historiography of the later Roman Empire, see A. Demandt, Der Fall Roms: die AuXo¨sung des ro¨mischen Reiches im urteil der Nachwelt (Munich, 1984), 246–73. 90 Ste. Croix, review of Frend, Martyrdom and Persecution, JTS 18 (1967), 217–21, at 217. See also Peter Brown’s contemporary description of the disciplinary background to his 1967 biography of Augustine as ‘that rather lonely and precarious bridge . . . between ancient and medieval history, between the disciplines of the historian, the theologian and the philosopher’; Brown, Augustine of Hippo: A Biography, rev. edn. (London, 2000), p. xi (orig. pub. 1967).

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‘the attitude of the Christians themselves and the inXuence of Christian doctrine as sources of conXict’.91 Nonetheless, his account is based on a number of theological concepts, and at times, a rather uncritical reading of source material. He refers repeatedly to ‘Late Judaism’, on the basis that it had been superseded by Christianity,92 and regards the Jews as frequent instigators of Christian persecution.93 Moreover, the ‘weakness’ of paganism is a decisive factor in the ‘failure of the persecutions’: by the beginning of the fourth century, he argues, ‘it was clear that the Christian message contained much, perhaps nearly all, that the pagans had been groping towards’.94 Such theological bias was not limited to theologians. Up to the mid-1970s Roman religion was, with some exceptions, studied within an evolutionary paradigm that rendered its extinction at the hands of Christianity historically inevitable.95 Apart from disciplinary changes, the interests of Roman historians have changed considerably since the 1960s. This is related in part to extra-academic factors. As we have seen, Mommsen’s Provinces of the Roman Empire had a galvanizing inXuence on British Roman historians, focusing attention on Roman administrative history. From 1892 there was a close relationship between training in ancient history and 91 Frend, Martyrdom and Persecution, p. vii. 92 See Boyarin, Dying for God, 127–30. 93 Frend, Martyrdom and Persecution, esp. 259, 271–2; on the implausibility of this idea, and its basis in Christian allegory, see J. Lieu, Image and Reality: The Jews in the World of the Christians in the Second Century (Edinburgh, 1996), 91; and ‘Accusations of Jewish Persecution in Early Christian Sources, with Particular Reference to Justin Martyr and the Martyrdom of Polycarp’, in G. N. Stanton and G. Stroumsa (eds.), Tolerance and Intolerance in Early Judaism and Christianity (Cambridge, 1998), 279– 95. Marcel Simon had argued along similar lines in his Verus Israel: e´tude sur les relations entre chre´tiens et juifs dans l’empire romain (135–425) (Paris, 1948), 144–54, trans. into English by H. McKeating (Oxford, 1986), 115–25. See also Fergus Millar’s review of Martyrdom and Persecution, which criticized Frend’s ‘bias in favour of (orthodox) Christianity, and against the Jews’ and endorsed Simon’s assessment of the evidence for Jewish persecutions of Christians; JRS 56 (1966), 231–6, at 233–4. 94 Frend, Martyrdom and Persecution, 521. 95 On which, see J. North, ‘The Religion of Rome from Monarchy to Principate’, in M. Bentley (ed.), Companion to Historiography (London, 1997), 57–68, at 57. Although it is now rare to Wnd this model justiWed in evolutionary terms, contrasts between the superiority of Christianity over ‘paganism’ can still be found, with little account taken of the fact that the comparison would only be meaningful to a Christian; see, for instance, MacMullen, Paganism in the Roman Empire, 136; Stark, The Rise of Christianity, 196–215.

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imperial administration, with the raising of the age limit for entry into the Indian Civil Service to 23 and the revision of the marking system of the entrance exam, which particularly beneWted Oxford Greats students.96 Although parallels between Roman and British imperial administration were not new,97 the study of Roman provincial governors such as the younger Pliny derived considerable impetus from this connection.98 Inevitably it also created an elective aYnity between historians and the Roman provincial governors, focusing attention on the perspective of the administrator and not the administered. In most Anglophone studies of the persecutions up to the Second World War, the persecuted Christians rarely appear as active agents.99 Accompanying this focus on Roman administrators was a corresponding focus on Roman sources, and on the high Roman Empire.100 The most notable exception to this rule among British ancient historians was Norman Baynes, who corresponded regularly with such continental scholars as Delehaye, Ensslin, Stein, Bides, Gre´goire, and Do¨lger. However, while trained as a classicist, he taught in the history department at UCL.101 With the rapid break-up of the British Empire after the end of the Second World War, not to mention the growth in immigration from former colonies to Great 96 For the background, see V. T. Larson, ‘Classics and the Acquisition and Validation of Power in Britain’s ‘‘Imperial Century’’ (1815–1914)’, International Journal of the Classical Tradition, 6.2 (1999), 185–225; R. Symonds, ‘Oxford and the Empire’, in M. G. Brock and M. C. Curthoys (eds.), The History of the University of Oxford, vii: Nineteenth-Century Oxford, Part 2 (Oxford, 2000), 689–716, at 699; also O. Murray, ‘Ancient History, 1872–1914’, ibid. 333–60, at 346–9. 97 See, for instance, George Cornewall Lewis, An Essay on the Government of Dependencies (London, 1841); 2nd edn. by C. P. Lucas (Oxford, 1891), 111–34. 98 Murray, ‘Ancient History, 1872–1914’, 348–9. 99 An exception to this, at least in principle, is Ramsay; see his The Church in the Roman Empire before A.D. 170 at 173–7 and 185–90. 100 Ramsay brieXy ventured beyond the 2nd cent., although he attributes his late 2nd-cent. terminus to a lack of scholarly resources, and in a lecture delivered at Cambridge in 1889 asked ‘why should traditional belief—or should I say traditional ignorance?—exclude all Christian Fathers or Byzantine historians from the classical scholar’s interest, and almost conWne him to producing the 43rd edition of one out of about a score of writers?’; The Church in the Roman Empire at 443–80, esp. 449. Hardy ended his Christianity and the Roman Government at ad 195 without comment, while both Last and Sherwin-White stayed within similar temporal boundaries. 101 See J. M. Hussey, ‘Norman Hepburn Baynes’, Proceedings of the British Academy, 49 (1963), 365–73, and more brieXy her biography of Baynes in DNB iv (Oxford, 2004), 476–7.

Introduction

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Britain, it is perhaps unsurprising that scholarly attention shifted from administrator to those administered. Although one should be wary of drawing too much from parallels between historiography and wider social and political changes, it is at least a notable coincidence that the later Roman Empire should have become so interesting to so many Oxford-trained classicists and historians in the 1950s and 1960s, given the earlier interconnection between classics, and particularly the ‘high’ Roman Empire, and the British imperial administration. Changes in Britain’s imperial role had more tangible consequences. At Oxford the relationship between undergraduate training and ‘public life’ came under scrutiny. In 1961 the newly elected Chichele Professor of history, Richard Southern, argued that history as a ‘system of education for practical men’ was no longer sustainable, and that the subject needed to be broadened in scope to acknowledge the insights of other disciplines such as anthropology.102 The eVects of these changes in Roman history are clear. Where, before the Second World War, Hugh Last was able to defeat a proposal for an honours school of anthropology at Oxford on the grounds that ‘an acquaintance with the habits of savages is not an education’, from the 1960s ancient historians increasingly turned to social and cultural anthropology to understand both the vagaries of ‘local knowledge’ and local social structures within the Roman Empire, a focus which has been further strengthened with the inXuence of postcolonial studies. This generated new interest in Roman religion.103 Although the relationship between anthropology and ancient history was not new, the study of Roman religion in Great 102 R. W. Southern, The Shape and Substance of Academic History (inaugural lecture, Oxford 1961), quoted in J. Harris, ‘The Arts and Social Sciences, 1939–1970’, in B. Harrison (ed.), The History of the University of Oxford, viii: The Twentieth Century (Oxford, 1994), 217–49, at 237. 103 Recent works on Roman religion could not possibly be listed in full. Some important examples include J. North, ‘Conservatism and Change in Roman Religion’, PBSR 44 (1976), 1–12; J. H. W. G. Liebeschuetz, Continuity and Change in Roman Religion (Oxford, 1979); MacMullen, Paganism in the Roman Empire; A. Wardman, Religion and Statecraft among the Romans (London, 1982); J. Scheid, Religion et pie´te´ a` Rome (Paris, 1985), 2nd edn. (Paris, 2001); R. L. Gordon, Image and Value in the Graeco-Roman World: Studies in Mithraism and Religious Art (Aldershot, 1996), and his essays in M. Beard and J. North (eds.), Pagan Priests: Religion and Power in the

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Britain between Warde Fowler’s The Religious Experience of the Roman People (1911) and the mid-1970s was remarkably static, locked in an evolutionary framework that the emergence of Weldwork-based ethnography had rendered obsolete.104 Ste. Croix’s account of the persecutions is unusual in that it bears very little trace of this framework. He emphasized the strong religious feelings that motivated Christian persecution, and while he made some concessions to contemporary ideas of elite religious apathy, he did not try to divide the religious feelings of the elite and the populace. As we have seen, he did not regard Christianity as a good thing, and argues that Graeco-Roman paganism and Christianity are categorically diVerent rather than qualitatively comparable.105 Ste Croix’s distinction between individualist, belief-centred Christianity and communal, ritual-centred paganism might now seem a little overdrawn, but it needs to be placed in its historiographical context. As religion in the Roman Empire has been more widely studied, such strong contrasts between Christianity and paganism have been scrutinized, and their edges softened. The identity between paganism and polytheism, for instance, is no longer sustainable,106 likewise Gibbon’s contrast between the tolerant pagan Roman Empire and Ancient World (London, 1990), 179–255; S. Price, Rituals and Power: The Roman Imperial Cult in Asia Minor (Cambridge, 1984); Beard, North, and Price, Religions of Rome, vol. i. 104 Warde Fowler was heavily inXuenced by the evolutionary anthropology associated particularly with E. B. Tylor, of which the most famous contemporary exponent was James Frazer, himself, of course, an eminent classicist. A. D. Nock, much the most interesting writer on Roman religion after Warde Fowler, was appointed Frothingham Professor of the History of Religion at Harvard following his move there from Cambridge in 1930. 105 As Garth Fowden noted, Robin Lane Fox’s Pagans and Christians is based on just such a contrast, with similar beneWts and drawbacks; Fowden, ‘Between Pagans and Christians’, JRS 78 (1988), 173–82, at 173. See also Averil Cameron, Christianity and the Rhetoric of Empire: The Development of Christian Discourse (Berkeley, 1991), 21 with n. 16. 106 See the essays collected in P. Athanassiadi and M. Frede, Pagan Monotheism in Late Antiquity; although note the criticisms of M. Edwards, ‘Pagan and Christian Monotheism in the Age of Constantine’, in S. Swain and M. Edwards (eds.), Approaching Late Antiquity: The Transformation from Early to Late Empire (Oxford, 2004), 211–34. Garth Fowden has recently made a rather unconvincing defence of ‘polytheism’ as ‘less nakedly oVensive’ a category than ‘paganism’, and states that ‘there was no such thing as ‘‘pagan monotheism’’ ’: see his ‘Late Polytheism’, in CAH xii: 521–72, at 521–2.

Introduction

31

its intolerant Christian successor which, as we have seen, signiWcantly underpins Ste. Croix’s work on persecution. In 1984 Peter Garnsey argued that the Roman authorities were not so much tolerant as appreciative of ‘the limits of their power’.107 Mary Beard, John North, and Simon Price have further demonstrated that the most signiWcant Roman religious concepts, religio and superstitio, were normative and potentially discriminatory, and argue that ‘oYcial Roman responses to Christianity’ should be placed ‘in the context of their responses to other forms of undesirable behaviour’.108 In consequence the early Christian persecutions are, if not less unique than they seemed to Ste. Croix, then less starkly deWned against a background of openness and toleration. Indeed, Keith Hopkins has suggested we should not ask why the early Christians were persecuted, but why they were not persecuted more often.109 The turn to cultural history is a particular feature of Anglophone late antique history, although the inXuence of hermeneutic philosophers such as Paul Ricoeur and Hans-Georg Gadamer, often received through the medium of CliVord Geertz’s interpretative anthropology, has contributed to a pluralizing trend across the historical discipline.110 One of the hallmarks of work inspired by Geertz is the emphasis on perception, or the need to understand ‘from the native’s point of view’, insofar as this is possible. Ste. Croix diVers from this approach emphatically, and sometimes advocates a rigidly 107 P. Garnsey, ‘Religious Toleration in Classical Antiquity’, Studies in Church History, 21(1984), 1–27 at 9. 108 Beard, North, and Price, Religions of Rome, i. 211–44 esp. 236–44; see also H. Drake, ‘Lambs into Lions: Explaining Early Christian Intolerance’, Past and Present, 153 (1996), 3–36. 109 K. Hopkins, ‘Christian Number and its Implications’, 197. 110 The direct inXuence of Geertz is most obvious in Peter Brown’s essay ‘The Saint as Exemplar in Late Antiquity’, Representations, 1.2 (1983), 1–25, but his inXuence on humanities more generally has been enormous, particularly since the publication of The Interpretation of Cultures: Selected Essays (New York, 1973). For a study of Geertz’s work and inXuence, see F. Inglis, CliVord Geertz: Culture, Custom and Ethics (Cambridge, 2000). For an interesting set of reXections on Geertz’s work, see S. B. Ortner (ed.), The Fate of ‘Culture’: Geertz and Beyond (Berkeley, 1999), and the rather hagiographical collection of R. A. Schweder and B. Good (eds.), CliVord Geertz by his Colleagues (Chicago, 2005). On the prominence of cultural history in Anglophone late antique studies, see A. Giardina, ‘Esplosione di tardoantico’, Studi Storici, 40 (1999), 157–80, at 167 and n. 35; and Cameron, ‘The ‘‘Long’’ Late Antiquity’, esp. 171–2.

32


fact-based epistemology, such as in his assertion that the Church is a ‘theological’ and not a ‘historical’ concept,111 and his frequent denunciation of later Christian hagiography as ‘worthless’ since it does not provide accurate information on actual events. The Wrst of these contentions is clearly false: ‘the Christian Church’ is a historical concept, even if one that does not denote any objective reality. The second position remains valid, but shows how much historians’ priorities have changed,112 and readers may now Wnd that Ste. Croix raises some important problems, which he is not interested in developing. For instance, in ‘Voluntary Martyrdom in the Early Church’, he notes the contradiction between the explicit denunciation of voluntary martyrdom by most leading early Christian writers and the common praise accorded to voluntary martyrs in practice, but then expressly ignores ‘the considerable quantity of late and Wctitious Passions in which the martyrs are made to behave in a provocative manner and abuse their judges’.113 Yet this is an interesting contradiction: why, in periods after the conversion of Constantine, when Church and State were not necessarily in relations of hostility, and were often closely intertwined, were Christian martyrs presented as antagonists? The other main problem of recent scholarship with important ramiWcations for Ste. Croix’s work on persecution is closely connected to the concerns of Geertz and later with those of Michel 111 Ste. Croix, ‘Heresy’ (below, Ch. 5, p. 202); ‘Chalcedon’ (below, Ch. 6, p. 260); Class Struggle, 6, 420, and 495. 112 Concern with the literary and rhetorical aspects of early Christian sources is one of the most notable developments in late antique historiography. It is not an entirely new development: Hippolyte Delehaye and Pierre Courcelle, to name two particularly noteworthy authors, transformed the study of hagiography and Augustine’s Confessions respectively by attending to their literary status. Nonetheless, Delehaye’s work on hagiography prioritized texts according to their reliability as a record of events; see his six-part classiWcation of martyr acts in Les Le´gendes hagiographiques, 4th edn. (Brussels, 1955), 106–9. Contrast this with two recent books on martyrdom, which disavow any interest in using martyr acts as sources for the events they purport to record: L. Grig, Making Martyrs in Late Antiquity (London, 2004), 1, who states that her book ‘does not seek to uncover the historical facts about the martyrs venerated by the late antique Church but to examine the construction of heroes’; and E. Castelli, Martyrdom and Memory: Early Christian Culture Making (New York, 2004), 4: ‘This book is not a history of early Christian martyrdom but an exploration of the culture-making aspects of its representations’. 113 Ste. Croix, ‘Voluntary Martyrdom’ (below, Ch. 4, p. 165).

Introduction

33

Foucault and particularly Edward Said, namely identity.114 Ste. Croix rarely questions what Christian identity is, short of noting the pluralism of Christianity in practice. It appears that he regards it as Pauline, or at least would like to do so, as illustrated in his possibly rhetorical question: ‘Would it be an exaggeration to say that the earliest systematic impulse towards execrating those who were believed to be proclaiming false doctrine came from St Paul and his circle?’115 The most radical recent thesis on early Christian identity is Daniel Boyarin’s ‘wave theory’, in which second-century Judaism and Christianity constitute ‘points on a continuum, from the Marcionites, who followed the second-century Marcion in believing that the Hebrew Bible had been written by an inferior God and had no standing for Christians, and who completely denied the ‘‘Jewishness’’ of Christianity, on one end, to many Jews on the other end for whom Jesus meant nothing’.116 In between these two poles, Boyarin seems to envisage people uncertain as to their identity, whether Jewish or Christian. It is perhaps signiWcant that scholars working in theology or religion departments have done much of this work on religious identity. For Ste. Croix, as an ancient historian, the problem of Christian identity would seem less diYcult. By around the late Wrst century the Romans had a clear conception of what Christians were, which encompassed most, although by no means all, of the myriad of groups who considered themselves Christians. This understanding focused on what Christians were not, namely people who would not participate in traditional sacriWces, and they developed distinct procedures for testing whether someone was a Christian by concentrating on a negative that no Christian, so they thought, would undertake. The very existence of martyrdom, particularly voluntary martyrdom, suggests that this perspective was not entirely separate 114 Much recent work has focused on the identities of Jews and Christians, and their fashioning through mutual interaction. See, among others, the essays collected in A. H. Becker and A. Y. Reed (eds.), The Ways that Never Parted: Jews and Christians in Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages (Texts and Studies in Ancient Judaism 95; Tu¨bingen, 2003); Boyarin, Dying for God; idem, Border Lines: The Partition of JudaeoChristianity (Philadelphia, 2004); S. N. C. Lieu, Image and Reality; Neither Jew nor Greek? Constructing Christian Identity (Edinburgh, 2003); Christian Identity in the Jewish and Graeco-Roman World (Oxford, 2004). 115 Ste. Croix, ‘Heresy’ (below, Ch. 5, pp. 213–14). 116 Boyarin, Dying for God, esp. 11; Border Lines, 17–19.

34


from the understanding of Christians. Identity lies at the heart of the Christian persecutions: Christians are persecuted for being Christian, for the Christian name, an aYliation demonstrated by the refusal to sacriWce. Although this does not necessarily resolve the diYculties of determining what Judaism and Christianity were in the early Empire, it is an absolutely essential perspective. Both were incorporated into conceptual and administrative structures by people with no particular interest in the Wner points of doctrinal dispute. It is here that we can see perhaps the most important inXuence of Ste. Croix’s work on persecution on subsequent scholarship. Although he was no historian of mentalities, his emphasis on the potentially dynamic force of Christianity contrasts markedly with the focus of Roman historians from the late nineteenth century, on persecution as a problem primarily of Roman administration, one conWned very largely to the high Empire. While some may think that Ste. Croix placed too much emphasis on the ‘enthusiasm’ or intolerance of the early Christians, he also helped to restore the relationship between Christians and their Graeco-Roman environment to the centre of any study of persecution. Even if Ste. Croix’s approach to and questions about Christian persecution may now seem uncontroversial or dated, that is partly because his arguments have been internalized by participants in subsequent debates; his articles and unpublished writings helped to create a new context in which Christian persecution could be investigated, in more subtle ways, in myriad local settings, local rivalries and disputes, where Christians suVered but also contributed to the suVering of Christians as provocative agents or, in due course, as enforcers.

1 Aspects of the ‘Great’ Persecution* The ‘Great’ persecution, of the years 303 to 312/3, requires thorough reconsideration. This paper will discuss certain features of the persecution, and, without attempting to present a complete picture, will suggest some modiWcations in the received view.

1. The Edicts of Persecution In this section it is necessary, for the sake of clarity, to go rapidly over some familiar ground. The First Edict (hereafter referred to as ‘E 1’) was apparently issued (datum) on the 23rd February 303, on which day the church opposite the imperial palace at Nicomedia was dismantled. Next day the edict was posted up (propositum). The probable contents may be summarized as follows: I. (a) All Christian churches (and, it appears, any house in which the Scriptures might be discovered)1 were to be destroyed.2 (b) All copies of First published as ‘Aspects of the ‘‘Great’’ Persecution’, Harvard Theological Review, 47.2(1954), 75–113. * I am much indebted to Professors N. H. Baynes, A. Momigliano and particularly A. H. M. Jones for help, encouragement and criticism, and to Professors E. G. Turner and Claire Preáux for replying to questions on papyrological matters. They must not be held responsible for any errors which remain or for the opinions expressed. I also wish to acknowledge a special debt to the works of Hippolyte Delehaye, who did so much to advance the study of the Passions of the martyrs as historical sources. References to Passions are to the editions mentioned in Appendix I below. 1 See Optat. Append. ii, pp. 200, 202 (ed. C. Ziwsa, CSEL xxvi): ‘ubi scripturae inveniuntur, (et) ipsa domus diruitur’ [‘where the scriptures are found, the house itself is destroyed’]. 2 Euseb. Hist. Eccles. viii 2.4; Mart. Pal. Praef. 1; 2.1; Optat. Append. ii, pp. 198–9; cf. Lactant. De Mort. Pers. 12.

36


the Scriptures and other liturgical books were to be surrendered and burnt, and all church plate and other such property was to be conWscated.3 (c) All meetings for Christian worship were prohibited.4 II. Persistent Christians were apparently deprived of the capacity to bring actions in the courts;5 those who possessed juridical privileges6 were to lose them;7 and ƒ K NŒ ÆØ (probably those members of the imperial civil service who were not technically soldiers and would mostly have been imperial freedmen)8 were to be reduced to slavery.9 3 Eus. HE viii 2.4; MP Praef. 1; Optat. Append. i, pp. 186–8; ii, p. 199; Augustine C. Cresc. iii 27.30; Conc. Arelat. i, Can. 13; and several Passions cited later. [On the destruction of books, see W. Speyer, ‘Bu¨chervernichtung’, JbAC 13 (1970), 123–52, esp. 139–40; Speyer, Bu¨chervernichtung und Zensur des Geistes bei Heiden, Juden und Christen (Stuttgart, 1981). See also P. Oxy. xxxiii 2673, from Feb. 304, in which the lector of a church in the village of Chysis reports to the gymnasiarchs of Oxyrhynchus that his church possesses nothing apart from a bronze gate, then in the process of being delivered to Alexandria.] 4 Eus. HE ix 10.8; and the Passions of the martyrs of Abitina and Philip of Heraclea. 5 Lact. MP 13.1; cf. 15.5. 6 i.e. senators (clarissimi), those of equestrian status (perfectissimi, egregii), decurions, veterans, and to some extent soldiers. [See P. Garnsey, Social Status and Legal Privilege in the Roman Empire (Oxford, 1970), and more recently his ‘Roman Citizenship and Roman Law in the Late Empire’, in S. Swain and M. Edwards (eds.), Approaching Late Antiquity: The Transformation from Early to Late Empire (Oxford, 2004), 133–55, esp. 140–9.] 7 Lact. MP 13.1; Eus. HE viii 2.4; MP Praef. 1. Thus the privileged classes would become liable to torture and the more savage punishments normally reserved for the lower orders. [See also P. Oxy. xxxi 2601. On the relationship between social status and punishment, citing the distinction between the treatment of citizens and aliens in the pogrom at Lyon in 177 ce, see P. Garnsey, ‘Legal Privilege in the Roman Empire’, Past and Present, 41 (1968), 3–24, at 19–20, repr. in M. I. Finley (ed.), Studies in Ancient Society (London, 1974), 141–65, at 160–1; also F. Millar, ‘Condemnation to Hard Labour in the Roman Empire, from the Julio-Claudians to Constantine’, PBSR 52 (1984), 124–47, repr. in Millar, Rome, the Greek World, and the East, ii: Government, Society, and Culture in the Roman Empire, ed. H. M. Cotton and G. M. Rogers (Chapel Hill, 2004), 120–50.] 8 Cf. the Caesariani of the Valerianic persecuting edict (Cypr. Epist. lxxx 1). See A. H. M. Jones, ‘The Roman Civil Service (clerical and sub-clerical grades)’, JRS 39 (1949), 38–55, at 46 [repr. in idem, Studies in Roman Government and Law (Oxford, 1960), 151–75, at 164–5; see also The Later Roman Empire, 284–602: A Social, Economic and Administrative Survey (Oxford, 1964), 564–5]; N. H. Baynes, ‘The Great Persecution’, in S. A. Cook, F. E. Adcock, M. P. Charlesworth, and N. H. Baynes (eds.), CAH xii: The Imperial Crisis and Recovery, A.D. 193–324 (Cambridge, 1939), 646–77, at 666 and nn. 1–4. [See more recently K.-H. Schwarte, ‘Die Christengesetze Valerians’, in W. Eck (ed.), Religion und Gesellschaft in der ro¨mischen Kaiserzeit (Ko¨lner historische Abhandlungen 35; Cologne and Vienna, 1989), 103–63, esp. 146–8.] 9 Eus. HE viii 2.4; MP Praef. 1.

Aspects of the ‘Great’ Persecution

37

The results of E 1 will be discussed presently. The Second and Third Edicts (EE 2 and 3) can be disposed of brieXy now: their eVects have already been admirably summarized by Baynes in his masterly chapter on the persecution in the Cambridge Ancient History.10 E 2, ordering the arrest of the Christian clergy,11 was probably issued during the spring or early summer of 303, as a consequence (if we may believe Eusebius) of political disturbances in Melitene and Syria, in which the Christians were apparently believed to be implicated. There is no valid evidence that this edict was ever promulgated in the West. In regions where Christians were plentiful, its enforcement seems to have put an intolerable strain on a rudimentary prison system, intended to provide not for convicted criminals undergoing sentence but merely for accused persons awaiting trial. Ordinary criminals, according to Eusebius, were positively crowded out. The government, therefore, took advantage of the vicennalia of Diocletian, which were celebrated either in September or in November, 303,12 to issue an amnesty to the incarcerated Christian clergy, granting them pardon on condition they sacriWced.13 This was E 3. The local authorities evidently lost no time in ridding themselves of their unwelcome guests. Some of the clergy gave in, and others were tortured into compliance; but if we may generalize from a striking passage in Eusebius’s Martyrs of Palestine,14 it appears that practically all those who remained Wrm were compelled to go through the motions of sacriWcing, protesting the while, and then released, or 10 Baynes, CAH xii. 666–7. 11 Eus. HE viii 6.8–9; cf. MP Praef. 2. 12 Opinions still diVer regarding this date, but it is not necessary to discuss the question here. Contrast W. Seston, Diocle´tien et la Te´trarchie, i (Paris, 1946), 49–51, with W. Ensslin in Pauly–Wissowa, Realenc., 2te Reihe, vii ii, 2423–4. [November is much more likely. It is given by Lactantius, our source closest to the events: De Mortibus Persecutorum 17.1.1, and supported by a papyrus from Panopolis which records a donative given on 20 Nov. 299 commemorating the accession of Diocletian; T. C. Skeat (ed.), Papyri from Panopolis in the Chester Beatty Library (Dublin, 1964), 2. 162–4. The early 7th-cent. Chronicon Paschale is the only source to date Diocletian’s accession to 17 Sept. 284, but its evidence on imperial succession in the late 3rd and early 4th cent. is often inaccurate: see M. Whitby and M. Whitby, Chronicon Paschale 284–628 AD (TTH 7; Liverpool, 1989), nn. 1, 17.] 13 Eus. HE viii 6.10; MP Praef. 2. Despite the language of the former passage, it seems unlikely that torture was prescribed as a penalty for recusants. 14 1.3–4. Cf. the 14th ‘canon’ of the episcopal letter of Peter of Alexandria (p. 46 and n. 44 below).

38


merely dismissed with the information that they were deemed to have sacriWced. The Fourth Edict (E 4) ordered all inhabitants of the empire to sacriWce to the gods,15 on pain of death. E 4 cannot be dated exactly, but it was probably issued in January or February, 304, for it had apparently not reached the proconsul of Africa by February 12th, but was being enforced in the Balkans by March.16

2. The Nature and Consequences of the First Edict Since the edict and rescripts of Gallienus in the early 260s, recorded by Eusebius,17 the Christian Church (or churches) had received a certain measure of toleration and recognition—how complete, and according to what constitutional principles, there is fortunately no need to discuss here. By E 1 the government forbade the collective practice18 of Christianity by attacking the churches, books and services of its adherents, and it inXicted special penalties upon members of the upper classes and imperial civil servants who refused to abandon Christianity; but for the ordinary individual—provided, of course, he retained no religious writings and attended no services—merely ‘being a Christian’ (the nomen Christianum) was visited with only one penalty: deprivation of the use of legal process. 15 Eus. MP 3.1: Ł Ø ŒÆd Ø [‘to sacriWce and pour a libation’]. The records of martyrdoms suggest that oVering incense or pouring a libation could be accepted as suYcient. 16 See N. H. Baynes, ‘Two Notes on the Great Persecution’, CQ 18 (1924), 189–94, esp. 189–92. It should, however, be realized that of the Balkan martyrdoms discussed by B. only those of Agape, Chione and Irene (March and April, at Thessalonica) are securely dated to 304. For an outline of the views adopted here about the divisions of the empire among the tetrarchs, see Appendix II below. For a criticism of the theory about the origin of E 4 advanced by Baynes, see Appendix III below. 17 HE vii 13; cf. 30.19; viii 1.1–6. On this very thorny question, see esp. the excellent summary of Baynes, CAH xii. 655–6. [On Gallienus’ rescript see L. de Blois, The Policy of the Emperor Gallienus (Leiden, 1976), 175–85; R. Lane Fox, Pagans and Christians (Harmondsworth, 1986), 553; D. Potter, The Roman Empire at Bay, AD 180–395 (London, 2004), 259–63; G. W. Clarke, ‘Third-Century Christianity’, in A. K. Bowman, P. Garnsey, and Averil Cameron (eds.), CAH xii: The Crisis of Empire, A.D. 193–337 (Cambridge, 2005), 589–671, at 645–6.] 18 See esp. the edict of Maximin of 313 (Eus. HE ix 10.8), where the whole persecution is summed up in the words, a ı ı H æØØÆ H KfiæBŁÆØ [‘the abolition of the Christian assemblies’].


39

According to Lactantius,19 Diocletian insisted that ‘eam rem sine sanguine transigi’ [‘this matter be carried through without bloodshed’]. This isolated statement has often been construed in an exaggerated sense, and some modern writers have gone so far as to conclude that E 1 altogether forbade the inXiction of the death penalty.20 This view, which is intrinsically improbable, is deWnitely disproved by reliable contemporary evidence of executions of Christians who disobeyed the speciWc clauses of the Wrst section of E 1 (as reconstructed above), by refusing to hand over their Scriptures or by holding services.21 Yet there is no trace of any lesser punishment having been laid down for disobedience to the provisions of the Wrst part of E 1. It seems most likely that for such oVences—which the government might reasonably have expected to be rare—no speciWc punishment was prescribed by the edict. The public would naturally assume that the death penalty was liable to be inXicted on any obstinate recusant who openly deWed the orders of a governor in such a matter;22 and this impression might be expected to have a wholesome eVect in securing obedience. ‘Mortuus fueras, si non illas invenisses’ [‘you would have been dead if you had not found those’], said Victor the municipal clerk to Silvanus the fossor, of the church of Cirta, when the latter produced some of the church plate.23 Instructions may have been given to the provincial governors not to resort to capital punishment at all if they could help it; but further than this the evidence forbids us to go. The emperor who had already issued the ferocious edict against the Manichaeans24 would hardly 19 MP 11.8. 20 e.g. H. J. Lawlor and J. E. L. Oulton, Eusebius, ii (London, 1928), 272: the death penalty would have been ‘a violation of the First Edict’. [In support of Ste. Croix, see more recently Barnes, ‘From Toleration to Repression: The Evolution of Constantine’s Religious Policies’, Scripta Classica Israelica, 21 (2002), 189–207, at 192.] 21 See Appendix IV below. 22 Cf. CTh xvi 5.34 (398), where the death penalty is speciWcally prescribed for Eunomians and Montanists who fail to hand over their heretical books. 23 Optat., Append. I, p. 187. 24 Mosaicarum et Romanarum Legum Collatio 15.3.1 in E. Seckel and B. Ku¨bler, Iurisprudentiae anteiustinianae reliquias (Lipsiae, 1927), ii ii, 381–3, or F. Girard and F. Senn, Textes de Droit Romain, 7th edn. (Paris, 1967), 582–3. [See also S. Riccobono et al. (eds.), Fragmenta Iuris Romani Anteiustiniani, 2nd edn. (Florence, 1968), ii. 580–1.] The date is probably 31st March 297: see W. Seston, ‘De l’authenticite´ et de la date de l’e´dit de Diocle´tien contre les Manicheéns’, in Me´langes de Philologie, de

40


have been squeamish in his attitude towards Christians who were guilty of open deWance of his orders. Except during the persecution of Decius, and to a smaller extent in that of Valerian, the Roman government had adhered, ever since the time of Trajan at least, to the wise principle that Christians were not to be sought out: ‘conquirendi non sunt’.25 This principle was not yet to be abandoned, save in respect of the two groups (the privileged classes and ƒ K NŒ ÆØ ) who had been specially noticed by the edict, and those instituting legal proceedings. It seems unlikely that any widespread inquisition was carried out among the two special categories, since additional machinery would have been required for this; but it was easy to apply a test in court to intending litigants, to discover which of them were Christians.26 (This may explain the choice of the penalty to be imposed on the ordinary Christian: it was when initiating court proceedings that he could most easily be exposed.) Litte´rature et d’Histoire Anciennes oVerts a` Alfred Ernout (Paris, 1940), 345–54. The greater severity with which Manichaeans were treated was no doubt due to their being regarded as agents of a hostile power, as well as religious oVenders; but much of Diocletian’s invective against the Manichaeans would have applied equally to the Christians. [For a translation of Diocletian’s rescript against the Manichees, see M. Beard, J. North, and S. Price, Religions of Rome, ii: A Sourcebook (Cambridge, 1998), 281–3; D. Lee, Pagans and Christians in Late Antiquity (London, 2000), 66–7; or I. Gardner and S. N. C. Lieu, Manichaean Texts from the Roman Empire (Cambridge, 2004), 116–18. Lieu supports Ste. Croix’s explanation for the severity of the edict, reckoning that Diocletian saw them as ‘a Persian Wfth column’; see Lieu, Manichaeism in the Later Roman Empire and Medieval China, 2nd edn. (Wissenschaftliche Untersuchungen zum Neuen Testament 63; Tu¨bingen, 1992), 121–4, at 121. The date of this rescript to the proconsul of Africa is probably 302; see T. D. Barnes, The New Empire of Diocletian and Constantine (Cambridge, Mass., 1982), 55 n. 41 and S. Corcoran, The Empire of the Tetrarchs: Imperial Pronouncements and Government AD 284–324, rev. edn. (Oxford, 2000), 135–6.] 25 Pliny, Epist. x 97.2. [Whether Decius’ edict was aimed at Christians has recently been questioned by Reinhard Selinger, J. B. Rives, and Graeme Clarke: see Selinger, Die Religionspolitik des Kaisers Decius: Anatomie einer Christenverfolgung (Frankfurt, 1994), esp. 29–37, and idem, The Mid-Third Century Persecutions of Decius and Valerian (Frankfurt, 2002), esp. 63–8; Rives, ‘The Decree of Decius and the Religion of Empire’, JRS 89 (1999), 135–54, esp. 141–2; G. W. Clarke, The Letters of Cyprian, i (Ancient Christian Writers 43; New York, 1984), 22–5; against which I. Gradel, Emperor Worship and Roman Religion (Oxford, 2002), 368. See now G. W. Clarke, ‘Third-Century Christianity’, CAH xii. 625–6. Ste. Croix later divided the persecutions into three stages; see ‘Early Christians’, Ch. 3, pp. 106–7.] 26 See Lact. MP 15.5.


41

The time-honoured method of deciding whether a given person was a Christian was the ‘sacriWce test’, as it will be called here: the individual concerned was asked to sacriWce, oVer incense, or make a libation, to the gods or the emperor.27 Since we Wnd the sacriWce test applied on several occasions, before the issue of E 4, in a manner not directly authorized by E 1, it is necessary to deWne its purpose more precisely. Its primary aim had always been not to expose Christians but to give those falsely accused of Christianity a chance to clear themselves in a universally recognized manner. The government, as a rule, took action against Christians only in response to popular clamour or individual delation, and the oVence it punished was being a Christian, up to the moment sentence was pronounced, not having been one. Provided the Christian was not also guilty of some speciWc crime such as treason, by word or deed, he could obtain ‘veniam ex paenitentia’ [‘pardon for his repentance’], as Trajan put it,28 by sacriWcing, to show that he had apostatized from Christianity. The sacriWce test was thus essentially a convenient method by which a suspected person could demonstrate that he had ceased to be a Christian, or had never been one. It was a privilege which a wrongly suspected or accused person, or a Christian prepared to apostatize, might wish to demand. A humane judge might make a practice of urging accused Christians to sacriWce as a means of saving themselves. When, from the time of the Antonines and Severans onwards,29 the judicial torture of free men belonging to the lower 27 There seems to be no good evidence from the Great persecution of attempts to make accused Christians curse Christ (as in Passio Polycarp. ix 3) or swear by the emperor’s genius or (as in Id. ix 2; x 1; Passio Scillitan. 5; Passio Apollon. 3). 28 See n. 25 above. 29 The exemptions in Cod. Just. ix 41.11.pr.; cf. 1 (and see Dig. xlviii 18.15.1; 18.16.1; 18.21; 22.6.2; xlix 5.2; 16.7; l 2.14), show that the practice was already well established by the reign of Marcus. The situation under the Severi onwards is well known: see T. Mommsen, Ro¨misches Strafrecht (Leipzig, 1899), 406–8. [See among others P. Garnsey, ‘Why Penal Laws became Harsher: The Roman Case’, Natural Law Forum, 13 (1968), 141–62; E. Patlagean, Pauvrete´ ećonomique et pauvrete´ sociale a` Byzance 4e–7e Sie`cles (Paris, 1977), 9–35; D. Grodzynski, ‘Tortures mortelles et cate´gories sociales: les summa supplicia dans le droit romain aux IIIe et IVe sie`cles’, in Du Chaˆtiment dans la cite´: supplices corporels et peine de mort dans le monde antique (Collection de l’Ećole Française de Rome 79; Paris, 1984), 361–404; and R. MacMullen, ‘Judicial Savagery in the Roman Empire’, Chiron, 16 (1986), 147–66, repr. in his Changes in the Roman Empire: Essays in the Ordinary (Princeton, 1990), 204–17 and 357–64.] For the 4th century, Dig. xxii 5.21.2 is illuminating.

42


classes became customary, it was only too likely that the sacriWce test would on occasion be used, or rather misused, combined with torture, to force Christian confessors to become apostates. But that was far from being its original object. If we may trust his own account of his procedure, Pliny imposed the sacriWce test not on confessors but only on those who said they were not Christians.30 Only upon the issue of E 4 did Diocletian and his colleagues abandon the principle, conquirendi non sunt, and in eVect provide, by the universal imposition of the sacriWce test, for the public exposure of all Christians, who must then suVer the extreme penalty. It is obviously wrong, however, to take the application of the sacriWce test during the Great persecution as proof that it is E 4 which is being enforced, as is commonly done. The appearance in a Passion of a demand (or invitation) that an accused Christian ‘sacriWce to the gods’, even if there is reason to think it was actually made, is by no means conclusive proof that E 4 was being invoked, for, as we have just seen, such a demand had long been usual in trials of Christians, and we know that it was revived in 303, in both East and West,31 after the publication of E 1, but before E 4 could have been issued. Only an order to sacriWce ‘in accordance with the imperial decree’ is conclusive—provided there is good ground for thinking the phrase was actually used and has not been added by a hagiographer as a stock formula. The hagiology of the fourth and subsequent centuries came to be written with diminishing restraint and increasing contempt for historicity; and the stories of the martyrs of the Great persecution were, as we should say, ‘written up’, according to a pattern which became ever more standardized.32 Refusal to comply with a demand to sacriWce, with or without a reference to an imperial decree to that eVect, became a stock feature and was included in virtually all Passions, even of martyrs who suVered under emperors other than Decius or the tetrarchs.33 30 Pliny, Epist. x 96.3, 5. 31 There is evidence for Syria, Palestine and Numidia: see below. 32 See esp. H. Delehaye, Les Passions des martyrs et les genres litte´raires, 2nd edn. (Subsidia Hagiographica 13B; Brussels, 1966); Les Le´gendes hagiographiques, 3rd edn. (Subsidia Hagiographica 18; Brussels, 1927) [trans. by D. Attwater as The Legends of the Saints (Dublin, 1998)]. 33 See e.g. Delehaye, Les Passions des martyrs, 183–5.


43

It will be proWtable to examine all the reliable detailed accounts we have of martyrdoms taking place between E 1 and E 4. From the West, we have nothing but the Passions of Felix of Thibiuca and of the congregation of Abitina, which are quite straightforward, the martyrs concerned being executed for direct disobedience to E 1. These documents call for no comment now. From the East, we have only34 the descriptions in Eusebius’s Martyrs of Palestine of the deaths of Procopius, Romanus, and Alpheus and Zacchaeus, which we may now consider. The Martyrs of Palestine contains the earliest and most authentic version of the story of Procopius, the Long Recension (L) being at this point much more informative than the Short Recension (S).35 The reason for the arrest of Procopius is obscure: it may or may not have taken place in consequence of E 2. When Procopius was brought before the tribunal at Caesarea on the 7th June 303, the governor Wrst ordered him to sacriWce to the gods, and then, when he refused, to pour a libation to the four emperors. He tactlessly replied by quoting with approval the famous lines of Odysseus in the Iliad against a multiplicity of rulers, and was immediately beheaded for treason. In view of what has been said above about the insertion of a reference to E 4 in virtually all Passions, it is interesting to Wnd that even in the Wrst of a series of legendary elaborations of the Passion of Procopius the execution is represented as taking place under an edict which ordered everyone to sacriWce or be put to death36—that is to say, under E 4, which was certainly not issued until months after Procopius’s martyrdom.

34 The Passion of Philip of Heraclea, of which we possess only a Latin translation, contains valuable material and seems to depend ultimately on the account of an eyewitness (though not the oYcial Acta); but it has been so heavily embroidered, as regards its dialogues, that it is unsafe to use it for present purposes. The order to sacriWce mentioned in Eus. HE viii 6.2 can be explained as by A. C. McGiVert, Eusebius: Church History, Life of Constantine the Great, and Oration in Praise of Constantine (NPNF I; Oxford, 1890), 327. 35 1.1–2. Lawlor and Oulton, at the end of Vol. i of their Eusebius, conveniently print side by side admirable English translations of S and of a composite version (from the Greek, Latin and Syriac) of L. 36 See Delehaye, Les Le´gendes hag.3, chap. v, at pp. 124–5 [Attwater trans., 105]. Cf. the similar addition to the Passio Felicis, given in H. Delehaye, ‘La Passion de S. Fe´lix de Thibiuca’, AB 39 (1921), 241–76, at 272, ch. 11.

44


On the 17th November 303, still before E 4 had been published, a Palestinian named Romanus, while present at Antioch, saw with indignation men, women and children (among whom were evidently many Christians) ‘going up in crowds to the idols and sacriWcing’.37 Romanus intervened to rebuke the sacriWcers, and was immediately arrested and sentenced to death, either for an act of rebellion or because his speech to the sacriWcers included statements technically treasonable. According to L, the governor was commanding sacriWce; but it is hard to believe that he did anything more than invite the people to make a public demonstration of loyalty in this manner. An oYcial order to sacriWce also enters into the martyrdom of Alpheus and Zacchaeus on the same day, presumably at Caesarea.38 Eusebius has just made indirect reference to EE 2 and 3, and it is often assumed that these men, one a reader and exorcist of Caesarea and the other a deacon of Gadara, had been arrested under E 2. This is certainly not true of Alpheus, a bold volunteer, whom Eusebius describes as being arrested in consequence of a public intervention, like that of Romanus, to prevent mass apostasy. Zacchaeus was apparently arrested at Gadara, and it seems very probable that he too had been guilty of some special provocation, although the details did not come to Eusebius’s knowledge. Alpheus and Zacchaeus were ordered to sacriWce but refused, saying they acknowledged only one God, the king of all, whereupon they were beheaded, presumably for making a statement technically amounting to treason. Mass apostasies similar to those rebuked by Romanus and Alpheus no doubt took place all over the empire during the year 303. In particular, Christians who belonged to the upper classes, and consequently had more to lose if they remained Christians, would think it prudent to forestall attack by ‘voluntarily’ making a public demonstration of their abandonment of Christianity. We know from Cyprian that in 250, upon the publication of the persecuting edict of Decius, very many African Christians publicly apostatized of their own accord before they were even arrested or interrogated or ordered to sacriWce: in two very striking passages in his De Lapsis,39 Cyprian 37 MP 2.1. If the churches were only now being destroyed, as S states, the authorities had been very slow to put E 1 into operation in Syria. 38 Eus. MP 1.5. L is very much fuller. 39 7; 8. Cf. Eus. HE vi 41.11–12.


45

represents them as rushing in crowds to clear themselves of suspicion by sacriWcing. At the other extreme from these voluntary apostates are the ‘voluntary martyrs’, as they will be called here: men who deliberately and unnecessarily went out of their way to seek martyrdom, like Romanus and Alpheus. Voluntary martyrdom was oYcially condemned by the orthodox, except in the case of those who were seeking to redeem an earlier lapse;40 but it was evidently by no means infrequent during the second and third centuries, and an astonishingly high proportion of the martyrs of the Great persecution whose stories we know in detail were volunteers. The curious phenomenon of voluntary martyrdom deserves closer attention than it has hitherto received, and it will be dealt with elsewhere.40 a The subject will also come up again later in this paper. It is suYcient now to record the fact that Mensurius, bishop of Carthage at the beginning of the Great persecution, had to forbid Christians to honour those who ‘gave themselves up of their own accord and volunteered the information that they possessed Scriptures which they would not hand over, when no one had asked them to do so’. Mensurius also referred, rather uncharitably, to ‘criminals and debtors to the treasury, who took advantage of the persecution to rid themselves of a life burdened with many debts, or hoped to purge themselves and (so to speak) wash away their crimes, or at any rate to make money and live like Wghting-cocks in prison on the charity of the Christians’.41

40 As in Peter Alex. Epist. Can. (see n. 44 below), 8; contrast 9, 10. Among the many other passages condemning voluntary martyrdom are Passio Polycarp. iv (cf. Eus. HE iv 15.7–8); Clem. Alex. Strom. iv iv. 16.3 to 17.3; x. 76–77; vii xi. 66.3 to 67.2, ed. O. Sta¨hlin; Cypr. Epist. lxxxi; Passio Cypr. 1.6 (endorsed by Aug. C. Gaudent. i 31.40); Conc. Illib., Can. 60; cf. Lact. MP 13.2, 3. [See below, Ch. 4, pp. 155, 160–1.] 40 a [See further Ch. 4.] 41 Aug. Brev. Coll. iii 13.25, in the translation of A. H. M. Jones, Constantine and the Conversion of Europe, rev. edn. (London, 1972), 108. But this allegation may have been a commonplace: cf. the Passio Theodoriti 3 (‘audivi te esse Wsci debitorem, et ideo mori desideras ne reddas quod debes’) [‘I have heard that you are a debtor of the treasury, and thus you long to die lest you return what you owe’; see the more recent edition of M. Marcovich (Berlin, 1986)]; Hippol. Elench. ix 12.7, ed. P. Wendland (Callistus, the future bishop of Rome, unable to repay money he had embezzled, voluntarily sought martyrdom).

46


3. The First and Fourth Edicts: Contrasts between East and West Modern writers42 commonly speak as if the ‘dies traditionis’ under E 1 were everywhere distinct from and succeeded by a very greatly intensiWed phase of the persecution, the ‘dies turiWcationis’ brought about by E 4. Those who hold this view might have taken warning from the fact that Lactantius never refers to E 4 at all, and that Eusebius mentions it only in his Martyrs of Palestine,43 not in his Church History. In the East, the characteristic form of apostasy is always conceived as sacriWcatio or turiWcatio; there seems to be no evidence at all that traditio was regarded as a religious oVence. This is true even of the earliest document we possess which deals oYcially with the problem of the Eastern lapsi of the Great persecution: the ‘Canonical Letter’ of Peter, bishop of Alexandria,44 dating from Easter, 306, in which, if anywhere, we might expect to Wnd some emphasis on traditio. The fourteen ‘canons’ of this letter are concerned entirely with the question of apostasy in the persecution, in various forms. Although the nature of the act constituting the lapse is seldom speciWed, it is obviously assumed throughout the document to be something in the nature of sacriWcing, oVering incense, or partaking of food previously oVered to idols; there is no reference whatever to traditio, 42 e.g. Baynes, ‘Two Notes on the Great Persecution’, 189, and CAH xii at 668; M. Besnier, Histoire Romaine, iv: L’Empire Romain de l’ave`nement des Se´ve`res au Concile de Niceé (Paris, 1937) (vol. iv of Histoire Geńe´rale, ed. G. Glotz), 328; G. Costa, ‘Diocletianus’, in E. de Ruggiero (ed.), Dizionario EpigraWco di Antichita` Romane, ii (Rome, 1926), 1793–1908, at 1860–1; L. Duchesne, Early History of the Christian Church, ii (London, 1912), 79; cf. W. Ensslin in Pauly-Wissowa, 2te Reihe, vii ii, 2487. 43 3.1. Our remaining contemporary authority for the persecution, Constantine (ap. Eus Vita Const. ii 51), does not distinguish between the various ‘sanguinary edicts’. [See the English trans. of Averil Cameron and S. Hall, Eusebius: Life of Constantine (Oxford, 1999), 112.] 44 Migne, PG xviii 467–508; M. J. Routh, Reliquiae Sacrae, iv (Oxford, 1846), 23–45; A. P. de Lagarde, Reliquiae Iuris Ecclesiastici Antiquissimae (Lipsiae, 1856), 63–73; E. Schwartz, ‘Zur Geschichte des Athanasius’, part 4, Nachrichten von der ko¨niglichen Gesellschaft der Wissenschaften zu Go¨ttingen (Philologisch-historische Klasse; 1905), 166–75 [repr. in Schwartz, Gesammelte Schriften, iii (Berlin, 1959), at 89–103].


47

direct or indirect. The canons45 of the Council of Ancyra, of (probably) 314, the next document of the same kind which has survived, also ignore traditio completely, although many of them are concerned with the problem of the lapsi, and these go into some detail on the diVerent ways in which sacriWce could be carried out. None of the participants in the controversies which vexed the Eastern churches in the fourth century accuses his opponents of traditio, although Meletius was later accused by his adversaries, absurdly enough, of sacriWcatio.46 In none of the Passions from the Eastern provinces is traditio made an issue. In that of Agape and her fellowmartyrs of Thessalonica,47 Chione complains that her religious books and papers have all been taken away from her, and Irene is accused of preserving ØŁæÆ ŒÆd Øº Æ ŒÆd Ø ÆŒ Æ ŒÆd ŒøØŒººı ŒÆd º Æ ; ªæÆH H ª ø æØØÆ H H I ø [‘parchments, books, tablets, codices, and pages of the writings of the erstwhile Christians of unholy name’]. Doubtless all Christians retained their sacred books when they could. But it appears that giving them up, or allowing them to fall into the hands of the authorities, was not regarded as a sin in the Eastern part of the empire. We have one positive piece of evidence to this eVect, in the Passion of Philip, bishop of Thracian Heraclea.48 Here we are told that Philip himself agreed to hand over the church plate to Bassus, the governor, but refused to give up the Scriptures. However, the deacon Hermes, who was later martyred with Philip, ‘diu antea verberatus, ingressus est ubi vasa omnia et scripturae laterunt’ [‘having previously been beaten for a long time, he went to where all the church plate and scriptures were hidden’]—and the narrator shows no sign of disapproval of Hermes’ action but continues to treat him with the greatest respect and sympathy. Finally, it is signiWcant that there appears to be no Greek term in the ecclesiastical writers for traditio. 45 C. J. Hefele–H. Leclercq, Hist. des conciles, i i, 301–26; Mansi ii 513–22. The Wrst nine canons deal with the lapsi. [On the council of Ancyra, see J. A. Fischer and A. Lumpe, Die Synoden von den Anfa¨ngen bis zum vorabend des Nicaenums (Paderborn, 1997), 453–88; and S. Parvis, ‘The Canons of Ancyra and Caesarea (314): Lebon’s Thesis Revisited’, JTS 52 (2000), 625–36.] 46 Athan. Apol. c. Arian. 59.1; Socr. Hist. Eccles. i 6. 47 §§ 4–6. 48 See, on this Passion, n. 34 above.

48


In the West, the situation is totally diVerent. If we compare with the canons of the purely Eastern Council of Ancyra those of the Western Council held at about the same time (August 314) at Arles, we are at once struck by the fact that its canons49 make no reference at all to apostasy by sacriWcing or burning incense. The persecution had ceased in the West more than nine years before the Council met, and only two canons50 are concerned with oVences committed during the persecution: they deal only with false accusations, and with traditio, in its diVerent forms, by those ‘qui scripturas sanctas tradidisse dicuntur vel vasa dominica vel nomina fratrum suorum’ [‘who are said to have handed over the holy scriptures or the Lord’s vessels or the names of their brothers’]. Here even traditio of the vasa dominica, like the other two forms of traditio, is treated as a religious crime, justifying the removal of the delinquent from the ranks of the clergy; whereas Philip of Heraclea, as we have seen, saw nothing wrong in handing over the church plate immediately he was ordered to do so. In the Donatist controversy, which convulsed the African church henceforward, traditio is the one issue which dwarfs all others, as far as the Great persecution is concerned.50 a In Africa, certainly, the oYcial view, of Catholics as well as Donatists, was that traditio was an act of apostasy. We have already referred to those admirable documents, the Passions of Felix of Thibiuca, executed for refusing to commit traditio, and of the martyrs of Abitina. Although a great part of the latter is an almost verbal reproduction of the oYcial Acta, the Passion in the form in which we have it is the work of a Donatist, who represents the diVerence between the faithful and the lapsi as turning entirely on the question of traditio,51 and does not fail to emphasize that Fundanus, bishop of Abitina, had given up his Scriptures—the most heinous form of traditio, needless to say. 49 Hefele–Leclercq, op. cit. 280–95; Mansi ii 471–4. [For a more recent edition and French translation of the Canons of Arles, see J. Gaudemet, Conciles gaulois du IVe sie`cle (Sources Chre´tiennes 241; Paris, 1977), 35–67. For an English translation, see J. Stevenson (ed.), A New Eusebius: Documents Illustrating the History of the Church to AD 337, rev. W. H. C. Frend (London, 1987), 293–6.] 50 13 (traditio); 14. 50 a [See Y. Duval, Chre´tiens d’Afrique a` l’aube de la paix constantinienne: les premiers échos de la grande persećution (Collections des E´tudes Augustiniennes 164; Paris, 2000), 65–99.] 51 Passio 2; 19–23.


49

Several bishops besides Fundanus, not to mention other clerics and laymen, were guilty of traditio.52 Others went in for evasions,53 which the authorities were evidently quite willing as a rule to countenance.54 The emphasis is always upon traditio. A bishop could even ask another how he could possibly have gained release after arrest ‘except by giving something up or ordering it to be given up.’55 All this concentration of interest upon traditio, and the virtual absence of any early reference to sacriWcatio or turiWcatio, shows that the persecution in the West was carried out under E 1, and that E 4 could not have been enforced to any signiWcant extent.56 There is another piece of evidence of the non-enforcement of E 4 in the West, or at any rate in the African provinces,57 the one area for which we have much evidence. This is the entire absence of any Western reference to the purchase of immunity from sacriWcing. The silence of the sources on this point presents a strong contrast to the wealth of references to the libellatici of the Decian persecution,58 52 e.g. Paul of Cirta (Optat. Append. i, pp. 186–7), Donatus of Mascula (Aug. C. Cresc. iii 27.30), possibly the bishops of Zama and Furni (Optat. Append. ii, p. 199). Victor of Rusiccade admitted throwing a copy of the Gospels into the Xames, claiming in extenuation that it was virtually illegible (Aug. C. Cresc. iii 27.30). 53 Mensurius claimed that he had given up heretical works (Aug. Brev. Coll. iii 13.25). Donatus of Calama surrendered medical books, Marinus of Aquae Tibilitanae some other papers (Aug. C. Cresc. iii 27.30). 54 See Aug. Brev. Coll. iii 13.25. The obliging oYcials tell Mensurius to give them ‘aliqua ecbola aut quodcumque’ [‘some rubbish or anything whatever’]. When he refuses, they discover and take away some heretical works. Some Carthaginian decurions complain to Anullinus, but he refuses to pursue M. 55 Aug. C. Cresc. iii 27.30. 56 C. Bigg, The Origins of Christianity, ed. T. B. Strong (Oxford, 1909), 482–3, was inclined to doubt whether E 4 was ever published in the West. And see Jones (op. cit. in n. 41 above, 55): ‘There is no sound evidence for the promulgation of the fourth edict in the West.’ [This is now widely accepted, although for dissenters see Introd. above, p. 20 n. 66. W. H. C. Frend argued against Ste. Croix in two works: Martyrdom and Persecution in the Early Church (Oxford, 1965), and ‘A Note on the Great Persecution in the West’, in Studies in Church History, 2 (1965), 141–8, repr. in Frend, Religion Popular and Unpopular in the Early Christian Centuries (London, 1976); see Ch. 2 for Ste. Croix’s response: pp. 79–95.] 57 Byzacena (Byzacium), here treated as part of the Proconsular province, may have been a province separate from Proconsularis in 303–4, as it certainly was at some time during the Wrst tetrarchy (ILA 3832 ¼ CIL viii 23179). [See Barnes, New Empire, 212.] 58 There is evidence for libellatici in Spain (Cypr. Epist. lxvii 1.1; 6.1–2), at Rome (Id. xxx 3.1; also xxi 2.2; 3.2), and also of course in Africa: Id. xx 2.2; lv 3.2; 10.2; 13.2; 14.1; 17.3; 26.1; De Lapsis 27–8; Ad Fort. 11. In Epist. lv 26.1, Cyprian describes the purchase of a certiWcate as a far less grave sin than adultery.

50


who procured false certiWcates of compliance with the imperial order. We must not, of course, expect to Wnd any mention in the Great persecution of libellatici or libelli, for this time certiWcates were not issued—a question to which we shall return presently. If E 4 had really been put into operation in the West, however, the sale of immunities would certainly have taken place there, as we know it did in the East; and since the washing of dirty linen which went on after the persecution in some of the Western churches was decidedly more vigorous than in the East, and is much better evidenced, largely owing to the Donatist controversy, we should certainly have expected to hear something about the practice we are considering. It is impossible to believe that the rigorist Africans, who, in common with their Roman and Spanish brethren, had denounced this form of evasion in the 250s as a form of apostasy, would have accepted it as permissible Wfty years later. We cannot leave this question without drawing a contrast again between East and West. In the East there is conclusive evidence that Christians did buy exemption from E 4; but here it was not regarded as a sin. In his twelfth ‘canon’, Peter of Alexandria declares that those who purchased immunity are not to be blamed, for they sustained loss of money with the object of saving their souls. He speaks of them almost with respect. After this we hear nothing more about the practice. Anyone who reads the canons of the Council of Ancyra with Cyprian’s De Lapsis and letters in mind may well be astonished at the lack of any reference to the sale of immunities in the Wrst nine canons, which deal in detail with the various grades of apostasy during the persecution. The one satisfactory explanation is that the device was not regarded as sinful by the Eastern churches, and therefore did not require to be dealt with in the disciplinary canons. All our evidence about the sale of exemptions in the Decian persecution comes from the West, whereas for the Great persecution our one piece of positive evidence (Peter’s letter), with the clear negative evidence of the canons of Ancyra, comes from the East. It is surely permissible, however, to use all the evidence for both persecutions together in this respect, and to draw conclusions accordingly. In the East, we may infer, the purchase of exemptions was not regarded as sinful in either persecution. This would explain the absence of any denunciation of Eastern libellatici in the 250s. As regards the West,


51

where the practice would undoubtedly have seemed as reprehensible in the Great persecution as it did Wfty years earlier, we can explain the lack of any reference to the purchase of immunities only on the assumption that E 4 was little enforced, so that very few Christians (if any) would have needed to buy exemption. We shall return later to the methods of evasion of E 4, but we may note in passing that by countenancing the purchase of exemptions the Eastern churches made it possible for very many Christians to avoid the alternatives of apostasy or death without the least stain on their consciences. So rarely does sacriWcatio (or turiWcatio) make its appearance in the contemporary or near-contemporary documents of the African churches that it is impossible to believe E 4 could have been enforced in Africa, except perhaps in a few isolated cases. It is worth examining all the references in the earliest sources to sacriWcatio (or turiWcatio) in the African provinces. They may be considered in three groups: 1. (a) At the meeting of Numidian bishops at Cirta in 305, which has already been mentioned, Donatus of Mascula evasively replied to his metropolitan’s accusation of traditio, ‘Scis quantum me quaesivit Florus ut turiWcarem, et non me tradidit deus in manibus eius, frater.’ [‘You know how often Florus asked me to burn incense, but God did not hand me over into his hands, brother.’] (b) At the Council of some seventy Donatist bishops at Carthage in (probably) 312, Marcian is reported to have declared that ‘TuriWcati, traditores, abhorrentes deo manere in ecclesia dei non possunt, nisi (etc.).’ [‘Incense burners and traitors, being abhorrent to God are unable to remain in the church of God unless . . .’]59 (c) Maximus, an elder of the church of Carthage, making an oYcial accusation of traditio against Felix of Abthugna on the 19th August 314, twice referred (according to the surviving proce`sverbal) to an imperial order for sacriWce as well as traditio.60 The alleged traditio of Felix, however, was supposed to have taken place at the very beginning of the persecution under E 1, a long time before E 4 was issued, and there is not another word about sacriWce in the subsequent proceedings, which describe how E 1 was enforced at

59 Aug. Adv. Fulg. 26. 60 Optat. Append. ii, pp. 198–9. The form Abthugna, or Abthugni, is the best attested: see CIL viii (Suppl. iv) 23085, and the remarks of H. Dessau at p. 2338.

52


Abthugna. The references to an imperial order to sacriWce are not even consistent: in one place the Christians have to sacriWce or deliver their Scriptures to be burnt, in the other everyone is to sacriWce and give up the Scriptures. We know deWnitely that there had been no such imperial order at that time. Before we try to explain the three passages which have just been cited we must look at some further evidence. 2. (a) The Catholic bishop Optatus of Milevis, writing his book against the Donatists some sixty years after the persecution, speaks in one place61 as if the Christians of Africa Proconsularis and Numidiawere everywhere compelled to oVer incense to the pagan gods. He also says elsewhere62 that it was a matter of common knowledge that during the persecution some bishops were guilty of turiWcatio; and when describing the session of Numidian bishops to which reference has already been made he speaks63 scornfully of Menalius as having stayed away from the meeting, on the pretence that he was suVering from ophthalmia, to avoid being convicted of turiWcatio. (Optatus is not above calling the early Donatists collectively ‘traditores, turati, homicidae’ [‘traitors, incense burners, and murderers’], just as Augustine after him calls them ‘traditores, turiWcati, schismatici’ [‘traitors, incense burners, and schismatics’],64 and so forth; but these are merely the ordinary pleasantries of controversy between Catholics and schismatics.) (b) With these passages of Optatus we may couple CIL viii 6700 (19353), an inscription from northern Numidia, referring to an unspeciWed number of martyrs ‘qui sunt passi sub preside Floro in civitate Milevitana in diebus turiWcationis’ [‘who suVered under the governor Florus in the city of Milevis in the days of incense burning’].64a Now there is conclusive proof that Valerius Florus could never have enforced E 4, at any rate in northern Numidia—that part of the province which at the date of the ‘Verona List’ and certain 61 3.8, a rhetorical contrast between Florus and Macarius the imperial notary sent to Africa by Constans in 347 (see W. H. C. Frend, The Donatist Church: A Movement of Protest in Roman North Africa (Oxford, 1952), 177 V.). 62 ii 25. 63 i 13. 64 Optat. i 15; Aug. Adv. Fulg. 26. 64 a [See the critical edition of Y. Duval, Loca Sanctorum Africae: le culte des martyrs en Afrique du IVe au VIIe sie`cle (Collection de l’Ećole Française de Rome 58; Rome, 1982), i. 245–7, no. 117.]


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inscriptions of the early fourth century was Numidia Cirtensis, and which included Milevis.65 An inscription from Ksar el-Ahmar, the ancient Macomades, shows that Florus had been replaced as governor by Aurelius Quintianus by the time of Diocletian’s vicennalia, which took place between 17th September and 20th November 303.66 Quintianus is never named as a persecutor, a fact which it is hardly possible to explain on the conventional view, according to which the ‘dies turiWcationis’ followed the publication of E 4, early in 304, and represented a second stage of the Great persecution, more severe than the Wrst stage, the ‘dies traditionis’.67 On this view, we should be obliged to suppose that the bishop of Milevis, the inscription, and even the contemporary record of the Cirta meeting are all mistaken in their references to Florus. The name of the chief persecutor, however, is surely just the very thing that is most likely to have been correctly remembered locally. The obvious explanation is that many Christians, anxious to forestall persecution, had publicly announced their apostasy, soon after the promulgation of E 1, by oVering incense to the pagan gods; and that Florus, like the governors of Syria and Palestine—and doubtless many others—had attempted, possibly in accordance with oYcial instructions from above, to induce at least some Christians to oVer sacriWce or burn incense to the gods as well as hand over their books. The public defection of a bishop or two in this way might be expected to induce numbers of rank-and-Wle Christians to apostatize.68 The language used by Donatus of Mascula—‘quantum me quaesivit Florus ut turiWcarem’—supports the interpretation given here, for it hardly Wts an oYcial command, which would have been backed by torture (a trial Donatus did not claim to have endured) and enforced if necessary by execution. The natural interpretation of Donatus’s statement is that he had yielded to a demand for traditio but had not given in to the suggestion of the governor that he should also oVer incense.68 a 65 See Appendix V below. 66 ILS 644 ¼ CIL viii 4764 (18698). On the date of the vicennalia see n. 12 above. 67 See p. 46 and n. 42 above. 68 Cf. Cypr. Epist. lix 10.3. 68 a [Perhaps quaesivit means ‘sought for’ rather than ‘asked’. But it is still implied, by Donatus’ silence on the subject, that he had committed traditio; and in view of ILS 644 (see above) E 4 could not yet have been issued, the governor being Florus.]

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3. We are left with only one set of sources which can be brought forward as evidence of the promulgation and enforcement of E 4 in Africa: the Passions of the African martyrs. Felix of Thibiuca and Saturninus and his companions of Abitina suVered before E 4 could have been published in Africa. Of the other Passions, the only one which is suYciently important69 to require serious consideration is that of Crispina of Thagora, martyred on 5th December 304 at Theveste (at this time included in the Proconsular province), after a trial before Anullinus. Four passages70 are material for our investigation. The interrogation begins, ‘Anulinus proconsul dixit: ‘‘Praecepti sacri cognovisti sententiam?’’ Crispina respondit: ‘‘Quid praeceptum sit nescio.’’ Anulinus dixit: ‘‘Ut omnibus diis nostris pro salute principum sacriWces, secundum legem datam a dominis nostris Diocletiano et Maximiano piis Augustis et Constantio et Maximo [Maximiano (one MS), i.e. Galerio Maximiano] nobilissimis Caesaribus’’.’ [Anulinus the proconsul said: ‘Do you understand the meaning of the sacred decree?’ Crispina replied, ‘I do not know what has been commanded.’ Anulinus said: ‘That you should sacriWce to all our gods for the welfare of the emperors, following the law issued by our masters the reverend Augusti Diocletian and the most noble Caesars Constantius and Maximus.’] A little later the proconsul says, ‘Caput tibi amputari praecipio, si non obtemperaveris praeceptis imperatorum dominorum nostrorum, quibus deservire cogeris subiugata: quod et omnis Africa sacriWcia fecit, nec tibi dubium est.’ [‘I will give orders for you to be beheaded if you do not obey the edicts of our lords the emperors. You will be forced to yield and obey them: all the province of Africa has oVered sacriWce, as you are well aware.’] Further on again Anullinus says, ‘Sacrilega non eris si sacris obtemperes iussionibus’ [‘You will not commit sacrilege if you obey the sacred edicts’]. Finally, the sentence pronounced on Crispina reads, ‘Crispina in superstitione indigna perdurans, quae diis nostris sacriWcare noluit, secundum augustae legis mandata caelestia, gladio eam animadverti iussi.’ [‘Seeing that Crispina has persisted in infamous superstition and refuses to sacriWce to our gods in accordance with the heavenly decrees of the Augustan law, I have 69 See, on the remainder, Appendix VI below. 70 i 2–3; i 7; ii 3; iv 1.


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ordered her to be executed with the sword.’] If these passages are genuine, we shall have to admit that E 4 was promulgated in at any rate the Proconsular province, and therefore, presumably, throughout the area controlled by Maximian. No doubt most people will take this view, which seems the natural one. Some, however, may not feel entirely convinced, especially since the Passion does contain at least one Xagrant insertion,71 and the addition of a few references to sacriWce would have seemed almost de rigueur to any later hagiographer. It is diYcult to believe that an aristocrat like Anullinus would have begun his formal written sentence with a nominativus pendens; and in the clause which follows, the more respectable reading, ‘augustae’, found in one or two manuscripts of the Passion, may well be a later attempt to improve on the ‘Augusti’ of the others, betraying the handiwork of a clumsy compiler. Even the proconsul’s statement, ‘All Africa has sacriWced, as you very well know’, does not prove the enforcement of E 4: the statement is a rhetorical exaggeration in any case, and it could just as well have been used of the large numbers of Christians who had lapsed before E 4 was issued. Moreover, as Monceaux72 noticed, the Passion which has survived would seem to be by no means identical with the version known to Augustine. Thus there is hardly suYcient evidence that E 4 was even promulgated in Africa, and it cannot have been enforced there, save perhaps in a few individual cases. Yet the African provinces, with those of Egypt, were regarded by Eusebius73 as conspicuous for the number of their martyrs. In Gaul and Britain, Constantius did not even enforce E 1 properly,74 and E 4 can never have been published in those areas. 71 Id. iii 1: ‘Et adiecit Anulinus commentariensi oYcio dicens: ‘‘Ad omnem deformationem deducta, a novacula ablatis crinibus decalvetur, ut eius primum facies ad ignominiam deveniat.’’ ’ [Anulinus then turned to the court notary and said: ‘Let her be completely disWgured by having her hair cut and her head shaved until she is bald, that her beauty might Wrst thus be brought to shame.’] Franchi, curiously enough, was willing to accept this; but see P. Monceaux, ‘Les ‘‘Actes’’ de Sainte Crispine, martyr a` The´veste’, in Me´langes Boissier: recueil de me´moires concernant la litte´rature et les antiquite´s romaines de´die´ a` G. Boissier (Paris, 1903), 383–9, at 386. For other defects in the Passion see Monceaux, Histoire litte´raire de l’Afrique Chre´tienne depuis les origines jusqu’a` l’Invasion Arabe, iii (Paris, 1905), 386–7, 388–9. 72 Op. cit. 383–7. 73 HE viii 6.10. 74 See Appendix II and n. 117 below. Alban’s martyrdom cannot be dated: see C. E. Stevens, ‘Gildas Sapiens’, EHR 56 (1941), 353–73, at 373.

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For the remainder of the West—Italy, Sicily, Spain, Raetia and Noricum—the evidence is very scanty indeed. It is desirable to set out what little evidence does exist. From Sicily we have one fascinating document, the Passion of Euplus, an enthusiastic volunteer for martyrdom. Clasping a copy of the Gospels, Euplus went and shouted, ‘I wish to die, for I am a Christian’, outside the oYce of Calvisianus, the corrector Siciliae. After a preliminary interrogation and some weeks’ imprisonment, Euplus was brought up again before the governor, who merely ordered him to produce his ‘forbidden writings’ and, possibly misunderstanding his reply, ordered him to be tortured (according to the Passion) ‘until he promises to sacriWce to the gods’—the only mention of sacriWce in the earliest version of the Passion. Franchi de’ Cavalieri, who produced the best edition of the document,75 may have been right in believing this to be a later insertion. However, it is quite possible that the words were actually spoken, and that they were equivalent to ‘until he agrees to abandon Christianity’. This Passion, then, is easily explicable without invoking E 4. And we may go further than this. The dates on which Euplus was interrogated were 29th April and 12th August 304. If E 4 was ever promulgated in Sicily, it is hard to believe that this had not happened by April 29th, let alone August 12th; yet both interrogations of Euplus are concerned entirely with his possession of the Scriptures. It is true that Euplus was carrying a copy of the forbidden documents when he made his appearance before the governor, and of course the Passion cannot be cited as evidence against the previous publication of E 4 in Sicily; but it is worth noting that the one Passion we have for the West, outside Africa, which reproduces the oYcial Acta (apart from the sentence) with hardly any alteration or embellishment should turn entirely on a provision of E 1 and relate to an insistent volunteer for martyrdom. From Spain we have not one reliable Passion: Vincent’s is a mere ‘historical novel’;76 and although that of Faustus, Januarius and Martial may go back ultimately to a respectable written source,77 it 75 Studi e testi xlix (1928) at p. 16. 76 See Delehaye, Les Le´gendes hag.3 114. The opening words show that the compiler had no written source available. 77 Evidently Delehaye thought so, for he places the work in his third class of Passions (op. cit. 114–15).


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is impossible to feel any conWdence in its verbal accuracy; moreover, these three martyrs too are represented as volunteers, who publicly challenged the governor and proclaimed themselves Christians. Otherwise, we have nothing better than some poems in the Peristephanon of Prudentius, written about a hundred years later and having very little to do with history. From Augusta Vindelicorum in Raetia we have one document, the Passion of Afra, the ‘German Magdalen’, which has been thought by some to be a substantial reproduction of the oYcial Acta and by others (with more reason) to be a pure romance.78 It seems that only one79 among many manuscripts of this Passion contains any direct reference to an imperial command to sacriWce or otherwise suggests that Afra suVered in the Great persecution; and although the manuscript in question would appear to be the earliest, it will not inspire much conWdence, except perhaps in those who are already predisposed to accept the ‘Afra legend’. From Noricum we have nothing of real value.80 As regards Italy, from which we might have expected some evidence, we are very badly oV indeed. The Roman church in particular did not preserve in a trustworthy form a record of a single one of the numerous martyrs it claims during the Great persecution: the Roman Gesta Martyrum, no less than twenty-three of which profess to relate to this persecution, are not earlier than the Wfth century, and they are probably in the main of the late Wfth and early sixth.81 We have a number of scattered 78 For a summary of the literature, see A. Harnack, Die Mission und Ausbreitung des Christentums in den ersten drei Jahrhunderten, 4th edn. (Leipzig, 1924), ii. 884 and n. 1 [trans. by J. MoVatt as The Mission and Expansion of Christianity in the First Three Centuries (London, 1908), ii. 271–2] (‘Die Ma¨rtyrerakte taugt nichts; die Tatsache ist gut bezeugt’). 79 That edited by Vielhaber (see Appendix I below). The crucial words, apparently lacking in the other MSS, are ‘necesse est ut praeceptis imperatorum obtemperes, ut accedens sacriWces’ [‘it is necessary that you obey the commands of the emperors and go up to sacriWce’]. In this MS the sentence on Afra begins with a nominativus pendens. 80 The Passion of Florian of Lauriacum (on which see J. Zeiller, Les Origines chre´tiennes dans les Provinces Danubiennes de l’Empire Romain (Paris, 1918), 62–4) preserves some historical elements, but so much of it is Wctitious that we cannot use it for present purposes. (Noricum ought perhaps to be considered as falling in the Eastern part of the empire during the years 303–6, and not in the area subject to Maximian.) 81 See A. Dufourcq, E´tude sur les Gesta Martyrum Romains (Paris, 1900–10), esp. i. 287–90. It is Delehaye’s opinion also that the Roman legends ‘sont de´pourvues de

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references to the Roman and other Italian martyrs in fourth and Wfth century writers, earlier than the Passions, and some of them—like the Passions themselves—may conceivably preserve historical material; but none of these references is of such a character that the historian can safely use it. There is no trace of any contemporary attempt to preserve records of the deeds of the Roman and Italian martyrs, and as early as the time of Pope Damasus (366–384) they were already more or less legendary Wgures, about whom ‘traditions’ circulated, based on no written documents. The Roman church failed to distinguish itself in the persecution, which left it demoralized and, until 311, continuously disorganized by violent factional strife.82 It was actually without a bishop for more than half the seven years intervening between the death or technical apostasy83 of Pope Marcellinus in 304 and the election of Miltiades in 311. The history of the persecution at Rome cannot be written; but there is at any rate no real evidence of the application of E 4, even if we accept the tradition that Marcellinus oVered incense to the gods, for this could be explained as the result of pressure applied to Marcellinus quite apart from that edict. The evidence for the rest of Maximian’s provinces thus provides no reason for modifying the opinion arrived at on examination of the African evidence, that E 4 was hardly, if at all, enforced in Maximian’s area. The only evidence of the enforcement of E 4 which commands any respect at all, apart from the Passio Crispinae, is provided by a single manuscript of the very questionable Passio Afrae. In the West the persecution seems to have fallen into abeyance even before the abdication of Diocletian and Maximian on 1st May 305; although in Italy and Africa, and presumably Pannonia, peace did not fully return to the Church until after Severus had been toute valeur au point de vue de l’histoire qu’elles pre´tendent faire connaıˆtre’ [‘are deprived of all value with respect to the history that they claim to report’] (Les Origines du culte des martyrs2, 262). For the worthless Passio Sabini (Savini), which so impressed Mason and others, see also F. Lanzoni, ‘La ‘‘Passio S. Sabini’’ o ‘‘Savini’’ ’, in Ro¨mische Quartalschrift fu¨r christliche Altertumskunde und fu¨r Kirchengeschichte, 17 (1903), 1–26, endorsed by Delehaye, Les Le´gendes hag.3 83 n. 2. 82 See the good brief summary in L. Duchesne, op. cit. (in n. 42 above), 72–6. 83 See Appendix VII below.


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overthrown, late in 306 or early in 307, by Maxentius.84 Eusebius85 is substantially right in saying that in the West the persecution lasted ‘not two whole years’. The last datable Western martyrdom is that of Crispina, on 5th December 304. In Numidia, where the persecution seems to have been at least as severe as anywhere in the West, it had evidently ceased for all practical purposes by February or the beginning of March 305, since clamorous meetings could then be held openly in Cirta itself, the Numidian capital, for the election of a new bishop in place of the traditor Paul, now deceased.86

4. The Administration of the Fourth Edict We must now consider the way in which E 4 was put into eVect. A comparison with what we know about the administration of the persecuting edict of Decius will be helpful. It is clear from the language used by Cyprian87 that under the edict of Decius a particular day was appointed, whether for the whole empire or separately in each province, by which everyone had to sacriWce and obtain a certiWcate that he had done so. When the fatal day was past, anyone who had not sacriWced and secured his certiWcate would have been liable to the death penalty. Cyprian’s correspondence and treatises show that the eVect of the persecution was to divide the Christians into three broad classes: at one extreme the lapsi, who had either sacriWced or procured false certiWcates to that eVect; at the other extreme the confessors, a few of whom were martyred; and in between the two, a substantial third group (often overlooked nowadays) which is referred to many times by Cyprian and his correspondents88 as the 84 Eus. HE viii 14.1; Optat. i 18. Church property was only returned to the Christians of Rome by Maxentius in 311 (Aug. Brev. Coll. iii 18.34) and to the African Christians (probably) by Constantine in 312/3 (Eus. HE x 5.15–17). 85 MP 13.12; cf. 13.13; HE viii 13.11. 86 The actual election of Silvanus, described at length in the Gesta apud Zenophilum (Optat. Append. I, pp. 192–7 [trans. by M. Edwards, Optatus: Against the Donatists (TTH 27; Liverpool, 1997), 150–69]), must of course have taken place before the consecration-meeting on the 4th or 5th March 305: for this date, see Appendix IV below, § (d). 87 De Lapsis 3. 88 Cypr. De Laps. 2; 3; 4; and many letters, esp. xii 2.2; xiv 2.1; xix 2.2; xxx 5.3; xxxi 6.2; lv 5.1.

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stantes: Christians who were not arrested or called upon to make any public profession of their faith, but had at least run the risk of punishment for failing to sacriWce by the appointed day and might be charitably assumed to be ready to confess their faith should they be apprehended. Cyprian would have these people treated as potential confessors: he says the confessors proper had made a public and they a private confession.89 We have no information as to what steps were taken to discover those who had no certiWcates, and it seems unlikely that any systematic procedure was adopted. We know from a letter of Dionysius, bishop of Alexandria, quoted by Eusebius,90 that in Alexandria—and therefore, presumably, in at least some other capital cities—there was some kind of public roll-call; but this formed part of the procedure for organizing the sacriWces and was not a subsequent check. The Decian certiWcates of sacriWce which have been preserved from Egypt, forty-three in number,91 were issued by local commissioners described by some such title as ƒ Kd H ŁıØH fi æ Ø,92 who were doubtless chosen by their local curiae. In every civitas throughout the empire the local magistrates and curia must have been 89 De Laps. 3. 90 HE vi 41.11: O Æd . . . ŒÆº Ø [‘they were called by name’]. 91 See J. H. KnipWng, ‘The Libelli of the Decian Persecution’, in Harv. Theol. Rev. xvi (1923), 345–90, supplemented by H. Gre´goire, Les Persećutions dans l’Empire romain, 2nd edn. (Me´moires de l’Acade´mie royale de Belgique, Classe des Lettres 56.5; Brussels, 1964), 129–30, and the works there referred to. [There are now 46 extant certiWcates of sacriWce from the Decian persecution. 41 were edited and translated by KnipWng. Those published subsequently are: PSI vii 778; J. Schwartz, ‘Une dećlaration de sacriWce du temps de De`ce’, Revue Biblique, 54 (1947), 365–9, repr. in Sammelb. vi 9084; P. Oxy. xli 2990; P. Oxy. lviii 3929; and P. Lips. ii 152. See the complete list of Decian libelli with concordances in R. Duttenho¨fer and R. Scholl, Griechische Urkunden der Papyrussammlung zu Leipzig (P.Lips.II) (Leipzig, 2002), 226–41. For the general context, see Rives, ‘The Decree of Decius’, 135–6; Selinger, Die Religionspolitik des Kaisers Decius.] 92 Cf. Cypr. Epist. xliii 3.1 (Carthage) and (if the document really relates to 250) Passio Pionii. iii 1 (Smyrna). [The Passio Pionii is generally dated to the Decian persecution; see, for example, T. D. Barnes, ‘Pre-Decian Acta Martyrum’, JTS 19 (1968), 509–31, at 529–31, repr. in Barnes, Early Christianity and the Roman Empire (London, 1984); Lane Fox, Pagans and Christians, 460–8; and L. Robert, Le Martyre de Pionios, preˆtre de Smyrne (Washington, 1994), esp. 1–9. For an argument in favour of dating it to the reign of Marcus Aurelius, see H. Gre´goire, P. Orgels, and J. Moreau, ‘Les Martyres de Pionios et de Polycarpe’, Bulletin de l’Acade´mie royale de Belgique, classe des lettres et des sciences morales et politiques, 47 (1961), 72–83.]


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saddled with the responsibility of choosing commissioners and seeing that they did their work properly; and certiWcates of sacriWce were no doubt provided for everywhere. The machinery of the Great persecution was diVerent. Two features stand out. First, certiWcates of sacriWce were not issued. For this we have only negative evidence: the fact that no mention is ever made of certiWcates in the sources, and that no certiWcates have survived among the papyri; but the contrast with the evidence for the Decian persecution is so striking that we can regard the complete absence of any provision for the granting of certiWcates as virtually certain. Secondly (and much more important), there is strong evidence that until 306 the central government did not make the municipalities responsible for taking active steps to enforce E 4. It must have been early in 306—long after the persecution had ceased in the West—that Maximin ‘for the Wrst time’ (F æH ) issued an edict ordering the municipal magistrates to enforce general sacriWce by men, women and children.93 Immediately, according to the Long Recension of Eusebius’s Martyrs of Palestine, heralds in every city called upon everyone to assemble at the temples, and ‘the military tribunes and centurions went from house to house and from ward to ward (ŒÆ! YŒı ŒÆd ¼Æ), making registers of the citizens; then they summoned each one by name and thus compelled him to do what had been decreed.’ (Eusebius, who is concerned only with Palestine, part of Maximin’s dominions, speaks of Maximin alone as the author of this decree; but Maximin was still only a Caesar, and it seems probable that the edict was in fact issued by Galerius and Maximin jointly, in the whole of the East.) Eusebius adds that throughout Caesarea (where he himself was living at the time)94 heralds proclaimed the edict, and military tribunes summoned each individual by name from a roll. A similar edict, instructing the local magistrates to enforce universal sacriWce, was issued in 309,95 in an even stronger form; but this time we hear nothing of the compilation of new registers. 93 Eus. MP 4.8. 94 MP 4.6, 8, 14. 95 By Maximin, according to Eus. MP 9.2. By now M. had probably been recognized as Augustus by Galerius, who may have prompted this action. It is obviously wrong to seek, with A. J. Mason, The Persecution of Diocletian: A Historical Essay (Cambridge, 1876), 284–5, for echoes of this edict in Passions the wording of which is untrustworthy.

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There can be little doubt that the edict of 306 was the Wrst of its kind during the whole persecution, and not merely during Maximin’s reign. Eusebius96 has already said that Maximin set to work on the persecution with greater vigour than his predecessors. When recording E 4, he does not mention any instructions such as he quotes Maximin as giving in 306 and 309, and the steps taken in 306 to prepare registers would not have been necessary had they been taken a year or two previously. Eusebius also speaks of the roll-calls as if they were unprecedented. Now a decree such as E 4 could not be properly carried out, especially in districts where Christians were numerous and not unpopular, without the creation of special administrative machinery such as that which was set up in pursuance of the Decian edict. Until this was done, in 306, and the municipal governments were made actively responsible for enforcing E 4, the edict could only have been carried out to a very small extent. Some Christians would have been frightened into sacriWcing, and some others would have been exposed and given the alternative of apostasy or death, but the stantes would have run even less risk of detection than in Decian times, for they were not even liable to exposure by inability to produce certiWcates. This is certainly what we should expect, and, as we shall see presently, it is conWrmed by the narrative of the Martyrs of Palestine. It also appears that until the compilation of special registers in 306 the authorities in at least some areas (the larger towns, at any rate) may not have possessed the complete lists of inhabitants which were essential if general sacriWce was to be eYciently organized. Lists would have been available of landowners, country-dwellers, and those liable to perform liturgies, but it seems rather unlikely that the non-propertied classes in the towns would have been included in any oYcial register.97 If this is correct, little could have been done to enforce compliance with E 4 on the part of the urban poor, who still provided a large part of the Christian congregations. This is the situation which Maximin’s drastic edict of 306 was intended to

96 MP 4.1. 97 See Appendix VIII below.


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remedy: the government now proposed to compel the local authorities to act, after completing their registers. According to the Martyrs of Palestine, the government did not leave the carrying out of the new edict entirely to the municipal oYcials; but it is permissible to suggest that the procedure described by the Long Recension, which Eusebius witnessed with his own eyes at Caesarea, was conWned to the provincial capitals and perhaps a few other important towns of the East—it would hardly have been possible to Wnd enough troops and oYcers to perform these burdensome duties in more than a few cities, and in most of the civitates the decurions must have been left to do the work themselves. The amount of work involved throughout the East would have been considerable. The new procedure ought to have made the enforcement of the order to sacriWce much more complete. In fact, however, the evidence of the Martyrs of Palestine suggests that there was no great increase in the seeking out of Christians—a fact which can only be explained by the reluctance of the provincial and civic authorities to carry out the orders given to them from above. We have already seen that in the West, where the Church would have condemned the purchase of exemption from sacriWcing as a form of lapse, E 4 was so little enforced—if at all—that resort to such evasions was unnecessary, whereas in the East the purchase of exemption did take place, but was not condemned. Those Christians who were reluctant to run the risk of arrest by becoming open confessors or secret stantes, and yet were unable for some reason to buy immunity from sacriWcing, were often able to avoid open apostasy—but not the displeasure of the Church, and subsequent penance—by devices we are fortunately able to trace in the canons of Peter of Alexandria and the Council of Ancyra. Some Christians successfully deceived the authorities by inducing pagans to impersonate them at the ceremony of sacriWcing, or by sending their own slaves (some of them Christians themselves) to sacriWce in their stead.98 Others evaded the edict with the connivance of the authorities, extending sometimes (in the case of priests) as far as the arrangement of bogus torture-sessions, to enable them to claim they had sacriWced only after enduring extreme agony, and thus to 98 Peter Alex. Epist. Can. 5–7 (see n. 44 above).

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return to the bosom of the Church on easier terms.99 It is diYcult to decide whether these collusive arrangements testify more strongly to the humanity, or to the venality, of the oYcials concerned. If all other resources failed, a stalwart Christian might take to Xight, as many had done in the time of Decius, hoping to return when the persecution had died down. We know from Athanasius100 that many Christians were given shelter by compassionate pagans, who hid them (at the risk of their own lives) while the persecution was at its height.

5. The Evidence of Eusebius’s Martyrs of Palestine Of all the provinces of the empire, it is only Palestine—Syria Palaestina, to give it its proper title—for which we have a full list of all the martyrdoms of the Great persecution. It has sometimes been denied that Eusebius’s Martyrs of Palestine gives a complete list of all the Palestinian martyrdoms of the Great persecution. The expressions Eusebius uses, however, are suYciently clear. After describing the martyrdoms of 310 at Caesarea, the last there, he says,101 ŒÆd a b ŒÆa ˚ÆØ"æ ØÆ K! ‹ºØ E F ØøªF æ Ø KØ º Ł Æ ÆææØÆ ØÆFÆ [‘Such were the martyrdoms accomplished at Caesarea during the entire period of the persecution’]. And at the very end of his narrative, after mentioning the later mass execution at Phaeno, he adds,102 ÆFÆ b s a ŒÆa —ÆºÆØ K ‹ºØ # Ø OŒg ı æÆ Ł Æ ÆææØÆ [‘These, then, were the martyrdoms accomplished in Palestine in eight entire years’]. Eusebius evidently believed he had mentioned all the Palestinian martyrdoms, and there is no reason to think his list is incomplete.102 a Eusebius was a priest of the church of Caesarea, the capital of the province, and he probably remained in Palestine, if not at Caesarea itself, during most of the years in question. Few Palestinian martyrdoms (except of course 99 Conc. Ancyran. I, Can. 1 (see n. 45 above). 100 Hist. Arian. ad Monach. 64. 101 MP 11.31. 102 13.11 S (cf. L). 102 a [Note T. D. Barnes’s more sceptical appreciation of this text which, he argues, only contains those martyrs known to Eusebius; Constantine and Eusebius (Cambridge, Mass., 1981), 154–5.]


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those at Phaeno) could have taken place elsewhere than at Caesarea, for sentence of death could be pronounced only by the provincial governor, who would spend most of his time in his capital city, and execution was public and normally followed immediately after sentence. If the governor condemned a Christian when holding his periodic assize in some city other than the provincial capital, the proceedings would receive full publicity, and it would have been easy for Eusebius to obtain particulars. There are no grounds for supposing that any Palestinian martyrdoms failed to come to Eusebius’s notice. Eusebius’s Palestinian103 martyrs can proWtably be divided, for purposes of analysis, into three classes: Wrst, volunteers, who actively brought arrest and death upon themselves; secondly, those who, without going so far as to demand martyrdom, nevertheless attracted attention to themselves;104 and thirdly, those whose arrest was not certainly due to their own act and who may have been sought out by the authorities. The results of classiWcation on these lines are astonishing. Out of a total of ninety-one martyrs, we must set aside fortyfour who were executed at Phaeno in the last years of the persecution: we have no details of the circumstances in which they were arrested, and at least two-thirds of them must have been Egyptians.105 Of the remaining forty-seven, at least thirteen were volunteers, and at least eighteen drew attention to themselves, leaving at most sixteen who may have been sought out. Small as this last group is, it contains at least three who acted most contumaciously at their trial.106 For 103 In the special sense in which Eus. uses the term, to include Palestinians, wherever they suVered, and Christians from other provinces martyred in Palestine. 104 Cf. Peter Alex. Epist. Can. 11. 105 Including 5 out of the 6 whose names we know. In MP 13.1 L, Eus. gives over 100 Egyptians out of a total of about 150 Christians remaining at Phaeno. Cf. 13.6 S. He records no great number of Palestinian confessors as being condemned to the mines: cf. MP 7.2, 3; 8.3, 4; 13.1 L; 13.10 L. In MP 8.1, 13 he mentions 227 Egyptian Christians sent to Palestine in two groups: the Wrst batch (of 97: MP 8.1 L, against S) were all sent to Phaeno; of the second (numbering 130: MP 8.13), some were taken to Cilicia. 106 Procopius, Zacchaeus, and the woman of Gaza (Ennatha: Eus. MP 8.8 L). The other members of this third group are Timothy, Thecla (whose execution is not actually recorded—perhaps she died in prison), Ulpian, Agapius I (MP 3.1; 6.3–7), Domninus, Auxentius, the two Pauls, Ennathas, Peter, Asclepius, Pamphilus and Valens. The 13 outright volunteers are Alpheus, Romanus, the 6 young men of Eus. MP 3.3–4, Apphianus, Aedesius, Antoninus, Zebinas and Germanus.

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the fourteen who suVered before the abdication of Diocletian, the corresponding Wgures (even more striking) are eight, two and four. It is necessary to be very circumspect in drawing conclusions from these Wgures. They emphatically do not prove that the persecution in Palestine was a trivial aVair or that it did not cause the Christian community great anxiety and misery. Some condemned Christians (whose numbers, by the way, are to be reckoned in dozens or scores rather than hundreds)107 were sent to the mines at Phaeno, and some intrepid confessors, like the Donatus to whom Lactantius addressed his De Mortibus Persecutorum,108 are known to have spent months and even years in prison, some of them sustaining repeated interrogations under torture. Some of those who apostatized in fear or under pressure may have suVered great agony of mind. Mere statistics of martyrdoms are not at all a reliable index of the suVerings of the Christians as a whole. Nevertheless, one certain conclusion does impose itself. Of the martyrs of Palestine about whom we have any detailed information, very few had been sought out: approximately twice as many (if not more) were volunteers or had otherwise attracted the attention of the authorities. No such deWnite conclusion can be reached in respect of the other provinces of the empire. However, since Eusebius represents the two men who governed Palestine during almost all the years of persecution—Urban (304–308/9) and Firmilian (308/9–310)—as particularly enthusiastic and cruel persecutors, and the same historian depicts Maximin as the most zealous in this regard of all the emperors, it seems very possible that the extent to which Christians were sought out was at least no greater in most of the other provinces. The number of martyrs may well have been exceptionally great in Egypt—but it is precisely in Egypt that we should have expected to Wnd the highest proportion of volunteers among the martyrs; and indeed it is certain that voluntary martyrdom was extensively practised by the Egyptians, of the Thebaid at any rate, for when Eusebius describes his experiences there, he makes it clear that the ‘many’ Christians he himself saw condemned to death ‘in a single day’ were in fact volunteers, who 107 See n. 105 above. 108 16.3–11; 35.2.


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‘leapt up before the judgment seat from this side and that (K $ø ¼ººŁ ¼ººØ), and confessed themselves to be Christians’, receiving sentence with hymns of thanksgiving.109 According to a statement of Lactantius,110 some governors boasted of having shed no Christian blood. Others, like Anullinus, who winked at Mensurius’s evasion of E 1,111 performed their duties without unnecessary enthusiasm. The whole climate of opinion had changed since the mid-third century, when the persecution of Decius had been preceded by serious anti-Christian rioting at Alexandria.112 Spontaneous popular hostility to Christianity seems to have virtually ceased by the end of the third century. It is therefore not surprising that the edicts enjoining general sacriWce, despite pressure from above, were enforced in a very lax manner. In the hagiographers, as Delehaye113 put it, ‘c’est toujours et partout la chasse aux chre´tiens de tout rang’ [‘it is, absolutely invariably, the hunt for Christians of all ranks’]. That picture could hardly be more misleading. We may reasonably conclude that except on isolated occasions, as for example during the brief but intense local persecution at Nicomedia soon after the issue of E 1,114 and perhaps a massacre of the whole population—or at any rate the whole Christian congregation—of a Phrygian town,115 the ordinary Christian who did not insist on openly parading his confession of faith (the stans) was most unlikely to become a victim of the persecution at all, especially in the years 109 HE viii 9.5. On Id. 3 we should note the sceptical observations of Gibbon (ed. Bury, ii 137, n. 183 [Womersley edn. i. 578–9 n. 182]). And here also the martyrs may well have been mainly volunteers. For Wve Egyptian volunteers in the Decian persecution, see Eus. HE vi 41.22–23. For the militant characteristics of lower class Egyptians in the later 4th century, see Amm. Marc. xxii 16.23. 110 Div. Inst. v 11.13. Lact. characteristically contrives to make his statement redound to the discredit of the governors concerned. 111 See n. 54 above. 112 Dionys. Alex., ap. Eus. HE vi 41.1–9; cf. Firmilian, ap. Cypr. Epist. lxxv 10.1. Contrast Eus. MP 9.3. 113 Delehaye, Les Passions des Martyrs 175; cf. the quotation on p. 177 from the Passion of Trophimus and others. 114 Eus. HE viii 6.1–7; Lact. MP 15.1–3. 115 Contrast Lact. Div. Inst. v 11.10 with Eus. HE viii 11.1 (and RuWnus’s version). This may be exaggerated hearsay: not even the name of the town is given. Ramsay’s suggestion (Cities and Bishoprics of Phrygia (Oxford, 1897), i ii, 505–9) that the town was Eumeneia is mere conjecture.

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before the municipal authorities of the East were made responsible for the active enforcement of E 4. And in the West, where the persecution ceased before it had properly developed, we need not be surprised to Wnd very few martyrdoms indeed, except of volunteers or of those who deWed E 1. The so-called Great persecution has been exaggerated in Christian tradition to an extent which even Gibbon did not fully appreciate. Other persecutions of Christianity were sporadic and short-lived, and none of them, except those of Decius and perhaps Valerian, were general, involving the whole or even the greater part of the empire. No estimate of the total number of martyrs can proWtably be attempted, but the considerations brought forward here certainly reinforce the arguments of those who have maintained that in the Great persecution, at any rate, the number was not large. But when all this is said, we must beware of underestimating the great suVering caused to the Christians by the atmosphere of hostility, liable to turn at any moment into active persecution, in which the Church grew up and ultimately triumphed. The threat of persecution, always hanging over their heads, was a factor of the utmost importance in the environment of the early Christians. And for some of the deplorable features which we Wnd in the mentality of so many of the prominent churchmen and ecclesiastical writers of the fourth and following centuries—above all the readiness to persecute and the hysterical denunciation of theological opponents—the atmosphere of constant menace in which Christianity had matured was in some degree responsible.

APPENDICES

I: The Passions. The bibliography by Baynes in Camb. Anc. Hist. xii 790–3 gives full references to the best texts of most of the Passions cited here, with the principal recent discussions. The remaining Passions, except that of Florian (for which see n. 80 above), will be found in R. Knopf, Ausgewa¨hlte Ma¨rtyrerakten3 (ed. G. Kru¨ger, 1929 [see the more recent edition with additions and amendments by G. Ruhback (Tu¨bingen, 1965)] ), or the


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various editions (1690–1859) of Th. Ruinart, Acta Martyrum. The doubtful Passio Afrae is edited by B. Krusch in Mon. Germ. Hist., Scr. rer. Merov. iii 61–4 (cf. 41–54), and a single MS by G. Vielhaber in Anal. Bolland. xxvi (1907), 59–61 (cf. 58, 61–5). [See J.-L. Maier, Le Dossier du Donatisme, i: Des origines a` la mort de Constance II (303–361) (Texte und Untersuchungen 134; Berlin, 1987) for critical texts and French translations of the Acta of the martyrs of Abitina, the Passio Felicis and the Passio Crispinae; for English translations see M. A. Tilley, Donatist Martyr Stories: The Church in ConXict in Roman North Africa (TTH 24; Liverpool, 1996). See Musurillo, Acts of the Christian Martyrs (Oxford, 1972), for texts and English translations of the Acta of the martyrs of Scillitana, the Passio Apollonii, the Passio Agapi et al., and the Passio Pionii. See also the edition of the Passio Pionii by Louis Robert, Le Martyre de Pionios, preˆtre de Smyrne (Washington, 1994).] II: The divisions of the Empire (see n. 16 above). It used to be generally assumed that there was a more or less complete territorial division of the empire among the four emperors of the Wrst tetrarchy, 293–305 (cf. Lact. MP 7.2: ‘in quattuor partes orbe diviso’), and that the government of any particular area at any given time was primarily in the hands of the Augustus or Caesar who was then supposedly in charge of that area. Quite recently Seston (op. cit. in n. 12 above, 231–47) has shown that this conception cannot be right: the Roman world still remained in principle an ‘indivisum patrimonium’ [‘an undivided inheritance’], the term used by a panegyrist (Paneg. Lat. xi (iii) 6.3) a few years earlier during the ‘dyarchy’ of Diocletian and Maximian. It is perhaps worth adding that ‘quadripartito imperio’, in F. Pichlmayr’s standard text of Aurelius Victor (Caes. xxxix 30), is an u implausible interpretation of the contractions in the MSS (q i and qı¯): A. Schott’s ‘quasi partito imperio’ is distinctly more acceptable [Schott’s version is followed in the edition of P. Dufraigne (Paris, 1975), but the recent edition of K. Gross-Albenhausen and M. Fuhrmann (Du¨sseldorf, 1997) prints ‘quadripartito imperio’]. Seston, however, goes too far when he says (op. cit. 243) that ‘la division de l’empire en quatre parts ne concerna que les revenus de la capitation et de l’annone aVecte´s a` chaque empe´reur pour ses troupes; elle ne toucha pas l’administration proprement dite qui resta une.’ [‘The division of the empire into four parts only concerned the revenues from tax and grain allocated to each emperor for his troops; it did not aVect the administration technically speaking, which remained one.’] Even if this is a substantially correct statement of the pure theory of Diocletian’s tetrarchy, it gives a misleading impression of its practice. It is evident from the diatribe against Maximian in the De Mortibus Persecutorum (8.3–4), rhetorical and exaggerated as it is, that Lactantius conceived M. as pursuing, in a particular area, a deWnite policy of his own choice, which, even if its motives

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were Wnancial, went far beyond the purely Wnancial sphere. This must be correct: M. was unable to make new laws in the West without obtaining the approval of D.; but subject always to the overriding control of the ‘senior Augustus’, whose personal auctoritas was supreme,116 he must have had a considerable degree of freedom in the way he enforced the existing laws, in every sphere, in the West. This conclusion is strengthened by the fact that Constantius, who was only M.’s Caesar, evidently had in practice a more or less free hand in the administration of Gaul and Britain, where he spent all his time. M., as far as we know, never entered C.’s area after 293, except to guard the Rhine frontier while C. was reconquering Britain, but remained in Italy, Africa and Spain, which C. never visited again. We know117 that C. did not even enforce E 1 properly, contenting himself with the perfunctory demolition of churches. This nicely illustrates the position of C. (and indirectly, that of M.) in theory and in practice: the edict had to be promulgated, and in theory it had to be enforced, but in practice C. could and did prevent its having much eVect. Unfortunately, we seem to have no reliable evidence about the position of Galerius. It is usually believed that he was allotted a distinct territorial sphere of authority, in the Balkans; but this is by no means certain, or even probable. D. and his Caesar did not, like their colleagues in the West, spend all their time in separate areas. G., for instance, warred against the Persians in 297/8 from Syria, where D. was also present, and he passed the whole winter of 302/3 and part of the spring of 305 with D. at Nicomedia. D. was in the Danube provinces and Thrace throughout 293 and all but the last few weeks of 294, spending much of his time at Sirmium in Pannonia; in the summer of 303 he was on the lower Danube again, and after a visit to Italy for his vicennalia towards the end of 303 he spent the spring and summer of 304 in the Balkans.118 There may well have been other such journeys. Again, if G. had really been the ruler of the Balkan area, we might have expected to 116 See esp. Lact. MP 15.6; Julian Orat. i 7ab. Cf. also Eus. HE viii 13.11; MP 3.5; Vita Const. i 14; ii 51. [See Corcoran, Empire, 266–92.] 117 The best evidence is the Donatist petition in Optat. i 22. Against the disingenuous Eus. HE viii 13.12–13 and viii Append. 4, and the absurd Vita Const. i 16, we must obviously accept Lact. MP 15.7. 118 The details can be reconstructed from Lact. MP 10.6; 11.3; 14; 17–19 and the subscriptiones of the constitutions issued during the years 293–4 and 303: see the list of constitutions in chronological order in P. Kru¨ger’s edn. of the Cod. Just., appendix ¨ ber die Zeitfolge der Verordnungen Diocletians und seiner I, and T. Mommsen, ‘U Mitregenten’, in Gesammelte Schriften, ii.ii (Berlin, 1905), 195–291, at 273–88, 290. [On the movement of the emperors in the tetrarchic period, see now Barnes, New Empire, 47–87, with amendments in his ‘Emperors, Panegyrics, Prefects, Provinces and Palaces (284–317)’, JRA 9 (1996), 532–52, at 543–4.] Lact. MP 18.6 is very exaggerated.


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Wnd him given a pre-eminent position in the reliefs on his triumphal arch at Thessalonica (for which see K. F. Kinch, L’Arc de Triomphe de Salonique (Paris, 1890), esp. pl. v–vi and pp. 24–6, 34–7 [see also J.-M. Spieser, Thessalonique et ses monuments du IVe au VIe sie`cle: Contribution a` l’e´tude d’une ville paleóchre´tienne (BEFAR 254; Athens, 1984), 99–104; C. C. Vermeule, Roman Imperial Art in Greece and Asia Minor (Cambridge, Mass., 1968), 336–50]; but it seems that in fact he is there subordinated to D., except when he is represented as the victorious general of the Persian war (see Seston, op. cit. 180–3, 250–2). It is signiWcant that an independent policy in a particular area in regard to the persecution seems never to be attributed to G. by any writer, even Lact. and Eus., who considered G. as the instigator of the whole aVair; and Lact. represents G. as gaining his end solely by working upon and through D. Only two fourth century writers profess to state G.’s share in a division of the empire. Aurelius Victor (Caes. xxxix 30), who gives him ‘Illyrici ora adusque Ponti fretum’ [‘the coast of Illyricum right across to the strait of Pontus’], was probably inXuenced in his allocation of all four areas, as Seston119 has pointed out, by his knowledge of the regional praetorian prefectures of the time at which he himself was writing. Praxagoras of Athens (FGrH 219 F 1.1), who allows G. Greece, Macedon, Œ"ø ! ` Æ and Thrace, gives an incomplete account of the division, actually ignoring Syria, Africa, Spain, Gaul and the greater part of the Balkans. Eutropius, on the other hand, although he describes (x 1) the partition of the Roman world between Constantius and Galerius in 305, says nothing about a territorial division among the members of Diocletian’s tetrarchy. And Eusebius (HE viii 13.11; MP 13.13) describes as quite unprecedented the pursuit of two entirely diVerent policies in regard to the Christians in the East and in the West, from the abdication of D. and M., or rather, from shortly before that event (hø in HE viii 13.11), when D. was ailing. All this suggests that contemporaries recognized in the second tetrarchy a division of authority which had not existed in the Wrst. The facts certainly support this view. The unity of the Wrst tetrarchy had been preserved mainly by the auctoritas of D.; the second tetrarchy, having no such cohesive principle, soon resolved itself into distinct territorial principalities. Although in theory the pretence of unity was maintained, yet immediately upon the abdication of D. and M. there seems to have been a fairly clear 119 Op. cit. (in n. 12 above), 244–5, citing the proof by J. R. Palanque, Essai sur la Pre´fecture du Pre´toire du Bas-Empire (Paris, 1933), 34, of the existence of a separate Prefecture of Illyricum from 357 to c. 361. [See more recently T. D. Barnes, ‘Praetorian prefects, 337–361’, ZPE 92 (1992), 249–60, esp. 258–9, who lists evidence for the prefecture of Illyricum from 343–344 to 361.]

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territorial division between Constantius and his Caesar Severus in the West (who took between them roughly the Latin-speaking half of the empire, including Pannonia), and Galerius and his Caesar Maximin in the East. There was even a well-marked division between the Augustus and the Caesar in each area, C. leaving Italy and Africa to Severus, and G. similarly leaving to M. the vast diocese of Oriens, stretching from the Taurus to the Great Syrtis. III: The issue of E 4 (see n. 16 above). The number of martyrdoms in this period in the whole empire to which dates can be assigned with any conWdence is very small indeed. From Asia Minor, where Christianity was as strong as anywhere, there are no such martyrdoms at all. It does seem quite probable, however, that enforcement of E 4 Wrst began in the Balkan area (see n. 16 above). On this probability, and the assumption (which we have seen to be not well founded) that the administration of the Balkans had been entrusted to Galerius to the same extent as that of Italy, Spain and Africa to Maximian and that of Gaul and Britain to Constantius, a bold theory has been developed about the origin of E 4 (Baynes, op. cit. in n. 16 above, 193, and in Camb. Anc. Hist. xii 667–8). That edict is conceived as having been issued by G. on his own responsibility, in February 304, while D. was incapacitated, and put into operation in the Balkans, then forced on M. with the threat of civil war, and Wnally adopted with reluctance by D. in the East in 305. This theory has little to commend it. The hazards of communication in those days might result in long delays before an edict was promulgated everywhere. A glance at the subscriptiones of some of the constitutions in the Codes will reveal unaccountable variations in this respect. To quote only one well attested early example, Wve and a half months elapsed before three laws issued at Trier early in November, 313 (CTh ix 40.1; xi 30.2; 36.1), were received at Hadrumetum by the governor of Byzacena. Thus the earlier appearance of E 4 in the Balkans could be explained quite simply by the fact that the edict reached these provinces earlier than many other areas, because it was issued there, or nearby. D. was at Ravenna on January 1st, 304; his next move—after how long an interval, we do not know—was into the Balkan district (Lact. MP 17.3–4). G. may well have been in the Balkans too at this time; but if indeed E 4 was more widely enforced, in the spring of 304, in this area than elsewhere—and the evidence (see n. 16 above) provides no very sure basis for the assumption—the most probable explanation would be the presence of D. himself. There is no reason to conceive D. as very seriously ill in the early part of 304: he would hardly have spent the summer travelling along the Danube shore (Lact. MP 17.3–4: ‘lectica plurimum vehebatur’ [‘he was conveyed for most of it on a litter’]; cf. ‘morbum


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levem’ [‘a minor illness’] if he had been so ill as to be incapable of exercising control of aVairs; and in the autumn of 304 he was able to appear in public and dedicate his new circus at Nicomedia (Lact. MP 17.4; and note the date of CJ iii 28.26). Lact. (MP 17.8), mentioning D.’s next public appearance, on 1st March 305, when he was convalescent and ‘scarcely recognizable’, adds, ‘quippe qui anno fere toto aegritudine tabuisset’ [‘after the wasting eVect of nearly a whole year’s illness’], where fere, taken with toto, must mean ‘nearly’ rather than ‘about’ a year. This too accords badly with the picture of a D. gravely ill in the very Wrst weeks of 304. The testimony of the sources, such as they are, is certainly in favour of the view that G. was a particularly bitter enemy of the Christians and the chief instigator of the persecution: both Lact. (MP 10.6; 11), who was at Nicomedia in 303, and Eusebius (HE viii 16.2 and appendix 1, 4; Vita Const. i 56–8) evidently believed this. On the other hand, the emperor Constantine (ap. Eus. VC ii 51), claiming Wrst-hand knowledge, seems to have attributed the persecution (the ‘sanguinary edicts’) mainly to the personal superstition of D.; he ignores G. Moreover, the author of the Oratio ad Sanctos (whether Constantine or some contemporary),120 apostrophizing recent persecutors of the Church, from Decius onwards, addresses himself to D. alone among the tetrarchs: this is all the more signiWcant, in that the point of the whole passage (ch. 24–5) is that persecutors come to a bad end, and G.’s end was notoriously gruesome, whereas D.’s was not. One may think that G.’s painful death would in any event have tended to lead to his being represented in Christian propaganda as the inspirer of the persecution. And it is perhaps worth noticing that Eutropius (Brev. ix 26) credits D. with being clever at making others bear the odium for his own severities. We may conclude, then, that D. undertook the persecution partly at least for superstitious reasons of his own, although pressure exerted upon him by G. may well have been an important factor, perhaps even decisive. To attribute E 4 entirely to the initiative of G. is to go far beyond the evidence. Lact., for all his anxiety to represent the persecution as the constant preoccupation of G., never even hints that his object in threatening M. with war was to make him join in the persecution: he speaks of G. as intent at this 120 See N. H. Baynes, Constantine the Great and the Christian Church, 2nd edn., ed. H. Chadwick (London, 1930), 50–6. [The Oratio ad Sanctos is now generally accepted as the work of Constantine; for an English trans. see M. J. Edwards, Constantine and Christendom (TTH 39; Liverpool, 2003), pp. xvii–xxii. Disagreements remain concerning its date and purpose. See the contrasting interpretations of M. J. Edwards, ‘The Constantinian Circle and the Oration to the Saints’, in M. J. Edwards, M. D. Goodman, and S. R. F. Price (eds.), Apologetics in the Roman Empire (Oxford, 1999), 251–76; and T. D. Barnes, ‘Constantine’s Speech to the Assembly of the Saints: Place and Date of Delivery’, JTS 52 (2001), 26–36.]

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time solely on driving both Augusti to resign, so that he himself could attain supreme power (MP 18.1–7).120a We may well ask how the remarkably intelligent Diocletian could have allowed himself to be persuaded to undertake a more extreme policy which events later showed to be seriously mistaken. The answer is perhaps that E I (especially in the East, where the Church did not regard traditio as a sin) may easily have appeared to the government to have been highly successful, and that little resistance may have been anticipated to E 4. IV: Executions under E I (see n. 21 above). (a) Felix, bishop of Thibiuca, according to his Passion, was executed at Carthage for refusing to commit traditio, on 15th July 303. (b) Saturninus and his companions of Abitina were tried at Carthage on 12th February 304 (Aug. Brev. Coll. iii 17.32) for holding a religious service, before E 4 could have been promulgated in Africa: see their Passion. These Christians were done to death in one way or another, by starvation if not by the sword. (c) Secundus, bishop of Tigisis in Numidia during the persecution, wrote in 304 or 305 of Numidian Christians martyred for refusing to hand over the Scriptures (Aug. Brev. Coll. iii 13.25; 15.27). (d) At the meeting of Numidian bishops at Carthage on 4th or 5th March 305 (on the date, see O. Seeck, ‘Quellen und Urkunden u¨ber die Anfa¨nge des Donatismus’, Zeitschrift fu¨r Kirchengeschichte, 10 (1889), 505–68 at 526–7), the same Secundus said of the martyrs, ‘quia non tradiderunt, ideo et coronati sunt’ (Aug. C. Cresc. iii 27.30). (e) CIL viii 6700 (19353), referring to the martyrs of Milevis, must also relate to executions previous to E 4 and therefore under E 1: see p. 52 above. [(f) See the Acta Gallonii, recently edited by P. Chiesa, ‘Un testa agioagrafica africane ad Aquileia: Gli acta Gallonia e dei martiri Timida Regia’, AB 114 (1996), 241–68.]120b V: The divisions of Numidia (see n. 65 above). Inscriptions attest the governorship of Florus in the North, centre, and extreme South-West of Numidia: CIL viii 6700, 19353 (Milevis); 4324 (Casae); 2345–7 ¼ ILS 631–3 (Thamugadi); Ann. e´p., 1942–3, 81 (the South-West). Only the Thamugadi inscriptions refer to Florus as governor of ‘N.M’ (G. Goyau, ‘La Numidia Militiana de la liste de Ve´rone’, Me´langes d’archeólogie et d’histoire de l’Ećole Française de Rome, 13 (1893), 251–79, with plate opp. p. 255), i.e., presumably, the ‘Numidia Militiana’ of the Verona List. Seston (op. cit. in n. 12 above, 326–30) believes that F. Wrst governed Numidia as a whole, and then an enlarged Numidia Militiana which now included Tripolitania; but if so, 120a [See further, P. S. Davies, ‘The Origin and Purpose of the Persecution of A.D. 303’, JTS 40 (1989), 66–94, who argues that Galerius was much less central to the persecution than Lactantius reports.] 120b [See also Chiesa’s account of the editorial problems posed by this text, and the methods used in making it: ‘Testi agiograWci stratiWcati: problemi editoriali negli Acta Gallonii e nella Passio Peregrini Bolitani’, Sanctorum, 1 (2004), 13–23.]


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why is Quintianus, in the inscription mentioned in n. 66 above, said to be governing ‘p(rovinciam) N(umidiam)’, and not ‘N(umidiam) C(irtensem)’? A ‘N(umidia) C(irtensis)’ is attested in 306: ILS 651 ¼ CIL viii 5526 (18860); 7965. Some problems remain, but Macomades, the site of Quintianus’s inscription, must have been included in the Northern rather than the Southern subdivision of Numidia, and there can be no doubt at all that Florus had left Northern Numidia before the vicennalia. VI: The African Passions (see n. 69 above). On the African Passions see P. Monceaux, Hist. litt. de l’Afrique chre´t. iii (1905) 122–61. Nothing need be said here of Restituta (Id. 133–4), Innocentius (Id. 134–5), the Twelve Brothers of Hadrumetum (Id. 135–6), Arcadius (Id. 154–6), or Marciana (Id. 156–8): their Passions are of no value for present purposes. The ‘martyr’ Salsa (Id. 163–8) has been shown to be imaginary by H. Gre´goire, ‘Sainte Salsa, roman e´pigraphique’, Byzantion, 12 (1937), 213–24. Aug. Serm. cccxxvi 2 purports to quote the dialogue between a governor and certain martyrs (perhaps the ‘Twenty Martyrs’ of Numidia, on whom see Monceaux, op. cit. 153) who are ordered to sacriWce and refuse. This may be based on the oYcial Acta, but the governor’s convenient question, ‘Quam ergo auctoritatem potestis habere?’[‘In that case, what authority can you have?’] (inviting the reply, ‘Auctoritatem regis aeterni portamus’ [‘We bear the authority of the eternal king’]), does not sound genuine. And in any event, as we have no more than a small fragment of the interrogation we cannot safely conclude that we have here an example of the enforcement of E 4, rather than, for instance, the trial of Christians arrested, as so often in Africa, for disobeying E 1. By Augustine’s day, of course, refusal to sacriWce was already a stock formula. The curious Passion of Typasius120 c the veteran (Monceaux, op. cit. 27, 126–32), from Mauretania Caesariensis, declares that Maximian ‘edictum per Africam misit, ut demolirentur ecclesiae, incenderentur divinae legis codices, turiWcarent sacerdotes et populi, atque omnes revocarentur ad militiam veterani’ [‘sent an edict through Africa, that the churches be demolished, the books of divine law burned, that the priests and people sacriWce, and all veterans be summoned to the army’] (§ 4); the oYcer who brings T. before the dux accuses him of declining to sacriWce to the gods ‘sicut praeceptum est’ (§ 5); and there are other references to sacriWcing. But the main oVence committed by T. is refusal to obey a recall to the colours, and the question of sacriWce is incidental. The Passion of Fabius120 d (Monceaux, op. cit. 27, 122–6), who was martyred for refusing to carry a standard in the governor’s 120 c [Ed. C. De Smedt, ‘Passiones tres martyrum Africanorum, SS. Maximae, Donatillae et Secundae, S. Typasii Veterani et S. Fabii Vexilliferi’, AB 9 (1890), 116–23.] 120 d [Ed. C. De Smedt, ‘Passiones tres’, 123–34; see also P. Franchi de’ Cavalieri in Studi e testi, 65 (1935), 101–13, and H. Delehaye, ‘Contributions rećentes a` l’hagiographie de Rome et d’Afrique’, AB 54 (1936), 265–315, at 300–2.]

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procession, also comes from Mauretania Caesariensis. We are told (§ 2) that one of the tetrarchs ‘qui Orientis partibus praesidebat, mittit ad socios suos per diabolum scripta feralia, ut beatum Fabium a Christianorum castris ad turiWcationis nefas compellerent’ [‘who was governing the Eastern regions, used the devil to send his associates a savage letter, that they force St Fabius away from the Christian camp to the oVence of sacriWce’]; but after this we hear no more about oVering incense or sacriWcing. Monceaux has shown that there is no reason to date either of these Mauretanian martyrdoms during the Great persecution. Monceaux’s conclusion (op. cit. 30) is that the only North African Christians certainly martyred for refusing to sacriWce (i.e., under E 4) are Crispina, the martyrs of Milevis (pp. 52, 54–5 above), and Maxima, Donatilla and Secunda.120 e The Passion of these three women (on which see Monceaux, op. cit. 148–51; H. Delehaye, ‘Contributions rećentes’, 296–300) may contain historical elements, but it does not deserve the respect it has received from most commentators: it has suVered extensive interpolations and revisions, and its wording cannot at any point be trusted. This is apparent from the ludicrously unhistorical opening sentence, ‘In illis diebus Maximianus et Gallienus imperatores litteras miserunt per omnem illam provinciam ut Christiani sacriWcarent in possessione Cephalitana’ [‘In those days Maximian and Gallienus the emperors sent letters through that entire province that the Christians should sacriWce on the Cephalitan estate’]; from the proconsul’s questions, ‘Christiani estis an pagani?’, ‘Christiana es an pagana?’ [‘Are you Christians or pagans?’, ‘Are you a Christian or a pagan?’]; from the double sentence pronounced on the women; and similar absurdities (Passio 1; 3; 6). The Passion provides no good evidence that the condemnation was in fact under E 4. VII: Pope Marcellinus (see n. 83 above). Marcellinus was evidently guilty of some act which was regarded at the time, or shortly afterwards, as discreditable: he is accused in the sources of traditio of the Scriptures,121 or of turiWcatio,122 or of both these crimes;123 and the legends of his 120e [Ed. C. De Smedt, ‘Passiones tres’, 110–16, or Franchi de’ Cavalieri in Studi e testi (1935), 75–97. Repr. with a French trans. in Maier, Dossier du Donatisme, 92–105. For an English trans. of this text, see Tilley, Donatist Martyr Stories, 17–24.] 121 Aug. C. Litt. Petil. ii 92.202; cf. Gesta Coll. Carth. iii 491–514; Aug. Brev. Coll. iii 18.34–36. 122 L. Duchesne, Le Liber PontiWcalis: Texte, Introduction, et Commentaire, i, 2nd edn. (Paris, 1955), 162–3; cf. 72–3 [English trans. by R. Davis, The Book of the PontiVs (Liber PontiWcalis): The Ancient Biographies of the First Ninety Roman Bishops to AD 715, 2nd edn. (TTH 6; Liverpool, 2000)]; Acta ps.-Synod. Sinuessae, in Mansi i 1249–60 (cf. Hefele–Leclercq, Hist. des conciles i i, 207–8). 123 Aug. De Unic. Bapt. 16.27, 30; Liber Genealogus 626 (ed. Mommsen, in MGH Auct. Antiq. ix, Chron. Min. i. 196). On the Donatist additions to this work, see Monceaux, op. cit. (in Appendix VI above) iv 101–2.


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subsequent repentance and martyrdom124 are most unconvincing. In the light of what has been said above, it may be suggested that perhaps M. in fact committed traditio, before the rigorist African view that such an act was tantamount to apostasy came to prevail generally in the Western churches, and that the memory of this was kept alive, especially by the Donatist group at Rome, and exaggerated in the customary manner to include turiWcatio. At any rate, it is impossible to avoid the conclusion of Duchesne (op. cit. in n. 42 above, 74) that ‘something unpleasant must have happened’. M. evidently suVered some sort of damnatio memoriae: see T. G. Jalland, The Church and the Papacy (London, 1944), 185–6 (where Diocletian’s vicennalia, however, are dated a year too late). [See also E. H. Ro¨ttges, ‘Marcellinus-Marcellus zur Papstgeschichte der diokletianischen Verfolgungszeit’, Zeitschrift fu¨r katholische Theologie, 78 (1956), 385–420; A. Amore, ‘Il preteso ‘‘lapsus’’ di papa Marcellino’, Antonianum, 32 (1955), 411–26; and J. Curran, Pagan City and Christian Capital: Rome in the 4th Century (Oxford, 2000), 49–50.] VIII: What registers were available for enforcing E 4? (see n. 97 above). We do not know for certain what personal registers were kept, even in Egypt, but it is hard to believe that any such lists would have been compiled for other than Wscal purposes—i.e., in connection with anything except taxes or liturgies.124a As a result of Diocletian’s reorganization of the taxation system, comprehensive registers should have been available of all landowners and agricultural workers: P. Cairo Boak 1, the edict (dated 297) of the prefect of Egypt, Aristius Optatus, speaks speciWcally of ¼ªæØŒØ only.124b A. De´leáge, La Capitation du Bas-Empire (Macon, 1943), 49, lists the returns made under this edict; add P. Ryl. iv 656. However, until the introduction of the collatio lustralis, or æı"æªıæ , probably by Constantine, there seems to be no good evidence that the urban poor paid direct taxation anywhere in the empire in the early fourth century, except in the dioceses directly subject to Galerius (or some of them) in the years c. 306 to 311: see Lact. MP 23; 26.2; 124 Liber Pontif. and Acta ps.-Synod. Sinuess. (as cited in n. 122 above); cf. Theodoret, Hist. Eccles. i 2. The silence of the Catalogus Liberianus (Duchesne, Liber Pontif. i 6–7), Depositio Episcoporum (Id. 10: here ‘Marcellini’ should clearly be ‘Marcelli’), and Depositio Martyrum (Id. 11–12) [both these in the edition of R. Valentini and G. Zucchetti, Codice TopograWco della Citta` di Roma, ii (Rome, 1942), 12–28] as well as of the Martyrologium Hieronymianum, seems conclusive. 124a [See A. E. R. Boak and H. C. Youtie, The Archive of Aurelius Isidorus in the Egyptian Museum, Cairo, and the University of Michigan (Ann Arbor, 1960), 23–9.] 124b [See also the inscriptions from Syria collected in F. Millar, The Roman Near East, 31 BC–AD 337 (Cambridge, Mass., 1993), 535–44 with discussion at 193–6, and the comments of Corcoran, Empire, 175–6; for the general background, see Barnes, New Empire, 226–37.]

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and CTh xiii 10.2, dated 311 by O. Seeck, Regesten der Kaiser und Pa¨pste fu¨r die Jahre 311 bis 476 n. Chr: Vorarbeit zu einer Prosopographie der christlichen Kaiserzeit (Stuttgart, 1919), 52–3.124c In Julian’s reign the townsfolk of Caesarea in Cappadocia were free from taxes imposed on the villagers (Sozom. HE v 4). Even if P. Cairo Boak 12 and P. Strasb. 42 ( ¼ W. Chrest. 210) are returns made for the purpose of a capitation tax, as believed by De´leáge (op. cit. 44–6), the tax in question was probably limited to the agricultural population, as De´leáge realized (op. cit. 46). Similarly, the I æØ of P. Ryl. iv 658, line 8, is simply the Diocletianic capitatio (Iæıæe ŒÆd I æØ ¼ jugatio et capitatio). The evidence for a polltax discussed by H. I. Bell in his Introduction (pp. 167–73) to P. Lond. iv 1419 is for a later period. The KØŒ "ºÆØ º ø of Oxyrhynchus, evidenced only from 301 to 315, is puzzling, but whether it is to be explained as by De´leáge (op. cit. 46–48), or as by A. C. Johnson and L. C. West, Byzantine Egypt: Economic Studies (Princeton, 1949), 259–61 (and see 265–8), or in some other way, it does not establish the existence of a general poll-tax payable by the urban population. Even in Egypt the original poll-tax (ºÆªæÆ Æ) had died out during the Wrst half of the third century (see H. I. Bell, ‘The Constitutio Antoniniana and the Egyptian Poll-Tax’, JRS 37 (1947), 17–23), and the poll-tax of Syria and other provinces must also have ceased to be exacted at the latest during the severe inXation of the 260s, in the reign of Gallienus.124d Some lists have been preserved on papyrus which may well contain the names of those liable to liturgies: P. Oslo iii III (in which only males appear) is a good example. In some cases all but the poorest citizens may have been included—but it was probably still among this class that the highest proportion of Christians was to be found in the early years of the fourth century. It would be very rash to dogmatize, especially since De´leáge (op. cit.) has shown how wrong it is to generalize from particular areas; but the procedure described by Eus. MP 4.8 is inexplicable if the authorities already possessed proper registers.

124c [S. Mitchell has recently dated it to 312; see his ‘Maximinus and the Christians in A.D. 312: A New Latin Inscription’, JRS 78 (1988), 105–24, at 123, and Anatolia, Land, Men and Gods in Asia Minor, ii: The Rise of the Church (Oxford, 1993), 64 n. 68. See also Corcoran, Empire, 151–2.] 124 d [The epikephalaion is attested from around 297/8 to 319/20. R. Bagnall suggests that it might have functioned similarly to the later chrysargyron (see above), since many of the receipts list the occupation of the payer; see Bagnall, Egypt in Late Antiquity (Princeton, 1993), 154; and for a collection of receipts, P. Parsons in P. Oxy. 42. 3036–45. The last extant receipt for the laographia dates to 248; see R. Bagnall and B. Frier, The Demography of Roman Egypt (Cambridge, 1994), 10–11.]

2 The Fourth Edict in the West and the Date of the Council of Elvira1 In an article published in 1954 I tried to establish, against the standard view of the Great Persecution, that there is no good evidence, and no likelihood, that the ‘Fourth Edict’ (issued early in 304 and enjoining universal sacriWce) was ever enforced in the Western part of the Roman Empire.2 This thesis was challenged in two publications by Frend,3 whose arguments can be summarized, partly in his own words, as follows; the Wrst four relate only to Africa, the Wfth only to Spain. 1. ‘The victims in 304 were layfolk, such as the women arrested on the Saltus Cephalitanus in proconsular Africa and executed on 30 July, and perhaps all the thirty-four martyrs recorded at Haidra (Ammaedara), in contrast to the clerics or organized congregations arrested in the previous year.’4 2. ‘Eusebius compares speciWcally the persecution in Africa with the horriWc scenes he witnessed in Egypt. Neither this, nor the statement in Mart. Pal. (13.12) that the persecution in the West

1 This essay, written around 1965 in response to criticisms by W. H. C. Frend, defends the contention of Chapter 1 that the Fourth Edict was never promulgated in the West. Henry Chadwick, the editor of the Journal of Theological Studies, accepted it, but Ste. Croix did not go ahead with publication. It was, though, read by Robin Lane Fox, who cites it approvingly in Pagans and Christians (Harmondsworth, 1986), 784 n. 4. 2 ‘Aspects’ [Ch. 1 above, pp. 48–59, 63–4]. 3 Frend, Martyrdom and Persecution in the Early Church (Oxford, 1965), 502–3; ‘A Note on the Great Persecution in the West’, in Studies in Church History, 2 (1965), 141–8 [repr. in Frend, Religion Popular and Unpopular in the Early Christian Centuries (London, 1976)]. 4 Frend, Martyrdom, 502–3; ‘Note’, 144–5.

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lasted ‘‘not fully two years’’ would make sense if the persecution had ended eVectively in the spring of 304.’5 3. Crispina, executed at Theveste in December 304, was required to sacriWce.6 4. An argument on which I laid particular stress,7 showing from epigraphic evidence that Valerius Florus, the one persecuting governor known in Numidia, had ceased to be governor, at any rate in northern Numidia, well before the end of 303, is Wrst misrepresented and then discounted, as I shall explain. 5. On the assumption that the Council of Elvira (Illiberris) can be dated to 15 May 309, or at any rate some time after the Great Persecution, its Wrst four canons are cited as evidence that in the Great Persecution in Spain ‘the crime of apostasy was reckoned in terms of sacriWce to the gods and not surrender of Scriptures’.8 1. Frend is basing himself on a petitio principii when he refers to ‘the victims of 304’ and includes among them the women from the Saltus Cephalitanus (Maxima, Donatilla, and Secunda)9 and the martyrs of Ammaedara, as well as Crispina. In fact there is no evidence at all of the year of persecution in any of the cases he 5 Frend, Martyrdom, 503; cf. ‘Note’, 143. [Frend adds, ‘i.e. before Eusebius’ Wrst ‘‘persecution year’’ was complete’. Frend follows H. J. Lawlor’s study of Eusebius’ ‘persecution years’, according to which the Wrst lasted around 20 months, from April 303 to January 305, while the rest correspond to normal calendar years—so the second year is January to December 305, third year January to December 306, and so on; see Lawlor, Eusebiana: Essays on the Ecclesiastical History of Eusebius (Oxford, 1912), 179–210. G. W. Richardson criticized this chronology, arguing convincingly that the persecution years start with the publication of the Wrst edict in Palestine, in April 303, and run subsequently from April to April. See Richardson, ‘The Chronology of Eusebius’, CQ 19 (1925), 96–100. Either way Frend’s point is valid: the Fourth Edict would fall in the Wrst ‘persecution year’ in both chronological schemes.] 6 Frend, Martyrdom, xii, 503; ‘Note’, 144. 7 Ste. Croix, ‘Aspects’ [above, Ch. 1, pp. 52–3, 74–5]. I think that Frend must be referring to my article at Martyrdom, 503 (cf. 530 n. 178) and ‘Note’, 145–6 (cf. 141 n. 2). 8 ‘Note’, 148; cf. Martyrdom, 503. 9 I hoped that I had suYciently shown, in ‘Aspects’ [above, Ch. 1, pp. 52–3, 76], that the Passion of Maxima, Donatilla, and Secunda does not in any way provide good evidence that their condemnation was under the Fourth Edict. [For an edition of this text, see J.-L. Maier, Le Dossier du Donatisme, i: des origines a` la mort de Constance II (303–361) (Texte und Untersuchungen 134; Berlin, 1987), 92–105, trans. by M. A. Tilley, Donatist Martyr Stories: The Church in ConXict in Roman North Africa (TTH 24; Liverpool, 1996), 13–24.]

The Fourth Edict in the West

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mentions, except Crispina’s, which I shall deal with presently.10 The martyrdom of Maxima, Donatilla, and Secunda is recorded as having occurred on 30 July; but the year date of 304, which is always given in the books, has been reached by presuming that these women were executed under the Fourth Edict—the very fact that has yet to be proved.11 That the three women and Crispina, and some other victims of the persecution, were ‘layfolk’ proves nothing, in view of the enthusiastic attitude towards martyrdom prevailing in Africa. And the thirty-four martyrs, or alleged martyrs, of Ammaedara could well have been just such an ‘organized congregation’ as the martyrs from Abitinae of the Acta Saturnini et al.—who were arrested, we may usefully recall, only at the end of 303 or the beginning of 304, since they were martyred on 12 February 304.12 As for Crispina, martyred apparently at the end of 304, there may well have been special reasons for making an example of her: she was a noble-born and wealthy lady, of the highest social rank13—the only Christian martyr of either sex in Africa at this time who is known to have been a person of consequence. Crispina may have played a prominent role in the Christian community of the little town of 10 The best MS of Crispina’s Passion (that of Autun) has Diocletiano novies et Maximiano (octies) Augustis consulibus [‘in the 9th consulship of Diocletian and the 8th consulship of Maximian’]: this makes it reasonable to date the event to 304, the year of Diocletian’s ninth consulship (and Maximian’s eighth). [See the edition of P. Franchi de’ Cavalieri, Studi e testi, 9 (1902), 21–35, repr. with trans. by H. Musurillo, Acts of the Christian Martyrs (Oxford, 1972), 302–9.] 11 See, for example, P. Monceaux, Histoire litte´raire de l’Afrique chre´tienne depuis les origines jusqu’a` l’invasion arabe, iii (Paris, 1905), 149; Frend, ‘Note’, 144; [and Maier, Dossier, 92. The year 304 is, though, justiWed by Tilley, Donatist Martyr Stories, 13–14.] 12 See the best text of these Acta, edited by P. Franchi de’ Cavalieri in Studi e testi, 65 (1935), 48–71. [M. A. Tilley has criticized this edition as an ‘unhappy conXation’ of the Donatist and Catholic manuscripts; Tilley, ‘Sustaining Donatist Self-Identity: From the Church of the Martyrs to the collecta of the Desert’, JECS 5.1 (1997), 21–35, at 24 n. 9. She has translated the Donatist manuscript in her Donatist Martyr Stories, 25–49 following the critical text of Maier, Dossier, 57–92. Note, however, that François Dolbeau has recently defended Franchi de’ Cavalieri’s edition as largely reliable, apart from a few minor points; see Dolbeau, ‘La ‘‘Passion’’ des martyrs d’Abitina: remarques sur l’e´tablissement du texte’, AB 121 (2003), 273–96.] 13 See Augustine, Enarr. in Psalm 120. 13: clarissima enim fuit, nobilis genere, abundans divitiis [‘for she was most eminent, noble by birth, and abounding with riches’; however, the Acta Crispinae do not support Augustine’s suggestion that she was of senatorial status].

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Thagora, as did another clarissima femina, Lucilla, at the Numidian capital Cirta14—and it may have been thought necessary to single her out at a time when the impetus of the persecution had died away and things were generally quieter. 2. When Frend speaks of Eusebius’ comparison of the persecution ‘in Africa’ with that in Egypt, he is thinking of HE 8.6.10. Here there are two points to be made: (a) Eusebius uses the phrase ‘especially those of Africa and Mauretania’ (malista oi kata te¯n Afrike¯n kai to Mauro¯n ethnos). He uses a similar expression in MP 13.12, ‘as far as Spain, Mauretania and Africa’ (epi Spanian Mauretanian te kai Afrike¯n). Indeed ‘Africa and Mauretania’ seems to have been a current way of referring to the western provinces of North Africa as a whole, as when Constantine in an oYcial letter written in 313 used the phrase per Africam et Mauretanian inde ad Hispanias [through Africa and Mauretania (and) from there to Spain] when speaking of journeys of clerics from the individual provinces of Byzacium, Tripolitania, Numidia, and Mauretania.15 Certainly Eusebius’ Afrike¯ kai to Mauro¯n ethnos was intended to cover Numidia as well—if he had really thought about it. But there must have been far fewer martyrs in Mauretania than either Proconsularis or Numidia. The fact that Eusebius twice refers to the persecution in Africa by a phrase which omits the very province of that area in which the persecution probably claimed the most victims suggests that his information about the events of 303–4 in the African provinces was not extensive.16 (b) Frend forgets that the large number of martyrdoms in the Thebaid was due particularly, according to Eusebius’ own eyewitness account, to the prevalence of voluntary martyrdom on a large scale, with Christians ‘leaping up before the judgement seat from this side 14 See Optatus (Ziwsa edn., CSEL 26), 1.16–19 [trans. M. Edwards, Optatus: Against the Donatists (TTH 27; Liverpool, 1997), 15–19]; Appendix 1, 189–96 ¼ H. von Soden (ed.), Urkunden zur Entstehungsgeschichte des Donatismus [hereafter UED], 2nd edn. rev. by H. von Campenhausen, Kleine Texte, 122 (Berlin, 1950), no. 28, pp. 42–50 (esp. 189 lines 4–5 ¼ UED 42 line 5) [Edwards, Optatus, 156–7]. See also Augustine, C. Cresc. 3.28.32 and 3.29.33; Enarr. in Ps. 36.2.19; Ep. 43.6.17. 15 Optatus, Appendix 3, 205–6 ¼ UED no. 14, pp. 17–18 [Edwards, Optatus, 183]. 16 He certainly knew of the existence of a place called Numidia: see the letter of Constantine quoted in HE 10.6.1.


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and that’, confessing themselves Christians and receiving the sentence of death with delight.17 It is probable that many of the African (especially Numidian) martyrs were also volunteers,18 and voluntary martyrs provide no evidence for the enforcement of the Fourth Edict. 3. In my earlier article I dealt at some length with the Acta Crispina,19 on which Frend lays much stress. Such as it is, this document is the one and only piece of apparently respectable evidence of a martyrdom in Africa, or indeed anywhere in the Western part of the Empire, for refusing to obey an imperial order to sacriWce. It would not, however, amount to convincing proof of the enforcement of the Fourth Edict in the West, even if there were not strong circumstantial evidence against such enforcement. Monceaux long ago pointed out a number of suspect features in the Passion,20 and some of his criticisms remain, even after the publication by Franchi de’ Cavalieri of a better text based on the Autun MS.21 In particular there is the brutal behaviour of Anullinus the proconsul which, although reXecting the unpleasant picture of him so familiar in hagiography,22 accords ill with the two pieces of good evidence we have for his behaviour as a persecutor.23

17 HE 8.9.5; cf. Ste. Croix, ‘Aspects’ [above, Ch. 1, p. 67] and n. 109. 18 See Ste. Croix, ‘Aspects’ [above, Ch. 1, p. 67], citing Augustine, Brev. Coll. 3.13.25 (CSEL 53) ¼ UED no. 4, 6. 19 ‘Aspects’ [above, Ch. 1, p. 45]. 20 ‘Les ‘‘Actes’’ de Sainte Crispine, martyr a` The´veste’, Me´langes Boissier: recueil de me´moires concernant la litte´rature et les antiquite´s romaines de´die´ a` G. Boissier (Paris, 1903), 383–9. 21 See above, n. 11; cf. Monceaux, Histoire, iii. 159–61. 22 See Monceaux, Histoire, iii. 31–2. 23 (1) Augustine, Brev. Coll. 3.13.25 ¼ UED no. 4, pp. 5–7; (2) Acta Saturnini et al., passim (see n. 12 above). [For full references to Anullinus see PLRE i. 79, s.v. C. Annius Anullinus 3, and A. Mandouze, Prosopographie chre´tienne du bas-empire, i: Afrique (303–533) (Paris, 1982), s.v. Anulinus. On the reliability of the Acta Saturnini, see now A. Dearn, ‘The Abitinian Martyrs and the Outbreak of the Donatist Schism’, JEH 55.1 (2004), 1–18. Dearn argues convincingly that the extant text was composed after the anti-Donatist Council of Carthage in 411, and represents the reinterpretation of the Great Persecution in the light of early 5th-cent. arguments, although the central section, which records the exchanges between governor and martyrs, may antedate the council. Its probable composition as a compendium of disparate local martyrs argues against relying too heavily on its evidence.]

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There is moreover, as Frend himself has admitted, evidence that the provincial governors Anullinus in Proconsularis and Florus in Numidia oYcially demanded, at an early stage in the persecution, that Christians should not only hand over their scriptures and church property but also sacriWce and oVer incense.24 Optatus also speaks as if Christians of both provinces had been ‘everywhere compelled to oVer incense’ to the pagan gods.25 Evidently Anullinus and Florus may have demanded an act of sacriWce or the oVering of incense on any occasion when Christians were brought before them, charged with possessing scriptures etc., or with assembling contrary to the First Edict. There is good evidence from other provinces for accused Christians being ordered to sacriWce or burn incense, and even doing this of their own accord, during the earliest phases of the Great Persecution, when only the First Edict had been issued. Examples are: (a) Peter, an imperial slave, tortured to death at Nicomedia,26 presumably on 12 March 303, the date in the Syriac Martyrology;27 (b) possibly also the imperial slaves Dorotheus and Gorgonius and the others mentioned by Eusebius, HE 8.6.5–7; (c) the large numbers of Christians who were sacriWcing at Antioch of their own accord ‘at the very time the churches were destroyed’ (under the First Edict); with (d) Romanus, who voluntarily came forward to rebuke these Antiochene apostates, and was arrested and later strangled in prison, on 17 November 303;28 (e) Procopius of Scythopolis, the Wrst Palestinian martyr of the Great Persecution, executed at Caesarea on

24 Anullinus: Optatus, Appendix 2, pp. 198–9 ¼ UED no. 19B, pp. 26–7: ‘cum persecutio esset indicta Christianis, id est, ut sacriWcarent aut quascumque scripturas haberent, incendio traderent’ [Edwards, Optatus, 172: ‘when an edict of persecution had been issued against the Christians, namely, that they should sacriWce or hand over to the Xames whatever scriptures they possessed’], and ‘ex iussione proconsulari omnes sacriWcarent et si quas scripturas haberent, oVerrent secundum sacram legem’ [Edwards, Optatus, 173 with modiWcation: ‘all should sacriWce according to the proconsular edict, and if any had scriptures, they should present them according to the sacred law’]. Florus: Augustine, C. Cresc. 3.27.30 ¼ UED no. 5, p. 7. 25 Optatus 3.8, p. 90; cf. 1.13, p. 16; 15, p. 17; 2.25, p. 65; Augustine, C. Fulg. 26. See ‘Aspects’ [above, Ch. 1, pp. 46–51]. 26 Eusebius, HE 8.6.2–4, cf. 7–8. 27 See H. Lietzmann (ed.), Die drei a¨ltesten Martyrologien (Kleine Texte 2; 1911), 9. 28 Eusebius, MP 2.


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7 June 303;29 and (f) Alphaeus of Caesarea, a volunteer beheaded at Caesarea on 17 November 303.30 4. But it is the technical evidence about the governors of Numidia on which I wish to lay most stress, particularly since Frend has misunderstood and misrepresented the argument that I put forward.31 There are, unfortunately, complications which make it diYcult to set out the position brieXy and clearly, but the eventual result is certain. The only persecuting governor of Numidia who is mentioned as such in the literary or epigraphic sources is Florus. He appears in Optatus, operating in Numidia as Anullinus does in Africa Proconsularis; and a document preserved by Augustine represents him as pressing Donatus, bishop of Mascula (in the southern part of Numidia), to oVer incense.32 He is also named in a Christian inscription from Castellum Elephantum (RouVach, some 12 km. west of Cirta/Constantina) as the governor under whom certain martyrs of Milevis (a few km. further west) suVered in diebus turiWcationis [‘in the days of incense oVering’].33 As we shall see presently two successive phases must be distinguished in Florus’ governorship: in one (the earlier one, it is virtually certain) he was praeses provinciae Numidiae, governor of the whole of Numidia; in the other (the later) he was governor of only the southern part of Numidia, Numidia Militiana as it is often called now in accordance with the Verona list.34 Of the Wrst seven inscriptions relating to

29 Eusebius, MP 1.1–2. 30 Eusebius, MP 1.5, especially in the Long Recension. 31 Ste. Croix, ‘Aspects’ [above, Ch. 1, pp. 52–3, 74–5]. 32 Optatus 3.8, p. 90 in Ziwsa edn. [Edwards, Optatus, 75]; Augustine, C. Cresc. 3.27.30 ¼ UED no. 5, p. 7. 33 CIL viii. 19353 ¼ 6700, printed in Kolbe’s monograph (see below) at 47, no. 8. [See now the much fuller edition, with a photograph and commentary, of Y. Duval, Loca Sanctorum Africae: le culte des martyrs en Afrique du IVe au VIIe sie`cle (Collection de l’Ećole Française de Rome 58; Rome, 1982), i. 245–7, no. 117.] For the site of RouVach, see S. Gsell, Atlas archeólogique de l’Alge´rie (Paris, 1911), 17, no. 93 [see also R. A. Talbert (ed.), Barrington Atlas of the Greek and Roman World (Princeton, 2000), 31 E4]. 34 See H.-G. Kolbe, Die Statthalter Numidiens von Gallien bis Konstantin (268–320) (Vestigia. Beitra¨ge zur alten Geschichte 4; Munich, 1962), 65 V.; G. Goyau, ‘La Numidia Militiana de la liste de Ve´rone’, Me´langes d’archeólogie et d’histoire de

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Florus’ governorship,35 the Wrst Wve call him governor of N(umidia) M(ilitiana); in the sixth the description of the province has perished, but the place where the inscription was found, Casae (El Mahder, some 20 km. north-east of Lambaesis and north-west of Thamugadi/ Timgad),36 would certainly have fallen in Numidia Militiana, as Kolbe states.37 But Kolbe’s seventh inscription, from Aqua Viva (near M! Doukal in the extreme south-west of the province),38 describes Florus as p(raeside) N(umidiae)—and this is an oYcial document, with the consular date 303, which would be extremely unlikely to make a mistake about Florus’ title. This inscription conWrms the evidence of the literary sources, quoted above, and of the Christian inscription from RouVach, that Florus was in charge of the whole of Numidia, including the northern section of the province, in the early part of 303.39 Now, in an inscription found near the site of ancient Macomades,40 we Wnd Aurelius Quintianus, who is nowhere named as a persecutor, governing the province of ‘Numidia’, regente p(rovinciam) N(umidiam) vestra(m), at the time of the vicennalia of Diocletian, which took place between 17 September and 20 November 303 and probably on the latter date.41 We have already noticed evidence which, for what it is worth, represented Florus, like Anullinus and other provincial governors, as demanding acts of sacriWce or burning incense at a time before the Fourth Edict was in operation; and what the inscription from Macomades proves is that Florus can l’Ećole Française de Rome, 13 (1893), 251–79; A. H. M. Jones, ‘The Date and Value of the Verona List’, JRS 44 (1954), 21–9 [repr. in Jones, The Roman Economy: Studies in Ancient Economic and Administrative History, ed. P. Brunt (Oxford, 1974), 263–79]. ‘Militana’, the form of the name employed by Frend (by analogy with Tripolitana), has no ancient evidence to support it. 35 Kolbe, Statthalter, 46–7. [For full references to Florus see PLRE i. 368, s.v. Florus 3.] 36 See Gsell, Atlas, 27, no. 141 [Barrington Atlas, 34 E2]. [See also W. KuhoV, Diokletian und die Epoche der Tetrarchie: das ro¨mische Reich zwischen Krisenbewa¨ltigung und Neuaufbau (284–313 n. Chr.) (Frankfurt, 2001), 347–8.] 37 Kolbe, Statthalter, 52 n. 3. 38 AE (1942/3), 81; Gsell, Atlas, 37, no. 36 [see Barrington Atlas, 34 D2]. 39 [All references are collected in T. D. Barnes, The New Empire of Diocletian and Constantine (Cambridge, Mass., 1982), 172; also KuhoV, Diokletian und die Epoche der Tetrarchie, 347–8.] 40 ILS 644 ¼ CIL viii. 18698 ¼ 4764; Kolbe, Statthalter, 53, no. 1. 41 [20 Nov. 303 is much more likely—see Ch. 1, n. 12.]


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never have enforced the Fourth Edict in Numidia at all, since he had ceased to be governor, at least as we shall see of the northern part of the province, Numidia Cirtensis, well before the end of 303, whereas the Fourth Edict was not issued until early in 304.42 According to Frend, the Macomades inscription merely proves that in November 303 Florus was no longer governor of the southern part of Numidia, the part referred to in inscriptions as Numidia Militiana after it became a separate province; he seems to regard this as my view as well,43 and goes on to suggest that ‘Florus may have moved [when Quintianus took over the southern part of Numidia] to the new civil province of Numidia Cirtensis’,44 the northern part of Numidia, the existence of which as a province separate from Numidia Militiana is attested in 305–6.45 Frend’s argument is misconceived for, in a divided Numidia, Macomades would have fallen in the northern part, the later Numidia Cirtensis.46 This is proved, beyond question, by the discovery there of another inscription (CIL viii.18700 [4766]) referring to Valerius Antoninus, who is known from three other inscriptions, from Thibilis (Announa) and Rusicade (Philippeville) to have been governor of the province of N(umidia) C(irtensis).47 In any case geographical consideration made this virtually certain: Macomades is a mere 40 km. or so south-east of Cirta, the capital of Numidia Cirtensis, and well north of the chain of lakes or marshes which lie to the north of Bagai and Thamugadi. Numidia Militiana must have been above all a frontier district,48 extending southwards from the area of Bagai, Mascula, Thamugadi, Lambaesis, and Lamasba. In my article I pointed out that inscriptions then attested the title Numidia Militiana at Thamugadi and nowhere else. We can now add its neighbour Lambaesis, on the strength of the subsequently discovered inscription which in fact records a votive 42 See Ste. Croix, ‘Aspects’ [above, Ch. 1, pp. 52–3]; cf. Frend, Martyrdom, 493. [See n. 51 below.] 43 See n. 6 above. 44 Frend, ‘Note’, 145–6; the argument in Martyrdom, 503 is not easily intelligible without reference to this. 45 [ILS 651; AE (1895), 80; ILAlg. 2.31.] The four inscriptions in question are printed by Kolbe, Statthalter, 55–6, cf. 51–5 [and listed in Barnes, New Empire, 172]. 46 As I stated explicitly in ‘Aspects’ [above, Ch. 1, pp. 74–5]. 47 All four inscriptions are printed by Kolbe, Statthalter, 55–6. 48 Cf. Frend, ‘Note’, 145–6.

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oVering by Florus himself to the god Mithras, of whom he was evidently a devotee.49 Only one problem remains, and it has a simple solution. The inscription from Macomades calls Quintianus governor of ‘p(rovinciae) N(umidiae)’, the undivided province of Numidia, not of N(umidia) C(irtensis). Although my case would be if anything even stronger if this could be accepted—because we could then say that Florus the persecutor had been superseded by Quintianus as governor of the whole of Numidia before the issue of the Fourth Edict—the situation revealed by the inscriptions relating to Florus as well as Quintianus makes it necessary to suppose that the Macomades inscription has not stated Quintianus’ title correctly, and that in fact he must have been governor of N(umidia) C(irtensis) only.50 It would be easy for the municipal senate of Macomades, a one-horse town, which set up the inscription, to assume that their new governor was praeses Numidiae, as his predecessors had been, and so, not realizing that the province had now been divided, to have used a title which had just become obsolete.51 At any rate, when the province had been divided and Quintianus arrived to take over Numidia Cirtensis, Florus must have remained as governor of Numidia Militiana, and it is in this second phase of his governorship that Kolbe’s Wrst Wve inscriptions, as well perhaps as the sixth, must have been set up.

49 AE (1955), 81; Kolbe, Statthalter, 47, no. 5 [see also M. Clauss, Cultores Mithrae: Die Anha¨ngerschaft des Mithras-Kultes (Stuttgart, 1992), 248]. 50 This is the conclusion of Kolbe, Statthalter, 54, with 50–3. 51 T. D. Barnes has pointed out to me the parallel with certain inscriptions which continue to give the governor of the province of Numidia, when it had become newly separate from Africa, his old title of leg. leg. III Aug.—not, it is true, an incorrect title, but an example of an out-of-date formula which persisted for a time. See B. E. Thomasson, Die Statthalter der ro¨mischen Provinzen Nordafrikas von Augustus bis Diocletianus (Lund, 1960), ii. 203. [See also KuhoV, Diokletian und die Epoche der Tetrarchie, 348, who discusses the Macomades inscription, but does not place much weight on it. Like Ste. Croix he notes that Macomades was in the vicinity of Cirta, but also suggests that the reference to the vicennalia does not necessarily specify the exact date of the inscription, since it does not state that the honoriWc arch on which it was placed was set up on that day. Accordingly, Quintianus may only have become governor sometime after 20 Nov. 303. He dates the division of Numidia to 303/304 without specifying when this happened, and argues that Florus was initially governor of the undivided province then became governor of the militarily more important Numidia Militiana.]


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We may now be certain, therefore, that Quintianus took over, if not the whole of Numidia, at least Numidia Cirtensis, the more important and thickly populated part of Numidia; and that if the martyrs of Milevis, in Cirtensis, suVered sub pr(a)eside Floro in diebus turiWcationis, as their inscription states, it must have been well before the end of 303 and before the Fourth Edict was issued.52 I must also add a protest against Frend’s statement that ‘Numidian folklore recorded a ‘‘dies thuriWcationis’’ as well as a ‘‘dies traditionis’’ ’.53 It is not merely that in the one piece of evidence we have for the use of the expression ‘dies thuriWcationis’ the ‘dies’ are plural and not singular; much more important is the fact that in the ancient sources the expression ‘dies traditionis’ never occurs at all, and ‘dies thuriWcationis’ only in the inscription concerning the martyrs of Milevis, which was apparently set up many years afterwards.54 There is certainly no warrant in the sources for the chronological sequence, ‘dies traditionis’ followed by ‘dies thuriWcationis’: this, as far as North Africa is concerned, is a pure invention of modern scholarship.55 5. Frend’s Wfth and Wnal argument obliges us to consider once more that much disputed question, the date of the Council of Elvira. Frend accepts Gre´goire’s date of 309,56 itself a reWnement of the dating proposed by Koch on the basis of very unsatisfactory arguments, as we shall see.57 Frend only deals with Canons 1–4, but there are several others which we must examine: 25, 45–6, 55, 56–7, 59, 60,

52 I see no reason to bring in the Third Edict, as Kolbe does, Statthalter, 51. 53 Frend, ‘Note’, 145. 54 [Duval, Loca Sanctorum Africae, 247, argues that the context of the inscription is not well enough known to date it with any exactitude.] 55 It can be traced back at least as far as de Rossi. See G. B. de Rossi, ‘Scoperte di insigni storiche epigraW di martiri di Milevi (Milah), di SitiW (Setif), e di luogo incerto tra Kalama (Ghelma) e Cirta (Constantina)’, Bullettino di archeologia cristiana (1875), 162–74, esp. 165–6; idem, ‘Notizie piu` precise intorno all’insigne epigrafe dei Martiri di Milevi sotto il preside Floro’, BAC (1876), 59–64, esp. 62–3. 56 H. Gre´goire, Les Persećutions dans l’Empire romain, 2nd edn. (Me´moires de l’Acade´mie royale de Belgique, Classe des Lettres 56.5; Brussels, 1964), 77, 146–8. 57 H. Koch, ‘Die Zeit des Konzils von Elvira’, Zeitschrift fu¨r die neutestamentliche Wissenschaft, 17 (1916), 61–7.

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and 73—some of these are quite irrelevant, but they have been brought into the discussion by other writers.58 Canons 2–4 can be dismissed immediately: they refer speciWcally and only to pagan Xamines [priests] who have become baptized Christians (Canons 2–3) or catechumens (Canon 4), and have then performed some objectionable act, sacriWcing or giving public games—if that is what Xamines qui non immolaverint, sed munus tantum dederint [‘priests who have not sacriWced, but who have merely given games’] in Canon 3 means. Three degrees of guilt are recognized: sacriWcing is to entail total exclusion from communion, extending even to the deathbed. It is quite wrong to represent these canons as referring to apostasy by sacriWcing during a persecution: there is no reference to persecution, explicit or implied. Canons 3–4 deal expressly with those who have not sacriWced but have carried out other duties attached to pagan priesthoods, and Canon 2 simply covers the extreme case in the same series, where a Xamen has actually sacriWced. The fact that the punishment in this last case was the most severe that the Church in the pagan empire was able to inXict indicates that the sacriWcing, like the giving of games etc., was not conceived as being done in the time of persecution, under the threat of death, but in a situation where freedom of action was untrammelled. One might have expected that municipal priests could not have avoided sacriWcing, but Canons 3 and 4 of Elvira prove that they could, at least in Spain at this period. These canons suggest that what could not be avoided was giving games. This is understandable: games would be much more costly than sacriWces, and thus it would not be easy to induce another person to give the games instead, though he might be persuaded to perform sacriWces. 58 For the text, see J. D. Mansi, Sacrorum Conciliorum nova et amplissima collectio, ii (Florence, 1759), 1–20; C. J. Hefele and H. Leclercq, Histoire des conciles i.i (Paris, 1907), 212–64; E. J. Jonkers, Acta et Symb. Conc. Saec. Quarto (Textus Minores 19, 1954), 5–23. [See also J. Vives, Concilios Visigo´ticos e Hispano-Romanos (Barcelona and Madrid, 1963), 1–15, and the more recent text of G. Martinez Diez and F. Rodriguez, La coleccioń canońica Hispana IV, concilios Galos, concilios Hispanos: primera parte (Madrid, 1984), 233–68. For an English translation, see S. Laeuchli, Power and Sexuality: The Emergence of Canon Law at the Synod of Elvira (Philadelphia, 1972), 126–35, repr. in B. Ehrmann and A. Jacobs (eds.), Christianity in Late Antiquity, 300–450 CE: A Reader (Oxford, 2003), 244–51. See the Appendix to this chapter for recent bibliography on these canons.]


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With Canons 2–4 we should take Canon 55, which also refers speciWcally and only to pagan priests, sacerdotes. If they ‘only wear crowns and do not sacriWce or oVer anything to idols at their own expense’, they can be received into communion after two years. I agree with Hefele that this canon is a complement to Canons 2–4: while they refer to pagan priests who have either sacriWced or given games, it completes the series by dealing with those who have done no more than publicly wear the distinctive sign of their priesthood.59 I also agree with Hefele that the series is continued in a way by Canons 56–7, the last being a little more severe simply because the Christians concerned had not been obliged to act as they did.60 The series, in order of severity of punishment, is: Canon 2, 3, 4 and 57, 55, 56. Certainly there is, again, no trace of persecution. Canons 59 is another to which persecution is irrelevant: it merely prohibits Christians from being present at sacriWces on the Capitol— where the main oYcial ceremonies of a city would take place. The penalty is severe: ten years’ penance for merely seeing the sacriWce performed by others. Again, persecution is not mentioned. Canons 45 and 46 deal with catechumens (45) or baptized Christians (46) who ‘have not been to church for a very long time’, per inWnita tempora. Here again—whatever Hefele and others may say61—there is no hint of persecution. Indeed the words per inWnita tempora show that the bishops could not possibly have had the Great Persecution in mind, since it lasted only about two years in the West, and for most if not all of that time the churches in Spain would have been closed and attendance at services would have been a capital oVence.62 Canon 60 deals with voluntary martyrdom:63 it declares that Christians executed for smashing idols are not to be accounted martyrs. Certainly voluntary martyrdom was more frequent during persecutions, but the phenomenon could occur at other times. In

59 Hefele–Leclercq, Histoire, 251–2. 60 Hefele–Leclercq, Histoire, 252–3. 61 Hefele–Leclercq, Histoire, 247–8. 62 See Ste. Croix, ‘Aspects’ [see above, Ch. 1, pp. 35–6]. 63 See Ste. Croix, ‘Aspects’ [above, Ch. 1, pp. 45, 65–8; and see below, Ch. 4, pp. 159–60].

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spite of this prohibition, Faustus, Januarius, and Martial,64 as well as Eulalia,65 were duly canonized, although they are all represented as volunteers. Canon 73 punishes Christians who ‘delated’ fellow-Christians. Koch was quite wrong to associate this canon with Canon 13 of Arles (314) and take it as proof of recent persecution. The Arles canon says nothing of delation but speaks of those clerics who ‘are said to have betrayed . . . the names of their brethren’ (tradidisse dicuntur . . . nomina fratrum suorum).66 Accusation of Christianity, it is true, was normally made by individual delatio,67 but this would not have happened in the Great Persecution: then, in an area where the persecution was being taken seriously, mere information would have been suYcient to have a Christian arrested by the authorities and put on trial, whether under the First Edict, for not handing over the scriptures or church property, or under the Second for being a cleric, or under the Fourth for not having sacriWced. Hence the wording of the Arles canon. The situation it contemplates can be seen in the Gesta apud Zenophilum, where Wrst Paul, the bishop of Cirta, evades a request for names of the readers (lectores) who have scriptures, and later the sub-deacons Catulinus and Marcuclius refuse point-blank to identify readers: nos non sumus proditores. Ecce sumus: iube nos occidi [‘we are not traitors. Here we are: order us to be killed’].68 Elvira Canon 73 is dealing with something entirely diVerent: delation of Christians by Christians for any crime whatsoever. This is proved by the later part of the canon—of which Koch quotes only the Wrst sentence referring to delations ending in proscription or death, where the penalty is to be total exclusion from communion. The canon goes on to say that if the accusation is a less serious one (not involving proscription or death), the exclusion is to last for only Wve years. That is to say the canon is a general one, 64 See their Passion in T. Ruinart, Acta primorum martyrum sincera et selecta (1689; ed. Ratisbon, 1859), 556–7. 65 Prudentius, Peristephanon 3, esp. 41–95. 66 [For a text and French trans. of the canons of Arles, see J. Gaudemet, Conciles gaulois du IVe sie`cle (Sources Chre´tiennes 241; Paris, 1977), 35–67.] 67 See Ste. Croix, ‘Early Christians’ [below, Ch. 3, pp. 110–11, 120]. 68 On the Gesta apud Zenophilum, see Y. Duval, Chre´tiens d’Afrique a` l’aube de la paix constantinienne: les premiers échos de la grande persećution (Collections des E´tudes Augustiniennes 164; Paris, 2000), 21–63.


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punishing all delation within the Christian community. Persecution, again, is not there. Canon 25 deals with letters of communion, litterae communicatoriae.69 DiVerent interpretations have been oVered, but I do not see any problem. Especially in view of Canon 9 of Arles,70 there is no doubt whatever that Canon 25 has in mind a Christian who, before setting out on a journey, asks his bishop to certify a letter of recommendation to other Christian churches he may visit: such people are to be given only litterae communicatoriae (for which see Canon 58), and they are not to be described as confessors,71 because such a title makes too much of an impression upon simple folk.72 Here at last a reasonable case can be made for supposing that there previously had been a persecution—but it is by no means an unanswerable case, for three reasons. First, individual persecutions may have occurred in individual localities in Spain during the 45 years between the persecution of Valerian and the Great Persecution. Second, even if the Council of Elvira took place only just before the Great Persecution, Valerianic (and even Decian) confessors might still be alive. Third, volunteers who came forward on their own initiative to testify publicly to the Faith, and who were dismissed or visited with some punishment less than death, might describe themselves as confessors. That leaves us with only one indication of a probable date for Elvira after 305, as we come to the last canon which can have any relevance to our problem: Canon 1. This excludes from communion, even on his deathbed, the adult Christian who after baptism has 69 Omnis, qui attulerit litteras confessorias, sublato nomine confessoris, eo quod omnes sub hac nominis gloria passim concutiant simplices, communicatoriae ei dandae sunt litterae [‘Anyone who carries a letter of a confessor should be given a letter of communion with the title ‘‘confessor’’ removed, since all those sharing in this glory of the title upset simple people everywhere’]. 70 De his, qui confessorum litteras aVerunt, placuit ut sublatis iis litteris alias accipiant communicatorias [‘Concerning those who carry a letter of a confessor, it is decided that this letter be taken away from them and they receive another letter of communion’]. 71 Sublato nomine confessoris refers to the deletion of the title of confessor. 72 Here I agree with Hefele–Leclercq, Histoire, i 235, cf. 287 n. 2. In spite of Hefele’s clear explanation, Koch (as his reference to Cyprian, Epist. 15.4 shows) evidently returned to an older view in which Canon 25 was taken to refer to the libelli pacis given by confessors to penitent apostates. He is very wrong when he brackets Canon 25 with 73 as proof of a previous persecution.

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‘gone to an idol’s temple to worship’, ad templum idoli idolaturus, on the ground that he has committed ‘a capital crime, the worst of crimes’. At Wrst sight this too looks like a post-305 decision. But need it be—can it be, even? There are two questions to consider: (a) The wording is very narrow. A Christian who had sacriWced not in an actual temple but, for instance, in a courtroom,73 or some other public place, would not be caught by this provision at all. Yet the courtroom in particular must often have been the scene of apostasy, when an accused Christian was coerced, with or without torture, into oVering incense. I cannot help thinking that Canon 1 means exactly what it says and refers to going into a pagan temple to participate in the cult.74 If this is so, there is no reference to persecution. (b) The penalty is again the most terrible the Church had it in its power to inXict on a believer. In spite of the severity of so many of the Canons of Elvira, it is impossible to believe that the Spanish bishops would have treated participation in pagan cult in a persecution as such an unforgivable crime. Koch quotes Cyprian, De Lapsis 17 (and he might have added many similar passages), as evidence of an intransigent attitude to lapsi.75 But De Lapsis was written before the Decian persecution was entirely over, and after that rules had been laid down for the readmission of penitent apostates in Africa, according to which even those who had actually sacriWced could be readmitted, at the latest at death’s door,76 and in some cases much earlier, with as short a term of penance as three years if they had begun as confessors and had apostatized only after torture.77 Now Cyprian is known to have been in correspondence with at least four Spanish congregations or their bishops, in three widely separated parts of Spain: Legio (Leon) and Asturica (Astorga), Emerita (Merida), and Caesaraugusta (Saragossa).78 On a matter which had caused so much discussion in the mid-third century but had eventually been settled in a perfectly reasonable manner, to the 73 Note Lactantius, DMP 13.1; cf. 15.5. 74 We may compare Canon 59, discussed above, where merely being a spectator of pagan cult in the Capitol is declared a crime. 75 Koch, ‘Zeit’, 63. 76 Cyprian, Ep. 55.17.3, sacriWcatis in exitu. 77 Cyprian, Ep. 57.1, 3, 5; 56.2.1. 78 See Cyprian, Ep. 67 salut.; 1.1; 6.1.


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satisfaction of all but a few extremists, there is no reason to think that the Council of Elvira would have so broken with precedent and common sense. For these reasons I conclude that Canon 1 also must not be taken as evidence of a recent persecution, but refers to Christians who had more or less voluntarily sacriWced in a pagan temple, perhaps during the holding of a civil magistracy. Such an act might well be considered unforgivable by a gathering of bishops, if torture or the other circumstances of persecution were not available to oVer any mitigation. We are left, then, with no canon, except perhaps 25, which even suggests that the Council of Elvira was held soon after the Great Persecution. And it is then possible to turn the argument round and ask whether we are not obliged to date Elvira either before the Great Persecution or else considerably later: for if the council took place within a few years of the persecution, would it not have been bound to deal with the problem of the various categories of lapsi? I do not see how we can be positive about the date of the council. But at the least this must be said: if it is put soon after the Great Persecution, it provides strong evidence that apostasy in Spain was not a great problem, and hence that the persecution there had not been all that severe. A long time ago Duchesne, in support of a date for Elvira before the Great Persecution, emphasized the striking contrast between its canons and those of the Council of Ancyra (314), or of the Canonical Letter of Peter of Alexandria (306);79 and we may notice here that the Elvira canons contain nothing to correspond even with Canon 13 of Arles, dealing with traditores. Koch’s attempted reply to Duchesne’s argument has no validity: it is based on the certainly false assumption that Constantius Chlorus ruled Spain at the time of the persecution. In my earlier article I tried to show that in the ‘First Tetrarchy’ (293–305) there was probably a less complete territorial division among the four emperors than in the Second (after 305);80 but at any rate, in so far as Italy, Africa, and

79 L. Duchesne, ‘Le Concile d’Elvire et les Xamines chre´tiens’, Me´langes Reńier. Bibliothe`que de l’Ećole des Hautes E´tudes, 73 (1887), 159–74. [Supported by T. D. Barnes, Constantine and Eusebius (Cambridge, Mass., 1981), 53, with n. 108, p. 314.] 80 ‘Aspects’ [above, Ch. 1, pp. 69–72]. See also W. Seston, Diocle´tien et la te´trarchie (Paris, 1946), i. 231 V., esp. 244–5. [The evidence is presented by Barnes, New Empire,

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Spain had a particular ruler, everyone would now agree that it was Maximian, an enemy of the Christians, and that the area in which Constantius was the key Wgure was Gaul and Britain only. The evidence of Eusebius is distorted by his desire to please Constantius’ son Constantine, by painting as rosy a picture as possible of his late father.81 But we may accept the statement of Lactantius that Constantius merely had the churches destroyed but did not allow any persecution of individuals (DMP 15.7), for it is partly conWrmed by the Donatist petition of 313 to Constantine, preserved by Optatus,82 in which the Africans beg Constantine to choose judges from Gaul to decide between them and the party of Caecilian on the grounds that Constantius did not persecute there and Gaul was ab hoc facinore immunis, free from the crime of traditio. The evidence of Lactantius is the more valuable in that he actually lived in Gaul for some time as tutor to Constantine’s son Crispus, and presumably wrote the De Mortibus Persecutorum there, between about 318 and 321.83 The Council of Arles did deal with traditio, but it was, of course, much more than a merely Gallic council: it contained bishops from most of the western part of the empire, including Liberius of Emerita, the metropolitan see of Lusitania, and dealt with wider issues such as the African schism. We ought to expect some reference to traditio in a Spanish council held soon after the Great Persecution, for the First Edict was surely enforced by Maximian and his provincial governors, and traditio must have occurred in Spain. The contrast in this respect between 196–7, who supports Ste. Croix and Seston. The most comprehensive recent narrative of the tetrarchic period is KuhoV, Diokletian und die Epoche der Tetrarchie, 17–326, 784–934. In English see Barnes, Constantine, 3–73; for a briefer narrative see S. Corcoran, The Empire of the Tetrarchs: Imperial Pronouncements and Government AD 284–324, rev. edn. (Oxford, 2000), 5–9, and D. Potter, The Roman Empire at Bay, AD 180–395 (London, 2004), 280–90, 333–63.] 81 In ‘Aspects’, [above, Ch. 1, p. 70] n. 117 I have referred to ‘the disingenuous HE viii 13. 12–13 and viii append. 4, and the absurd Vita Const. i 16’. The truth leaks out a little in Mart. Pal. 13.12. 82 Optatus 1.22, Ziwsa 25–6 ¼ von Soden, UED no. 11, p. 13 [Edwards, Optatus, 22–3]. 83 See J. Moreau, Lactance: ‘De la mort des persećuteurs’ (Sources Chre´tiennes 39: Paris, 1954), I. 34–7. [There is some debate about the date of De Mortibus Persecutorum, and its place of writing and publication: see Barnes, ‘Lactantius and Constantine’, JRS 63 (1973), esp. 32–9, who dates it to some time between July or August 314 and 315. The earlier date, however, merely strengthens Ste. Croix’s point.]


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Elvira and Arles is striking—unless, of course, the standard chronological order of the councils is reversed and we place Elvira later than Arles. This is one of two solutions of the date of Elvira which I would regard as possible. It would explain the absence of any reference to traditio at Elvira—the question had already been settled at Arles, with Liberius among others being present to agree to the decision. Two arguments have been produced against a date after 313. Little weight need be attached to the Wrst,84 that Ossius (Hosius) of Cordoba must have been in constant attendance upon Constantine from 312 onwards. Ossius could easily have been given brief leave to attend an important synod in his own province. The other argument, proposed by Gre´goire,85 is that if the political situation had permitted (as it would of course have done after Constantine had made himself master of the whole of the West at the end of 312),86 bishops from Mauretania Tingitana, part of the civil diocese of the Spains, would necessarily have been present at Elvira. This is not conclusive. There is no parallel to Elvira, for the bishops attending the other known synods of the period—Arles, Ancyra, Neocaesarea—came in each case from a very large area. But the argument has some substance: one would certainly have expected a synod of bishops from all the Spanish provinces to be attended by the bishops of Mauretania Tingitana. The alternative is to accept a date for Elvira before 303. The only argument I can see against this, but it is a strong one, is that we know of no parallel for such a council.87 The habit of holding assemblies of bishops grew up only by degrees, and as a result of the need to settle major disputes, such as the Donatist and Arian controversies. Surely Elvira ought to come after Arles, as Neocaesarea after Ancyra. Once problems relating to the lapsi of the Great Persecution had been thrashed out at Arles and Ancyra, the bishops at Elvira and 84 Advocated among others by Koch, ‘Zeit’, 67, Gre´goire, Persećutions, 146–7 [and Laeuchli, Power and Sexuality, 87 n. 65]. 85 Gre´goire, Persećutions, 147–8. 86 [In fact, Constantine probably inherited Spain from his father Constantius in 306; both Julian (Oration 2.51d) and Orosius (Hist. Adv. Pag. 7.25.15) record that Constantius ruled there and, as Barnes notes, the panegyric of 313 makes no mention of Constantine liberating Spain (Pan. Lat. 12.9.25); cf. Barnes, New Empire, 197. Maxentius defeated Severus to rule Italy and Africa in 307, lost Africa brieXy to Domitius Alexander, then reconquered it in 309.] 87 Ossius’ attendance at Elvira is no objection to an early date, for when he died in 357–8 he could be called a centenarian: Athanasius, Hist. Arian. 45.

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Neocaesarea could devote themselves entirely to other matters. On balance I think that this argument outweighs the one objection to the later date, and with some misgiving I would place Elvira after 314 and, because of an acute point made long ago by Baluze,88 before the Council of Nicaea in 324, and preferably earlier rather than later in that period because Valerius, bishop of Caesaraugusta, who was present at Elvira, was bishop at the time of the Great Persecution, during which he was exiled.89 At any rate the canons of Elvira provide no evidence whatever about the operation of the Fourth Edict of the Great Persecution, or indeed about any aspect of that persecution. It is a pity that the detailed evidence for the persecution in Spain is so poor.90 There are no really reliable Passions: the best, that of Faustus, Januarius, and Martial, like Prudentius’ account of Eulalia, exhibits martyrs as volunteers.91 No doubt there were some executions, but the redoubtable Ossius, though a confessor,92 survived the persecution, and if we believe the Passion of the archdeacon Vincentius—a mere historical novel according to Delehaye93—his bishop, Valerius of Caesaraugusta, was only exiled, a milder punishment than that meted out to most confessing bishops. To sum up, the hypothesis I advanced in my earlier article, that the Fourth Edict was not enforced, and probably not even promulgated, in the western part of the empire, stands unimpaired. The main weight of the argument still rests not only on the absence of good evidence for the enforcement of the Fourth Edict in the West, but even more on the striking contrast between the emphasis on sacriWcing alone in the canons of Ancyra and the letter of Peter of Alexandria,94 and the emphasis on traditio in the canons of Arles and in the Donatist controversy in Africa. 88 See Mansi, Sacrorum Conciliorum, ii 1–2 n. 2; Hefele–Leclercq, Histoire, i.i. 218. 89 See the Passion of S. Vincentius, in Ruinart, Acta, 400–1. But note the comments below on the dubious value of this text. 90 Cf. J. Zeiller, in A. Fliche and V. Martin, Histoire de l’E´glise, ii; Eng. trans. by E. C. Messenger, History of the Primitive Church, iv. 1074. 91 See ‘Aspects’ [above, Ch. 1, pp. 56–7]. 92 Athanasius, Hist. Arian. 42, 44. 93 H. Delehaye, Les Le´gendes hagiographiques, 4th edn. (Brussels, 1955), 114. [Eng. trans. by D. Attwater, The Legends of the Saints, repr. with an introduction by T. O’Laughlin (Dublin, 1998), 95.] 94 See Ste. Croix, ‘Aspects’ [above, Ch. 1, pp. 48–9].

Appendix to Chapter 2

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APPENDIX TO CHAPTER 2

The Date of the Council of Elvira Joseph Streeter

A considerable amount has been written on the Council of Elvira after 1965, not all of which is particularly relevant to the concerns of this chapter.1 Unsurprisingly, given the paucity of evidence from early fourth-century Spain, debate about the date of the council has continued, much of which remains within the scholarly traditions outlined by Ste. Croix. Accordingly, dating depends upon whether the historian interprets Elvira as a response to the Great Persecution. Barnes and Lane Fox do not, but choose diVerent dates. Barnes follows Duchesne2 in dating the council to around ad 300, or ‘not long before Diocletian decreed persecution’.3 Lane Fox follows the arguments of this chapter, noting the absence of any reference either to lapsi or traditores, and prefers a date after the Council of Arles (314) to one before 303, on the grounds that between 260 and 295 no confessors were created.4 Laeuchli, Frend, and Chadwick continue to argue for a date of around 309–10, although neither Frend nor Chadwick defends this at any length.5 1 It has been of particular interest to Catholic theologians, owing to the stipulation of priestly celibacy in Canon 33. For a summary of writings on this subject between 1970 and 1979, see R. Gryson, ‘Dix ans de recherches sur les origines du ce´libat eccle´siastique: re´Xexion sur les publications des anneés 1970–1979’, Revue Theólogique de Louvain, 11.2 (1980), 157–85. 2 See n. 79 above. F. Salvador Ventura, on prosopographical grounds, has reWned Duchesne’s date to the years 300–2; see his Prosopografıá de Hispania Meridional, iii: Antiguëdad tardıá (300–711) (Granada, 1998), 46 (s.v. Barbatus, and in most subsequent entries for participants). 3 Barnes, Constantine, 53–4; see also his ‘The Constantinian Reformation’, The Crake Lectures 1984 (New Brunswick, 1986), 39–57, at 45–6, repr. in Barnes, From Eusebius to Augustus: Selected Papers 1982–1993 (Aldershot, 1994), where he defends this date further. 4 Lane Fox, Pagans and Christians, 664–5, reaYrmed in his ‘Literacy and Power in Early Christianity’, in A. Bowman and G. Woolf (eds.), Literacy and Power in the Ancient World (Cambridge, 1994), 126–48, at 137. 5 Laeuchli, Power and Sexuality, 86 n. 65; W. H. C. Frend, The Rise of Christianity (London, 1984), 448; H. Chadwick, The Church in Ancient Society: From Galilee to Gregory the Great (Oxford, 2001), 181–2.

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The date of 309 is problematic, at least as presented by Gre´goire.6 As Ste. Croix explains above, Gre´goire’s case for 309 rests on the absence of bishops from Mauretania Tingitana, part of the diocese of Spain, at a Spanish church council.7 The assumptions underlying this are that Maxentius was, until 310, in control of Spain and prevented signiWcant movements of Christians in his territories, whereas once Spain came under Constantine’s rule in 310 the impediment would have been removed.8 However, the numismatic evidence underpinning this argument—namely Maxentian coinage thought to have been minted at Tarraco in Spain—has been discredited since the coins in question were actually struck at Ticinum in Italy.9 There is no other evidence to link Maxentius to Spain, control of which was probably inherited by Constantine directly from his father in 306.10 Laeuchli defends 309 in less concrete terms, seeing the contradictory nature of the canons as characteristic of the pre-Constantinian Church, and their ambivalent attitude towards Rome as suggesting a Church removed by some distance from persecution—which would not be the case if the canons were dated to 306.11 Both arguments could also justify a date before 303, and given the general lack of evidence for early fourth-century Spain—let alone the Spanish Church—there are few objective grounds upon which either point can be established. Finally, the earliest date proposed by Koch, 306, is tentatively supported by Gaudemet12 and more Wrmly by Ramos-Lisson,13 who links 6 See n. 56 above. 7 See p. 97 above, with n. 86. 8 See E. Stein, Histoire du Bas Empire, i (Paris, 1959), 87. In the original draft of this essay Ste. Croix accepted this chronology, noting that ‘numismatic evidence shows that Spain adhered to Constantine as early as 310’. 9 C. H. V. Sutherland, Roman Imperial Coinage, vi (Oxford, 1967), 6–7, 266–98. Cf. Barnes, Constantine, 314 n. 108, and New Empire, 195–200, for the political divisions of the empire under the tetrarchy. 10 See n. 86 above. 11 How far the council would need to be removed from persecution for this ambivalence to remain is only dealt with Xeetingly. Laeuchli notes, somewhat vaguely, that ‘Man forgets fast, especially if the conXict he is about to forget did not touch him as deeply as he thought it did at the time’; see Power and Sexuality, 87 n. 65. Perhaps, but while the persecution in Spain was brief, Spanish Christians would surely have been aware of more brutal events elsewhere which, one imagines, would keep any memory of persecution fresh. 12 J. Gaudemet, ‘Concile d’Elvire’, Dictionnaire d’Histoire et de Geógraphie Eccle´siastique, 15 (1963), 312–48. 13 D. Ramos-Lisson, ‘En torno al la autenticidad de algunos canones del concilio de Elvira’, Scripta Theologica, 11 (1979), 181; idem, ‘Das Konzil von Ilı´beris (um 306)’, in J. Orlandis and D. Ramos-Lisson, Die Synode auf der iberischen Halbinsel bis zum Einbruch des Islam (Munich, 1981), 3–30, at 6, later translated into Spanish, Historia de los Concilios de la Espanã romana y visigoda (Pamplona, 1986), 25–67.


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the concerns of the canons with those of a Church under immediate pressure from without—a position that Ste. Croix convincingly criticizes. Much the most radical study of the canons of Elvira is that of Maurice Meigne,14 although it has not occasioned much discussion in Anglophone scholarship.15 It will have been noted that throughout this essay Ste. Croix treats the canons of Elvira as a complete document, as do Barnes, Lane Fox, Laeuchli, Frend, Chadwick, Gaudemet, and Ramos-Lisson, and it is this assumption that Meigne attacks. He argues that the document now called ‘the canons of the council of Elvira’ is in fact a composite text, a collection, consisting of 21 original canons (numbers 1–21) from the turn of the fourth century,16 another more or less coherent group of 13 canons (63–75) dating to some time between the councils of Arles and Nicaea,17 and 47 remaining canons of later date.18 Meigne’s reasons for this are several: the Elviran canons are, he notes, unusually long—around four times the length of other fourth-century canons; the list of decisions is disorderly; they are frequently contradictory, both philologically and in terms of content;19 and Wnally, several canons appear anachronistic, preWguring later problems of church discipline in both East and West. Suberbiola Martinez has further reWned Meigne’s thesis, positing two early councils in 298 (canons 59–77) and 309 (1–22) with three further councils in 354 (53–8), 365 (37–52), and 396 (23–36).20 One signiWcant objection is that Meigne oVers no motive for such a collection. Ramos-Lisson adds other criticisms,21 suggesting that the unusual length of the canons derives simply from the number of problems presented to the fathers of Elvira, and that the discrepancy between Canons 1 and 59 might indicate one later interpolation and not the existence of a collection. As to anachronisms, he suggests that the presence of the 14 M. Meigne, ‘Concile ou collection d’Elvire?’, Revue d’Histoire Eccle´siastique, 70 (1975), 361–87. 15 Although see H. A. Drake, Constantine and the Bishops: The Politics of Intolerance (Baltimore, 2000), 508 n. 70; H. Hess, The Early Development of Canon Law and the Council of Serdica (Oxford, 2002), 40–2; and M. Kulikowski, Late Roman Spain and its Cities (Baltimore, 2004), 328–9 n. 3. Barnes mentions it, but without critical comment: see his ‘The Constantinian Reformation’, 55 n. 43. 16 Meigne follows the dating of Duchesne; see n. 79. 17 Meigne, ‘Concile ou collection’, 386. 18 Meigne, ‘Concile ou collection’, 366. 19 Most conspicuously between Canons 1 and 59. 20 See his Nuevos concilios Hispano-Romanos de los siglos III y IV: La coleccioń de Elvira (Malaga, 1987). He attacks the integrity of the canons on much the same grounds as Meigne, but also notes the diversity in penitence (see esp. 16–18). He also notes further contradictions between canons, notably 7 and 47. 21 Ramos-Lisson, ‘En torno’.

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inXuential Ossius of Cordoba explains the diVusion of the issues debated at Elvira, and their importance in later doctrinal debate. Despite these criticisms, Meigne’s collection thesis has been well received by Gryson,22 Brennecke,23 and Drake,24 while Reichert describes it as ‘common property’.25 Certainly it provides a novel explanation for an exceptional document, which Ramos-Lisson’s criticisms do not address very convincingly. Why should the canons of Elvira be so much longer than those of every other fourth-century council, and why should a council consisting only of Spanish bishops resolve so many important doctrinal issues? Moreover, in contrast to later fourth-century canons, those at Elvira are often contradictory, and muddled in order. However, other explanations are possible, which do not involve rejecting the integrity of the Elviran canons. Above all it is questionable whether coherence of order is a necessary feature of church canons. Discrepancies could be explained as textual traces of disharmony in the Church.26 Parallels with other councils for which we have more evidence are also instructive. While the Council of Chalcedon in 451 met to resolve a speciWc doctrinal issue (the nature of Christ), the simple fact that many bishops were assembled in one place made it a convenient opportunity to deal with any other ecclesiastical problems. Thus following discussion of the central doctrinal problem, the emperor Marcian instructed the bishops present to ‘remain three or four days longer, and in the presence of our most magniWcent oYcials, move whatever proposals you wish’.27 Of course the circumstances of the Church in the mid-Wfth century were very diVerent from those in the Wrst quarter of the fourth century, and we are fortunate to have unusually detailed evidence for the proceedings at Chalcedon. Nonetheless, similar issues of convenience may well explain the range of issues discussed at Elvira. Also, if we were to accept Duchesne’s early date, according to which the Canons of Elvira are the Wrst published canons of any 22 Gryson, ‘Dix ans de recherches’ (n. 95), 161–3: Gryson largely discounts Meigne’s philological argument, but concedes that his general point on the collection is probably correct. 23 H. C. Brennecke, ‘Bischofsversammlung und Reichssynode: das Synodalwesen im Umbruch der konstantinischen Zeit’, in F. von Lilienfeld and A. M. Ritter (eds.), Einheit der Kirche in vorkonstantinischer Zeit (Oikonomia 25; Erlangen, 1989), 35–53, at 42–3. 24 Drake, Constantine and the Bishops, 223 and 508 n. 70. 25 E. Reichert, Die Canones der Konzil von Elvira: Einleitung und Kommentar, Ph.D. diss. University of Hamburg (1990), 49. As Hess says, this probably overstates the case; cf. Hess, Early Development of Canon Law, 42. 26 Cf. Lauechli, Power and Sexuality, 4–8. 27 E. Schwartz (ed.), ACO ii.i.2 (Berlin, 1933), 158 §23. On the Council of Chalcedon, see Ch. 6 below.


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church council, it would be unwise to expect them to conform to generic regularities, given that they would themselves constitute a new genre. Similarly, an early date would place the Council of Elvira in quite diVerent circumstances from the councils of Arles or Nicaea. Constantine’s conversion to Christianity and the transformation of religious power that it eVected ‘rationalized’ problems of doctrine and church organization: rather than actively seeking to resolve a wide range of ostensibly unrelated ecclesiastical problems, Constantine more often responded to speciWc local disputes, as rival groups appealed to him in order to receive his patronage. If Elvira dates to the turn of the fourth century, religious authority within the Church was considerably more diVuse than it became after 312, and the range of problems to be raised and subsequently resolved may have been correspondingly greater. What consequences might Meigne’s thesis have for Ste. Croix’s argument? At one level the Meigne and Suberbiola Martinez hypotheses provide possible solutions to the dating diYculties that Ste. Croix reviewed in the latter part of the paper. Whether the theory of conXated council decisions is superior to Ste. Croix’s cautious review of the possibilities is a matter of choice: scepticism is due any answer to a problem with so little supporting evidence, and Suberbiola Martinez’s work in particular seems unduly bold.28 Meigne shows well the unusual nature of the canons of Elvira, and this deserves some comment. If we follow Ste. Croix and accept a single council, why might the canons have been composed between 314 and 325? They may simply have been ‘any other business’ in between the more focused meetings of Arles and Nicaea, which might also explain their unusual length. In this case it is not clear why the bishops chose to meet in Spain, although the presence of the inXuential Ossius could have been important, or why bishops from beyond Spain were not involved in discussing issues of wider import. Against an early date for Elvira, Ste. Croix simply notes its lack of precedent—although this did not stop the Wrst published canons of a Church council being published. Indeed, lack of precedent is one way to explain the unusual quality of the Elviran canons, particularly in relation to other fourth-century canons—not least given that they would then constitute the only published canons of the pre-Constantinian Church. There is also a good piece of evidence for an early date that Ste. Croix does not discuss, namely the list of nineteen bishops present at the council: Ossius of Cordoba is second, with Felix of Acci (Cadiz) presiding, which, as Barnes has 28 See M. Sotomayor, ‘Consideraciones sobre las fuentes para el estudio del christianismo primitivo en Andalucia’, in C. Gonza´lez Romań (ed.), La Be´tica en su problema´tica histo´rica (Granada, 1991), 299–311, esp. 304–8.

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noted, would surely be unlikely after 312.29 Nonetheless, the central theme of this chapter, that the canons of Elvira provide no evidence for the promulgation of the Fourth Edict in Spain, is intact whether we regard them as a collection or as the genuine pronouncements of a council. On the date of the council, Ste. Croix had for some time been uncertain, as the reference to Elvira in Chapter 4 clearly shows.30

29 See Barnes, ‘The Constantinian Reformation’, 45. 30 See Ch. 4, pp. 159–60.

3 Why were the Early Christians Persecuted?1 The persecution of the Christians in the Roman Empire has attracted the attention of scholars of many diVerent kinds. The enormous volume of literature on the subject is partly due to the fact that it can be approached from many diVerent directions: it oVers a challenge to historians of the Roman Empire (especially of its public administration), to Roman lawyers, to ecclesiastical historians, to Christian theologians, and to students of Roman religion and Greek religion. In fact all these approaches are relevant, and they must all be used together. First published as ‘Why were the Early Christians Persecuted?’, Past and Present, 26 (1963), 6–38. 1 This article is a revised version of a paper read to the Joint Meeting of the Hellenic and Roman Societies and the Classical Association at Oxford on 12 August 1961. As I am engaged upon a book on the persecutions, in which the matters discussed here will be treated in greater detail, I have not attempted to supply complete documentation and bibliographies; but I have added a certain number of references. Except when otherwise stated the Passions of the martyrs to which I have referred here can be found in R. Knopf and G. Kru¨ger, Ausgewa¨hlte Ma¨rtyrerakten, 3rd edn. (Tu¨bingen, 1929). [4th edn. (Tu¨bingen, 1965). For a new text and English translation of most of these martyrdoms, see H. Musurillo, Acts of the Christian Martyrs (Oxford, 1972). There is no evidence that the projected book on persecutions ever took even rudimentary shape; for most of the 1960s Ste. Croix’s energies were turned towards aspects of Classical Greek History, resulting in the publication of The Origins of the Peloponnesian War and the collection of papers on Athenian Democracy which has recently been published as Athenian Democratic Origins, while towards the end of the decade he was beginning to contemplate the issues which eventually appeared in The Class Struggle in the Ancient Greek World: From the Archaic Age to the Arab Conquests (1981; corr. imprint, London, 1983). The ongoing work on Persecutions is represented by the article on Elvira (Ch. 2 above) dating from the late 1960s and the lecture materials on ‘Heresy, Schism and Persecution’ (the basis for Ch. 5 below) from the 1970s and 1980s. The 1963 P & P article, but not the 1964 rejoinder, was reprinted in M. I. Finley (ed.), Studies in Ancient Society (London, 1974), 210–49.]

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The question I have taken as a title needs to be broken down in two quite diVerent ways. One is to distinguish between the general population of the Graeco-Roman world and what I am going to call for convenience ‘the government’: I mean of course the emperor, the senate, the central oYcials and the provincial governors, the key Wgures for our purpose being the emperor and even more the provincial governors. In this case we ask Wrst, ‘For what reasons did ordinary pagans demand persecution?’, and secondly, ‘Why did the government persecute?’ The second way of dividing up our general question is to distinguish the reasons which brought about persecution from the purely legal basis of persecution—the juridical principles and institutions invoked by those who had already made up their minds to take action. But let us not look at the persecutions entirely from the top, so to speak—from the point of view of the persecutors. Scholars who have dealt with this subject, Roman historians in particular, have with few exceptions paid too little attention to what I might call the underside of the process: persecution as seen by the Christians—in a word, martyrdom, a concept which played a vitally important part in the life of the early Church.2 It is convenient to divide the persecutions into three distinct phases. The Wrst ends just before the great Wre at Rome in 64; the second begins with the persecution which followed the Wre and continues until 250;3 and the third opens with the persecution under Decius in 250–1 and lasts until 313—or, if we take account of the anti-Christian activities of Licinius in his later years, until the defeat of Licinius by Constantine in 324. We know of no persecution by the Roman government until 64, and there was no general persecution until that of Decius. Between 64 and 250 there were only isolated, local persecutions; and even if the total number of victims was quite considerable (as I think it probably was), most individual 2 See W. H. C. Frend, ‘The Failure of the Persecutions in the Roman Empire’, Past and Present, No. 16 (Nov. 1959), pp. 10–30; ‘The Persecutions: Some Links between Judaism and the Early Church’, Jl. of Eccles. Hist. ix (1958), pp. 141–58; ‘The Gnostic Sects and the Roman Empire’, Jl. of Eccles. Hist. v (1954), pp. 25–37. [See also ‘Voluntary Martyrdom’, Ch. 4 below.] 3 In fact the persecuting edict was probably issued before the end of 249, but there are no recorded martyrdoms before January 250.

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outbreaks must usually have been quite brief. Even the general persecution of Decius lasted little more than a year, and the second general persecution, that of Valerian in 257–9, less than three years. The third and last general persecution, by Diocletian and his colleagues from 303 onwards (the so-called ‘Great Persecution’), continued for only about two years in the West, although it went on a good deal longer in the East.4 In the intervals between these general persecutions the situation, in my opinion, remained very much what it had been earlier, except that on the whole the position of the Church was distinctly better: there were several local persecutions, but there were also quite long periods during which the Christians enjoyed something like complete peace over most of the empire;5 and in addition the capacity of the Christian churches to own property was recognized, at least under some emperors. But I agree with Baynes6 and many others that complete toleration of Christianity was never oYcially proclaimed before the edict of Galerius in 311. The subject is a large one, and I cannot aVord to spend time on the Wrst phase of persecution (before 64), during which, in so far as it took place at all, persecution was on a small scale and came about mainly as a result of Jewish hostility, which tended to lead to disturbances.7 After the execution of Jesus, the organs of government come quite well out of it all: their general attitude is one of impartiality or indiVerence towards the religious squabbles between Jews and Christians. In consequence of riots provoked by Christian missionary preaching, action was sometimes taken by the oYcials

4 See my ‘Aspects of the ‘‘Great’’ Persecution’, Harv. Theol. Rev. xlvii (1954), pp. 75 V., at pp. 95–6 [Ch. 1, pp. 58–9 above]. 5 Especially from the reign of Gallienus (260–8) to the beginning of the Great Persecution (303). 6 N. H. Baynes, ‘The Great Persecution’, in S. A. Cook, F. E. Adcock, M. P. Charlesworth, and N. H. Baynes (eds.), CAH xii: The Imperial Crisis and Recovery, A.D. 193–324 (Cambridge, 1939), 646–77, at p. 655. [See also R. Lane Fox, Pagans and Christians (Harmondsworth, 1986); W. H. C. Frend, The Rise of Christianity (Philadelphia, 1984).] 7 See Act. Apost. vi.8–vii.60; viii.1–4; ix.1–2; xii.1–2, 3–19; xiii.45, 50–1; xiv.2, 4–6, 19–20; xvii.5–9, 13–14; xviii.12–17; xx.2–3; xxi.27 V. Cf. I Thessal. ii.14–16. Jewish hostility continued, and Tertullian (Scorp. 10) could call the Jewish synagogues ‘fontes persecutionis’ [‘sources of persecution’].

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of local communities. But any Christians who were martyred, like Stephen and James ‘the Just’ (the brother of Jesus),8 were victims of purely Jewish enmity, which would count for little outside Judaea itself. The Sanhedrin acted ultra vires in executing James—and Stephen, if indeed his death was not really a lynching. I do not intend to give a narrative, even in outline, of the second and third phases of persecution, which I shall mainly deal with together. The earliest stages of intervention on the part of the government,beforeabout112,areparticularlyobscuretous.Wecannot be certain how and when the government began to take action; but, like many other people, I believe it was in the persecution by Nero at Rome which followed the great Wre in 64. The much discussed passage in Tacitus9 which is our only informative source leaves many problems unsolved, but I can do no more here than summarize my own views, which agree closely with those expressed by Professor Beaujeu in his admirable recent monograph on this persecution.10 In order to kill the widely believed rumour that he himself was responsible for starting the Wre, Nero falsely accused and savagely punished the Christians. First, those who admitted being Christians11 were prosecuted, and then, on information provided by them (doubtless under torture), a great multitude were convicted, not so much (according to Tacitus) of the crime of incendiarism as because of their hatred of the human race (‘odio humani generis’).12 Tacitus, like his friend Pliny and their contemporary Suetonius,13 detested the Christians; and although he did not believe they caused the Wre14 he 8 Act. Apost. vi.8–vii.60 (Stephen); xii.1–3; Josephus, Ant. Jud. xx.9.1, §§ 197– 203; Euseb. Hist. Eccles. ii.23 (James). 9 Tac. Ann. xv.44.3–8. 10 J. Beaujeu, L’Incendie de Rome en 64 et les chre´tiens (Coll. Latomus, xlix, Brussels, 1960). The other sources are discussed and quoted by L. H. CanWeld, The Early Persecutions of the Christians (Columb. Univ. Stud. in Hist. Econ. and Pub. Law), lv, 1913), pp. 43 V., 141 V. A good selective bibliography up to 1934 will be found in S. A. Cook, F. E. Adcock, M. P. Charlesworth, and N. H. Baynes (eds.), CAH x: The Augustan Empire 44 B.C.–A.D. 70 (Cambridge, 1934), pp. 982–3. 11 The imperfect tense, ‘qui fatebantur’ [‘who were confessing’], shows that the confession was one of Christianity and not of incendiarism. 12 Tac. Ann. xv.44.5. Cf. Hist. v.5; Tert. Apologet. 37.8; Cic. Tusc. Disp. iv.25, 27; Diod. Sic. xxxiv.1.1. 13 Suet. Nero 16.2. 14 His words ‘abolendo rumori Nero subdidit reos’ [‘to eliminate this rumour, Nero furnished culprits’] (44.3) prove that.


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does say they were ‘hated for their abominations’ (‘Xagitia’) and he calls them ‘criminals deserving exemplary punishment’.15 The Christians were picked on as scapegoats, then, because they were already believed by the populace to be capable of horrid crimes, Xagitia: that is worth noticing. (Had not the Empress Poppaea Sabina been particularly sympathetic towards the Jews,16 they might well have been chosen as the most appropriate scapegoats.) And once the Wrst batch of Nero’s Christian victims had been condemned, whether on a charge of organized incendiarism or for a wider ‘complex of guilt’,17 there would be nothing to prevent the magistrate conducting the trials (probably the Praefectus Urbi) from condemning the rest on the charge familiar to us in the second century, of simply ‘being a Christian’—a status which now necessarily involved, by deWnition, membership of an anti-social and potentially criminal conspiracy. I now want to begin examining the attitude of the government towards the persecution of the Christians. I propose to consider mainly the legal problems Wrst, because although they involve some highly technical questions of Roman public law, the more important ones can, I believe, be completely solved, and we shall then be in a very much better position to understand the reasons which prompted the government to persecute; although before we can Wnally clarify these, we shall have to consider the other side of our problem: the reasons for the hatred felt towards Christianity by the mass of pagans. The legal problems,18 from which a certain number of non-legal issues can hardly be separated, may be grouped under three heads. 15 Ann. xv.44.4, 8. 16 Jos. Ant. Jud. xx.8.11, § 195; cf. Vita 3, § 16. Jos. describes Poppaea as ‘Godfearing’ (Ł $ ). And see CanWeld, op. cit., pp. 47–9, on the implications of I Clem. 4–6. 17 A. Momigliano, ‘Nero’, in CAH x. 702–42, at pp. 725–6. 18 The modern literature is vast and much of it is worthless. All the works that anyone could wish to consult today are given by Knopf and Kru¨ger, op. cit. (in n. 1 above), pp. viii–ix and the bibliographies for individual Passions; A. N. SherwinWhite, ‘The Early Persecutions and Roman Law Again’, Jl. of Theol. Stud., n.s., iii (1952), pp. 199–213; V. Monachino, Il fondamento giuridico delle persecuzioni nei primi due secoli (Rome, 1955, repr. from La Scuola Cattolica, lxxxi, 1953); A. Wlosok, ‘Die Rechtsgrundlagen der Christenverfolgungen der ersten zwei Jahrh.’, Gymnasium, lxvi (1959), pp. 14–32. [See also H. Musurillo, Acts of the Christian Martyrs (Oxford, 1972), pp. lvii–lxii.]

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First, what was the nature of the oYcial charge or charges? Secondly, before whom, and according to what form of legal process, if any, were Christians tried? And thirdly, what was the legal foundation for the charges? (For example, was it a lex, or a senatusconsultum, or an imperial edict speciWcally directed against Christianity, or some more general edict, or an imperial rescript or series of rescripts?) I will deal with the Wrst question now, and then the other two together. First, then, the nature of the charges against the Christians. Here I am going to be dogmatic and say that from at least 112 onwards (perhaps, as we have seen, from 64) the normal charge against Christians was simply ‘being Christians’: they are punished, that is to say, ‘for the Name’, the nomen Christianum. This is quite certain, from what the Christian Apologists say in the second and early third centuries,19 from several accounts of martyrdoms,20 and from the technical language used by Pliny and Trajan in their celebrated exchange of letters, probably at about the end of 112,21 concerning the persecution conducted by Pliny in his province of Bithynia et Pontus.22 Pliny speaks of the Christians he had executed as ‘those who were charged before me with being Christians’ (‘qui ad me tamquam Christiani deferebantur’), and the only question he says he asked these confessors was whether they admitted this charge (‘interrogavi ipsos, an essent Christiani’);23 and Trajan in his reply speaks of ‘those who had been charged before you as Christians’ (‘qui Christiani ad te delati fuerant’), and goes on to say that anyone ‘who denies he is a Christian’ (‘qui negaverit se Christianum esse’) and proves it ‘by oVering prayers to our gods’ can go free.24 With the other evidence, that settles the matter. Now the delatores who Wrst accused the Christians as such before Pliny could not be sure (as we shall see) that Pliny would consent to take cognizance of the matter at 19 e.g. Justin, I Apol. 4; II Apol. 2; Athenag. Legat. 1–2; Tert. Apol. 1–3 etc.; Ad Nat. i.3; and many similar passages. 20 Euseb. Hist. Eccles. iv.15.25 and Passio Polyc. 12.1; Passio SS. Scillitan. 10, 14; Passio Apollon. 1 V. 21 But perhaps a year or even two years earlier: see R. Syme, Tacitus (Oxford, 1958), i, p. 81; ii, p. 659 (App. 20). 22 Pliny, Epist. x.96–97. It is a pleasure to be able to welcome at last a really good Eng. trans. of Pliny’s Letters, by Betty Radice (Penguin Books, 1963). 23 Idem, 96.2–3. 24 Idem, 97.1, 2.


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all, let alone inXict the death penalty. Since they thought it was worth ‘trying it on’, they evidently knew that in the past other oYcials had been prepared to punish Christians as such. And in fact Pliny now did so,25 although later on he had second thoughts and consulted the emperor, saying he was doubtful on what charge and to what extent he should investigate and punish, and in particular whether he should take the age of the accused into account, whether he should grant pardon to anyone who was prepared to apostatize, and whether he should punish for the Name alone or for the abominable crimes associated with being a Christian (the ‘Xagitia cohaerentia nomini’). Trajan explicitly refused to lay down any general or deWnite rules and was very selective in his answers to Pliny’s questions. In two passages which do him great credit he instructs Pliny that Christians must not be sought out (‘conquirendi non sunt’), and that anonymous denunciations are to be ignored, ‘for they create the worst sort of precedent and are quite out of keeping with the spirit of our age’. Christians who are accused as such, in due form (by a private prosecutor, delator), and are convicted must be punished, but anyone who denies he is a Christian, and proves it ‘by oVering prayers to our gods’, is to receive ‘pardon on the score of his repentance’ and be set free. In my opinion, Pliny could justiWably take this to mean that punishment was to be for the Name alone. As I have shown, I believe that persecution ‘for the Name’ began either in 64 or at some time between 64 and 112. As an alternative, many writers have brought forward certain passages in the New Testament, especially the Apocalypse and I Peter,26 and have sought to show that under Domitian, if not under Nero, emperor-worship was enforced in Asia Minor, and that the Christian sect was proscribed when Christians refused to take part in it, the charge being really political disloyalty. I would put no weight on such considerations; although on the evidence of the Apocalypse I do not doubt that some Christians may have been put to death in Asia (especially at Pergamum) for refusing to pay cult to the emperor. (Of course, 25 Idem, 96.3. 26 Esp. Rev. ii.10, 13; vi.9–11; vii.13–14; xiii.15; xvii.6; xviii.24; xix.2; xx.4; I Pet. iv.12–19. The dates of both works are still controversial. As regards I Peter, I agree with F. W. Beare, The First Epistle of Peter, 2nd edn. (Oxford, 1958), pp. 9–19, that it comes from the early second century.

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they ought not to have been compelled to do anything of the sort, no emperor being oYcially numbered among the gods of the Roman state until he was dead and had been duly pronounced divus, even though in practice he received cult in his lifetime at provincial level and below.) One often hears it said that the Christians were martyred ‘for refusing to worship the emperor’.27 In fact, emperor-worship is a factor of almost no independent importance in the persecution of the Christians.28 It is true that among our records of martyrdoms emperor-worship does crop up occasionally;29 but far more often it is a matter of sacriWcing to the gods30—as a rule, not even speciWcally to ‘the gods of the Romans’. And when the cult act involved does concern the emperor, it is usually an oath by his Genius (or in the East by his )31 or a sacriWce to the gods on his behalf.32 Very characteristic is the statement of Vigellius Saturninus, proconsul of Africa in 180, to the Scillitan martyrs: ‘We too are religious, and our religion is simple, and we swear by the Genius of our lord the emperor, and we pray for his welfare, as you also ought to do’.33 This is also the situation which is reXected in the Apologists. Tertullian, addressing himself in 197 to the Roman governing class in the Apologeticus, examines at great length the charges against the Christians: he sums them up by making the pagans say to the Christians, ‘You don’t worship the gods, and you don’t oVer sacriWce for the emperors’.34 27 Cf. Syme, op. cit., ii, p. 469: ‘an invincible spirit that denied allegiance to Rome when allegiance meant worship of Caesar’. 28 That this is just as true of the third century as of the second has recently been demonstrated by R. Andreotti, ‘Religione uYciale e culto dell’imperatore nei ‘‘Libelli’’ di Decio’, Studi in onore di A. Calderini e R. Paribeni, i (Milan, 1956), pp. 369–76. It is particularly signiWcant that Cyprian never mentions the imperial cult. And ‘the cult of the emperors plays a very subordinate part in the last great persecution’ (Baynes, ‘Great Persecution’, p. 659). 29 As in Pliny, Epist. x.96.5 (contrast 97.1: ‘dis nostris’ [‘to our gods’]); Euseb. Hist. Eccles. vii.15.2. 30 As e.g. in Pliny, Epist. x.97.1; Passio Justini, v.8; Passio Carpi et al. (Gr.), 4 etc.; Passio Fructuosi, ii.2; Passio Conon. iv.3–5. 31 As e.g. in Euseb. Hist. Eccles. iv.15.18, 20, 21 and Passio Polyc. 9.2, 3; 10.1; Passio SS. Scillitan. 3, 5; Passio Apollon. 3. Contrast Tert. Apol. 32.2–3. 32 As e.g. in Passio SS. Scillitan. 3; Passio Perpet. vi.2; and other sources. See also Tert. Apol. 10.1; 28.2 etc. 33 Passio SS. Scillitan. 3. 34 Tert. Apol. 10.1; and see, for discussion of the two charges separately, 10.2–28.1 and 28.2–35. Tert. goes on (10.1) to sum up the two charges against the Christians as


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And there is ample evidence to show that the situation remained substantially the same right through the third and early fourth centuries, even during the general persecutions.35 I now turn to the nature of the judicial process against the Christians. (In considering this, I shall go beyond the strictly legal sphere from time to time, and look at some of the reasons why persecution took place.) The procedure against Christians was in every case that used for the vast majority of criminal trials under the Principate: cognitio extra ordinem (or extraordinaria) [‘special investigation’/‘specials’], which I shall discuss in a moment. Capital trials under this process in the provinces took place before the provincial governor and no one else. In Rome, the only trials of Christians about which we have good evidence were before the Praefectus Urbi36 or a Praefectus Praetorio;37 none of the known cases was important enough to come directly before the emperor himself, or the senate,38 although in the early Principate appeals by Roman citizens Wrst accused elsewhere may have gone to the emperor’s court. Now Roman law was surely the most impressive intellectual achievement of Roman civilization. But what Roman lawyers of today mean when they speak of Roman law is essentially private law, a large part of which is concerned with property rights, their deWnition and protection. (Did not Cicero in the De OYciis, anticipating Marx, say that the main reason for the very existence of political communities was the security of private property—‘ut sua sacrilegium [literally ‘sacrilege’, but in this context ‘disregard for gods’] and maiestas [‘treason’], but he is hardly using either word in its technical sense: his ‘sacrilegium’ seems to be a rhetorical equivalent for IŁ . (For the technical meaning of sacrilegium, see Th. Mommsen, Ro¨misches Strafrecht (Berlin, 1899), pp. 760 V.) 35 See n. 28 above. 36 Justin, II Apol. 1–2 (Ptolemaeus, Lucius and another); Passio Justini 1. 37 Early in the reign of Commodus, Apollonius was tried and sentenced by the Praetorian Prefect Perennis; but the surviving versions of the Passion, and the narrative of Euseb. Hist. Eccles. v.21, are confused, notably with regard to the role played by the senate, which has been much discussed. A conWdent explanation is hardly possible: the best so far produced seems to me that of E. GriVe, ‘Les actes du martyr Apollonius’, Bull. de litte´r. eccle´s. liii (1952), pp. 65–76; cf. Monachino, op. cit. (in n. 18 above), pp. 33–9. 38 See the preceding note.

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tenerent’ [‘so that they could possess what was theirs’]?)39 Large areas of Roman criminal and public law, however, were by contrast very unsatisfactory, and one of the worst of these blemishes was precisely cognitio extra ordinem, the procedure by which the large deWciencies of the quaestio system (the ordo iudiciorum publicorum [‘system of public courts’], regulating the punishment of what may be called ‘statutory crimes’), which at least was subject to fairly strict rules, were supplemented by direct governmental intervention. As Mr. Sherwin-White pointed out in his Sarum Lectures for 1960–61, the rather few oVences dealt with by the quaestio system were essentially those of ‘high society and the governing personnel’; the ‘crimes of the common man’—theft and so forth—had largely to be dealt with extra ordinem, even at Rome.40 In making use of cognitio extra ordinem the magistrate concerned had a very wide discretion41— even more so, of course, in criminal trials than in civil actions, just because of the relative vagueness of the criminal law. This discretion extended not only to Wxing penalties, but even to deciding which cases the magistrate would recognize as criminal and which—like Gallio when appealed to by the Jews of Corinth against St. Paul42—he would refuse even to consider. The right of judicial cognitio (iurisdictio) belonged to all provincial governors as part of their imperium. In the criminal sphere it was almost unlimited, save in so far as the rights of Roman citizens (under the Lex Iulia de vi publica)43 had to be respected, and in so far as a prosecution might be brought against the governor at Rome after his term of oYce was over.44 The sphere in which the judge might exercise his discretion was actually at its widest in the early Principate, before it began to be circumscribed by the imperial constitutions issued more and more frequently from 39 Cic. De OYc. ii.73. 40 A. N. Sherwin-White, Roman Society and Roman Law in the New Testament (Oxford, 1963), pp. 13–23 and passim. 41 The ‘arbitrium iudicantis’ [‘power of the judge’], on which see F. M. de Robertis, ‘Arbitrium Iudicantis e Statuizioni imperiali’, Zeitschr. der Savigny-Stiftung fu¨r Rechtsgesch. lix (1939), Rom. Abt., pp. 219–60. 42 Act. Apost. xviii.12–17. 43 The principal text is Digest, xlviii.6.7; cf. Sent. Pauli, v.26.1. See esp. A. H. M. Jones, Stud. in Roman Government and Law (Oxford, 1960), pp. 54 V. 44 See P. A. Brunt, ‘Charges of Provincial Maladministration under the Early Principate’, Historia, x (1961), pp. 189–227.


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Hadrian’s time onwards.45 Tacitus, in his famous comment on Antonius Felix, governor of Judaea in St. Paul’s time, can speak of his ‘royal prerogatives’ (‘ius regium’);46 and, in one of the worst cases of provincial misgovernment on record, a proconsul of Asia, towards the end of the reign of Augustus, could congratulate himself proudly and in Greek, over the dead bodies of three hundred provincials he had executed in a single day, on having performed a kingly act.47 In a sense, the power to conduct a criminal cognitio was part of the power of coercitio [‘right to punish’] inherent in imperium; but it is quite wrong to conceive the Christians as being punished by pure coercitio in the narrower sense, summarily and without the exercise of proper iurisdictio: coercitio in that sense, exercised (as the lawyers put it) de plano, in an informal manner, was limited to minor oVences.48 I cannot help feeling that some of those who have persisted in speaking of the proceedings against the Christians as ‘police measures’ have not fully realized that the trials in question were in no way summary proceedings by pure coercitio but proper legal trials, involving the exercise of iurisdictio in the fullest sense. The arbitrary and irresponsible character of the cognitio system was well understood by Mommsen, who says contemptuously in his Ro¨misches Strafrecht that it entirely eludes scientiWc exposition, its very essence being a ‘legalised absence of settled form’.49 ‘To Roman criminal law’, says Schulz, ‘the rule ‘‘nullum crimen sine lege, nulla poena sine lege’’ [‘no crime, no penalty without a law’] was and remained for ever unknown.’50 Jolowicz, discussing the criminal system of the Principate, rightly pointed out that it ‘never passed 45 See n. 41 above. 46 Tac. Hist. v.9. 47 Seneca, Dial. iv (De Ira, ii).5.5; cf. Tac. Ann. iii.68.1. The proconsul was L. Valerius Messalla Volesus and the date a.d. 11 or 12. 48 The principal text is Dig. xlviii.2.6 (‘levia crimina’); cf. i.16.9.3; xlviii.18.18.10. Several passages in the law-books and elsewhere (e.g. Sen. De Clem. i.5.3) distinguish between a decision given ‘pro tribunali’, as a result of a formal trial, and one given ‘de plano’, informally: the technical terms ‘cognitio’ and ‘decretum’ are reserved for the former type (see Dig. xxxvii.1.3.8; xxxviii.15.2.1; xlviii.16.1.8). The position was much the same in civil cases: see R. Du¨ll, Z.S.-S.R. (n. 41 above), lii (1932), Rom. Abt., pp. 170–94. 49 T. Mommsen, Ro¨misches Strafrecht (Leipzig, 1899), 340. 50 F. Schulz, Principles of Roman Law (Oxford, 1936), p. 173, cf. p. 247 (‘No criminal charge except by a law, no punishment except by a law’).

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through a stage of strict law’, and ‘the ‘‘rule of law’’, towards which the quaestiones had been a step forward, was never established’.51 To Wnd that in a very important part of the Roman legal system the rule of law as we know it did not exist will surprise only those who Wx their eyes on the splendid system of civil jurisprudence52 and ignore criminal and administrative law and procedure. Recalcitrant as it is to precise analysis, the system of cognitio extra ordinem has been adequately discussed in the standard textbooks.53 Through his understanding of the nature of the cognitio process, Mr. Sherwin-White, in an article published in 1952,54 has been able to cut away a vast amount of dead wood and provide by far the best introduction to the study of the legal aspects of the early persecutions—although I shall argue presently that he is mistaken in one very important point. Since our information comes almost entirely from Christian sources, interested in recording martyrdoms, the great majority of the trials of Christians we know about in detail end in conviction and a death sentence. But the very wide discretion exercised by the provincial governor might on occasion work in favour of accused Christians. The most signiWcant evidence comes from Tertullian’s Ad Scapulam, written probably in 212, where we hear that the very Wrst proconsul to shed Christian blood in Africa was Vigellius 51 H. F. Jolowicz, Historical Introd. to the Study of Roman Law, 2nd edn. (Cambridge, 1952), p. 413. [3rd edn. (1972), 404.] 52 Even in civil jurisdiction the growth of cognitio extraordinaria resulted in an ‘assimilation to administrative and police action’ (W. W. Buckland, A Text-Book of Roman Law, 2nd edn. (Cambridge, 1932), p. 663). [See also W. Turpin, ‘Formula, cognitio, and Proceedings extra ordinem’, Revue internationale des droits de l’antiquite´, 3rd ser. 46 (1999), 501–2.] 53 Notably Mommsen, op. cit., pp. 340–1, 346–51; P. F. Girard, Man. e´le´m. de droit rom., 6th edn. (Paris, 1918), pp. 1084–97; and in more detail U. Brasiello, La repressione penale in dir. rom. (Naples, 1937). See also Maxime Lemosse, Cognitio. E´tude sur le roˆle du juge dans l’instruction du proce`s civil antique (The`se de Droit, Paris, 1944), pp. 129 V., esp. 211–57. Useful contributions have been made in this country by J. L. Strachan-Davidson, Problems of the Roman Criminal Law, ii (Oxford, 1912), pp. 159–75; Jones, op. cit. (n. 43 above), pp. 53–98; Sherwin-White, op. cit. (n. 40 above), v. Index, s.v. ‘Cognitio’. [In the reprint in Studies in Ancient Society, 249 n. 170, Ste. Croix accepted the correction of Fergus Millar (JRS 58 (1968), 222) that the standard procedure in Roman criminal trials should not be called cognitio extra ordinem, since this was not an expression used in ancient sources.] 54 See n. 18 above.


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Saturninus,55 who was in oYce as late as 180;56 and that a whole series of African proconsuls (after Saturninus, it seems) had gone out of their way to be friendly to accused Christians:57 one of them helped the Christians to conduct their case in such a way as to secure an acquittal (I only wish we had more details of that); another acquitted an accused Christian outright, apparently on the ground that to convict him would cause a riot; yet another, reluctant at having to deal with such a case, released an accused Christian who consented under torture to apostatize, without actually making him sacriWce; and a fourth tore up the vexatious indictment of a Christian when his accuser failed to appear. That shows how things might work in practice. A governor exercising cognitio extraordinaria in a criminal case was bound (for all practical purposes) only by those imperial constitutiones and mandata58 which were relevant in his particular area and were still in force.59 Unfortunately, oYcial publication of imperial constitutions seems to have been an extremely ineYcient and haphazard process,60 and a conscientious governor might often Wnd himself in great 55 Tert. Ad Scap. 3.4. 56 See Passio SS. Scillitan. 1. 57 Tert. Ad Scap. 4.3–4. 58 Mandata, imperial administrative regulations relating mainly to the provinces (some of general application, others not), were technically distinct from constitutiones. The most complete deWnition of constitutiones is Ulpian’s, in Dig. i.4.1.1 (cf. Inst. J. i.2.6; Gaius, i.5): it can be reduced to epistulae and subscriptiones, edicta, decreta (formal legal decisions), and summary decisions de plano (see n. 48 above). A technical term often employed, which cuts across the deWnition just given, is rescripta: this includes all subscriptiones (dealt with through the emperor’s secretary a libellis) and most epistulae (dealt with through the secretary ab epistulis). 59 Some modern scholars have held that in strict legal theory imperial constitutiones originally remained law only during the reign in which they were issued. Yet by the third quarter of the second century Gaius (i.5) could say it had never been doubted that such constitutiones had ‘the force of law’. Cf. Pomponius in Dig. i.2.2.11, 12; Ulpian in Dig. i.4.1.1; also i.4.1.2, explaining that some constitutiones are ‘personal’ and not to be treated as precedents. By the early second century the constitutiones of emperors were evidently regarded as holding good until reversed by their successors—and this is true not only of ‘good emperors’ such as Augustus (Pliny, Epist. x.79, esp. §§ 2, 4, 5; x.80 and 84), but even of Domitian (who had suVered a ‘damnatio memoriae’): see Idem, x.58 (esp. §§ 3, 10); 60.1; 65–6 (esp. 65.3; 66.2); 72; cf. Papinian in Dig. xlviii.3.2.1 (Domitian) and Gai. i.33 (Nero). See on the whole question Jolowicz, op. cit. (n. 51 above), pp. 374–83. 60 See F. von Schwind, Zur Frage der Publikation im ro¨m. Recht (Mu¨nchener Beitra¨ge zur Papyrusforschung, xxxi, 1940); and brieXy Jolowicz, op. cit., pp. 381–3;

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perplexity as to what the law was. This is nicely illustrated by a letter from Pliny to Trajan dealing with the problem of the status of foundlings (Łæ ).61 He can Wnd nothing to the point, he says, in the constitutiones of previous emperors. An edict said to have been issued by Augustus had been quoted to him, with letters of Vespasian, Titus and Domitian, addressed to other parts of the empire, but he did not enclose copies of these, as he was not certain of their accuracy or even (in some cases) of their authenticity, and he felt sure there would be proper copies in the oYces of the emperor’s central administration. One sentence is particularly signiWcant: he did not feel that in a matter which called for the emperor’s authoritative decision he ought to be ‘content with precedents’.62 Once Pliny’s correspondence with Trajan had been ‘published’ (no doubt by his friends, soon after 117, when he and Trajan were both dead), every educated Roman would be likely to know what instructions Trajan had given regarding the Christians; and thereafter any provincial governor might well feel that until oYcial policy towards the Christians changed he had better follow the same procedure. But other governors, at any rate in other provinces, were not absolutely bound by this precedent; and indeed some ten years later we Wnd a proconsul of Asia consulting Hadrian on the treatment of the Christians, and instructions being sent in return to his successor, C. Minicius Fundanus, the purport of which, unhappily, is not entirely clear from the version which has come down to us through Christian writers63—I myself believe this rescript represented no Schulz, op. cit. (n. 50 above), pp. 243–7. Cf. also U. Wilcken, ‘Zu den Kaiserrescripten’, in Hermes, lv (1920), pp. 1–42; F. M. de Robertis, ‘Sulla eYcacia normativa delle costit. imp.’, Annali della fac. di giurispr. della R. Univ. di Bari, n.s. iv (1941), pp. 1–100, 281–374; G. I. Luzzatto, ‘Ricerche sull’applicaz. delle costit. imp. nelle provincie’, Scritti di dir. rom, in onore di C. Ferrini, ed. G. G. Archi (Pavia, 1946), pp. 265–93. [For discussion of diVerent forms of imperial communications, see F. Millar, The Emperor in the Roman World (London, 1977), ch. 5.] 61 Pliny, Epist. x.65. 62 On precedent in Roman law, see Jolowicz, op. cit. (n. 51 above), pp. 363–5, and the works cited on p. 569. 63 Justin, I Apol. 68 (our texts give Eusebius’s Greek version); Euseb. Hist. Eccles. iv.9; RuWnus, Hist. Eccles. iv.9. The traditional date of Fundanus’s proconsulate is 124–5, but it is 122–3 according to R. Syme, Tacitus, ii, p. 468 n. 5. I believe this rescript has been misunderstood by e.g. H. Gre´goire, Les Persećutions dans l’Empire romain, 2nd edn. (Me´moires de l’Acade´mie royale de Belgique, Classe des Lettres


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departure from the policy laid down by Trajan. The decisions taken by Nero in 64 and Trajan in 112 did not constitute precedents absolutely binding upon provincial governors generally. Tertullian’s notorious reference to an ‘institutum Neronianum’64 does not refer to a general edict: ‘institutum’ is not a technical legal term, and we must translate ‘the practice adopted by Nero’. We are told by Lactantius that Ulpian (in the early third century) collected and published in his treatise De OYcio Proconsulis the nefarious imperial rescripts laying down the penalties to be inXicted on Christians.65 I would emphasize that Lactantius speaks of rescripta, not edicta or mandata. Unless he is using the word very loosely, this is another piece of evidence against the existence of a ‘general law’ speciWcally proscribing Christianity, a notion which, as far as I am aware, no specialist in Roman public law and administration has ever been willing to entertain, popular as it has been among ecclesiastical historians.66 It is very possible that these rescripts laid down no more deWnite rules than those we Wnd in Trajan’s letter to Pliny or Hadrian’s to Fundanus. A rescript of Marcus Aurelius ordered the penalty of relegation to an island to be applied to anyone who did anything to alarm the Wckle minds of men with dread of the supernatural;67 but this is scarcely relevant for our purposes, especially as we never hear of any Christians suVering under this provision. The Sententiae Pauli include a rule of unknown date, threatening punishment to those who ‘introduce new sects or religious practices not founded on 56.5; Brussels, 1964), 155–64 [pp. 138 V. in 1951 edn.]; contrast W. Schmid, ‘The Christian reinterpretation of the Rescript of Hadrian’, Maia, vii (1955), pp. 5–13; CanWeld, op. cit. (n. 10 above), pp. 103–18; Wlosok, op. cit. (n. 18 above), p. 23 n. 29. The alleged letter of Antoninus Pius, in Euseb. Hist. Eccles. iv.13, is certainly Wctitious (contrast 26.10). 64 Tert. Ad Nat. i.7. See J. W. Ph. BorleVs, ‘Institutum Neronianum’, Vig. Christ. vi (1952), pp. 129–45, esp. 141–4. Cf. Cic. In Pis. 30; Ad Att. iv.18.1; Brut. 269; Tac. Ann. xiv.43.1; Inst. J. i.2.10; Suet. Nero, 16.2. 65 Lact. Div. Inst. v.11.19. 66 Against the historicity of the statement in Scr. Hist. Aug., Sep. Sev. 17.1, that Severus forbade conversion to Christianity (‘Iudaeos Weri sub gravi poena vetuit. Idem etiam de Christianis sanxit’ [‘He prohibited conversion to Judaism with a heavy penalty, and he also decreed the same for Christianity’]), see the convincing arguments of K. H. Schwarte, ‘Das angebliche Christengesetz des Sep. Sev.’, Historia, xii (1963), pp. 185–208. 67 Dig. xlviii.19.30. Cf. Marcus Aurel. Med. i.6.

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rational grounds, so as to inXuence the minds of men’;68 but this too seems to me of little importance for us. Nor does it seem at all likely that a governor would wish to commit himself in his provincial edict on such a minor criminal matter as the prosecution of Christians. And if he was ever in serious doubt about the course he ought to pursue, he could always consult the emperor. It is important to remember that the standard procedure in punishing Christians was ‘accusatory’ and not ‘inquisitorial’: a governor would not normally take action until a formal denunciation (delatio nominis) was issued by a delator, a man who was prepared not merely to inform but actually to conduct the prosecution in person, and to take the risk of being himself arraigned on a charge of calumnia, malicious prosecution, if he failed to make out a suYcient case.69 Trajan, as we have seen, forbade the seeking out of Christians. This principle, however, could be and sometimes was disregarded. The best attested example comes from the savage persecution at Lyons and Vienne in 177, when the governor did order a search to be made for Christians70—and incidentally seems to have punished apostates for what Pliny had called the ‘Xagitia cohaerentia nomini’, the shocking crimes of which Christians were supposed to be guilty, and which had been alleged against them in this case by their pagan slaves.71 It is wrong to say the governor here was acting ‘illegally’, because of course he was not absolutely bound to follow Trajan’s rescript to Pliny; but it looks as if the great majority of governors did follow it. On this occasion the governor actually condemned to the beasts, as a favour to the enraged populace, a Christian named Attalus, who was a Roman citizen, although the emperor had just given speciWc instructions to the governor that Christians who were Roman citizens should be beheaded.72 He was exceeding his instructions, certainly; but he could plead political necessity, and there is no reason to think he was taken to task by the emperor, who was Marcus Aurelius.

68 Sent. Pauli, v.21.2. 69 Cf. Euseb. Hist. Eccles. iv.9.3. 70 Idem, v.1.14. 71 Idem, 33, cf. 14. 72 Idem, 50–52, cf. 44, 47 (where IıÆ ØŁ~ ÆØ is explained by I a Œ Æº" [‘cut oV the heads’]); cf. Digest xlviii.19.31.


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This raises another point: the attitude of the emperor. Christian propaganda from at least the middle of the second century onwards tried to make out that it was only the ‘bad emperors’ who persecuted, and that the ‘good emperors’ protected the Christians;73 but there is no truth in this at all. We know, for example, of quite a number of martyrdoms under the Wrst two Antonines in widely separated parts of the empire, and even at Rome itself.74 In reality, persecution went on automatically, if sporadically, whoever the emperor might be; and until the third century at any rate it is better not to think of persecutions primarily in terms of emperors. It was the provincial governor in each case who played the more signiWcant role—and even his attitude might be less important than what I must call ‘public opinion’. If the state of local feeling was such that no one particularly wanted to take upon himself the onus of prosecuting Christians, very few governors would have any desire to instigate a persecution. If, on the other hand, public opinion was inXamed against the Christians (as we shall see it often was, down to the middle of the third century), then delators would not be lacking, and Christians would be put on trial; and few governors would have any motive for resisting strong local feeling demonstrated in this perfectly permissible way, especially if some of the more inXuential men in the area were leading the agitation, as they often would be. Imperial instructions (mandata) given to provincial governors bade them take care to rid their provinces of ‘bad men’ (mali homines);75 and Ulpian said it was characteristic of a good and serious-minded governor that he keep his province ‘settled and orderly’ (‘pacata atque quieta’), adding that he would have no diYculty in securing this end if he diligently saw to it that the province was cleared of ‘mali homines’—and sought them out accordingly.76 The governor was advised by a Wrst-century jurist to consider not so much what was the practice at Rome as what the circumstances required;77 and the principle that in the exercise of 73 The Wrst writer we know to have asserted this is Melito of Sardis: see Euseb. Hist. Eccles. iv.26.9. It soon became ‘common form’: see Tert. Apol. 5 etc. 74 e.g. those of Polycarp, of the Christians of Lyons, of the Scillitans, and, at Rome, of Ptolemaeus and Lucius, of Justin and his companions, and of Apollonius—to name only a few of whom we possess reasonably reliable records. 75 Paulus, in Dig. i.18.3; cf. Sent. Pauli, v.22.1. 76 Dig. i.18.13. pr. 77 Proculus, in Dig. i.18.12.

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his criminal jurisdiction the governor should act according to the circumstances existing in his particular province was well recognized.78 Probably the main reason why some martyrdoms— perhaps many martyrdoms—took place was that they were thought to be necessary if the province were to be kept ‘pacata atque quieta’.79 Most governors were doubtless only too willing to take action against men who were strongly disapproved of by ‘all right-thinking people’, and who tended to become the centre of disturbances. Everyone will remember how Pilate yielded to the vociferous demands of the local notables and their followers for the cruciWxion of Jesus.80 If a governor, indeed, refused to do what was expected of him in this way, not only would he become unpopular: the general indignation against the Christians would be only too likely to vent itself in riots and lynching, as we have evidence that it did on occasion;81 and once violence began, anything might happen. Christians might also be suspect, as mali homines, in the eyes of some governors, because they worshipped a man who had admittedly been cruciWed by a governor of Judaea, as a political criminal,82 who thought of himself as ‘king of the Jews’.83 Their loyalty to the state, whatever they might say, could well appear doubtful, if only because they refused even to swear an oath by the emperor’s Genius.84 They were always talking about the imminent end of the world; and one of their books spoke with bitter hatred of Rome, thinly disguised under the name of Babylon, and prophesied its utter ruin.85 And furthermore the secrecy of their rites might well seem a cover for political conspiracy, or at any rate anti-social behaviour. A governor who had such considerations in mind when trying Christians might even decide to Wnd them guilty of maiestas (treason): this would account 78 See e.g. Ulpian, in Dig. xlvii.11.9, 10 (cf. 14.1.pr.); Saturninus, in Dig. xlviii.19.16.9. 79 A. Ronconi, ‘Tacito, Plinio e i Cristiani’, Studi in onore di U. E. Paoli (Florence, 1956), pp. 615 V., at p. 628, gives great emphasis to the need to satisfy ‘public opinion’ as a cause of persecution. 80 Mark xv.1–15 and parallel passages; and esp. John xix.12, 15. 81 See e.g. Euseb. Hist. Eccles. v. Praef. 1; 1.7; vi.41.1–9. 82 See Minucius Felix, Octavius, 9.4. 83 Mark xv.2, 9, 12, 26 (and parallel passages); Luke xxiii.2; John xix.12, 15. 84 Cf. n. 31 above. 85 Rev. xiv.8; xvi.19; xvii–xviii.


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for various statements by Tertullian about Christians being accused of that crime86—although I would not take these pieces of rhetoric very seriously myself. In any event, the factors I have just been mentioning would have less and less weight as time went on, and it became clear that Christians had no political objectives whatever and few particularly anti-social habits. Sometimes a Christian who was in danger of being put on trial might be able to escape altogether by bribing the intending delator or the authorities. There is evidence that this was happening in Africa by the early third century at the latest:87 not merely individuals but whole churches had purchased immunity, to the disgust of Tertullian,88 who believed that during persecution Christians must stand their ground and neither take to Xight nor buy themselves oV. This rigorist attitude was only partly shared by the churches of the West, and in the East it seems to have been generally repudiated: Xight or concealment during persecution was oYcially approved everywhere (except in so far as leading clergy might incur disapproval for deserting their Xocks); but in the West, though apparently not in the East, the purchase of immunity, at any rate in a form which might give the impression of apostasy, was regarded as a sin, if not a particularly grave one.89 Our evidence comes mainly from Africa, Spain and Rome during the Decian persecution, when certiWcates of compliance with the imperial order to sacriWce to the gods were purchased wholesale by the less steadfast members of the Christian community.90 Although we have not yet disposed of all the legal issues, we have at least reached a point from which we can see that the last of my three questions of a legal nature, ‘What was the legal foundation for the charges against the Christians?’, has answered itself, because under the cognitio process no foundation was necessary, other than a prosecutor, a charge of Christianity, and a governor willing to punish on that charge. Theories that the Christian churches could be legally regarded as collegia illicita, unlawful associations, either in the sense 86 Tert. Apol. 10.1; 28.3 V., etc. 87 Tert. De Fuga in Persec. 5.5; 12–14 (written c.212, during Tert.’s Montanist period). 88 Idem, 13.5. 89 See my op. cit. (n. 4 above), pp. 87–8 [Ch. 1 above, pp. 50–1]. 90 Ibid. n. 58.

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of being irremediably illegal (so that their members were at all times liable to criminal punishment), or merely because they were unlicensed (and liable to be prosecuted if they failed to obey an order to disband), have been strongly attacked in recent years by specialists in Roman public law;91 and in spite of some texts which suggest there may have been some technical irregularity,92 I am convinced that this issue can have had no real importance: we never hear that any Christian was ever prosecuted as a member of a collegium illicitum. I want to deal at this point with a theory produced by Mr. SherwinWhite in the admirable article I mentioned earlier93 and repeated in his Sarum Lectures.94 According to this theory, once Pliny had discovered that the Xagitia generally attributed to the Christians did not exist, the real foundation for condemning them was their contumacia, their refusal to obey the reasonable order of a magistrate; and in the second and early third centuries this contumacia was ‘the core of the oYcial objection’. Against this theory there are Wve separate arguments: 1. In every single case the very word required is stubbornly lacking. Pliny does not use the term contumacia at all: employing entirely untechnical language, he says he did not doubt ‘whatever sort of thing it was they were confessing to, their pertinacity and inXexible obstinacy ought to be punished’;95 and as far as I know the essential 91 See esp. F. M. de Robertis, Il diritto associativo romano (Bari, 1938), pp. 289–91, 366–86; G. Bovini, La proprieta` eccles. e la condiz. giurid. della chiesa in eta` precostant. (Milan, 1949); Sherwin-White, op. cit. (n. 18 above), pp. 205–6. Contrast P. W. DuV, Personality in Roman Private Law (Cambridge, 1938), pp. 169–70: until its recognition by Constantine ‘the Church must have appeared to the private law as a collection of unauthorised and therefore illegal colleges’. 92 Notably Origen, Contra Celsum, i.1 [trans. H. Chadwick, Origen, Contra Celsum (Cambridge, 1953)]; cf. Pliny, Epist. x.96.7 (with 33.3; 34.1); Tert. Apol. 38.1–2; 39 (esp. §§ 20–1); De Ieiunio, 13. But for the third century see Scr. Hist. Aug., Sev. Alex. 49.6; Euseb. Hist. Eccles. vii.13; 30.19. 93 Op. cit. (n. 18 above), pp. 210–12. The essence of the theory (though without actual endorsement of the view that the crime was called ‘contumacia’) seems to have been accepted by H. Last, Reallex. fu¨r Antike und Christentum, ii (Stuttgart, 1954), col. 1208 V. (see col. 1213). 94 Op. cit. (n. 40 above), pp. 4, 18, cf. pp. 19–20, 72–3. 95 Epist. x.96.3: ‘pertinaciam . . . et inXexibilem obstinationem’.


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word never appears in any authentic account of a martyrdom or any other reliable ancient source dealing with the persecutions.96 This alone is enough to put the theory out of court in so far as it depends on attaching a technical meaning to contumacia. 2. Pliny’s victims, Mr. Sherwin-White says, had refused to comply with ‘a reasonable order. . . . the test requiring homage to the di nostri . . . The test was reasonable, and its refusal revealed contumacia’.97 In fact Pliny never says he had asked any self-confessed Christians to sacriWce: he makes it quite clear that he had imposed this act only upon those who denied that they were Christians, as a test of their sincerity.98 This destroys the whole foundation of the theory, an essential presupposition of which is that the Christians were ordered to sacriWce and contumaciously refused. 3. It is true that in many later trials of Christians the accused are actually ordered to sacriWce or to do some other act which their religion did not allow them to perform. But even here contumacia could not make its appearance until after the trial had begun. And would it not be absurd to accept as the legal ground of a prosecution an element which could not even arise until after proceedings had begun and the accused was being questioned? 4. The theory we are considering would make contumacia the essential element, quite gratuitously, in every persistent crime—as of course it is, in a sense; but would it not be perverse to pick out the mere persistence and hold it up as the essential part of the crime? Only in so far as the act or default originally complained of is itself criminal can the mere persistence in it be a crime. The essential element in the condemnation of Christians is the illegality of Christianity, not the mere behaviour in court of the accused, which, as we 96 The other examples given by Sherwin-White, op. cit. (n. 18 above), pp. 210–12, show nothing more than what he himself calls ‘the remarkable reluctance of Roman oYcials to condemn Christians’. For the further assertion, ‘They are only condemned when their contumacia has been proved’ (p. 211), there is no evidence at all. 97 Op. cit. (n. 18 above), p. 210. The same mistake has been made by other writers, even A. D. Nock, in his mainly admirable article. ‘The Roman Army and the Roman Religious Year’, HTR 45 (1952), 187–251, at 218. 98 Pliny, Epist. x.96.5, cf. 3. Sherwin-White himself admits elsewhere (p. 205) that Pliny did not require ‘the Wrst batch’ of Christians to sacriWce to di nostri!

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have seen, is the only point at which contumacia could conceivably come in. We want to know why the government wanted Christians to be brought to trial. The contumacia theory distracts attention from this main issue. 5. Close examination of three legal texts to which Mr. SherwinWhite appeals in defence of his theory99 and of the dozens of others in which contumacia (and the corresponding adjective and adverb) are used does not at all support his interpretation; but this question is too technical to be discussed in the body of this article.100 Nor can I accept Mr. Sherwin-White’s statement that ‘the Roman oYcial is indiVerent to the religious aspects in the known cases, provided that the Christian sheds his contumacia’.101 This is to ignore a signiWcant part of Pliny’s letter: ‘It is clear that the temples, recently almost deserted, are beginning to be frequented again, and that the sacred rites, long neglected, are being renewed; also that the Xesh of the sacriWcial animals, which has been Wnding very few purchasers, is 99 In the Wrst, Dig. xlviii.19.4, contumacia merely increases penalties already incurred (cf. Trajan, in Pliny, Epist. x.57.2). The second, Dig. xlviii.19.5, deals with the condemnation of accused in their absence: here the contumacia consists in not appearing at the trial, and may involve sentence in absentia. In the third example, the cases described in Coll. xv.2.2, no one doubted that professio of the magic arts was already illegal: all Ulpian says is that the Magi, ‘per contumaciam et temeritatem’, went from private scientia, which on some earlier views (see loc. cit., init.) was not forbidden, to public professio. Ulpian does not make the contumacia a ground for the subsequent suppression, as Mr. Sherwin-White represents him as doing when he writes (p. 211), ‘This, says Ulpian, was contumacia. Hence most emperors imposed a total ban’—Ulpian mentions the contumacia et temeritas incidentally. 100 The words ‘contumacia, contumax, contumaciter’ occur very frequently in the legal sources—over 40 times in the Digest alone. They are often used quite untechnically (as of the behaviour of children to their parents: Cod. Just. viii.46.3; 49.1), and as a rule they simply indicate an attitude of mind, rather than any speciWc act: in at least 13 of the texts in the Dig. the expression used is ‘per contumaciam’ and merely signiWes that the person concerned is acting deliberately, wilfully, deWantly (it will be suYcient to cite Dig. l.1.13), and thereby in many cases incurring an added penalty (see e.g. Dig. xlviii.19.4). The only texts I have been able to Wnd which use contumacia and its cognates in anything approaching a technical sense are those referring to men who deliberately refuse to comply with a summons to appear (or produce documents), whether in criminal or in civil trials: e.g. Dig. xlii.1.53.pr., 1, 2, 3; 1.54; Cod. Just. iii.1.13.2b, 2c, 3, 4, 7 (dealing with civil cases only); vii.43.4, 7, 8, 9 etc.; Cod. Theod. ii.18.2; x.13.1; xi.31.5. This gave rise to what has been called in modern times a ‘Contumacialverfahren’: see Mommsen, Ro¨misches Strafrecht, 335–6; T. Kipp in Pauly-Wissowa, RE iv, cols. 1166–70 (contumacia). 101 Op. cit. (n. 18 above), p. 211.


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on sale everywhere’.102 In view of this it can hardly be denied that Pliny was genuinely concerned—whether for what we should call religious reasons or not!—about the decline of the traditional religion in his province, and regarded its revival as a justiWcation of his policy of repression, tempered by mercy to apostates. On the face of Pliny’s letter the ‘obstinacy’ of the Christians consisted merely in their threefold confession of Christianity, in face of a warning (after the Wrst confession) that they would be punished for it. Further light is shed upon this ‘obstinacy’ by some of the Passions of the martyrs, many of whom either repeat the standard formula, ‘Christianus sum’, in reply to all questions, or make legally irrelevant replies. If you will give me a quiet hearing, I will tell you the mystery of simplicity . . . I do not recognize the empire of this world, but rather I serve that God whom no man sees or can see with these eyes. I have committed no theft; but if I buy anything, I pay the tax, because I recognize my Lord, the King of kings and Emperor of all peoples . . . It is evil to advocate murder or the bearing of false witness.

These are the answers given to the proconsul of Africa by Speratus the Scillitan103—edifying, no doubt, but irritating to a judge and certainly giving an impression of other-worldly ‘pertinacity and inXexible obstinacy’. My next point concerns what I call ‘the sacriWce test’, used by Pliny in order to give those who denied being Christians a chance to prove their sincerity.104 The earliest example we have of the use of such a test in the Roman world, as far as I know, is at Antioch early in the year 67, when it was used during a pogrom by the Greeks of that city, to distinguish between Jews and non-Jews.105 The character of the sacriWce test changed when judicial torture, which until the second century had been used (except in very special circumstances) only on slaves, came to be regularly applied to all those members of the lower classes (the vast majority of the population of the empire) who became involved in criminal trials, whether they were Roman citizens 102 103 104 105

Epist. x.96.9–10. Passio SS. Scillitan. 4, 6, 7. Cf. Euseb. Hist. Eccles. v.1.20; Passio Conon. iv.2; etc. Pliny, Epist. x.96.5. Josephus, Bell. Jud. vii.3.3, §§ 50–1. For the date, see § 46.

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or not.106 Once judicial torture had become a standard practice, the sacriWce test naturally tended to lose its original character as a privilege, and to become something which was enforced, usually with the aid of torture. But the essential aim was to make apostates, not martyrs. One could say without exaggeration that a governor who really wanted to execute Christians would be careful to avoid torturing them, lest they should apostatize and go free. For there is no doubt that with few exceptions an accused who was prepared to perform the prescribed cult acts was immediately released without punishment. Tertullian, of course, in his barrister’s way, makes much of this as evidence that the authorities did not really regard the Christians as criminals at all. ‘Others, who plead not guilty’, he cries, ‘you torture to make them confess, the Christians alone to make them deny.’107 This was perfectly true, and it must surely count as a lonely anomaly in the Roman legal system. The explanation is that the only punishable oVence was being a Christian, up to the very moment sentence was pronounced, not having been one. I certainly know of no parallel to this in Roman criminal law. Tertullian ridicules the situation. What is the use of a forced and insincere denial, he asks scornfully. What is to prevent a Christian who has given such a denial and been acquitted from ‘laughing at your eVorts, a Christian once more?’108 I need not spend much time on the question of the supposed abominations (Xagitia) with which the Christians were charged— ¨ı ØÆ ~Ø Æ ŒÆd ˇNØ ØØ Ø [‘Thyestian banquets and Oedipodean intercourse’], as they are called,109 meaning of course cannibalism and incest. It is hard to say how seriously these charges were taken by the government. The Christian Apologists of the 106 The practice seems to have been well established by the reign of Marcus Aurelius (161–80): see the references in my op. cit. (n. 4 above), p. 80 n. 29 [Ch. 1, p. 41]. 107 Tert. Apol. 2 (esp. § 10); cf. Ad Scap. 4.2; Cyprian, Ad Demetrian. 13; Min. Fel. Octav. 28.3–5. 108 Tert. Apol. 2.17. 109 Euseb. Hist. Eccles. v.1.14; Athenag. Legat. 3, 31; cf. Euseb. H.E. iv.7.11; v.1.26; ix.5.2; Justin, I Apol. 26; II Apol. 12; Dial. c. Tryph. 10; Tert. Apol. 6.11–7.2 etc.; Min. Fel. Octav. 8–9, 28, 30–1; Orig. c. Cels. vi.27, 40. [For discussion of Christian apologetic literature, see the collection edited by M. Edwards, M. Goodman, and S. Price, Apologetics in the Roman Empire: Pagans, Jews, Christians (Oxford, 1999), esp. S. Price, ‘Latin Christian Apologetics: Minucius Felix, Tertullian, and Cyprian’, 105–29.]


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second and early third centuries devote a good deal of attention to rebutting such accusations, which were evidently believed by the populace in both the eastern and the western parts of the empire. After the Wrst half of the third century, however, they seem to have died out, although we know from Eusebius that a Roman military commander in Syria in 312, under the bitterly anti-Christian emperor Maximin, did try to fake charges of immoral behaviour against the Christians of Damascus, in order to inXame public opinion against them.110 The behaviour of the ordinary pagan during the Great Persecution suggests that he no longer believed such slanders. Moreover, even for the early period, when these accusations were generally credited, one may feel that a more fundamental interpretation is necessary. As Macaulay said over a hundred years ago, ‘There never was a religious persecution in which some odious crime was not, justly or unjustly, said to be obviously deducible from the doctrines of the persecuted party.’111 The reproaches of Xagitia seem to have been essentially appendages of some more real complaint. Unfortunately, these charges were given some colour by the fact that orthodox Christians and heretics tended to Xing them at each other, a fact upon which Gibbon severely remarks, ‘A pagan magistrate . . . might easily have imagined that their mutual animosity had extorted the discovery of their common guilt.’112 Before I come to the Wnal stage of this investigation, I want to take a brief glance at a long series of events which may have given pagans rather more ground for their active antagonism to Christianity than we tend to suppose: I refer to what I have called ‘voluntary martyrdom’.113 Examination of it will require us to look at persecution, for once, mainly from the receiving end. 110 Euseb. Hist. Eccles. ix.5.2. [For analysis of the context, see S. Mitchell, ‘Maximinus and the Christians in AD 312: A New Latin Inscription’, JRS 78 (1988), 105–24.] 111 See H. Last, Jl. of Rom. Stud. xxvii (1937), p. 89 n. 63. 112 E. Gibbon, Decl. and Fall of the Rom. Emp. (ed. J. B. Bury), ii, ch. xvi, pp. 80–1. For examples, see Justin, I Apol. 26; Iren. Adv. Haeres. i.6.3–4; 24.5; 25.3–5 (and see Euseb. Hist. Eccles. iv.7.9–11); Clem. Alex. Strom. iii, esp. 2, 4, 5; Tert. De Ieiun. 17; Philaster, De Heres. 29 (57), ed. F. Marx. 113 For some remarks on this phenomenon, see my op. cit. [Ch. 1, pp. 45, 56, 65–7] I shall give the very considerable body of evidence for voluntary martyrdom in my forthcoming book (see n. 1 above). [For Ste. Croix’s collection of the evidence, see Ch. 4 below.]

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It is a signiWcant fact, as yet not generally appreciated, that a very large number of sources (Passions as well as literary texts) show intrepid Christians going far beyond what their churches oYcially required of them, often indeed oVering themselves up to the authorities of their own accord, and occasionally acting in a provocative manner, smashing images and so forth. After making a detailed study of the evidence for these ‘voluntary martyrs’, I would claim that the part they played in the history of the persecutions was much more important than has yet been realized. It seems to me impossible to doubt that the prevalence of voluntary martyrdom was a factor which, for obvious reasons, both contributed to the outbreak of persecution and tended to intensify it when already in being. Contrary to what is usually said, voluntary martyrdom was by no means conWned mainly to heretical or schismatic sects such as Montanists and Donatists, but was a good deal more common among the orthodox than is generally admitted. The heads of the churches, sensibly enough, forbade voluntary martyrdom again and again, and were inclined to refuse to these zealots the very name of martyr—passages to this eVect could be cited from a dozen diVerent sources, including Clement of Alexandria, Origen and Lactantius, at least three bishops (Cyprian and Mensurius of Carthage and Peter of Alexandria), the Passion of Polycarp, and the Canons of the Council of Elvira.114 Nevertheless, we do hear of an astonishingly large number of volunteers, most of whom, whatever the bishops might say, were given full honour as martyrs, the general body of the faithful apparently regarding them with great respect. One of the most fascinating of the Passions of the Great Persecution is that of Euplus, who suVered at Catana in Sicily. It begins In the consulship of our lords Diocletian (for the ninth time) and Maximian (for the eighth time) [that is, in 304] on the 29th of April, in the most famous city of Catana, in the court room, in front of the curtain, Euplus shouted out, ‘I wish to die, for I am a Christian.’ His excellency Calvisianus the corrector said, ‘Come in, whoever shouted.’ And the Blessed Euplus entered the court room, bearing the immaculate Gospels—

and he achieved the end he had sought.115 114 For some of these references, see my op. cit., p. 83 n. 40 [Ch. 1, p. 45]. 115 Passio Eupli, 1.


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In the next year, 305, while a festival was being celebrated at Caesarea in Palestine, a false rumour began to spread that certain Christians would be given to the beasts as part of the joyful celebrations. While the governor was on his way to the amphitheatre, six young men suddenly presented themselves before him with their hands bound behind them, crying out that they were Christians and demanding to be thrown to the beasts with their brethren. We can well believe Eusebius when he adds that the governor and his entire suite were reduced to a condition of no ordinary amazement. The young men were arrested and imprisoned, but instead of giving them to the beasts as they had demanded, the merciless pagan condemned them to a speedy death by decapitation.116 These are but two of a large number of similar examples. Sometimes the fact that certain martyrs were volunteers, and were not sought out by the authorities, may alter our whole picture of a persecution. For example, the many Christians Eusebius says he himself saw condemned to death in a single day in the Thebaid in Upper Egypt during the Great Persecution are described by him in terms which show that they were volunteers, who, after sentence had been pronounced upon one of their brethren, ‘leapt up before the judgment seat from this side and from that, confessing themselves to be Christians’.117 The seeking out of Christians in this area, therefore, need not have been nearly as vigorous as we might otherwise have assumed from the evidently large number of victims. Now voluntary martyrdom was not just a late phenomenon, which appeared only in the general persecutions: we have examples from the second century too—indeed, from the very earliest period at which we have any detailed records of martyrdoms at all: that is to say, from the 150s onwards, including one on quite a large scale from about the year 185, recorded in Tertullian’s Ad Scapulam. When Arrius Antoninus, proconsul of Asia, was holding his periodic assize in one of the towns of his province, a whole crowd of Christians presented themselves in a body before him, demanding the privilege of martyrdom—all the Christians of that town, says Tertullian, but we must allow for his customary exaggeration. The astonished 116 Euseb. Mart. Pal. 3.2–4 (in both Recensions). 117 Euseb. Hist. Eccles. viii.9.5.

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proconsul ordered a few oV to execution, but contemptuously dismissed the remainder, saying to them, ‘If you want to die, you wretches, you can use ropes or precipices’.118 The positive evidence for voluntary martyrdom begins in the Antonine period, about 150. Conceivably, I suppose, it could have been a Montanist practice in origin. But I should like to suggest, with all the reserve necessitated by lack of direct evidence, that in fact it is likely to have begun much earlier, and that the reason why we do not hear of it before the middle of the second century is simply that we have too little speciWc evidence of any sort about persecution or martyrdom before that time. Here the Jewish background of Christianity, above all the Jewish martyr-literature, is a very material factor. As far back as the Maccabaean period, as Professor Baron has put it, there was born ‘that great exaltation of religious martyrdom which was to dominate the minds of Jews and Christians for countless generations’.119 We have examples of voluntary martyrdom on the part of Jews even before the Christian era, notably the incident in 4 b.c., described by Josephus, when two pious rabbis instigated their followers to cut down the golden eagle set up by Herod over the great gate of the Temple: about forty men were executed, the rabbis and the actual perpetrators of the deed being burnt alive.120 Now the two most fervent works of Jewish martyr-literature, the Second and Fourth Books of Maccabees, with their unrestrained sensationalism and gruesome descriptions of tortures, both formed part of the Septuagint, and must therefore have been well known to the early Church. And indeed a detailed linguistic study by Dr. Perler has shown it to be very likely that IV Maccabees exerted an important inXuence on the thought and writings of Ignatius,121 whose martyrdom must have taken place during the Wrst quarter of the second century. Although there is no evidence of any value that Ignatius himself was actually a voluntary martyr,122 we may, I think, see him 118 Tert. Ad Scap. 5.1, quoting the proconsul’s words in the original Greek. 119 S. W. Baron, A Social and Relig. Hist. of the Jews, 2nd edn. (New York, 1952), i, p. 230. [For further discussion of Jewish precedents, see Ch. 4 below, pp. 193–8.] 120 Jos. Bell. Jud. i.33.2–4, § § 648–55 (cf. ii.1.2–3); Ant. Jud. xvii.6.2–4, § § 149–67. 121 O. Perler, ‘Das vierte Makkabaërbuch, Ignat. v. Antiochien u. die a¨ltesten Martyrerberichte’, Riv. di archeol. crist. xxv (1949), pp. 47–72. 122 John Malalas (Chronogr. xi, p. 276, ed. W. Dindorf [11.10, ed. Theil]) speaks of Trajan as ‘exasperated against Ignatius because he reviled him’, and the ‘Antiochene


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as the precursor of the whole series; for in his letter to the Church of Rome, written while he was being taken from Antioch to the capital for execution, he displays what has often been called a pathological yearning for martyrdom. He describes himself as ‘lusting for death’ & ı& IŁÆ Ø& ),123 and he admonishes the Roman Christians (Kæø not to try to do anything to save him. The eager way in which he speaks of the tortures confronting him—‘Come Wre and cross and encounters with beasts, incisions and dissections, wrenching of bones, hacking of limbs, crushing of the whole body’124—shows an abnormal mentality. It is diYcult to believe that Ignatius was an isolated case, even in his own day. If even a few Christians of the late Wrst and early second centuries had a similar craving for martyrdom (as so many others certainly did later), and gave practical expression to it, especially if they did so by insulting pagan cults, it would be even easier to understand how persecution quickly became endemic in many parts of the Roman world. We are in a position at last to attempt to answer the question confronting us, which, it will be remembered, is twofold: ‘Why did the government persecute?’, and ‘Why did the mass of pagans often demand and initiate persecution?’ I propose to take the second question Wrst. The answer is clear: it is given to us over and over again in the sources. It was not so much the positive beliefs and practices of the Christians which aroused pagan hostility, but above all the negative element in their religion: their total refusal to worship any god but their own. The monotheistic exclusiveness of the Christians was believed to alienate the goodwill of the gods, to endanger what the Romans called the pax deorum (the right harmonious relationship between gods and men),125 and to be responsible for disasters Acts’ of Ignat. (§ 2) say he was %Œı ø Xª [‘was willingly led’] to Trajan at Antioch. But this hardly makes Ignat. a volunteer, and is entirely unreliable anyway: cf. The Apostolic Fathers, ed. J. B. Lightfoot, 2nd edn. (London, 1889), ii. 2, pp. 363 V., 383–91, 436 V., 480–1 V., 575–6. 123 Ignat. Epist. ad Rom. 7.2. 124 Ibid. 4.1–2; 5.2–3. 125 This subject has been discussed in innumerable works, of which I will mention here only W. Warde Fowler, The Relig. Experience of the Rom. People (London, 1911), pp. 169 V., 272 V.

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which overtook the community. I shall call this exclusiveness, for convenience, by the name the Greeks gave to it, ‘atheism’ (IŁ );126 characteristically, the Latin writers refer to the same phenomenon by more concrete expressions having no philosophical overtones, such as ‘deos non colere’ (not paying cult to the gods): the word atheus Wrst appears in Latin in Christian writers of the early fourth century, Arnobius and Lactantius.127 Whatever view we may hold about the mentality of educated, upper-class intellectuals, we must admit that the great mass of the population of the Roman Empire, in both East and West, were at least what we should call deeply superstitious; and I see not the least reason why we should deny them genuine religious feeling, provided we remember the essential diVerences between their kind of religion and that with which we are familiar. By far the most important of these was that pagan religion was a matter of performing cult acts rather than of belief, or ethics. No positive and publicly enforceable obligation, however, rested upon any private individual, whether a Roman citizen or not, or upon a common soldier,128 to participate in any particular acts of cult,129 although magistrates and senators of Rome itself,130 and magistrates (and perhaps senators) of individual 126 See A. Harnack, Der Vorwurf des Atheismus in den drei ersten Jahrh. (Texte u. Untersuch. xxviii [N.F. xiii].4, 1905). Among the texts are Epist. ad Diogn. 2.6; Passio Polyc. iii.2; ix.2; cf. xii.2 (Euseb. Hist. Eccles. iv.15.6, 18–19, cf. 26); Euseb. H.E. v.1.9; Justin, I Apol. 5–6, 13; Athenag. Legat. 3, 4–30; Clem. Alex. Strom. vii.1.1.1; Tert. Apol. 6.10 (note ‘in quo principaliter reos transgressionis Christianos destinatis’ [‘for which in particular you have identified Christians as guilty of wrong-doing’]); 10.1–28.2 (esp. 24.1, 9); Arnob. Adv. Gentes, i.29; iii.28; v.30; vi.27. 127 Arnob., as cited in the preceding note, each time referring to pagan charges against Christians. Lact. (Epit. 63.2; De Ira, 9.7) uses the word of pagan philosophers only. Cicero (De Nat. Deor. i.63) has the Greek word ¼Ł (applied to Diagoras), and Min. Fel. (Octav. 8.2) transliterates (acc. ‘atheon’). 128 See Tert. De Idolol. 19: for a man serving in a ‘[militia] caligata vel inferior quaeque’ [‘military position or some lesser one’] there is no ‘necessitas immolationum’ [‘necessity to sacriWce’]. 129 See, brieXy, Mommsen, Ro¨m. Strafr. p. 568, and on the whole subject Nock, op. cit. (n. 97 above), esp. pp. 189–92, 212–13. 130 For Roman senators, see e.g. S.C. ap. Edict. Augusti ad Cyren. 135–6 (S. Riccobono, Fontes Iuris Rom. Anteiustin. i, 2nd edn. (Florence, 1941), no. 68); Suet. Div. Aug. 35.3. If Euseb. Hist. Eccles. viii.1.2, is to be believed, some Christian oYcials in the provinces in the late 3rd century will have been given an imperial dispensation from & KŁ ø & ª Æ religious duties. (These men to whom the emperors entrusted a ø [‘the rule of nations’] will hardly have been provincial governors: cf. H.E. viii.9.7; 11.2.)


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Greek and Roman towns,131 might be legally obliged to do so; and of course great social pressure might be brought to bear upon individuals who refused (on adopting Christianity or Judaism, for instance) to take part in family or other observances. No compulsion was necessary, because until the advent of Christianity no one ever had any reason for refusing to take part in the ceremonies which others observed—except of course the Jews, and they were a special case, a unique exception. Much as the Jews were detested by the bulk of the Roman governing class, as well as by many humbler Romans and Greeks, it was admitted (by the educated, at any rate) that their religious rites were ancestral, and very ancient. All men were expected piously to preserve the religious customs of their ancestors. And so even Tacitus, who strongly disliked Judaism, could say that the religious rites of the Jews ‘have the recommendation of being ancient’.132 The gods would forgive the inexplicable monotheism of the Jews, who were, so to speak, licensed atheists.133 The Jews of course would not sacriWce to the emperor or his gods, but they were quite willing, while the Temple still stood, to sacriWce to their own god for the well-being of the emperor; and Augustus, if we may believe Philo,134 by a happy compromise not only accepted this but himself paid for the sacriWces. Matters were very diVerent with the Christians, who had ex hypothesi abandoned their ancestral religions. Gibbon expressed the contrast perfectly when he wrote, ‘The Jews were a people which followed, the Christians a sect which deserted, the religion of their fathers.’135 The Christians asserted openly either that the pagan gods did not exist at all or that they were malevolent demons. Not only did they 131 If only to take oaths when required: see e.g. the Lex Municipalis Salpensana, xxvi (Riccobono, F.I.R.A., i2, no. 23). The Severi gave Jews holding municipal honores exemption from religious acts oVensive to them: Dig. l.2.3.3. 132 Tac. Hist. v.5: ‘antiquitate defenduntur’. Cf. Orig. c. Cels. v.25 V. And the fact that Jewish cult was aniconic seems to have appealed to some Romans, e.g. Varro (August. De Civ. Dei, iv.31). 133 For pagans calling Jews ‘atheists’, see J. Juster, Les Juifs dans l’Emp. rom. (Paris, 1914), i, p. 45 n. 1, § 2. 134 Philo, Leg. ad Gai. 157, 317. Contrast Jos. c. Ap. ii.6, § 77 (and cf. B.J. ii.10.4, § 197). For an attempt to explain the contradiction between Philo and Jos., see E. M. Smallwood’s edn. of the Leg. ad Gai. (Leiden, 1961), pp. 240–1. 135 Gibbon, op. cit. (n. 112 above), ii, ch. xvi, p. 74 (marginal summary).

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themselves refuse to take part in pagan religious rites: they would not even recognize that others ought to do so. As a result, because a large part of Greek religion and the whole of the Roman state religion was very much a community aVair, the mass of pagans were naturally apprehensive that the gods would vent their wrath at this dishonour not upon the Christians alone but upon the whole community; and when disasters did occur, they were only too likely to fasten the blame on to the Christians. That the Christians were indeed hated for precisely this reason above all others appears from many passages in the sources, from the mid-second century right down to the Wfth. Tertullian sums it all up in a brilliant and famous sentence in the Apologeticus: the pagans, he says, ‘suppose that the Christians are the cause of every public disaster, every misfortune that happens to the people. If the Tiber overXows or the Nile doesn’t, if there is a drought or an earthquake, a famine or a pestilence, at once the cry goes up, ‘‘The Christians to the lion.’’ ’136 The essential point I want to make is that this superstitious feeling on the part of the pagans was due above all to the Christians’ ‘atheism’, their refusal to acknowledge the gods and give them their due by paying them cult. The Christian Apologists have much to say in reply to this charge137—and, by the way, they are addressing themselves to the educated class, sometimes in theory to the emperors themselves. The earliest surviving Apologists are of the mid-second century, but there is no reason to think the situation was diVerent earlier. We must not confuse the kind of atheism charged against the Christians with philosophical scepticism. Tertullian pretends to be very indignant because philosophers are permitted openly to attack pagan superstitions, while Christians are not. ‘They openly demolish your gods and also attack your superstitions in their writings, and you applaud them for it’, he exclaims.138 The vital diVerence was, of 136 Tert. Apol. 40.1–2 (with 37.2); cf. Ad. Nat. i.9; also Firmilian, ap. Cypr. Epist. lxxv.10; Cypr. Ad Demetrian. esp. 2–5; Arnob. Adv. Nat. i.1 V. (esp. 13, 16, 26) and passim; August. De Civ. Dei, ii.3 (proverb: ‘No rain, because of the Christians’) etc.; Orig. c. Cels. iii.15; Comm. ser. in Matt. 39; Maximin Daia, in Euseb. Hist. Eccles. ix.7.3–14 (esp. 8–9); 8.3. 137 See n. 126 above. 138 Tert. Apol. 46.4.


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course, that the philosophers, whatever they might believe, and even write down for circulation among educated folk, would have been perfectly willing to perform any cult act required of them—and that was what mattered. That the religious misbehaviour of certain individuals should be thought of by pagans as likely to bring unselective divine punishment may seem less strange to us when we remember that similar views were held by Jews and Christians. Orthodox Christians felt towards heretics much as pagans felt towards them. The martyred bishop Polycarp, who (it was said) had actually known the Apostles personally, used to tell how the Apostle John, entering the baths at Ephesus, rushed out again when he saw the heresiarch Cerinthus inside, crying, ‘Away, lest the very baths collapse, for within is Cerinthus the enemy of the truth.’139 About the middle of the third century, however, the attitude of the general run of pagans towards the Christians begins to undergo a distinct change. Whereas until then the initiative in persecution seems to have come from below, from 250 onwards persecution comes from above, from the government, and is initiated by imperial edict, with little or no sign of persecuting zeal among the mass of pagans. The beginning of the change seems to me to come with the Decian persecution. The last two recorded major outbreaks of popular fury against the Christians which I know of were those in Cappadocia and Pontus in 235140 and at Alexandria in 249.141 The change has gone quite far by the time of the Great Persecution, when the majority of pagans (except in a few places, like Gaza)142 seem to be at least indiVerent, some even sympathetic to the Christians,143 and few provincial governors display any enthusiasm for the task. ‘The government had outrun pagan animosity.’144 The reason for the change, I take it, is that Christianity had by now spread widely and 139 Iren. Adv. Haeres. (ed. W. W. Harvey), iii.3.4; Euseb. Hist. Eccles. iii.28.6; iv.14.6. The same mentality can be found among the Christian emperors: see e.g. Constantine’s letter to AelaWus, of 313–14 (Optatus, Append. iii, f. 30b [trans. Edwards, Optatus]); Cod. Theod. xvi.5.40.1 (a.d. 407); Nov. Theod. iii. pr., and above all 8 (a.d. 438). 140 Firmilian, as cited in n. 136 above. 141 Dionys. Alex. ap. Euseb. Hist. Eccles. vi.41.1–9. The cause of this outbreak is not given. 142 See Euseb. Mart. Pal. 3.1 (Long Recension). 143 See esp. Athanasius, Hist. Arian. 64. 144 Baynes, ‘Great Persecution’, 677.

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lost its secretive character, and pagans had come to realize that Christians were not so diVerent from themselves, and just as religious. I have ignored minor reasons for popular dislike of the Christians; but no doubt some people might feel a grudge against them on simple economic grounds: we may remember how these are said to have been responsible for arousing opposition to apostolic preaching at Philippi and Ephesus.145 Finally, we can try to analyse the attitude of the government. For once it is of little avail to ransack earlier Roman history for precedents, in the hope of discovering the principles on which Rome treated foreign religions,146 because the great problem posed by Christianity, its exclusiveness, was something Rome had never encountered before—except under very diVerent conditions, in the Jewish national religion.147 I do not myself believe that there is a single solution to our problem. I believe that diVerent members of the governing class may have been actuated by diVerent motives, and I think that each one of us must decide for himself how much weight he would attach to each. I have already mentioned some minor factors, which may in some cases have played an important and even a decisive part: the need to pacify public opinion; and suspicion of the Christians as a conspiratorial body, or at least as undesirables, mali homines. But for my own part I believe that the main motives of the government, in the long run, were essentially religious in character, according to the ancient conception of religion. These religious motives appear in two rather diVerent forms, which some people might prefer to call 145 Act. Apost. xvi.16–24; xix.23–41. (For the trade in images, see Philostr. Vita Apollon. v.20.) See also Tert. Apol. 42–3. And cf. Pliny, Epist. x.96.10—perhaps in a case such as this the butchers might be aggrieved! 146 The article by H. Last, ‘The Study of the Persecutions’, JRS 27 (1937), pp. 80–92, is nevertheless useful for its detailed examination of earlier acts of interference in religious matters by the Romans. 147 It was perhaps a failure to realize the importance of this factor that led Nock, op. cit. (n. 97 above), p. 217, to make a generalization about the policy of the Roman government in religious matters which seems to me mistaken in regard to Christianity: ‘To sum up, the state interfered not because the Roman gods were failing to get their due but because particular practices or groups were held to be unsuitable or subversive or demoralizing. That is in substance true of oYcial action against the Christians prior to Decius.’


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‘superstitious’ and ‘political’ respectively, thereby avoiding the term ‘religious’ altogether. Some of the governing class, in the third century at any rate (and I believe from the Wrst), were undoubtedly inspired by the very motives I have described as characteristic of their subjects. Among the persecuting emperors, we must certainly place Galerius in this category (on the contemporary evidence of Lactantius),148 and also Diocletian, who seems to have been a thoroughly religious man.149 About Decius and Valerian I would reserve my opinion. It is true that after the Severan period we Wnd many soldier-emperors of little or no education, whom we might suspect of the grosser forms of superstition; and of course among the higher oYcials such as provincial governors there will have been a greater proportion of uneducated men. But, as it happens, Decius cannot be called a man of that sort, and conspicuously not Valerian. I would concede that even in the third century, and to a far greater extent in the second, especially the early second, there may have been a signiWcant number of members of the governing class who did not share the superstitious horror felt for the Christians by the masses. But even such people, I believe, were impelled to persecute—perhaps as vigorously as their less emancipated brethren—by motives I think we are justiWed in calling religious,150 in that their aim also was always primarily to break down the Christian refusal to worship the pagan gods, even if the basis from which they proceeded was diVerent. I want to stress two vital pieces of evidence which I do not see how we can explain away. First, there is the fact that except to a limited extent in the time of Valerian, and more seriously under Diocletian, what I have called the positive side of Christianity is never oYcially attacked: persecution did not extend to any aspect of the Christian religion other than its refusal to acknowledge other gods. No attempt 148 Lact. De Mort. Persec. 9 V., esp. 10.6; 11.1–4, 8. Galerius seems to have been the chief instigator of the Great Persecution: see my op. cit. [Ch. 1, pp. 70–2 above]. 149 See e.g. Euseb. Vita Const. ii.51 [trans. with commentary, Averil Cameron and S. G. Hall (Oxford, 1999)], and note the tone of parts of Diocletian’s copious legislation, esp. the long edict concerning marriage (Mos. et Rom. Leg. Coll. vi.4, esp. §§ 1, 2, 6), or that against the Manichees (Idem, xv.3, esp. § 3), or even the opening of the edict on prices (see Econ. Survey of Anc. Rome, ed. T. Frank (Baltimore, 1940), v, p. 311). See also Lact. M.P. 11.6. 150 In general, I warmly agree with the views expressed by J. Vogt, Zur Religiosita¨t der Christenverfolger im Ro¨m. Reich (Sb. Akad. Heidelberg., Phil.-hist. Klasse, 1962).

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was ever made, even in the general persecutions, to prohibit Christians from worshipping their own god in private, although Valerian151 and Diocletian152 (but not Decius) forbade them to assemble for common worship, and Diocletian also ordered the destruction of churches and the conWscation of sacred books and church property.153 As the deputy prefect of Egypt said to Bishop Dionysius of Alexandria in 257, ‘Who prevents you from worshipping your own god also, if he is a god, along with the natural gods?’154 And of course the sacriWce test continues to be used, and if the Christian complies with it he goes free, even in the general persecutions. Secondly, there is what I believe to have been the complete immunity from persecution of most of the Gnostic sects. Some of these professed doctrines of a recognizably Christian character (heretical in varying degrees as they were) and called themselves Christians. Yet in Roman eyes there was evidently a fundamental diVerence between Gnostics and orthodox Christians, if Gnostics were not persecuted. Why? The reason can only be that the Gnostics did not think it necessary to be exclusive, like the orthodox, and refuse to pay outward respect to the pagan gods when the necessity arose. We are told by orthodox Christian sources that Basilides, perhaps the most important of all the Gnostic heresiarchs, permitted his followers to eat meat which had been oVered to idols, and in time of persecution ‘casually to deny the faith’, doubtless by accepting the sacriWce test.155 It appears, then, that although the tenets of the Gnostics must have appeared to the Roman governing class to be very similar to those of the orthodox, the Gnostics escaped persecution precisely because they consented to take part in pagan religious ceremonies on demand, when the orthodox refused to do so. 151 See Passio Cypr. i.7; Euseb. Hist. Eccles. vii.11.10–11. 152 See Euseb. H.E. ix.10.8; Passio Saturnini et al. Abitin. esp. 1, 2, 5–14 (the best text is by P. Franchi de’ Cavalieri, Studi e testi, lxv (1935), pp. 49–71; see also Th. Ruinart, Acta Martyrum, edn. of 1859, pp. 414 V.); Passio Philippi Heracl. 4 (Ruinart, op. cit., p. 441). 153 The references are given in my op. cit. [Ch. 1 above, pp. 35–6], nn. 1–3. 154 Euseb. H.E. vii.11.9. 155 Agrippa Castor, ap. Euseb. H.E. iv.7.7; cf. Iren. Adv. Haeres. (ed. W. W. Harvey), i.19.3; iii.19.4; iv.54; Tert. Scorp. esp. 1, 15; Clem. Alex. Strom. iv.4.16.3–17.3; 9.71.1–72.4; 12.81–8. And see Frend, op. cit. (1954), in n. 2 above.


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What then was the attitude of the more enlightened pagans among the governing class? Why did they too persecute? Here I think it may be helpful if I re-tell a story told by Henry Crabb Robinson about the reception by Lord Thurlow, Lord Chancellor of England, of a deputation which waited upon him in 1788 to secure his support in their eVorts to bring about the repeal of the Corporation and Test Acts. Lord Thurlow ‘heard them very civilly, and then said, ‘‘Gentlemen, I’m against you, by God. I am for the Established Church, damme! Not that I have any more regard for the Established Church than for any other church, but because it is established. And if you can get your damned religion established, I’ll be for that too.’’’156 Lord Thurlow may not have been exactly what we should call today a religious man, but his attitude may help us to understand that of some members of the Roman governing class of the late Republic and early Principate—though of course I am not saying it is the same. Religion, for such Romans, was above all the ius divinum, the body of state law relating to sacred matters, which preserved the pax deorum by means of the appropriate ceremonial.157 It derived its great value, as Cicero repeatedly aYrms, mainly from the fact that it rested upon the auctoritas maiorum,158 the force of ancestral tradition. As Dr. Weinstock has pointed out,159 St. Augustine was very much in the Ciceronian tradition when he declared that he would not believe the very Gospel itself, did it not rest upon the auctoritas of the Catholic Church160—a point of view 156 Diary, Reminiscences, and Corr. of Henry Crabb Robinson, ed. T. Sadler, 3rd edn. (London, 1872), i, p. 197 (ch. xv). 157 See the remark by Caecilius, the pagan speaker in Minuc. Fel. Octav. 7.2: all religious ceremonies were invented ‘vel ut remuneraretur divina indulgentia, vel ut averteretur imminens ira aut iam tumens et saeviens placaretur’ [‘either to be rewarded by divine approbation, or that anger when threatening might be averted or, if already swelling and raging, be placated’]. 158 Cic. De Nat. Deor. iii.5–9 is perhaps the most illuminating passage. See also De Div. ii.148, etc. 159 S. Weinstock, review of K. Latte, Ro¨misches Religionsgeschichte, JRS 51 (1961), 206–15, at 210. (I am grateful to Dr. Weinstock for allowing me, before the delivery of the paper on which this article is based, to read the MS of his very impressive discussion, then not yet published. I found his para. 3, pp. 208–10, particularly helpful.) 160 August. Contra Epist. Manich. 5.

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still held today by some Christian churches. Cicero, legislating in the De Legibus for his ideal commonwealth, begins with ius divinum.161 In the De Natura Deorum he makes his more sceptical speaker, Cotta, open his case in Book i by proclaiming that he is himself a pontifex, who believes that ‘religious rites and ceremonies ought to be maintained with the utmost reverence’,162 and much more to the same eVect. He makes his Stoic speaker, Balbus, echo sentiments he had expounded himself in his speech to the senate, De Haruspicum Responsis, to the eVect that the Romans ‘in religion, that is the cult of the gods, are far superior to other nations’.163 Such passages could be multiplied. It seems to me entirely beside the point (though doubtless true enough) to object that Cicero rarely if ever shows any unmistakable sign of ‘personal religion’, as we should call it. And when Professor Latte, in his great history of Roman religion, says that one Wnds in Cicero’s philosophical works no ‘inward participation’,164 I feel as if I were being invited to note the absence of colour in a black-and-white drawing. The Roman state religion contained nothing that was personal to the individual. And as for rational belief (or disbelief) in the gods—did it ever Wgure in the thoughts of Cicero and his kind except when they were playing the Greek game of philosophical disputation? Contrast the instinctive belief which Cotta in the De Natura Deorum, speaking to Balbus, proclaims in the words, ‘From you, a philosopher, I am bound to ask for a rational account of religion. Our ancestors I must believe, even in the absence of rational explanation.’165 These people had a deep emotional feeling for Roman religion, as the ius divinum, the ‘foundation of our state’,166 an essential part of the whole Roman way of life. One can still hold this to be true, even if, taking perhaps an uncharitable view (as I would myself), one holds that quite a large 161 Cic. De Leg. ii.18–22. 162 Cic. De Nat. Deor. i.61. 163 Ibid. ii.8; cf. De Har. Resp. 19. Among many similar passages in other authors, see Val. Max. i.1, esp. §§ 8, 9; Tert. Apol. 25.2. An interesting early text is S.I.G.3, no. 601 (b.c. 193), and one of the last (and most important) is Symmachus, Rel. iii (ed. O. Seeck, pp. 280–3), of a.d. 384. Other texts are cited in A. S. Pease’s edn. of the De Nat. Deor. ii (Cambridge, Mass., 1958), p. 567. 164 K. Latte, Ro¨misches Religionsgeschichte, 2nd edn. (Munich, 1960), p. 285. 165 Cic. De Nat. Deor. iii.6. 166 Ibid. iii.5.


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part of that religion was above all an instrument by which the governing class hoped to keep the reins of power in its own hands.167 In the De Legibus, Cicero, himself an augur, gloriWes that oYce because past augurs have been able to annul laws passed by reforming tribunes, to which Cicero refuses the very name of law.168 But such deep-seated expressions of his own interests and those of his class are far from making his conception of religion ‘insincere’ or ‘cynical’—indeed, the reverse is true. I have appealed to Cicero because I suppose most people would agree that the author of the De Divinatione may well be considered one of the least superstitious men in an age which was distinctly less superstitious than the age of the persecutions. For Cicero’s spiritual descendants of the early Principate, Roman religion was part of the very stuV of Roman life and Roman greatness; and they were prepared to extend their protection also to the cults of the peoples of their empire, whose devotion to their ancestral religions seemed to their rulers only right and proper. Can we imagine that such men, however intellectually emancipated from the superstitions of the vulgar, would have had any compunction about executing the devotees of a new-fangled sect which threatened almost every element of Roman religion, and indeed of all the traditional cults conducted by the inhabitants of the Roman world? I would be prepared to speak of persecution so motivated as being conducted for religious reasons, though I realize that other people might prefer to use another word—political, perhaps. I shall end by quoting what seems to me the most illuminating single text in all the ancient sources, for the understanding of the 167 For ØØÆØ Æ (which in this passage is perhaps best translated ‘fear of the supernatural’) as the very cement of the Roman constitution, see Polyb. vi.56.7–12. Varro, the greatest authority on Roman religion, thought it expedient, as did Scaevola before him, that ‘states should be deceived in matters of religion’: August. De Civ. Dei, iv.27, cf. 31, 32. See in addition Augustine’s attack on Seneca (based on his lost work on Superstition), in C.D. vi.10; also Livy, i.19.4–5; Dio Cass. lii.36.1–3. 168 Cic. De Leg. ii.14, 31. In the face of conXicting opinions among the experts whether divination really had a supernatural basis or was simply a political expedient (‘ad utilitatem . . . reipublicae composita’), Cicero proceeds (Ibid. 32–3) to declare his belief in the divine origin of augury, while lamenting its present decline. In the later De Div., however, he makes it perfectly clear that he had no belief in the reality of divination (ii, esp. 28–150), although in public he would keep up a pretence of taking it seriously, as a useful buttress of the constitution and the state religion (ii.28, 70–1).

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persecutions. Paternus, proconsul of Africa, is speaking to Cyprian at his Wrst trial in 257, and telling him what the emperors have just decreed. This, it is true, is a special edict, making it incumbent upon the Christian clergy, on pain of exile, to perform certain acts which ordinary folk would not normally be obliged to carry out; but what is enjoined is something any accused Christian might be ordered to perform, and this gives the text general signiWcance. The decree is: ‘Eos qui Romanam religionem non colunt debere Romanas caerimonias recognoscere’.169 I think the sense is brought out best by translating the main clause negatively: ‘Those who do not profess the Roman religion’—it is admitted that there are such people— ‘must not refuse to take part in Roman religious ceremonies.’ Ste. Croix’s article provoked an immediate response from SherwinWhite, whose views on contumacia and the relevance of accusations of immorality to persecutions he had questioned.1 Sherwin-White accepted that Ste. Croix’s thesis would ‘for long rank among the most satisfactory treatments of this theme’ (23) and agreed that it was applicable to the period from the late second century onwards (25). His concern was for the earliest period of persecutions, the evidence for which he complained that Ste. Croix interpreted in the light of later developments. Ste. Croix’s typically combative and rapid response fairly represents and fully counters Sherwin-White’s arguments, especially with regard to the crucial evidence of Pliny’s correspondence with Trajan. Perhaps the only element of SherwinWhite’s article that needs to be recalled is his citation of evidence from Lucian who, writing at the end of the second century, did not mention accusations of immorality against Christians and thought their only oVence was ‘godlessness’ (De Morte Peregrini 11–14; Alexander 25); Sherwin-White accepted that by Lucian’s time the Ste. Croix thesis of persecution on religious grounds was beyond challenge and oVered these references as additional support. Lucian’s account of Peregrinus is discussed by Ste. Croix in ‘Voluntary Martyrdom’ (pp. 186–8 below). 169 Passio Cypr. i.1. 1 A. N. Sherwin-White, ‘Why were the Early Christians Persecuted?—An Amendment’, P & P 27 (1964), 23–7; repr. (with an Addendum) in his Letters of Pliny: A Historical and Social Commentary (Oxford, 1966), 772–87.


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The exchange in Past and Present 1964 terminated the public debate: there was clearly insuYcient evidence to demonstrate the contumacia theory, and scholars have been increasingly willing to accept that issues of religion could and did have a signiWcant impact in all periods of the ancient world. It has also become clear that in many respects the Roman world did not operate in a neat and coherent legal way, so that concern for the precise legal basis for persecution is misdirected. This acceptance of Ste. Croix’s contention that the ill-deWned processes of what he labelled the cognitio extra ordinem were capable of adaptation for occasions of persecution does provide the possibility of a partial rapprochement between an aspect of Sherwin-White’s thesis and the Ste. Croix view, namely with regard to contumacia. For Ste. Croix, the phenomenon of volunteer martyrs was a plausible trigger for some, perhaps even many, of the outbreaks of persecution (see further Ch. 4 below), but the behaviour of these volunteers, which might include outbursts from spectators in court or public disrespect for acts or sites of worship, represented a deWance of authority and a disregard for convention which might well have been termed contumacia.2

Why were the Early Christians Persecuted?—A Rejoinder* There are two diVerent questions in dispute between Mr. SherwinWhite and myself: [A. N. Sherwin-White, ‘Why were the Early Christians Persecuted?—An Amendment’, P & P 27 (1964), 23–7] (1) whether ‘sheer disobedience’, as such, was ever a ground for the judicial condemnation of Christians; and (2) whether at Wrst the government behaved to Christianity ‘exactly as it did towards other ‘‘superstitions’’ ’ (P & P (1964), 24), and ‘the only ground indicated for the proscription of the [Christian] cult1 is its association with crimes and immoralities—Xagitia, scelera, maleWcia’ (p. 23, with the next two paragraphs: my italics). 2 Musurillo, Acts, p. lxi, also saw scope for convergence between the rival theories, though this was through their common acceptance of the arbitrariness of the cognitio extraordinaria procedures. * First published in Past and Present, 27 (1964), 28–33. 1 It is inexact to speak of the Christian ‘cult’ in this connection: the Christian cult was not directly attacked before the Valerianic persecution (see [pp. 139–40 above]).

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1. On the Wrst question, most of my criticisms of Mr. SherwinWhite’s article of 1952 still stand (see [pp. 124–7 above]), especially the second, to which he has made no reply; and he now exposes the weakness of his case even more clearly by citing texts which, when correctly interpreted, turn against him. First, the passage in Marcus Aurelius (xi.3). Here Mr. SherwinWhite takes the phrase ŒÆa łØºc Ææ"ÆØ , out of its context, as the equivalent of ‘ob meram contumaciam’ and assumes that Marcus is accusing the Christians of seeking death ‘out of sheer disobedience’. In fact Marcus is contrasting the attitude of the Christians to death with the attitude he himself approves, formed by an act of individual & Œæ ø ), arrived at ‘rationally and with judgment (Ie NØŒ & dignity and without theatricality’ (º ºªØ ø ŒÆd ø ŒÆd . . . IæÆªfi&ø ). There is no room here for any idea of disobedience or deWance of authority (‘contumacia’). What Marcus is objecting to is the Christians’ irrational pig-headedness, and the Latin equivalent of Ææ"ÆØ here is obstinatio2—a complaint often levelled against Christians.3 Mr. Sherwin-White, substituting contumacia for obstinatio, converts ‘mere obstinacy’ (cf. pp. 126–7 above) into ‘sheer disobedience’. In exactly the same way he tries to turn the puzzled Pliny’s attribution to the Christians of ‘pertinacia . . . et inXexibilis obstinatio’ [‘stubbornness and unshakeable obstinacy’] into something quite diVerent: ‘deWance of his authority as governor’. But again, the text speaks of ‘obstinacy’, not of deWance or disobedience. And Pliny is not giving a formal, technical justiWcation of his actions: that was not necessary. What he is saying is, ‘Well anyway, they were a thoroughly obstinate crew and deserved what they got.’ In spite of his ‘nescio quid . . . puniri soleat’ [‘I do not know what punishment is customary’], his own actions (see the Wrst two sentences of § 3 of his letter) show that he knew confessors should be executed for the ‘Name’, for ‘being Christians’. Their ‘obstinacy’ was one of the undesirable manifestations of the Christian superstitio.

2 See F. Martinazzoli, Parataxeis (Florence, 1953), pp. 17 V. 3 See e.g. Tert. Apol. 27.2 (where T. goes on in § 3 to call it ‘constantia’), 7; 50.15; De Spect. 1.1; Ad Nat. i.17–19; and of course Pliny, Epist. x.96.3.


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Secondly, the Sardinian inscription (P & P (1964), 26).3a I ignored this as irrelevant: it reveals an entirely diVerent situation, and the text actually underlines Mr. Sherwin-White’s inability to cite any direct evidence. Here the proconsul does indeed accuse the Galillenses of disobedience, to an actual judicial decision (‘nec parentes decreto suo’), and of contumacia (even longa contumacia, deWance of repeated orders to clear out), and he threatens that if the situation continues he will treat them as guilty of seditio. How convenient it would be for Mr. Sherwin-White if he could quote even a few statements of this sort in relation to the persecution of Christians, as his theory demands that he should! But there is in fact no evidence that Christians were ever executed because they were guilty of ‘disobedience’. When Mr. Sherwin-White says there are ‘no later oYcial documents’ in which his favourite expression ‘contumacia’ might appear, he forgets that ‘the early martyr-acts, . . . written in the format of a Roman court-record’ (P & P (1964), 23), sometimes preserve the actual words spoken by the magistrate trying the case. Here the sentence on the Scillitan martyrs is very signiWcant: the proconsul says, ‘quoniam oblata sibi facultate ad Romanorum morem redeundi obstinanter perseveraverunt’4—not that they ‘disobeyed an order’, but that they ‘obstinately persevered, although given an opportunity of returning to Roman behaviour’. What I have called ‘the sacriWce test’ (see pp. 124–8 above) was indeed originally a privilege oVered to those who were prepared to apostatize, or who denied being Christians, to enable them to prove their detachment from the Christian superstitio. 2. On the second question, Mr. Sherwin-White has not paid attention to what his sources (Suetonius, Tacitus and Pliny) actually say. His ‘maleWcia’ can only refer to Suetonius, Nero 16.2, where, however, only the corresponding adjective appears, with a signiWcant diVerence of emphasis. Suetonius calls Christians a ‘genus hominum superstitionis novae ac maleWcae’ [‘a class of men from a new and evil superstition’]. His attention is concentrated upon the actual religion, the superstitio: this itself he regards as ‘maleWca’, as a likely cause of evil-doing. 3a [Text in E. M. Smallwood, Documents Illustrating the Principates of Gaius, Claudius and Nero (Cambridge, 1967), 392; trans. in B. Levick, The Government of the Roman Empire, 2nd edn. (London, 2000), no. 53.] 4 Passio SS. Scillitan. 14.

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In Tacitus (Annals, xv.44.3–5, 8, in Furneaux’ edition) it is again precisely the superstitio which is detestable (‘exitiabilis’), an evil (‘malum’, to be classed with ‘atrocia aut pudenda’ [‘atrocious and shameful acts’]). Although Tacitus describes the Christians as ‘hated for their abominations’, and doubtless himself shared the belief in their ‘Xagitia’ [‘disgraceful acts’] which he attributes to the common herd, and although he calls the Christians ‘guilty and deserving exemplary punishment’, he evidently did not believe the Christians Wred Rome (as Mr. Sherwin-White admits in his 1952 article, p. 208); and—the essential point—unless Tacitus is misleading us, the government did not believe this either!5 The government, then, was not persecuting the Christians for a crime it believed them to have committed. The evidence of Tacitus here may be recalcitrant to precise analysis; but such as it is it merely shows the government persecuting the Christians (primarily as incendiaries) because the populace believed them guilty of abominations and would therefore be the readier to suppose them guilty of starting the Wre. Fortunately, the evidence of Pliny can be pressed, and is conclusive. There is not the least suggestion in Pliny’s letter or in Trajan’s reply that on this occasion the ‘Xagitia’ were actually the ground of persecution, although Pliny was prepared to regard persecution for ‘Xagitia’ as a theoretical possibility (§ 2 of his letter). Pliny executed the confessors for the ‘Name’, without any evidence of ‘Xagitia’, or indeed of anything except their confession that they were Christians, and he later discovered (from apostates) that there were no ‘Xagitia’. He nevertheless, in the acknowledged absence of ‘Xagitia’, still regarded Christianity as something disgusting; but again, as with Suetonius and Tacitus, it is the religion itself, the superstitio, which is abhorrent: it is ‘prava, immodica’ (§ 8 of his letter). Even Last, on p. 91 of the article recommended by Mr. Sherwin-White,5a had to admit that Pliny is ‘far . . . from proving that the denial of the Roman gods was not the essence of the Christian oVence’. At Wrst Pliny had not felt certain what it was customary to do about Christians (note the word ‘soleat’ in § 1 of his letter). Among 5 See the treatment of the expression ‘subdidit reos’ by Beaujeu, on pp. 16–17 of the work cited in n. 10 to my article [p. 108 n. 10 above]. 5a H. Last, ‘The Study of the Persecutions’, JRS 27 (1937), 80–92.


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other things, he says he did not know whether he ought to punish (1) for the ‘Name’ alone, even in the absence of ‘Xagitia’, or (2) for the ‘Xagitia’. The vital diVerence, which commentators seldom bring out, is that (1) punishment for the ‘Name’ alone (a) would be inXicted for the mere confession of Christianity, but on the other hand (b) could be avoided by denial or apostasy, demonstrated by sacriWcing, whereas (2) punishment for the ‘Xagitia’ (a) would involve an inquisition into their nature, but (b) presumably, if ‘Xagitia’ were discovered (or invented), the guilty could not escape by merely apostatizing from Christianity. We must distinguish between three categories among those accused before Pliny as Christians: some proved to be confessors (§§ 2–4 of his letter), others denied that they had ever been Christians (§ 5), others again had apostatized or were ready to do so (§ 6). After some hesitation, Pliny decided in practice to consider the charges both against confessors and against outright deniers as being in respect of the ‘Name’ alone; and he clearly hoped that Trajan would allow him to apply exactly the same policy to apostates as to deniers (§§ 6–10). It was to this course of conduct, in relation to all three categories (confessors, deniers and apostates), that Trajan, betraying no surprise at the absence of ‘Xagitia’, explicitly gave his oYcial approval. (It looks to me as if Mr. Sherwin-White has not fully realized this: cf. P & P (1964), 24.) It is most signiWcant that deniers and (by Trajan’s rescript) even apostates were allowed to escape by accepting the sacriWce test: this is yet another proof that the ‘Xagitia’ were not nearly as important as Mr. Sherwin-White thinks—if you take charges of cannibalism seriously, you do not pardon the cannibals simply because they tear up their membership cards of the Cannibals’ Club. Again, it was having the ‘superstitio’ which made the Christians dangerous, and abandoning the ‘superstitio’ removed the cause of oVence: get them to give up Christianity, and the likelihood of their wanting to go in for ‘Xagitia’ would disappear. This makes excellent sense of the Roman attitude, which on Mr. Sherwin-White’s version of the facts is unreasonable in the extreme. In view of the scantiness of the evidence, no one could safely deny that belief in ‘Xagitia’ supposedly committed by Christians may have been a factor, on occasion perhaps an important factor, inducing the government to persecute. But the evidence to which

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Mr. Sherwin-White himself appeals aVords no basis for taking the ‘Xagitia’ as the only element, or even the main element, in the mind of the government, although it still leaves open the possibility that the ‘Xagitia’ may have played an important role in the minds of ordinary folk. Only in so far as the government felt it necessary to give in to popular demands for persecution motivated in this way can we conWdently put particular emphasis on the ‘Xagitia’ as a factor inXuencing the government.6 But apart from the fact that the Christian superstitio was itself the objectionable thing, there is no direct evidence for the ground of persecution in the early days, so far as the government is concerned. I am myself inclined to think that riots— especially with Jews—caused by Christian preaching (see n. 7 to my article [p. 107 n. 7 above]) and perhaps provocative acts committed by early enthusiasts (see pp. 131–3 above, on ‘voluntary martyrdom’) may have played an important part. It is when we look at the behaviour of the Roman government over the centuries7 (undeterred by Mr. Sherwin-White’s description of this as ‘beginning at the end and working backwards’) that we Wnd reason to attribute a major role to the Christians’ total rejection of the whole of Roman ‘religio’, summed up in the charge of ‘atheism’. The onus is on those who deny the early importance of this long-lasting element to produce reasons why it should have arisen only after Pliny’s day, when all that we know of Roman religion would lead us to expect its appearance very soon after Christianity Wrst attracted the attention of the government. I wonder why Mr. Sherwin-White interprets § 10 of Pliny’s letter to mean that it was only ‘subsequently’ (some time after his persecution began) that Pliny ‘became concerned at the reported neglect of civic cults due to the inXuence of the Christians’. How can he possibly know this? Pliny says (perhaps with some exaggeration) that the temples, which had been almost empty, were beginning to be frequented again. This, says Mr. Sherwin-White (n. 3), ‘refers to the situation some time after the measures reported by him in §§ 1–6’. But it is only the revival of the cults which we can thus date. And 6 Here, some pertinent remarks have been made by A. Ronconi, in the last paragraph of his paper referred to in n. 79 to my article [p. 122 n. 79 above]. 7 See esp. n. 139 to my article [p. 137 n. 139 above].


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Pliny goes on to say something Mr. Sherwin-White fails to repeat: that the sacred rites which had long been allowed to lapse (‘diu intermissa’) were being renewed, and the Xesh of the sacred victims was again being sold. We cannot know when Pliny ‘became concerned’, but in view of the words ‘diu intermissa’ we may well think it likely that the neglect of the traditional observances was something that forced itself on Pliny’s notice soon after his arrival in the area. However, my point is not so much that this may have inXuenced Pliny in deciding whether to persecute (on this we have no information), but that Pliny, in his tactful attempt to get Trajan to approve the policy he had followed, laid great emphasis on the religious revival he had brought about, which he evidently believed would weigh with the emperor. That anyone can say the government behaved to Christianity ‘exactly as it did towards other ‘‘superstitions’’ ’ is incomprehensible to me. The devotees of what other ‘superstitio’ did the Romans ever execute as such whenever anyone brought a charge against them of holding that superstition? The answer, of course, is None. Mr. Sherwin-White should reXect in particular upon the details of the suppression of the ‘Bacchanalia’ in b.c. 186.8 Here, (1) punishment was inXicted not for professing adherence to the cult, or even taking part in it, but for committing ‘Xagitia’; (2) the cult was not made altogether illegal but was sanctioned even at the time to devotees already committed to it, in small groups of not more than Wve members, if they obtained the permission of the senate; and (3) later, the Bacchic cult was freely tolerated. Actions taken by Rome against other cults (that of Isis, for example) were equally short-lived and always for speciWc abuses, and they contrast equally strongly with the permanent ban on the mere profession of Christianity. Mr. Sherwin-White would do well to re-read a very useful work to which he himself appeals as if it fully supported his theories: that of E. G. Hardy (cited in his n. 4, and more familiar to most people as the 8 For which see A. H. McDonald, in Jl. of Rom. Stud. xxxiv (1944), at pp. 26–31, with full references. [R. A. Bauman, ‘The Suppression of the Bacchanals: Five Questions’, Historia, 39 (1990), 334–48; E. S. Gruen, ‘The Bacchanalian AVair’, in Studies in Greek Culture and Roman Policy (Berkeley, 1990), 34–78; P. G. Walsh, ‘Making a Drama out of a Crisis: Livy on the Bacchanalia’, Greece and Rome, 34.2 (1996), 188–203.]

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Wrst section of Hardy’s Studies in Roman History, i, London, 1906, 1910). Here he will Wnd a point of view rather diVerent from his own. ‘The Christians’, says Hardy, ‘subsequently to, as before [my italics], the rescript of Trajan were punished generally for the name, i.e. . . . for the inherent disloyalty to the state involved in their IŁ [atheism], and manifested in the obstinatio with which they clung to it’ (Studies, 2nd edn., p. 101, cf. 13). This is much nearer the truth. Christianity, unlike all the various forms of paganism, which enjoyed ‘peaceful co-existence’ among themselves, would never countenance other religions: this was surely the heart of its unique oVence— against the gods and therefore against the state. Toleration of a very ancient idiosyncrasy of the national faith of the Jews (cf. p. 135 above) could not be extended to the potentially dangerous innovations of a missionary superstitio.

4 Voluntary Martyrdom in the Early Church In considering the relation between early Christianity and its environment, historians have paid far too little attention to the phenomenon which I shall call voluntary martyrdom. By a volunteer martyr, or volunteer, I mean a Christian who deliberately and unnecessarily provoked persecution and thus sought a death which he might have avoided without any sacriWce of Christian principle. There is suYcient evidence to show that voluntary martyrdom was by no means conWned to heretical or schismatic sects but, although frowned upon by the dominant section of opinion in the Catholic Church, was a great deal more common among the orthodox than the Christian apologists have cared to admit. In all probability quite a substantial proportion of the ‘noble army of martyrs’ of the Wrst three centuries consisted of volunteers and those whom I shall presently deWne as ‘quasi-volunteers’. It is impossible to doubt that the prevalence of voluntary martyrdom was a factor which both contributed towards the outbreak of persecution and tended to intensify it when it was already in progress. In my class of voluntary martyrs, as I have deWned them, I include only those who (a) explicitly demanded the privilege of martyrdom; or (b) came forward of their own accord in times of persecution and made a public confession of Christianity which was bound to lead to instant execution; or (c) by some deliberate act—destroying images, for example, or assaulting a provincial governor while he was sacriWcing—clearly invited arrest and execution. Intermediate between these volunteers and the ordinary martyrs are those whom [This collection of evidence was put together in the late 1950s, and served to underpin the brief discussion in Past and Present (1963), 21–4 (Ch. 3, pp. 129–33).]

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I shall call ‘quasi-volunteers’. These fall into three groups: I. those in whom we cannot demonstrate a conscious desire for martyrdom for its own sake, but who were rigorists of one kind or another, going beyond the general practice of the Church in their opposition to some aspect of pagan society—for example, Christian paciWsts who refused military service; II. those who without, as far as we know, actually demanding or inviting martyrdom, deliberately and unnecessarily attracted attention to themselves, for example by ministering openly to arrested confessors, and hence brought about their own arrest; III. martyrs who are not recorded to have been directly responsible for their own arrest, but who after being arrested behaved with deliberate contumacy at their trial. Being Christian confessors, they would probably have been put to death in any event, but some of them brought upon themselves particularly unpleasant forms of execution. It is diYcult to decide how one should regard those Christians who, after being arrested, or in fear of arrest or of some violation of their chastity, deliberately committed suicide, ‘religious suicide’ as I shall call it. I will not in fact be treating them as volunteers or quasivolunteers, nor have I attempted to record them all. Their motives are seldom, if ever, known to us: sometimes they may have been actuated by a very understandable desire to escape a possibly lingering and painful death, or may have feared that when subjected to torture they would deny their faith and thus destroy their immortal souls. Sometimes, on the other hand, especially when a neurotically sexual element is present, one may suspect the existence of some pathological yearning for death, which is so evident in some of the voluntary martyrs. Anyone who concerns himself seriously (as I do not feel qualiWed to do) with the psychological aspects of martyrdom must obviously take these cases into account. I shall limit myself to giving a brief account of the ‘oYcial’ attitude of the Church on this question. My principal aim in this paper is to show that a large body of evidence exists for voluntary martyrdom. I shall therefore set out this evidence, in three parts: Wrst, the passages in which the practice is condemned by leaders of orthodox opinion; second, the evidence for individual volunteers, including quasi-volunteers, roughly in chronological order; third, some other relevant material,

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including a discussion of Jewish antecedents. Finally, I shall draw some conclusions.

OYcial Disapproval of Voluntary Martyrdom In trying to state the oYcial attitude of the Church towards voluntary martyrdom we are confronted from the Wrst with an obvious conXict between theory and practice, between the verdict on principle by particular churches, clerics, and at least one episcopal council, and the attitude actually adopted by the Catholic Church towards numerous individual volunteers. Apart from the works of heretics and schismatics, including Tertullian in his later, Montanist, phase,1 I know of no open advocacy or approval of voluntary martyrdom in principle by any surviving Christian writer of the Wrst few centuries, apart perhaps from two situations in which it is sometimes countenanced. First, where a lapsed Christian repents and wishes to atone immediately for his fall,2 and, second, where one of the faithful sees other believers on the point of lapsing and hopes to prevent this by making a voluntary confession at the decisive moment.3 Certainly the practice of voluntary martyrdom was repeatedly condemned in general terms, as we shall see. This is natural enough and eminently sensible during the pagan Empire, when an act of provocation might endanger both the individual concerned and the Christian community—the individual because he might lapse under torture, and the community because a persecution (at any rate a local one), or an intensiWcation of persecution, might well follow. However, the treatment of individual 1 For such heretical views, see below, pp. 191–2. 2 See Peter of Alexandria, Ep. Can. 8. [Cyprian also argued that the lapsed could gain pardon by making a public confession, the consequences of which could range from exile to execution; see Ep. 19.2.3; Eps. 24 (Caldonius to Cyprian) and 25; Ep. 55.4.1–2, 7.1, 16.3; De Lapsis 36. See further G. W. Clarke, ‘Double-Trials in the Persecution of Decius’, Historia, 22 (1973), 650–63, at 656–7, and his commentary and translation of Cyprian’s letters, The Letters of St. Cyprian, 4 vols. (Ancient Christian Writers 43–7; New York, 1984–9). Note, however, that such acts only win pardon for Catholics. Schismatics cannot be martyrs (De Ecclesiae Catholicae Unitate 14).] 3 The only authority I can quote for this exception is Peter of Alexandria, Ep. Can. 11 (if I have interpreted it correctly). A good example would be Eusebius, HE 6.41.22–3 [and perhaps MP, Long Recension, 1.5 e–h; see n. 78 below].

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volunteers is not at all what the general statements about voluntary martyrdom might lead us to expect: the deeds of very many were evidently remembered with enthusiasm by the faithful and they are certainly recorded without disapproval in the sources, which virtually never make an adverse comment upon any particular volunteer who remained steadfast to the end. It is incorrect to say that ‘Christians who deliberately courted martyrdom were denied the name of martyr’.4 This curious contradiction between theory and practice has largely escaped the notice of historians. Thus Le Blant, in an address delivered in 1875, could say, ‘Dans le camp des chre´tiens . . . la foule avait ses entraıˆnements, et, trop facilement parfois, saluait comme des martyres des personnages que l’E´glise se refusait a` inscrire au nombre de ses saints’ [‘in the Christian camp . . . the crowd had its passions, and sometimes too easily hailed as martyrs those whom the Church itself refused to include among its saints’] without acknowledging that the Church frequently capitulated to the masses.5 Rather more recently Delehaye has written, ‘Nos texts donnent l’impression que, sauf le cas d’he´re´sie, la mort he´roı¨que du martyr arreˆtait sur les le`vres du juge eccle´siastique le reproche que son inconside´ration aurait me´riteé . . . Les tourments et la mort subis sans de´faillance pour la vraie foi, e´taient, en pratique, le seul crite`re du martyre’ [‘Our texts give the impression that, excepting the case of heretics, the heroic death of a martyr would stop the ecclesiastical judge from voicing the reproach that his lack of consideration should have deserved . . . in practice, the only criteria for a martyr were the torments and death suVered without weakness for the true faith’].6 The explanation may 4 Thus H. Chadwick in his excellent translation of Origen, Contra Celsum (Cambridge, 1953), 501 n. 3. To the same eVect see E. Le Blant, ‘Polyeucte et le ze`le te´me´raire’, in Me´moires de l’Institut Nationale de France, Acade´mie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres, 28 (1876), 335–52, at 335: ‘Selon les rigoureuses lois de la discipline des anciens aˆges, Polyeucte ne serait pas un martyr; l’acte meˆme de violence qui a illustre´ sa me´moire l’exclurait de tout droit a` ce titre’ [‘According to the strict rules and requirements in ancient times, Polyeucte would not be a martyr; the very act of violence which made his memory famous would exclude him from all right to this title’; on Polyeuctes, see below, p. 169 and n. 21]. 5 E. Le Blant, ‘Polyeucte et le ze`le te´me´raire’, 337. 6 H. Delehaye, Sanctus: Essai sur le culte des saints dans l’Antiquite´ (Subsidia Hagiographica 17; Brussels, 1927), 167, 169.


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be correct as far as it goes, but it does not go far enough: it fails to explain the contradiction between theory and practice. We still need to ask why voluntary martyrdom was condemned unequivocally if virtually every successful volunteer received as much veneration as an ordinary martyr. If the Church was prepared to forgive, and even applaud, all such infractions of discipline, why did it condemn them without qualiWcation beforehand? Why did it not merely issue a warning against the dangers of volunteering for martyrdom, both to the individuals concerned and to their church? The answer, surely, is that in practically all cases of voluntary martyrdom the mass of simple believers forced the hand of their more intelligent and worldly-wise leaders and insisted on having the volunteers venerated just like other martyrs.7 The evidence for condemnation of voluntary martyrdom down to the time of the Great Persecution can conveniently be presented in roughly chronological order. 1. Passio Polycarpi 4; Eusebius, HE 4.15.7–8. In the persecution at Smyrna just before the reign of Marcus Aurelius in which Polycarp suVered,8 a Phrygian named Quintus, accompanied by some others whom he had induced to follow him, came forward voluntarily to oVer himself to the authorities as a Christian; but his courage failed him and under threat of torture he apostasized. What the others 7 [This is a slightly unconvincing explanation, not least because it fails to explain why Christian writers should have included accounts of voluntary martyrs if there was such consensus amongst the elite concerning their proper status. It seems to me more convincing simply to accept it as a contradiction between theory and practice, one that cannot be divided into elite and popular elements. On the shortcomings of such a ‘two-tiered’ model see P. Brown, The Cult of the Saints (Chicago, 1981), esp. 17–22; Arnaldo Momigliano’s ‘Popular Beliefs and the Late Roman Historian’, in Studies in Church History, 8 (1971), 1–18 is often cited in this context, although it should be noted that he does not dismiss the model as such, but disagrees with its application to late antiquity.] 8 [The date is much disputed. Eusebius places it in the reign of Marcus Aurelius, which is supported by H. Gre´goire and P. Orgels, ‘La Ve´ritable Date du martyre de S. Polycarpe (23 fe´vrier 177) et le ‘‘Corpus Polycarpianum’’ ’, AB 69 (1951), 1–38 and more recently by P. Brind’ Amour, ‘La Date du martyre de Saint Polycarpe (le 23 fe´vrier 167)’, AB 98 (1980), 456–62. However, his dating is not always reliable (see, for instance, the Passio Pionii, at n. 55 below) and it is more convincingly placed in the mid- to late- 150s. See T. D. Barnes, ‘Pre-Decian Acta Martyrum’, JTS 19 (1968), 509–31, at 512–13; and J. Lieu, Image and Reality: The Jews in the World of the Christians in the Second Century (Edinburgh, 1996), 72–3.]

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accompanying him may have done we are not told. The church at Smyrna, in whose letter the Passion of Polycarp is preserved, expresses its disapproval of this action as contrary to the advice of the Gospel. The reference is no doubt to Matthew 10: 23 [‘when they persecute you in this city, Xee into another’], a text often cited in this connection.9 2. Clement of Alexandria, Strom. 4.4.17.1–3; 4.10.76.1–77.3; 7.11.66.3–67.2 (about ad 200). Clement condemns the practice of voluntary martyrdom in the most vigorous terms in three separate passages. He defends the orthodox position against the Gnostics who deprecated physical martyrdom as a form of suicide (Strom. 4.4.16.3), and at the same time rebukes volunteers with a most ingenious argument (Strom. 4.10.77.1): they become accomplices in the crime of those who put them to death, an accusation which is diYcult to resist on logical grounds. There is nothing whatever in Clement’s polemic to suggest that the volunteers he had in mind were ‘heretics’.10 3. Tertullian, De Corona Militis 1.4.4–5. In one of the most aggressive works of his later phase, written (perhaps in 211) after he had become a Montanist,11 Tertullian reveals that the orthodox Christians of Africa were perturbed by the openly anti-militarist tendencies of the Montanists, which were endangering the then satisfactory situation of the African Church. Praising a fanatical soldier who had been executed for refusing to wear a wreath at the distribution of a donative (and who would therefore fall into our category of quasi-volunteers of type I), Tertullian denounces those Catholic Christians who had passed strictures on the soldier ‘ut de 9 Cf. also Matt. 26: 41; 6: 13; 26: 47. Cited by Peter of Alexandria, Ep. Can. 9, and Quirinus, bishop of Siscia, on being arrested while in Xight from his see, probably in 308 (Passio Quirini 2, T. Ruinart, Acta primorum martyrum sincera et selecta (1689; ed. Ratisbon, 1859), 522–3). Origen, Contra Celsum 8.44, evidently has this text in mind when he says that a Christian who Xees from persecution is observing the commandment of his Master. 10 As asserted by M. M. Hassett, ‘Martyr’, in The Catholic Encyclopedia, ix (New York, 1910), 736–40, at 737. 11 [T. D. Barnes originally dated this work to 208, but later conceded that this was too early; note, however, that Ste. Croix’s caution in suggesting 211 is well justiWed. See Barnes, Tertullian: A Historical and Literary Study, 2nd edn. (Oxford, 1985), 37 and 328.]


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abrupto et praecipiti et mori cupido, qui de habitu interrogatus nomini negotium fecerit’ [‘as being headstrong and rash, and too eager to die, because in being interrogated about a matter of dress, he brought trouble on the Christian name’] and had complained ‘that a peace so good and long is endangered for them’. The orthodox had good cause for anxiety in the activities of such men, and in this pamphlet of Tertullian, who was in eVect exhorting Christian soldiers to desert—as Gibbon put it, ‘a counsel which, if it had been generally known, was not very proper to conciliate the favour of the emperors towards the Christian sect’.12 4. Origen, Comm. in Johannem 28.23 (18), written perhaps about ad 232–5, also rebukes would-be volunteers, and at some length, using much the same arguments as Clement and appealing to numerous texts of Scripture. This passage, in the mature Origen, is all the more weighty in that Origen himself, when a mere boy, is said to have been on the verge of becoming a voluntary martyr.13 5. Passio Cypriani 1.5 (ad 257). Cyprian tells the proconsul that church discipline does not allow the presbyters of Carthage to give themselves up of their own accord, but that he will Wnd them if he seeks them out. Cyprian’s attitude is commended by Augustine, Contra Gaudentium 1.31.40. 6. Cyprian, Ep. 81.1.4 (ad 258): ‘Let no one among you stir up any trouble for the brethren or oVer himself up to the Gentiles of his own volition.’14 7. Commodian, Instr. 2.21 (‘Martyrium volenti’), writing probably in the second half of the third century, urges those who would rush into martyrdom to be satisWed instead with living the good life.15 8. Council of Elvira, Canon 60 (either c.300 or towards 320). Anyone who smashes an idol is not to be counted as a martyr. The

12 E. Gibbon, Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (ed. J. B. Bury, London, 1909–14), i. 482 n. 102. See also H. Gre´goire, Les Persećutions dans l’Empire romain, 2nd edn. (Me´moires de l’Acade´mie royale de Belgique, Classe des Lettres 56.5; Brussels, 1964), 31–3. 13 See below, pp. 168–9. 14 [Trans. G. W. Clarke, The Letters of St. Cyprian, iv. 105–6, slightly modiWed.] 15 Cf. Instr. 2.7 (‘Fideles cavete malum’), lines 14–18, where Commodian expresses his view that ‘multa sunt martyria, quae sunt sine sanguine fuso’ [‘there are many martyrdoms which occur without blood being shed’].

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practice is not warranted by the Gospel and was unknown in the Apostolic Age.16 9. Lactantius, DMP 13.2.3, speaks of the man who tore down Diocletian’s Wrst persecuting edict when it was posted up in Nicomedia on 24 February 303 as acting non recte, and unfeelingly says that he was legitime coctus.17 Eusebius on the other hand is sympathetic to this martyr (HE 8.5), although he was in fact, of course, executed for an act of civil disobedience and only indirectly as a Christian. 10. Augustine, Brev. Coll. 3.13.25. Mensurius, bishop of Carthage, writing in ad 304–5 to Secundus the bishop of Tigisis, says he has forbidden his Xock to honour those ‘who gave themselves up of their own accord and volunteered that they possessed Scriptures which they would not hand over, when no one had asked them to do so’.18 Mensurius also refers uncharitably to ‘criminals or debtors to the treasury, who took advantage of the persecution, wishing to be rid of a life burdened by many debts, or thought they could thus purge and wash away their crimes19—or at any rate make money and live like Wghting cocks in prison on the charity of the Christians’.20 11. Peter of Alexandria, Ep. Can. (Easter ad 306). Four of the Wfteen canons (numbers 8–11) refer to voluntary confessors. They are in general mildly censured (Canon 9) for ignoring the precepts of Jesus.21 Peter expresses himself rather obscurely at places, but it appears that he countenanced voluntary confession only when 16 [On the date of the Council of Elvira, see further, Ch. 2.] 17 Possibly Eutherius, whose martyrdom at Nicomedia on 24 Feb. is recorded in the Syriac martyrologies: see H. Delehaye, Les Origines du culte des martyrs, 2nd edn. (Subsidia Hagiographica 20; Brussels, 1933), 148. 18 Failure to hand over sacred books was almost certainly the only capital oVence of which Christians could be guilty in Africa, where it is very unlikely that any but the Wrst of the persecuting edicta of Diocletian and his colleagues had been published: see ‘Aspects’ [above, Ch. 1, pp. 46–53]. 19 The early Christian Church saw the martyrs as assessors in the divine judgement, and believed that their ‘baptism of blood’ had wiped away all their sins, even the sins of those who, as mere catechumens, had not yet received baptism in the ordinary way; see Hippolytus, Apost. Trad. 19.2. 20 Trans. by A. H. M. Jones, Constantine and the Conversion of Europe, rev. edn. (Harmondsworth, 1972), 108. 21 And see Canon 10, which is particularly diYcult to interpret but must refer to clerics who oVered themselves up (see the commentaries of Balsamon and Zonaras, printed alongside the English translation in the Ante-Nicene Christian Library 14


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undertaken by those who had lapsed but repented (Canon 8), or by those who wished to set an example to prevent others from lapsing (Canon 11).22 Peter refuses to condemn those who had left everything and Xed (Canon 13).23 In the Christian Empire few opportunities for voluntary martyrdom presented themselves, and references to it are correspondingly uncommon. The orthodox attitude is stated brieXy by Gregory of Nazianzus (Or. 43.6): ‘It is the custom of martyrdom for people not to go as volunteers to the contest . . . nor when present to withdraw—for the one is the mark of rashness, the other of cowardice’. The same sentiments are expressed in more detail by Athanasius (Apologia de Fuga Sua 22 [31]), who disapproves of ‘rashly tempting the Lord’ and regards Xight from persecution as a divine law.24 The practice of the blessed martyrs, he says, was to Xee, but to submit to martyrdom when discovered. It is interesting at this point to Wnd him suddenly changing his ground. If, he says, some of the martyrs oVered themselves up to the persecutors, they did not do so without reason: they demonstrated by their deaths that their oVering up of themselves was from the Spirit.25 (Edinburgh, 1869), 292–322). [On the general context of Peter’s letter, see T. D. Barnes, Constantine and Eusebius (Cambridge, Mass., 1981), 201–2, and D. Potter, The Roman Empire at Bay AD 180–395 (London, 2004), 411–13. For editions see Ch. 1 n. 44.] 22 See above, p. 155. 23 He cites Acts 12: 4, 18–19; 19: 26–30; Gen. 19: 17; Matt. 2: 13–16. [See also his letter (although it is possibly apocryphal) to Apollonius the bishop of Sioout, who had apparently lapsed into idolatry; Peter admonishes him, and confesses to being ‘at a loss about you, where your wits have gone, that you have not had the wit to turn back and escape, and have not had the wit to exercise yourself and escape by means of [others] who have their wits about them, before you were ruined’. See J. Barns and H. Chadwick, ‘A Letter ascribed to Peter of Alexandria’, JTS 24 (1973), 443–55, at 454. Note too that his Canonical Epistle should be read against his own Xight following the publication of Diocletian’s Wrst persecuting edict in 303.] 24 [On the relationship of this text to the rest of Athanasius’ thought, see A. Petterson, ‘To Xee or not to Xee: An assessment of Athanasius’ de Fuga Sua’, Studies in Church History, 21 (1984), 29–42; for the general background, see T. D. Barnes, Athanasius and Constantius: Theology and Politics in the Constantinian Empire (Cambridge, Mass., 1993), 124–6.] 25 [To these might be added the earlier example of Lactantius, Div. Inst. 4.18.1–2, who states that Christ Xed from persecution as a lesson to future Christians. On this passage, see O. Nicholson, ‘Flight from Persecution as Imitation of Christ: Lactantius’ Divine Institutes IV.18.1–2’, JTS 40.1 (1989), 48–65.]

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The mid-Wfth-century ecclesiastical historian Theodoret expresses mild disapproval of the destruction of a Persian Wre temple in ad 419–20 by, according to the story,26 a bishop named Abdas, who then refused to obey an order from the Persian king Yazdgard I to rebuild the temple, and thus brought about his own martyrdom and a persecution which aZicted the Church in Persia for thirty years (HE 5.39.3). However, Theodoret cannot bring himself to condemn Abdas altogether: he says he much admires him and thinks him worthy of the martyr’s crown. The Western Fathers of the fourth to the sixth century rarely mention voluntary martyrdom except, of course, in relation to sectarian fanatics such as the Donatist Circumcellions, to be mentioned later, against whom are aimed the Second Canon of the Council of Carthage of ad 348–9 and some of Augustine’s polemical writings.27 Augustine certainly implicitly condemned the practice of oVering oneself up for martyrdom when, as we have already noticed, he applauds the statement of Cyprian that church discipline did not allow the Carthaginian presbyters to give themselves up of their own accord. Ambrose is much more explicit: although martyrdom must be eagerly accepted if it oVers itself, it must not be rashly sought out, for there is a danger that the volunteer may be betrayed by his own weakness or bring down a persecution upon the Christian community.28 Jerome twice emphasizes that 26 But see J. Labourt, Le Christianisme dans l’empire Perse sous la dynastie Sassanide, 224–632 (Paris, 1904), 105–7, and P. Peeters, ‘Une passion armeńienne des SS. Abdas, Hormisdas, Saˆhıˆn (Sueres) at Benjamin’, AB 28 (1909), 399–415, who makes use of other sources, notably the Syriac Passion of Abdas, according to which the destruction of the Wre temple was the work of a presbyter, Hasu. [See also L. Van Rompay, ‘Impetuous Martyrs? The Situation of the Persian Christians in the Last Years of Yazdgard I (419–420)’, in M. Lamberigts and P. Van Deun (eds.), Martyrium in Multidisciplinary Perspective: Memorial Louis Reekmans (Louvain, 1995), 363–75, at 365–7.] 27 Mansi, Sacrorum Conciliorum nova et amplissima collectio, iii (Florence, 1759), 143 V., 151 V.; summarized in Hefele–Leclercq, Histoire des conciles, i (Paris, 1907), 837–41; Augustine, Contra Epistolam Parmeniani 1.10.16; Contra Gaudentium 1.22.25, 1.27.30, and 1.28.32; Eps. 88.8, 185.3.12. [See further the bibliography in E. Lepelley, ‘Circumcelliones’, in C. Mayer (ed.), Augustinus-Lexicon, i (Basel, 1986–94), 930–6.] 28 Ambrose, De OYciis Ministrorum 2.30.153, laudabilis mortis cum occasio datur, rapienda est illico [‘should the opportunity arise to die a death that will bring you great praise, seize it there and then’; trans. I. J. Davidson]; see also 1.37.187, 1.42.208.


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martyrdom is worthless if it is undertaken for the sake of the honour and glory (Comm. in Ep. ad Galat. 5.14, 26; PG 26.410, 424). It is convenient at this point to draw attention to some interesting remarks by Augustine (CD 1.16–28) and Ambrose (De Virginibus 3.7.32–6) on one particular variety of what I have called ‘religious suicide’.29 Faced with the problem of whether virtuous Christian women in danger of being raped by barbarian Vandals might lawfully escape violation by committing suicide, or after being raped might follow the example of Lucretia, Augustine denounces all such practices; and he enlarges the scope of his discussion to include even cases in which a Christian commits suicide to avoid ‘rushing into sin through the allurement of pleasure or the intensity of pain’. However, it is signiWcant of the division of opinion on such questions within the Christian community that he feels obliged to make an honourable exception of certain holy women who, in time of persecution, had drowned themselves in their determination to preserve their pudicitia,30 and were honoured as martyrs by the Catholic Church. As Augustine uncomfortably says, ‘concerning these I am reluctant to make any rash comment’; perhaps they acted, like Samson, ‘under God’s orders, not in error but obedient’ (CD 1.26). Augustine must be referring here to the three well-born ladies of Antioch, left anonymous in the narrative of Eusebius (HE 8.12.2–4) whose names were traditionally Domnina, Bernice, and Prosdoce. The attitude of

29 See above, p. 154. On attitudes towards suicide in antiquity, see M. RostovtzeV, The Social and Economic History of the Hellenistic World, iii (Oxford, 1941), 1329 n. 31; H. A. Musurillo, The Acts of the Pagan Martyrs (Oxford, 1954), 236–7. Particularly interesting is Tacitus, Agricola 42.4–5. [The subsequent bibliography on this subject is large. See most recently T. D. Hill, Ambitiosa Mors: Suicide and the Self in Roman Thought and Literature (London, 2004); P. Plass, The Game of Death in Ancient Rome: Arena Sport and Political Suicide (Madison, 1995); A. Van HooV, From Autothanasia to Suicide: Self-Killing in Classical Antiquity (London, 1990); and M. GriYn, ‘Philosophy, Cato, and Roman Suicide’ I and II, Greece and Rome, 33 (1986), 64–77 and 192–202. On the parallels between Christian martyrdom and suicide, see G. Bowersock, Martyrdom and Rome (Cambridge, 1995), 59–74.] 30 On condemnation to a brothel as a punishment for Christian women, see Eusebius, MP 5.3 following the numbering of H. J. Lawlor and J. E. L. Oulton, Eusebius (London, 1928), i. 327–400; add Ambrose, De Virginibus 2.22–33; John Chrysostom as cited below n. 35. The actual inXiction of the penalty was probably very rare indeed.

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Ambrose is even more ambiguous than that of Augustine. Dealing with the question of whether Christian virgins had a right to escape violation at the price of suicide, he praises a nameless virgin of Antioch who refused to save herself in that way when condemned to a brothel in time of persecution (De Virginibus 2.4.22–33); but when he goes on to tell the story of the suicide of certain Christian women in similar circumstances he carefully refrains from condemning their action.31 Jerome is more explicit: only when chastity is endangered should the prohibition against suicide be relaxed.32 Others, like Eusebius (HE 8.12.2–4, 8.14.16–17) and John Chrysostom, were warmly sympathetic to those who committed religious suicide.33 Chrysostom devoted two panegyrics to Domnina and her daughters,34 and at least one to Pelagia, a virgin of Antioch who was said to have thrown herself from a roof in order to escape arrest and possible prostitution.35 (It is worth noting that none of the women had been tried, let alone sentenced; and it is diYcult to believe that there was any real or immediate threat to their chastity.) Chrysostom insists that many other Christian women had similarly committed suicide to avoid arrest.36

Volunteers and Quasi-Volunteers I shall now present the evidence for individual acts of voluntary martyrdom. I do not pretend that this collection is complete, even 31 De Virginibus 3.7.33–6; cf. Ep. 37.38 (ad Simplicianum). Ambrose speaks of Pelagia and her mother and sisters: he seems to be combining the stories of Pelagia (see n. 35 below) and of Domnina, Bernice, and Prosdoce. 32 Jerome, Comm. in Jonam 1.402 (PL 25.1129A). 33 [It is important to note, however, that Chrysostom does not always consider ‘religious suicide’ a valid option: ‘the death of martyrs who kill [themselves] is an obvious defeat, yet of those who are murdered, a splendid victory’; Hom. in S. Jul. 3, trans. W. Mayer.] 34 Hom. in SS. Bernic. etc. (PG 50.629–40); Hom. in Quatrid. Lazarum et SS. Domnina etc. (PG 50.641–4). 35 Hom. in S. Pelag. I and II (PG 50.577–84). The ‘Hom. in S. Pelag. II’, ed. P. Franchi de’ Cavalieri in Studi e testi, 65 (1935), 301–3 is declared spurious (ibid. 281–300). On Pelagia, see H. Delehaye, Les Le´gendes hagiographiques, 4th edn. (Brussels, 1955), 186–95, against H. Usener, Legenden der heiligen Pelagia (Bonn, 1879). 36 Hom. in S. Pelag. 1.2 (PG 50.580), and see Eusebius, HE 8.12.2.


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within the limits I have set myself: it is quite possible that I have missed a number of examples. Moreover, because of the disfavour with which voluntary martyrdom was regarded by many leading members of the Church, it may well be that in some cases a voluntary act which really occurred was toned down or entirely suppressed when the written record of the martyrdom was compiled. I may say that I have deliberately omitted cases in which I am not satisWed with the evidence for the voluntary nature of the martyrdom—for instance, when it is recorded in a Passion of unhistorical character,37 or an untrustworthy literary source.38 Having regard to what seems to me the excessive veneration of martyrdom in many parts of the North African provinces, I have been particularly chary of accepting stories of voluntary martyrdoms from that area, unless there is particularly good evidence for them. St Salsa, an alleged volunteer at Tipasa, has been shown by Gre´goire to be wholly Wctitious,39 and I am very suspicious of other supposed North African volunteers such as Marciana at Mauretanian Caesarea.40 Nor have I paid any attention to the considerable quantity of late and Wctitious Passions in which the martyrs are made to behave in a provocative manner and abuse their judges. 1. At the end of the trial of Ptolemy before Q. Lollius Urbicus, praefectus urbi about ad 150, a Christian bystander whose name is given as Lucius reproached the prefect for having given an unjust sentence of death against an innocent man, and was immediately executed. Another Christian bystander also came forward to make his confession and was duly sentenced.41 2. I have already described the abortive attempt at voluntary martyrdom by Quintus the Phrygian at Smyrna, just before the 37 e.g. Rusticus and Proculus in Passio Firmi et Rustici (Ruinart, Acta, 636–42); the 37 Egyptian martyrs (Ruinart, Acta, 576–8). 38 e.g. Philemon in RuWnus, Historia Monachorum 19.4–11 [see the critical text of E. Schulz-Flu¨gel, Tyrannius RuWnus Historia Monachorum sive de Vita Sanctorum Patrum (Patristische Texte und Studien 34; Berlin, 1990)]. 39 H. Gre´goire, ‘Sainte Salsa, roman epigraphique’, Byzantion 12 (1937), 213–24. 40 Her Passio (Acta Sanctorum 9 January (vol. i, p. 569)) seems to preserve more historical reminiscences (see P. Monceaux, Histoire litte´raire de l’Afrique chre´tienne depuis les origines jusqu’a` l’invasion arabe, iii. 3 (Paris, 1905), 156–8) but cannot be trusted at any point. 41 Justin, Apol. 2.2, repeated in Eusebius, HE 4.17.8–13.

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reign of Marcus Aurelius.42 It is often forgotten that Quintus is said to have prevailed upon others to follow his example, kai . . . proselthein hekontas [‘and come forward willingly’]. We may perhaps infer that they were duly martyred, but this is left obscure. 3. Paeon, who was present in court during the trial of Justin and others at Rome in ad 165, came forward saying that he was a Christian and was beheaded with the rest.43 4. At the trial of Carpus and Papylus at Pergamum, perhaps during the early part of the reign of Marcus (ad 161–9),44 a Christian bystander named Agathonice45 made a voluntary confession and was burnt to death, fastening herself at the stake according to the Greek Passio, ‘un texte beaucoup trop vante´’ [‘a much overrated text’] according to Delehaye.46

42 Passio Polycarpi 4.1; Eusebius, HE 4.15.7–8. 43 Passio Justini 4.6. The word hesto¯s (he stood up) is decisive. 44 This is the date usually accepted, but it is far from certain. The Latin Passio puts the martyrdom tempore Decii imperatoris [‘in the time of the emperor Decius’]. [On the diYculties in dating this text, see T. D. Barnes, ‘Pre-Decian Acta Martyrum’, 514– 15, who argues that the question Principalis es? in the Latin recension suggests a 3rdcent. date, since there is a reference to this oYce in the Severan period in the Digest jurist Callistratus (Dig. 48.19.27.2–28), but this may well be the result of Justinianic editing. The Wrst documentary record is CJ 10.48.2 perhaps from 287, on which see S. Corcoran, The Empire of the Tetrarchs: Imperial Pronouncements and Government AD 284–324, rev. edn. (Oxford, 2000), 254–5. It is common in the Theodosian Code and is attested epigraphically in the 4th cent. (e.g. ILS 6623, IRT 559, 564, 567, and 595); see A. H. M. Jones, The Later Roman Empire, 284–602: A Social, Economic, and Administrative Survey (Oxford, 1964), 731 and V. Weber, ‘Die Munizipalaristokratie’, in K.-P. Johne (ed.), Gesellschaft und Wirtschaft des ro¨mischen Reiches im 3. Jahrhundert (Berlin, 1993), 245–317, esp. 303–4. Accordingly the use of principalis probably suggests a date from Diocletian onwards for the Latin recension. I would like to thank Benet Salway for his help with this problem. Of course the date of the Latin recension does not necessarily coincide with the actual martyrdom of Carpus, Papylus, et al. On this, see J. Den Boeft and J. Bremmer, who note that Papylus, a citizen of Thyatira, was tried in Pergamum (one of the assize centres of the Roman province of Asia), which they argue suggests a date before ad 215, when Caracalla granted the right to hold assizes to Thyatira; see their ‘Notiunculae martyrologicae II’, Vig. Chr. 36 (1982), 383–402, at 384–5.] 45 The expression used is Agathonike¯ de tı¯s hesto¯sa [‘There was a woman named Agathonice¯ standing there’]: Passio Carpi 42. 46 The Greek Passio Carpi 42–7; Delehaye, Sanctus, 168 n. 5. There may well be a lacuna in the Greek text: the cry of the crowd suggests that Agathonice was at any rate duly sentenced (as she is in the Latin text of the Passio) and did not simply rush into the Xames. [See also Den Boeft and Bremmer, ‘Notiunculae martyrologicae II’, 385.]


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5. During the persecution at Lugdunum (Lyons) in ad 177 two voluntary martyrs came forward to make their confession: Vettius Epagethus, who demanded to be heard in defence of his brethren at their trial and was immediately sentenced (Eusebius, HE 5.1.9–10); and Alexander, a doctor from Phrygia, who stood by the tribunal, encouraging the Christians accused by signs to confess, and was noticed by the crowd, brought before the governor, and sentenced to the beasts (Eusebius, HE 5.1.49–50). 6. When Arrius Antoninus, proconsul of Asia in about ad 184–5, was holding his periodic assize in one of the towns of this province, a large number of Christians—all the Christians of that town, according to Tertullian, but we must allow for his customary exaggeration—presented themselves in a body before him, demanding the privilege of martyrdom. The astonished governor ordered a few oV to execution, but contemptuously dismissed the remainder with the words, ‘If you want to die, you wretches, you can use ropes or precipices.’47 7. The future Pope and Saint, Callistus, is said by his bitter enemy and fellow-saint, Hippolytus (Elench. 9.12, esp. 7–9), to have made an attempt at voluntary martyrdom, happily unsuccessful, at a date which would be somewhere about ad 190. Hippolytus says that Callistus, the slave of a well-to-do Christian (who seems to have been an imperial freedman), having embezzled money entrusted to him in connection with a banking business, tried to escape, was recaptured and sent to the treadmill, but was soon liberated, apparently in the hope that he would be able to get some of the money back. Not being able to do so, according to Hippolytus, he planned for himself a hero’s death: pretending that he was going after his debtors, he went to the Jewish synagogue on the Sabbath and deliberately created a disturbance. The Jews brought him before the praefectus urbi, who did not sentence him to death but had him Xogged and sent to the mines in Sardinia, from which he was soon released. This story must be treated with considerable suspicion. It is told by Hippolytus, unhappily our only authority for these events, with concentrated venom, and the Refutation of All Heresies, in which it occurs, was not published until 30 or more years later, after the 47 Tertullian, Ad Scapulam 5.1.

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death of Callistus. Do¨llinger’s explanation,48 that Callistus really was trying to collect debts from the Jews and that the disturbance was created by their assaulting him, may well be true. What is important for our present purposes, however, is that Hippolytus evidently thought it a plausible allegation that a Christian who was in a very bad position might deliberately court martyrdom by attacking the enemies of the Christian Church in circumstances which would be likely to bring upon him the supreme penalty.49 8. At Alexandria in ad 202–3 Origen, then a mere boy of 16, was impelled by the arrest of his father Leontes (who was subsequently martyred) to rush forward himself to make his confession (and of course be put to death); but he was prevented, according to Eusebius (HE 6.3.4–5), by his mother’s hiding his clothes, and he had to content himself with writing his father a letter in praise of martyrdom, which has not survived.50 Origen remained a steadfast confessor until the very end of his life (Eusebius, HE 6.39.5), and during the persecution at Palestinian Caesarea under Maximinus in ad 235–7 wrote an Exhortation to Martyrdom, addressed to two of his friends who were confessors.51 However, in his more mature years (as we have already seen),52 he ceased to approve of volunteering for martyrdom and indeed gave a reasoned condemnation of it. This change of attitude may not be entirely unconnected with his self-castration, prompted by a literal interpretation (too literal, as he himself later acknowledged: Comm. in

48 J. Do¨llinger, Hippolytus und Kallistus; oder die ro¨mische Kirche in der ersten Ha¨lfte des dritten Jahrhunderts (Regensburg, 1853), 117–21 (see also the Eng. trans. by A. Plummer, Hippolytus and Callistus; or, the Church of Rome in the First Half of the Third Century (Edinburgh, 1876), 108–12), which is generally followed by Roman Catholic writers. What Hippolytus says is [‘Callistus, having nothing to pay and being unable to run away again because he was watched, planned a scheme for his death on the Sabbath indeed (kai sabbatoi); pretending to go out as if to his creditors, he hurried to the synagogue of the Jews, who were gathered together, and created a disturbance among them’]. The position of sabbatoi suggests to me that Hippolytus is ridiculing Callistus’ pretext—‘on the Sabbath, if you please’. 49 Cf. the allegations of Mensurius in the letter quoted by Augustine, Brev. Coll. 3.13.25 (see above, p. 160); also Passio Theodoriti 3 (Ruinart, Acta, 606–7). 50 It was still available when Eusebius was writing: see HE 6.2.6. 51 [See the translation of Henry Chadwick, in J. E. L. Oulton and H. Chadwick, Alexandrian Christianity (London, 1954), 393–429.] 52 See above, p. 159.


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Matthew 15.3) of the reference in Matthew 19. 2 to those who have ‘made themselves eunuchs for the kingdom of heaven’s sake’.53 9. Saturus, Perpetua’s catechist, gave himself up at Carthage in ad 203 (Passio Perpetuae 4.3). 10. In about ad 205–6, during the governorship of Subatianus Aquila, the virgin Potamiaena, threatened by the prefect with a punishment involving violation of her chastity, evidently made some very abusive reply, for which she was immediately put to death in a very unpleasant manner, being gradually boiled to death with pitch.54 Potamiaena is thus probably a quasi-volunteer of type III. Another quasi-volunteer (of type I) is Basilides (Eusebius, HE 6.5.5–6), the soldier who led Potamiaena to execution. Shortly afterwards he suddenly refused to swear an oath (a thing which other Christian soldiers must often have been prepared to do) and was denounced and beheaded. Yet another quasi-volunteer of the same variety is the African soldier mentioned earlier in whose honour Tertullian wrote his De Corona Militis.55 11. Perhaps the best known of all voluntary martyrs is the eponymous hero of Corneille’s play, Polyeucte, who is credited with tearing down the persecuting edict of Decius (ad 250) at Melitene on the upper Euphrates. The Latin Passio which appears in the Bollandist Acta Sanctorum (AA SS Feb. II [13 Feb.], 651–2) contains no mention of provocation by Polyeuctes, of which (if it is indeed historical) the compiler may have disapproved; but the provocation does appear in the Greek texts of the Passio,56 which, although it is obviously a late composition with some characteristic hagiographical touches, does, I think, preserve a historical nucleus. 53 See Eusebius, HE 6.8.1–2. [The veracity of Eusebius’ anecdote is not universally accepted. Sceptics include H. Chadwick, Sentences of Sextus (Cambridge, 1959), 110, and P. Cox, Biography in Late Antiquity: A Quest for the Holy Man (Berkeley, 1983), 89– 90. See also M. J. Edwards, Origen Against Plato (Aldershot, 2002), 12 and 38 n. 4, and, for a more positive evaluation of the story, P. Brown, The Body and Society: Men, Women and Sexual Renunciation in Early Christianity (New York, 1988), 168 with n. 44.] 54 Eusebius, HE 6.5.1–4. Palladius, Lausiac History 3, gives a slightly diVerent story. Eusebius calls Potamiaena ‘the famous maiden’. 55 See above, pp. 158–9. 56 The best is that published by E. Aube´, Polyeucte dans l’histoire: E´tude sur le martyre de Polyeucte, d’apre`s des documents ine´dits (Paris, 1882). For an English translation of an Armenian translation of the Greek Passio, see F. C. Conybeare, The Armenian Apology and Acts of Apollonius and other Monuments of Early Christianity (London, 1896), 123–46. See also AA SS Feb. ii. 652–4.

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12. Six or seven volunteers are recorded among the victims of the Decian persecution at Alexandria in ad 250.57 Besas, a soldier, tried to protect other martyrs from insult as they were being led away to execution; he was tried and beheaded (Eusebius, HE 6.41.16). 13. During the Valerianic persecution in ad 258–9 three Palestinians, Priscus, Malchus, and Alexander, and apparently a Marcionite woman, deliberately sought martyrdom by making a voluntary confession before the governor (Eusebius, HE. 7.12). 14. As Cyprian was being led to execution on 14 September 258, a number of his Xock cried out, ‘Let us be beheaded with him.’58 There was little danger, however, of their pious wish being granted. 15. In the same persecution, when Marianus, Jacobus, and others were being tried at Lambaesis before Aemilianus, who was perhaps acting as provincial governor in place of the deceased proconsul,59 a Christian who was present drew attention to himself, quod iam per gratiam proximae passionis Christus in eius ore et facie relucebat [‘because already Christ shone in his countenance through the grace of his imminent passion’], proclaimed himself a Christian and apparently suVered with the others.60 16. During the years immediately preceding the ‘Great Persecution’, and perhaps during its course, we hear of several martyrs who were executed for oVending against military discipline, by refusing to enlist, continue in military service, or obey orders, owing to

57 If, with most scholars, we date the martyrdom of Pionius to the Decian persecution, following the Passio Pionii, we cannot reckon Pionius a volunteer, even though after being arrested he put chains around his own neck and those of his two companions (Pass. Pion. 2.3–4), since Pionius and the others would have been required to sacriWce in any event; but if Eusebius (HE 4.15.47) is right in putting the martyrdom under Marcus Aurelius (as believed, e.g., by Gre´goire, Persećutions, 108–14, 157 f.), then we should have to count Pionius and his two companions as volunteers. [See H. Gre´goire, P. Orgels, and J. Moreau, ‘Les Martyres de Pionios et de Polycarpe’, Bulletin de l’Acade´mie royale de Belgique, Classe des lettres et des sciences morales et politiques, 47 (1961), 72–83 for an argument in favour of dating the Passion to the reign of Marcus Aurelius. It is still normally dated to the reign of Decius; see, for example, T. D. Barnes, ‘Pre-Decian Acta Martyrum’, 509–31, at 529–31; R. Lane Fox, Pagans and Christians (Harmondsworth, 1986), 460–8; and L. Robert, Le Martyre de Pionios, preˆtre de Smyrne (Washington, 1994), esp. 1–9.] 58 Passio Cypriani 5.1. 59 Passio Mariani et Iacobi 9.2, with Passio Montani et Lucii 6.1. 60 Passio Mariani et Iacobi 9.2–4.


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Christian scruples. There are some four or Wve of these cases, which we may conveniently consider together. I do not think that there was a unanimous consensus of opinion in the Christian Church, before the reign of Constantine, on the question of whether Christians might serve as soldiers. Several prominent early Fathers of the Church believed that service in the army was entirely incompatible with Christianity—Tertullian, Hippolytus, Origen, and Lactantius.61 However, Christians had undoubtedly served in the army from at least the second half of the second century, and probably earlier, and Christian soldiers must have been numerous by the end of the third century. It is certainly true to say that by that time the great majority of Christians saw nothing intrinsically un-Christian in military service. The actions of the martyrs listed below were, therefore, those of extremists, and they may properly be reckoned among the quasi-volunteers of type I. (i) On 12 March 295 the Christian paciWst Maximilian was executed at Theveste in what is usually called proconsular Numidia,62 for refusing to enlist.63 61 See C. J. Cadoux, The Early Church and the World (Edinburgh, 1925), 272–80, 417–40, 573–92. [See generally J. F. Ubinã, Cristianos y militares: la iglesia antigua ante el eje´rcito y la guerra (Granada, 2000); also the survey of J. Helgeland, ‘Christians and the Roman Army from Marcus Aurelius to Constantine’, ANRW ii. 23.1 (Berlin and New York, 1979), 724–834.] 62 That part of Numidia at this time was joined to the province of Africa and under the jurisdiction of its proconsul [on which see T. D. Barnes, The New Empire of Diocletian and Constantine (Cambridge, Mass., 1982), 212]. 63 The Passio Maximiliani, in my opinion, is virtually an exact copy of the oYcial Acta, down to and including the sentence of Maximilian. It is a fascinating document, our one authentic description of the enrolment of a Roman recruit and a very valuable historical source from more than one point of view. Yet, as far as I know, no English translation has ever been published, and the Latin text has not been re-edited since it was included in Ruinart’s collection in the 17th cent. [Ruinart’s edition was reprinted and translated into English by H. Musurillo, Acts of the Christian Martyrs (Oxford, 1972), 244–9; see the more recent critical editions of P. Siniscalco, Massimiliano, un obiettere di conscienza del tardo impero: studi sella Passio S. Maximiliani (Turin, 1974), with text at 159–61; and E. di Lorenzo, Gli Acta S. Maximiliani Martyris: Introduzione, testo, traduzione e commento (Naples, 1975), 20– 7, who also translates it into Italian. The reasons behind Maximilian’s refusal to enlist have received considerable attention. See among others, J. Helgeland, ‘Christians and the Roman Army’; P. Brock, ‘Why did St. Maximilian Refuse to Serve in the Roman Army?’, JEH 45.2 (1994), 195–209; and J. Ubinã, Cristianos y militares, 386–98. Delehaye, in an article Wrst published in 1932, also viewed Maximilian as an extremist; ‘Re´fractaire et Martyr’, in Delehaye, Me´langes d’hagiographie grecque et latine

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(ii) On 21 July 298 Marcellus, centurion of the Legio VII Gemina, then serving in Galicia in north-west Spain, threw away his belt and cane and refused to serve in the army any longer, on the ground that he was a Christian. He was tried before the provincial governor and then, on 30 October 298, before Aurelius Agricolanus, vicar of the Spains, at Tingis (Tangier) in Mauretania. He was executed for infringement of military discipline: the fact that he acted as he did because he was a Christian was legally immaterial.64 Tacked on to the Passion of Marcellus is that of Cassian, who is represented as the shorthand writer (excerptor) taking down the record of the case before Agricolanus. Cassian, we are told, when sentence of death was pronounced, threw his pen and book on the ground, declaring the sentence unjust, and was shortly afterwards executed as a Christian. Cassian is referred to as early as 400 or thereabouts by Prudentius (Peristeph. 4.45–8); but, as Delehaye has shown, the Passio Cassiani is entirely worthless,65 and although there may very well have been a martyr named Cassian at Tangier, we must admit that we know nothing of the date or the circumstances of his execution. (Subsidia Hagiographica 42; Brussels, 1966), 375–8. The scholarly consensus about the value of this Passion has been challenged by David Woods, ‘St. Maximilian of Tebessa and the Jizya’, in P. Defosse (ed.), Hommages a` Carl Deroux (Collection Latomus 279; Brussels, 2003), 266–76. Woods argues that the text was produced during the period 724–838 on the grounds that the lead seal that marked his status as a recruit reXects knowledge of the operation of the Muslim poll-tax or jizya. Even if this claim is not accepted, Woods advances other arguments against accepting the text as a contemporary and accurate account of a real martyrdom.] 64 [See the edition of G. Lanata, ‘Gli atti del processo contro il centurione Marcello’, Byzantion, 41 (1972), 509–22, although note the comments in F. Dolbeau’s review, Revue des E´tudes Latines, 52 (1974), 570–3 and Barnes, New Empire, 178; see also Ubinã, Cristianos y militares, 398–411, and the English translation in J. Helgeland, R. Daly, and J. Patout Burns, Christians and the Military: The Early Experience (Philadelphia, 1985), 60–1.] 65 See Ruinart, Acta, 345. The oYcial Acta were certainly not used as a source in this case. The words iisdem fere responsionibus, iisdemque sententiis, quibus sanctus Marcellus [‘with almost the same replies and the same opinions as those of Saint Marcellus’] place this beyond any doubt. And there are various touches characteristic of later hagiography: multum iudicem iudicantis crederent omnes esse Marcellum [‘everyone believed that Marcellus was more truly a judge than the one judging’]; tremefactus Aurelius Agricolanus exsiliens de sella [‘trembling, Aurelius Agricolanus sprang up from the bench’]; venerabilis Cassianus [‘blessed Cassian’]. The whole document is of a totally diVerent character from the Passio Marcelli, which reproduces the Acta closely. See H. Delehaye, ‘Les Actes de S. Marcel le centurion’, AB 41


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(iii) It was probably during the last years of the third century that the veteran Typasius and the soldier Fabius were condemned to death by the dux of Mauretania Caesariensis, the former for refusing to rejoin the colours when ordered,66 and the latter for declining to carry a banner in the governor’s procession.67 Most Christians would have performed these acts with a clear conscience. (iv) The very curious Passion of Dasius of Durostorum, who would not play his allotted part in the Saturnalia, must be largely if not wholly Wctitious,68 and I do not feel able to make any use of it.

(1923), 257–87, at 278, who rightly concludes, ‘Tout le rećit est un plagiat; il ne nous apprend rien ni sur S. Cassien ni sur l’audience ou` fut condamne´ S. Marcel, et il faut s’abstenir de le citer a` coˆte´ des Actes de ce martyr comme un text inde´pendant’ [‘The entire account is plagiarized; it tells us nothing about either Saint Cassian or the audience which condemned Saint Marcel, and one must refrain from citing it alongside the acts of this martyr as though it is an independent text’]. See also N. H. Baynes, ‘The Great Persecution’, in CAH xii, 1st edn. (Cambridge, 1939), 646–77, at 663 and n. 3. 66 See Ste. Croix, ‘Aspects’, 111 [above, p. 75]; Monceaux, Histoire litte´raire de l’Afrique chre´tienne, iii. 27, 126–32. [The value of the Passio Typasii as a historical source has received some attention, particularly with respect to its literary characteristics. J. Fontaine and C. StancliVe have noted parallels with Sulpicius Severus’ life of Martin of Tours; see Fontaine, ‘Sulpice Se´ve`re a-t-il travesti Saint Martin de Tours en martyr militaire?’, AB 81 (1963), 31–58, at 43–8, and StancliVe, St. Martin and his Hagiographer: History and Miracle in Sulpicius Severus (Oxford, 1983), 144–8. D. Woods has noted the parallels with Eutropius’ Breviarium; see Woods, ‘A Historical Source of the Passio Typasii’, Vig. Chr. 47 (1993), 78–84. Finally, Alan Dearn has recently examined it in relation to the sectarian problems of 4th- and 5th-cent. North Africa, arguing that ‘the way in which Typasius is remembered, or more likely, invented, aims to give legitimacy to the spread of monasticism in late fourth- or early Wfth-century North Africa by depicting Typasius as a proto-Monk’; Dearn, ‘The Passio S. Typasii Veterani as a Catholic Construction of the Past’, Vig. Chr. 55 (2001), 86–98, at 87.] 67 See Ste. Croix, ‘Aspects’, 111 [above, pp. 75–6]; Monceaux, Histoire litte´raire de l’Afrique chre´tienne, iii. 27, 122–6; Franchi de’ Cavalieri in Studi e testi, 65 (1935), 101–13; H. Delehaye, ‘Contributions rećentes a` l’hagiographie de Rome et d’Afrique’, AB 54 (1936), 265–315, at 300–2. [For the possible dates of Fabius’ martyrdom, see Helgeland, ‘Christians and the Roman Army’, 823.] 68 I agree with the judgement of H. Delehaye, Les Passions des martyrs et les genres litte´raires, 2nd edn. (Subsidia hagiographica 13B; Brussels, 1966), 230–5; see also his ‘Saints de Thrace et de Me´sie’, AB 31 (1912), 161–300, at 265–8. [See the more recent ¨ bersetzung und edition of R. Pillinger, Das Martyrium des heiligen Dasius: Text, U ¨ sterreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften, Philosophisch-HistorKommentar (O ische Klasse 517; Vienna, 1988) with the comments of J. Den Boeft and J. Bremmer, ‘Notiunculae martyrologicae V’, Vig. Chr. 49 (1995), 146–64, at 159–61.]

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We now come to the martyrs of the ‘Great’ Persecution. 17. The earliest is the man who tore down the Wrst edict of persecution on the very day it was posted up at Nicomedia, and was burnt to death. We have had occasion to refer to him already [above, p. 160]. Soon afterwards there were many other martyrdoms at Nicomedia, and Eusebius’ source declared that men and women ‘leapt upon the pyre with a divine and indescribable eagerness’ (Eusebius, HE 8.6.6)—a phrase which may, or may not, imply voluntary martyrdom. 18. If Mensurius was speaking the truth in his letter to Secundus, quoted above (p. 160), certain African Christians in ad 303–5 had voluntarily and unnecessarily denounced themselves to the authorities as possessing Scriptures which they would not surrender. 19. Eulalia, a young fanatic of Augusta Emerita (Me´rida) in Spain, is celebrated in a poem by Prudentius, written in about 400.69 According to the poet, who of course exaggerates and invents freely, Eulalia, a girl of 12, was taken to the country by her parents during a time of persecution (no doubt in ad 303–4), but escaped, came to town, publicly denounced the provincial governor for idolatry, and when invited to oVer incense spat in his face, smashed the pagan image and trampled the incense underfoot. Prudentius, who loves to expatiate on the tortures suVered by the martyrs he celebrates, gives himself full scope in describing what happened to poor little Eulalia before the Xames devoured her. The whole story may conceivably be invented, but there may well be a historical nucleus, merely embroidered by the poet. 20. Three other Spaniards are said to have oVered themselves up to the provincial governor during the ‘Great’ Persecution: Faustus, Januarius, and Martialis in Cordova. Their Passion, however, is in my opinion an unsatisfactory document, although Delehaye was willing (with some hesitation) to include it in his third class of Passions, namely those having as their main source a written document based on the oYcial Acta or the reports of trustworthy eyewitnesses.70 69 Peristephanon 3 [On Prudentius’ account of the martyrdom of Eulalia, see J. Petruccione, ‘The Portrait of St. Eulalia of Me´rida in Prudentius’ Peristephanon 3’, AB 108 (1990), 81–104]. The Passion (BHL i. 405, with Suppl. 3rd edn. 308) is worthless. 70 Ruinart, Acta, 556–7; H. Delehaye, Les Le´gendes hagiographiques, 4th edn. (Brussels, 1955), 115, cf. 106–8.


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21. On 29 April 304 at Catana in Sicily there appeared in the governor’s court-room, secretarium, a man named Euplus (or it may be Euplius) who shouted out, ‘I wish to die, for I am a Christian.’ He was deWnitely clasping a copy of the Gospels, retention of which was now, in consequence of the Wrst persecuting edict of Diocletian, a serious crime.71 The interrogation which followed immediately, and was renewed when Euplus was formally tried before the governor on 12 August 304, centred upon Euplus’ possession of the Scriptures: his statement to the governor par’ emoi eisin, seems to have meant, ‘They are here with me, in my heart’; but the same words could also mean, ‘They are in my possession’, and the governor evidently understood them in that sense. Euplus was then tortured, perhaps to death—at any rate dying a martyr.72 22. According to Basil, Gordius made a voluntary confession in the stadium outside Caesarea in Cappadocia, presumably between ad 304 and 312. The details may be unhistorical, but the main fact may well be true.73 23. It is evident from the Canonical Epistle of Peter of Alexandria, quoted above [pp. 160–1], that there had been a number of voluntary martyrdoms in Egypt by the spring of 306.

71 [See ‘Aspects’ (above, Chapter 1), p. 36 with n. 3.] 72 Passio Eupli 2.2. After the words ‘let Euplus be racked and beaten until he promises to sacriWce to the gods’ the superior Greek version of this Passion evidently ceases to be a transcript of the oYcial Acta and neither it nor the inferior Latin version can be relied on. They both profess to record the usual sentence of beheading, but it may be that Euplus died under torture. 73 Basil, Homily XVIII, in Gordium mart. (PG 31.489–508, esp. § 3, col. 497). [Following the Byzantine synaxaries, Gordius’ death is generally dated to 321, and the tyrant identiWed as Licinius, although there is little compelling evidence for this; see B. Gain, L’E´glise de Cappadoce au IVe sie`cle d’apre`s la correspondance de Basile de Ce´sareé (330–379) (Rome, 1985), 219 n. 280.] Basil’s comment is interesting: ‘there is some vague story which has been transmitted to us preserving the manly feats of the man in his struggles’. For Basil’s probable lack of real knowledge about Gordius’s martyrdom, see Delehaye, Les Passions des martyrs et les genres litte´raires, 139–40. [Also F. Halkin, ‘Un second saint Gordius?’, AB 79 (1961), 5–15, at 5–6. Raymond Van Dam has recently reiterated this point, noting that Basil ‘hardly knew what to say’ about him, and suggests that the commonness of his name in Cappadocia might indicate that Basil was ‘trying to embellish some local traditions into full Christian cults’; see his Becoming Christian: The Conversion of Roman Cappadocia (Philadelphia, 2003), 90, and Kingdom of the Snow: Roman Rule and Greek Culture in Cappadocia

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24. At the trial of Phileas, bishop of Thmuis, probably in 305 or 306, a soldier named Philoromus made a voluntary confession and was beheaded by the spring of 306.74 25. Eusebius, while in the Thebaid between the years 306 and 312, saw ‘many’ voluntary martyrs condemned to death ‘in a single day’ (HE 8.9.5). The fact that they were volunteers is guaranteed by Eusebius’ statement that they ‘leapt up before the judgement seat from this side and that (epepedon allothen alloi), made their confession and received sentence with hymns of thanksgiving’. As I have already pointed out,75 it is quite wrong to cite this passage, as so many modern writers have done, as evidence of the intensity of that persecution. If the men in question had not been volunteers, but had been under arrest already, they would have been brought in under guard, probably in chains. 26. As I have already shown,76 a remarkably high proportion of the ‘Palestinian’ victims of the ‘Great’ Persecution, of whom Eusebius gives us a complete list in his Martyrs of Palestine,77 were volunteers or quasi-volunteers. Of the 91 martyrs mentioned by Eusebius, we know nothing at all about 44 (mostly Egyptians) who were executed at the copper mines of Phaeno. That leaves us with 47. Of these at least 14 were volunteers proper, and at least another 17 were quasivolunteers of types II and III. The following is a brief summary of the deeds of the outright volunteers.

(Philadelphia, 2002), 54–5. Pauline Allen reckons that ‘the general veracity of his account . . . is guaranteed by the fact that in the audience there are some who remember the event’, but this is surely rather naı¨ve; see J. Leemans, W. Mayer, P. Allen, and B. Dehandschutter, ‘Let us die that we may live’: Greek Homilies on Christian Martyrs from Asia Minor, Palestine and Syria c. AD 350–AD 450 (London, 2003), 57 (whose translation is used above). On the context and aims of Basil’s homilies to martyrs, see P. Rousseau, Basil of Caesarea (Berkeley, 1994), 184–9.] 74 Passio Phileae et Philoromi 3.1–3; Eusebius, HE 8.9.7. 75 ‘Aspects’ [above, pp. 66–7]. 76 ‘Aspects’ [above, pp. 64–7]. [See also Barnes, Constantine, 148–63 on the historical background.] 77 In this work Eusebius concerns himself with Palestinians, wherever they were martyred, and Christians from other provinces martyred in Palestine.


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(i) Alpheus publicly rebuked a large number of fellow-Christians who were sacriWcing at Caesarea,78 and Romanus did the same at Antioch.79 (ii) Apphianus seized the governor of Palestine by the arm while he was pouring a libation (MP 4.2–15). Aedesius, his brother, violently assaulted Hierocles, the prefect of Egypt, who, according to Eusebius, had just sentenced some Christian virgins to a fate they would consider worse than death: he knocked Hierocles down and went on hitting him and admonishing him as he lay prostrate (MP 5.2–3). Antoninus, Zebinas, and Germanus interrupted the governor of Palestine while he was sacriWcing and exhorted him to cease from error (MP 9.4–5). (iii) The most extraordinary incident of all took place at Caesarea, early in 305. While a festival was being celebrated, a false rumour began to spread that certain Christians would be thrown to the beasts as part of the joyful celebrations. While the governor was on his way to the amphitheatre, six young men (Timolaus, Dionysius, Romulus, Paeïs, and two named Alexander) suddenly presented themselves before him with their hands bound behind them, crying out that they were Christians and demanding to be thrown to the beasts with their brethren (MP 3.2–4). We can well believe Eusebius when he adds that the governor and his entire suite were reduced to a condition of no ordinary amazement. The young men were arrested and imprisoned, but they were to be disappointed in the manner of their death, for instead of giving them to the beasts, as they had demanded, the merciless pagan condemned them to a speedy death by decapitation. Eusebius gives not only the names of the young men 78 Eusebius, MP 1.5e–k Long. In citing the Long Recension (L) of this work I have followed the numbering of Lawlor and Oulton, Eusebius, i. 327–400, who give an English translation of L, from the Greek, Latin, and Syriac, side by side with the Short Recension. [Alpheus’ actions seem to be of the type countenanced by Peter of Alexandria, Ep. Can. 11 (above, n. 3): ‘And because he saw that at that time laxity and great fear had fallen upon all men, and many were swept along, as it were, before the torrent of many waters and were led to the foul worship of idols, he considered how he might oppose the torrent of evil by his fortitude’; MP 1.5 f, trans. Lawlor and Oulton.] 79 MP 2; De Resurr. 2 (PG 24.1097–1100); John Chrys. Laud. in S. Roman. I and II (PG 50.605–18). [Romanus’ actions appear to have been motivated by the same reason as those of Alpheus (see above): according to MP 2, he was ‘wont to deter by rebukes those whom terror was dragging down to the error of idolatry’, trans. Lawlor and Oulton.]

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but also their places of origin: two were Palestinians, two were Egyptians, one was a Phoenician, and one came from Pontus. It is interesting to Wnd Eusebius showing no disapproval of their action, any more than of the exploits of the other volunteers he records: indeed, he speaks of the young men, especially in the Long Recension of his work, with real enthusiasm. (iv) A fourteenth confessor who is perhaps to be counted among the volunteers proper is Valentina (MP 8.6–8), who was so infuriated by the spectacle of a Christian woman of Gaza being tortured at Caesarea in about ad 309 that she shouted out to the governor, ‘How long will you torture my sister so cruelly?’; and on being arrested struggled violently and kicked over a pagan altar. The two women were bound together and burnt alive. At least 17 of the remaining martyrs are quasi-volunteers of type II, who drew attention to themselves by openly visiting or assisting arrested confessors or concerning themselves with the dead bodies of martyrs. Agapius, brother of Alexander of Gaza (one of the six young men mentioned above), frequently visited his brother in prison, and was executed at the same time, as was another man called Dionysius who had also been ministering to the imprisoned confessors (MP 3.4). Theodosia of Tyre approached confessors who were on trial and asked them to pray for her; she was condemned and drowned (MP 7.1–2). In 309 certain Egyptian confessors who had been dispatched to Palestine for penal labour in the mines were sent on to Cilicia. Some of their fellow-Christians set out from Egypt to take food to them there, but were arrested at Ascalon; some were sent to the mines, but two (Promus and Elijah) were beheaded, and one (Ares), who may have been guilty of special provocation, was burned (MP 10.1). Five unnamed Egyptian Christians had succeeded in escorting the arrested confessors to Cilicia, but on their return journey they were arrested at Caesarea. They pretended that they came from Jerusalem and gave themselves Hebrew names; this is said to have alarmed the governor of Palestine, who thought the Christians must somewhere have established a city hostile to Rome. The Wve were all beheaded (MP 11.5–14). Among others who were beheaded at Caesarea that same day were four Christians who had drawn attention to themselves in much the same manner as those we


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have just noticed. Porphyry, a slave, on hearing sentence of death pronounced against his master Pamphilus, shouted out a request that he might be given the body for burial; he was burned alive (MP 11.15–19). An ex-oYcer from Cappadocia named Seleucus brought news of Porphyry’s death to Pamphilus, and greeted one of the confessors with a kiss; he was beheaded (MP 11.20–3). Theodulus, a slave of the governor’s household, also kissed a confessor and was cruciWed (MP 11.24). Another Cappadocian, Julian, embraced the dead bodies of the martyrs and was burnt (MP 11.25–8). Soon afterwards Hadrian and Eubulus, who had come from Batanaea to visit the confessors, were given to the beasts and Wnally decapitated (MP 11.29–30). At least two more of Eusebius’ ‘Palestinian’ martyrs were quasivolunteers of type III, who after being arrested behaved in an unnecessarily provocative manner. Procopius, the Wrst in Eusebius’ catalogue, was arrested and ordered to sacriWce to the gods. When he refused to pour a libation to the four emperors,80 he quoted with approval the famous words of Odysseus in the Iliad against a multiplicity of rulers [‘lordship for many is no good thing; let there be one ruler, one king’].81 For this treasonable reXection upon the Tetrarchy he was immediately executed. The woman of Gaza,82 at whose trial Valentina made her protest, had abused the emperor while being interrogated. Among the remaining 16 ‘Palestinian’ martyrs it seems quite likely that there may have been other volunteers or quasi-volunteers. The extraordinary punishment (that proper to parricides) inXicted upon Ulpian at Tyre (MP 5.1 Short Recension) suggests that he had been guilty of something more than a plain confession of Christianity; and of Domninus, who was burnt, a punishment not often inXicted upon ordinary Christian confessors other than slaves, we are expressly told that he was famous for his confessions and his great boldness (MP 7.4). A few religious suicides are recorded from this period, notably of those at Antioch who are said by Eusebius to have thrown themselves down from the roofs of houses in order to escape arrest and torture 80 MP 1.1–2. See H. Delehaye, Les Le´gendes hagiographiques, 119–39 for developments of the Procopius’ story; also BHG (3rd edn.), 218–20. 81 Iliad 2.204–5, trans. Lattimore. 82 Ennatha according to MP 8.8. L; but cf. 9.6–8.

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(HE 8.12.2); the three women of Antioch already mentioned [above, pp. 163–4], who drowned themselves in alleged fear of violation; and a Roman woman of the upper classes who stabbed herself to death to avoid being prostituted to Maxentius (Eusebius, HE 8.14.16–17). With the birth of the Christian Empire the period in which I am primarily interested comes to an end—except for the short interval of less than two years, in ad 361–3, when Julian became emperor and paganism was oYcially restored; I shall presently refer to some voluntary martyrdoms which took place at that time. My main concern is with the relationship of the early Church in the Roman Empire to its pagan environment. I therefore propose to say virtually nothing about the persecutions of Christians by Christians, whether Catholics, heretics, or schismatics, which took place with distressing frequency from the early fourth century onwards, although this strife of sects also produced its voluntary martyrs.83 Nor do I intend to make more than a very brief reference to the Donatist Circumcellions of the fourth and Wfth centuries, who carried the practice of voluntary martyrdom to the most extreme lengths. In Julian’s reign martyrdom at the hands of pagans was voluntarily undertaken by Christians once more. As Baynes has put it, ‘Julian was never a persecutor in the accepted meaning of that word: it was the most constant complaint of the Christians that the emperor denied them the glory of martyrdom.’84 Some of them retaliated with acts of deliberate provocation, which provincial governors less tolerant than the emperor himself sometimes punished savagely as acts of civil rebellion. 83 To give only one example: in ad 414–15 Amonius, a fanatical Nitrian monk, threw a stone at Orestes the prefect (hated by the Patriarch Cyril and his partisans) and was tortured to death. Cyril wished to have him reverenced as a martyr: Socrates, HE 7.14. 84 N. H. Baynes, ‘Constantine’s Successors to Jovian: and the Struggle with Persia’, in CMH i, ed. H. M. Gwatkin and J. P. Whitney (Cambridge, 1911), 55–86, at 80. For an account of Julian’s religious policy by a modern Roman Catholic writer, see P. de Labriolle, ‘Christianisme et paganisme au milieu du IVe sie`cle’, in A. Fliche and V. Martin, Histoire de l’E´glise, iii (Paris, 1936), 177–204, esp. 189–91. [The bibliography on this subject is substantial. See the contrasting interpretations of G. W. Bowersock, Julian the Apostate (London, 1978), 79–93; P. Athanassiadi, Julian: An Intellectual Biography (London, 1992), orig. publ. as Julian and Hellenism (Oxford, 1981), 24–7, 161–91; and R. Smith, Julian’s Gods: Religion and Philosophy in the Thought and Action of Julian the Apostate (London, 1995), esp. 179–218.] Complaints in, for example, Greg. Naz. Or. 4 (contra Julianum I) 58, 61, 84; Theodoret, HE 3.17, cf. 11; Sozomen, HE 5.17 Wn.


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27. We hear of martyrdoms which may properly be called voluntary,85 resulting from the destruction of pagan temples or images at Durostorum in Moesia,86 and at two places in Asia Minor: Caesarea in Cappadocia,87 and Merum in Phrygia.88 Two young Christians insulted the Mother of the Gods at Pessinus in Phrygia while Julian himself was there; but what happened to them is not clear—one at any rate was Xogged, but apparently not executed, and we hear of no punishment of the other, although he appeared in court.89 The Wfthcentury ecclesiastical historians, Socrates and Sozomen, give a highly coloured description of the fate of the three martyrs of Merum (Macedonius, Theodulus, and Tatian); while after various tortures they were being roasted on gridirons they begged the governor to turn them over, in order, they said, that they might not be cooked on one side only. Another volunteer who was cruelly tortured but appears to have survived was Mark, bishop of Arethusa in Syria, who had destroyed a pagan temple in the reign of Constantius.90 Ordered by Julian to restore the temple himself or to pay for its reconstruction, he at Wrst Xed, but returned when he heard that vengeance was being taken on his Xock. He was tortured, but he refused, successfully, to pay for the rebuilding, even when the pagans oVered to accept a very small contribution. Other Christians were punished for oVering public insult to paganism: thus Basil of Ancyra was martyred, and Busiris of the same town was tortured and imprisoned but survived the apostate emperor.91 85 I have not included here those martyred under Julian for destroying pagan images under the earlier Christian emperors, e.g. Cyril of Heliopolis (Theodoret, HE 3.7) and Artemius (3.18). 86 Jerome, Chronicle 2379; Theodoret, HE 3.7; see J. Zeiller, Les Origines chre´tiennes dans les provinces danubiennes de l’Empire romain (Paris, 1918), 126–7. 87 Greg. Naz. Or. 4.92; Ep. 58; Basil, Ep. 100. 88 Socrates, HE 3.15; Sozomen, HE 5.11. 89 Greg. Naz. Or. 5.40. It is possible, but not I think likely, that both were executed. 90 Greg. Naz. Or. 4.88–91; Theodoret, HE 3.7; Sozomen, HE 5.10. According to Sozomen, Mark was tortured to death, but from Theodoret, and the silence of Gregory, it is clear that he was ultimately released. 91 Sozomen, HE 5.11. The Passion of Basil (for a Latin translation see Ruinart, Acta, 599–603) is historically worthless. [This verdict has been contested by D. Woods, who argues that it is ‘on the whole . . . a reliable historical source’; see his ‘The Martyrdom of the Priest Basil of Ancyra’, Vig. Chr. 46 (1992), 31–9, at 36, against which H. C. Teitler, ‘History and Hagiography: The Passio of Basil of Ancyra as a Historical Source’, Vig. Chr. 50 (1996), 73–80.]

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28. Gregory of Nazianzus, in one of his scurrilous orations against Julian, tells us of some Christian soldiers whom Julian induced to burn a few grains of incense before receiving one of their customary donatives, but who later repented, tore their hair and rushed out into the street, crying out that they were Christians and wanted to atone for their sin. When they reached the palace they uttered execrations against Julian and demanded to be burnt alive, so that they might be cleansed by the very Wre with which they had deWled themselves in the act of oVering incense. Julian condemned them to banishment. The Wfth-century ecclesiastical historian Theodoret gives a more dramatic account in which the emperor Wrst passes sentence of death and only changes it at the very last moment: ‘In this’, adds Theodoret, ‘the emperor was actuated by the most malign jealousy, for he envied them the glory of martyrdom.’92 29. Julian did execute two Christian soldiers of his guard, Juventius and Maximus, who abused him at a banquet as ‘more wicked than all the nations of the earth’ and, when brought before him, persisted in their attitude; but he was careful to proclaim that the executions were for insulting the emperor and not for religion.93 There would undoubtedly have been many more voluntary martyrdoms had Julian not exercised surprising self-restraint in the face of deliberate provocations of various kinds, as for example when his attempt to make peace between a Christian father and his apostate son was insolently rebuVed (Theodoret, HE 3.15), or when Maris, bishop of Chalcedon, interrupted him while he was sacriWcing and publicly rebuked him as an impious man, an apostate and an atheist (Soc. 3.13; Soz. 5.4). Maris suVered severely from cataract, and when the exasperated Julian uncharitably taunted him with his blindness, which his God could not cure, Maris replied that he thanked God for it because it prevented him from looking upon the face of an apostate. Yet Julian took no action against Maris. Theodoret tells with great pleasure the story of some Christian nuns of Antioch who, when Julian passed, sang hymns especially loudly to show their contempt for him (HE 3.19). When the Christians of Antioch were 92 Greg. Naz. Or. 4.82–4, and see also Sozomen, HE 5.17; Theodoret, HE 3.16–17. [As Theresa Urbainczyk has noted, such forceful condemnation of Julian is characteristic of Theodoret’s history; see her Theodoret of Cyrrhus: The Bishop and the Holy Man (Ann Arbor, 2002), 30–1.] 93 Theodoret, HE 3.15.


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ordered by Julian to remove the body of their third-century martyr, Babylas, from Daphne to Antioch, they did so with a great demonstration, as a result of which several were arrested and a young man, Theodorus, tortured but eventually released.94 I have said that I propose to deal very brieXy with the Circumcellions, ‘the shock troops of Donatism’ as they have been called.95 It is my object in this paper to show that voluntary martyrdom, far from being peculiar to heretics and schismatics, occurred constantly in the very bosom of the Catholic Church, even though the dominant section of opinion in the Church disapproved of it. The Circumcellions, however, are a class apart. Although substantially orthodox in doctrine, they were extreme schismatics to a man.96 They were a characteristically African phenomenon, for it was in North Africa, and especially in Numidia (modern Algeria), that the cult of the martyrs reached its greatest intensity. More than one ancient author describes the Circumcellions as having their minds Wxed on martyrdom.97 In them the tendencies which we have seen at work in other sections of the 94 Soc. 3.18–19; Soz. 5.19–20; Theod. HE 3.10–11; RuWnus, HE 1.37. 95 See W. H. C. Frend, ‘The Cellae of the African Circumcellions’, JTS 3 (1952), 87–9; also The Donatist Church: A Movement of Protest in Roman North Africa (Oxford, 1952). [The subsequent bibliography on the Circumcellions is substantial. Frend continued to work on them and his analogy between the Circumcellions and various peasant revolts has proved inXuential; see particularly his ‘Circumcellions and Monks’, JTS 20 (1969), 542–9, repr. in his Town and Country in the Early Christian Centuries (London, 1980), and ‘Heresy and Schism as Social and National Movements’, in Studies in Church History, 9 (1972), 37–56, repr. in his Religion Popular and Unpopular in the Early Christian Centuries (London, 1976). It should be noted, however, that a number of scholars had developed similar approaches independently of Frend; see the bibliography listed in B. D. Shaw, ‘Who were the Circumcellions?’, in A. H. Merrills (ed.), Vandals, Romans and Berbers: New Perspectives on Late Antique North Africa (Aldershot, 2004), 227–58, at 227–31 nn. 1–13. See also M. Gaddis, There is no Crime for those who have Christ: Religious Violence in the Christian Roman Empire (Berkeley, 2005), 111–24.] 96 [Although they would not have considered themselves schismatics; on some of the classiWcatory problems associated with the ‘Donatists’, see B. D. Shaw, ‘African Christianity: Disputes, DeWnitions, and ‘‘Donatists’’ ’, in M. R. Greenshields and T. A. Robinson (eds.), Orthodoxy and Heresy in Religious Movements: Discipline and Dissent (Lampeter, 1992), 5–34, repr. in Shaw, Rulers, Nomads, and Christians in Roman North Africa (Aldershot, 1995).] 97 See Frend, Donatist, 174 V. [Note, however, that considerable source diYculties attend any study of the Circumcellions. Brent Shaw has shown recently that ‘external accounts’ of the Circumcellions, found in handbooks of heresies (among which he includes Augustine’s Liber de haeresibus), are ‘largely useless for any viable

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Christian Church appeared in an acute and intense form. If no other death oVered itself conveniently, the Circumcellions might on occasion resort to ritual suicide, sometimes in masses, throwing themselves over precipices or into rivers, or even, we are told, burning themselves alive. Others would perish in attacks on villas or Catholic churches. These men were greatly honoured by their fellow Donatists as martyrs.98 Even those who did not feel that their time had yet come to seek martyrdom were very dangerous to their enemies, the Catholic clergy and the Catholic villa-owning aristocracy of North Africa, because of the contempt of death, even desire for death, which their outlook engendered in them. The Circumcellions, however, are in reality outside the Weld with which I am concerned, and I need say no more about them. It is beyond my ability to deal in general with martyrdoms occurring outside the Roman Empire; but I have already referred (above, p. 162) to the destruction of a Persian Wre-temple in 420, and I may add that Theodoret may have known of voluntary martyrdoms during the persecution which followed under Yazdgard I and Vahram V, for he says that ‘of their own accord they rushed . . . in their desire to gain the death which brings about indestructible life’ (HE 5.39). Sabas, the Gothic saint martyred in 372, made two confessions in which he showed excess of zeal, and rejected attempts by his fellow villagers to conceal him, before he was Wnally arrested; and even after that he twice failed to make use of opportunities to escape.99 And there is one other interesting episode which I must not fail to mention. In Muslim Spain in the mid-ninth century, under the Emirs ‘Abd alRahman (822–52) and Mohammed I (852–86), Christianity was tolerated and even given a certain oYcial status (as usual in Muslim countries, at least before the Crusades), there being few restrictions on churches except that they were not allowed to ring bells for services or organize public processions.100 However, a party centred investigation of the social phenomenon in Africa’; see Shaw, ‘Who were the Circumcellions?’ at 257.] 98 The Wrst Council of Carthage in ad 348–9 forbade that those who destroyed themselves be honoured as martyrs (Conc. Carthag. I, Canon 2); see above, n. 27. 99 [See the translation of P. Heather and J. Matthews, The Goths in the Fourth Century (TTH 11; Liverpool, 1991), 111–17.] 100 See E´. Le´vi-Provençal, Histoire de l’Espagne musulmane (Paris, 1950), i. 225–39.


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at Wrst at Cordova and led by Eulogius and Alvar was avid for martyrdom, although this could hardly be obtained except for oVering public insult to the Prophet, a crime for which many Christian fanatics were executed during the last years of ‘Abd al-Rahman II. Such voluntary martyrdom was oYcially proclaimed sinful and tantamount to suicide by a Council convened at Cordova in 852; but the movement spread and, shortly after the Council, the Christian community at Toledo, evidently dominated by more fanatical elements, even elected Eulogius metropolitan, a choice which Mohammed I refused to ratify. In 859 Eulogius, arrested on a charge of illegal proselytization, publicly insulted the Prophet and was duly decapitated. The movement continued for a time, but eventually petered out in the tenth century.101

Other Relevant Source Material In this section, as before, I have deliberately ignored evidence which I believe to be valueless, such as the clearly unhistorical story in John Malalas and John of Antioch of a letter sent to Trajan by Tiberianus, governor of Palestina Prima, complaining of his weariness in persecuting Christians who ‘will not stop incriminating themselves in order to be put to death’.102 1. It is very well known that from the earliest times Christianity venerated its martyrs and conceived of them as occupying a special place in the future life.103 There is a great deal of evidence, which I 101 [See K. B. Wolf, Christian Martyrs in Muslim Spain (Cambridge, 1988); J. A. Coope, The Martyrs of Co´rdoba: Community and Family Conflict in an Age of Mass Conversion (Lincoln Nebraska, 1995).] 102 Malalas, Chronicle 11.5 (273) [trans. E. JeVreys, M. JeVreys, and R. Scott; see the recent edition of H. Thurn, Ioannis Malalae Chronographia (Corpus Fontium Historiae Byzantinae 35; Berlin, 2000)]; John of Antioch fr. 111 in Fragmenta Historicum Graecorum, iv (Paris, 1851), 580–1. 103 On the original signiWcance and the developments of the word martus and the concept of martyrdom, see H. Delehaye, Sanctus, 74–121; F. Gu¨nther, Martus: Die Geschichte eines Wortes (Berlin, 1941). [See also H. Von Campenhausen, Die Idee des Martyriums in der alten Kirche (Go¨ttingen, 1936); N. Brox, Zeuge und Ma¨rtyrer: Untersuchungen zur fru¨hchristlichen Zeugnis-Terminologie (Munich, 1961); Gre´goire, Persećutions, 238–49; H. Strathmann, ‘Martus’, in G. Kittel and F. Friedrich (eds.), Theological Dictionary of the New Testament (London, 1964), 474–508; T. Baumeister, Die Anfa¨nge der Theologie des Martyriums (Mu¨nster, 1979); and G. W. Bowersock, Martyrdom and Rome (Cambridge, 1995), 1–21.]

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need not review in detail now,104 showing that confessors awaiting martyrdom, benedicti martyres designati as Tertullian calls them (Ad Martyras 1.1), using the technical term for Roman magistrates who had been elected but had not yet entered upon their oYce, were persons of extraordinary consequence among the faithful, who visited them in relays (sometimes exposing themselves in doing so) and brought them food and comforts.105 Confessors, at any rate those awaiting execution, might sometimes even claim the prerogative of forgiving the sin of apostasy on the part of weaker brethren who had lapsed under pressure:106 during the Decian persecutions of 250 this practice was carried to such lengths in Africa that certiWcates of forgiveness, libelli pacis, were given wholesale by imprisoned confessors—thousands a day, according to Cyprian (Ep. 20.2), who was exasperated at the aVront to his own authority, and whose letters are full of indignant complaints about these libelli pacis. The veneration paid to confessors sometimes went to their heads: we hear of complaints from Tertullian and Cyprian about iactatio martyris.107 2. We have just one work by a pagan author which corroborates, if from a hostile point of view, some of the things we learn from Christian sources about the reverential attitude of the ordinary Christians towards imprisoned confessors. This is The Death of Peregrinus, written probably during the late 160s by the satirist Lucian. And as it happens the same work also provides us with an excellent pagan parallel to the voluntary Christian martyrs. Peregrinus, or Proteus as he preferred to call himself, was a real historical character, a citizen of Parium on the Hellespont and a very curious person indeed. It was in Palestine, according to Lucian, that Peregrinus fell in with the Christians ‘and picked up their queer creed. I can tell you, he pretty soon made them look like children: prophet, chairman, organizer—he was everything at once; expounded their 104 See the opening chapter of H. Delehaye, Les Origines du culte des martyrs, 2nd edn. (Subsidia hagiographica 20; Brussels, 1933), esp. 15 V. 105 See Delehaye, Sanctus, 11–14. 106 See Tertullian, Ad Martyras 1.6; De Pudicitia 22.1–2; Cyprian, Ep. 15; 16; 17.2; 20.2–3; 21.3; 22.2; 23; 27; 35; 36; Dionys. Alex. ap. Eusebius, HE 6.42.5–6; Peter of Alexandria, Ep. Can. 5; probably Eusebius, HE 5.2.5. I know of no reference to this practice after the Decian persecution. 107 Tertullian, Adv. Prax. 1.4; Cyprian, Ep. 11.1; cf. 13.4, 5; 14.2, 3.


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books, commented on them, wrote a lot of books himself. They took him for a sort of god, accepted him as a lawgiver, and declared him their president . . . the end of it was that Proteus was arrested and thrown into prison. This was the very thing to lend an air, in his future career, to the storytelling and notoriety he was addicted to. Well, the Christians took it all very seriously: he was no sooner in prison than they began trying every means to get him out again, but without success. Everything else that could be done for him they most devoutly did. Aged widows and orphan children might be seen hanging about the prison from break of day. Their oYcials even bribed the gaolers to let them sleep inside with him. Then elaborate dinners were conveyed in; their sacred writings were read; and our old friend Peregrinus, as he was still called in those days, became for them ‘the modern Socrates’. From some of the Asiatic cities, too, the Christian communities put themselves to the expense of sending deputations, with oVers of sympathy, assistance, and legal advice. The alacrity of these people in dealing with any matter that aVects their community is something extraordinary: in no time they spend their every penny. Peregrinus, all this time, was making quite an income on the strength of his bondage: money came pouring in. You see, these misguided creatures have convinced themselves that they are going to be altogether immortal and live for ever, which explains the contempt for death and voluntary self-devotion which are so common among them (par ho kai kataphronousin tou thanatou kai hekontes autous epididoasin hoi polloi) . . . Now an adroit, unscrupulous charlatan, who has seen this world, has only to get among these simple souls, and his fortune is pretty soon made: he plays with them.’108 Eventually Peregrinus was released from prison by the legate of Syria and returned to Parium, but his wandering soon began again. ‘The Christians’, says Lucian (De Mort. Peregr. 16), ‘were meat and drink to him; under their protection he lacked nothing, and this luxurious state of things went on for some time.’ At last the Christians found him out and excommunicated him. He then became a 108 De Morte Peregrini 11–13; I have used the delightful free translation of F. G. Fowler, in H. W. Fowler and F. G. Fowler, The Works of Lucian of Samosata: Complete with Exceptions SpeciWed in the Preface, iv (Oxford, 1905), 79–95, adapting it slightly.

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Cynic philosopher, and at the Olympic Games of 161 announced that at the next Games, in 165, he would immolate himself on a pyre, a promise which he actually fulWlled (Lucian, De Mort. Peregr. 1–6, 20–42; Fugitivi 1–2, 7). Lucian presents him as a man dominated by a passion for notoriety and theatricality; but this, of course, is not the whole story,109 and evidently the suicide of Peregrinus made a deep impression at the time, as Lucian indirectly admits.110 There were those who searched the burning remains for some precious relic they could carry away;111 and a venerable disciple of Peregrinus insisted that immediately after his cremation Peregrinus had appeared to him in white raiment (De Mort. Peregr. 40). It seems merely fortuitous that Peregrinus did not conceive his plan of self-immolation when he was still a member of the Christian community. If he had done so, and had chosen a suitable method of inducing the authorities to put him to death, he might even have achieved a place among the saints and martyrs of the Church. 3. The distinguishing characteristic of the voluntary martyrs is a positive craving for martyrdom for its own sake. This characteristic sometimes appears in martyrs who are not known to have taken 109 See M. Caster, Lucien et la penseé religieuse de son temps (Paris, 1937), 237–55, with bibliography at 396–7. I agree with Caster’s comment on p. 245 that Lucian is totally lacking in any religious feeling. [It is doubtful whether Lucian’s religious feelings can be inferred so easily from his work. As J. L. Lightfoot has recently argued, ‘for all the caustic tone of the religious satire in Lucian’s . . . works, the crucial observation is that they are not, for the most part, up-to-the-minute responses to the changing contemporary scene, but rather heirs to a long tradition of comic and philosophic satire directed against religious Xummery (not necessarily against the idea of gods per se)’; see Lightfoot, Lucian: On the Syrian Goddess (Oxford, 2003), 200. See also J. Hall, Lucian’s Satire (New York, 1981), 194–220, and C. P. Jones, Culture and Society in Lucian (Cambridge, Mass., 1986), 33–45.] 110 The suicide was copied from Indian models: see Lucian, De Morte Peregrini 25, 39; Fugitivi 6–7 (Brachmanes, gymnosophistai). Two such Indian suicides were well known in the West, that of Calanus at Susa in 324 bc in the presence of Alexander (the main sources are Arrian, Anab. 7.2–3; Strabo 15.1.68; Diodorus 17.107.1–5; Plutarch, Alex. 69), and that of Zarmanus or Zarmarus at Athens in 25 bc in the presence of Augustus (Cassius Dio 54.9.9–10; Strabo 15.1.4; 1.73; Plutarch, Alex. 69.8). [Note that Peregrinus claims the Cynic hero Heracles as his model; see De Morte Peregrini 33 and 36. On the importance of Heracles in Cynic thought see R. Hoïstad, Cynic Hero and Cynic King: Studies in the Cynic Conception of Man (Uppsala, 1948), 22–73.] 111 Lucian, De Morte Peregrini 39. Compare the Christian attention to martyrs’ relics, the earliest evidence of which appears to be Passio Polycarpi 18.2–3.


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active steps to realize their desire, although in some cases there may be reason to suspect that in fact they did so. Prominent among these is an important Wgure in the history of the early Church, who, though he cannot be proved to have been a voluntary martyr, is perhaps the precursor to the whole series: Ignatius, bishop of Antioch, who was martyred at Rome, probably between the years 110 and 125, but possibly even as late as the 160s. In his letter to the Church of Rome, written while he was being taken from Antioch to the capital for execution, Ignatius displays what I can only call a pathological yearning for martyrdom.112 The prospect of being given to the beasts at Rome Wlls him with intense pleasure. He describes himself as ‘desiring to die’ (Ep. ad Rom. 7.2), and admonishes the Roman Christians not to try to save him. ‘I am willingly dying for God,’ he says (Ep. ad Rom. 4–5), ‘unless you hinder me. I urge you, do not become an untimely kindness to me. Allow me to be bread for the wild beasts; through them I am able to attain to God. I am the wheat of God and am ground by the teeth of the wild beasts, that I may be found to be the pure bread of Christ. Rather, coax the wild beasts, that they may become a tomb for me and leave no part of my body behind . . . May I have the full pleasure of the wild beasts prepared for me; I pray they will be found ready for me. Indeed, I will coax them to devour me quickly . . . Fire and cross and packs of wild beasts, cuttings and being torn apart, the scattering of bones, the mangling of limbs, the grinding of the whole body, the evil torments of the devil—let them come upon me, only that I may attain to Jesus Christ.’113 We do not know the circumstances in which Ignatius was arrested and sentenced. John Malalas (Chron. 11, p. 276) and the Antiochene Acts of Ignatius depict him as a volunteer giving deliberate provocation;114 but these sources are late (the Antiochene Acts are probably later than Malalas, whose Wrst edition was

112 [Note, however, that he never uses the word ‘martyr’; see Bowersock, Martyrdom and Rome, 6.] 113 [Trans. B. D. Ehrmann, The Apostolic Fathers, i (Cambridge, Mass., 2003), 274–7; see also the commentary of W. R. Schoedel, Ignatius of Antioch (Philadelphia, 1985), 175–80.] 114 Ed. J. B. Lightfoot, The Apostolic Fathers, 2nd edn. (London, 1889), ii.ii. 477–95, 589–95.

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completed c.530), and quite untrustworthy,115 and we cannot pay any serious attention to them. Any suggestion that Ignatius was a volunteer, plausible as it may seem, must remain unsupported by credible evidence. However, although we cannot actually count Ignatius as a volunteer, his letter to the Romans is evidence of the existence in the early Church of a trend which was only too likely to lead to voluntary martyrdom, even at times when the authorities were not much inclined to persecute. I can Wnd no trace of any disapproval among Christians of Ignatius’ attitude. Indeed the curious and rather repellent metaphor about being the wheat of God, to be ground into pure bread by the teeth of the wild beasts, is quoted approvingly by Irenaeus in the 180s (Adv. Haeres. 5.28.4: though without attribution to Ignatius by name), and no doubt the letters of Ignatius did circulate in the early Church,116 although, as it happens, they are rarely quoted in the surviving literature. There seems little reason to think that the state of mind visible in Ignatius’ letter to the Church of Rome was an isolated phenomenon. 4. I now wish to refer brieXy to one of the most remarkable of all early Christian documents, the Passion of Perpetua and her companions, described by Delehaye as ‘the masterpiece of hagiographic literature’.117 It is indeed an extraordinary composition. There is no attempt to use the oYcial Acta of the trial. Nearly half of the original 115 See the thorough analysis of Lightfoot, The Apostolic Fathers, 383–91 (Acts), 436–7 (Malalas). 116 See esp. Eusebius, HE 3.36.2–15. The evidence is set out and discussed at length in Lightfoot, The Apostolic Fathers, i. 135–232; P. N. Harrison, Polycarp’s Two Epistles to the Philippians (Cambridge, 1936), 209 V. [C. Munier, ‘Ou` en est la question d’Ignace d’Antioche? Bilan d’un sie`cle de recherches 1870–1988’, ANRW ii.27.1 (Berlin and New York, 1993), 359–484.] 117 Ed. Knopf, no. 8; Delehaye, Les Passions, 63. [See J. Amat’s edition of the Passio Perpetuae; Passion de Perpe´tue et de Fe´licite´, suivi des Actes (Sources chre´tiennes 417; Paris, 1996), with the text and French trans. at 98–183. Perpetua’s Passion has received much attention in recent years. See particularly Louis Robert’s classic study of her last vision, ‘Une vision de Perpe´tue martyre a` Carthage en 203’, CRAI (1982), 228–76, repr. in Robert, Opera Minora Selecta: E´pigraphie et Antiquite´s Grecques, v (Amsterdam, 1989), 791–839. See also B. D. Shaw, ‘The Passion of Perpetua’, Past and Present, 139 (1993), 3–45, repr. in R. Osborne (ed.), Studies in Ancient Greek and Roman Society (Cambridge, 2004), 286–325; and J. Bremmer, ‘Perpetua and her Diary: Authenticity, Family and Visions’, in W. Ameling (ed.), Ma¨rtyrer und Ma¨rtyrerakten (Stuttgart, 2002), 77–120.]


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Latin Passion, in its complete form, consists of Perpetua’s own vivid record of her arrest, her trial, and her experiences in prison, outstanding among which are her visions. A few more paragraphs contain the record of further visions, those of Saturus, Perpetua’s catechist and fellow-martyr and a volunteer, the only one in this group of martyrs (see above, p. 169). The rest of the Passion is the work of an editor who was either an eyewitness to the martyrdom or obtained his material from an eyewitness; and it must have been composed soon after the events it relates, which took place at Carthage in 203. It is believed by many scholars that the editor, who shows Montanist characteristics, was no less a person than Tertullian himself, who became a Montanist a few years after Perpetua’s martyrdom.118 Recent Roman Catholic writers, however, while admitting distinct Montanist elements in the outlook of the editor of the Passion, consider the contributions of Perpetua and Saturus themselves suYciently orthodox, even if they show traces of Montanist inXuence.119 There is certainly no sign that Perpetua and the others were in any way separated from the Catholic community in Africa. However, even if the martyrs considered themselves, and were considered by the rest of their community, to be orthodox Catholic Christians, I do not myself see how one can possibly avoid the conclusion, which has imposed itself on most scholars, that a distinct Montanist Xavour pervades even the passages written by Perpetua and Saturus. I therefore do not think it right to treat the Passion as truly representative of the outlook of Catholic Christianity. Nevertheless, it was undoubtedly characteristic of what we might call the left wing of the Catholic Church in Africa, which a century later was 118 [Tertullian was Louis Robert’s preferred choice as author, although he conceded that this could not be established with any certainty; see Robert, ‘Une vision de Perpe´tue’, 235 n. 35; against this see T. D. Barnes, Tertullian: A Historical and Literary Study, rev. edn. (Oxford, 1985), 79–80 and 329; and R. Braun, ‘Nouvelles observations linguistiques sur le re´dacteur de la ‘‘Passio Perpetuae’’ ’, Vig. Chr. 33 (1979), 105–17. Brent Shaw reckons Robert’s caution to be ‘perhaps the point . . . where the whole matter ought to be left’; see his ‘The Passion of Perpetua’ at 309 n. 70.] 119 Delehaye, Les Origines, 63 V., esp. 66–7; P. de Labriolle, La Crise montaniste (Paris, 1913), 339–53. [Barnes originally reckoned the Passion of Perpetua to be ‘Montanist through and through’, but later conceded that the visions of Perpetua and Saturus need to be separated from the general tone of the text; see his Tertullian at 77–9 and 329, with the review of J. Matthews, JTS 24 (1973), 245–9, at 248–9.]

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to break away in the Donatist schism. Moreover, its great popularity shows that it made a very strong appeal to Christians generally, and it seems to me representative of a signiWcant section of opinion within the Catholic Church. The most striking feature of the Passion of Perpetua is its atmosphere of elation, or exaltation, in the face of approaching martyrdom. The martyrs are greedy for death: they receive with joy the sentence of execution by exposure to the beasts, hilares descendimus ad carcerem (‘we went down to the cell joyfully’); and they spend the interval before execution in a state of intense excitement and pleasurable anticipation, enhanced by comforting visions in which they see themselves play a most distinguished part. The brethren who visit them treat them with the very greatest respect, and their prayers, for the living and for the dead, are believed to have special eYcacy. The act of martyrdom is everything. One of the company, Saturninus, is said to have declared while in prison, in words which remind us irresistibly of Ignatius, that ‘he wished he could be thrown to all the beasts, that he might wear a more glorious crown’. 5. When Epictetus (Diss. 4.7.6), after speaking of various classes of men who have no fear of tyrants (because they wish for death, are nobly indiVerent to it, or are deranged by madness or despair), goes on to ask ‘if madness can produce this attitude of mind toward the things which have just been mentioned, and also habit, as with the Galileans, cannot reason and demonstration teach a man that God has made all things in the universe, and the whole universe itself, to be free from hindrance, and to contain its ends in itself, and the parts of it to serve the needs of the whole?’ He may not be referring to the Christians at all, but rather to the Jewish Zealots;120 and even if he has the Christians in mind, he may be alluding to the steadfastness of their martyrs in general. However, in the Meditations of Marcus Aurelius there is a passage which suggests that the philosophic

120 Thus A. Schlatter, ‘Der Ma¨rtyrer in den Anfa¨ngen der Kirche’, in Beitrage zur Fo¨rderung christlicher Theologie, 19.3 (1915), 226–310, at 241 and 290–1 n. 35. [See also M. Hengel, Die Zeloten: Untersuchungen zur ju¨dischen Freiheitsbewegung in der Zeit von Herodes I. bis 70 n. Chr (Leiden, 1976), 60–1, trans. by D. Smith as The Zealots: Investigations into the Jewish Freedom Movement in the Period from Herod I until 70 A.D. (Edinburgh, 1989), 58–9.]


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emperor thought the Christian martyrs guilty of theatricality.121 The accusation was no doubt thoroughly unjust as regards the ordinary martyrs, but some of the volunteers may well have acted in such a way as to lend colour to Marcus’ criticism. 6. A passage in Origen’s Contra Celsum suggests that Christians would sometimes revile and strike a pagan image in their eagerness to prove it powerless to avenge such an insult (8.38). Origen, however, reproves such conduct as unseemly and not characteristic of educated Christians (see also 8.41). Another passage shows that Celsus, writing in the Antonine period,122 had accused the Christians of being ‘mad’ and of ‘deliberately rushing forward to arouse the wrath of an emperor or governor and bringing upon themselves blows and tortures and even death’ (Contra Celsum 8.65). Origen Xatly denies this, but he seems to be thinking of acts of outright civil disobedience.

Jewish Antecedents of Christian Martyrdom The literature of the Jewish resistance movement against Antiochus IV Epiphanes had immediately produced its mythical confessors (Daniel in the lions’ den, and the three young men in the burning Wery furnace: Dan. 6 and 7, of 167–165 bc) and soon it was commemorating its martyrs, actual or mythical. At Wrst, perhaps, they were a nameless band: thus the author of 1 Maccabees, certainly writing before (probably long before) the Roman conquest of Judaea in 63 bc, refers with restraint to anonymous people who chose to die rather than eat prohibited meats (1 Macc. 1: 62–4).123 Tradition 121 [11.3, trans. Farquharson: ‘How admirable is the soul which is ready and resolved, if it must this moment be released from the body, to be either extinguished or scattered or to persist. This resolve, too, must arise from a speciWc decision, not out of sheer opposition like the Christians, but after reXection and with dignity, and so as to convince other, without histrionic display.’ Although see P. Brunt, ‘Marcus Aurelius and the Christians’, in C. Deroux (ed.), Studies in Latin Literature and Roman History, i (Brussels, 1979), 483–520, at 498, who argues that the reference to the Christians is ‘almost certainly a gloss’.] 122 I do not think it possible to be more precise than this. For the relevant evidence, see Chadwick, Contra Celsum, pp. xxvi–xxviii. 123 Cf. Revelation, where the martyrs are exalted, but only one individual (Antipas) is casually named.

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ultimately retained the memory of a small company of ten ‘Maccabean martyrs’, the heroes of 2 and 4 Maccabees, of which the former was probably written in the early Wrst century bc and the latter in the Wrst half of the Wrst century ad (2 Macc. 6–7; 14: 37–46; 4 Macc. 5–18).124 A gradual development was also taking place in Jewish thought: most of the prophets were now credited with having been martyrs, or at least confessors who had suVered persecution for their religion, if only at the hands of their own people.125 The best known and one of the earliest attested of these legendary accretions is the tradition that Isaiah was martyred by being sawn in half,126 a tradition certainly known to Justin in the 150s (Dial c. Tryph. 120), and possibly to the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews (11: 37). The notion of special rewards for those Jews who perished for their faith probably emerged during the Wrst century bc. 1 Maccabees knows nothing of a future life;127 but 2 and 4 Maccabees assert a resurrection of at any rate those Israelites who die as martyrs for their faith.128 Eternal life with the Patriarchs,129 ‘in the bosom of Abraham’ 124 The standard texts are those in the editions of the Septuagint by A. Rahlfs (1935) and by H. B. Swete. For 2 Macc. see Les Livres des Maccabeés (2nd edn., 1949), a text of 1 and 2 Maccabees with French trans. and comm.; for 4 Macc. see M. Hadas, The Third and Fourth Books of Maccabees (1953), a text with Eng. trans. and comm., and a good select bibliography on pp. 139–41; A. Dupon-Sommer, Le Quatrie`me Livre des Maccabeés (Bibl. de l’Ećole des Hautes-E´tudes, 274; 1939), a French trans. and comm.; O. Perler, ‘Das vierte Makkabaërbuch, Ignat. v. Antiochen und die a¨ltesten Martyrerberichte’, Riv. di archeol. crist. 25 (1949), 47–72. See also H. W. Surkau, Martyrium im ju¨discher und fru¨hchristlicher Zeit (1938). 125 See H. A. Fischel, ‘Martyr and Prophet (a Study of Jewish Literature)’, Jewish Quarterly Review, ns 37.3 (1947), 265–80, and 37.4 (1947), 363–86, 279–80. 126 See R. H. Charles, Apoc. and Pseudep. of the OT (1913), ii. 155–8, with an Eng. trans. of (and notes upon) the Martyrdom of Isaiah, pp. 159–62; The Ascension of Isaiah (1919). 127 ‘All the rewards of faithfulness enumerated by the dying Mattathias (ii 52–61) are limited to this life’: see R. H. Charles, A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life in Israel, in Judaism, and in Christianity (2nd edn., 1913), 266. 128 2 Macc. 7: 9, 14, 23, 29, 36; 12: 44; 14: 46; 4 Macc. 5: 37; 7: 18–19; 13: 17; 15: 3; 16: 25; 17: 5, 12, 18; 18: 23. I cannot agree with Charles, Critical History, 275 etc., that 2 Maccabees actually presents all the righteous as sharing in the resurrection; but three passages in 4 Macc. (5: 37; 13: 17; 18: 23) do concede immortality to the forefathers of the martyrs (in this work there is no reference to a resurrection of the body, as in e.g. 2 Macc. 7: 11; 14: 46). 129 4 Macc. 13: 17; cf. 7: 19; 16: 25.


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to use the New Testament phrase,130 is the particular privilege of the martyrs. ‘Men dying for God’, says the author of 4 Maccabees, ‘live unto God as live Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob, and all the Patriarchs’ (16: 25; cf. 7: 19);131 the martyrs ‘stand beside the throne of God’ (4 Macc. 17: 18). So in the Christian Apocalypse the souls of the martyrs are ‘under the altar’ (Rev. 6: 9), which is ‘before God’ (Rev. 9: 13); they are ‘before the throne of God’ (Rev. 7: 15) and they alone have part in the First Resurrection, living and reigning with Christ for a thousand years (Rev. 20: 4–6). The early Church saw the martyrs as assessors in the divine judgement,132 and believed that their ‘baptism of blood’ had wiped away all their sins,133—even the sins of those who, as mere catechumens, had not yet received baptism in the ordinary way (Hippol. Apost. Trad. 19.2). The Church saw itself from the Wrst as a new ‘Israel of God’,134 a conception which the disastrous failure of the Jewish revolt and the destruction of the Temple in ad 70 could only strengthen.135 Part of its inheritance from the ‘Israel of the Xesh’ was the attitude towards martyrdom, and even some actual martyrs with their stories. The Maccabean martyrs, strangely neglected by the Pharisaic movement,136 were enthusiastically adopted, so that by the fourth century 130 Luke 16: 22–3. Is it fanciful to Wnd an echo of the Eleazer of 2 and 4 Maccabees in the name Lazarus, a colloquial form of Eleazar, given to the only character in any parable of Jesus who receives a name, and who goes to a blessed future life ‘in the bosom of Abraham’? 131 So in Tacitus, Hist. 5.5 animos proelio aut suppliciis peremptorum aeternos putant [Judaei]. 132 Hippolytus, Comm. in Dan. 2.37; Dionys. Alex. ap. Eusebius, HE 6.42.5; and other passages cited by H. Delehaye, Les Origines, 4 n. 6. 133 For the earliest evidence on this subject, see H. Windisch, Taufe und Su¨nde im a¨ltesten Christentum bis auf Origenes (1908), 414–15, 423, 435, 481–3. 134 In the NT, see esp. Gal. 6: 16; 3: 7, 9, 29; Rom. 9: 6–8; cf. Eph. 2: 11–13; Phil. 3: 3. See also 1 Clem. 29; Justin, C. Tryph. 123, 135, 119–20; Irenaeus, Adv. Haeres. 4.8.1; 5.32.3, 34.1; Clement of Alexandria, Strom. 2.6.28.4; 29.1. I have not been able to gain access to A. Oepke, Das neue Gottesvolk, im Schrifttum, Schauspiel, bildender Kunst und Weltgestaltung. 135 See H. J. Schoeps, Aus fru¨hchristlicher Zeit (1950), 153–67. 136 It is true that the Pharisaic movement became thoroughly alienated from the Hasmonaean ruling house from the time of John Hyrcanus, towards the end of the 2nd cent. bc (see Jos. AJ 13.10.5–6, §§ 288–98); but that is no reason why the Maccabean martyrs gloriWed in 2 and 4 Maccabees should have fallen out of favour,

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their cult had spread in a remarkable manner;137 numerous panegyrics in honour of these martyrs—inspired, apparently, by 4 rather than 2 Maccabees—were pronounced by the Fathers of the Church.138 John Chrysostom could call Eleazar ‘the Wrst martyr of the old dispensation, the image of Peter the chief of the apostles’. Many individual elements in the Christian conception and stories of martyrs were taken over directly from Judaism, with 2 and 4 Maccabees as the main source; these works were known in the early Church,139 including the churches of Smyrna and of Vienne and Lyons, from which emanated the best known of our earliest surviving Passions, those of Polycarp and of the Gallic martyrs of ad 177.140 Prominent among these inXuences is the habitual use of the terminology of Greek athletic games, and in particular of the word athletes as a characteristic designation of the martyr or confessor: this we Wnd in 4 Maccabees (6: 10; 17: 15–16, cf. 12–13).141 To compare the struggle for virtue with the games, employing metaphors and similes drawn from the stadium and gymnasium, is of course a Stoic practice, adopted also by Philo;142 but it seems likely that it took root especially as the author of 2 Maccabees seems himself to have been a Pharisee, and the author of 4 Maccabees is not in the least interested in the political resistance movement led by the Hasmonaeans (which he never mentions) but in the purely religious victims only. The explanation, I think, must be that in the absence of actual cults of the martyrs, discouraged by oYcial Judaism, interest in particular martyrs would not be likely to remain alive unless their teaching, as prophets or Rabbis, had been preserved. 137 See Delehaye, Les Origines, 201–2; M. Maas, ‘Die Maccabaër als christliche Heilige’, Monatsschrift fu¨r Geschichte und Wiss. D. Judentums, 44 (1900), 145–56; J. Jeremias, ‘Die Makkabaër-Kirche in Antiochia’, Zeitschrift d. neutest. Wiss. 40 (1942), 254 V. 138 The principal texts are Greg. Naz. Or. 15, in Machab. Laud.; John Chrysostom, Hom. in SS. Maccab. I and II (PG 50.617–28); Hom. 11, de Eleaz. (PG 53.523–30); Ambrose, De Jacob et vit. Beat. 2.10.43–12.58; Augustine, Serm. 300, 301 (PL 38.1376– 93). Razis very rarely appears, but see Augustine, C. Gaudent. 1.31, 38, and Ep. 204.6– 8, where he does not escape reproof for his suicide (his death is described as mirabilior quam prudentior, ‘more marvellous than sensible’). 139 For Clement, Hippolytus, Origen, and Cyprian, see E. Schu¨rer, Geschichte des juud. Volkes, iii (4th edn., 1909); O Machabaeicam matrem in Pass. Montan. Et Luc 16.4 (¼ Musurillo, ACM, p. 230) presupposes an audience familiar with 2 or 4 Maccabees. 140 Perler, ‘Das vierter Makkabaërbuch’. 141 There are an astonishing number of other metaphors drawn from the games: see 4 Macc. 9: 23, 11: 20, 13: 14, 16: 16, 17: 11–16. 142 Philo, Quod Omn. Pro. Lib. 88; De Migrat. Abr. 27; De Sobrietat. 65; De Somniis 1.59.


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among Christian writers primarily because of the extended use made of it by the author of 4 Maccabees. Among other elements which Christian Passions seem to have borrowed from Judaism are the attribution of prophetic and other visions to the martyr before execution;143 the miraculous invulnerability or temporary preservation of the martyr;144 the admiration excited by the martyr in his guards and executioners, who are sometimes converted, even to the extent of deciding to die with him;145 the angelic radiance of the face of the martyr when death approaches;146 the prodigies which often accompanied a martyrdom, including on occasion the sudden death of the persecutor concerned.147 The impact of Judaism on Christian attitudes included examples of volunteers for martyrdom. The incident about which we are best informed occurred early in 4 bc, shortly before the death of Herod, and is sympathetically narrated by Josephus (BJ 1.33.2–4, §§ 648–55; AJ 17.6.2–4, §§ 149–64). Two rabbis named Judas and Matthias successfully urged their disciples to cut down the golden eagle which Herod had set up over the great gate of the Temple at Jerusalem. Some forty of these fanatics were arrested immediately, and they were all put to death on Herod’s orders, the two rabbis and the man who had actually pulled down the eagle being burnt alive. Eventually it became necessary for the leaders of Judaism to check voluntary martyrdom, because of the dangers to Jewish communities by inXaming opinion: giving oneself up to persecutors was authoritatively condemned.148 A council of rabbis held at Lydda during the second great Jewish revolt against the Romans in ad 132–5 declared that a Jew might yield to any compulsion except to commit idolatry, incest, or murder to save his life.149 Islam also condemned voluntary martyrdom, which was nevertheless practised from time to time by 143 In one or two of these cases it is just possible that the borrowing was by Judaism from Christianity. See Fischel, ‘Martyr and Prophet’, 364–71. 144 Ibid. 376–7. 145 Ibid. 267, 279. 146 Ibid. 381–4. 147 Ibid. 377–9. 148 See J. H. Greenstone, ‘Martyrdom, Restriction of ’, in Jewish Encyclopaedia, viii (1904); G. F. Moore, Judaism in the First Centuries of the Christian Era (1927), ii. 106 n. 4, 107–8; Fischel, ‘Martyr and Prophet’, 268. 149 See Moore, Judaism in the First Centuries, 30, 106–7.

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fanatics and sectarians,150 a reXection of the shared heritage and similar pressures on these three religions.

Conclusions I believe that I have produced suYcient evidence to prove that from at least the Antonine period onwards voluntary martyrdom was very much more prevalent in the early Church than has hitherto been realized. It was not a peculiarity of heretics and schismatics, even if some members of schismatic or heretical sects—Donatists and perhaps Montanists, for example—indulged in it more than the orthodox. The main reason for the oYcial condemnation of the practice, stated with peculiar clarity by Ambrose, was that it might well bring down a persecution upon the Christian community. As I said at the beginning of this paper, the prevalence of voluntary martyrdom must have contributed towards the outbreak of persecution and tended to intensify it when it already existed. But I should like to go further than that. The evidence for Christian voluntary martyrdom begins in the Antonine period. I wish to suggest, with all the reserve necessitated by the lack of evidence, that in fact the practice probably began very much earlier, and that the reason why we do not hear of it before about 150 is that we have too little evidence for any sort of persecution or martyrdom or indeed about the life of the Church in general—before the end of the second century. Here the Jewish background and literature of martyrdom is material. The new ‘Israel of God’ could not have been unaware of the Jewish attitude to martyrdom, and it very quickly made up its mind (as we can see from the New Testament) that it too would have to be prepared to suVer persecution. Many Christians must have read and taken to heart the stories of the Maccabean martyrs, so much more detailed, concrete, and vivid than the vague ‘noble army of martyrs’, ‘nameless martyrs’, in Revelations. It is hardly possible to doubt that Ignatius had read 4 Maccabees, and there is good reason to think that the book became widely known in the Church in the second 150 See I. Goldziher, Muhammedanische Studien, ii (Halle, 1890), 388–91 [trans. C. R. Barber and S. M. Stern, Muslim Studies ii, ed. S. M. Stern (London, 1971), 351–4]; F. DornseiV, Archiv fu¨r Religionswiss. 22 (1923–4), 151–3.


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century.151 Would not many an emotional convert be likely to be powerfully aVected and react in the same way as Ignatius? That famous martyr, if not actually a volunteer, was of the very stuV of which voluntary martyrs were made. As we have seen, his letter to the Roman Church shows him as devoured by a passionate desire for martyrdom, ero¯n tou apothanein. Would not rewarding his letter tend to inspire in others of the faithful something of his own longing for martyrdom? And a Christian who desired martyrdom intensely enough could easily Wnd it: even before the mere nomen Christianum became a suYcient ground for condemnation, he had only to oVer public insult to a pagan image or an oYcial cult (the imperial cult in particular) to be instantly apprehended and—unless the magistrate concerned happened to take an unusually lenient view of the case— sentenced to death. I would claim that since voluntary martyrdom was evidently practised quite extensively from at least the reign of Marcus Aurelius onwards, and since the conditions for its existence (particularly the characteristic mentality, found in Ignatius, and a literature glorifying martyrdom and describing individual examples 151 [The date of 4 Maccabees has been much discussed, and is now most commonly assigned to around ad 100, although certainty is impossible (the books of the Maccabees are Wrst mentioned in the late 2nd cent., in Clement of Alexandria’s Stromata, 5.14.97). Ste. Croix may well have been following Elias Bickerman’s dating of ad 19–54; ‘The Date of Fourth Maccabees’, in Louis Ginsberg Jubilee Volume (New York, 1945), 105–12, repr. in Bickerman, Studies in Jewish and Christian History, i (Leiden, 1976), 275–81. The date of Ignatius’ letters is equally uncertain; Eusebius dates Ignatius’ death to ad 107, and his letters are generally assigned to the early 2nd cent.; see the recent discussions of R. M. Hu¨bner, ‘Thesen zur Echtheit und Datierung der sieben Briefe des Ignatius von Antiochen’, ZAC 1 (1997), 44–72 with the responses of G. Scho¨llgen, ‘Die Ignatien als pseudepigraphisches Briefcorpus: Anmerkung zu den Thesen von Reinhard M. Hu¨bner’, ZAC 2 (1998), 16–25 and H. J. Vogt, ‘Bemerkungen zur Echtheit der Ignatiusbriefe’, ZAC 3 (1999), 50–63 (with a further response by Hu¨bner to come). Similarities between Ignatius and 4 Maccabees should, perhaps, be explained in terms of shared concerns rather than direct authorial inXuence; see further J. W. Van Henten, ‘The Martyrs as Heroes of the Christian People: Some Remarks on the Continuity between Jewish and Christian Martyrology, with Pagan Analogies’, in M. Lamberigts and P. Van Deun (eds.), Martyrium in Multidisciplinary Perspective: Memorial Louis Reekmans (Bibliotheca Ephemeridum Theologicarum Lovaniensium 117; Leuven, 1995), 303–22; D. Boyarin, Dying for God: Martyrdom and the Making of Christianity and Judaism (Stanford, 1999), 115–17. See also Bowersock, Martyrdom and Rome, 77–81, at 79, who argues that ‘the language of Ignatius and IV Macc. seems clearly to reXect . . . a common origin for both in the imperial Greek of Asia Minor.’]

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of it in an emotionally disturbing manner) were equally prevalent in the earlier period, from which we could hardly expect any evidence anyway, we can conclude that there may have been quite a number of volunteers in the late Wrst and early second centuries. If that were so, it would be much easier to understand why persecution originally became rooted and why the mere nomen Christianum became punishable. I have dealt in a separate paper with the causes and legal basis of the persecution of Christianity,152 and all I need do here is to say that in my opinion the principal cause of persecution was religious: a fear that the Christians, by their ‘atheism’ or refusal to recognize the Roman gods, would destroy the pax deorum and bring down the anger of the gods on the whole community, local or imperial. How much more easily would their pagan contemporaries jump to this conclusion if a number of Christians went out of their way to insult the gods deliberately, thereby showing that their ‘atheism’ was more than a mere withdrawal from the worship to which the gods were traditionally entitled.

152 See Ch. 3.

5 Heresy, Schism, and Persecution in the Later Roman Empire My purpose in this chapter is essentially to explain why and how the Christian Church—or rather churches—became during the fourth and following centuries, and remained for more than a millennium and a half, the greatest organized persecuting force in human history. I shall argue that we can understand the origin of this situation far better if we consider the persecution of the Christians in the Wrst three centuries and the early years of the fourth, as well as persecution by the Christians from the fourth century onwards. We can learn something about each kind by studying the other: there are important elements of continuity between the two periods, although there are also some entirely new and important features in the Christian period. Unfortunately, it seems virtually unknown for a modern scholar to treat both types of persecution together;1 indeed, as far as I know, the only work of any kind that does try to do this is still a very brief article of my own.2 For Christians, naturally, all the emphasis tends to be placed upon the persecutions of Christianity; the much more extensive, long-lasting, and often successful persecutions by Christians, of pagans, Jews, Manichees, and Christian sects other than their own, are easily overlooked. It is not uncharacteristic that the usually very scholarly and reliable Oxford Dictionary of the 1 When I wished to do this some years ago, for a paper presented to the International Colloquium on Ecclesiastical History held at Oxford in 1974, I could Wnd no published work of any value on these lines in any of the few languages I can read. 2 ‘Christianity’s Encounter with the Roman Imperial Government’, in A. Toynbee (ed.), The Crucible of Christianity: Judaism, Hellenism and the Historical Background to the Christian Faith (London, 1969), 345–51, with bibliography at 357.

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Christian Church should be most inadequate in its second edition (1974) and scarcely better in its third (1997) in dealing with persecutions in antiquity by Christians.3 Before I go any further I should say that although the term ‘the Christian Church’ in the singular is a perfectly permissible theological expression, referring to an ideal situation which could be contemplated in the abstract, the historian, as distinct from the theologian, is usually obliged to employ the plural and speak of ‘the Christian churches’; for the theologian’s ideal of a single Church, sometimes referred to in a mystical sense as ‘the Body of Christ’, never came near to being realized in practice, even in Apostolic times and far less when Christianity became the established religion of the Roman Empire. The expression ‘the Christian Church’, therefore, denotes strictly a theological and not a historical concept.4 But the term is too convenient to be entirely abandoned, especially for the fourth century onwards when the Christians formed, for all their divisions, the one and only important empire-wide organization, or series of organizations, apart from the State itself.5 Although we must draw a distinction between persecutions of Christians and persecutions by Christians, there is (as I have already indicated) an important similarity between them. Both were carried out by a Roman state which underwent far less change after it had become Christian than many ecclesiastical historians believe, which makes it all the more strange that so few modern writers have paid any attention to continuities between pagan and Christian persecutors. This continuity resided above all in a deep-seated belief in the 3 Although the entry ‘Persecutions, early Christian’ in the third edition notes that from Theodosius I onwards the State coerced pagans into conversion ‘with more fervour and success than it had shown in suppressing Christianity’, it is still overwhelmingly focused on persecutions of Christians. Under the entry ‘toleration, religious’, there is a short reference to ‘the increasingly close connection between ecclesiastical authority and civil power’ after the conversion of Constantine, but the main focus is on the post-Reformation period. 4 [See Introduction, pp. 31–2.] 5 I am sometimes tempted to compare these, in a strictly functional sense, to what President Eisenhower called ‘the military-industrial complex’ in the United States. [See also Ste. Croix, The Class Struggle in the Ancient Greek World: From the Archaic Age to the Arab Conquests (1981; corr. imprint, London, 1983), 420. In an interview published in 1988 Ste. Croix explained this analogy by remarking that the early Church ‘was almost a rival to the government’; see ‘The Ancient World Today’, Horos, 6 (1988), 123–33, at 130.]

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necessity (to which I shall return shortly) to preserve the goodwill and favour of the gods, or of God: the pagans sometimes called this the ‘pax deorum’. Accordingly, the central characteristic of pagan persecutions of Christians is that they proceeded essentially from religious motives, and I would argue that there is good evidence that the persecutions by the Christians were, to a considerable degree, similarly motivated.6 The traditional religions of Rome, enshrined above all in what a Roman like Cicero would call ius divinum, the corpus of State law governing sacred matters, was for a member of the Roman governing class one of the very foundations of the Roman State, the fundamenta . . . nostrae civitatis to use Cotta’s phrase in De Natura Deorum (3.2.5).7 It was, of course, primarily a matter of performing certain prescribed cult acts, and it involved scarcely anything in the way of belief, except in the eYcacy of those cult acts.8 It was also completely tolerant of, and indeed would protect, Greek and other non-Roman cults,9 even if they had not been admitted among the oYcial sacra populi Romani [‘sacred things of the Roman people’], unless they gave rise to behaviour the Roman government considered criminal, scandalous, or excessive.10 6 [Ste. Croix justiWes the category ‘religious persecution’ in ‘Why were the Early Christians Persecuted?’ (above, pp. 138–40): even the governing classes, he argues, ‘were impelled to persecute . . . by motives I think we are justiWed in calling religious, in that their aim also was always primarily to break down the Christian refusal to worship the pagan gods’. Note, however, that the distinction between religion and politics in the ancient world has been called into question; see esp. S. R. F. Price, Rituals and Power: The Roman Imperial Cult in Asia Minor (Cambridge, 1984), 15–19; J. A. North, ‘Religion and Politics, from Republic to Principate’, JRS 76 (1986), 251–8, esp. 257.] 7 See Ste. Croix, ‘The Religion of the Roman World’, Didaskalos, 4 (1972), 61–74; also ‘Why were the Early Christians Persecuted?’ [above, Ch. 3, pp. 141–3]. 8 See Introduction. 9 Ste. Croix, ‘Religion’, 67 cites Minucius Felix, Octav. 6.3 and Arrian, Tact. 33.4 V., to which might be added Cic. II Verr. 4.113–15; Jos. AJ 19.5.278–91. [It is probably an overstatement to suggest that the Romans felt a commitment to tolerate and protect indigenous forms of worship. On the whole they felt no need to suppress them. See Appendix to this chapter on toleration.] 10 [Certainly accusations of immorality or criminal behaviour often accompanied the suppression of non-Roman religious groups, and Christian apologists regularly felt the need to counter such charges: see, for example, Tertullian, Apol. 2.5, 2.19–20, 4.2; Minucius Felix, Octav. 9–10, 28. However, suppression could occur without immoral behaviour or criminal activities speciWed—for instance, neither Tacitus (Annals 2.85) nor Suetonius (Tiberius 36) suggests that Tiberius’ expulsion of the

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With the conversion of Constantine in 312, Christianity became the most favoured religion of the empire,11 and well before his death in 337 it had become the main oYcial religion.12 Before the end of the fourth century all forms of paganism and all Christian sects except the Catholic one, by now accepted as Nicene, had been proscribed and were persecuted in one way or another.13 Moreover, Christians generally shared the outlook of their pagan contemporaries to the extent of feeling that religious misbehaviour of individuals might bring down punishment not merely upon the individuals concerned but upon at least their immediate communities and even perhaps the empire as a whole—especially its rulers. Hence the numerous persecuting edicts against heretics, schismatics, Manichees, Jews, Samaritans, and pagans—and to quote a pompous imperial constitution of 423, ‘all the others whose sects it disgusts us to insert in our most pious sanction, all of which have diVerent names but a single perWdy’ (Cod. Theod. 16.5.60).14 The evidence Jews and Egyptian rites from Rome was a response to immoral or criminal activity. Moreover, whether immoral behaviour or criminal activity was the reason for the suppression of non-Roman religious groups is further complicated by the rhetorical use of immorality in polemic. Above all, Roman suppression of non-Roman religious groups lacks any clear structure. While at times it seems to have been in response to perceived immorality, at others it seems more like a show of power justiWed as a response to immorality, as in the suppression of the Bacchic cult in 186 bc, on which see J. A. North’s important study, ‘Religious Toleration in Republican Rome’, PCPS 25 (1979), 85–103, repr. in C. Ando (ed.), Roman Religion (Edinburgh, 2003), 199–219. See also M. Beard, J. North, and S. Price, Religions of Rome, i: A History (Cambridge, 1998), 211–44.] 11 T. D. Barnes, ‘The Conversion of Constantine’, Ećhos du Monde Classique, 4 (1985), 371–91 [repr. in Barnes, From Eusebius to Augustine (Aldershot, 1994); see also R. Lane Fox, Pagans and Christians (Harmondsworth, 1986), 609–62; Beard et al., Religions of Rome, 364–88]. 12 [Although note that this process was uneven, varying across diVerent parts of the empire; see now T. D. Barnes, ‘From Toleration to Repression: The Evolution of Constantine’s Religious Policies’, Scripta Classica Israelica, 21 (2002), 189–207, esp. 200–5.] 13 Ste. Croix, Class Struggle, 396–405, 419–41, 445–52, 477, 481, 483–4, 495–7; K. L. Noethlichs, Die gesetzgeberischen Massnahmen der christlichen Kaiser des vierten Jahrhunderts gegen Ha¨retiker, Heiden und Juden (Ph.D. diss., Cologne, 1971). For translations of many key texts, see P. R. Coleman-Norton, Roman State and Christian Church: A Collection of Legal Documents to A.D. 535 (London, 1966). 14 [Note the comments of T. Honore´, who sees Sallustius, the quaestor drafting the law, as less ideologically driven than does Ste. Croix, and interprets the formula quorum sectas sanctioni taedet inserere as a complaint that ‘listing the names of


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extends from the earliest Christian times well into the Later Empire; there is far too much to quote in bulk and I shall merely select eight representative examples, from the Wrst to the sixth century. 1. Old Polycarp, who was said to have known the Apostles personally, used to tell a story, which is reported both by Irenaeus (Adversus Haereses 3.3.4) and twice by Eusebius (HE 3.28.6; 4.14.6), of how the Apostle John when entering the baths at Ephesus caught sight of the notable heretic Cerinthus inside and immediately rushed out shouting, ‘away, lest the very baths collapse, for within is Cerinthus the enemy of the truth.’ Even to remain under the same roof as such a man was dangerous.15 2. In the mid-third century Demetrianus, a pagan, attributed to the impiety of the Christians the plagues, wars, famines, and droughts which were then aZicting the empire. St Cyprian, in his reply to Demetrianus, also accepted these tribulations as a divine punishment, but of course attributed them to the failure of the pagans to worship the Christian God (Ad Demetrianum 1.5, 7–10, etc.).15a 3. The emperor Constantine aVords numerous examples of the attitude I am describing.16 During the winter of 313–14, he wrote a

heretical sects is boring’; see his Law in the Crisis of Empire: The Theodosian Code and its Quaestors (Oxford, 1998), 109–10. Moreover, whether this imperial constitution is especially pompous—at least any more than other imperial constitutions—is questionable, and attention should be drawn to the legitimating function of such language; see W. E. Voss, Recht und Rhetorik in den Kaisergesetzen der Spa¨tantike: Eine ¨ bereignungsrecht (Frankfurt, 1982); Untersuchung zum nachklassischen Kauf-und U and J. Harries, Law and Empire in Late Antiquity (Cambridge, 1999), 56–77. Nonetheless, this wording demonstrates Ste. Croix’s hostility to late antique religious legislation.] 15 The veracity of this anecdote has sometimes been doubted, but to my mind it becomes much more easily acceptable when we take into account the fourth item in my selection. 15a See the recent French edition, with translation and commentary, by J.-C. ` De´me´trien (Sources Chre´tiennes 467; Paris, 2003). Fredoville, A 16 Most of the texts have been admirably dealt with by N. H. Baynes, A. H. M. Jones, and T. D. Barnes; see Baynes, Constantine the Great and the Christian Church, 2nd edn., ed. H. Chadwick (London, 1972), esp. 10–14; Jones, Constantine and the Conversion of Europe (London, 1948), 80–3, and The Later Roman Empire, 284–602: A Social, Economic, and Administrative Survey (Oxford, 1964), 93–7; and Barnes, The New Empire of Diocletian and Constantine (Cambridge, Mass., 1982), 238–47. I merely select one example for illustration.

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letter about the Donatist controversy to AelaWus, if the name is correctly transmitted, the vicar or vice-prefect of the civil diocese of Africa: ‘Since I have been informed that you are also a worshipper of the Most High God, I confess to your eminence that I think it in no way right that such disputes and altercations [i.e. the Donatist controversy] should be concealed from us, when they might perhaps arouse the highest deity not only against the human race, but also against myself, to whose care he has by his celestial nod committed the regulation of all things earthly . . . For only then shall true and full security be possible for me, and a hope of the best and most prosperous outcome always and in everything from the unstinting benevolence of the most almighty God, when I am aware that all men worship the most holy God by the due rites of the Catholic religion in harmonious and brotherly observance.’17 The emperor felt personally responsible to God for the empire which God had entrusted to his charge, and he feared that if he allowed religious error and disorder to exist, God might well punish him, and with him the empire. 4. Now comes my personal favourite in this list of examples, a passage in the Ecclesiastical History of Theodoret, a leading theologian of the mid-Wfth century, which I have never seen quoted but is, to me at least, highly signiWcant.18 It recalls the behaviour of the Apostle John when confronted in the Ephesus baths by the heresiarch Cerinthus. In about 374 the eastern emperor Valens, who had Arian sympathies, exiled—among other Catholic bishops—the orthodox and zealously anti-Arian bishop Eusebius of Samosata, whom Theodoret greatly admired. He was replaced by an Arian bishop, Eunomius, but Eusebius had evidently impressed upon his congregation that if they associated with an Arian bishop they would bring deWlement upon themselves. When Eunomius went down to the public baths and his attendants shut everyone else out, he graciously ordered that the doors be opened and everyone who wanted to come in be admitted. Eunomius urged them to come into the water with him, but they all held back, which Eunomius attributed 17 Optatus, Appendix 3, Ziwsa edn., 206 [trans. M. Edwards, Optatus: Against the Donatists (TTH 27; Liverpool, 1997), 183–4]. 18 [On Theodoret, see T. Urbainczyk, Theodoret of Cyrrhus: The Bishop and the Holy Man (Ann Arbor, 2002).]


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to the natural respect for himself as bishop. When he went oV, however, the others refused to enter the bath until the water had been drained and replaced, feeling that it had been subject to pollution, agos, by the presence of the heretic (Theodoret, HE 4.15.2–3). The word agos is very familiar from Greek literature of the classical period for, among other things, the curse one brings upon oneself by sacrilegious behaviour.19 According to Theodoret, Eunomius soon realized how detested he was and left the city (HE 4.15.4–7). 5. In 428, in his Wrst sermon soon after his election to the archbishopric of Constantinople, Nestorius, who was not yet regarded as a heretic, said to Emperor Theodosius II in words that were long remembered, ‘Give me the earth purged of heretics and I will give you heaven in return. Destroy the heretics with me, and I will destroy the Persians with you’ (Socrates, HE 7.29.5). 6. Ten years later, in 438, the emperors Theodosius II and Valentinian III declared in a constitution directed against Jews, Samaritans, heretics, and pagans, ‘We perceive that a special responsibility of our Imperial Majesty is the pursuit of true religion. If we can hold fast to this worship, we shall open the way to prosperity in human undertakings’ (Nov. Theod. 3. pref.). It would pain me to reproduce the degenerate rhetoric of the rest of the document,20 and I shall merely summarize it by saying that the emperors attribute the recent inclement weather, which has ruined the crops, to divine anger at pagan practices, which they are accordingly obliged to persecute. 7. The emperor Zeno’s Henoticon, issued in 482, expresses conWdence that if God is worshipped in harmony by the empire, enemies will be wiped out, all will submit to the imperial rule in peace, and the earth will yield its fruits in abundance (Evagrius, HE 3.14).

19 e.g. Aesch. Eum. 166–7 (and cf. miasma at 169); Herodotus 6.56, and 6.91.1. There are other interesting literary passages about the fear of being deWled by water already used by men under a curse or in a polluted condition: e.g. Polybius 30.29.3–5 (Sicyon, c.165 bc); also Plutarch, De Invidia et Odio (Moralia 538a) for alleged Athenian detestation of the accusers of Socrates in the early 4th cent. The Greek words used in such situations included not only agos, but also the closely related terms miasma (cf. Aesch. Eum. cited above) and miaino: see R. Parker, Miasma, Pollution, and PuriWcation in Early Greek Religion (Oxford, 1983), introd. 20 [For more recent approaches to late antique legal rhetoric, see n. 14 above.]

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8. In the sixth century Justinian shows in several of his laws that he expected divine punishment of a collective nature to follow the commission of certain religious oVences. For example, in a Novel of 535 against blasphemy and taking the name of God in vain with an oath, he declares that such crimes are a direct cause of ‘famines, earthquakes and plagues’ (Nov. 77.1.1). In a later Novel denouncing male homosexual practices at Constantinople, Justinian mentions God’s ‘just punishment of those in Sodom’ and expresses his fear that if such crimes are allowed to continue God may be moved to wrath again (Nov. 141 of 559). There is a clear implication that Constantinople may share the fate of Sodom if its inhabitants do not mend their ways. It would be superXuous to quote more of the many passages in imperial laws and the early Fathers which similarly anticipate divine punishment of the empire as a whole, or of some part of it, as a result of heresy, schism, paganism, or some other form of impiety. Just as Christianity had been seen by pagans as a ‘contamination’, a contagio to adopt one of the expressions used by Pliny in his correspondence with Trajan (Pliny, Ep. 10.96.9), so to a Christian convert like the ex-astrologer Firmicus Maternus and in various imperial laws, paganism was a contagio.21 And to most sincere Christians heresy, even schism, was if anything worse.22 When persecution took place in the Christian empire, the persecutors normally—indeed almost always—denied that their actions could be called persecutio, or dio¯gmos in Greek, terms which had become standard for the persecution of Christians.23 Of course 21 Firmicus Maternus, De Errore Profanorum Religionum 7.1, 12.1, 20.7, 26.2; Cod. Theod. 16.5.56, 62; Const. Sirmond. 6, etc. 22 [For instance, it is signiWcant that anti-heretical legislation between the 4th and 6th centuries vastly outnumbers legislation against pagans; see C. Humfress, ‘Roman Law, Forensic Argument and the Formation of Christian Orthodoxy (III–VI Centuries)’, in S. Elm, E´. Rebillard, and A. Romano (eds.), Orthodoxie, Christianisme, Histoire (Paris, 2000), 125–47.] 23 [Although note that Christians use dio¯gmos and persecutio to describe persecution of themselves; we do not have much evidence for how persecutors of Christians described their behaviour, but note that Pliny, in the passage cited above (Ep. 10.96.9), speaks of being able to ‘set right’ the contagio that is Christianity, language that would not be out of place in the Theodosian Code. For examples of this use by Christians, see Passio Polycarpi 1.1; Hegesippus quoted in Eusebius, HE 3.20.5.]


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persecution by one’s own sect was not regarded as belonging to the category of ‘persecution’ at all, and, as Lactantius could remark in the early fourth century, even heretics always considered their own sect to constitute the true Catholic Church (Divine Institutes 4.30.13). They preferred to speak of just retribution, or the like, as when Optatus retorted against the Donatists, who complained about the severe treatment they had received in 347, that what they had suVered was not persecution but deserved punishment (3.10). It is important to understand here that Christians, to whatever denomination they belonged, not only regarded themselves as Catholic and Orthodox, and their opponents consequently as heretics or schismatics, but also almost invariably refused to recognize as Christians those who were not in communion with themselves;24 indeed they condemned them all, individually and collectively, to everlasting perdition. ‘Separated as you are from the Church,’ wrote Augustine to a priest of the Donatist schism, ‘you will be punished with eternal torment, even if you were burnt alive for the name of Christ’ (Aug. Ep. 173.6).25 That is a typical statement by Augustine, justiWed on his own principles, perhaps, but revealing one of the viciously sectarian characteristics which make it impossible for many of us to join in the general Christian chorus of praise for that remarkable man. Before the empire became oYcially Christian there were some splendid Christian pleas for religious toleration, in the most absolute terms.26 The so-called Edict of Milan of 313 is of course one of the 24 [In general Christians were exclusive, but in certain circumstances, especially in response to a challenge or when speaking from a minority perspective, they might be more accepting of alternative Christian points of view. Thus Nestorius, whose hardline comment is quoted above (§ 5), in his Egyptian exile came to hold a more inclusive opinion of the opponents whose views he had been confronting during his Patriarchy (Evagrius 1.7). Evagrius (1.11) developed a remarkably accommodating assessment of the zigzag progress towards orthodoxy, in response to criticisms of episcopal tergiversations at church councils, though he had earlier expressed traditional hostility towards Nestorius as enemy of Christ (1.1–2).] 25 Note, too, Cod. Theod. 16.7.3 for ‘those who have polluted themselves’. 26 For example, Tertullian, Apol. 24.5–10; Ad Scap. 2.2; Lactantius, Div. Inst. 5.19.9–24 (esp. 11, 22–4); 5.20.7–10 (esp. 9–10); Epit. Div. Inst. 47.52.3 to 49.54.7. See P. Garnsey, ‘Religious Toleration in Classical Antiquity’, Studies in Church History, 21 (1984), 1–27. [See also n. 9. This probably overstates the case: the modern principle of religious toleration has no commensurate form in the ancient world. See Appendix to this chapter.]

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major documents in the history of human freedom:27 it repeatedly aYrms most emphatically that liberty of religion ought to be complete and unrestricted. In the Christian empire, however, few were prepared to raise their voices in defence of any freedom but that of their own particular sect, and pleas for toleration, from now on, came almost exclusively from pagans and other victims of persecution. Of the pagan voices, little now survives apart from a few isolated passages in Julian, Themistius, Libanius, Symmachus, and Ammianus.28 I can only give the barest summary of the many violent, ‘extralegal’ actions of enthusiastic Christian mobs such as the destruction of pagan sanctuaries and statues,29 the lynching of individual pagans (that of Hypatia in 415 or 416 is only the most famous example),30 or of hated Christians (even bishops) belonging to rival sects,31 and the massacre of each other, as when scores of corpses were left on the Xoor of the Roman basilica on a single day in 366 during the faction Wghting between the supporters of the rival popes Damasus and Ursinus, for which we have the alternative Wgures of 137 in Ammianus (27.3.13) and 160 from a document preserved in the Collectio 27 For the Edict, see Eusebius, HE 10.5.1–14, with Lactantius, DMP 48.1–12; I think we may continue to speak of ‘The Edict of Milan’, although, of course, as Otto Seeck pointed out as long ago as 1891, the document is not an edict, was not published in Milan, and was not issued by Constantine [Seeck, ‘Das sogenannte Edikt von Mailand’, Zeitschrift fu¨r Kirchengeschichte, 12 (1891), 381–6 at 381]. See further T. D. Barnes, ‘Lactantius and Constantine’, JRS 63 (1973), 29–46, esp. 44 and nn. 173–4 [repr. in Barnes, Early Christianity and the Roman Empire (London, 1984)]; also idem, Constantine and Eusebius (Cambridge, Mass., 1981), 318 n. 4. 28 See Appendix to this chapter. 29 Libanius, Or. 30 (Pro Templis) esp. 8–11, 22–3, 54–5; Sozomen, HE 7.15.11 V. (discussed below). [On the role of bishops in the destruction of pagan shrines and temples in the East, see G. Fowden, ‘Bishops and Temples in the Eastern Roman Empire’, JTS 29.1 (1978), 53–78 and for a more general survey of late antique religious conXict, see Fowden, ‘Polytheist Religion and Philosophy’, in A. Cameron and P. Garnsey (eds.), CAH xiii (Cambridge, 1998), 538–60, esp. 539–43, 548–54.] 30 [On Hypatia’s murder, see A. Cameron and J. Long, Barbarians and Politics at the Court of Arcadius (Berkeley, 1993), 59–62; M. Dzielska, Hypatia of Alexandria, trans. F. Lyra (Cambridge, Mass., 1995), 83–100.] 31 For instance Proterius, installed as patriarch of Alexandria after Chalcedon, and lynched by anti-Chalcedon fanatics in 457; see Evagrius 2.8 [with further references in M. Whitby, The Ecclesiastical History of Evagrius Scholasticus (Liverpool, 2000), 85–9]. W. H. C. Frend, The Rise of the Monophysite Movement: Chapters in the History of the Church in the Fifth and Sixth Centuries (Cambridge, 1972), 154–5. [See below, Ch. 6, p. 317.]


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Avellana (1.7; CSEL 35.1, p. 3).32 Among many interesting narratives which may reXect useful local knowledge, I will mention only Sozomen’s account of the zealous missionary bishop Marcellus of Apamea in Syria (HE 7.15.11 V.): Marcellus had been keen to destroy all the pagan temples in his diocese, but was eventually caught during one of these exploits by a group of local pagans who found him on his own, without the ‘soldiers and gladiators’ in his following, and Wnished him oV. A provincial council later refused to allow the bishop’s sons to avenge him, expressing the delicate feeling that the young men would do better to give thanks to God for having graciously found their father worthy of dying as he did (he had been burnt to death). Was the attitude of the Christian authorities substantially the same as that of the pagan persecutors? To some extent it was: as I have shown, they were as concerned to maintain the pax Dei, if I may call it that, as the pagans had been to secure the pax deorum. But there were also two new interdependent concepts, of enormous importance: heresy and schism; these were indeed something entirely new, that the pagan world had never known and, owing to the extraordinarily heterogeneous character of polytheism, could never conceivably have known.33 Because of these new notions, the Christians were not 32 [For the struggle between Christian factions early in Damasus’ career, see A. Lippold, ‘Ursinus und Damasus’, Historia, 14 (1965), 105–28; C. Pietri, Roma christiana: recherches sur l’e´glise de Rome, son organisation, sa politique, son ideólogie de Miltiade a` Sixte III (311–440) (Rome and Paris, 1976), i. 405–18, and idem, ‘Damase, e´veˆque de Rome’, in Saecularia Damasiana (Studi di Antichita` Cristiana 39; Vatican City, 1986), 29–58; J. Curran, Pagan City and Christian Capital: Rome in the Fourth Century (Oxford, 2000), 137–42; R. Lizzi Testa, Senatori, popolo, papi: il governo di Roma al tempo dei Valentiniani (Munera 21; Bari, 2004), 129–70.] 33 [Certainly the distinctively Christian preoccupation with heresy and schism was quite new, and unthinkable to a ‘polytheist’—not least because polytheism, unlike Christianity, is a scholarly construct (one that originated in Christian polemic), and was not an institution with members conscious of their identities as members. However, certain non-Christian institutions used comparable strategies to maintain doctrinal orthodoxy. Indeed, the argument has recently been advanced that the Christian concern with orthodoxy arises in response to Platonist criticisms that the diversity of Christian thought precluded Christians from discerning the truth; see G. R. Boys-Stones, Post-Hellenistic Philosophy: A Study of its Development from the Stoics to Origen (Oxford, 2001), 151–75. See also P. Athanassiadi’s study of the institutional and doctrinal strategies used to maintain the authority of the Athenian diadoche, although she views this primarily as a response to Christianity; ‘The Creation of Orthodoxy in Neoplatonism’, in G. Clark and T. Rajak (eds.), Philosophy and Power in the Graeco-Roman World (Oxford, 2002), 271–91.]

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content, as the pagans had been, merely to procure acts of outward conformity. By the fourth century, if not long before, most inXuential Christians had formed the opinion that there was only one set of true beliefs in matters divine, and, since salvation itself depended upon belief, the nature of belief was all-important. As Pope Leo I said, veritas . . . simplex atque una and varietatem . . . non recipit [‘Truth is simple and one’ and ‘does not admit of divergence’] Ep. 172. False Christian belief was heresy; the introduction of disunity in the organization of the Church, as by the Novatians and Donatists, was schism. That was the ultimate Christian position, but for a long time there was little or no clear distinction between the terms. Heresy and schism in the new, Christian sense go right back to the very beginning of Apostolic times. I cannot go into details here about the many usages of these and similar words in Josephus and the New Testament,34 but I would like to recommend the two best treatments that I know of the evolution of these words and their cognates,35 and 34 Josephus, Vita 10–12; AJ 13.171–3; BJ 2.119–66, cf. 118. Acts 5: 17 (Sadducees), 15: 5, 26: 5 (Pharisees), 24: 5, 14; 28: 22; Gal. 5: 20; 2 Pet. 2: 1; Titus 3: 10; Acts 20: 29–30. [Although hairesis and schisma feature in the New Testament, it is probably an exaggeration to say that they bear their distinctively Christian meaning. It is extremely diYcult to determine precisely when this occurs, and examples of the positive meaning of hairesis (as a sect or school) can still be found in 4th-cent. texts, perhaps most signiWcantly in the Greek translation of Constantine and Licinius’ letter on the restoration of the Church (the ‘so-called Edict of Milan’) in Eusebius, HE 10.5.2 and 10.5.4 and Constantine’s letter to Alexander and Arius in Eusebius, VC 2.71.5 and Socrates, HE 1.7.12. Acts 20: 29–30 is important, in that it shows how doctrinal and social unity was important among Christian communities before the articulation of the concepts ‘heresy’ and ‘schism’; here Paul tells the elders of Ephesus, in characteristically violent language, that after he has gone ‘savage wolves will come in among you and will not spare the Xock’, and ‘even from your own body there will be men coming forward who will distort the truth to induce the disciples to break away and follow them’. The Wrst appearance of a distinctively Christian sense of ‘heresy’ is perhaps Ignatius’ letters to the Ephesians (6.2) and to the Trallians (6.1) from the early 2nd cent. It might, however, be safer to date this emergence to the later 2nd cent. and the work of Justin Martyr and Irenaeus, in which heresy is central to Christian historical consciousness. Here we Wnd the Wrst genealogies of heresy, which established an opposition between the apostolic succession of the Church and the succession of all heresies from Simon Magus; see for instance Irenaeus, Adversus Haereses, 1.27.4, and in general A. le Boulluec, La Notion d’he´re´sie dans la litte´rature grecque aux IIe–IIIe sie`cles (Paris, 1985).] 35 J. Glucker, Antiochus and the Late Academy (Hypomnemata 56; Go¨ttingen, 1978), 166–206; M. Simon, ‘From Greek hairesis to Christian heresy’, in W. R. Schoedel and R. L. Wilken (eds.), Early Christian Literature and the Classical


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to draw attention to a list of New Testament passages which refer, often in very strong terms, to religious strife and dissension of many kinds in the earliest Christian communities.36 Not even in the Wrst generation do we Wnd Christians as anything like a united body. Would it be an exaggeration to say that the earliest systematic impulse towards execrating those who were believed to be proclaiming false Intellectual Tradition (In honorem Robert M. Grant) (Theólogie Historique 53; Paris, 1979), 101–16. [The subsequent bibliography on heresy is enormous, and cannot adequately be summarized here. One of the most inXuential studies of the 20th cent. was Walter Bauer’s Rechtglaübigkeit und Ketzerei im a¨ltesten Christentum (Tu¨bingen, 1934), trans. by G. Krodel and R. A. Kraft as Orthodoxy and Heresy in Earliest Christianity (Philadelphia, 1971), who demonstrated the historical falsity of Eusebius’ account of a pristine and orthodox early Church assailed after the deaths of the apostles by heretics, arguing that heresy often preceded orthodoxy; for critical examinations of this thesis, see R. Williams, ‘Does it make sense to speak of preNicene orthodoxy?’, in idem. (ed.), The Making of Orthodoxy: Essays in Honour of Henry Chadwick (Cambridge, 1989), 1–23, and M. Desjardin, ‘Bauer and beyond: On Recent Scholarly Discussion of hairesis in the Early Christian Era’, The Second Century, 8 (1991), 65–82. Perhaps most problematic is Bauer’s rather ‘essential’ understanding of heresy and orthodoxy as separate entities, such that one could possibly precede the other; see D. Boyarin, Border Lines: The Partition of JudaeoChristianity (Philadelphia, 2004), esp. 2–3. On the origins and subsequent Christian transformation of hairesis, see also H. von Staden, ‘Hairesis and Heresy: The Case of the hairesis iatrikai’, in B. F. Meyer and E. P. Sanders (eds.), Jewish and Christian SelfDeWnition, iii: Self-DeWnition in the Graeco-Roman World (London, 1982), 76–100. Attention has also focused on the literary techniques by which heresiologies were constructed; see particularly A. le Boulluec, La Notion d’he´re´sie dans la litte´rature grecque aux IIe–IIIe sie`cles (Paris, 1985); for the later empire, see H. Inglebert, ‘L’Histoire des he´re´sies chez les he´re´siologues’, in B. Pouderon and Y.-M. Duval (eds.), L’Historiographie de l’E´glise des premiers sie`cles (Theólogie Historique, 114; Paris, 2001), 105–25, and idem, Interpretatio Christiana: les mutations des savoirs (cosmographie, geógraphie, ethnographie, histoire) dans l’antiquite´ chre´tienne 30–630 apre`s J.-C (Collection des E´tudes Augustiniennes 166; Paris, 2001), 393–456; Averil Cameron, ‘How to Read Heresiology’, Journal of Early Modern and Medieval Studies, 33.3 (2003), 471–92, now repr. in D. B. Martin and P. Cox Miller (eds.), The Cultural Turn in Late Ancient Studies: Gender, Asceticism, and Historiography (Durham, NC, 2005); on the legal setting of later doctrinal disputes, see Humfress, ‘Roman Law, Forensic Argument and the Formation of Christian Orthodoxy (III–VI centuries)’ and Orthodoxy and the Courts in Late Antiquity (Oxford, forthcoming).] 36 Acts 15, esp. 1–2, 5, 7, 24; 20: 29–30; Rom. 16: 17–18; 1 Cor. 1: 10–11, 12–13; 3: 3–4, 5–9; 11: 18–19; 12: 25; 2 Cor. 11: 3–4, 12–15; Gal. 1: 6–9; 2: 11–14; 5: 20; 1 Tim. 1: 3–4, 6–7, 19–20; 4: 1–3, 7; 6: 3–5, 20–1; Titus 1: 9–14; 3: 10–11; 2 Pet. 2: 1–3; 1 John 2: 18; 2 John 7; Jude 18–19; Rev. 2: 6, 15–16 (cf. 14), 20–4. The list is by no means complete. Among the terms used are hairesis, schisma, hairetikos anthro¯pos, antichristos, antilegontes, apodiorizontes, dichostasiai, ergatai dolioi, eris, skandala, stasis, heterodidaskalein, ze¯los, ze¯te¯sis, pseudapostaloi, pseudodidaskaloi, pseudophrophe¯tai,

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doctrine came from St Paul and his circle?37 I hope it is clear now why as a historian, I am so insistent that the term ‘the Christian Church’ in the singular is, after nearly 2,000 years, still in strictness not a historical expression but a theological one.38 Heresy and schism, then, are Christian innovations. Again and again in Christian literature, however, we Wnd an expression of the need for unity, both in belief and organization. In paganism, of course, belief mattered little; it was the performance of cult acts that was essential.39 Even those pagan cults that recognized degrees of seniority among worshippers (like Mithraism with its seven grades of initiates) had no uniWed hierarchical organization remotely resembling that of the Christians.40 This, I suggest, introduced a new element which created an entirely new situation and made religious persecution far more likely in the Christian Empire. Whereas in pre-Christian times the emperor, or a provincial governor, would feel bound to see to the maintenance of the established cults, he would see no reason at all to interfere with other systems of cult (other religiones), of whatever kind, provided they did not involve Xagitia or the like, or, as with Christianity, refusal to pay respect to the established gods.41 As soon as the empire became Christian, however, an entirely new factor appeared which can be seen very clearly in the writings and actions of the Wrst lukoi bareis (‘grievous wolves’). [Compare with the slightly shorter list in Class Struggle, 644 n. 26, which catalogues ‘New Testament passages which refer to or foreshadow the rise of heresy and schism’.] 37 See especially Acts 20: 29–30; Rom. 16: 17–18; and Gal. 1: 6–9. 38 [See above, Introduction, pp. 31–2.] 39 [See Appendix to this chapter.] 40 [This is very probably true, although paucity of evidence militates against secure statements on the structure of Mithraic worship. For a comprehensive summary of 20th-cent. historiography of Mithraism, including diVerent approaches to the Mithraic grades, see R. Beck, ‘Mithraism since Franz Cumont’, ANRW ii. 17.4 (1984), 2002–2115, esp. 2089–93. See also R. Gordon, ‘Reality, Evocation, and Boundary in the Mysteries of Mithras’, Journal of Mithraic Studies, 3.1–2 (1980), 19–99, repr. in Gordon, Image and Value in the Graeco-Roman World (Aldershot, 1996). For a minimalist interpretation of the possible structure of the priestly grades, see M. Clauss, The Roman Cult of Mithras: The God and his Mysteries, trans. R. Gordon (Edinburgh, 2000), 131–40.] 41 [It is slightly misleading to translate religiones as ‘systems of cult’. Religio is a normative term, and a religio would by deWnition not involve Xagitia of any sort. See Appendix to this chapter.]


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Christian emperor: Constantine felt the necessity, for the Wrst time, of enforcing unity in worship. With the active encouragement of the bishops he began to take steps to stamp out Wrst a schismatic sect, the Donatists, and a little later heretical beliefs, especially those of the Arians, courses of action which, at great cost, proved only moderately successful in the long run over a large part of the empire.42 At this point I wish to draw attention to a very signiWcant precedent for the use during the pagan empire of ‘the secular arm’ in the service of the principal Christian Church. Even if we disregard a story about the Christians and the popinarii in one of the most disreputable lives in the Historia Augusta (Severus Alexander 49.6), we must certainly accept the account of Eusebius, brief as it is, of the successful appeal of the orthodox Christian bishops to the pagan Aurelian, about 270, that he drive out the excommunicated bishop of Antioch, Paul of Samosata, by force and hand over his church to the Catholics (HE 7.30.19).43 And so, as Eusebius says, Paul was driven out of the church by ‘the secular arm’, if I may so translate he¯ kosmike¯ arche¯. There is nothing that need surprise us here. It is true that St Paul had forbidden Christians to have recourse to the civil courts in disputes among themselves (1 Corinthians 6: 1–8). But the Catholics no doubt applied here a most convenient doctrine which they, and many heretics and schismatics, utilized against each other under the Christian empire: there can only be one true Christian Church (the one, naturally, to which I, the person making the decision, happen to belong) and a man who has been excommunicated by my bishop has obviously ceased to belong to the Church and need no longer be considered a Christian. There could be no objection, under this doctrine, to employing the resources of civil power against a heretic like Paul of Samosata. It is worth remembering here the command of St Paul to Christians to obey the civil powers which, as he put it, were ‘ordained by God’.44 And it is interesting to note, by the way, that the 42 [Contrast with Drake’s recent argument for Constantine’s ‘moderate and inclusionist policy’; Constantine and the Bishops: The Politics of Intolerance (Baltimore, 2000), 451–4, at 452.] 43 For the date, see F. Millar, ‘Paul of Samosata, Zenobia and Aurelian: The Church, Local Culture and Political Allegiance in Third-Century Syria’, JRS 61 (1971), 1–17. 44 Rom. 13: 1–7; Titus 3: 1; cf. 1 Pet. 2: 13–17; 1 Tim. 2: 1–2; John 19: 11. See C. D. Morrison, The Powers That Be: Earthly Rulers and Demonic Powers in Romans

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particular bone of contention which brought about the appeal to Aurelian was property: it seems to have been only possession of the church building which made the appeal to civil power necessary. Long before Constantine became interested in the Arian controversy he found himself involved with the Donatist schism in North Africa. Indeed, this happened almost immediately after his victory over Maxentius in 312.45 In a whole series of letters written between 312 and 316 we Wnd him showing exasperation at the existence of factions in the African Church; in one he particularly emphasizes his determination to ensure unity of worship, as he puts it ‘in virtue of my established policy and of my duty as emperor’, pro instituto meo ipsiusque principis munere.46 Ironically enough, Constantine Wrst became personally involved in the Donatist dispute at the insistence of the Donatists, who of all schismatic sects enjoyed the greatest amount of popular adherence in their own particular area (mainly Numidia, roughly modern Algeria), but were never able to obtain any positive support from the political authorities and could hope for nothing better than a grudging toleration, except during the reign of Julian (and perhaps while Firmus and Gildo were in power in Africa). It was the Donatists who Wrst proclaimed the principles, ‘What has the emperor to do with the Church?’ ‘What have Christians to do with kings? Or what have bishops to do with the palace?’47 But this was only after their repeated appeals to the ‘secular arm’ of Constantine had resulted in victory for the Catholics. Nor were most Donatists averse to using coercion on their own account in the localities, especially in Numidia, where they 13.1–7 (Studies in Biblical Theology 29; London, 1960); see also Ste. Croix, ‘Early Christian Attitudes to Property and Slavery’ [see below, Ch. 7, pp. 343–4 n. 41] and Class Struggle, 398, 432–3, 439–40, 447. 45 W. H. C. Frend, The Donatist Church: A Movement of Protest in Roman North Africa (Oxford, 1952); R. A. Markus, ‘Christianity and Dissent in Roman North Africa: Changing Perspectives in Recent Work’, Studies in Church History, 9 (1972), 21–36 [repr. in Markus, From Augustine to Gregory the Great (London, 1983); H. A. Drake, Constantine and the Bishops, 212–21]. On Constantine’s role, see F. Millar, The Emperor in the Roman World (London, 1977), 584–90. 46 Optatus, Append. 7. 47 ‘Quid est imperatori cum ecclesia?’, Optatus 3.3, where the saying is attributed to Donatus himself; ‘Quid Christianis cum regibus? Aut quid episcopis cum palatio?’, Optatus 1.22.


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were strong enough to do so, in particular—as the Catholics were fond of reminding them—during the reign of the ‘Apostate’ Julian, to whom they had not hesitated to appeal and with whom alone they had been successful. Again we must not be surprised that the Catholics should have made full use of the coercive power of the State which was suddenly placed at their disposal by Constantine. He had already shown a desire to repress Donatist ‘trouble-makers’ in his letter to the bishop of Carthage in the winter of 312–13 (Eusebius, HE 10.6.1–5), before any appeal was made directly to him. When he was Wrst invoked, by the Donatists, he referred the matter to Bishop Miltiades of Rome, for an ecclesiastical decision (Eusebius, HE 10.5.18–20): so far no Christian need have felt cause for alarm. But in the event, no mere ecclesiastical decision, not enforced by the secular arm, proved eVective: not even a second verdict, that of the Synod of Arles, could cow the Donatists into submission, and Constantine’s emissaries, Eunomius and Olympius, equally failed. It was at this point that Constantine, without (as far as we know) any objection from within the Church at the time, took the fateful step leading inevitably to ‘Caesaro-papism’, which had so much deeper roots in the practice of the Church, as distinct from the theory, than many modern scholars have been prepared to admit. When ecclesiastical decisions failed to inhibit the Donatists, Constantine realized that if he wanted to secure religious peace he must intervene personally and use force—his very important letter to Domitius Celsus in the winter of 315–16, preserved by Optatus (Appendix 7), is perfectly clear on that point. And the letter implies that it is not only the Donatists who may need to be taught a lesson, but the Catholic bishop Caecilian himself, if he is found to be in the wrong. Of course Constantine has been blamed by churchmen for reopening ecclesiastical questions already decided over and over again by bishops, but what else could he do? He must by now have realized that massive force might have to be used in the cause of the unity of religion, and that bloodshed was very likely to result, the exact opposite of what he so fervently desired. We cannot blame him for wishing to satisfy himself Wrst that the force would be used on the right side. In 316 Constantine did institute the persecution of the Donatists: their churches were taken away from them, and the Donatists

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honoured as martyrs those who died in the resulting conXict. This was the moment at which, I believe, the Catholic Church, by accepting imperial aid in the repression of its opponents, took the Wrst in a series of fateful steps which were to make of organized Christianity, as I said at the beginning, a persecuting force without parallel in human history. I suggest, then, that ideally the Catholics should have refused the use of force oVered by the State to coerce their Donatist opponents. In taking such a course of action they would have been justiWed both in principle and on grounds of expediency: in principle because some of them, Lactantius in particular, had proclaimed the right of religious liberty in the most unqualiWed terms, and on grounds of expediency, because once the coercion that the State could employ was accepted, in however ‘righteous’ a cause, dissident schismatic or heretical sects, equally convinced of their own righteousness, would inevitably use, and did use, the same kind of coercion against the Catholics themselves, when they could. Actually, after about Wve years of repression in Africa, the hardheaded Constantine realized that persecution was only stiVening Donatist resistance, and that the religious peace and uniformity he desired could not be achieved in that area without the use of even more formidable and bloody measures, which he was not prepared to undertake. Reluctantly, Constantine completely abandoned the persecution of Donatism. In a fascinating letter to the Catholic bishops and laity of Africa, written probably in May 321, he sadly admits his failure to secure peace for ‘the most holy brotherhood’ in complete concord, and advises the Catholics to await the working of ‘the heavenly medicine’, caelestis medicina, and meanwhile to persevere patiently and leave vengeance to God (Optatus, Append. 9). In one extraordinary phrase he expresses the hope that suVering so endured will avail with God as a kind of martyrdom! Finally in 330 Constantine wrote to the Catholic bishops of Numidia, where Donatism was still strongest, harping from the outset, as always, on his great theme of concord, and urging them again that vengeance be left to God (Optatus, Append. 10). Since the Donatists had seized the Catholic basilicas of Cirta (now renamed Constantina after the emperor), he promised to build them another out of public funds. I have no time here to go into the details of the Arian controversy, which involved much persecution on both sides, but I should just like


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to draw attention to another extraordinarily interesting letter of Constantine, written to Alexander, the predecessor of Athanasius as patriarch of Alexandria, and to Arius, a mere priest (Eusebius, VC 2.64–72). As yet Constantine had simply no idea how strongly churchmen could feel about issues which he regarded as unnecessary, and futile theological quibbles that should never have been raised at all. As always he shows that his mind is Wxed entirely on achieving concord and harmony, concordia and harmonia. The Catholics showed no sign of being willing to adopt a policy of religious toleration at any time when they were able to decide the religious policy of an emperor. With very rare exceptions it was only the victims, or the potential victims, of Christian persecution who denounced it. A. H. M. Jones has expressed the truth admirably:48 The Donatists originally applied to Constantine to settle their quarrel with the Catholics: it was only when the verdict Wnally went against them that they evolved the doctrine that the church ought to be independent of the state . . . Athanasius, Hilary and the homoousian party in the West enunciated a similar doctrine and put forward pleas for religious liberty when Constantius II was lending his support to their adversaries. They had raised no protest when Constantine had ejected their rivals, and they said nothing about religious freedom when Gratian and Theodosius I banned all beliefs but their own.

One may see various factors contributing to this situation. I have already stressed the importance of the new concepts of heresy and schism. The physical existence of church property, which expanded several times over during the fourth century, was another factor which tended to make legal coercion necessary: for what was to happen when, as so often in Africa (and later Syria), and sometimes elsewhere, one and the same church building was claimed by two rival sects, each representing itself as ‘the Catholic Church’? The one certain example of an appeal to a pagan emperor by Christians for settlement of a dispute was when Aurelian was enlisted in order to eject Paul of Samosata from the church of Antioch (Eusebius, HE 7.30.19).

48 The Later Roman Empire, 934–7, at 935.

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There is yet another factor I would emphasize, which Christians nowadays usually prefer to forget: the sinister inXuence of Old Testament precedent, appeal to which was often made. For the early Church the Old Testament was the Word of God, equally with the New, and Christians of all denominations ransacked its pages for suitably deadly missiles to hurl at each other and at pagans: these were not diYcult to Wnd. The two earliest works we possess which deal approvingly and at length with persecution by Christians are the De Errore Profanorum Religionum [‘On the Errors of Profane Religion’] of Firmicus Maternus, written in the late 340s, and the work by the African bishop Optatus against the Donatists (it seems to have no speciWc title), Wrst published about 365–6 and reissued in an amended version some twenty years later.49 Firmicus is advocating the persecution of paganism in general; Optatus is dealing with a particular Christian schism. There are many unspeakably horrifying and bloodthirsty passages in the Old Testament which have been invoked to justify the punishment of religious crimes. One of the nastiest Old Testament characters to earn the approval of Optatus is the grandson of Aaron, Phineas, who killed Zimri the Israelite and his Midianite wife Cozbi, spearing the woman through the belly, and thereby earned the warm approval of Yahweh and the cessation of a plague which had apparently caused 24,000 deaths (Numbers 25. 6–15).50 Firmicus’ justiWed comment on a ferocious passage in Deuteronomy 13 chills the blood: ‘God orders neither son nor brother to be spared and he thrusts the avenging sword through the beloved body of a wife’.51 The example of Phineas is later quoted with approval by others, including 49 Firmicus: see above, n. 21. For discussion of Optatus, see the introduction to Edwards, Optatus. 50 Optatus 3.5, 7; 7.6, citing for example Exod. 32, esp. 26–9; 1 Kings 18: 17–40; Num. 25: 1–15. Phineas (see Num. 25: 6–15; 1 Chron. 9: 20, Ps. 106: 28–31) is often referred to with admiration by Jewish writers (notably Philo). Compare the story of Korah, Dathan, and Abiram (Num. 16: 1–35 (and cf. 41–50!), 26: 9–11), cited by Optatus at 1.21; 6.1 to justify the punishment of the wicked; Didascalia Apostolorum 23 (ed. R. H. Connolly (1929), pp. 194–7) invokes the punishment of the adherents of Korah, Dathan, and Abiram as ‘a monument and example of the destruction of schismatics’, and adds ‘and everyone who imitates them shall perish even as they’. 51 Firmicus, De Errore 28.10 and 29.1–2, on Exod. 22: 20 and Deut. 13: 6–11, 12–18; ‘nec Wlio iubet parci nec fratri, et per amata coniugis membra gladium vindicem ducit’.


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St Ambrose, Expositio Psalmorum 118.18.10–11, as a worthy example to be followed in the suppression of heresy by Christians.52 Anyone insuYciently acquainted with the Old Testament who feels surprise at the ferocity of such passages should look at some of the texts in which Yahweh is represented as insisting upon genocide by the Israelites in the Promised Land, some of which I have collected.53 But what of the New Testament? The ‘Parable of the Tares’, the weeds among the wheat (Matthew 13), was used, at least from the early third century onwards, and in particular by St Cyprian, to justify a lenient policy to sinners, until the fertile ingenuity of St Augustine, justiWed for once, produced a triumphant counterblast to this use of the parable:54 No, said Augustine, verse 29 (‘lest while ye gather up the tares ye root up the wheat with them’) shows clearly that only when there is uncertainty and fear of punishing the innocent are the tares to be allowed to remain until harvest; if there is no doubt about the tares, they are to be rooted out as soon as they are identiWed. And it was also left to Augustine to produce the one proof text from the New Testament which those who had a taste for devious allegory could regard as justiWcation by their Lord himself of the coercion of heretics and schismatics.55 This was the ‘Parable of the Great Supper’ in Luke 14, where in the command in verse 23 to ‘go out into the highways and hedges and compel them to come in’ the ‘highways and hedges’ were interpreted allegorically as heresies and schisms. This seems to me a conspicuous example of wilfully perverse exegesis. The vital text does not occur in the parallel passage in Matthew 22 (the ‘Parable of the Wedding Feast’), and in both cases the centre of interest is the failure of those originally invited—clearly 52 CSEL 62.401–3; contrast Ps.-Dionysius, Ep. 8.5 (cited Appendix, p. 250). 53 Class Struggle, 331–2, with 617–18 nn. 9–12. [As noted in the Introduction, Ste. Croix abhorred the Jewish God Yahweh and intended to examine the inXuence of the Old Testament on Christian intolerance at greater length. An example of the signiWcance of the Old Testament in late antiquity is Eutychius’ selection by Justinian as Patriarch of Constantinople on the basis of his knowledge of Old Testament precedent: see Evagrius, HE 4.38, p. 187, and Eustratius, Vita Eutychii, ed. C. Laga (Brepols, 1992), 613–38 ¼ PG 86.2 § §22–3; on Eutychius, see A. Cameron, ‘Eustratius’ Life of the Patriarch Eutychius and the Fifth Ecumenical Council’, in G. Clarke (ed.), Reading the Past in Late Antiquity (Rushcutters Bay, 1990), 205–24, repr. in ead., Changing Cultures in Early Byzantium (Aldershot, 1996), ch. 1.] 54 Augustine, C. Epist. Parmen. 3.2.13. 55 Augustine, Ep. 93.2.5; 173.10; 185.6.24; 208.7; C. Gaudent. 1.(xxv).28.

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the Jews—to attend the Feast.56 Yet the text in question, with its compelle intrare (Luke 14: 23), was appealed to repeatedly right down into the Middle Ages and beyond. It is no wonder that a tolerant pagan like Ammianus should say that ‘wild beasts are not such enemies to mankind as are most Christians (plerique Christianorum) in their deadly hatred of one another’ (22.5.4). Ammianus is referring, of course, not to individual behaviour but to the way the Catholics and other sects treated each other, and he will have had in mind such incidents as the one he himself relates of the bloody strife in Rome between the partisans of the rival popes Damasus and Ursinus, which I have already mentioned.57 Ammianus was not markedly hostile to Christianity in general, and he severely censured his hero, Emperor Julian, for forbidding Christians from becoming teachers of rhetoric and literature—a form of Berufsverbot which, by the way, was retorted against the pagans by Justinian.58 It is sometimes claimed that the death penalty for religious oVences was not speciWcally prescribed before the last decade of the fourth century. This is far from true. When Constantine ordered that the writings of Arius be burnt, he also decreed that anyone

56 [The exegesis is less perverse than Ste. Croix would wish—he was no lover of Augustine, and was happy to convict him of false interpretation. The Jews were certainly the focus of the Parable as it was told by Christ, but it was not illegitimate for a later interpreter to substitute the Church for the Jews since it could be regarded as representative of the body of Christians invited to share Christ’s message; on this basis those who failed to adhere to the Catholic Church, heretics and schismatics, might be equated with those lurking in the highways and hedges.] 57 [See above, n. 32; see also T. D. Barnes, Ammianus Marcellinus and the Representation of Historical Reality (Ithaca, 1998), 110.] 58 Cod. Just. 1.5.18.4; 1.11.10.2. [On Ammianus’ attitude to Christianity, see the contrasting interpretations of J. Matthews, The Roman Empire of Ammianus (London, 1989), 435–51, at 450, for whom ‘Ammianus’ expressed attitude to Christianity was not one of indiscriminate hostility’, and T. D. Barnes, ‘Literary Convention, Nostalgia and Reality in Ammianus Marcellinus’, in Clarke, Reading the Past in Late Antiquity, 59–92 at 72, and Ammianus Marcellinus and the Representation of Historical Reality, 79–94. Barnes argues that Ammianus, like Julian, was an apostate Christian who sought to marginalize the importance of Christianity in his Res Gestae. For further criticisms of Matthews, see J. P. Davies, Rome’s Religious History: Livy, Tacitus and Ammianus on their Gods (Cambridge, 2004), 227–33. For a summary of the historiography on Ammianus’ attitudes to religion, see R. L. Rike, Apex Omnium: Religion in the Res Gestae of Ammianus (Berkeley, 1987), 1–7.]


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concealing such a work should be put to death.59 Other laws use expressions like severissimum supplicium [the harshest penalty], which would be understood as including the death penalty.60 It is true that death was rarely prescribed as a punishment for a purely religious oVence, one not involving, for instance, riotous assembly or some practice tainted with magic. But there was a very good reason for this, which is well explained by St Augustine: to put a heretic or schismatic to death is to send him straight to eternal perdition, without any opportunity for repentance.61 Against this consideration, however, there was another which seemed to many devout Christians to be even more powerful: the grave danger of allowing a heretic to corrupt the faithful with the deadly poison of his false doctrine and thereby perhaps consign them to damnation. Certainly, every conceivable penalty short of death is imposed in law after law: exile in various degrees, many diVerent forms of deprivation of civil rights, prohibition against assembling, Wnes (sometimes enormous, up to 50 lb. weight of gold), and—for free coloni as well as slaves— Xogging.62 All this was enacted with the full consent of the bishops, and often doubtless at their instigation. Even the barbarous punishment of mutilation, very rarely prescribed by the Roman criminal law (cruel as it could be), was used for the punishment of purely religious oVences, as, for example, when Justinian in a Novel of 536 provided that the writings of Severus the Monophysite were to be burnt and that anyone who copied them was to have his hand cut oV (Just. Nov. 42.1.2). To sum up, persecution in various forms for purely religious reasons was oYcially decreed by all the Christian emperors from 59 Socrates, HE 1.9.30–1; Gelasius, HE 2.36.1–2; see P. R. Coleman-Norton, Roman State and Christian Church: A Collection of Documents to A.D. 535 (London, 1966), iii. 1293, s.v. ‘book-burning’ for some similar edicts—the burning both of heretical and of anti-Christian works, especially those of Porphyry, was repeatedly ordered by Christian emperors. 60 Cod. Theod. 16.8.1.pr. ¼ Cod. Just. 1.9.3 (ad 315, 329 or 339). Cod. Theod. 16.9.2 ¼ Cod. Just. 1.10.1; cf. Cod. Theod. 16.8.6. Cod. Theod. 16.10.4 (ad 354 or 356); cf. 16.10.6 (356). Cod. Theod. 16.5.9. 61 Ep. 100.1; 153.1.3, 6.18; cf. 173.1–2. 62 See esp. Cod. Theod. 16.5.52.4 (412), 54.7 (414), 65.3 (428); Augustine, Ep. 133.2. It is often not only coloni and slaves who are to be Xogged: see Cod. Theod. 16.5.21 (392); 40.7 (407); 53 (probably 398); 16.6.4.1 (405).

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Constantine onwards.63 Even Valentinian I (364–75), who was in this respect milder than the others, was not a complete exception.64 Invoking the assistance of the emperor in this manner, in trying to crush opponents, involved the Christians in submitting to the emperor’s will in many ways, even in the settlement of strictly theological disputes.65 In particular it came to be recognized that a General Council of the Church, an ‘Oecumenical’ Council, could be summoned only by an emperor, and when and where he pleased; if he wished to inXuence its decisions, he could do so decisively.66 It is often assumed that the vast mass of imperial legislation against religious dissent was not properly enforced—as indeed its constant re-enactment may suggest. But, if so, the main reason may be 63 The best account I know of the imperial legislation is to be found scattered through Jones, The Later Roman Empire, 284–602: see his index, s.v. ‘persecutions’, ‘heretics’, ‘paganism’, ‘Jews’, ‘Samaritans’, ‘Manichees’, etc. See also Jean Gaudemet, L’E´glise dans l’Empire romain, IVe–Ve sie`cles (Paris, 1958), 593–652. It is seldom suYciently realized how shamefully Christians treated the Jews at various times: see for example J. Parkes, The ConXict of the Church and the Synagogue: A Study in the Origins of Antisemitism (London, 1934); and the inaugural lecture by E. Mary Smallwood, From Pagan Protection to Christian Oppression (Belfast, 1979), which, however, scarcely reaches the 6th cent. Some of the worst known examples come from the 6th and 7th cent., especially under the emperor Heraclius and in the Visigothic kingdom in Spain after it became Catholic under Reccared I in the late 580s. For Jews welcoming the Arabs in the 630s, see my Class Struggle, 484, with 652–3 n. 39. [The relationship between Jews and Christians in late antiquity has become a very fertile Weld. While the position of Jews in the later Roman Empire undoubtedly became more diYcult from Constantine onwards, Ste. Croix’s picture is perhaps a little overdrawn. As Seth Schwartz judiciously notes, ‘Local persecutions, forced conversions, seizures of synagogues, and so on, which violated the letter but not always the spirit of the laws, may have been somewhat less common than has often been thought (surprisingly few are attested in contemporary sources), but they undoubtedly occurred’; see Schwartz, Imperialism and Jewish Society, 200 B.C.E. to 640 C.E. (Princeton, 2001), 179–202, at 183. See also G. Stroumsa, ‘Religious Contacts in Byzantine Palestine’, Numen, 36 (1989), 16–42; F. Millar, ‘Jews of the GrecoRoman Diaspora between Paganism and Christianity’, in J. Lieu, J. North, and T. Rajak (eds.), The Jews among Pagans and Christians in the Roman Empire (London, 1992), 97–123.] 64 See esp. Ammianus 30.9.5; cf. Cod. Theod. 9.16.9; Socrates, HE 4.1 with Sozomen, HE 6.6. His law against the Manichees is Cod. Theod. 16.5.3; against Ursinians, Coll. Avell. nos. 7–12 (CSEL 35.1.49–54), cf. nos. 5–6 (ibid. 48–9). See also Cod. Theod. 16.6.1, and the very interesting letter in Theodoret, HE 4.8. 65 See Class Struggle, 403–5, and note esp. the reference to Chadwick, The Early Church (London, 1967), 132. 66 [See below, Ch. 6.]


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simply that the governors of the provinces and the other leading oYcials responsible for enforcing such legislation were mainly pagans even in the early Wfth century,67 and would feel little disposition to take action under persecuting edicts. And of course many of the edicts may have achieved their intended objective, at least in some degree, merely by the threat they represented.68 We have no right, however, to expect to Wnd much evidence of the enforcement of persecuting edicts in speciWc cases: there are few sources that would give us that kind of information, and it would be rash to conclude, from the rarity of particular examples, that the edicts were not enforced. We do have some evidence, of which I shall cite four specimens. The Wrst of these examples of speciWc cases of persecution must date from the reign of Constantine: our source is Epiphanius’ description of how he denounced to the bishops, and drove out, some eighty members of an Egyptian Gnostic sect with peculiar practices in which he himself had been participating (Panarion 26.17.8–9). A second piece of evidence comes from an inscription from Sardis in Asia Minor:69 this appears to refer to the punishment of oVenders against an early law of Justinian (Cod. Just. 1.11.10, presumably of 529–34), which would have had the eVect of making all pagans liable to compulsory baptism, on pain of exile and conWscation of property. Next comes a story with a particularly delightful ending.70 In the Wrst quarter of the Wfth century the Catholic Bishop Theodosius of 67 See R. von Haehling, Die Religionszugeho¨rigkeit der hohen Amstra¨ger des ro¨mischen Reiches seit Constantins I Alleinherrschaft bis zum Ende der Theodosianischen Dynastie (324–450 bzw. 455 n. Chr.) (Antiquitas iii.23; Bonn, 1978), admirably reviewed by J. R. Martindale in JRS 69 (1979), 194–6. 68 [The eYcacy of late antique law has recently come under considerable scrutiny. R. Macmullen has argued forcefully that they were not eYcacious, based upon the number of references to unenforced laws and ‘strident wording’ which, he argues, suggests frustration; see his ‘Social Mobility and the Theodosian Code’, JRS 54 (1964), 49–53, at 49–50, and more generally Corruption and the Decline of Rome (New Haven, 1988), 168. For a more positive interpretation, see Harries, Law and Empire in Late Antiquity, 77–98.] 69 W. H. Buckler and D. M. Robinson, Sardis, vii: Greek and Latin Inscriptions (Leiden, 1932), i. 43–4, no. 19. [C. Foss has dated the inscription to some time after 539; see Foss, Byzantine and Turkish Sardis (Cambridge, Mass., 1976), 29, with inscription reprinted at 116.] 70 Socrates, HE 7.3; copied by Cassiodorus, HE Tripart. 11.3 (CSEL 71.632–3).

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Synnada in Phrygia was a very keen persecutor of the Macedonian heretics in his diocese. He even armed his clergy against them, as well as persecuting them in the courts and driving them out of the district, an example of episcopal behaviour which I am certain was by no means uncommon. Finding that the governors of the province did not have suYcient enthusiasm for the punishment of the heretics, he went to Constantinople and persuaded the praetorian prefect of the east to issue special edicts stiVening the penalties against them. But while he was away Agapetus, the local bishop of the Macedonians, induced his whole congregation to go over to the Catholic faith. One can imagine the consternation of Theodosius when he returned, to Wnd that Agapetus had calmly usurped his own position. He went oV to Constantinople again in a fury, only to be told by the wise Patriarch Atticus that he had better consider himself (shall I say?) to have made himself redundant. My fourth example is not nearly as well known as it deserves to be, and it brings out the fact that in the Christian Empire exceedingly unpleasant consequences might attend the propagating of a belief which may seem shocking to few people today: that virginity is not inherently superior to marriage. The ex-monk Jovinian discovered this when he wrote in favour of that view, and compounded his oVence by arguing against the perpetual virginity of the Virgin Mary, even in partu and post partum, a doctrine which was then being enthusiastically preached by prominent bishops such as Ambrose and Augustine.71 Jovinian was not only attacked by Jerome in the longest of his sometimes rather scurrilous pamphlets against individual opponents; in addition he was condemned by Pope Siricius 71 See conveniently J. N. D. Kelly, Jerome (London, 1975), 180–7; for the virginity of Mary, 181 with n. 11. [See also D. Hunter, ‘Helvidius, Jovinian, and the Virginity of Mary in Late Fourth-Century Rome’, JECS 1.1 (1993), 47–71; idem, ‘Rereading the Jovinianist Controversy: Asceticism and Clerical Authority in Late Ancient Christianity’, Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies 33.3 (2003), 453–70, now repr. in D. B. Martin and P. Cox Miller (eds.), The Cultural Turn in Late Ancient Studies: Gender, Asceticism, and Historiography (Durham, NC, 2005), 119–35; Y.-M. Duval, L’AVaire Jovinien: d’une crise de la socie´te´ romaine a` une crise de la penseé chre´tienne a` la Wn du IVe et au de´but du Ve sie`cle (Studia Ephemeridis Augustinianum 83; Rome, 2003). On the Virgin Mary in late antiquity, see now Averil Cameron, ‘The Cult of the Virgin in Late Antiquity: Religious Development and Myth-Making’, in R. N. Swanson (ed.), The Church and Mary (London, 2004), 1–21, esp. 7.]


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and the even more powerful Bishop Ambrose, and by two church councils, at Rome and Milan. And that was not all. The bishops denounced Jovinian at the imperial court; the result was what the great (and pious) historian of the late Empire, Ernst Stein, enigmatically described as ‘mesures eńergiques’.72 To Wnd out the peculiar appropriateness of the phrase ‘energetic measures’ one must consult the Theodosian Code: an imperial constitution issued in 398 refers to the episcopal denunciation, condemns the sacrilegious meetings organized by Jovinian outside Rome, orders that Jovinian’s associates be deported for life to diVerent islands, and prescribes for Jovinian himself the same punishment, preceded—and here we see just what ‘mesures eńergiques’ really means—by Xogging with a leaded scourge, the terrible plumbum or plumbata whose application could well be fatal.73 This may well be why we hear no more of the wretched Jovinian, who may well have succumbed to the Xogging even if he was hardly the debauched voluptuary depicted with such relish by Jerome (Contra Jovinian 1.40; 2.21, 36–7). I must draw to an end now, and have no time to describe the bitter strife that went on and on between those we refer to as Catholics or Orthodox and the Monophysites or Miaphysites (and the variants on both sides), which involved much oYcial persecution by the Catholics and some furious popular outbursts, particularly on the other side.74 An appearance of episcopal unanimity was produced at the great Council of Chalcedon in 451, which was dominated by an overwhelming parade of imperial authority in the shape of the august lay commissioners who presided over it. But, as Norman Baynes well 72 E. Stein, Histoire du Bas-Empire: de l’E´tat romain a` l’E´tat byzantin, vol. i, 2nd edn. (Paris, 1959), 214. Cod. Theod. 16.5.53, rightly redated to 6 Mar. 398 by Seeck, Regesten der Kaiser und Pa¨pste fu¨r die Jahre 311 bis 476 n. Chr: Vorarbeit zu einer Prosopographie der christlichen Kaiserzeit (Stuttgart, 1919; repr. Frankfurt, 1964), 28, accepted by Stein, BE i.ii.533–4. 73 For death as a common result of application of the plumbum, see Augustine, Ep. 10*.4.3 (ed. J. Divjak, CSEL 88 (1981), 48.20–1), and even from ordinary Roman Xoggings, Athanasius, Hist. Arian. 60; see further Ste. Croix, Class Struggle, 472–3. 74 [The main source from the Monophysite perspective is John of Ephesus’ Lives of the Eastern Saints, whose evidence provides the basis for the discussions in Frend, Monophysite Movement, chs. 6–7, esp. pp. 247–53, 273–6; see also the more partisan treatment in S. Ashbrook Harvey, Asceticism and Society in Crisis (Berkeley, 1990); consult index under ‘Monophysites, persecution of ’.]

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put it, Chalcedon ‘came not to bring peace, but a sword’.75 It seems to me beyond question that the persecution of the Monophysites greatly weakened the unity of the empire and facilitated the extraordinarily rapid conquest of Mesopotamia, Syria, and Egypt by the Arabs in the 630s and 640s.76 I will merely add that the chapter on the Council of Chalcedon ends with a melancholy story from the Syriac Chronicle of Michael the Syrian which shows how vehemently Byzantine rulers persecuted the Monophysitism to which many communities in Syria had become devoted.77 I end with a story which seems to me to be a particularly good illustration of the consequences, in medieval Europe, of the imposition during the Later Roman Empire of a great structure of dogmatic and organizational intolerance which was to plague various parts of the world for many centuries. The story, which comes in the Wrst chapter of Joinville’s Life of St Louis (King Louis IX of France, who died in 1270), has a peculiarly delightful ending.78 Joinville is retelling a story told to him by the sainted king about a great assembly of Christian clergy and Jews held at the monastery of Cluny to stage a religious debate. There was a certain lame knight, leaning upon a crutch—one must not forget the crutch, since it plays an important a part in the story as the suspenders in Kipling’s ‘How the whale got its throat’. The knight asked the abbot if he could speak Wrst, and when the abbot agreed the knight demanded to have the most important and learned of the Jewish rabbis brought before him. As soon as the Jew had come, the knight asked him whether he believed that Mary, the mother of Jesus, was a virgin at the time of his birth and in truth the Mother of God. The Jew indicated that . . . no, he did not accept that. Whereupon the knight exclaimed, ‘By heaven, I’ll make you pay for it!’, and he lifted up his crutch and struck the Jew such a blow with it over the ear that he knocked him

75 N. H. Baynes, Byzantine Studies and Other Essays (London, 1955), 355. 76 Class Struggle, 483–4, with 651–3 nn. 32–9 [following Jones, Later Roman Empire, 1034–5]; H. Kaegi, Byzantium and the Early Islamic Conquests (Cambridge, 1992). 77 [Cf. Ch. 6 below, p. 319.] 78 Life of St Louis, in Joinville and Villehardouin, Chronicles of the Crusades, Engl. trans. by M. R. B. Shaw (Harmondsworth, 1963), 175.


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down. The Jews hastily took up the wounded rabbi and Xed; there and then the conference ended, before it had scarcely begun. When the abbot protested to the knight, the knight retorted that the abbot had been guilty of even greater folly in calling people together for such a conference because there were many good Christians there who, before the discussion ended, would have done away with doubts about their own religion, though not fully understanding the Jewish position. The sainted king was entirely on the knight’s side. ‘So I tell you’, he said to Joinville, ‘that no one, unless he is an expert theologian, should venture to argue with these people. But a layman, whenever he hears the Christian religion abused, should not attempt to defend its tenets except with his sword—and that he should thrust into the scoundrel’s belly, as far as it will go.’

APPENDIX TO CHAPTER 5

Religious Toleration in Classical Antiquity and Early Christianity Joseph Streeter

In the 1999 draft of this paper, Ste. Croix included a comprehensive list of evidence on toleration in the Christian Roman Empire and beyond. Initially we planned to incorporate this into the body of the text, but this proved impossible. However, the collection of evidence is of value, not least because it provides a good vantage point from which to examine some of the salient aspects of Ste. Croix’s approach to Christianity, and their historiography. As I have noted in the Introduction, Ste. Croix contrasts pagan or polytheist tolerance and Christian intolerance. This contrast was most inXuentially expressed in English by David Hume in his essay ‘Of superstition, and enthusiasm’ (1742), and The Natural History of Religion (1757), although it has deeper roots.1 According to Hume, polytheism is tolerant

1 The destructive eVects of Christianity on social harmony had been explored for some time before Hume, most signiWcantly in the Machiavellian tradition. As noted in the Introduction, apart from Hume, another important inXuence on Gibbon is

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owing to its falsity: ‘being entirely founded in vulgar tradition’, it ‘is liable to this great inconvenience, that any practice or opinion, however barbarous or corrupted, may be authorised by it.’2 In contrast, monotheism or ‘theism’ always tends to intolerance, since each sect regards its own faith and worship as exclusively true. Accordingly, ‘the several sects fall naturally into animosity, and mutually discharge on each other, that sacred zeal and rancour, the most furious and implacable of all human passions’.3 Although Hume did not, at least in 1757, dispute the intellectual foundations of ‘theism’, reckoning that ‘the whole frame of nature bespeaks an intelligent author’,4 the consequence of corrupted theism (intolerance or ‘enthusiasm’) was far worse than that of corrupted polytheism (superstition), because ‘the corruption of the best things produces the worst’.5 Hume’s inXuence on Gibbon is clear,6 although Gibbon, like Ste. Croix, noted Islam’s superior record on religious toleration.7 The inXuence of Hume and Gibbon is still apparent in contemporary scholarship, with both Ramsey MacMullen and Glen Bowersock asserting the inherently tolerant character of polytheism.8 Montesquieu’s Conside´rations, on which see V. de Senarclens, Montesquieu, Historien de Rome: un tournant pour la re´Xexion sur le statut de l’histoire au XVIIIe sie`cle (Geneva, 2003). Montesquieu had made this contrast as early as 1716 in his ‘Dissertation sur la politique des Romains dans la religion’, in Œuvres comple`tes de Montesquieu, ed. M. A. Masson, iii (Paris, 1955), 37–50. 2 D. Hume, ‘The natural history of religion’, ed. J. W. Colver, in Hume, The Natural History of Religion and Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion (Oxford, 1976), 23–98, at 58–9. For a clear introduction to Hume’s philosophy of religion, see J. C. A. Gaskin, Hume’s Philosophy of Religion, 2nd edn. (London, 1988); for the broader intellectual and historical context, see P. Harrison, ‘Religion’ and the Religious in the English Enlightenment (Cambridge, 1990) and K. Haakonssen (ed.), Enlightenment and Religion: Rational Dissent in Eighteenth-Century Britain (Cambridge, 1996). 3 Hume, ‘Natural history of religion’, 60. 4 Hume, ‘Natural history of religion’, 25. 5 Hume, ‘Of superstition and enthusiasm’, in Essays Moral, Political, and Literary, ed. T. H. Green and T. H. Grose (London, 1889), 144–50, at 144. 6 E. Gibbon, History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, i. 447 (ed. Womersley); on Hume’s inXuence on Gibbon, see J. G. A. Pocock, ‘Superstition and Enthusiasm in Gibbon’s History of Religion’, Eighteenth Century Life, 8.1 (1982), 83–94; D. Womersley, The Transformation of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (Cambridge, 1988), 20–38. 7 Gibbon, Decline and Fall, iii. 315; for the background to Gibbon’s account of the spread of Islam, and particularly the use of Muhammad in 17th- and 18th-cent. trinitarian disputes, see D. Womersley, Gibbon and the ‘Watchmen of the Holy City’: The Historian and his Reputation 1776–1815 (Oxford, 2002), 147–72. 8 R. MacMullen, Paganism in the Roman Empire (New Haven, 1981), 1–5; G. W. Bowersock, Hellenism in Late Antiquity (Ann Arbor, 1990), 6: ‘Polytheism is by deWnition tolerant and accommodating.’


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While Ste. Croix indicts Christianity for its intolerance, he notes, citing Tertullian, Lactantius, and the ‘so-called Edict of Milan’, that ‘before the empire became oYcially Christian there were some splendid Christian pleas for religious toleration, in the most absolute terms’ and charges postConstantinian Christianity with failing to follow this precedent. However, it is unclear that these texts bear this interpretation. Two problems stand out: Wrst, we need to ask what the phrase ‘toleration in the most absolute terms’ might mean; second, we need to ask whether the texts Ste. Croix cites really establish a precedent for later Christians. A recent collection of essays, principally by philosophers and political theorists, aptly characterizes toleration as ‘an elusive virtue’, and one of the contributors, the philosopher Bernard Williams, notes that it seems ‘at once necessary and impossible’.9 That the meaning and consequences of toleration are still disputed obviously presents signiWcant diYculties to a historian of toleration. Nonetheless, toleration ‘in the most absolute terms’ must surely refer to some positive concept of toleration, which aYrms diversity as inherently valuable. Such an understanding of toleration is generally combined with the idea of human rights, according to which a person is entitled to certain beliefs and practices by virtue of being human, as long as they do not interfere with the freedom and dignity of others. This is very much a modern conception, formulated following the Reformation and installed as one of the fundaments of civil society during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.10 Accordingly, ancient and medieval historians should use the concept ‘toleration’ with caution. Some have suggested that it has no relevance to the ancient world.11 In contrast, the argument has recently been advanced that it can be used to describe pre-Modern and non-Western societies, and should not be seen as the exclusive preserve of the modern West.12 There are certainly problems with starting from a ‘strong’ deWnition

9 See D. Heyd (ed.), Toleration: An Elusive Virtue (Princeton, 1996), and B. Williams, ‘Toleration: An Impossible Virtue’, 18–27, at 18. 10 This is, of course, a process with a very diVerent momentum in diVerent parts of Europe. For some of the historical background, see the essays collected in O. P. Grell and R. Porter (eds.), Toleration in Enlightenment Europe (Cambridge, 2000) and J. I. Israel, Radical Enlightenment: Philosophy and the Making of Modernity 1650–1750 (Oxford, 2001). See also R. Geuss, History and Illusion in Politics (Cambridge, 2001), 73–84. 11 This has been much discussed in the last decade. M. Beard, J. North, and S. Price, Religions of Rome, i: A History (Cambridge, 1998), 212, have argued that ‘the concept ‘‘toleration’’ is distinctively modern and does not apply in this period’. 12 See the work of John Christian Laursen and Cary Nederman, who have argued that historians of toleration need not use a ‘positive’ concept of toleration as their

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of toleration, since it runs the risk of rendering all societies intolerant until they reach precisely the strong deWnition that is the starting point. Nonetheless, if we do extend toleration, we need to use the term carefully; in particular we need to distinguish intention from eVect. Toleration was never a positive aim of late antique emperors, kings, or bishops, and it was only an aim for their addressees if they could not maintain their beliefs or practices in any other way. It was a consequence of discourses on the exercise of power, perhaps most notably clemency which, as we shall see, was often an eVective mask for practical limitations of government, or a rhetorical strategy employed by those in a position of weakness. As Peter Brown has argued, ideas of toleration were not the main limitation on religious intolerance in late antiquity. Brown himself has emphasized the importance of the forms of comportment bound up with elite paideia, which encompassed both pagans and Christians and blunted the edge of Christian intolerance, and has shown how practicalities of government, particularly revenue collecting, could lead to greater tolerance than suggested by Christian rhetoric.13 Perhaps the main diVerence between such a society and one based on an explicit concept of toleration is that the limits of intolerance are potentially very fragile, with the consequence that once violence breaks out it can quickly escalate. The other central diYculty in referring to ‘religious toleration’ in the ancient world is the absence of any concept commensurable with ‘religion’. The Latin religio carries quite diVerent connotations, and is better translated as ‘correct practice’, to be contrasted with superstitio.14 As Mary Beard, John North, and Simon Price have argued, religio and superstitio were

measure, since doing so renders all pre-Enlightenment and non-Western societies intolerant. See Laursen and Nederman, ‘Problems of Periodization in the History of Toleration’, Storia della StoriograWa, 37 (2000), 55–65; Nederman and Laursen, ‘DiVerence and Dissent: Introduction’, in Nederman and Laursen (eds.), DiVerence and Dissent: Theories of Toleration in Medieval and Early Modern Europe (Lanham, Md., 1996), 1–16, at 1, restated in Nederman, Worlds of DiVerence: European Discourses of Toleration, c.1100–c.1550 (Philadelphia, 2000), 1–2. See also Laursen (ed.), Religious Toleration: ‘The Variety of Rites’ from Cyrus to Defoe (London, 1999), esp. 1–11; Laursen and Nederman (eds.), Beyond the Persecuting Society: Religious Toleration before the Enlightenment (Philadelphia, 1998), 1–10. 13 P. Brown, Authority and the Sacred: Aspects of the Christianisation of the Roman World (Cambridge, 1995), esp. 29–54, and ‘Christianisation and Religious ConXict’, in A. Cameron and P. Garnsey (eds.), CAH xiii: The Late Empire, A.D. 337–425 (Cambridge, 1998), 632–64. On limitations of power, see also P. Garnsey, ‘Religious Toleration in Classical Antiquity’, Studies in Church History, 21 (1984), 1–27, at 9. 14 See Beard, North, and Price, Religions of Rome, i: A History, 215–28; P. Garnsey and C. Humfress, The Evolution of the Late Antique World (Cambridge, 2001), 139.


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simultaneously ‘discursive categories which framed religious arguments’ and ‘labels of approval or disapproval’.15 The boundaries between religio and superstitio should not be sought objectively. Their precise meaning was dependent on context, and was very much in the eye of the beholder. While our concept ‘religion’ is certainly not value-neutral, it is perhaps less explicitly normative than religio.16 Thus when we speak of ‘religious toleration in the ancient world’, we must recognize that the concept religio had a much more restrictive meaning that ‘religion’, and that many practices that we classify as religious could equally well be prohibited as superstitio. The ‘socalled Edict of Milan’ is signiWcant because it classiWes Christianity as religio, alongside the traditional religiones of the Roman Empire.17 It does not signal a commitment to ‘religious toleration’ in anything like the sense we might use, as superstitiones would still be subject to coercion and prohibition. Ste. Croix’s examples from Tertullian and Lactantius pose more complex problems. Lactantius has recently been claimed as a supporter of religious toleration,18 and both he and Tertullian make arguments that overlap with later ideas of freedom of conscience.19 Lactantius also inXuenced early modern scepticism, which was an important source of ideas for later theories of religious toleration.20 Tertullian coins the phrase libertas religionis at Apologeticus 24.6, a passage worth quoting in full: Videte enim ne et hoc ad inreligiositatis elogium concurrat, adimere libertatem religionis et interdicere optionem divinitatis, ut non liceat mihi colere quem velim, sed cogar colere quem nolim. 15 Beard, North, and Price, Religions of Rome, i: A History, 215. 16 On the development of the category ‘religion’, see T. Asad, Genealogies of Religion: Discipline and Reasons of Power in Christianity and Islam (Baltimore, 1993); and D. Dubuisson, The Western Construction of Religion: Myths, Knowledge and Ideology (Baltimore, 2003). 17 Lactantius, De Mortibus Persecutorum 48.2–12. 18 See for instance E. de P. Digeser, ‘Lactantius, Porphyry, and the Debate over Religious Toleration’, JRS 88 (1998), 129–49, and The Making of a Christian Empire: Lactantius and Rome (Ithaca, 2000), 91–114; H. Drake, ‘Lambs into Lions: Explaining Early Christian Intolerance’, Past and Present, 153 (1996), 3–36, and Constantine and the Bishops: The Politics of Intolerance (Baltimore, 2000), 211; Garnsey and Humfress, Evolution of the Late Antique World, 206–7, who recognize the contextual limits to Lactantius’ tolerance. 19 On the importance of freedom of conscience in Enlightenment ideas of toleration, see J. Dunn, ‘The Claim to Freedom of Conscience: Freedom of Speech, Freedom of Thought, Freedom of Worship?’, in The History of Political Theory and Other Essays (Cambridge, 1996), 100–20. 20 On which see L. A. Panizza, ‘Lorenzo Valla’s De vero falsoque bono, Lactantius and Oratorical Scepticism’, Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, 41 (1978), 76–107.

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Look to it, whether this also may form part of the accusation of irreligion— to do away with freedom of religion, to forbid a man choice of deity, so that I may not worship whom I would, but am forced to worship whom I would not. I have included the Loeb translation, which shows well some of the diYculties that this text poses. If we translate inreligiositas as ‘irreligion’ and religio as ‘religion’, all seems clear. The diYculty lies in knowing what a non-Christian would have understood by libertas religionis. This is presumably anticipated by Tertullian, when he explains that doing away with libertas religionis entails forbidding optio divinitatis, a description that certainly resembles our understanding of religious toleration, and this pluralist understanding of religio is supported by his earlier reference to Judaism as a religio licita (Apol. 21.1). In Ad Scapulam 2.2 he argues along similar lines: ‘it is ordained by both man-made and natural law that each person may worship whatever he wishes’. We must be wary, however, of letting attractive and, to us, self-evidently plausible sentiments cloud our sense of what they might have meant in context. Tertullian interprets coercion and persecution of Christians as being about what Christians worship, or at least this is the rhetorical strategy that he adopts. However, as Ste. Croix argued, it is not the positive aspect of Christian worship that seems to have angered contemporaries, but rather its negative aspect, the fact that being a Christian entailed the rejection of ancestral religious practices.21 Indeed, if we look at other religious groups or practices coerced or prohibited by the Roman authorities, attention focuses almost exclusively on the manner of worship, and not its object. Although the adherents of some deities certainly attracted particular ridicule,22 the deity itself is not blamed. When, in 186 bc, the Roman senate suppressed the Bacchic cult, it regulated, but did not prohibit, the worship of Bacchus.23 Late republican and early imperial deWnitions of religio are concerned with the attitude with which the gods are approached, 21 Ste. Croix, ‘Early Christians’ [above, Ch. 3, pp. 133–8]. 22 See for instance Juvenal, Satire 6.522–41 on a priestess of Isis; perhaps also Apuleius’ account of Lucius’ conversion, Metamorphoses 11, although the precise signiWcance of this text remains controversial and, as John Winkler argued, it is probably misguided to look for a Wxed and conclusive meaning; see Winkler, Auctor and Actor: A Narratological Reading of Apuleius’s The Golden Ass (Berkeley, 1985), 204–47. 23 The senate’s measures are recorded on ILLRP 511 ¼ ILS 18, trans. in Beard, North, and Price, Religions of Rome, ii. 290–1 inscription, with Religions of Rome, i. 91–8; on the suppression of the Bacchic cult, see J. North, ‘Religious Toleration in Republican Rome’, PCPS 25 (1979), 85–103, repr. in C. Ando (ed.), Roman Religion (Edinburgh, 2003), 199–219.


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and the same is true of deWnitions of superstitio or deisidaimonia, articulated perhaps most famously in Theophrastus’ sketch of a ‘superstitious man’.24 Tertullian’s inconsistent use of religio further complicates the meaning of libertas religionis. Earlier in chapter 24 he defends Christianity against accusations of treason against Roman religio (crimen laesae maxime Romanae religionis) on the grounds that ‘if they (the Roman gods) deWnitely are not gods, then deWnitely it is not religio’ (si enim non sunt dei pro certo, nec religio pro certo est) and goes on to contrast the ‘true religio of the true god’ with the ‘crime of true irreligio’ (crimen verae inreligiositatis). In Ad Scapulam he plays other games with religio. The assertion nec religionis est cogere religionem (‘it is not a part of religio to force religio’) alludes to the relationship between superstitio and excess, suggesting that the urge to force Christians to sacriWce is the opposite of religio. It is, then, very unclear how a non-Christian would have understood the phrase libertas religionis. They would almost certainly have chafed at Tertullian’s temerity in claiming Christianity as religio. Whether we should expect clear principles from a text like Apologeticus is doubtful, and it seems to me that Tertullian is playing with paradoxes rather than trying to make a coherent argument for toleration. The most that can be inferred securely from this passage is that he advocates freedom to be a Christian. Lactantius’ use of religio is similarly contradictory. Witness Divine Institutes 5.19.21:25 They (pagans) realise that nothing matters more in human aVairs than religio and that it ought to be defended with every endeavour, but they are just as deceived in the religio itself as they are in how to defend it. In book 4 Lactantius discusses the meaning of religio, which he deWnes as ‘worship of what is true’, and superstitio, which is ‘worship of what is false’ (4.28.11). He is not therefore asserting that there are many legitimate religions: if religio is ‘worship of what is true’, then it can only refer to Christianity. Non-Christians have a sort of primordial understanding of the importance of Christianity (religio), but are led astray by demons into thinking that their worship is religio. Elsewhere, however, we Wnd a more pluralist use of religio; in a contrast between Christianity, or ‘our religio’ (nostra religio) (5.19.30) and paganism, Lactantius states that ‘when the 24 Theophrastus, Characters 16; see the recent edition with Engl. trans. and comm. by J. Diggle, Theophrastus: Characters (Cambridge Classical Texts and Commentaries 43; Cambridge, 2004), 110–13. 25 See the recent translation and commentary of A. Bowen and P. Garnsey, Lactantius: Divine Institutes (TTH 40; Liverpool, 2003). All subsequent translations will follow this edition, with some modiWcations.

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sacriWce is over in all its emptiness, they leave their religio as they found it, in the temple and with the temple’, and that ‘religiones of that sort (eiusmodi) cannot make people good and cannot be reliable and stable’ (5.19.27–8). There is not necessarily a contradiction between these two uses of religio: the job of rhetoric is persuasion, and one way to make a point is to use, and subvert, the discourses through which opponents understand themselves. I do not want to downplay the potential signiWcance of Tertullian’s and Lactantius’ arguments against coercion and persecution, which contrast favourably with the attitudes of many leading Christians after the conversion of Constantine, although later Christians were able to Wnd scriptural defences of pluralism. However, as Socrates remarked of the phrase used by the Arians in 382, ‘they say now many are called and few are chosen—an expression which they never used when on account of fear and terror the majority of people were on their side’.26 Neither Tertullian nor Lactantius made a positive case for toleration. Although they issued pleas against persecution, they did so from positions of weakness. They were not interested in general principles of toleration, but in the immediate toleration of orthodox Christians. Both fail what Perez Zagorin, in a slightly diVerent context, has called the ‘heresy test’, in that neither accepted diversity within the Church.27 Organizing the sources collected by Ste. Croix into useful categories has not proved easy. The classiWcation I have chosen is threefold, and is designed less with logical coherence in mind than with general context within which groups of texts can be understood. The Wrst section includes explicit pleas for toleration, which argue for a plurality of legitimate worship (with the caveat that ‘legitimate worship’ already presupposes the exclusion of many practices that we would categorize as religious); it will be noticed that these are all issued by non-Christians. The second section comprises material from Christian historians (not just Church historians) critical of intolerance or persecution. While a historian was under no compulsion to be tolerant or detached, a detached mode of narrative was at least available for use, and diVerent historians use this to diVerent degrees. Openness and toleration is not common in the work of post-Constantinian Christians; it features most abundantly in works of history. The Wnal section comprises pleas against coercion or persecution, which overlap with our understanding of toleration, but were generally directed to speciWc problems. 26 Cited by P. Brown, ‘Christianisation and Religious ConXict’, in A. Cameron and P. Garnsey (eds.), CAH xiii: The Late Empire, A.D. 337–425 (Cambridge, 1998), 632–64, at 643–4. 27 See P. Zagorin, How the Idea of Religious Toleration Came to the West (Princeton, 2003), 313–14.


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Support for toleration Of the sources collected by Ste. Croix, the three authors who make the strongest cases for toleration are Themistius (Orations 5 and 6, 364 and 365),28 Symmachus (third Relatio, 384),29 and Libanius (Oration 30, 386).30 Although the texts proclaim the plurality of legitimate forms of worship, it is diYcult to infer principles or attitudes from them, and the circumstances of their delivery must be taken into account. In the speech to celebrate the start of Jovian’s consulship on 1 January 364,31 Themistius praises Jovian’s ‘legislation on divine matters’32 on the basis that ‘there are some matters which have escaped compulsion and are superior to threat and injunction, for example the whole question of virtue and, above all, reverence for the divine’, adding that it is ‘necessary for whoever intends that they (virtue and reverence for the divine) should exist naturally to take the lead in these good things, having realized most wisely that the impulse of the soul is

28 Themistius, Or. 5 esp. 67b–70d, with Socrates, HE 3.25.20–1. Eng. trans. by P. Heather and D. Moncur, Politics, Philosophy, and Empire in the Late Fourth Century: Select Orations of Themistius (Liverpool, 2001), 159–73, 180–98, with introductory discussion at 149–58, 173–9. See also G. Dagron, ‘L’Empire romain d’Orient au IVe sie`cle et les traditions politiques de l’Hellenisme: le te´moignage de The´mistios’, Travaux et Me´moires, 3 (1968), 1–242, at 163–98 for discussion and partial French translation. Also J. P. Daly, ‘Themistius’ Plea for Religious Toleration’, Greek, Roman and Byzantine Studies, 12 (1971), 65–79; C. Ando, ‘Pagan Apologetics and Christian Intolerance in the Ages of Themistius and Augustine’, JECS 4.2 (1996), 171–207. 29 Latin text and trans. in R. H. Barrow, Prefect and Emperor: The Relationes of Symmachus A.D. 384 (Oxford, 1973), 34–47. On this episode see the collection of sources, German trans., and comm. of R. Klein, Der Streit um den Victoriaaltar: die dritte Relatio des Symmachus und die Briefe 17, 18, und 57 des Maila¨nder Bischofs Ambrosius (Texte zur Forschung 7; Darmstadt, 1972). For the historical background, see J. F. Matthews, Western Aristocracies and Imperial Court AD 364–425 (Oxford, 1975), 205–11, and N. McLynn, Ambrose of Milan: Church and Court in a Christian Capital (Berkeley, 1994), 166. 30 For the content and context see the introduction to A. F. Norman’s translation in Libanius, Selected Works ii (Loeb Classical Library; Cambridge, Mass., 1977), 92–9; and cf. n. 29 above. 31 Socrates, HE 4.32.2–5; Sozomen, HE 6.36.6–37.1; Cassiodorus, HE Tripart. 8.12.1 (CSEL 71. 484–5). 32 There is some debate over whether Jovian had issued this legislation, or whether Themistius was urging him to do so. For the former position see A. H. M. Jones, The Later Roman Empire, 284–602: A Social, Economic, and Administrative Survey (Oxford, 1964), 150, against which J. Vanderspoel, Themistius and the Imperial Court: Oratory, Civic Duty, and Paideia from Constantius to Theodosius (Ann Arbor, 1995), 148–53. Jones’s position is more likely; see Heather and Moncur, Politics, Philosophy, and Empire, 154–5.

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unconstrained, and is both autonomous and voluntary’. Themistius then harmonizes Christian and non-Christian forms of worship: ‘while there exists only one Judge, mighty and true, there is no one road leading to him’. For Themistius persecution simply will not work, though he also develops arguments for religious diversity on the grounds of the beneWts of competition and from comparison to the varied composition of the army. Although Jovian’s acceptance of toleration might appear to be a rare example of a person in a position of power rejecting the opportunity to impose their religious beliefs, the policy proclaimed for him by Themistius cannot bear this weight. Jovian’s position as emperor was in fact shaky, since the praetorian prefect Salutius Secundus (non-Christian) had commanded support in discussions over the succession in Julian’s beleaguered army in Persia, and Jovian had not yet reached the heartlands of the empire to impose his authority.33 In the immediate circumstances, it would have been politic for Jovian to avoid causing oVence to inXuential sections of the army or administration which he had inherited from Julian; how his religious policies might have developed is beyond speculation, since he died on 17 February after a reign of less than 8 months. Jovian’s successor in the East, Valens, had been elevated by his brother, Valentinian I, on 28 March 364 and before the end of the year he too was being praised by Themistius for religious toleration, although this is not one of the main themes of Oration 6, which focuses on the concordia of the two coemperors.34 There are, however, signiWcant changes in Themistius’ approach to the topic: whereas to Jovian Themistius could present Christianity as the religion of the Syrians, which had its place alongside the alternative religions of the Greeks and Egyptians, in addressing Valens Themistius proclaims that some religions are better than others and nowhere suggests that diversity within Christianity might be acceptable. Valens was clearly a committed Christian and Themistius will already have been made aware of his strong preference for a non-Nicene Christological approach: the emperor soon initiated action against the philosophers favoured by Julian, in particular Maximus of Ephesus, and set about returning the Church to the anti-Nicene situation which had pertained under Constantius II. From reports in Socrates (4.32) and Sozomen (6.36.6–37.1), it appears that Valens had to soften his

33 For discussion of the evidence, see P. Heather, ‘Ammianus on Jovian, History and Literature’, in J. W. Drijvers and D. Hunt (eds.), The Late Roman World and its Historian: Interpreting Ammianus Marcellinus (London, 1999), 105–16, at 105–8. 34 Heather and Moncur, Politics, Philosophy, and Empire, 177–8; N. Lenski, Failure of Empire: Valens and the Roman State in the Fourth Century A.D. (Berkeley, 2002), 28–9.


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line on divisions within the Church, since both historians compliment Themistius on persuading the emperor to moderate his severity and accept that God was honoured more greatly by a diversity of approach. The speech in question does not surive, unless Socrates has conXated the message of the speech to Jovian and so distorted the historiographic tradition.35 It is, however, not unduly cynical to suspect that Themistius was merely acting, as usual, as the imperial mouthpiece for a policy decided on other grounds,36 in this case most probably the threat posed to Valens by the usurpation of Procopius, which certainly led to a change of heart with regard to the Nicene champion, Athanasius of Alexandria.37 Whereas Themistius devised arguments to promote the policies of Christian emperors, Symmachus and Libanius write as non-Christians brought up in a world where intellectuals with diVerent beliefs had been more closely linked to each other by educational, family, and social ties than separated by a religious divide.38 Libanius in particular demonstrates an accommodation which can be appealing to modern commentators: he wrote letters on behalf of Christians during Julian’s reign (Eps. 724, 763, 819, 1411) and in 364 appealed to Priscianus, the governor of Palestina Prima, to provide security for the Manichees ‘who do no harm to anyone but are persecuted by some people’ (Ep. 1253 ¼ 132 Norman),39 and commiserated with the Jewish patriarch, perhaps after the Christian attack on the synagogue at Callinicum (Ep. 914 ¼ 160 Norman).40 There was, however, no question where the balance of power lay, and in the 380s both Libanius in the East and

35 From Socrates it passed to Sozomen, and from them to Cassiodorus, HE Tripart. 8.12.1 (CSEL 71. 484–5). 36 For this general interpretation of Themistius, see Heather and Moncur, Politics, Philosophy, and Empire, 29–42. 37 See T. D. Barnes, Athanasius and Constantius: Theology and Politics in the Constantinian Empire (Cambridge, Mass., 1993), 161–3. 38 For the context, see J. H. W. G. Liebeschuetz, Antioch: City and Imperial Administration in the Later Roman Empire (Oxford, 1972), 224–42; also P. Petit, Libanius et la vie municipale a` Antioche au IVe sie`cle apre`s J.-C. (Paris, 1955); and, brieXy, P. de Labriolle, La Reáction paienne: e´tude sur la pole´mique antichre´tienne du Ier au VIe sie`cle (Paris, 1934), 429–33. 39 See PLRE i. 727, s.v. Priscianus I. 40 With regard to the identity of the Patriarch, Menahem Stern argued for Gamaliel V; see his Greek and Latin Authors on Jews and Judaism II: from Tacitus to Simplicius (Jerusalem, 1980), 581–3, with Ep. 914 reprinted with an English translation at 589–90. Otto Seeck and PLRE argue for Gamaliel VI; see Seeck, ‘Gamaliel. 3’, Pauly–Wissowa, RE 7. 690; PLRE i. 385 s.v. Gamalielus. On the role of the patriarchate in late antique Palestine, see M. Goodman, State and Society in Roman Galilee A.D. 132–212, 2nd edn. (London, 2000), 116–18.

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Symmachus in the West had to respond to an increasingly intolerant atmosphere. Symmachus started his defence of the Altar of Victory by praising the value of tradition and the need to guarantee the safety of the empire, employing much the same strategy as Themistius to Jovian, with a similar metaphor: it is reasonable that whatever each of us worships is really one and the same. We gaze up at the same stars, the sky covers us all, the same universe encompasses us. What does it matter what practical systems we adopt in our search for truth? Not by one avenue only can we arrive at so tremendous a secret.41 Vanderspoel has suggested that both Themistius and Symmachus derived this metaphor from Porphyry.42 To suggest that there are many ways to the divine does not mean that all are legitimate, nor that all forms of worship are ways to the divine: this still remains to be said. In the East a few years later Libanius decided to petition Theodosius I that further destruction of temples should be stopped.43 The commitment of the emperor to Nicene Christianity had changed the religious balance, partly through a series of laws on heretics and non-Christians, partly through the creation of a permissive atmosphere in which Nicene champions, who had been on the defensive for half a century, could settle scores with a conWdence that any misdemeanours would be overlooked—a parallel to the behaviour of polytheists under Julian. In contrast to Themistius who had advocated to emperors policies which he already knew they were interested in implementing, or at least discussing, Libanius addresses Theodosius as an outsider. He has to argue from a position of weakness, that non-Christians are not breaking any law, that destruction of temples might enrich those participating in the pillage but will not secure any genuine conversions, and that the empire receives beneWts from the range of religious practice, including polytheist practices which had protected it for centuries (Or. 30). But oYcials such as the praetorian prefect Cynegius, or bishops such as Marcellus of Apamea or Theophilus of Alexandria knew that the results of their actions were in line with imperial preferences, even if their methods were not.

41 Symmachus, Relatio 3.10, trans. Barrow. 42 Pierre Courcelle traced this motif back to Porphyry; see his ‘Verissima philosophia’, in J. Fontaine and C. Kannengiesser (eds.), Epektasis: me´langes patristiques oVerts au Cardinal Jean Danie´lou (Paris, 1972), 653–9. Vanderspoel argues likewise: Themistius and the Imperial Court, 24–6. 43 For the context, see G. Fowden, ‘Bishops and Temples in the Eastern Roman Empire, ad 320–435’, JTS 29 (1978), 53–78.


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Libanius’ stance is directly comparable to that of Tertullian and Lactantius in the pre-Constantinian world: in such circumstances recourse to pleas for diversity and arguments for toleration are indications of the weakness of the writer’s position,44 as Ambrose had exploited in his responses to Symmachus’ request (Ambrose, Eps. 72–3 (17–18) ). In a period of transition there will have been a number of Christians like Pegasius, the bishop of Ilium, whose alleged respect for the old gods is recorded by Julian (Ep. 19). However, there are strong biblical injunctions against worship of other gods and numerous stories of the suVerings of those who did. In an established Christian society there are unlikely to have been many Christians who would have accepted arguments for a pluralism of legitimate worship.45 Ambrose made quite clear that he regarded the restoration of the Altar of Victory as entirely illegitimate, tantamount to persecution (72 (17).9), and emphatically rejected any idea of pluralism of legitimate worship by quoting Matthew 6: 24: ‘no man can serve two masters’. He followed up his success in the Altar of Victory dispute by opposing attempts of Valentinian II and his mother Justina to grant toleration to Arians (Ambrose, Eps. 20–1). Themistius diVers from Libanius and Symmachus, since the arguments he addresses to successive emperors chimed with initiatives they were undertaking or planning to undertake,46 but the apparent tolerance of Jovian and Valens must be interpreted in the context of their political vulnerability.47 Most Christian emperors believed that they had an obligation to intervene in religious matters, a view articulated, for example, in the Henoticon of Zeno (Evagrius 3.14) or the Theopaschite Edict of Justinian (Codex Iustinianus I.1.6) and enacted through Theodosius I’s forceful support for Nicene Christianity or the role of Marcian in the Council of Chalcedon. Even 44 There was an analogous situation in Athens in the early 4th cent. bc when, although references to oligarchic activities in the late 5th cent. were prohibited under severe penalty by the amnesty sworn at the restoration of democracy, in practice reliance on the amnesty as part of a defence of character was a very weak argument and only adopted when individuals had nothing better to exploit. 45 McLynn, Ambrose of Milan, 166, cites Ambrose, Ep. 72 (17).8, Quod si aliqui nomine Christiani tale aliquid decernendum putant (‘so, if anyone calling themselves Christians believe such a decree should be passed’), as evidence for Christians at the Milanese court speaking in support of Symmachus, but this is unclear. If there were such Christians, we do not know upon what grounds they issued their support, and it seems as likely that Ambrose is warning Valentinian of Christians who might place senatorial loyalties before matters religious; see 72 (17).6: ‘I too urge you to respect the high character of senators; but beyond doubt, God is to be put Wrst, before all others.’ 46 For this general interpretation of Themistius, see Heather and Moncur, Politics, Philosophy, and Empire, 29–42. 47 The same is true for Julian’s toleration of diversity.

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Valentinian I, who is praised by Ammianus for his moderate approach to religious diVerences (30.9.5), issued strict legislation against the Manichees (Cod. Theod. 17.5.3).

Christian historians on toleration In contrast to these examples of secular preference for toleration favourable references to heretics and non-Christians are, of course, hard to come by in Christian sources. Two sources which appear to be unusually inclusive are Salvian’s De Gubernatione Dei 48 and Socrates, Historia Ecclesiastica.49 In his account of heretical barbarians,50 Salvian argues that they are not wilful dissenters, but have been led astray by false teachings and, though in error, ‘they err with a good heart, not in hatred but in love of God, believing that they honour and love God’. Salvian remarks upon the perspectival character of the category ‘heresy’51 (although it should be noted that he does not draw any pluralist conclusions from this), then sounds a note of caution, concluding that ‘in what manner, for this erroneous and false belief, they are to be punished on the day of judgement, nobody can know but the judge’.52 However, Salvian’s barbarian heretics need to be placed in context. In De Gubernatione Dei they have a distinct narrative function, as a counterpoint by which the destitute morals of contemporary Romans can be exposed.53 In juxtaposing simple-minded and virtuous barbarians, unwittingly led astray from the truth, with polished Romans, who understand scripture properly but fail to live by it, Salvian does not make a positive case for barbarian theology, but uses it as a device to undermine Roman moral authority, as demonstrated by his citation from Luke 12: 47–8: ‘the slave, who does not know his master’s will and does not carry it out will be Xogged lightly; however, the slave who knows his master’s will and does not carry it out will be Xogged severely’.54 48 See the edition of G. Lagarrigue, Salvien de Marseille: Œuvres, ii (Sources Chre´tiennes 220; Paris, 1975). 49 See the edition of C. C. Hansen, Sokrates Kirchengeschichte (Die griechischen christlichen schriftsteller der ersten Jahrhunderte 1; Berlin, 1995). On Socrates, see T. Urbainczyk, Socrates of Constantinople: Historian of Church and State (Ann Arbor, 1997). 50 See esp. De Gubernatione Dei 5.2.5–11. 51 See esp. 5.2.9: ‘among us they are heretics, among themselves they are not’. 52 Salvian, De Gubernatione Dei 5.2.10. 53 On which, see D. Lambert, ‘The Barbarians in Salvian’s De Gubernatione Dei’, in S. Mitchell and G. Greatrex (eds.), Ethnicity and Culture in Late Antiquity (London, 2000), 103–15. 54 Salvian, De Gubernatione Dei 5.2.11.


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Ste. Croix regarded Socrates as ‘outstandingly tolerant’, particularly with regard to his doctrinal position, and collected a number of passages from his Historia Ecclesiastica to support this view. Socrates certainly criticizes the contentiousness of bishops a number of times.55 In the preface to book 5 he apologizes to the reader for including an account of wars, partly: so that those reading it do not get weary from a surfeit of only the bishops’ arguments and their plots against each other. But more than these reasons, so that it may be realized that when public aVairs were in turmoil, those of the church were also in turmoil, as from some kind of sympathy.56 He praises Jovian, who dismissed contending Christian factions with the words ‘I hate contentiousness, but I love and honour those who side with unanimity’, which apparently subdued ‘those who were desirous of altercation’.57 Later he lauds the patience of Proclus, bishop of Alexandria, and contrasts it with that of his teacher, the bishop Atticus, who ‘occasionally practised severities upon the heretics’ (7.41.4–7). In the next chapter, he praises Theodosius II for never having approved persecutors (7.42.1). The heresiarch Nestorius, whose pursuit of heretics while Patriarch of Constantinople is linked to his rage, vainglory, and mental levity, is presented as a warning against the perils of intolerance which stirs up unnecessary troubles (7.29.4–13; 31).58 Moreover, Socrates appears to have allowed for variety in the practice of worship, discoursing on regional variations in Christian practices of worship, not least Easter, arguing at 5.22.1 that ‘neither the ancients nor moderns who have aVected to follow the Jews, have had any rational foundation for contending so obstinately about it’, and adding that there is no apostolic legislation on the date of Easter.59 He regrets the trinitarian disputes which the Council of Nicaea had failed to resolve, partly because these were arguments between people who agreed on the important essentials of a Trinity with the Son of God as a distinct member of that Trinity (1.23.8). Perhaps as a result he refers to Arian Goths as ‘martyrs’.60

55 Cf. 1.23.5–8 on Eustathius of Antioch and Eusebius of Caesarea’s dispute over the term homoousios; 7.29.4–13. 56 Socrates, HE 5. praef. 2–4, trans. Urbainczyk, Socrates of Constantinople, 178. 57 Socrates, HE 3.25.4–5. 58 His famous pronouncement to Theodosius II, ‘Give me the earth purged of heretics and I will give you heaven in return; destroy the heretics with me, and I will destroy the Persians with you’, demonstrates his arrogance. 59 Socrates, HE 5.22.7–11. 60 Socrates, HE 4.33.7; on this occasion his views were copied by Sozomen, HE 6.37.12.

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Socrates is certainly the most tolerant of the Wfth-century church historians, and appears to have viewed much of the episcopal contention of the fourth and early Wfth centuries as based either on vanity and unwillingness to conduct debate within the context of friendship, or on practical matters that do not deserve treatment. His near contemporary Sozomen, though often following Socrates quite closely, has many fewer clear expressions in favour of toleration (e.g. 4.26.4) and more characteristic are passages deploring heresies,61 while the independent Theodoret of Cyrrhus, who was attacked and ultimately deposed as bishop by Theodosius II for his doctrinal links with Nestorius, criticized secular interference in church aVairs but did not urge toleration.62 The basis for Socrates’ openness in unclear. Some have argued, on the basis of a number of positive references to Novatian and his followers, that Socrates was himself a Novatian and so, as a member of a minority group, more inclined towards tolerance,63 but this is diYcult to prove conclusively:64 although the Novatians were among the victims of Nestorius’ persecution which Socrates condemned (7.29), they were a rigorist sect among whom toleration might be a surprising attribute. Moreover, it is important to note that Socrates rarely values diversity: his solution to doctrinal issues is that Christians should stop debating rather than try to Wnd the institutions to maintain doctrinal openness. Jovian is praised for criticizing contention, not for making a positive appeal to toleration. The key to Socrates’ attitude may well lie in his rather novel conception of the relationship between Church and State, according to which ‘sometimes the troubles of the Church happen Wrst and public ones follow’ and ‘sometimes it is the other way round’.65 This is notably diVerent from the relationship envisaged by Lactantius and Eusebius, where the well-being of the Empire is 61 Sozomen, HE 6.25.13–14 and 6.26.8; see also 7.12.12. Note, though, that he does comment with regard to the heretical Apollinarii that the dispute might have been avoided if personal hatreds had not caused complications (6.25.13–14). 62 For discussion of Theodoret’s Christological position and his Werce arguments with his opponents, see Ch. 6 below, pp. 294–303. 63 See recently M. WallraV, Der Kirchenhistoriker Sokrates: Untersuchungen zu Geschichtsdarstellung Methode und Person (Forschungen zur Kirchen und Dogmengeschichte 68; Go¨ttingen, 1997), 251–79, supported in the review of S. Rebenich, Zeitschrift fu¨r Antikes Christentum, 4 (2000), 392–5, at 394. 64 See H. Leppin, ‘The Church Historians (I): Socrates, Sozomenus, and Theodoretus’, in G. Marasco (ed.), Greek and Roman Historiography in Late Antiquity: Fourth to Sixth Century A.D. (Leiden, 2003), 219–54, at 221–2; Urbainczyk judiciously concludes that ‘there is not enough evidence for a conclusive judgement’; Socrates of Constantinople, 27. 65 On which, see J. Szidat, ‘Friede in Kirche und Staat: zum politischen Ideal des Kirchenhistorikers Sokrates’, in B. Ba¨bler and H.-G. Nesselrath (eds.), Die Welt des Sokrates von Konstantinopel (Munich, 2001), 1–14.


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dependent on that of the Church.66 The complementary relationship envisioned by Socrates, where struggles between Christians rebound upon the condition of the Empire, perhaps predisposes him to seek peace by suppressing episcopal contention, where a Eusebius would see the well-being of the Empire dependent precisely on the constant protection of the Church from heretics. For all this, Socrates’ signiWcance is unclear. Peter Garnsey also singled out his tolerance, along with Salvian and Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite, but noted that they are ‘peripheral Wgures compared with Ambrose and Augustine who dominate the debate with pagans and dissenting Christians in the crucial late fourth and early Wfth centuries’.67 Socrates, however, is interesting as a precursor for three sixth-century historians who included some positive comments on toleration. In the tradition of ecclesiastical historiography, Evagrius, writing in the 590s, remarks that Christian heresies had arisen not because individuals had intended to dishonour God but because while striving to worship Him better their attempts to improve on deWnitions of the ineVable and inscrutable had resulted in inappropriate innovations—though even these served to advance the clariWcation of doctrine (HE 1.11); he subsequently comments on the smallness of the divide between the Christological opponents, which revolved around a single letter, ek or en (2.5). These statements have to be read in context. The apparent acceptance of the inevitability of heresy is located within a rhetorical defence of Christianity against a notional pagan critic, while the minimal diVerence between Chalcedonians and Monophysites was an argument in favour of attempts to overcome the schism rather than a defence of diversity.68 Evagrius also roundly criticizes Nestorius for his blasphemy which performed the devil’s work by disrupting orthodoxy (1.2),69 and praises Gregory of Antioch for bringing Monophysites into the orthodox church (6.22), passages which point to the limits to his own acceptance of diversity. At the same time, however, he had a strong preference for conciliation and believed that the dangers of dispute outweighed the beneWts of unanimity: thus Emperor Anastasius is praised for preserving tranquillity by tolerating divergent views, whereas Justinian, who struggled throughout his reign to produce a unifying doctrine, is criticized for the disruption which resulted.70 66 The arrogant Nestorius shared this attitude. 67 Garnsey, ‘Religious Toleration in Classical Antiquity’, at 17. 68 For discussion of context, see M. Whitby, The Ecclesiastical History of Evagrius Scholasticus (TTH 33; Liverpool, 2000), 29–30, 80–1 with 7–8. 69 Though Evagrius also recorded Nestorius’ defence of his Christological position as a compromise that was intended to reconcile warring factions (1.7). 70 See Whitby, Evagrius, pp. xxxviii–xlvii.

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Procopius, too, roundly condemned Justinian’s persecutions, which he presented as one of the emperor’s excuses for destroying mankind (Secret History 13.7–8), though, as often with Procopius’ criticisms, the opposite is asserted in the panegyrical Buildings (1.1.9).71 In Wars (5.3.6–9) Procopius advocates a limit to human inquiry: For I think it insane folly to investigate the nature of God, what that might be. For I think that even human matters cannot be comprehended exactly by man, and much less what pertains to the nature of God. Accordingly these matters have been safely passed over in silence by me (sesio¯pe¯stho¯) so as not to discredit what had been honoured. For I would not state anything else about God other than he is completely good and has everything in his power. But let everyone say whatever he thinks he knows about these matters, both priest and layman. As a classicizing historian who had to grapple with the problem of reconciling the omniscience of God with the mundane business of causation in the world (e.g. 2.10.4–5), it is not surprising that Procopius opted for cautious comments, though it is important to emphasize that his views are fully compatible with Christian belief.72 Procopius’ reservations about the diYculties of precise investigation are similar to those of Evagrius, but his invitation to diverse opinions is more inclusive, a reXection perhaps of the long-standing tradition in Greek historiography of accepting diversity of practice.73 Procopius’ successor Agathias includes a lenient comment on errors of belief (1.7.3): Therefore all those who miss the truth are more worthy of pity than reproach, and of obtaining complete forgiveness. For without doubt they do not intentionally slip and fall, but while striving for the good they fail in

71 For the complementary relation between the two works, see Averil Cameron, Procopius (London, 1985), esp. ch. 1. 72 For Procopius’ Christianity, see Averil Cameron, ‘The ‘‘Scepticism’’ of Procopius’, Historia, 15 (1966), 466–82; Averil and Alan Cameron, ‘Christianity and Tradition in the Historiography of the Late Empire’, CQ 14 (1964), 316–28, both repr. in Averil Cameron, Continuity and Change in 6th Century Byzantium (London, 1981); ead., Procopius, ch. 7. The attempt by A. Kaldellis (Procopius of Caesarea: Tyranny, History and Philosophy at the End of Antiquity (Philadelphia, 2004), ch. 5) to prove the contrary is not convincing: it depends on a sequence of interlocking hypotheses, including the assumption that the historian Agathias was also a nonChristian (see n. 74). 73 The classic antecedent is Herodotus’ contrast of the burial customs of Greeks and the Indian Callatiae, who ate their dead (3.38).


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judgment and thereafter hold Wrm to what they think, whatever indeed that might happen to be. The statement is made in the context of Agathias’ digression on the religious practices of the Alamanni, whose worship of natural features has just been noted, albeit with the qualiWcation that contact with the Franks (who were Catholic Christians) was eVecting a change.74 As with Procopius the strong historiographical tradition of relativity may have inXuenced Agathias’ presentation here.75

Pleas against coercion and persecution According to Libanius, the emperor Julian’s policy towards Christians closely resembles one of toleration, in that he objected strongly to their beliefs, but did not feel that he could coerce them to change. In his funeral oration for Julian, Libanius praises Julian’s desire to win Christians over by persuasion and not force, which he says was motivated by the fact that persecutions had only strengthened the Christian cause.76 A number of factors might account for this. One is imperial clemency, which Julian proclaims in two of the letters selected by Ste. Croix.77 Ammianus (esp. 22.5.3–4) suggests pragmatic motives, namely that in allowing each person ‘fearlessly and without opposition to observe his own religio (religio sua)’ he would intensify the Christian tendency to internecine strife and thereby reduce the prospect of facing a united populace.78 The dispute between 74 Averil Cameron established Agathias’ Christianity; Cameron, Agathias (Oxford, 1970). The recent attempt by A. Kaldellis, ‘The Historical and Religious Views of Agathias: A Reinterpretation’, Byzantion, 69 (1999), 206–53, to question his Christianity does not withstand scrutiny: Kaldellis does not note the similarity of Agathias’ views in 1.7.3 to those of Evagrius, and he incorrectly suggests that his tolerance relates to animal sacriWce, whereas his comments on sacriWce occupy 1.7.4–5 and are introduced as a strong exception to the tolerance of the previous section. 75 Ammianus’ preference for toleration (e.g. 30.9.5 on Valentinian) has already been noted. The majority view of Ammianus as a traditional non-Christian commentator on religious developments has been challenged by T. D. Barnes, Ammianus Marcellinus and the Representation of Historical Reality (Ithaca, 1998), ch. 8, who speculates that Ammianus was an apostate. 76 Libanius, Or. 18.121–3. 77 See Ep. 40, on disputes between the churches at Edessa and Ep. 41, where Julian contrasts his position with the persecution of Constantius (436A) and orders the people of Bostra not to follow the clerics in fomenting public disorder (though he suggested that they might take action against their bishop). 78 Julian may also have calculated that he had little chance of rapidly overturning support for Christianity across the Eastern Empire.

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Valentinians and the Arian Church (he¯ Arianike¯ ekkle¯sia) at Edessa was probably a consequence of the imperial permission for exiles to return to their cities; Julian punished those involved by conWscation of church property, ostensibly to assist the Church to adhere more closely to its ideals of poverty (Ep. 40), but, with soldiers and the imperial private purse as the beneWciaries, Julian’s concern for ecclesiastical purity was as pragmatic as his advocacy of toleration. This should be read alongside one of Ste. Croix’s favourite passages from Ammianus that ‘no wild beasts are such enemies to mankind as are most Christians in their deadly hatred of each other’ (22.5.4), which he coupled with Ammianus’ account of the struggle between Damasus and Ursinus for the bishopric of Rome in 366 (27.3.12–13).79 Julian’s letters corroborate Libanius’ account to some degree. Ep. 36, the famous rescript on Christian teachers, which forbade Christians from teaching grammar and rhetoric but not from attending schools as pupils, argues against coercing Christian boys to renounce their Christianity, and similar arguments against coercion can be found in letters 37 to Atarbius, the governor of Macedonia,80 and 41, where Julian aYrms the necessity of persuading through reason (logos) and not violence. Certainly Julian was no persecutor of Christians, and later Christian writers had to go to some lengths to demonstrate his cruelty, suggesting even that his refusal to persecute was motivated by a desire to deny Christians the crown of martyrdom. Nonetheless, he did discriminate. Ep. 37, while stating that Christians or ‘Galileans’ should not be executed or abused unjustly, orders that ‘god-fearers’ (theosebeis) be given preferential treatment, while Ep. 36 was clearly regarded as unjust and discriminatory by contemporary and later Christians,81 and ‘harsh’ (inclemens) by Ammianus (25.4.20). It would, then, seem judicious to say that Julian opposed coercion rather than favoured toleration, and from an imperial perspective a reluctance to engage in enforcement or a certain degree of passive toleration might, in many circumstances, have been the most sensible approach to controlling their territory at times of imperial weakness.82 Throughout the Wfth century western emperors almost always had more pressing matters to attend to than religious or doctrinal purity. In 535 the new Ostrogothic king Theodahad, an Arian, protested to Emperor Justinian with regard to the Catholic convert Ranilda that: 79 See, for example, Class Struggle, 451; for bibliography on this struggle, see above, Ch. 5, n. 32. 80 See PLRE i. 120, s.v. Atarbius. 81 e.g. Ambrose, Ep. 72 (17).4. 82 Even the powerful Constantine came to realize that it was pointless to attempt to force the Donatists into communion with Catholics.


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I do not presume to exercise judgement in those cases where I have no special mandate. For, since the Deity allows various religions to exist, I do not dare to impose one alone. For I remember reading that we should sacriWce to the Lord of our own will, not at the command of anyone who compels us. He who does otherwise clearly opposes the heavenly decree.83 At the time Theodahad was desperate to avoid oVering Justinian grounds for further interference in the West.84 Theodahad’s precursor, Theoderic the Amal, had maintained good relations with the Catholic hierarchy in Rome throughout most of his reign, since this contributed to harmony between Goths and Romans, though this changed when the danger of a doctrinal rapprochement between Rome and Constantinople and signs of growing eastern interest in western aVairs transformed religious aYliation into a potential matter of political loyalty.85 The beneWts of stability also underlie examples of toleration extended to Jews, unsuccessfully by Theodosius I in the famous case of the Callinicum synagogue,86 and justiWed in a letter from Theoderic, datable to the period 507–12, concerning a synagogue in Genoa: the Jewish community could add a roof, but nothing more in the way of expansion or ornament, since Theoderic, while condemning ‘the prayers of erring men’ admits, ‘I cannot command your faith because no one is forced to believe against his will’ (Cassiodorus, Variae 2.27).87 By the late sixth century the position of the eastern empire was coming to resemble that of the west a century earlier. Tiberius Constantine (578–82) had a reputation for moderation and he restrained the persecuting zeal of the Constantinopolitan patriarchs John Scholasticus and Eutychius, on the grounds that he had enough trouble with external wars without arousing an internal one as well (John of Ephesus, HE 1.37; 3.12); part of Tiberius’ justiWcation was that Monophysites, whose persecution he was being asked 83 Cassiodorus, Variae 10.26, trans. by S. J. B. Barnish, Cassiodorus: Variae (TTH 12; Liverpool, 1992), 140–1; the reference is to Psa. 53: 8 (54: 6). 84 Thus, the risks taken by the regime of Valentinian II in opposing the Catholic Church are pointed out in a letter from the Gallic emperor Magnus Maximus in 386 (Collectio Avellana 39); the threat was that Maximus would invade to support the Catholics. 85 Discussion in J. Moorhead, Theoderic in Italy (Oxford, 1992), 235–45. For a brief summary of Theodahad’s reign, see M. Humphries, ‘Italy, A.D. 425–605’, in A. Cameron, B. Ward-Perkins, and M. Whitby (eds.), CAH xiv: Late Antiquity: Empire and Successors, A.D. 425–600 (Cambridge, 2000), 525–51, at 533–4. 86 Discussion in McLynn, Ambrose of Milan, 298–300. 87 In both this letter and that of Theodahad discussed above the precise framing of the argument must be attributed to Cassiodorus, though in each case he was providing appropriate justiWcation for royal policy and it is likely that his arguments would have become those of the ruler, if the latter had ever been challenged.

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to sanction, were neither pagans nor heretics. The motives of would-be persecutors might also be suspect, with greater attention being paid to opportunities for enrichment from conWscations than securing repentance through education (John 5.15; 21). Imperial leniency could be pushed too far, however, and violent reaction provoked. Tiberius’ willingness to tolerate provision of church services for the Arian families of non-Roman soldiers engaged in the current Persian War prompted accusations of heresy against the emperor himself, and his mildness was then a factor in the violent antipagan riots which rocked the capital when the populace suspected that those accused of sacriWce might not be properly punished (John 3.30–4).88 For the remainder of his reign Tiberius had to permit attacks on non-Christians, and his successor Maurice was likewise made to approve the public execution of a so-called magician when the Patriarch John Nesteutes overrode his preference for clemency (Theophylact 1.11.15–20). Later examples of this attitude can be found in Christian sources, and of course Christians could Wnd a scriptural basis for forbearance. Persecution or coercion did not have to be opposed for its inability to dissuade pagans or heretics. Other, more practical reasons could be cited. Thus, with regard to the trial at Trier of Priscillian by Magnus Maximus, Martin of Tours, who regarded the Spanish ascetic as a heretic, opposed the execution of Priscillian and the aftermath in which Priscillianists in Spain were to be hunted down. Expulsion from the Church was suYcient punishment for heretics, while a witch-hunt would aVect many true Christians as well: overall the Church should be permitted to resolve its own troubles.89 Education was a possible alternative to coercion. In the sixth century, Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite admonished Demophilus for turning away an unholy and sinful man who had come to the monastery in which he lived to ‘heal his evil ways’, and argued against following the violent examples of Phineas and Elijah; instead he advocated the example of Christ, according to which ‘it is necessary to teach, not take vengeance on the ignorant, just as we do not punish but lead the blind’.90 This approach could be adopted with regard to the Jews. In 591– 2 Pope Gregory instructed Peter of Terracina and two other neighbouring 88 See I. Rochow, ‘Die Heidenprozesse unter Kaisern Tiberios II Konstantinos und Maurikios’, in Studien zum 7. Jahrhundert in Byzanz. Probleme der Herausbildung des Feudalismus (Berliner Byzantinische Arbeiten 47: Berlin, 1976), 120–30. 89 Sulpicius Severus, Chron. 2.50 in the new edition of G. de Senneville-Grave (Sources Chre´tiennes 441; Paris, 1999); Dial. 3.11–13 (esp. 11); for the general background, see H. Chadwick, Priscillian of Avila (Oxford, 1976). 90 Ps.-Dionysius the Areopagite, Ep. 8, MPL 3.1096C–7B, esp. 1096C, Eng. trans. in R. F. Hathaway, Hierarchy and the DeWnition of Order in the Letters of PseudoDionysius (The Hague, 1969), 148–9.


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bishops to stop pressurizing the local Jewish community by closing their places of worship, since kindness and admonition rather than force would win them over (Gregory, Register 1.34; 2.6), while the anti-Jewish actions, which included forced baptism, by King Sisebut in Spain were criticized by Isidore of Seville.91 In the early ninth century the argument of Ps.-Dionysius was exploited by Theodore the Studite in a letter to Theophilus of Ephesus (2.152; PG 99, cols. 1481–5). Theodore was reacting against the citation of a letter which Symeon Stylites the Younger was said to have written to Justin II (565–78) to urge the emperor to kill rebellious Samaritans: this letter had been read out at the Second Council of Nicaea in 787. According to Theodore the emperor could use force against the Samaritans if they were in revolt against imperial government, but not on religious grounds alone, citing Ps.-Dionysius against the application of the precedents of Phineas and Elijah and urging that Iconoclasts must be taught rather than killed.92

91 Isidore of Seville, Hist. Goth. 60 (MGH Auct. Ant. 11.2.291); Chronica 416. 92 Brief discussion in Chadwick, Priscillian, 151–2.


Church Councils



Ste. Croix started working on the Council of Chalcedon in the 1970s. It is clear from scattered remarks in Class Struggle that he had been intrigued by the detail as well as the extent of the material available for its analysis, and that the framework for a full treatment was already being mapped out mentally. Thus he comments on the lack of familiarity with the Acta among historians, with even ecclesiastical historians included ‘since a large part of the contents is (or ought to be) rather painful reading for those who wish to believe that the deliberations and decisions of orthodox bishops may be expected to reveal the workings of the Holy Spirit’ (145–6). Subsequently, when discussing emperors’ powers and their relations with the Church, the issue of the control of Ecumenical Councils is raised and reference is made to how the degree of imperial interference is revealed with ‘startling clarity in the proceedings of the Council of Chalcedon’ whose deliberations were dominated by the highpowered lay commission (403–4). These two passages introduce three key themes from Ste. Croix’s paper: the richness of the evidence, which deserves to be better known;1 the discreditable behaviour of many of the episcopal attendees; and the emperor’s ability to control proceedings through his commissioners (though Ste. Croix had not yet singled out the signiWcance of the chief commissioner, Anatolius). Once Class Struggle had been dispatched to the publishers, Ste. Croix turned to working up these comments. An early airing for his views, perhaps even the very Wrst, was at a meeting in London held under the aegis of the Society for the Promotion of Hellenic Studies on 3 June 1982. Croix revelled in the ambiguity of his initial title, ‘The Council of Chalcedon, 451’, since he suspected that the audience 1 This point is now developed much more fully in the forthcoming publication of Fergus Millar’s Sather Classical Lectures, A Greek Roman Empire: Power, Belief and Reason under Theodosius II, 408–50 (2006).

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might contain people who had turned up in the expectation of learning about some obscure aspect of the Peace of Callias or the working of the Athenian Empire in the mid-Wfth century bc—topics on which, thanks to Origins of the Peloponnesian War, Ste. Croix’s expertise was well known, especially to an audience of Hellenists. For the sake of clarity he acceded to a request from the organizers to add the essential ad to the date. Thereafter the paper was presented at various gatherings, including the East Christian seminar run by Sebastian Brock and Kallistos Ware in Canterbury Road, Oxford, in 1982 or 1983, where I heard it for the Wrst time, the seminar of the Birmingham Centre for Byzantine Studies and in Manchester, also in 1982/3. Preparations for these seminars generated a dense paper which, even with some excisions, easily exceeded the normal 60-minute slot, as well as pages of references. In the mid-1980s the paper was set aside as being reasonably Wnished, although, as with all Ste. Croix’s projects, new ideas, additional bibliography, and any other material relevant to the particular topic were gathered in a lever-arch Wle. When in 1986 he reviewed the possible contents of a volume of Christian essays, Chalcedon was the Wrst item in the list, with a comment only about the need to identify the latest version of the seminar text. The state of the text at this stage can be gauged from the recent Greek translation of the paper as presented in Athens in 1987, under half the length of the current version (and with only 34 footnotes!).2 Matters remained thus for the next decade, with Chalcedon scheduled for inclusion in the Radical Conclusions volume of his grander two-volume Christian project. In 1998/9 Ste. Croix returned to work on the text, by which time he had reverted to a slimmed-down singlevolume version of his Christian researches. There was some tinkering to the original seminar script, with the introductory section being rewritten several times, though without deWnite improvement. Additional work on some of the later sections was intended, since the leverarch Wle contained notes and hints for issues which ought to be pursued. For example in the seminar version Ste. Croix had dismissed the complexities of the imperial commissioners’ connections with 2 ˇ `˝ˇ ˚` ˙ ˙: ˜ˆˇ, `¯¯ ˚` ˙Ł˙, ed. D. I. Kyrtatas, trans. I. Kralle (Athens, 2005), 319–65.

Introduction

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the words, ‘I prefer to have my prosopography done by someone else’; in reality, however, he had started to compile the necessary material, or at least left notes to remind himself to do this. The postChalcedon reputation of Dioscorus was another topic on which he certainly wanted to add material. I had happened to send him the text of a chapter on ecclesiastical historiography after Chalcedon, which I had produced for a Brill volume on Late Antique historiography.3 This contained a section on the Ple¯rophories (Proofs) of John Rufus, a Monophysite collection of miraculous proofs of the error of Chalcedon and the heroic behaviour of its two main opponents, Dioscorus and Timothy Aelurus; Ste. Croix had marked this up with evident enthusiasm, and identiWed that it would supplement the brief comments he had already made about the Life of Dioscorus. He was also eager for information about the presentation of Chalcedon in Evagrius, which I was currently engaged in translating and annotating.4 These more substantial revisions, however, were never undertaken. In preparing Ste. Croix’s seminar paper for publication, I have chosen to keep a certain amount of the original delivery style. This appears to have been his intention from the various rewritings of Chalcedon on which he embarked in 1999,5 and there is merit in preserving somewhere in this volume the combative style of Ste. Croix in full Xow about his ‘beastly’ Christians. I have followed up as many of his suggestions or directions for further work as possible; on occasion, for example on subscriptions, there was not much to suggest exactly what might have been said, but more often the general direction has been clear—what one might term in Thucydidean language the xumpasa gno¯me¯ of the argument.6 I have made 3 As happens with such collaborative enterprises the volume was very slow to appear. I had sent a copy of the Wnal text to Ste. Croix in 1998, the date of submission to the editor, but publication was delayed for Wve years: ‘The Church Historians and Chalcedon’, in G. Marasco (ed.), Greek and Latin Historiography in Late Antiquity (Leiden, 2003), 447–93. 4 The Ecclesiastical History of Evagrius Scholasticus, an English translation with introduction and notes (TTH; Liverpool, 2000). 5 Ste. Croix was revising this piece in the late autumn of 1999, so that this was probably the last paper on which he was working before his death. 6 For Ste. Croix’s important discussion of this term, see his Origins of the Peloponnesian War (London, 1972), 7–16.

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fairly substantial additions, amounting perhaps to between a third and a half of the whole, but I do not believe that I have introduced anything with which Ste. Croix would have disagreed;7 the central points of the argument remain as they were articulated in Ste. Croix’s seminar presentations. At the very few points where I do not accept, or where I want to qualify, Ste. Croix’s discussions, I have used square-bracketed notes to indicate as much. Apart from these speciWc passages, all uses of the Wrst-person singular refer to Ste. Croix.

7 D. Harvey and R. Parker, in the Editors’ Introduction to Ste. Croix’s Athenian Democratic Origins and Other Essays (Oxford, 2004), 3, sensibly refer to the temerity of attempting to predict Ste. Croix’s reaction to new information or arguments. It may be rash to have tried to round oV and Wll out what Ste. Croix had left, but it was certainly his intention to do more work on the paper.

6 The Council of Chalcedon with additions by Michael Whitby The Council of Chalcedon, in October 451, is one of the events in ancient history about which we know most: the wealth of contemporary sources is altogether outstanding, in both quantity and quality.1 Indeed I have sometimes tried to tease colleagues in ‘Ancient History’ or ‘Classics’ by insisting, half seriously, that we actually know more about the council than about any other event in ancient history. Since it will not be as familiar to those who work in the 1 The prime source is the very full Acta in Greek, with a Latin version which is mainly a translation though with some diVerences and additions, edited in six folio volumes by E. Schwartz, Acta Conciliorum Oecumenicorum, ii.i–vi (Berlin and Leipzig, 1932–8). The Greek Acta are in ii.i, the Latin in ii.iii; ii.iv contains the relevant letters of Pope Leo (also available in PL 54) as well as other essential documents. There are some indices in ii.vi, which can be supplemented by ACO iv.iii (1974–84). One potential point of confusion is that in the Greek Acta the second session of the council, that of 10 Oct., is presented as the third meeting; the Latin retains the correct order. There are French translations of substantial sections in A. J. Festugie`re, E´phe`se et Chalce´doine: Actes des Conciles (Paris, 1982) and Actes du Concile de Chalce´doine, Sessions III–VI (Geneva, 1983); the Wrst part of the Wrst volume (pp. 27–650) translates large parts of the Acta of First Ephesus, after which there are some imperial letters relating to the convocation of the council and the Acta of the Wrst and third sessions, while the second volume covers the second, fourth, Wfth, and sixth sessions (since Festugie`re’s title accepts the numbering of the Greek Acta). An English translation of the Greek Acta, with the supplementary Latin material and some of the key correspondence immediately before and after the council, is being prepared by Richard Price. [This is now published: R. Price and M. Gaddis, TTH 45; Liverpool, 2005. I have beneWted from the chance to read parts of this translation in draft, and many of the translations of the Acta are taken from, or adapted from this draft; I am greatly indebted to Richard Price for this opportunity to consult and use his unpublished material, and Richard has also made many useful comments on and corrections to this chapter.]

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central areas of ancient history, I will begin by giving a brief outline of the salient facts one needs to know as background.

Background With Christianity there arose for the Wrst time two entirely new phenomena, which could never exist at all in paganism. One was heresy, departure from orthodox belief; the other was schism, separation from the single universal Church—which, as I have emphasized in my book on the class struggle, is a strictly theological concept and has never had any real existence as a historical one, for in reality those claiming to be Christians have never at any time been a single united body: both schism and heresy existed from Apostolic times.2 Beginning with Constantine there were repeated attempts by the authorities of the Christian Empire to create unanimity, harmony (homonoia, concordia); dissidents were persecuted on occasion from the Wrst, and there were numerous outbreaks of popular fanaticism, sometimes resulting in massacres, and evoking from Ammianus the statement that ‘wild beasts are not more hostile to mankind than are most Christians (plerique Christianorum) in their deadly hatred of one another’ (22.5.4). Ammianus, of course, was thinking in terms of sectarian rather than personal hatred. The principal heresy of the fourth century, Arianism,3 had been largely stamped out by the early Wfth century, except among German ‘barbarians’, although later it revived here and there for a time. But now entirely new Christological controversies broke out in the East, beginning with Nestorius, archbishop of Constantinople from 428 to 431.4 Without making any attempt to describe his doctrines, I shall 2 The Class Struggle in the Ancient Greek World: From the Archaic Age to the Arab Conquests (1981; corr. imprint, London, 1983), 445 V. (esp. 451–2), with the notes, 643–4, esp. 644 n. 26. See further Introduction, pp. 31–2 above, and Ch. 5, p. 202. [Against dating the concepts of heresy and schism to Apostolic times, see Ch. 5 n. 34.] 3 See the contributions to M. Barnes and D. H. Williams (eds.), Arianism after Arius: Essays on the Development of the Fourth-Century Trinitarian ConXicts (Edinburgh, 1993). 4 For narrative of developments, see W. H. C. Frend, The Rise of Christianity (London, 1984), 752–70; H. Chadwick, The Church in Ancient Society from Galilee to Gregory the Great (Oxford, 2001), 515–68; T. E. Gregory, Vox Populi: Popular Opinion and Violence in the Religious Controversies of the Fifth Century A.D. (Columbus, Oh.,

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only say that, as generally remembered by the great majority of the faithful, Nestorius was the heresiarch who, although willing to call the Virgin Mary Christotokos, ‘Mother of Christ’, refused to describe her as Theotokos, ‘Mother of God’, a distinction then possessing great signiWcance.5 As early as the late fourth century the cult of the Virgin Mary had come to evoke curiously strong passions, in the West as well as the East, and the theory of her perpetual virginity, not merely post partum, but even miraculously in partu, was already widely held. Nestorius was condemned at the First Council of Ephesus in 431, where Cyril of Alexandria managed to arrange matters in his favour, and then exiled as a result of intrigues at the court of Theodosius II. Cyril, though initially deposed by Theodosius after being condemned by Nestorius’ supporters at Ephesus and strongly challenged over the orthodoxy of his anti-Nestorian Twelve Anathemas, emerged triumphant, thanks to the support of the Augusta Pulcheria and Pope Celestine as well as enormous bribes lavished on imperial courtiers. A fascinating list of Cyril’s gifts is preserved in the Acta of First Ephesus in the form of a letter from an Alexandrian archdeacon who complains that Cyril stripped his enormously wealthy church of everything (ecclesia Alexandrina nudata) and incurred a debt of 1,500 pounds of gold into the bargain: the bribes included one gift of 200 pounds of gold to a eunuch Grand Chamberlain, and some delightful presents such as carpets, pictures, ivory chairs and other furniture, not to mention a few ostriches.6 Nestorianism soon lost any importance it had had in the Roman Empire when John of 1979); P. Allen, ‘The DeWnition and Enforcement of Orthodoxy’, in A. Cameron, B. Ward-Perkins, and M. Whitby (eds.), CAH xiv: Late Antiquity: Empire and Successors 425–600 (Cambridge, 2000), 811–34. 5 Nestorius, The Bazaar of Heracleides, trans. G. R. Driver and L. Hodgson (Oxford, 1925), 97–100; Barhadbeshabba, Ecclesiastical History, ed. and French trans. F. Nau, PO 9 (1913), 489–631, and 23 (1932), 177–343, ch. 21 (PO 9, 531–3); Evagrius 1.2. J. A. McGuckin, St Cyril of Alexandria: The Christological Controversy, its History, Theology and Texts (Vig. Chr. Suppl. 23; Leiden, 1994), ch. 2. For the interest of the Theodosian dynasty in Marian devotion, see K. Holum, Theodosian Empresses: Women and Imperial Dominion in Late Antiquity (Berkeley, 1982), 147–74. 6 ACO i.iv, pp. 222–5; see Ste. Croix, Class Struggle, 177 and 574 n. 13 (with full references); Festugie`re, E´phe`se, does not translate this document. The precise occasion of these bribes within this complex sequence of events is unknown, but they may have been deployed after Cyril’s initial rehabilitation while he was struggling to defend his Twelve Anathemas.

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Antioch and the bishops under his jurisdiction were persuaded to accept reconciliation with Cyril of Alexandria in winter 432.7 The great question now was whether Jesus Christ should be conceived as having two diVerent Natures, divine and human, united but fully retaining their separate identities, or whether, after the Incarnation, there was only one Nature, a divine one into which Christ’s human nature was in some way subsumed.8 For convenience I will refer to the latter as Monophysites, as they are usually now known,9 although this term seems not to have been accepted by them or even regularly applied to them for several generations. Those who held the doctrine of the Two Natures (and who triumphed at Chalcedon) I will refer to as Orthodox, as they are regarded by the great majority of Christians today, including the Orthodox churches, Roman Catholics, and Protestants, but not by the Coptic and Ethiopic churches, the Armenian church, and the Syrian Jacobites, who are all what we should call Monophysites, or at least non-Chalcedonians in varying degrees. The next episode to note was in 448 when Eutyches, a Constantinopolitan archimandrite, was condemned by a local synod chaired by the Patriarch Flavian for holding Monophysite ideas in what was later to be regarded as an extreme form.10 Attempts were made to reverse this decision until, in the next year, 449, Theodosius II ordered the case to be considered at a Second Council of Ephesus. Here Eutyches was rehabilitated through the inXuence and pressure of Dioscorus of Alexandria, a fervent Monophysite who had succeeded Cyril as patriarch in 444, and was appointed to chair the council by imperial command. This council is usually referred to as the Latrocinium, the 7 ACO i.i.4, nos. 123, 127, 130; Evagrius 1.6. McGuckin, Cyril, 110–16. 8 Festugie`re, Actes du Concile, 7–16, contains a valuable introduction by Henry Chadwick which presents the fundamental Christological problems from an essentially orthodox perspective. See too the ‘Theological Introduction’ to Richard Price’s translation of the Acta of Chalcedon. 9 S. Brock, ‘The Christology of the Church of the East’, in Tradition and Heritage of the Christian East: Proceedings of the International Conference (Moscow, 1996), 163–4, proposes Miaphysite or Henophysite as more accurate alternatives; although the former has now been adopted by some, Monophysite remains the recognized term. 10 Eutyches’ One Nature views had just been attacked by Theodoret of Cyrrhus in his Eraniste¯s, for which see G. H. Ettlinger, Theodoret of Cyrrhus, Eranistes (Oxford, 1975). This provoked retaliation against Theodoret and other clerics believed to have Nestorian inclinations, but it may also have prompted others to attack Eutyches.


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‘Brigandage’, ‘Banditry’, or ‘Robber Council’, the name given to it in a letter of Pope Leo on the grounds that it was characterized by extreme violence which Dioscorus promoted;11 it is not recognized in the oYcial list of ecumenical councils, which began with Nicaea in 325 and in which First Ephesus and Chalcedon are reckoned as the third and fourth. The proceedings of Second Ephesus are not preserved intact, though an important Syriac version survives; also substantial sections relating to the condemnation of Flavian and the failure to admit for discussion what was to become known as the Tome of Leo were read out at the Wrst session of Chalcedon, and so are preserved in its Acta.12 At Second Ephesus the Wrst casualties were Flavian of Constantinople and Eusebius of Dorylaeum, who were condemned for their treatment of Eutyches, though technically the oVence was propounding additions to the Creed of Nicaea.13 At subsequent sessions a number of eastern bishops were deposed, Ibas of Edessa who was regarded as a follower of Nestorius’ teacher, Theodore of Mopsuestia, Ibas’ nephew, Daniel of Carrhae, and Irenaeus of Tyre, a personal friend of Nestorius who had accompanied him to First Ephesus; Ibas’ cousin, Sophronius of Tella, was also investigated, but judgement was reserved and he was still in post for the Council of Chalcedon. The most prominent victims were Theodoret bishop of Cyrrhus, the leading intellectual advocate of views similar to those of Nestorius, and Domnus of Antioch, who had hoped to escape by acquiescing in the deposition of his subordinates but then found himself without supporters himself. There was a variety of accusations, but the common threads were connections, direct or indirect, with Nestorius, and opposition to Alexandrian theology: for Dioscorus and his supporters these clergy were irredeemably heretical.14 The 11 Leo, Ep. 95, sent to Pulcheria on 20 July 451 (ACO ii.iv, no. 51, p. 51 line 4). 12 For the Syriac version there is a German trans. by J. Flemming, ‘Akten der ¨ berephesinischen Synode vom Jahre 449, syrisch mit Georg HoVmanns deutscher U setzung und seinem Anmerkungen herausgegeben’, Abhandlungen der ko¨niglichen Gesellschaft der Wissenschaften zu Go¨ttingen, phil.-hist. Kl. 15.1 (Berlin, 1917), 1–159; also an Eng. trans. by S. G. F. Perry, The Second Synod of Ephesus (Dartford, 1881). 13 On Flavian see H. Chadwick, ‘The Exile and Death of Flavian of Constantinople: A Prologue to the Council of Chalcedon’, JTS 6 (1955), 17–34, an illuminating article even if its conclusion on the probable date of Flavian’s death is not accepted. 14 See Chadwick, Church, 563–6.

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unfortunate Theodoret had been both a personal friend of Nestorius and probably the most potent doctrinal opponent for Cyril of Alexandria, whose anti-Nestorian Twelve Anathemas he embarrassed by probing their own orthodoxy.15 Then, in the summer of 450, Emperor Theodosius II died after falling from his horse, to be succeeded by Marcian, who in religious matters was clearly inXuenced by the wishes of his formidable wife, Pulcheria, the elder sister of Theodosius; she had held the rank of Augusta since 414 and now, at the age of 51, married Marcian on condition that her virginity be preserved.16 Although Pulcheria had been persuaded to support Cyril against Nestorius in the 430s—her staV were among the recipients of Cyril’s bribes—and so might have been expected to favour his successor at Alexandria, Dioscorus, over those alleged to be tainted with Nestorian views,17 during the latter years of Theodosius’ reign she had lost inXuence and so may have been inclined to oppose her brother’s current doctrinal favourite, Eutyches. She was now a passionate champion of Orthodoxy, and was already corresponding with Pope Leo about her hostility to Second Ephesus (Leo, Ep. 60), so that the religious policy of the imperial house changed drastically, to total support for Orthodoxy. The result was the Council of Chalcedon, in October 451, where the complete victory of Orthodoxy was secured by a clear expression of the imperial will, enforced by a presiding commission of some of the highest dignitaries in the empire. The Wrst Wve sessions dealt with two fundamental issues, the fates of Dioscorus (Wrst and third sessions) and of some of his supporters at Second Ephesus (fourth session), and the need for a new deWnition of faith (second and Wfth sessions), with the imperial couple attending the sixth session to ratify 15 At the Wrst session of Chalcedon the Egyptian bishops chanted ‘Theodoret accused Cyril. We exclude Cyril if we admit Theodoret. The canons have expelled him. He is rejected by God.’ ACO ii.i.70 § 43, and cf. also §§ 29, 39 for other expressions of hostility. 16 For references see PLRE ii. 929–30, s.v. Aelia Pulcheria; R. W. Burgess, ‘The Accession of Marcian in the Light of Chalcedonian Apologetic and Monophysite Polemic’, BZ 86–7 (1993–4), 47–68. 17 At the Wrst session of Chalcedon the Egyptian bishops clearly hoped for this when they chanted ‘The Augusta expelled Nestorius. Many years to the orthodox Augusta. The Council does not admit Theodoret’ (ACO ii.i.69, § 33, and cf. also §§ 31, 39).


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decisions so far. Thereafter a further ten sessions dealt with more speciWc issues.

Sources and Discussions The sources for the Council of Chalcedon are, as I have said, extraordinarily rich, and on this occasion, for once, there is no need for Quellenforschung which is all too often an attempt to get behind real works which do survive and can be read, to hypothetical ones which do not and cannot. In the Wrst place we possess very full minutes of the proceedings of the council, the Acta, based on stenographic records, which run to over 400 folio pages of Greek text in Eduard Schwartz’s remarkable scholarly edition, not to mention a Latin version (also printed in ACO) which, although it was edited in its present form about a century after the event, is a very faithful translation and indeed contains much good additional material; this runs to well over 500 folio pages. There are also four smaller volumes in Schwartz’s great work which contain a mass of contemporary material, such as letters and petitions, relating to the aftermath and reception of the council.18 The forthcoming annotated English translation of the full Greek Acta will make this material much more accessible, since Schwartz’s corpus is not exactly easy to use. At present the best help is provided by digests or abbreviated versions, of which the most useful by far is Hefele–Leclercq’s Histoire des Conciles.19 These do, however, lose much of the real richness of the Acta, especially the torrents of invective, so that, for example, one does not expect to Wnd in them remarks like that made in the tenth session by the metropolitan bishop of Cyzicus, Diogenes: Diogenes, 18 There is work to be done on identifying the diVerent agendas and audiences of the various post-Chalcedon collections of documents. For an illuminating example of what can be done with a collection related to First Ephesus, see F. Millar, ‘Repentant Heretics in Fifth-Century Lydia: Identity and Literacy’, Scripta Classica Israelica, 23 (2004), 111–30. 19 C. J. Hefele and H. Leclercq, Histoire des Conciles: d’apre`s les documents originaux ii.i–ii (Paris, 1908), esp. ii. 649–834; this summary is based on the text of the Acta in J. D. Mansi, Sacrorum Conciliorum nova et amplissima collectio vi–vii (Florence, 1761–2). There is an English translation from an earlier German version by Hefele, published as A History of the Councils of the Church, iii (Edinburgh, 1883), esp. 285–428.

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one of the leading turncoats at the council, commented that the Ephesians if left to themselves elect as their bishops salgamarioi, a direct Greek borrowing from the Latin word for something like ‘pickle-sellers’ (ACO ii.i.411, § 56).20 The massive bulk of this collection of evidence does not, however, mean that we have a complete record of proceedings, since on occasions it is apparent that some exchanges have been omitted or reordered: thus in the second session, the Acta represent the full text of Leo’s Tome as being read out before certain speciWc objections are recorded and rejected (ACO ii.i.277–8, §§ 22–6), although it is clear that the objections were registered at speciWc points during the formal reading of the Tome; the compilers of the Acta did not want to enshrine disrespect for the Tome by recording repeated interruptions, which may well have been more vehement and protracted than the calm account of their dismissal suggests, an example of the important role which the controllers of a council played in deWning its memory.21 It has been argued, to my mind with some exaggeration, by leading scholars that the procedure for church councils was modelled closely on that of the Roman Senate; one signiWcant diVerence is that councils worked by consensus, with episcopal unanimity reXecting and demonstrating the will of God, whereas in senate meetings it was possible to introduce counter-proposals or at least disagree with the 20 This Wrst appears in Liddell and Scott only in the 1968 Supplement to the 9th edition, where the single reference given is a 6th-cent. inscription from Corinth. [Ste. Croix made this point in ‘A Worm’s-Eye View of the Greeks and Romans and How they Spoke: Martyr Acts, Fables, Parables and Other Texts’, Latin Teaching, 37.4 (1984), 16–30, at 23–4, where he uses the energetic and colloquial language of the bishops as part of his argument that teachers of classical languages should make more use of early Christian texts to enliven their material. The word is recorded in Lampe’s Patristic Greek Lexicon, which also notes the Corinth inscription. Ste. Croix’s point reXects the frustrating separation of secular from ecclesiastical Greek in the main lexica. The all-round importance of the collections of council Acta, including their linguistic signiWcance for issues such as bilingualism and translation, has been recognized by Fergus Millar, ‘Repentant Heretics’, 116, a comment which will be developed at greater length in the forthcoming publication of his Sather lectures, A Greek Roman Empire: Power, Belief and Reason under Theodosius II, 408–50.] 21 See further below for discussion of ‘turncoats’. M. J. van Parys, ‘The Council of Chalcedon as Historical Event’, Ecumenical Review, 22 (1970), 305–20, at 314, notes that the Acta for the Wfth session are rather meagre, but without identifying any obvious reason.


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motion under discussion.22 Fortunately, however, one feature of the recording of senatorial procedure was preserved, since the Acta record not only decisions and speeches but vast numbers of acclamations (ekboe¯seis, acclamationes in Latin), as well as less formal exclamations. As early as Pliny’s Panegyric, delivered to Trajan in ad 100, the acclamationes of imperial speeches were being solemnly recorded in the Acta Senatus (Pan. 75).23 The practice increased during Late Antiquity and extended to new venues, such as church councils, not least because emperors had demonstrated their interest: Constantine encouraged provincial gatherings to praise or criticize their governors through acclamations which were to be reported to the emperor himself (Cod. Theod. 1.16.6 of 331), and by 371 provincials on such reporting missions were permitted to use the imperial post (Cod. Theod. 8.5.32). The fact that both laws were included in the Codex Theodosianus, which was compiled about a decade before the Council of Chalcedon, indicates that they were still in force, and the Constantinian law indeed was retained in the Codex Justinianus. Acclamations might well digress from the occasion or event which had triggered them. The senatorial Acta which record the reception in Rome in 438 of the newly promulgated Codex Theodosianus provide a good example in a compact series of acclamations which move from praise of the emperors, particularly in their capacity as law-makers, to requests for the consulship to be granted to certain leading senators.24 In the Acta of Chalcedon, we have not only the conventional shouts in honour of the emperor and empress, but also many highly charged and even abusive explosions. On occasion there are also comments on, or reactions to acclamations. These might involve the assertion that the acclamations being recorded did not represent a majority view, ‘Only a few are shouting. The council does not speak’ as the Constantinopolitan clergy responded to chants at 22 F. Dvornik, ‘Emperors, Popes and Councils’, DOP (1951), 3–23, at 4, 18; P. BatiVol, ‘Origines de re`glement des concils’, in E´tudes de liturgie et d’archeólogie chre´tienne (Paris, 1919), 84–153, at 85; H. Gelzer, ‘Die Konzilien als Reichsparlamente’, in Ausgewa¨hlte kleine Schriften (Leipzig, 1907), 142–55. 23 For a good discussion of the prevalence of acclamations, see C. Roueche´, ‘Acclamations in the Later Roman Empire: New Evidence from Aphrodisias’, JRS 74 (1984), 181–99. 24 J. F. Matthews, Laying Down the Law: A Study of the Theodosian Code (New Haven, 2000), 35–49.

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the second session for the restoration of Dioscorus and other deposed bishops (ACO ii.i.279, § 35). Occasionally the presiding oYcials attempted to restrain the vehemence of the outbursts, ‘These vulgar outbursts are not becoming to bishops, nor useful to either party. Allow everything to be read’ (ACO ii.i.70, § 44), but such interventions were rare; they tend to occur when, as on this occasion when the presence of Theodoret was at issue, the council was in danger of straying from the oYcial agenda. Mutual episcopal mud-slinging was tolerated and at Chalcedon the most frequent chant was the repeated exo¯ bale, ‘Chuck ’em out’—or perhaps, since these are the cries of holy bishops, one should translate ‘Cast them out’. But the Acta are very far from being our only source of knowledge about Chalcedon. Evagrius, who came from Epiphania in Syria and was employed in a legal capacity by the orthodox bishop of Antioch, Gregory, during the 580s, compiled an ecclesiastical history of the years 431 to 594 which continued the narratives of the mid-Wfthcentury triad of writers, Socrates, Sozomen, and Theodoret. Evagrius deliberately began his account with the origins of the Christological dispute about the Natures of Christ by starting with Nestorius’ patriarchy and the First Council of Ephesus, even though this entailed some overlap with Socrates (1.2). Chalcedon was crucial to Evagrius’ story, and he provides a substantial account of proceedings in two parts, a shorter version within the chronological narrative in Book 2 (ch. 4) and then a longer one which is presented as an appendix to Book 2.25 It is clear that Evagrius used a version of the Acta, which he summarized reasonably well: at one point he conXated two letters by Pope Leo, at two places he seems to have misunderstood which side of a complex argument a particular speaker was supporting, and there are a few errors over the order of arguments and particular names. However, in the light of the sheer quantity of the material which he was attempting to summarize, this record is not too bad, and his account is a reasonably brief and 25 This occupies 37 pages in the standard Bidez–Parmentier text, 9 for the initial account and 26 for the appendix. There are annotated translations, with crossreferences to the relevant sections of ACO, by M. Whitby, The Ecclesiastical History of Evagrius Scholasticus (Liverpool, 2000) and A. J. Festugie`re, ‘E´vagre, Histoire Eccle´siastique’, Byzantion, 45 (1975), 187–488.


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informative introduction to the key events.26 In the main narrative Evagrius focused on three key issues, the reversal of the incorrect decisions of Second Ephesus, the deposition of Dioscorus for disciplinary reasons, and the establishment of a new Creed. In the appendix the focus is even more clearly on Dioscorus, whose misconduct and intransigence are displayed to the full, though the reputation of Pope Leo is also upheld through demonstrations of the parallels between the views in his Tome and the teachings of Cyril of Alexandria.27 Inevitably, as a good orthodox writer, Evagrius omitted much of the most ‘spicy’ material, but he does not entirely disguise the vital role performed again and again at critical points in proceedings by the emperor himself and the imperial commissioners who presided at every session except the formal disciplinary proceedings at which Dioscorus was condemned in his absence.28 In addition to Evagrius the Ecclesiastical History of the Monophysite Zachariah rhetor preserves a brief account of proceedings from the losers’ perspective. The letter collections of Pope Leo and Bishop Theodoret provide important evidence for the views of two of the main participants as well as of some of their correspondents; Theodoret’s letters in particular reveal interesting links with some central players at Chalcedon.29 There is no modern work on the council which, to my mind, provides a thoroughly acceptable account. Most writing on Chalcedon has been done by theologians,30 whereas I am a professional 26 Whitby, Evagrius, p. xxxix. 27 See further Whitby, Evagrius, pp. xxxviii–xxxix. 28 [To my mind the full extent of imperial involvement is only clear in the Acta, but it is true that Evagrius does not write the commissioners out altogether.] 29 Theodoret, Correspondance, ed. Y. Aze´ma (Sources Chre´tiennes 40, 98, 111; Paris, 1955–65), esp. i. 44–56; there is an older Eng. trans. by B. Jackson in NPNF ii.3 (Grand Rapids, 1892). 30 For an account in English by a theologian, see R. V. Sellers, The Council of Chalcedon, a Historical and Doctrinal Survey (London, 1953); brief and useful theological treatments are provided by L. R. Wickham, ‘Chalkedon, o¨kumenische Synode (451)’, Theologische Realenzyklopa¨die, 7 (1981), 668–75, and in H. Chadwick’s preface to Festugie`re’s Actes du Concile. T. Camelot, E´phe`se et Chalce´doine (Paris, 1962) does not add much. The massive collection (over 2,700 pages) edited by A. Grillmeier and H. Bacht, Das Konzil von Chalkedon. Geschichte und Gegenwart (3 vols., Wurzburg, 1951–4) is essentially theological and has little of historical value, although there is a useful and accurate historical table covering the years 422 to 564 at

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historian and a theologian in only a very amateur way—although I have tried hard to understand all the main theological issues, some of which are immensely subtle and complex and diYcult to grasp. I sympathize very much with the comments of the sixth-century historian Procopius of Caesarea who, when mentioning an abstruse theological controversy, refused in principle to give details even though he insisted that he thoroughly understood it: ‘for I hold it a sort of mad folly (an aponoia manio¯de¯s tis) to research into the nature of God. Even human nature cannot, I think, be precisely understood by men; still less can the things which pertain to the nature of God. So let me shun this peril and pass these things by in discreet silence’ (Wars 5.3.5–9). It is probably already clear that I do not myself share any of the theological opinions of any of the great divisions of Wfthcentury Christendom: this does at least enable me to claim complete impartiality as between Orthodox and Monophysites,31 even if the ferocious strife between them, which sometimes, as we shall see, took on a murderous character, often makes me feel like repeating the dying words of Mercutio in Act 3 of Romeo and Juliet, ‘A plague o’ both your houses’. ii. 941–67 which helps to clarify the antecedents as well as the reception of the council. In addition to van Parys, ‘Council’, the best modern treatments of the council from the historical point of view are W. de Vries, ‘Die Struktur der Kirche gema¨ss dem Konzil von Chalkedon (451)’, OCP 35 (1969), 63–122 (there is a French trans. of this article in idem, Orient et Occident: les structures eccle´siastiques vues dans l’histoire des sept premie`res conciles oecumeńiques (Paris, 1974) ); see also idem, ‘Das Konzil von Ephesus 449, eine ‘‘Raübersynode’’?’, OCP 41 (1975), 357–98, where the question mark in the title points to de Vries’s overall approach. De Vries’s articles get to grips with what actually went on at councils, even if the author’s commitment to Pope Leo’s outlook and activities can sometimes seem overconWdent. V. C. Samuel, ‘Proceedings of the Council of Chalcedon and its Historical Problems: A Paper Written from a Critical Point of View’, Ecumenical Review, 22 (1970), 321–47 is of some interest, in that the author, a priest in the non-Chalcedonian Indian Syrian Orthodox Church, rightly regards the council proceedings as eYciently controlled by the combined power of Pope and Emperor, but his doctrinal stance leads him to make dubious claims about proceedings at Second Ephesus. [I am sure that Ste. Croix would also have commended the very helpful introductions and annotations to the new English translation of the Acta.] 31 It is diYcult to Wnd in English an account of the council, its antecedents, and consequences from the Monophysite perspective. In addition to Samuel, ‘Proceedings’, noted above, see also idem, The Council of Chalcedon Re-examined: A Historical and Theological Survey (Madras, 1977; repub. London, 2001), which is of greater theological than historical interest.


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Some Issues At this point I will refer to two or three themes which I will not be pursuing. The theological struggles of the period are sometimes treated as essentially a battle for ecclesiastical supremacy between the three great Eastern patriarchates, Alexandria, Constantinople, and Antioch. Certainly the rivalry of the three great sees could be, and sometimes was, a major factor: jealousy of the upstart see of Constantinople might draw together Alexandria and sees in Asia Minor threatened by the extension of the metropolitan power of the capital, or might unite Rome and Alexandria against its universal pretensions. The humbling of John Chrysostom in which Theophilus of Alexandria played a leading part is one instance; doctrine played no part, whereas episcopal power was crucial.32 Furthermore the theologians of Alexandria and Antioch had strong local doctrinal traditions, though those of Constantinople did not. But to my mind in these theological contests what I might call issues of episcopal or ecclesiastical geography are secondary, and we must always treat as primary the actual doctrines held by each of the participants in this whole ideological strife. I do not, however, wish to belittle the importance of the greatly added weight and bitterness which might be given to a doctrinal dispute by the fact that the participants were also Wghting for their own ecclesiastical power and the prestige of their sees.33 Another issue to be set aside is the ambition of the odious Bishop Juvenal to turn his see of Jerusalem into a patriarchate, at the expense of Antioch, which he succeeded in doing at Second Ephesus and then maintained at Chalcedon even though he had to return some of the ill-gotten territorial gains he had just made.34 32 J. H. W. G. Liebeschuetz, Barbarians and Bishops, Army, Church, and State in the Age of Arcadius and Chrysostom (Oxford, 1990), chs. 19–20; S. Elm, ‘The Dog that did not Bark: Doctrine and Patriarchal Authority in the ConXict between Theophilus of Alexandria and John Chrysostom of Constantinople’, in L. Ayres and G. Jones (eds.), Christian Origins: Theology, Rhetoric and Community (London, 1998), 68–93. 33 Those who wish for an account of the episcopal/ecclesiastical aspect of the dogmatic disputes could begin with Norman Baynes, ‘Alexandria and Constantinople: A Study in Ecclesiastical Diplomacy’, in Byzantine Studies and Other Essays (London, 1955), 97–115. Samuel, ‘Proceedings’, 342–3, sees Pulcheria’s support for opponents of Eutyches as motivated mainly by her desire to secure the elevation of her imperial see of Constantinople at the expense of Alexandria, but his extreme cynicism is unjustiWed. 34 For his long and generally successful career, see E. Honigmann, ‘Juvenal of Jerusalem’, DOP 5 (1950), 209–79.

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Neither do I intend to lay any stress at all on alleged political motives, such as the supposed necessity in 451 for Emperor Marcian to take great account of the views of the 32-year-old senior Augustus, the western Emperor Valentinian III,35 as well as of Pope Leo, the bishop of his capital city, Rome, which was not in fact Valentinian’s normal residence.36 Valentinian resented the unilateral proclamation of Marcian in the East on the grounds that he should have been consulted, and did not recognize Marcian as Augustus until 30 March 452; during 451 the rift was symbolized by a refusal in the West to acknowledge Marcian’s consulship, while Marcian may have claimed not to have been informed about the western consul AdelWus.37 In reality, for both emperors Attila the Hun provided a more pressing problem: in 450 Marcian risked his wrath by refusing 35 E. Stein, Histoire du Bas-Empire, i (2nd edn., 1959), 312. [Evagrius 2.1, however, may hint at a possible link between Valentinian’s ratiWcation of Marcian’s elevation and the summoning of the council, though the conjunction of events could be innocent.] 36 [Ste. Croix’s comment that Rome was not Valentinian’s normal residence reXects the standard scholarly view that Ravenna served as the western imperial capital from the date of Honorius’ move there in the early 5th cent. Although Ste. Croix is correct that across the whole of his reign Valentinian III spent more time in Ravenna than Rome, it has now been pointed out by A. Gillett, ‘Rome, Ravenna and the Last Western Emperors’, PBSR 69 (2001), 131–67, esp. 145–8, that the imperial court was based at Rome on various occasions during the 440s and regularly from 450; furthermore, Valentinian and his family provided Wnancial support for Pope Leo’s buildings in and around Rome, and used ecclesiastical ceremonies to advertise their attachment to the city. I am grateful to Fergus Millar for drawing my attention to this article. We may assume that Valentinian broadly shared the doctrinal views of his Pope, and may have exploited the embarrassment of the eastern regime over the conduct and decisions of Second Ephesus, but in spite of Valentinian’s Roman connection Ste. Croix is still right not to attach signiWcance to this possible motive for the council. Eastern emperors were quite capable of disregarding papal views, as Theodosius II had already demonstrated. The impetus for the council came from the East, partly from clerics who believed that Second Ephesus had gone too far or had aVected the episcopal balance of power, but much more importantly from the imperial pair, who, for example, coerced the reluctant eastern bishops into agreeing a new Creed: comparisons with Constantine and Helena were presumably not unwelcome to the new regime, and personal as well as religious considerations may have inXuenced their determination to secure the ‘right’ decisions at Chalcedon. Promotion of good relations with the Pope and the West was an advantage, but not such a crucial one that it would override eastern interests.] 37 R. S. Bagnall, A. Cameron, S. R. Schwartz, and K. A. Worp, Consuls of the Later Roman Empire (Atlanta, 1987), 436.


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to continue payments agreed by Theodosius, but Attila had Wrst attacked the West where he claimed a share in the empire as the bride price of Honoria, who had attempted to betroth herself to Attila; during summer 451, as Wnal preparations for Chalcedon were being made, the western general Ae¨tius and his Visigothic allies defeated the Huns at the battle of the Catalaunian plains. In 450–1 Valentinian may have suspected Marcian of exporting the Hunnic problem to the West, but by early 452 the prospect of an attack on Italy should have encouraged a rapprochement. It does not seem that the convocation of the council, or even its decisions, had any impact on the divide. As far as Pope Leo was concerned, suYcient reassurance that the emperor was now in full sympathy with his views would have been provided by a synod which convened at Constantinople on 21 October 450; this comprised eastern bishops who had not been party to the deposition of Flavian, plus four western bishops representing the pope.38 Nor can I follow the great historian Ernst Stein in attributing the role of Empress Pulcheria above all to her hatred of Chrysaphius,39 the inXuential eunuch chamberlain of Theodosius II, who is so often represented as primarily responsible for the religious policy adopted by that emperor; I am very sceptical about this theory, and will not mention it further.

Secular Control My overall thesis is that the Council of Chalcedon was every bit as much an engine of coercion as the ‘Robber’ Council of Second Ephesus, and that the machinery of compulsion was actually far 38 P. Mouterde, ‘Fragment d’Actes d’un Synode tenu a` Constantinople en 450’, Me´langes de l’Universite´ S. Joseph Beyrouth, 15.2 (1930), 35–50; idem, ‘Saint Abundius de Coˆme et ses trois compagnons a` un synode de Constantinople en 450’, AB 48 (1930), 124–9; ACO ii.i.8–10, nos. 9–10 (letters from Marcian and Pulcheria to Leo of 22 Nov. 450). 39 Stein, Histoire, 310. [I am more sympathetic to this theory than Ste. Croix: the strong evidence for hostility between Pulcheria and Chrysaphius is set out in PLRE ii. 295–6, as well as for the links between Chrysaphius and Eutyches, his godfather, and for his hostility towards Flavian of Constantinople; cf. Evagrius 2.2 and Whitby, Evagrius, 26 n. 81. What cannot be proved is that Pulcheria was primarily motivated by opposition to Chrysaphius rather than doctrinal conviction, but it is the case that she came to oppose the current champions of Cyrilline theology, in particular of Cyril’s Twelve Anathemas, which she had supported in the 430s.]

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more powerfulat Chalcedon, so muchso that actualforce didnot need to be used, or even visibly threatened, because everyone knew that resistance to the imperial will would result in his ruin: the loss of episcopal oYce, and perhaps excommunication and exile to a distant part of the empire, as happened to the one determined opponent, Dioscorus.40 This should not surprise anyone, as it only provides one more among many examples of the very high degree of control that a Roman emperor could exercise (if he wished) over the Christian churches in the area over which he ruled, even in the sphere of doctrine.41 It was easiest to enforce a particular set of theological views by summoning a general Council of the Church, which the emperor alone had the power to do.42 Even Pope Leo the Great, who had the most exalted idea of the importance of his own Apostolic See, had to admit throughout his correspondence with Theodosius II, Pulcheria, and Marcian, which fortunately survives, that it was the emperor and the emperor alone who decided whether, when, and where to summon a general council. Leo changed his own view about the desirability of a general council more than once between 449 and 451 in the light of changing circumstances, but was unable to impose his wishes. In the end he had to be content with having his doctrinal letter to Flavian of Constantinople, which is commonly referred to as the Tome of Leo,43 endorsed at Chalcedon as the best statement of the true faith. 40 Samuel, ‘Proceedings’, 324, claimed that the level of imperial interest was unprecedented, but this forms part of his argument to undermine the legitimacy of Chalcedon as opposed to Second Ephesus, whose decisions he presents as free from coercion. J. MeyendorV, Imperial Unity and Christian Divisions (New York, 1989), 168, saw the close imperial involvement as permitting greater freedom of debate than at previous councils; contrast van Parys, ‘Council’, 317, who urged that imperial inXuence should not be exaggerated and suggests that Marcian exercised sensible discretion in leaving doctrinal matters to the council. Both these views underestimate the extent of imperial direction, which tolerated limited disagreement provided that the emperor’s wishes were approved in due course, and included very Wrm imperial guidance even on doctrinal decisions; see further below. 41 See, for example, W. H. C. Frend, The Rise of the Monophysite Movement, Chapters in the History of the Church in the Fifth and Sixth Centuries (Cambridge, 1972), ch. 2; Dvornik, ‘Emperors’. 42 However, after a council had deWned current orthodoxy, an emperor might have greater problems in securing the imposition of these views on bishops and monks scattered throughout his dominions. 43 The best text of the Tome (Leo, Ep. 28, PL 54. 755–82) is in ACO ii.ii.24–33, of which there is a French trans. in Festugie`re, Actes du Concile, 32–7; there is an Eng. trans., from the PL text, by C. L. Feltoe in NPNF 2nd ser. 12 (Leo and Gregory the


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The signiWcance of imperial initiative and of the control of proceedings is revealed by some of the ecclesiastical gatherings of Theodosius II’s reign.44 First Ephesus had been summoned by Theodosius II at the request of Nestorius, who hoped to exploit certain complaints which he had received from Egyptian monks about Cyril of Alexandria’s behaviour, charges which might allow him the opportunity to dispose of a powerful doctrinal rival without becoming locked into a detailed argument about terminology. Nestorius was conWdent in the emperor’s favour since Theodosius had appointed Candidianus, the comes domesticorum, to maintain order and ensure that the participants attended to the issues. Candidianus was a supporter of Nestorius, as is clear from the backing he gave to the attacks on Cyril which John of Antioch led after his belated arrival (ACO i.i.1.120; i.i.5.119–20), but he had not been given authority to participate, and this limitation prevented him from arranging proceedings within the council, while a lack of physical support left him unable to oppose the partisans organized by Cyril of Alexandria and the local bishop Memnon outside.45 At First Ephesus the community of interest between Pope Celestine and Cyril allowed Cyril to claim the presidency as the Pope’s representative on the decisive Wrst day (ACO ii.iii.197, § 911, lines 5–6), and Candidianus then lacked authority to halt proceedings. It was only by placing control of a council in the right hands that an emperor could be certain of securing the decisions that he wanted: even an emperor’s representative might be outmanoeuvred if he was not presiding.

Great) (London, 1895), 38–43. For the Greek trans. which was read at Chalcedon, see ACO ii.i.10–20 (Epist. Coll. M, no. 11), with Schwartz’s observations in ACO ii.i, pp. xiv–xvi. 44 For Caesaropapism in the Byzantine Empire, see G. Dagron, Emperor and Priest: The Imperial OYce in Byzantium (Eng. trans. by J. Birrel, Cambridge, 2003), ch. 9; although most of the discussion is devoted to the later Byzantine Empire, pp. 296–7 do touch on the issues in the 5th and 6th cent. 45 Candidianus’ brief was to prevent disturbances round about the council, but he was not to meddle in matters of the faith since that was not the business of a layman; nevertheless he was also to see that no dissensions arising from the passion of argument should disturb the consultation and precise search after the truth, and ensure that all should hear clearly what was said and speak their mind without harm so that when, by single propositions and counter-propositions, the inquiry had been completed, the decisions of all might be duly recorded (ACO i.i.1.120).

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The importance of presidency is further revealed in the conXict between Flavian of Constantinople and Eutyches in 448/9. Proceedings had begun in November 448 at a local, or ‘home’ synod of bishops at Constantinople which Flavian had summoned to consider a dispute in the Church at Sardis; this was naturally chaired by Flavian. The assembly was exploited by Eusebius of Dorylaeum to present a doctrinal indictment of Eutyches; there may have been collusion between Flavian and Eusebius, since the former is unlikely to have objected to the elimination of this turbulent monk and the sequence of events put Flavian in charge of the investigation without giving advance warning to Eutyches or his supporters. There was little that Eutyches could immediately do to hinder developments: after the opening of proceedings on 12 November (ACO ii.i.103, § 238) and Eutyches’ refusal to respond to summons on the 15, 16, and 17, an ultimatum brought him to attend on the 22, when he was accompanied by ‘a large following of soldiers, monks and members of the prefect’s staV’ (ACO ii.i.138, § 463). Emperor Theodosius’ wish to inXuence proceedings is revealed by the presence of the silentiary Magnus who read out an imperial missive which decreed that the patrician Florentius, ‘a man of faith and proven orthodoxy’, would attend the hearing; Florentius was to be present precisely ‘because the discussion was about the faith’, a reversal of the attitude which had prevented Candidianus from inXuencing proceedings at Ephesus. The emperor’s simple statement about the suYciency of the synods of Nicaea, Constantinople, and Ephesus was further proof of his support for Eutyches for whom this was almost a catchphrase (ACO ii.i.138, § 468). Flavian appears to have been somewhat tetchy about the presence of Florentius, Wrst asking Eutyches whether he wanted him to attend and then rejecting Magnus’ request that a cleric be sent to invite him in (ACO ii.i.139, §§ 473–4); Florentius did then shape the direction of proceedings to try to enable Eutyches to assent to an acceptable doctrinal formula (ACO ii.i.139–40, 142–4, §§ 478, 484, 521, 526, 541, 543), much to the annoyance of his accuser Eusebius, who feared that this might compromise his own position (ACO ii.i.139–40, §§ 477–85). In spite of this pressure Theodosius could not circumvent Flavian’s power as president, and Eutyches was condemned. Imperial displeasure was displayed in late March 449, when Theodosius publicly withdrew from communion with his


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patriarch in Santa Sophia, and in April three separate attempts were made to overturn Eutyches’ condemnation by demonstrating irregularities in Flavian’s proceedings. The record produced by Flavian’s notaries was subjected to detailed scrutiny, and under extreme pressure from Florentius these conceded that it was extremely diYcult to produce an exact transcription (ACO i.i.153–6, §§ 576–614); accusations by the silentiary Magnus that Flavius had prepared Eutyches’ condemnation in advance and so precluded a fair investigation further weakened the patriarch’s position (ACO i.i.178, §§ 838–42).46 Flavian’s control of proceedings, however, even if challenged, was not overturned, and the solution for Theodosius was to summon an ecumenical council.47 To avoid a repetition of the unintended outcome of First Ephesus and the embarrassment of Flavian’s synod at Constantinople, Theodosius wrote to Dioscorus of Alexandria to direct him to convene the synod, with Juvenal of Jerusalem and Thalassius of Caesarea in support; he also appointed Helpidius, count of the imperial consistory, and the tribune Eulogius to control proceedings. The emperor repeatedly insisted that Theodoret was not to participate and furthermore clearly demonstrated his hostility towards Flavian and his treatment of Eutyches: ‘we wrote to this most God-beloved bishop repeatedly in an attempt to still the turmoil he had stirred up . . . We repeatedly pressed this most religious bishop several times to drop the inquiry, lest it be cause of disturbance to the whole world, but he refused.’48 Theodosius knew what he wanted the council to achieve and was satisWed with the result: when writing to Emperor Valentinian, and the empresses Licinia and Galla Placidia to defend himself against protests from Pope Leo, he referred to Flavian as ‘chief cause of contention’ and said that peace reigned after his expulsion—‘nothing contrary to the rule of faith or of justice had been done there’ (Leo, Ep. 62–4). 46 Nestorius, Bazaar, pp. 341–2; ACO ii.i.148–79, §§ 555–849. Chadwick, Church, 555, notes the impact on Flavian. 47 Frend, The Rise of the Monophysite Movement, 95 refers to Theodosius’ ‘sureness of touch in ecclesiastical aVairs’ after First Ephesus, but this is not borne out by events in the capital in 448–9 when, in the short term, he was outmanoeuvred by his patriarch. 48 Dioscorus: ACO ii.i.68–9, § 24; Helpidius and Eulogius: ACO ii.i.72, § 49 (and cf. § 189 for Helpidius’ involvement); Theodoret: ACO ii.i.74, § 52; Flavian: ACO ii.i.73, § 51.

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Finally, the preliminaries to Chalcedon provide further examples of imperial interest in the close control of events. Much was done in support of the Orthodox cause between the assumption of power by Marcian and Pulcheria in August 450, over a year before the opening of the council. First, it is revealed by fragmentary Acta preserved in Syriac that in October 450 the new patriarch of Constantinople, Anatolius, who had been appointed after Second Ephesus and the expulsion and subsequent death of Eutyches’ opponent Flavian, and all his bishops had formally subscribed the Tome of Leo.49 Support for the deceased Flavian was now a touchstone for orthodoxy, his name was reinstated in the diptychs and his remains were returned to Constantinople. Anatolius was in an awkward position. He had been deacon and apocrisarius of Dioscorus (Liberatus, Breviarium 12, 76), who will have presented him to Emperor Theodosius as an acceptable leader for the Constantinopolitan Church in which Eutyches was currently prominent; he owed his position to Flavian’s death and had also been consecrated by Dioscorus, which all suggest that at the time of appointment he was eager to present himself as an opponent of Theodoret and Two Nature Christology. Whether he saw an opportunity to throw oV an unwelcome subservience to Alexandria,50 whether he simply recognized the doctrinal consequences of the change of ruler, or whether pressure had to be applied, Anatolius switched Christological sides. Pope Leo’s correspondence reveals that both Anatolius and Maximus, the new patriarch of Antioch who had also been appointed after Second Ephesus and now also had to demonstrate his independence from Dioscorus, had been using all their immense inXuence in the vast areas in which they were the dominant ecclesiastical Wgures, in support of Orthodoxy and the Tome of Leo and in condemnation of Eutyches and Nestorianism (Leo, Ep. 88; ACO ii.iv.46–7); Eutyches, brieXy reinstated at Second Ephesus, had again been condemned and banished. Both patriarchs will have known that anything less than enthusiastic commitment to the new ecclesiastical direction would leave them vulnerable at a future council; Anatolius at least had the comfort that his expelled 49 Mouterde, ‘Fragment’, 47; V. Grumel, Les Regestes des Actes du Patriarchat de Constantinople i.i (2nd edn., Paris, 1972), 89, no. 116. 50 He may have been moving in this direction even before the death of Theodosius.


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predecessor had died and he could present himself as a leader in the new doctrinal direction, but Maximus had to be wary of the danger that Domnus, one of the victims of Second Ephesus, might return. The decisive council was initially summoned to meet at Nicaea, to recall the Wrst ecumenical council and present this new gathering as an extension of its work. However, after reports reached court that troublemakers were gathering to disrupt proceedings, Pulcheria wrote to the governor of Bithynia with instructions that he expel monks, clergy, and laity who had no business to be present (ACO ii.i.29: 17–29). Perhaps most important of all, though rarely even noticed, Emperor Marcian in a letter dated 22 September 451 made it clear to the bishops at Nicaea that he was determined to crush any attempt at the council by unruly behaviour, stasis or thorubos, to maintain the wishes of the people referred to as ‘those who share the opinions of Eutyches, or of anyone else’ (ACO ii.i.30: 21–9); Eutyches is here, as frequently in the Acta of Chalcedon, regarded as the champion of One Nature Christology, though the vagueness of the expression ‘of Eutyches or of anyone else’ may have been intended to increase worries among possible targets. Most modern writers simply ignore this imperial letter, which I would regard as one of the most signiWcant of all the surviving documents relating to the council, because it provides explicit evidence that Emperor Marcian, even before the opening of the council and the expression of any episcopal consensus, had every intention of crushing the Monophysites. Whether the crucial decisions were taken by Marcian or his wife Pulcheria is impossible to decide, but the upshot was the same: the emperor had revealed the regime’s doctrinal preferences and these would be enacted. Such determination was necessary, since Dioscorus and his supporters challenged the imperial redirection of doctrine by anathematizing Pope Leo; it was perhaps this act of intransigence which persuaded Marcian to order that the council be transferred to Chalcedon, immediately across the Bosporus from the capital, although the public explanation for the switch was that urgent public business was detaining the emperor.51 After 51 ACO ii.i.28–9, § 14. Monophysites attributed the change of venue to divine intervention which served to preserve the reputation of Nicaea: Michael the Syrian 8.10 (trans. J. B. Chabot (Paris, 1901), vol. ii, p. 39); Zachariah of Mitylene, Chronicle, 3.1, trans. F. J. Hamilton and E. W. Brooks (London, 1899).

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travelling to Illyricum, Marcian promised that he would not undertake further trips away from the capital (ACO ii.i.30, § 16), a further demonstration that he intended to keep in close touch with proceedings. The way was being prepared at the very highest level for a complete reversal of Second Ephesus, the result which we can see being eVected in the Acta of Chalcedon. A further sign of secular inXuence in preparations for the council is in dealings with the exiled Nestorius, a most contentious issue for clerics. Evagrius angrily rejected the assertion by the Monophysite historian Zachariah that Nestorius had been invited to attend, arguing that he was consistently anathematized by the council and was already dead before proceedings began (2.2). This, however, misrepresents Zachariah’s text, which records that Marcian did order the recall but that Nestorius died while setting out (3.1, p. 42). ConWrmation that Marcian actually did send a message to Panopolis in Egypt to order Nestorius’ return, but that death supervened, is provided by the Nestorian history of Barhadbeshabba (ch. 30) and the Monophysite collection of Ple¯rophories (Proofs) by John of Beth RuWna (33, 36), a Greek text which survives only in Syriac translation.52 Quite what Marcian intended to do with Nestorius is uncertain, since opposition to him provided one of the most powerful rallying points in the current doctrinal arguments. It is possible that he hoped to pressurize him in the kind of interview which Dioscorus is presented as having with Marcian and Pulcheria in the Life of Dioscorus by Theopistus, another Greek work which, inevitably because of doctrinal position, is preserved in a Syriac version:53 Dioscorus resisted the call to acknowledge the need to follow the 52 Barhadbeshabba, Ecclesiastical History, ed. and French trans. F. Nau, PO 9 (1913), 489–631, and 23 (1932), 177–343; John Rufus, Ple¯rophories, ed. and trans. F. Nau, PO 8 (1911), 1–208. 53 F. Nau, ‘Histoire de Dioscore, patriarche d’Alexandrie, ećrite par son disciple Theópiste’, Journal Asiatique, 10th ser. 1 (1903), 1–108, 241–310. On the work, see P. Mouterde, ‘La Concile de Chalce´doine d’apre`s les historiens monophysites de langue syriaque’, in Grillmeier–Bacht, Konzil, i. 581–602, at 597–601, and M. Cramer and H. Bacht, ‘Der antichalkedonische Aspekt im historisch-biographischen Schrifttum der koptischen Monophysiten (6.–7. Jahrhundert.). Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte ¨ gyptens’, in Grillmeier–Bacht, Konzil, der Enstehung der monophysitischen Kirche A ii. 315–38; Honigmann, ‘Juvenal’, 265, suggested that the Ple¯rophories were the source for this Life, but there seems to be too much independent information in the latter, and cf. Baynes, ‘Alexandria’, 114–15 for acceptance of authenticity.


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Pope’s doctrinal lead, but Nestorius might have been less resilient, especially after more than a decade of uncomfortable exile. He could also have been paraded before the assembled bishops, placed in the middle to await judgement and then subjected to a renewed interrogation; this might have revealed that Nestorius did not hold fully ‘Nestorian’ views and that he was prepared to condemn some of the more extreme formulations which went under his name. At any rate his presence might have allowed the council to demonstrate its orthodox credentials either by welcoming back a long-lost sheep or by condemning a persistently obstinate opponent—but this would have been an imperial rather than episcopal strategy, since for almost all bishops Nestorius was best left in his remote exile. Such emphasis on secular control of doctrinal issues may disconcert some, for example those who see the council as a providential correction for the errors of Second Ephesus,54 and an alternative explanation might be sought along the lines that force was unnecessary because almost all bishops at Chalcedon favoured the decisions which restored divinely favoured orthodoxy. It is true that most bishops whose voices can be heard wanted to be on record as deeply committed to stamping out what was identiWed as heresy, but that should come as no surprise. Dioscorus, however, had supporters of whom some stayed loyal even after the contentious Wrst session had gone against him. Some of these bishops simply absented themselves from later sessions when they might have been coerced into subscribing a document against Dioscorus: thus the third session at which Dioscorus was deposed was attended by 204 bishops (ACO ii.i.199–204) as opposed to 343 at the Wrst session. Reservations might also be signalled in the way in which bishops subscribed to a decision: thus Amphilochius of Side, whose antipathy to the proceedings is clear from his request for a delay before the second summons to Dioscorus and his subsequent repudiation of the council, reluctantly explained his decision to subscribe, ‘It was not my wish to cut oV any member of the Church, particularly one of rank; but because Dioscorus, formerly bishop of the great city of Alexandria, in addition to the charges that certain persons have brought 54 e.g. P. Goubert, ‘Le Roˆle de Sainte Pulche´rie et de l’eunuque Chrysaphios’, in Grillmeier-Bacht, Konzil, i. 303–21, at 304, 318.

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against him, refused to present himself when summoned for a third time by the holy and ecumenical Council and brought down the sentence of the Council on his own head, he has only himself to blame.’55 This contrasts with the majority of acceptances which are bland comments of assent with the occasional more expansive statement of episcopal allegiance or other contextual comment.56 The deposition was secured, but it is clear that perhaps only just over half the bishops at Chalcedon were Wrmly behind this decision. The third session at Chalcedon is exceptional in that it was the one meeting of the council at which there was not a secular president: the meeting was chaired by the papal representative, Paschasinus of Lilybaeum, and the imperial commissioners commented four days later at the fourth session (17 October) on the lack of secular input: ‘But your devotion will give an account to God, both concerning Dioscorus who was deposed by you without the knowledge of the most sacred eminence and of us’ (ACO ii.i.305, § 12). This departure from normal practice might seem to undermine the argument about imperial control, but it is possible that the commissioners were content to be spared involvement in the formal trial of Dioscorus and a contentious decision which would have a serious impact on the operation of imperial authority in Egypt.57 In any event the bishops 55 Zachariah 4.7, Evagrius 2.10. The Greek Acta preserve only the names of subscribers, but the Latin version contains the complete subscriptions: ACO ii.iii.309, § 94.22; cf. § 94.26 (Onesiphorus of Iconium) for another equivocal reference to Dioscorus’ mistakes which avoids a formal statement of condemnation, and contrast § 94.34 for the combination of Dioscorus’ behaviour with explicit assent to the condemnation. 56 Standard acceptances: ‘I too concur with the declarations of the holy fathers . . .’, ‘I too concur with the condemnation by the holy fathers . . .’, ‘I am in complete agreement with the decision by the holy fathers . . .’, ‘I assent to the condemnation by the holy fathers and the holy Council . . .’, ‘I make the same judgement as the most holy fathers before me . . .’ (ACO ii.iii.313–14, § 94.50–4). Episcopal attachment: ‘I too assent to the sentences delivered by the most holy bishops Paschasinus and Lucensius and the most devout presbyter Boniface, legates of the most holy and blessed bishop of Rome, and by the most holy and blessed Anatolius archbishop of the capital city of Constantinople, New Rome, and to all the decrees of the holy and ecumenical Council . . .’ (ACO ii.iii.312, § 94.42; cf. p. 330, § 94.188, 192), which can be contrasted with the reference to Anatolius but not the papal legates in § 94.37). 57 [It should also be noted that the session was held on the third day after the second session, even though that had closed with the presiding commissioners declaring a Wve-day recess to allow bishops to reXect on endorsing the Tome of


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ultimately reinforced the decision to depose Dioscorus along with Wve colleagues associated in the direction of Second Ephesus announced by the commissioners at the end of the Wrst session (ACO ii.i.195, § 1068). This deposition had been pronounced, albeit with the speciWc qualiWcation ‘if the emperor agrees’, and the bishops’ decision at the third session to reinstate the Wve associates also had to be referred to the emperor for ratiWcation (ACO ii.i.305, §§ 12, 14).58 Leo. Samuel, ‘Proceedings’, 346, claimed that the papal legates’ intention was to remove one implacable opponent of the Pope’s views and so further the work of the council.] 58 [I am rather more suspicious than Ste. Croix about proceedings at the third session. The session opened with a clear statement of papal supremacy from Paschasinus: ‘It is well known to this God-loving council that an imperial letter was sent to the blessed and apostolic Pope Leo summoning him to the holy council. But since neither the custom of antiquity nor the necessities of the general time appeared to allow this, he has charged my littleness to preside over this holy council in his stead. It is therefore necessary that whatever is brought forward should be examined by our sentence. Therefore let the petition that has now been presented by our most Godbeloved brother and fellow-bishop Eusebius be received by the most God-beloved archdeacon and primcerius Aetius and be read’ (ACO ii.i.204, § 4). There is no reference to the long discussion of Eusebius’ complaint at the Wrst session, and Paschasinus appears to treat the commissioners’ sentence on Dioscorus as irrelevant. At the start of the Wrst session there had been signs of tension between the commissioners and the papal representatives over the control of proceedings, and the conduct of this third session seems to continue this. It also appears that the commissioners had been expected to attend any trial of Dioscorus (ACO ii.i.208, § 31), and Dioscorus was able to argue, when explaining his refusal to present himself for judgement, that the absence of the commissioners prejudiced proceedings (ACO ii.i.207–10, 221, §§ 22, 36, 70), so that the conduct of the trial might be thought to lack legitimacy. To my mind there are two signiWcant factors. First is the personal grievance which the pope had against Dioscorus because of the anathema against Leo recently pronounced at Nicaea. Second is the evidence from the end of the second session on 10 October of episcopal support for the reinstatement of Dioscorus and the other bishops deposed on the Wrst day: this began as a plea on behalf of the whole group, but soon resolved into chants for Dioscorus: ‘We have all sinned, forgive us all. Dioscorus to the Council. Dioscorus to the churches’ (ACO ii.i.279–80, §§ 30–44). To pre-empt any chance of forgiveness for Dioscorus the papal representatives perhaps decided to take the lead in securing the formal condemnation of Dioscorus by his fellow bishops, a move which the commissioners and the emperor retrospectively tolerated since the result did not contradict their own agenda. The suggestion that the commissioners absented themselves to protect the emperor’s position, and especially his authority in Egypt, is not compelling: the secular power was still perceived to be implicated in the deposition of Dioscorus and the imposition of a successor at Alexandria.]

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One major issue where the application of imperial pressure is clearly visible is the decision to consider a new deWnition of faith. The need for a new Creed was raised by the presiding imperial commissioners as the major item of business for the second session on 13 October, but this provoked Werce opposition from the bishops: ‘This is what we all say. What has already been expounded is suYcient. It is not permissible to produce another exposition’ and ‘We will not produce a written exposition. There is a canon which declares that what has already been expounded is suYcient. The canon forbids the making of another exposition. Let the work of the fathers prevail’—in each case the chant was a collective one from ‘the most devout bishops’ (ACO ii.i.274, §§ 5, 7). However, the proposal from the commissioners that a drafting committee representing each patriarchy should be constituted was eventually accepted, with the proviso of an adjournment of Wve days to permit time for deliberations, before the meeting dissolved into chaos over demands for the readmission of Dioscorus (ACO ii.i.279, §§ 31, 33). At the Wfth session on 22 October Anatolius of Constantinople presented a draft deWnition through his deacon Asclepiades, which had clearly been ratiWed on the previous day by a general meeting of bishops (ACO ii.i.319, §§ 2–8), for which no record is preserved. There was opposition from the papal legates and bishops from the diocese of Oriens over the need to include speciWc references to Mary as Theotokos, and the existence of two natures, divine and human, in Christ (ACO ii.i.319–20, §§ 6, 9–20); during the argument the legates asked that imperial instructions be given for their return to Rome so that the council might be concluded there. An appeal to Marcian conWrmed the stark choice facing the bishops, recourse to a new drafting group of Anatolius, the legates, and eighteen eastern bishops or ‘If your Holiness does not want even this, you are to know that the Council will have to meet in the western parts, since your Religiousness is unwilling to deWne here unambiguously the true and orthodox faith’ (ACO ii.i.320–1, § 22).59 Even this threat did not bring 59 It might be questioned whether Marcian and Pulcheria would themselves have wanted to lose their tight control of proceedings which a move to the West would have entailed; it was possible that they were bluYng the bishops, conWdent in the ability of their commissioners to broker a deal, or they may have thought that the parameters for any discussion at a western council were suYciently tight for the switch not to be a threat to their plans.


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immediate acquiescence, since the Illyrian contingent shouted, ‘Let those who dissent make themselves known. The dissenters are Nestorians. Let the dissenters go oV to Rome’ (ACO ii.i.321, § 25). The commissioners, however, who had been trying to direct the bishops to focus on the overlap between the Tome of Leo, which all had recently accepted, and the proposed additions about Mary and the Two Natures, eventually channelled discussions in the required way (ACO ii.i.320, §§ 13, 15, 17). The episcopal leaders, for example Anatolius of Constantinople, the author of the unsatisfactory draft, could appreciate the consequences of surrendering decisions on doctrine to a westerner whose abilities they doubted, as well as the danger of creating a powerful precedent for future papal interference in the aVairs of the Eastern Church. Although the drafting group contained Eusebius of Dorylaeum, who had speciWcally opposed the need for another deWnition (ACO ii.i.320, § 19), as well as three Illyrians from the group prepared to dispute even the imperial instruction, a revised version was produced and accepted, apparently without further fuss (ACO ii.i.130, § 35). There is certainly no evidence that physical force was applied to achieve this result, but there is also no doubt that the bishops were constrained to accept a document which was somewhat diVerent from that which they had prepared, with some reluctance, for themselves.

The Mechanics of Control Against this recent background, the issue of precisely how control was implemented at the council should be important, and this provides a good example of the great gulf that lies between a theological and a historical approach to Chalcedon. For me as a historian, the Wrst thing that needs to be examined carefully in the proceedings is the way in which it was run by those who presided: who were they, what was their attitude—were they impartial, or were they committed in advance to one side? No modern work, however, pays nearly enough attention to these key individuals.60 It has indeed been stated 60 R. Delmaire, ‘Les Dignitaires laı¨cs au Concile de Chalce´doine: notes sur la hie´rarchie et les pre´seánces au milieu du Ve sie`cle’, Byzantion, 54 (1984), 141–75, provides a technical discussion which focuses on issues of secular precedence and does not pursue the more interesting investigation of the commissioners’ doctrinal

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that the presidents were the legates of Pope Leo, namely the bishops Paschasinus of Lilybaeum and Lucensius of Ascoli and the Roman presbyter Boniface. Thus the current English version of Altaner’s Patrology, in its section on Pope Leo, states that ‘the Council of Chalcedon . . . was presided over by his legates’.61 The confusion is illustrated in the successive editions of the scholarly Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church: in its Wrst edition this makes the same assertion about the legates’ presidency, but the passage was radically altered in the second edition to read ‘his legates spoke Wrst at the Council of Chalcedon’, and this is repeated in the third edition.62 This is at least a great improvement, since it no longer falsiWes a central fact about the council, yet the entry still ignores the issue of presidency. There is much that needs to be said about those who really presided at Chalcedon, the imperial commissioners as they are usually called now—appropriately enough since they were the direct personal representatives of the emperor and had been appointed by him.63 The commissioners, of whom most were serving magistrates,64 holders of major state oYces, have in Greek the oYcial title of archontes (literally ‘rulers’, but ‘those with power to decide’ aYliations. Samuel, ‘Proceedings’, recognized the commissioners’ importance but did not probe their allegiances, even though this would have bolstered his argument that Chalcedon did not promote a free discussion of doctrinal matters. 61 B. Altaner, Patrology (Eng. trans. by H. G. Graef, Edinburgh, 1960), 418; a subsequent edition of the German original (Freiburg, 1978), 357 omits this error. Van Parys, ‘Council’, 311 states that the right to preside belonged to Paschasinus, who exercised it several times, though he also concedes that the commissioners usually presided. 62 F. L. Cross, Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church (Oxford, 1957), s.v. Leo I, St; 2nd edn. (1974); 3rd edn. by E. A. Livingstone (1997). 63 Chadwick, Church, 571, brieXy notes that leading secular oYcials presided at all sessions except one, but does not probe their allegiances; Allen, ‘DeWnition’, 814, acknowledges that the imperial oYcials ensured orderly proceedings, but does not mention more substantive input; MeyendorV, Imperial Unity, 168, notes that the commissioners led proceedings, but still manages to call the papal legate Paschasinus the council’s ecclesiastical president, as if that position was signiWcant. 64 Of the regular commissioners Martialis was an ex-magister oYciorum, being listed immediately after the current holder of the oYce, Vincomalus; at the sixth session they were joined by Martialis’ immediate successor (and Vincomalus’ predecessor) Placitus, who was listed after Martialis. It is not clear why the former holders of the post of magister oYciorum are treated diVerently from other ex-oYce holders, who are recorded in the list of senators.


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may in the circumstances give a better expression of that function) and in the Latin iudices (judges). They numbered seven at the three of the Wrst four sessions when secular oYcials presided. On 25 October at the climactic and celebratory sixth session, when Marcian and Pulcheria were present to add solemnity to the unanimous acceptance by the bishops of the new Creed and Marcian addressed the assembly, ten archontes attended. At most subsequent sessions far fewer archontes presided, often only three, though these were Anatolius, Palladius, and Vincomalus, who belonged to the top four in terms of seniority.65 At each of the more important sessions the commissioners, doubtless to magnify their prestige and lend weight to their interventions, were accompanied by a rather larger group of senior senators, of whom most were not currently holding magistracies; at the initial sessions the archontes were accompanied by 12 senators, though 28 attended for the imperial visit; no senators were present for the later sessions. Collectively the combined archontes and senators form the most august and powerful body of dignitaries that I have ever encountered in such a situation in the whole of antiquity and they completely dominated the council’s proceedings. At the start of each session the archontes and senators in attendance were personally identiWed by name as well as by the principal oYces each had held. All members of the presiding party had the most illustrious titles possible. Above the mere clarissimi, and later the spectabiles and illustres, of the Wrst four centuries, familiar to all Roman historians, there were now two supremely digniWed groups, magniWcentissimi and, at the very top, gloriosissimi, or in Greek megaloprepestatoi and endoxotatoi.66 Every one of the nineteen commissioners at Chalcedon has both these titles, with only one probable exception who may have been merely magniWcentissimus.67 The whole group is referred to 65 Apart from one or two slips in the record, the commissioners are always named in precisely the same order, because rank and precedence were, of course, matters of the highest importance in the Later Roman Empire. On this see Delmaire, ‘Dignitaires’. 66 On senatorial ranks, see A. H. M. Jones, The Later Roman Empire, 284–602: A Social, Economic, and Administrative Survey (Oxford, 1964), 528–30. 67 [The position may be more complicated: see Delmaire, ‘Dignitaires’, 157–61, for discussion of the two titles. In the Wrst session the Greek Acta record Martialis, Sporacius, and Genethlius with the single epithet megaloprepestatos, but at the second session Martialis and Sporacius are also accorded endoxotatos; Genethlius alone is

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repeatedly by very high-sounding phrases such as hoi megaloprepestatoi kai endoxotatoi archontes kai he¯ huperphues sunkle¯tos, or in Latin magniWcentissimi et gloriosissimi iudices et amplissimus senatus. It is worth pursuing these individuals a bit further. On numerous occasions in the Acta we are told that ‘the commissioners’, decorated with one of their exalted titles, said something or took some action.68 Now, nineteen or so people—and not even the three who presided at the later sessions—do not react to unforeseen and unrehearsed situations in an identical way and with identical words. No one, I think, who has studied late Roman procedure will doubt that it would always be the senior member of the collective who would normally speak and take the necessary action; the rest would simply support him.69 Who, then, was the leading commissioner among the nineteen? The name which appears Wrst at the beginning of each of the fourteen sessions at which he presided is that of Anatolius.70 Anatolius is commonly referred to by theologians, on the rather rare occasions when they do notice his embarrassing presence at all, simply as a patrician, which indeed he was since it was a distinguished but not unusual title;71 but had he only been patrician he would not have ranked at the top of the team, or even in regularly just megaloprepestatos, which suggests that this is not a mistake. In the Latin text, however, at the Wrst four sessions all three men are merely magniWcentissimus, and in the lists for the sixth session, when Emperor Marcian attended, only the most senior individuals, Anatolius, Palladius, and Vincomalus as well as the four ex-consuls receive both epithets, which might suggest that there were not yet strict rules about the combined usage.] 68 By contrast, commissioners and senators do not intervene individually. 69 The same is true of Second Ephesus where Dioscorus undoubtedly determined the direction taken by the Wve leading bishops who were also held to be partly responsible for the conduct of proceedings and who were brieXy deposed at Chalcedon. The junior commissioners probably shared many of the views of their overall president or were judged to be suYciently impressionable to follow the required line. At Second Ephesus Juvenal of Jerusalem was the most committed of Dioscorus’ associates, whereas Thalassius of Caesarea and the others appear more malleable. 70 Numerous references in PLRE ii. 84–6, s.v. Anatolius 10; also Delmaire, ‘Dignitaires’, 161–2. Anatolius did not preside at the third session when Dioscorus was condemned by the bishops, while Marcian and Pulcheria were present at the sixth; session seven in the Greek Acta (15 in the Latin) was not a proper session of the council but a list of the canons. Anatolius chaired all the other sessions. 71 Patricians were not listed in PLRE ii, but the omission was made good in PLRE iii. 1462–6: over 160 individuals are included in the list, of whom at least a dozen were active in the East in the mid-5th cent.


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the top group of archontes of whom most were serving magistrates actually in oYce at the time of the council.72 The position which placed him among the archontes and at the top of the whole nineteen was that of magister militum praesentalis, one of the two commanders of the central imperial armies, a man therefore whose troops were stationed in the vicinity of the council. As a strictly military man, Anatolius may have been second in the whole Eastern Empire only to the great Aspar, who, with the empress Pulcheria, had been most responsible for bringing his former domesticus, or bodyguard, Marcian to the throne in the previous year.73 But Aspar was not only an Alan ‘barbarian’, he was also an Arian and so could not be admitted to an orthodox Christian council. Anatolius, on the other hand, was an orthodox Christian as well as being a senior commander; in addition, perhaps even more important, he was also a most distinguished and successful diplomat who, as magister militum per Orientem under Theodosius II, had negotiated a peace treaty with Persia in 441, and subsequently been selected for missions to Attila the Hun in 447 and 450. It is no joke to say that the capacity to deal with Attila, who emerges as a very wily negotiator from the accounts of embassies in Priscus—and Priscus had participated in one of these missions—had the appropriate experience for dealing with a gathering of several hundred bishops and their attendants.74 Apart from

72 Contra Delmaire, ‘Dignitaires’, 161–2, who places Anatolius’ appointment as MM praesentalis shortly after his return from the East, which forces him to conclude that he was out of oYce before April 449 when he was acclaimed at Edessa after the praetorian prefect Protogenes, the quaestor Nomus, and the MM per Orientem Zenon. Delmaire explained Anatolius’ priority at Chalcedon on the grounds that his earliest holding of a senior title, that of MM, preceded all his colleagues, and that he was the only imperial representative to have the title of patrician (which he shared with the ex-consuls among the senators). Delmaire’s chronology is wrong, and he fails to observe the signiWcance of Anatolius’ current military position as commander of troops in the vicinity; he was in fact the only general, or ex-general, to attend the council. 73 Holum, Empresses, 208–9; Whitby, Evagrius, 60 n. 12; Burgess, ‘Accession’, attributes the elevation entirely to Aspar, but his scepticism about Pulcheria’s role seems excessive. 74 B. Croke, ‘Anatolius and Nomus: Envoys to Attila’, Byzantinoslavica, 42 (1981), 159–70; repr. in idem, Christian Chronicles and Byzantine History 5th–6th Centuries (Aldershot, 1992), xiii. [The notion of Christian bishops being as much of a challenge as Attila greatly appealed to Ste. Croix.]

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Anatolius, Wve of the other commissioners and senators are also known to have been sent on oYcial embassies: Tatian (third in the lists), Florentius (8th), Senator (9th), Nomus (10th), Constantine (17th).75 The three commissioners who regularly follow Anatolius in the lists are men of considerable experience who between them held the three most powerful administrative posts in the empire: Palladius, praetorian prefect of the east, Tatian, city prefect at Constantinople, and Vincomalus, the magister oYciorum for the east.76 I began this part of my discussion by saying that I was going to give an illustration of the gulf between the historical and theological approaches to Chalcedon, and I am now in a position to explain exactly what I had in mind. In the enormous volume edited by Grillmeier and Bacht, Das Konzil von Chalkedon, a volume which has a comprehensive index occupying 188 double-columned pages, Pope Leo, who did not of course attend the council, has almost two whole columns to himself; Theodoret has nearly four inches, and another Anatolius, the patriarch of Constantinople, has some two inches—but the great Anatolius, the man who was primarily responsible for running the council, is simply not there at all: if the index is not at fault, and I am sure that it is not, then he is entirely ignored.77 Even Frend’s Monophysite Movement, a volume which is more sensitive to historical issues, does not recognize the signiWcance of Anatolius, and yet Frend was well aware of the role of emperors in deciding doctrinal issues:78 Anatolius is mentioned once, in the context of acclamations at Edessa in 449, but not in relation to 75 Senator and Nomus had been identiWed, along with Anatolius, by Attila as acceptable Roman envoys (Priscus fr. 13.1.13–14), and in 450 Nomus had accompanied Anatolius to Attila (Priscus fr. 15.3, 4); see also Croke, ‘Anatolius’, 167–70. 76 In March 452 these three oYcials, along with Valentinian the praetorian prefect of Illyricum, received the decrees of Marcian conWrming the acts of the council, as well as its decisions on Flavian and Eutyches (ACO ii.i.479–83, §§ 23–5); their posts collectively gave them the range of authority to oversee the implementation of its provisions. Valentinian, the most prominent absentee, was presumably prevented from attending the council by the business in Illyricum which had threatened to distract Marcian. 77 [These Wgures are not entirely fair, since most of these massive volumes is concerned with the doctrinal background to the council and its aftermath, in both of which the Tome of Leo was crucial so that Leo’s predominance is not surprising; but the omission of the secular Anatolius is still a signiWcant fact.] 78 Frend, Monophysite Movement, 45–6 for Chalcedon, and ch. 2 more generally.


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Chalcedon, where Marcian is presented as a prime mover.79 Yet Anatolius’ personal position in the great theological controversy which the council was summoned to settle can easily be identiWed from his correspondence with Theodoret, who was the subject of a crucially important decision by the commissioners early in the Wrst session at Chalcedon. Anatolius was no neutral. He is the closest and most regular of Theodoret’s secular correspondents. We possess seven letters to him from Theodoret, of which six were written during the period of the bishop’s disgrace in the latter years of Theodosius when Theodoret hoped that Anatolius would help to remove the various imperial restrictions which had been imposed (Eps. 79. 92) or secure imperial approval for a journey to Rome for judgement by the Pope (Ep. 119). Apart from this signiWcant association with Theodoret, Anatolius had a long-standing reputation for orthodox involvement in church aVairs: in 433 Paul of Emesa wrote to him about church unity shortly after the reconciliation between John of Antioch and Cyril had been achieved. In 442 he dedicated a silver reliquary for the bones of Thomas at Edessa, a sign of Christian devotion, but it might be signiWcant that the local bishop was then Ibas, who was associated with Theodoret and anti-Alexandrian Christological views (he was a casualty at Second Ephesus). Of course Marcian, who in principle chose all the commissioners, would have taken particular care over the selection of his chief representative and so can retain some claim to be the prime mover at the council, but his chosen agent deserves much more attention than he is traditionally accorded: Anatolius was unlikely to be favourably disposed towards Dioscorus and the Alexandrian cause.80 79 Frend, Monophysite Movement, 67, quoting the Edessa acclamation ‘Long live the Patrician Anatolius. May he be preserved for Romania’, which is preserved in the Syriac Acta of Second Ephesus (Frend’s reference to Flemming is unhelpful: the precise location of the quote is p. 17, lines 45–6, and there are other chants for Anatolius at 17.10–12 and 25.45). 80 The only possible evidence that might undermine this is the chant for Anatolius among the Edessa acclamations of 449 (see above); this demonstration was directed against Ibas, so that positive comments for a friend of Ibas might seem strange, but Anatolius appears in a sequence of important Wgures (Zeno, Chrysaphius, Stratelates, Patricius, Urbicius) and it is likely that the anti-Nestorian demonstrators wanted to reassure one of Ibas’ more powerful supporters that he was not being included in their attack on the bishop.

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It might be signiWcant that we have letters from Theodoret to two of the other commissioners, Vincomalus and Sporacius, and Wve of the senators including all the Wrst four to be named, Florentius (8), Senator (9), Nomus (10), and Protogenes (11), along with Constantine (17).81 One letter survives from Theodoret to Vincomalus which conveys thanks for the assistance in securing his return from exile after the death of Theodosius II (Ep. 141); therefore Vincomalus, like Anatolius, was a supporter of Theodoret before the council was summoned. Sporacius, the uncle of Anatolius, is another established ally; Theodoret had written to him in late 448, when he was already under pressure from Theodosius (Ep. 97); Sporacius also accepted the dedication of Theodoret’s compendium on heresies, and could be described as his patron by Michael the Syrian (8.13). Florentius also received letters in the late 440s (Eps. 89, v), but appears to have supported a diVerent doctrinal stance, since in November 448 Theodosius appointed him as a person of guaranteed orthodoxy to attend Flavian’s investigation of Eutyches’ views (ACO ii.i.138, § 468; see above) and then to participate in the subsequent inquiry into these proceedings;82 he does not receive the sort of begging or thanking letters addressed to the likes of Anatolius, Vincomalus, and others. Theodoret had asked Senator to help with a tax remission for Cyrrhus in 446/7, and then approached him again in November 448 to urge that he listen favourably to bishops who were in Constantinople to plead Theodoret’s case (Eps. 44, 93). Nomus was sent a defence of Theodoret’s orthodoxy in 448 but appears not to have reacted since in November Theodoret wrote again wondering why he had not responded to earlier letters (Eps. 58, 81, 96). Nomus’ position seems to have been ambiguous: he was prepared to lend money to two nephews of Cyril of Alexandria, whose relatives came under pressure after his death in 444 from his successor Dioscorus (Theodoret’s most determined enemy), but charged an extortionate 81 For full references on all these individuals, see PLRE ii. 82 Florentius’ doctrinal views are obscured by the problems in the record of Flavian’s proceedings against Eutyches, whose accuracy he questioned rigorously, and he attempted to deny some of the statements attributed to him (ACO ii.i.172, § 778). If Theodoret had regarded him as a potential ally, then he would probably have written to him in Nov. 448 along the same lines that he did to Sporacius, though the lack of such a letter from the collection is not decisive evidence.


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rate of interest which he used an imperial oYcial to collect (ACO ii.i.216–18, § 57). In 449 he was regarded as close to the position of Chrysaphius in supporting Eutyches, another of Theodoret’s bitter enemies, over the imperial decision to summon the Second Council of Ephesus (Theodore Lector 346). His presence at Chalcedon suggests that he was one of the numerous secular as well as ecclesiastical leaders who were prepared to trim their views according to the prevailing imperial preferences; participation was perhaps intended as a test of his allegiance to the change of doctrine. In his capacity as praetorian prefect of the east Protogenes received a letter from Theodoret in 448/9, similar to those sent to Anatolius and Senator, to ask that he ensure he had a fair hearing when defending accusations of heresy (Ep. 94). Constantine too was PPO, in which capacity he received a request for tax relief for Cyrrhus, and one subsequent letter (Ep. 42, xix). Theodoret’s links with the commissioners are signiWcant, even though some of the letters originated from the sort of contacts that a provincial bishop might be expected to have with high oYcials responsible for taxation and security matters.83 The fact that not all the connections are positive, however, does help to highlight the diVerent nature of Anatolius’ association:84 his contacts with Theodoret are closer than for any of his colleagues.85 Theodoret’s aVairs are not the only signiWcant factor relating to the commissioners. Tatian, for example, was trusted to act as intermediary between Pope Leo and Marcian in April 451, which suggests that he was 83 Though both Zoilus and Apollinaris (present at Chalcedon as senators) served as praetorian prefect of the east in the early 440s, but are not among the correspondents of Theodoret. 84 W. E. Kaegi, Byzantine Military Unrest 471–843 (Amsterdam, 1981), 78 asserted with regard to leading generals that there was ‘little evidence of partisanship arising from their personal religious views’. Overall this statement is true, which makes the case of Anatolius all the more interesting. 85 [Ste. Croix recognized the importance of Theodoret’s correspondence, and investigated it with regard to Anatolius, but did not pursue it further: in his seminar presentations on Chalcedon he would comment about his lack of interest in the details of prosopography, which he preferred to have undertaken for him by others. Although he might initially have been surprised by the presence among the commissioners of Theodoret’s former opponents, Florentius and Nomus, this would have provided further evidence for the power of imperial patronage to aVect doctrinal views.]

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doctrinally in sympathy (Leo, Ep. 82). Martialis, however, had attended the inquiry in April 449 into Flavian’s treatment of Eutyches, like Florentius, and so is likely to have been sympathetic to One Nature views at that stage. Romanus, the former praepositus sacri cubiculi and member of the presiding group at the Wrst, second, fourth, and sixth sessions, was among those who received Cyril’s bribes in 431/2, but the trajectory of Pulcheria’s views illustrates that allegiances could change over two decades. Overall, Anatolius remains the key individual; some of his colleagues might be expected to oVer strong support to moves in favour of Theodoret and against Eutyches, whereas a few had records which might suggest the reverse but whose prominence now might constrain them to acquiescence with the imperial agenda.

Theodoret at Chalcedon In justiWcation of the thesis about the high degree of control that would be exercised over the Christian churches by an emperor who had the inclination and the requisite inXuence, I shall concentrate now on a particular event at Chalcedon, the admission to the assembly of Theodoret. In the 430s and 440s Theodoret was the leading theologian in the Antiochene Christological tradition and, after the death of Cyril of Alexandria, he could claim to be foremost in the Greek-speaking world. He also produced a history of the Church as a continuation of Eusebius; this was probably Wnished by 450, while he was deposed from his see, but its coverage only extended down to 428, thereby enabling Theodoret to evade the problems associated with the patriarchy of Nestorius which included imperial opposition to his own views. Patriarch Photius was complimentary about the style, which he found to be appropriate—clear, elevated, and restrained, although the use of metaphors was sometimes excessive (Cod. 31). As to content, it has been noted that Theodoret’s attitude to imperial involvement in church aVairs was much more negative than that of the two other contemporary ecclesiastical historians, Socrates and Sozomen: his account of the Council of Nicaea gives Constantine much less credit than Socrates’ version, or than Eusebius in his Life of


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Constantine.86 One further work was the Historia Religiosa, a collection of stories about Holy Men (and a few women); most came from Syria, and Theodoret recorded his own dealings with some of the more prominent contemporary saints, for example Symeon Stylites and Jacob of Cyrrhus. Theodoret was a prominent theologian with a distinctive Christological position in an age when theology could be a dangerous occupation87—the more dangerous indeed the more seriously it was pursued, however harmless it might seem to a mere Vicar of Bray, a species which, even in its episcopal form, was not at all uncommon in the Wfth century, as we shall see presently. I cannot hope to describe in a few sentences the theology of Theodoret and how it diVered from that of his opponents. All I will say is that it was characteristically ‘Antiochene’, as opposed to the Alexandrian variety espoused by Cyril and Dioscorus, and that Dioscorus, recognizing that Theodoret was his most dangerous intellectual enemy, was keen to have him excluded from discussions. This had been achieved in the preliminaries to Second Ephesus when Emperor Theodosius issued an edict conWning Theodoret to his own diocese of Cyrrhus. It was a measure of the great importance attached to Theodoret as an intellectual spokesman for the opponents of Dioscorus and Eutyches that the edict is said to have been written out in the emperor’s own hand, that it was brought personally to Theodoret, who was apparently at Antioch, by an important imperial oYcial, the comes Rufus, and that a few days later an oYcial of the magister militum per Orientem went to Cyrrhus to verify that Theodoret had gone back there as ordered, and to make him sign an acknowledgement that he had received the edict (Theodoret, Ep. 79, 80). I know of no parallel for such a series of measures directed against an individual cleric, not even the extremely diYcult Athanasius of Alexandria who was expelled from his see more than once.88 86 H. Leppin, ‘The Church Historians (I): Socrates, Sozomenus, and Theodoretus’, in G. Marasco (ed.), Greek and Roman Historiography in Late Antiquity: Fourth to Sixth Century A.D. (Leiden, 2003), 219–54, at 230–1, 242. 87 It is arguable that the production of his Eraniste¯s, with its attack on Eutyches’ One Nature Christology, reawakened doctrinal controversy and triggered the sequence of events which led to Second Ephesus and hence Chalcedon. 88 On Athanasius, see T. Barnes, Athanasius and Constantius: Theology and Politics in the Constantinian Empire (Cambridge, Mass., 1993), esp. chs. 3 and 11.

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The Acta of Chalcedon, in the section where the proceedings of Second Ephesus are read into the record, preserve two letters from Theodosius which state that he had forbidden Theodoret to attend the forthcoming council at Ephesus unless the council itself should speciWcally invite him (ACO ii.i.68–9, 74, §§ 24, 52); the texts make it clear that the emperor detested Theodoret because of his opposition to Cyril of Alexandria, whom he had anathematized in the 430s, and whose Twelve Anathemas he had subjected to such searching challenge that their full acceptance was delayed. Theodosius clearly wanted to have Theodoret excluded from the council, which duly happened, and in his absence he was virulently attacked, expelled from his see, deprived of clerical status, and anathematized. The Acta of Second Ephesus, although incompletely preserved, contain the edict later issued by Theodosius which not only endorses the deposition of Theodoret but associates his writings with those of the heresiarch Nestorius and even of the pagan Porphyry, and orders that these are to be delivered up to be publicly burnt. We possess several of Theodoret’s letters written over the following months which show him in a state of great distress at his expulsion from the see he had occupied for twenty-six years and where he had campaigned energetically against various heresies.89 The burning of books regarded as heretical, or which attacked Christianity as in the case of Porphyry, was prescribed by Christian emperors from Constantine onwards in the case of serious challenges to the faith.90 That Theodoret should now be singled out for such treatment testiWes again to his importance as a theologian. Theodoret’s absence from Second Ephesus meant that Flavian and other opponents of Eutyches and Dioscorus were deprived of their most eVective potential defender, which made their own condemnation a foregone conclusion.91

89 Theodoret, Eps. 113–25, esp. 113 to Pope Leo, 119 to Anatolius of Constantinople, and 125 to John of Germanicia. 90 P. R. Coleman-Norton, Roman State and Christian Church (London, 1966), iii. 1293 (index s.v. book-burning). There is a very full treatment by W. Speyer, Bu¨chervernichtung und Zensur des Geistes bei Heiden, Juden und Christen (Stuttgart, 1981). 91 Theodoret did his best by providing Domnus of Antioch with detailed advice before his departure to the council: Ep. 112; to no avail. At Chalcedon he contributed to refuting objections to the Tome of Leo by pointing to useful parallels in the writings of Cyril of Alexandria (ACO ii.i.82, § 26).


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Then came the great change in the aVairs of the Eastern Church which I mentioned earlier, the death of Theodosius, and the succession of Marcian in August 450. We possess letters from both Marcian and Pulcheria to Pope Leo, dating from November 450, which contain some exceedingly important information that rarely, if ever, is accorded its full weight:92 Marcian proclaims not only that he had personally recalled from exile all the bishops who had been removed at Second Ephesus but, explicitly, that this had been done so that they might receive back their sees by the decision of a church council, which was then already in prospect. We also have Theodoret’s letters to three of the most inXuential men in the empire, Anatolius, Aspar, and Vincomalus, written early in 451 after he had received the news of Marcian’s edict, which, plausibly enough, he attributes to Pulcheria also (Eps. 139–41). They all express his delight at what he calls, in the letter addressed to Anatolius, the righting of the wrong done to himself (Ep. 139).93 Now, technically, the emperor and empress could not by themselves reinstate Theodoret and the other victims of Second Ephesus in their sees: this could only be done by a church council, preferably an ecumenical council such as Theodoret had been eagerly advocating and the imperial pair were now planning.94 Theodoret and the others, however, now had permission to return to their own cities, and since it was known that the emperor had annulled his predecessor’s edict and brought back the men concerned speciWcally with a view to their reinstatement as bishops, that was now certain to happen. For Theodoret in early 451, as just mentioned, it was now a foregone conclusion since he can speak of the wrong done to himself as having already been righted. Everyone in the diVerent sees would have known what was about to occur, and have adjusted their behaviour accordingly.95 92 Preserved as Leo, Eps. 76–7 (ACO ii.i.1, pp. 8–10 for the Greek texts; ii.iii.18–19 for the Latin). 93 Theodoret’s closeness to Anatolius is shown by the fact that his letter is far longer than those to the other two supporters, indeed almost matching their combined lengths. 94 De Vries, Orient, 107. 95 [Richard Price argues (‘Letters before Council’, Introduction) that a council was not necessary to secure Theodoret’s reinstatement, since Marcian’s edict had already eVected this. This may well be right, but the treatment of Theodoret at the eighth session of Chalcedon indicates that his position still required the sort of doctrinal validation that the emperor could not bestow.]

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I now come to two very revealing episodes at Chalcedon, on 8 and 26 October, which constitute the climax in the saga of Theodoret. At the opening session of the council, 8 October 451, the nineteen imperial commissioners headed by Anatolius took their seats in the Church of St Euphemia at Chalcedon, with clerics to their right and left—mainly bishops, but in a few cases priests representing their absent bishops (some absentees were represented by neighbouring bishops). On their left sat the three oYcial papal legates, the patriarchs of Constantinople and Antioch with their subordinate bishops from the dioceses (i.e. the late Roman civil dioceses) of Pontica, Asiana and Thrace, and of Oriens, with the exception of Palestine whose bishops sat with the bishop of Jerusalem. These bishops were now prepared without exception to follow an Orthodox line. On what the Acta call the right sat the patriarch of Alexandria, Dioscorus, with the Egyptian bishops, Bishop Juvenal of Jerusalem with the bishops of Palestine, and bishops from the civil diocese of Illyricum; all of these had recently been allies of Dioscorus, and retained some attachment to him during the proceedings of Chalcedon as some of their interventions reveal.96 This placing represented 96 The overall number of bishops at the council is somewhat uncertain, since the subscriptions vary for the diVerent sessions and some bishops certainly had their signatures added after the event (for example to demonstrate support for the condemnation of Dioscorus). An inXated Wgure of 600, roughly double the attendance at Nicaea, was already being mentioned at the fourth session of Chalcedon (ACO ii.i.113, § 53). However, the best attended session was the Wrst, with 340 participating when bishops might have thought there was still some chance to determine the overall direction of proceedings, with the sixth session, at which the emperor was present, being next with 324 in attendance. Attendance obviously varied according to the bishops’ commitment to the particular business of the day, with the proceedings against Dioscorus at the third session only attracting 204. There were also ‘supernumeraries’ present at some sessions whose voices at least might contribute to the general clamour (ii.i.75, 78, §§ 55, 74), and these may have been included in some of the more optimistic calculations by those interested in maximizing support for proceedings. Opponents of the council were keen to belittle the numbers and status of those in attendance: see Michael the Syrian 8.13 (ii, pp. 98, 102 for the assertion that fewer than 300 attended the Wrst session, while no more than 200 were present for Dioscorus’ condemnation, with in each case the numbers including priests and deacons as well as bishops). [Ste. Croix suggested that there were several bishops in the vicinity who never participated in a session, but it seems implausible that church leaders would endure the discomforts of travel to Chalcedon and the inconveniences of lengthy absence from their own sees and yet be content not to appear at any session. One possible explanation would be that there were unoYcial quotas for


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the great division between those who called themselves Orthodox, on the commissioners’ left, and the Monophysites on the right. Of course the right was always the place of honour and the left of relative debasement;97 but we must understand the Acta to be referring to the right and left of the imperial commissioners who had their seats facing the mass of bishops seated in the nave of the church. The bishops would, of course, see the placings in the opposite way, with the Orthodox approved by the emperor grouped on the right and those to be disciplined or reprimanded on the left. The symbolism was such that when Juvenal decided to switch allegiance at the very Wrst session he moved, together with the contingent from Palestine, from one side of the commissioners to the other, where they were welcomed by the Orientals, ‘God has led you well, orthodox one. You are welcome’ (ACO ii.i.115, §§ 284–5); they were followed by the Illyrican bishops and four from Egypt (ACO ii.i.115–17, §§ 286–98). Dioscorus had pronounced an anathema on Pope Leo on arriving in Asia for the council, so that open religious war had been more or less declared between Alexandria and Rome. Immediately proceedings began the papal legates protested against his presence as a member of the council: ‘We have instructions from the most blessed and apostolic bishop of the city of Rome, the head of all the churches, in which he has thought it right to say that Dioscorus should not take a seat in the assembly, and that if he presumes to do so, he should be expelled. This we are obliged to observe. If it pleases your Greatness, either he must leave or we will leave’ (ACO ii.i.65, § 5). They alone spoke in Latin, and their short interventions were usually translated at once into Greek, often by Veronicianus, secretary to the imperial consistory, though the interpreter is not always speciWed. Probably many of the other bishops understood some Latin, however imperfectly, although there were only two bishops from the West apart diVerent dioceses to prevent domination by any one episcopal interest group, with the result that a metropolitan might travel with some ‘reserves’. At First Ephesus, for example, metropolitans had been invited by Emperor Theodosius to attend with limited numbers of attendant bishops, although this was ignored by Cyril in particular; there is, however, no evidence for such a provision at Chalcedon, and it is simplest to admit that numbers were much lower than claimed by the council’s supporters.] 97 Cf. Priscus fr. 13.1.33–5 for arrangements at a banquet held by Attila.

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from the papal legates.98 It is possible that at the third session, when the papal legates were in control, translations were not always provided: sometimes the involvement of an interpreter is noted (ACO ii.i.206, § 18), but the legates may have expected other Latin pronouncements to be understood or have relied on Aetius, the archdeacon and chief notary, to enact their instructions or provide suYcient paraphrase of their words to permit proceedings to continue (ACO ii.i.204–6, 211, §§ 4, 8–9, 42–3). After an exchange between the legates and the commissioners, in which the latter insisted that the speciWc charges against Dioscorus be stated, the plea for Dioscorus to be excluded was refused. It is probable that the complete exchange was not recorded in the Acta, since there are likely to have been further interventions, including by Dioscorus, before the commissioners adopted a sensible compromise which they addressed to Dioscorus, ‘If you are acting as judge, you cannot in that capacity plead your cause’ (ACO ii.i.66, § 13):99 Dioscorus would not be excluded, though also he would not sit as a full member of the council but in the middle of the two groups, as an accused person rather than a judge. The Pope’s representatives had to accept this decision, and business could continue once Dioscorus had moved to the middle ‘and the most devout Roman bishops had also sat down in their proper places and had ceased speaking’ (ACO ii.i.66, § 14). The implication is that the papal representatives were not best pleased with the result; in the brief tussle for control they had failed to secure their wishes outright, while the commissioners had managed to keep the western delegates at Chalcedon and demonstrate their own superior authority. Thereupon Bishop Eusebius of Dorylaeum, a very tough individual who had once been an imperial agens in rebus,100 came forward to denounce Dioscorus, 98 Aurelius the African and Restitianus the African (ACO ii.i.64, § 3.341, 343), who may well have now been resident in Constantinople, refugees from the Arian Vandals; invitations had not been sent to western bishops apart from the Pope and his representatives. Note Schwartz’s observations in ACO ii.i, p. xv about the lack of bilingual skills in the Church at this time. 99 In the light of later exchanges it is most unlikely that the Oriental bishops did not chip in with some comments about their arch enemy or that the Egyptians did not voice support for their leader. 100 Collectio Avellana 99.4 (CSEL 35.1, p. 441); for the position, see Jones, Later Roman Empire, 578–82.


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accusing him of disgraceful behaviour at Second Ephesus and demanding that the Acta of that council should now be read out. After another brief exchange the commissioners ordered this to be done. The Acta began with the letter of Emperor Theodosius by which the council was convened and which ended with the statement referred to earlier that Theodoret should be excluded from the council at Ephesus unless it issued a speciWc invitation to him. I suggest that the reading of the letter in question, which conveniently ended with the question of Theodoret, had been agreed beforehand between Eusebius and the commissioners, since the latter promptly interrupted and ordered that Theodoret should join the council: ‘Let the most devout Theodoret enter and take part in the Council, since the most holy archbishop Leo has restored his see to him, and the most divine and pious emperor has decreed his attendance at the holy Council’ (ACO ii.i.69, § 26). Now the Pope, of course, had no power to intervene in the aVairs of an eastern see, except in his own opinion of his universal rights and in so far as others might Wnd it useful to invoke his prestige in their favour; he was certainly a most useful ally now for the proponents of Two Nature Christology. The essential fact was that the commissioners were able to report that the emperor had commanded the admission of Theodoret. The bishops on the other side, who are described as those of Egypt, Illyricum, and Palestine, put up a determined Wght, shouting ‘Have mercy, the faith is being destroyed. The canons exclude him. Drive him out. Drive out the teacher of Nestorius’— the expression exo¯ bale occurs no fewer than fourteen times at this point within about a single page of the Acta (ACO ii.i.69–70, §§ 27–40), as well as innumerable times later on. Slogans were shouted across the Xoor from each side. Theodoret’s opponents were furious at hearing the commissioners accord him the title of bishop: ‘Do not call him a bishop, he is no bishop. He is not a bishop. Drive out the enemy of God. Drive out the Jew’ (ACO ii.i.70, § 37); they also appealed to the Augusta Pulcheria, hoping that she would continue to demonstrate hostility to Nestorians and not realizing where her allegiance now lay. The Orthodox group was equally violent in its language in the opposite direction: ‘Drive out the Manichaeans. Drive out the enemies of Flavian. Drive out the enemies of the Faith’, ‘Drive out the murderer Dioscorus’ (ACO ii.i.69, §§ 28, 30).

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‘Jew’ and ‘Manichee’ were standard accusations to be exploited against opponents,101 while Dioscorus could be held responsible for the death of Flavian of Constantinople who succumbed while being led oV into exile after Second Ephesus. Eventually the imperial commissioners felt that they had given suYcient rein to the mutual animosity of the bishops. They insisted that Theodoret should remain, which he did for the present, sitting in the middle in his capacity of accuser just as Dioscorus sat there as an accused,102 and that the Acta of Second Ephesus should be read; Theodoret’s presence would not be prejudicial to anyone, since everyone had free speech, while Maximus of Antioch could vouch for his orthodoxy. After further exchanges they commanded the bishops to be silent, ‘These vulgar outbursts are not becoming to bishops, nor useful to either party. Allow everything to be read’ (ACO ii.i.70, §§ 35, 44). The Egyptians made one last eVort, pleading that they would be silent if Theodoret alone were expelled: ‘Our interjections are in the cause of piety. We speak on behalf of the orthodox faith’—by which they naturally meant their own belief in the One Nature in Christ. But the commissioners overrode them, ‘Let, rather, the hearing be conducted according to God, and allow everything to be read in order’ (ACO ii.i.70, §§ 45–6). Long extracts from the Acta of Second Ephesus, mainly documents, were then read out by Constantine, magistrianus and secretary to the imperial consistory. This revealed a story which reXected great discredit on many of the bishops now at Chalcedon, a fact which undoubtedly further tilted the balance in favour of both the commissioners and the papal legates, since at Second Ephesus the pope’s representative Hilary was perhaps the only participant to emerge with any credit. The complete rehabilitation of Theodoret was never going to be thwarted, but it was not until the eighth session on 26 October that the process was completed.103 Theodoret’s enemies did ensure that he 101 Since Nestorians were alleged to reject the full divinity of Christ, to be called ‘Jew’ appeared an appropriate insult (cf. Evagrius 1.2), whereas ‘Manichees’ who accepted that Christ was special but not equal to God was an insult applicable to those who were believed to impugn the equality of Christ the Son with God the Father. 102 Presumably Nestorius, if he had survived to obey the invitation to attend, would also have been placed in the middle to await a decision. 103 ACO ii.i, pp. 368–70 (Actio IX (Latin VIII), §§ 4–25).


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was made to swallow a most bitter pill by having to pronounce an anathema against his long-standing friend Nestorius. Theodoret was most reluctant to oblige, but as soon as he hesitated there were ferocious cries, ‘This man is a heretic, a Nestorian. Drive out the heretic’ (exo¯ bale again). Eventually he had to obey orders and pronounce a speciWc anathema against Nestorius (ACO ii.i.368, § 13), at which point the imperial commissioners immediately weighed in again, insisting that all doubts about Theodoret’s faith were now removed; Theodoret thereafter remained back in post as bishop of Cyrrhus.

Episcopal Decision-Making A moment ago, when I skipped from the Wrst to a later session of the council, I mentioned that a situation had been revealed at the Wrst session which was most discreditable to many bishops. Chalcedon witnessed extraordinary changes in the dogmatic position of dozens of bishops, which raises the question of how so many could be persuaded to change their allegiance on such a crucial matter as Christology. The bishops known by name to have been present at Second Ephesus have been shown by Honigmann to have numbered about 145–50, depending on how they are counted.104 When Flavian of Constantinople was condemned on 8 August, the only participant recorded as speaking against this verdict in the parts of the Acta reread into those of Chalcedon was Hilary, the Roman deacon who was then Pope Leo’s legate and would succeed him as Pope in 461: the Greek Acta record him as saying kontradikitour, adding ‘that is to dissent’ (ACO ii.i.191, § 964), after which he took refuge at the altar. Before the session on 22 August at which Theodoret and other bishops were condemned, Hilary had prudently departed Ephesus; he later claimed to have feared for his safety (Leo, Ep. 46). With this exception (and Hilary was not at Chalcedon to take credit for his prescience), the bishops unanimously accepted the One Nature Christology associated with Eutyches and Dioscorus, and supported the various condemnations. Yet Honigmann has shown that the great 104 E. Honigmann, ‘The Original Lists of the Members of the Council of Nicaea, the Robber Synod and the Council of Chalcedon’, Byzantion, 16 (1942/3), 20–80.

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majority of bishops at Second Ephesus, all but about twenty-six, were present or represented among the larger numbers at Chalcedon, where they all, with the exception of Dioscorus, took the opposite line. How many of this group can have been sincere on both occasions? It looks as though dozens of bishops, on one or other occasion, committed themselves to a theological position which they did not hold and indeed had regarded as heretical immediately before their change of heart: such inconsistency would, surely, be fatal to their chances of eternal life (see, for example, the story in Ple¯rophories 9). One of those who changed their stance at Chalcedon, Theodore of Claudiopolis, described the pressures on bishops at Second Ephesus: these arose partly through the fear that people who had received baptism from them would be ruined, partly because of confused organization which left many bishops uncertain of what was happening, and partly because of intimidation by Dioscorus’ supporters—out of 135 bishops, 42 had been ordered to be silent and only 15 were left to oppose the actions of Dioscorus and Juvenal (ACO ii.i.76, § 62). Dioscorus was certainly a determined leader for the council: not content with vocal support from the assembled bishops, at one point he demanded a show of hands to conWrm what was being said (ACO i.i.140, § 494), and all decisions naturally had to be subscribed in due course. Respect for authority was one factor: as Theodore of Claudiopolis continued, ‘Dioscorus and Juvenal and all those who signed Wrst had, as orthodox, been entrusted by the master of the world with passing judgement in matters of the faith. Plotting nefariously among themselves, they made us act as judges, who were sitting there in all innocence as men ignorant of the aVair’ (ACO ii.i.76, § 62): how could a minor bishop oppose such leaders of the Church? Even quite a prominent bishop could proclaim the need to follow authority: thus when Dioscorus accused Basil of Seleucia of failing to uphold his beliefs at Ephesus, ‘Have you, out of respect for human beings, transgressed what is correct and rejected the faith?’, Basil responded by emphasizing the importance of clerical obedience: ‘If I had been up before secular oYcials I would have borne witness, for I displayed unfettered speech at Constantinople. But if one is judged by one’s father, one cannot defend oneself ’ (ACO ii.i.94, §§ 179–80). This respect is shown in some of the formulae used by subscribing


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bishops, where the opinion of their metropolitan, or of leading patriarchs, might be cited: ‘It is a most pious rule that one must obey the holy fathers and heed their decisions . . .’, ‘I make the same judgement as my metropolitan and the holy council . . .’ (ACO ii.iii.312–13, 322, §§ 43, 130).105 An emphatic exposition of the currently favoured doctrinal line was another factor, especially for bishops who were not expert in the intellectual gymnastics of advanced Christological debate. At Second Ephesus Dioscorus forcefully pursued the plausible argument that it was wrong to go beyond the deWnitions of Nicaea, Constantinople, and First Ephesus, an argument which clearly still resonated with the bishops at Chalcedon, since this explained their very reluctant acquiescence in the imperial instruction that a new creed be formulated (ACO ii.i.274, §§ 5, 7).106 If patriarchs and metropolitans expressed support for a particular view, then ordinary bishops were likely to follow; consensus could be achieved by securing the support of a relatively small number of key participants. Even an individual with strong views on the faith might be persuaded to adapt his terminology if he had the chance to discuss issues in the presence of someone in whom he had conWdence, as the exchanges between Eutyches and Florentius at Constantinople in April 448 illustrate: ‘The most magniWcent and glorious ex-prefect, ex-consul and patrician Florentius said: ‘‘Since the mother is consubstantial with us, then in every way the Son is consubstantial with us.’’ Eutyches the presbyter said, ‘‘Till today I did not say this . . . Before I did not say this of Him; I am saying to you what, I think, I did not say originally. But now, since your Sacredness has said it, I say it’’ ’ (ACO ii.i.139–44, §§ 478–545, quoting from 521–2).107 Florentius seems to have been trying to encourage the assembly eVectively to lead Eutyches through a series of stages designed to produce an orthodox 105 See above, nn. 56–7. 106 As van Parys, ‘Council’, 309, notes, distaste for innovation was a powerful consideration, so that the alleged fear and coercion were not the only motivating factors at Second Ephesus. For a blanket defence of that council, see Samuel, ‘Proceedings’. 107 Florentius’ intentions are made absolutely clear during the review of Flavian’s proceedings against Eutyches when, in addition to objecting to certain misrepresentations of his words in the Acta, he explained ‘but because I saw everyone exerting pressure on him, I was urging him to give his assent’ (ACO ii.i.172, § 776).

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confession, though this was negated by the determination of Flavian and Eusebius to have Eutyches condemned. Disorganization is another issue noted by Theodore of Claudiopolis. We know rather little about the detailed procedure of a council. Proceedings were controlled by a president or presidents who should determine the business of the day. Each session presumably began with a roll-call of those present, since the Acta for each session begin with a list of names which does not necessarily tally exactly with those who might later subscribe the decisions of that session. Participants were seated, and usually made their interventions while still seated, since occasional exceptions are noted in the form that so-andso ‘stood and spoke’ (ACO ii.i.144, § 546). Moments of high drama were signalled by departures from this norm, as when Eustathius of Beirut leapt into the middle of the meeting, brandishing a book in an attempt to excuse his part in Second Ephesus (ACO ii.i.113, § 265).108 Formal complaints or petitions were presented in writing, to be read by a notary, with the individual responsible being required to come forward into the middle, as Eusebius of Dorylaeum on the Wrst day at Chalcedon (ACO ii.i.66, §§ 14–15). Proposals to initiate action or to read items into the Acta were usually made by metropolitan bishops, another example of the importance of seniority. Exchanges must often have been quite rowdy, with two or more opposed groups chanting and individuals also attempting to make themselves heard. Although it might sometimes have been convenient to plead deafness, there is considerable plausibility in the excuse of Bishop Julian, ‘Because there was an uproar I don’t remember who said it’ (ACO ii.i.175, § 814). The presiding oYcials determined the agenda for each day. Thus at Second Ephesus Dioscorus wanted the issue of the Faith, which included the review of Flavian’s condemnation of Eutyches, considered Wrst, and he was able to secure this through pointing to the imperial instructions which had convened the council (ACO ii.i.86–7, §§ 116–20; cf. 221). This permitted him to evade the issue 108 [This suggestion is not very plausible, since in a meeting of several hundred bishops and attendants it would have been very diYcult for a prospective speaker to attract the attention of the presiding commission or to make himself heard to the often noisy multitude.]


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of Leo’s Tome while appearing not to reject it (ACO ii.i.83, §§ 84–5). At Chalcedon, however, when Dioscorus appears to have embarked upon a similar strategy by demanding that the Faith be dealt with Wrst (ACO ii.i.67, § 21), his request was ignored; similarly when Dioscorus knew that proceedings were going against him, and he suggested an adjournment on the grounds that ‘your magniWcence is tired’, which must refer to the imperial commissioners, the proposal was also disregarded (ACO ii.i.180–1, § 862). Any control over who spoke and in what order must have been vested in the presidents. On occasions they might direct questions at speciWc participants, as when Dioscorus challenged one of the papal representatives, Julian, to approve procedures at Second Ephesus, or the commissioners at Chalcedon demanded a response from Dioscorus (ACO ii.i.99, 112, §§ 217, 259); but overall they probably had less chance of regulating ongoing discussions than the Speaker on a most ill-tempered House of Commons occasion. A well-timed intervention might focus bishops’ attention on a particularly important issue, as when the imperial commissioners directed the council to give its views on the orthodoxy of Flavian’s faith (ACO ii.i.114, § 272), an initiative which triggered the desertion of most of Dioscorus’ supporters. Some advance preparation would also have been useful, and it has already been suggested that the commissioners at Chalcedon may have agreed tactics with Eusebius of Dorylaeum to ensure that the issue of Theodoret’s presence was introduced; at First Ephesus two collections were read out to provide examples of orthodox doctrine from the Fathers and then of Nestorian errors, and these had clearly been prepared well before the proposal by Flavian of Philippi that they be read (ACO i.i.2.39–52, §§ 59–60).109 On the other hand, such preliminary work might appear to pre-empt discussion in the council: in 449 Flavian of Constantinople was accused of drawing up the sentence of deposition against Eutyches in advance of the meeting of 22 November 448 (ACO ii.i.177–9, §§ 829–49). This confusion made control of the recording of a council just as important for its eventual outcome as the ordering of actual 109 On the Wrst day at Chalcedon Dioscorus had clearly prepared a dossier of patristic texts to support his doctrinal position (ACO ii.i.117, § 299), although he did not have the chance to read these into the record.

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proceedings, and we have evidence for several challenges to the accuracy of the formal Acta which suggest that everything was not always precisely agreed.110 A perfect record was not easy to achieve. Aetius, who served as senior notary during Flavian’s investigation of Eutyches, subsequently had to defend his record against charges of falsiWcation by Eutyches and his supporters (ACO ii.i.153–76, §§ 576–827). Aetius admitted that it often happened that a remark made by one bishop, or only by one or two, was recorded as a cry of the whole synod (ACO ii.i.170–1, § 767); proceedings sometimes became heated, and it must have been almost impossible for the notaries to sort out exactly what was being said by whom, and by how many, and in what order. Aetius also pointed to another source of distortion when he was challenged over the omission of some comments which narrowed the gap between Eutyches and the orthodox: ‘Many remarks are made in councils by the most God-beloved bishops in the course of general discussion and by way of advice which they do not permit to be written down’ (ACO ii.i.173, § 792).111 Interventions might also be wrongly attributed: Florentius complained that he had been allocated one statement that he had not made since it was not his business to pronounce on matters of doctrine, and that in spite of a request to be shown the Acta he had never received them (ACO ii.i.172, §§ 778, 781). It seems that the party in control of a synod, unless there was an exceptional arrangement for the ratiWcation of all comments as at Carthage in 411, had considerable control over what was distributed as the accepted account of proceedings, with some material being struck out if it did not accord with the overall objectives of those in control and words being attributed, perhaps even maliciously, to some who were not given the chance to check the record.

110 Most revealing for the diYcult position of ordinary bishops caught up in the rapid changes is the case of the unfortunate Aetherius of Smyrna: he was on record as participating in the condemnation of Eutychius at Constantinople in 448, but he then denied this in a rather disjointed exchange with Dioscorus at Ephesus; at Chalcedon he attempted a further exculpation of his behaviour (ACO ii.i.118–19, §§ 308–29). Basil of Seleucia was another bishop in a diYcult position (ACO ii.i.179–80, §§ 851–7). 111 At Constantinople in 449 the deacon Constantine asked ‘that my words about a rule of faith be erased. I uttered them in the midst of the uproar without being conscious of what I was saying’ (ACO ii.i.157, § 624).


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With regard to Second Ephesus, in a signiWcant exchange triggered by an objection on the part of the Eastern bishops at Chalcedon to a chant attributed to the whole council in 449, Dioscorus was able to demonstrate that his notaries112 had not been the only ones to keep a record: ‘Look the notary of Bishop Juvenal kept a record, as did the notary of Bishop Thalassius and that of the bishop of Corinth. Was it only mine?’ But, at the prompting of Eusebius of Dorylaeum, the imperial commissioners asked Stephen of Ephesus about his notaries and he claimed that his men had been displaced: ‘My notaries— Julian who is now the most devout bishop of Lebedos and the deacon Crispinus—were keeping a record but the notaries of the most devout bishop Dioscorus came and erased their tablets, and almost broke their Wngers in the attempt to snatch their pens. I didn’t get copies of the minutes and I don’t know what happened next, but on the very day the investigation took place we signed the sheet and the bishops who had not signed it did so under my guarantee on the following day’ (ACO ii.i.87–8, §§ 121–30). It would appear that the host bishop had some responsibility to provide professional recorders for the diYcult task of compiling an agreed record, though the president also had an interest;113 Dioscorus, while permitting 112 Later Dioscorus admitted in passing that his notary Demetrianus was in control of the record when he accused Basil of Seleucia of secretly asking the latter to have the record changed (ACO ii.i.179–80, § 854). 113 Procedures are revealed in the Acta of a meeting at Carthage in 411 between Catholics and Donatists, even though this event assumed the character of a formal court case rather than a standard church council: text by S. Lancel, Actes de la Confe´rence de Carthage en 411 (3 vols. Sources chre´tiennes 194, 195, 224; Paris, 1972, 1975); also, idem, in Corpus Christianorum Series Latina 149A (Turnhout, 1974); discussion of proceedings in M. A. Tilley, ‘Dilatory Donatists or Procrastinating Catholics: The Trial at the Conference of Carthage’, Church History, 60 (1991), 7–19; also B. D. Shaw, ‘African Christianity: Disputes, DeWnitions and ‘‘Donatists’’ ’, in M. R. Greenshields and T. A. Robinson (eds.), Orthodoxy and Heresy in Religious Movements: Discipline and Dissent (Lampeter, 1992), 5–34; repr. in his Rulers, Nomads and Christians in Roman North Africa (London, 1995). The tribune and notary Marcellinus—another example of a president with pronounced (anti-Donatist) views—was put in charge by Emperor Honorius, and he provided lay notaries, while the two sides each produced four notaries of their own; these were divided into teams to ensure there were no breaks in the shorthand record, and the process of rewriting the shorthand notes into a longhand record was supervised by two bishops from each party. A day was left vacant between each meeting to permit the full record to be prepared, but even this was insuYcient since at the start of the second session some of the material was still in shorthand. Once the longhand version was ready,

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some of his allies to keep their own notaries, had ensured his personal control of the crucial account. As an example of possible changes, in the middle of the Wrst session at Chalcedon the Eastern bishops protested that they had had no part in some violent expressions of hatred against Eusebius of Dorylaeum, who had led the attacks on Eutyches in 448: the Acta of Second Ephesus recorded that ‘The holy council said, ‘‘Destroy and burn Eusebius. Burn him alive. May he be split in two. As he has divided, let him be divided’’ ’ (ACO ii.i.140, § 491), a reference to the One Nature of Christ as upheld by the Monophysites being divided into the Two Natures not only of the ‘Orthodox’ but also of the Nestorians; however, at Chalcedon the Eastern bishops asserted, somewhat confusedly, ‘No one said this. Dioscorus said it. The Egyptians said it’, an accusation which the Egyptian bishops were happy to accept (ACO ii.i.140–1, §§ 496–7). The chant had clearly been voiced at Ephesus, but the degree of support for it had been exaggerated in the oYcial account. Recording proceedings was an extremely challenging task, and the professional skill of Greek shorthand writers who struggled to distil the essence of a mass of confused cries deserves our admiration.114 Intimidation, however, is the most common defence used to explain the changes of mind, and has already been noted in connection with the accuracy of the Acta. Early in the Wrst session, when Theodoret entered, the Egyptians contributed a couple of exo¯ bales to express their disgust at the appearance of this heretic, but the Easterners and their allies responded: ‘We signed blank sheets. We suVered blows and we signed’ (eis agrapha hupergrapsamen. each bishop signed every remark he had made, an unusual precaution but sensible in the light of the highly contentious nature of this debate. Detailed discussion of the production of the record in E. Tengstro¨m, Die Protokollierung der Collatio Carthaginensis: Beitra¨ge zur Kenntnis der ro¨mischen Kurzschrift nebst einem Exkurs u¨ber das Wort scheda (schedula) (Studia Graeca et Latina Gothoburgensia 14, 1961). 114 [Experience of the production of the record of Parliamentary proceedings in the UK indicates that, even with the help of tape recordings, it can be diYcult to produce a complete and accurate record: for example, heavy regional accents, especially in a noisy session, are diYcult to transcribe. Deliberate change is not impossible: on one occasion when an under-prepared Minister answered a straight yes/no question the wrong way round, the record was adapted to ensure that the correct information was preserved in the published proceedings.]


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Etupte¯the¯men kai hupergrapsamen).115 And then they too go into series of exo¯ bales against Manichees, the enemies of Flavian and the enemies of the faith (ACO ii.i.69, §§ 27–8). There can be no doubt that some essential information has been left out of the Acta here, doubtless owing to the fearful episcopal hubbub in this Wrst session of the council, since the Eastern bishops were trying to excuse themselves by pointing to the compulsion they had been under when, so far as the Acta of Chalcedon are concerned, no accusation had been brought against them.116 Apparently Dioscorus and his supporters had been pointing out, quite correctly, that the condemnations of Theodoret and the others had been unanimous,117 which would have included support from some of the Eastern bishops now favouring his readmission at Chalcedon; as a result the unfortunate Easterners, dismayed at their own cowardice at Second Ephesus,118 but now eager to exculpate themselves and place themselves securely on what would be the winning side, had to explain their behaviour. They knew they had uttered, or at least signed up to, theological expressions which they had imperfectly understood and never perhaps really held, but now wanted to repudiate everything they had said or subscribed, to secure forgiveness and be allowed to retain their bishoprics. The beneWts to be gained at Chalcedon from allegations of intimidation at Second Ephesus mean that these should be investigated critically rather than accepted as self-evidently true, which is the usual verdict.

115 Few, if any parts of the Acta of Chalcedon are as dramatic as these two sentences, brilliant summaries of what must have been a scarcely intelligible babble of emotional cries. 116 Samuel, ‘Proceedings’, 329–30, is suspicious about the accusation of signing blank sheets, on the grounds that the charge does not appear in Eusebius of Dorylaeum’s Wrst indictment of Dioscorus and is not mentioned in any of the reactions to Second Ephesus before this Wrst day at Chalcedon. However, this justiWcation only became relevant to excusing the bishops’ behaviour at Ephesus when they were pressed to explain their changes of mind at Chalcedon. 117 We only have the incomplete record in the Syriac Acta for the condemnations on 22 Aug. 449 but there is no reason to question that they were indeed agreed unanimously by all those present. 118 [The use of the words ‘at their own cowardice’ does reveal that Ste. Croix could slip into the traditional assumption that Second Ephesus was indeed a latrocinium where many bishops felt unable to uphold their ‘real’ views.]

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In the standard Orthodox picture we are presented with one great villain, Dioscorus, who behaved in the most arbitrary and tyrannical way at Second Ephesus. It is worth remembering, however, that he had presided by imperial command, and that whatever intimidation actually occurred was supported by Helpidius and Eulogius, the two counts provided by Emperor Theodosius to keep order if necessary. Since imperial objectives coincided with those of the leading bishops there could be little doubt over the outcome: it was Helpidius who relayed the imperial instruction that Eusebius of Dorylaeum should not be permitted to attend, and who controlled the order of business in such a way that the letter of Pope Leo, the future Tome of Leo at Chalcedon, was not presented to the council in spite of the protests of the papal representatives (ACO ii.i.97–9, §§ 197–222). These decisions suited Dioscorus’ purpose, though at Chalcedon it was convenient for him to stress the dominance of the secular controller (ACO ii.i.96–7, §§ 189, 193). With regard to the subscriptions the Eastern bishops at Chalcedon asserted that ‘Soldiers with clubs and swords stood by, and we took fright at the clubs and swords. We were intimidated into signing. Where there are soldiers and clubs, what kind of Council is it? This is why he [Dioscorus] accepted soldiers’ (ACO ii.i.75, § 54; cf. ACO ii.i.180, §§ 858, 861). Coercion extended beyond the meetings according to Stephen of Ephesus, who referred to a band of Eutyches’ monks and of soldiers led by the imperial representatives Helpidius and Eulogius that marched on his episcopal palace to denounce his reception of some of those now declared heretical (ACO ii.i.75, § 58).119 Dioscorus certainly contributed his share to the coercion. He controlled the record and ensured that the necessary subscriptions were provided, as already noted, and he had also arranged for the council to be attended by the zealous Syrian archimandrite Barsauma, who spoke only Syriac and so would not have been able to contribute much to doctrinal discussions. Barsauma’s role, however, was more physical in that he was said by the Orthodox 119 I would stress that I am very distrustful of anything said by Stephen, who is revealed, especially by the Syriac Acta, to have taken a positively enthusiastic part in Second Ephesus in the condemnation of several orthodox bishops, being one of the Wrst bishops to oVer their opinion on several key issues. Inevitably the full evidence for this behaviour was not included among the sections recited at Chalcedon.


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bishops at Chalcedon to have ‘brought a thousand monks against us’ (ACO ii.i.312, § 78);120 according to Diogenes of Cyzicus, another very unreliable witness to my mind, he was anxious to murder Flavian of Constantinople (ACO ii.i.312, § 77). Two Orthodox bishops, Onesiphorus of Iconium and Marinianus of Synnada, drew a particularly vivid picture of Dioscorus seeking to enforce general conformity with his wishes by exclaiming, ‘Call the counts’, ‘Bring the counts here’, dos tous kome¯tas (ACO ii.i.180–1, §§ 858–61). According to these two bishops the counts then brought in their soldiers with weapons, and these were accompanied by the Proconsul of Asia with attendants and chains; Barsauma and his monks were there too, and even the fearsome parabalani of Alexandria (ACO ii.i.179, § 851). At this point all the bishops signed up. Dioscorus, however, denied all these allegations, and the parts of the Acta of Second Ephesus read out at Chalcedon, unsurprisingly, contain no evidence for such coercion, nor do the discussions preserved in the Syriac Acta. Which side was telling the truth is diYcult to tell, but the accumulation of accusations of intimidation may contain an element of ‘overkill’. This might have been sensed by the imperial commissioners. On several occasions the ‘turncoat’ bishops collectively or individually expressed their repentance: ‘We all sinned, we all beg forgiveness.’ At one point the commissioners responded rather sharply, ‘Yet you declared earlier that you were forced by violence and compulsion to sign the deposition of Flavian of sacred memory on a blank sheet.’ The implication was that the bishops would not be acknowledging a sin if they had really been intimidated; to this challenge the Eastern bishops could only respond with another round of ‘Sin and Forgiveness’ (ACO ii.i.94, §§ 181–4).121 One approach to determining the truth of accusations of intimidation might be to consider the representation of Chalcedon in 120 [The thousands of monks may have been mobilized against episcopal opponents in Syria, rather than at Second Ephesus, but he is very likely to have brought some monastic supporters with him.] 121 Samuel, ‘Proceedings’, interpreted this second apology as a sign that the bishops were indicating acknowledgement of the falsehood of the accusation about ‘blank sheets’, for which they now apologized to the commissioners, but that seems too precise a reading. The bishops might well have felt, or at least wanted to convey the impression that they admitted, that they might have put up more resistance at Second Ephesus.

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Monophysite tradition. Monophysite writers had to explain why most bishops accepted the decisions of the council, and it would have served their purpose to underline the wickedness of Marcian and Pulcheria by pointing to any violence they may have applied to the Church. Compulsion is mentioned, but only in general terms, in Zachariah’s Ecclesiastical History, where the bishops are said to have accepted Theodoret’s presence because of royal authority and to have subscribed under compulsion (3.1). The Life of Dioscorus also states that imperial pressure had to be applied to secure episcopal agreement, though the description of Dioscorus’ dealings with the imperial pair focuses as much on Pulcheria’s attempted seduction as on Marcian’s exhortation to follow the primacy of Rome. In the Ple¯rophories most criticism is directed at the bishops themselves: Satan predicted that the bishops at the council would adore him, while Abba Andrew had a vision in which the bishops symbolically recruciWed Christ by throwing a pure child into a furnace, a performance from which only the upright Dioscorus abstained (9, 14). There is a signiWcant diVerence between these texts and what was said about physical compulsion at Second Ephesus. In many respects Dioscorus was a convenient scapegoat whose guilt cleared all other participants at Second Ephesus. This is certainly the line which Thalassius of Caesarea pursued when attempting to defend his role in the leadership at Second Ephesus: ‘I was named in the sacra, but I did not know why . . .’, ‘I only know that I did not prevent it, and that I did not have suYcient authority by myself to insist on the reading’, ‘I was not responsible.’122 Dioscorus is a character who often evokes detestation, with even Norman Baynes, a scholar seldom given to denunciation, referring to him as ‘the Attila of the Eastern Church’, with the additional comment that ‘This is surely an insult to Attila.’123 The only sympathetic verdict that I have come across in modern literature is that of Otto Seeck, who describes Dioscorus at Chalcedon as the one man who ‘behaved like a man in this collection of howling old women’.124 Among contemporaries 122 ACO ii.i.76, 85, 97, §§ 61, 106, 191; the commissioners may have tired of such evasion, since the last plea drew the sharp response, ‘When the faith is being decided, this is no excuse’ (§ 192). 123 Baynes, ‘Alexandria’, 114. 124 O. Seeck, Geschichte des Untergangs der antiken Welt, vi (1920), i. 274. Partisan writers such as Samuel also, naturally, praise Dioscorus.


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sources from the Monophysite communities naturally upheld his reputation. The Life of Dioscorus shows that he could evoke deep admiration among his followers, but this text is rarely noticed, while various stories in the Ple¯rophories of John Rufus show Dioscorus as a lone hero at the council, with Timothy Aelurus as his one loyal follower (14). Dioscorus certainly did not lack courage. Of the leaders at Second Ephesus all except Dioscorus, who alone never recanted, were pardoned and reinstated during the fourth session; they had confronted the choice between loss of position, along with all the beneWts that leadership of a large and rich see could bring, and acceptance of the new order. Juvenal of Jerusalem was a very political animal and managed to negotiate a reasonably good result for himself and his see, with a separate patriarchal jurisdiction for Jerusalem being agreed on 23 October and ratiWed by the full council on the 26th (ACO ii.i.109–10, §§ 11–18; ii.i.364–6, §§ 3–17).125 Thalassius of Caesarea and the others were much weaker individuals, and had probably been as ineVectual at Second Ephesus as they were at Chalcedon.126 Dioscorus’ Egyptian followers also failed to match his courage. Early in the Wrst session at Chalcedon the Egyptian bishops cried out, ‘Bring Wre and we’ll show you’ (ACO ii.i.76, § 64), but they were bluYng: even these Egyptians eventually changed allegiance without there being, on this occasion, any explicit threat of physical violence:127 four of the bishops abandoned Dioscorus on the Wrst day (ACO ii.i.116, §§ 293–6), while the others, after failing to attend the third session and oppose the attack on their leader, then approached the council in the fourth session in an attempt to accommodate themselves to the world after Dioscorus (see below). The power of an almighty state was irresistible. It is worth remembering that pressures were created not only inside a council and by those present, but that bishops might also have to answer back home to the clergy and laity of their diocese. This is revealed by a particularly vivid and arresting scene at Chalcedon, which occupies some four and a half pages of the Acta of the 125 On this see Honigmann, ‘Juvenal’, 245–6. 126 Thalassius was another bishop to have been involved in proceedings at Constantinople in 448–9 as well as Second Ephesus and Chalcedon; he appears to have followed whatever position was currently dominant (e.g. ACO ii.i.157, §§ 626–7). 127 Twelve centuries later Galileo at least had to be shown the instruments of torture by another all-powerful Christian tribunal.

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fourth session (ACO ii.i.306–10, §§ 19–62, esp. 48–58). It begins with the announcement by the imperial commissioners that they had received a petition to the emperor, signed by thirteen Egyptian bishops, on behalf of all the bishops of Egypt. Apart from the thirteen there were another four Egyptians who had already, literally, crossed the Xoor during the Wrst session and thus gone publicly over to the other side, the ‘Orthodox’, but these thirteen had not yet publicly disowned Dioscorus, who had Wnally been deposed at the previous session (numbered 2 in the Greek Acta).128 These bishops were terriWed of what might happen to them when they returned home and it became known that they had departed from the Alexandrian theological position and abandoned Dioscorus, doing what everyone else at Chalcedon, except Dioscorus, had done: namely, if they subscribed the Tome of Leo, who had been anathematized by Dioscorus, and anathematized Eutyches whom Dioscorus had welcomed back into the orthodox communion at Second Ephesus. The Egyptians were quite willing to hand out other anathemas and do anything else which the council demanded, but these two things they simply could not aVord to do, they said, until a new patriarch had been installed in Alexandria, a man who would be able to tell everyone what the True Faith now was. Eventually they gave way on Eutyches, and duly anathematized him, but they continued to refuse to endorse the Tome of the Pope who had been anathematized by their patriarch. All the other bishops in the council were insistent that this conciliatory move was not enough, and that the wretched Egyptians should be excommunicated; but the latter prostrated themselves before the bishops, throwing themselves on the council’s mercy and begging for pity on their grey hairs: ‘By your feet’, nai to¯n podo¯n humo¯n, they keep saying. This continues in a highly emotional vein, because, as the Egyptians repeat again and again, their congregations would simply kill them if they went home having in eVect apostatized from the True Faith before there was a new patriarch in Alexandria who alone could save them by giving an authoritative new exposition of that Faith. Eventually it was the imperial commissioners, in 128 There were, of course, many other Egyptian bishops who had not come to Chalcedon.


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another display of their superior authority, who produced a reasonable solution, against the whole weight of episcopal opinion whose intolerance might in part reXect the zeal of recent conversion, since not one bishop is recorded as expressing any sympathy for the Egyptians’ plight. The commissioners very sensibly decided that the Egyptians could stay at Constantinople until a new patriarch was installed at Alexandria (ACO ii.i.310, § 60). This story is most informative about the passionate feelings roused in many places, including Egypt, by the question of Christian doctrine: a bishop who lapsed, even under extreme pressure, and subscribed to credal formulae produced by a person whom his own archbishop or patriarch had anathematized, even if that person was the bishop of Rome, might risk being murdered out of hand by his own congregation. The reality of this danger is revealed by what happened in 457 to Proterius, an Egyptian cleric who was prepared to accept the decisions of Chalcedon and was accordingly installed as Dioscorus’ orthodox replacement as patriarch of Alexandria. His position in the city depended on military backing, but when the death of Emperor Marcian was announced, news which will have created uncertainty about the status of Chalcedon, a mob stormed the church in which he was preparing to celebrate some baptisms, lynched him in the centre of the city, inXicted various insults on his corpse including allegedly the eating of his liver, then burnt the remains and scattered the ashes. The situation in Jerusalem immediately after Chalcedon is another example: Juvenal was adamant before his departure for the council about the need to uphold the decisions of Second Ephesus, and his U-turn caused considerable unrest. This was led by a monk named Theodosius who had himself been appointed bishop and began to ordain subordinates of the same view; it took almost two years before Juvenal reclaimed his see, and then only with powerful secular backing (Evagrius 2.5).

Conclusion However sceptical I may be about the traditional story of the councils of the mid-Wfth century, it is diYcult to dispute the considerable evidence that points to Second Ephesus being an occasion when the inevitable pressures to which bishops would be subjected crossed a

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boundary of acceptability. Chalcedon was diVerent, but it is utterly wrong to imagine that it was an occasion for simple and honest debate which permitted the wrongs of the Church to be rectiWed. The signiWcance of the wishes of the imperial pair, Marcian and Pulcheria, determined the direction of proceedings, and they found in the great Anatolius a man with the diplomatic skill and doctrinal convictions to ensure that their preferences were brought into eVect. The very Wrst day demonstrated the course which discussions would take, and thereafter those bishops who did not share all the imperial views were restricted to a damage-limitation exercise, unsuccessful in respect of the new Creed, more successful in securing that only the intransigent Dioscorus suVered permanent punishment. But the doctrinal decisions were ultimately political in conception and the investment of papal authority in these decisions caused further problems, which eventually proved insuperable for their acceptance. Chalcedon introduced bitter rivalries between Chalcedonian orthodox and Monophysites (with variants on each side), which involved intermittent oYcial persecution by the Orthodox and some furious outbursts, particularly from those excluded from imperial favour. The amount of intellectual energy and imperial prestige devoted to eVorts to construct a formula of reconciliation, from the Henoticon of Zeno in the 470s through the Theopaschite, Three Chapters, and Aphthartodocest initiatives of Justinian in the mid-sixth century, to the Monothelete Ekthesis of Heraclius of 638 is diYcult to credit.129 But the image of Pope Vigilius being dragged from sanctuary to prevent him evading Justinian’s pressure in the months before the Fifth Ecumenical Council (553), with such force that the altar rails to which he was clinging were torn away with him (Malalas 18.111), conveys something of the intensity of feeling in the West: Vigilius knew that he would be required to subscribe to some signiWcant modiWcations to the decisions of Chalcedon with respect to the so-called Three Chapters, the term used to denote the condemnation of Theodore of Mopsuestia, the writings of Theodoret against Cyril, and the letter of Ibas to Maris the Persian, and this slight to the perfect authority of the council in which Pope Leo’s 129 Frend, Monophysite Movement; P. Allen, Evagrius Scholasticus the Church Historian (Louvain, 1981), ch. 2.


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views had been endorsed was bound to provoke uproar in the western Church. I shall end with a melancholy but characteristic little story recorded in Michael the Syrian (Chron. 11.6, vol. ii. 422–3), since it shows that even in the direst emergency, with the Arabs overrunning Syria, the orthodox Byzantines refused to tolerate adherents of the One Nature Christology who now constituted the majority of the inhabitants in Egypt, much of Syria and northern Mesopotamia. At the great battle of Yarmuk in 636 the Byzantine army in Syria was utterly defeated by the Arabs under Omar and, although a few cities held out for two or three years longer, Byzantine power in Syria was now irretrievably broken. The emperor Heraclius sent an army to defend the passes of Cilicia against the Arabs, and to it there Xed the local Syrian Monophysite bishop, who seems to have been Epiphanius of Callisura. The Byzantine commander Gregory questioned him closely about his faith. When Epiphanius discoursed about the One Nature of the Divine Word united hypostatically with the Xesh, and speciWcally repudiated the doctrines of Chalcedon, Gregory cut oV his head.130 Imperial success at Chalcedon exacted a substantial price from Marcian’s successors over the next two centuries. The Council of Chalcedon, which in isolation can be seen as a complete triumph for Marcian and Two Nature Christology, and which has been lavishly praised by some modern theologians, has often been described, rightly in my opinion, as a disaster for the Eastern Empire: as Norman Baynes put it, Chalcedon came ‘not to bring peace, but a sword’.131 Monophysite views were far too strong to be suppressed in some areas, above all in Egypt and much of Syria and Mesopotamia,132 and the Orthodox Empire would surely have done better to be content with doctrinal formulae that would have accommodated it, or at least tolerated its existence.

130 Cf. W. E. Kaegi, Byzantium and the Early Islamic Conquests (Cambridge, 1992), 215, and for broader discussion of the impact of religious divisions on the Islamic conquests, ibid. 209–17; also Ste. Croix, Class Struggle, 483–4. 131 Baynes, ‘Alexandria’, 115. 132 The best account of these subsequent developments is in Frend, Monophysite Movement; also MeyendorV, Imperial Unity, chs. 7–8, 10.


Christianity and Property



Although the following essay was reprinted with only minor revisions to the arrangement of material in Class Struggle, we have decided that it deserves a place in this collection as the best example of the themes pursued and approaches adopted by Ste. Croix in preparation for his projected monograph ‘Early Christian Attitudes to Women, Sex and Marriage’. In this chapter the word ‘Early’ is vital: Ste. Croix begins with the settlement structure of Palestine under the Hellenistic kings and early Roman empire, and then considers the evidence of the Gospels on poverty and property in the light of Greek and Roman attitudes. Locating the Gospels in their social, literary, and intellectual contexts is of prime importance,1 whereas much less attention is paid to the equally interesting issues of how attitudes to these matters evolved in the expanding Church of the second to Wfth centuries, especially after imperial recognition by Constantine provided the beneWts and temptations of security and respectability. This approach was taken further in a succession of lecture series and seminars, most importantly the Gregynog Lectures at Aberystwyth in 1986, a sequence in Copenhagen in 1987, and the Townsend Lectures at Cornell in 1988. As an example of how Ste. Croix’s work developed, St Paul’s declaration in Galatians 3:28 that ‘There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female; for ye are all one in Christ Jesus’, which is alluded to brieXy in ‘ECAPS’, became the focus of extended treatment. The purpose was to ram home the message that St Paul, one of Ste. Croix’s trinity of beˆtes noires (the others being Plato and St Augustine), could oVer absolutely no help to feminist theologians eager to 1 As Ste. Croix put it at the start of a seminar in March 1982, ‘To understand the early Christian attitude to women and marriage, and to discover which of its elements are new, one needs to know the situation in the Jewish communities (in the Diaspora as well as Palestine) and in the Hellenistic and Roman worlds.’

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Wnd biblical authority for the equality of the sexes. The presentation was susceptible to challenge from two sides: Wrst, Ste. Croix, while being fully in command of the classical texts and their problems of interpretation, was not conversant with all developments in the voluminous Pauline scholarship, so that attacks on alleged views of St Paul, or demonstrations of discrepancies of thought between diVerent Pauline texts, might be evaded by appeal to the need to distinguish between Pauline and deutero-Pauline works; second, although Ste. Croix referred to some modern scholars for whom the Pauline injunction was signiWcant, it is now more common for contemporary feminist theologians to accept that St Paul himself did not pursue the practical implications of his statement so that his words can in fact still provide biblical justiWcation for sexual equality. The desire to demonstrate the frail basis for Christian teaching on other family matters led Ste. Croix to investigate the ‘misuse’ of Genesis 2: 242 in Jesus’ teaching on marriage in Mark 10: 7–9 and Matthew 19: 5–6, as well as by St Paul in 1 Corinthians 6: 15–16. Part of the discussion centred on the apparently divergent view of marriage in Luke 16: 18, which introduced a section on other signiWcant discrepancies between Luke and Mark, most notably over the expression attributed in Mark to the centurion at the cruciWxion, ‘Truly this man was a Son of God’ (15: 39; cf. Matthew 27: 54). Another part was occupied by a full demonstration of the prevalence of polygamy in the Old Testament, and its continued acceptance in the family of Herod the Great, practices which Jesus was able to ignore since he operated primarily within peasant communities where very few people had ever had the wealth to indulge in polygamy. The issue of polygamy acted as a cue to a topic close to Ste. Croix’s heart, St Paul’s obsession with fornication, an aspect of his personality which he believed was too often ignored or downplayed. Ste. Croix’s arguments on these topics developed through the various presentations in the late 1980s, but it would be fair to say that the overall trajectory of these changes was to push the balance of discussions away from Early Christianity as such and towards the antecedents of the New Testament, naturally the Old Testament, but 2 ‘Therefore shall a man leave his father and mother, and shall cleave unto his wife; and they shall be one Xesh.’

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less obviously Plato. With regard to the Old Testament, Yahweh and the question of prophecies of the Messiah attracted attention. As a result one reasonably polished piece emerged on the Immanuel prophecy in Isaiah 7: 14 and its misappropriation in Matthew 1 to refer to the Virgin birth of Jesus. The argument that the prophecy in Isaiah must relate to a contemporary birth is diYcult to refute, but few other than fundamentalist theologians would want to dispute this contention in any case. The signiWcant question of whether the misuse of the prophecy in Matthew was an innovation or reXected a more widespread messianic reinterpretation of various Old Testament passages in Wrst-century bc Jewish circles is not broached. Perhaps the main interest of the piece is the indication that Ste. Croix was returning to the challenges of his fundamentalist upbringing.3 This is pursued much further in work related to the issue of Theodicy, the justiWcation of God against objection or criticism, which culminated in a very substantial paper (well over 20,000 words) devoted to the book of Job. This study occupied the better part of two years in the early 1990s, advancing through successive handwritten drafts with visitors and correspondents being treated to the latest developments in the presentation. Ste. Croix’s central thesis was that the text of Job as we have it is an amalgam of an anti-Yahweh tract, which reveals the behaviour of the deity to be morally objectionable in the highest degree, and a limited amount of more traditional ‘Yahwehist’ material which came to provide the outside layers of what was eVectively a sandwich. Although Ste. Croix recognized that Christian believers (presumably Jews as well) could hardly allow themselves to accept the full implications of his remorseless arguments, he was somewhat disappointed by reactions from the few colleagues to whom he had oVered the full piece for comment. What Ste. Croix had produced was a broadside against fundamentalist interpretations of Job, but whose central premises could be sidestepped by less doctrinally rigid believers. In a short piece on ‘Yahweh/God Almighty’ Ste. Croix expressed what had become the 3 On a very personal note Ste. Croix comments on the name Maher-shalal-hashbaz (Isaiah 8: 1), ‘one of the longest and most ferocious names of a male child in the Old Testament’, that its owner may have preferred to keep a low proWle in the community, adducing his own experience as the possessor of a name exported from France by Huguenots which had naturally excited the derision of young boys.

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driving force for this prong of his intellectual project, the desire ‘After almost a whole long lifetime of false politeness towards the deity whom I was brought up to worship and adore, . . . to speak and write exactly as I please about the ancient genocidal monster represented by his worshippers as glorifying in the mysterious Name of Yahweh’. The other direction in which Ste. Croix’s concern to uncover the full intellectual context for Christian attitudes led was to Plato, whom he regarded as essential to his thinking on Christian persecution (i.e. persecution by Christians) as well as on sex and family matters. Plato, as noted above, was one of Ste. Croix’s key targets: his animosity was already well formed in the early 1950s when Karl Popper had been one of his teaching colleagues at the London School of Economics.4 For Ste. Croix, Plato’s passionate advocacy of religious persecution in Laws 10 (887–910) anticipated the behaviour of Christian persecutors, just as his views on a judgement of the dead and punishment in Hell5 had little resonance beyond a very few Platonist philosophers before the development of Christian eschatological thought, while his proposed laws on sexual and family matters also foreshadowed Pauline and later Christian views. In the late 1980s, in the aftermath of the Gregynog and Townsend lecture series, Ste. Croix had been extremely enthusiastic to develop his lectures into the intended book on ‘Sex and Marriage in Early Christianity’, but in spite of presenting his views in more than two dozen universities in North America and Europe he never felt that he had fully mastered the complexities of his subject. The problem was not in the treatment of legal material, which was fully discussed in the lectures, nor in the Patristic sections where much more could certainly have been said about the voluminous documentation. Ste. Croix’s unease centred on origins, and as his writing progressed even a strong desire to ‘nail’ Augustine, the third of his beˆtes noires, could not counteract the pull of Plato and Paul, especially when coupled with the chance to revisit some of the fundamentalist debates on 4 They had, for example, discussed the publication of Popper’s Open Society and its Enemies, which had been rejected by one major University Press on the grounds that it was ‘too disrespectful to Plato’. For his own assessment of Plato as ‘one of the most determined and dangerous enemies that freedom has ever had’, see Class Struggle, 284. 5 Plato, Gorgias 523a–527c; Phaedo 80d–82b, 107e–108c, 110b–115a; Republic 614b–621b.

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which he had cut his teeth in the 1920s and 1930s. By the mid-1990s Ste. Croix had virtually admitted that a publication of the lecture series was impossible, and he focused his eVorts on salvaging what he could from his writings of the previous decade, but he was perhaps no longer the best judge of what was most eVective since papers with a primarily Old Testament focus were prominent in his planned volumes of Christian essays. It is the earlier writing which has stood the test of time best and so, although it might have been possible to excavate the versions of the Gregynog lectures, say, to produce a somewhat revised version of Ste. Croix’s thoughts, it seemed more appropriate to include in this collection the one item which he had seen through to publication himself.

7 Early Christian Attitudes to Property and Slavery1 I begin with the central fact about Christian origins: that although the earliest surviving Christian documents are in Greek and although Christianity spread from city to city in the Graeco-Roman world, its Founder lived and preached almost entirely outside the area of Graeco-Roman civilization proper; the world in which he was active was not at all that of the polis (the city) but the very diVerent world of the cho¯ra (the countryside). This may require some explanation. In the classical period, in Greece itself and in some of the early Greek colonies in Italy and Sicily and on the west coast of Asia Minor, the word cho¯ra was often used as a synonym for the agroi (the Welds), the rural area of the polis;2 and sometimes the word polis itself, in the special limited sense of its urban area, was contrasted First published in Studies in Church History, 12 (1975), 1–38. 1 This paper is a re-presentation of parts of my book, The Class Struggle in the Ancient Greek World (to be published by Duckworth about the autumn of 1976), which incorporates the substance of the J. H. Gray Lectures delivered at Cambridge University in February 1973, greatly expanded. Full documentation for those statements for which I have not provided proper references here will be found in that book, referred to below as CSAGW. The best collection of early Christian views concerning property (from the OT down to the early 5th century) is by Paul Christophe, L’Usage chre´tien du droit de proprie´te´ dans l’ećriture et la tradition patristique ¼ Collection Theólogie, Pastorale et Spiritualite´, no. 14 (Paris, 1964). I have made much use of this book (although at times it is uncritical), as of C. J. Cadoux, The Early Church and the World (Edinburgh, 1925 and repr.). Ernst Troeltsch, The Social Teaching of the Christian Churches i, trans. Olive Wyon (London, 1931), pp. 1–200, has some useful material, but for my purposes does not lie suYciently close to the historical background, and I have not cited it here. & &æÆ is equivalent to KŒ ø & Iªæø & [‘from 2 For example in Thuc. ii.5.7, KŒ the Welds’] in 14.1; cf. K &Ø IªæØ& in 14.2, and the same expression and ŒÆa c &æÆ [‘throughout the countryside’] in 16.1.

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with its cho¯ra.3 This usage continued in the Hellenistic period (roughly the last three centuries bc) and under Roman rule: every polis had its own cho¯ra in the sense of its own rural area. However, except where a native population had been reduced to a subject condition4 there was generally in the areas just mentioned no fundamental diVerence between those who lived in or near the urban centre of the polis and the peasants who lived in the countryside, even if the latter tended to be noticeably less ‘urbane’ (less cityWed) than the former; all were Greek and participated in a common culture to a greater or less degree. But in those parts of Asia and Egypt into which Greek civilization penetrated in the time of Alexander the Great and in the Hellenistic period the situation was very diVerent. In Asia, from at least the time of Alexander (and probably, as I have argued elsewhere,5 as early as the Wfth century bc), the terms cho¯ra and polis had come to be used on occasion with a recognized technical sense, which continued throughout the Hellenistic period and beyond in Asia and Egypt: in this sense the cho¯ra was the whole vast area not included in the territory administered by any Greek polis; it was under the direct, autocratic rule of the kings, the successors of Alexander, and it was bureaucratically administered, while the poleis had republican governments and enjoyed forms of precarious autonomy which diVered according to circumstances. Under Roman rule the same basic division between polis and cho¯ra continued; but the great bulk of the cho¯ra came by degrees under the administration of particular poleis, each of which had its own cho¯ra (territorium in the Latin west). The cities in the strict sense (the poleis) were Greek in very varying degrees in language and culture; native languages and cultures prevailed in the cho¯ra, where the population lived mainly in villages, the most common Greek term for which was ko¯mai. Graeco-Roman civilization was essentially urban, a civilization of cities; and in the areas in which it was not native, in which it had not grown up from roots in the very soil, it

3 As in Thuc. vi 4.2; Lyc. C. Leocr. 1; etc. 4 I shall mention the main examples in CSAGW: they include Heracleia Pontica, Zeleia, Priene, Syracuse. 5 In The Origins of the Peloponnesian War (London, 1972), pp. 154–5, 313–14.

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remained largely an upper-class culture, parasitic on the countryside which supported it and to which it gave little in return.6 The essential point I want to make is that—apart from Jerusalem, a special case—as I shall explain presently—the mission of Jesus took place entirely in the cho¯ra, in its ko¯mai, in the agroi of Palestine. Partly it was conducted altogether outside polis territory, in areas of Galilee and Judaea administered not by cities but directly by Herod Antipas the ‘tetrarch’ or by the Roman governor of Judaea; but it is highly signiWcant that on the rather rare occasions when we do Wnd Jesus active inside polis territory, it is never in the polis itself, in the sense of its urban area, but always in its country district. As we shall see, whenever we have any speciWc information (as distinct from vague general statements) the terms used are such as to point unmistakably to the countryside—the ko¯mai, ko¯mopoleis, agroi, cho¯ra, also the mere¯, horia, paralios, pericho¯ros. There is of course a great dispute about how much reliable historical information can legitimately be extracted from the narratives of the Gospels, even the synoptics. But I would emphasize that in so far as we can trust the 6 Perhaps the best account of this fundamental opposition between town and country in the Greek east is in part v (‘The Achievement of the Cities’, pp. 259–304) of A. H. M. Jones’s great work, The Greek City from Alexander to Justinian (Oxford, 1940), esp. 285 et seq. Another major work by Jones, Cities of the Eastern Roman Provinces (frequently cited in The Greek City) has been reissued in a second edn. (Oxford, 1971), with the sections on Palestine in ch. 10 (on ‘Syria’, pp. 226–94) revised by M. Avi-Yonah. A recent work, limited to the late republic and principate, is Ramsay MacMullen, Roman Social Relations 50 B.C. to A.D. 284 (London, 1974): the Wrst two chapters of this (I ‘Rural’, and II ‘Rural-Urban’, pp. 1–56) have much wellchosen illustrative material. For the opinions of a scholar who knew the archaeological as well as the literary evidence particularly well, see M. RostovtzeV, Social and Economic History of the Roman Empire (Oxford, 1957), i, pp. 261–73 (with ii, pp. 660 et seq., esp. pp. 664–6), 344–52, 378–92. For an able account of the social and economic background of the great Jewish revolt in Palestine of ad 66–70, see Heinz Kreissig, Die sozialen Zusammenha¨nge des judaïschen Krieges: Klassen und Klassenkampf im Pala¨stina des 1. Jahrh. v.u.Z. ¼ Schriften zur Geschichte und Kultur der Antike no. 1 (Berlin, 1970). [For the relationship between Hellenistic cities and rural hinterlands, and the impact of Greek inXuences on the latter, see G. Shipley, The Greek World after Alexander, 323–30 bc (London, 2000); there are also several relevant discussions in A. Erskine (ed.), A Companion to the Hellenistic World (Oxford, 2003), esp. ch. 15, ‘Town and Country in Ptolemaic Egypt’ by Jane Rowlandson, and ch. 8, ‘The Seleukids and Asia’ by Michel Austin. For the situation in Palestine in the 1st cent. ad, see F. Millar, The Roman Near East 31 BC–AD 337 (Cambridge, Mass., 1993), ch. 10. Although its main focus is later, there is also much of relevance in M. Goodman, State and Subject in Roman Galilee, 132–212 (Oxford, 1983).]


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speciWc information given us by the Gospels there is no evidence that Jesus ever even entered the urban area of any Greek city. That should not surprise us: Jesus, as I indicated at the beginning, belonged wholly to the cho¯ra, the Jewish countryside of Galilee and Judaea. Palestine, which had been ruled by the Ptolemies for over a hundred years after the death of Alexander, became around 200 bc part of the Seleucid kingdom. Just before the middle of the second century Judaea achieved a considerable degree of independence for nearly a century; but from 63 bc onwards the whole of Palestine and Syria was always eVectively under Roman control, although Judaea (and Samaria) did not actually become a Roman province until ad 6, and Galilee and Peraea until 44.7 In Palestine the native language at the beginning of the Christian era was Aramaic, which was spoken throughout the countryside and also by a good proportion of the inhabitants of many of the cities. By the time of Jesus, Palestine contained a number of genuine poleis, some of which were much more Hellenic in character than others.8 With the exception of Tyre and Sidon, which I shall mention presently, the cities on the coast (Caesarea, Ascalon, Gaza and others) were too far from the main scene of Jesus’s activity to be mentioned in the Gospels, and we can ignore them here. The cities we need to notice are, Wrst, Sepphoris and Tiberias, the only two in Galilee; next Samaria, between Galilee and Judaea, recently re-founded by Herod the Great as Sebaste (but never mentioned under that name in the New Testament); thirdly the well-marked cluster of ten genuine cities administering a large area 7 For the history of Palestine in the late Hellenistic and early Roman period, see the admirable new English version, by Geza Vermes and Fergus Millar, The History of the Jewish People in the Age of Jesus Christ (175 B.C.–A.D. 135), of Emil Schu¨rer’s Geschichte des ju¨dischen Volkes im Zeitalter Jesu Christi (3/4 edn., 1901–9), of which only vol. i (Edinburgh, 1973) has already appeared. The events of 63 bc to ad 44 are dealt with on pp. 237–454. [The remaining volumes of Schu¨rer’s History have now appeared: vol. ii, ed. G. Vermes and F. Millar (Edinburgh, 1979); vol. iii.1–2, ed. G. Vermes, F. Millar, and M. Goodman (Edinburgh, 1986–7). See also F. Millar, The Roman Near East 31 BC–AD 337 (Cambridge, Mass., 1993), ch. 10.] 8 See Victor Tcherikover, Hellenistic Civilization and the Jews (Philadelphia/Jerusalem, 1959), pp. 90–116; Jones, Cities, ch. 10, esp. pp. 248–9, 255–9, 269–76; ‘The Urbanization of Palestine’, in JRS 21 (1931), pp. 78–85; RostovtzeV i2, pp. 269–73, ii2, 663–6 nn. 32–6; M. Avi-Yonah, The Holy Land from the Persian to the Arab Conquest (536 B.C. to A.D. 640): A Historical Geography (Grand Rapids, Mich., 1966), esp. pp. 127–80.

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known as Decapolis, to the east and south-east of Galilee and the north-east of Judaea; and Wnally one or two cities at the periphery of the area within which Jesus moved: Caesarea Paneas, founded in 2 bc by Herod’s son, Philip the tetrarch,9 some 25 miles to the north of the lake of Galilee (and referred to in Mark and Matthew as Caesarea Philippi), and the ancient Phoenician towns of Tyre and Sidon, of which Tyre lay on the coast, due west of Caesarea Paneas, with Sidon to the north of it. Now the word polis is often used by Greek authors (and in the Septuagint) in a loose sense, of places which were not true cities but simply large villages or market-towns which were described more correctly by other expressions such as me¯troko¯miai, ko¯mopoleis. In the Gospels, Luke especially, the term polis is used on dozens of occasions for individual named places which were not technically cities at all: Nazareth, Capernaum, Nain, Chorazin, Bethsaida, Sychar of Samaria, Ephraim, Arimathea, Bethlehem—and Jerusalem.10 The last is a special case. From the early Hellenistic period onwards, Greek authors such as Hecataeus of Abdera and Agatharchides of Cnidos (ap. Jos. C. Apion. i. 197–8, 209) could call Jerusalem a polis, and in some respects it did qualify for that title, although I think it would be preferable to regard it essentially as the administrative capital of Judaea, of the ethnos (the ‘nation’) of the Jews. In any event, it was very far from being a proper Greek polis. Of the other places called poleis in the Gospels, we might wish to call Bethsaida a ‘town’;11 none of the others was really more than a village. And although much of 9 See Jones, Cities, pp. 282. 10 Jerusalem appears as a polis in all four Gospels. Otherwise, Mark has only Capernaum (which also appears as a polis in Luke and by implication in Matthew); Ephraim and Sychar appear only in John; Arimathea, Bethlehem and Nain only in Luke: Bethsaida (a ko¯me¯ in Mk. 8.22–3), Chorazin and Nazareth are found as poleis in Matthew and Luke. Perhaps I should emphasize here that Jerusalem was never at any time a polis in the technical sense, except when Hellenizing Jews attempted to turn it into the polis of ‘Antioch-by-Jerusalem’ during a short period beginning in 175 bc: see Tcherikover pp. 153 et seq., esp. pp. 161–74, 188. If Jerusalem really had a theatre, amphitheatre and hippodrome (alien to the Jewish way of life), it was only because these were provided by that ardent Hellenizer, Herod the Great—who is also said to have built the same three structures at Jericho, which no one would dream of calling a polis: see Schu¨rer pp. 304–5 n. 56. 11 It was the capital of the (originally Ptolemaic) toparchy of Gaulanitis, and it had been re-named Julias by Philip the tetrarch: see Jones, n. 9 above.


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the activity of Jesus is said in the Gospels to have taken place in desert places or by the shore of the lake of Galilee or elsewhere in the country districts, we are sometimes told in very general terms that Jesus went through poleis (Mt. 11: 1; compare Lk. 4: 43), or poleis and ko¯mai (Mt. 9: 35; Lk. 13: 22), or ko¯mai, poleis and agroi (Mk. 6: 56). But in such contexts the word poleis must be understood in the very loose and untechnical sense in which the evangelists (like some other Greek authors) habitually use it. As I said earlier, wherever we have a speciWc reference to a visit by Jesus to one of the genuine poleis, it is in every single case made clear that it was the country district of the polis concerned to which Jesus went.12 Let us begin with Samaria. We can forget the bogus polis of Sychar (Jn. 4: 5), a mere village of course, and the passage in Matthew (10: 5) in which Jesus tells his disciples not to go into a polis of the Samaritans. That leaves us with only two passages in Luke: in 17: 11 Jesus merely goes ‘through the midst of Samaria and Galilee’, and in 9: 52 he sends messengers ‘to a ko¯me¯ of the Samaritans’ to prepare for his coming, which in fact never took place—Jesus went to another ko¯me¯ (9: 55). There is never a mention of Sebaste, the city founded by Herod, which was a pagan town, with no large proportion of Jewish settlers, and the only genuine polis in the Samareitis.12 a The Decapolis crops up in two passages in Mark and one in Matthew, and the manner of its appearance is signiWcant. In Mt. 4: 25 crowds from Decapolis (which had a large cho¯ra) and elsewhere follow Jesus. In Mk. 7: 31 Jesus comes from the borders of Tyre, through Sidon,13 to the lake of Galilee, via (as the text has it) ‘the midst of the boundaries (or ‘territory’) of Decapolis’.14 But it is 12 Whether ‘he could no longer enter N ºØ ’, in Mk. 1: 45, means ‘into a city’ or ‘into the city concerned’ (perhaps Capernaum, as in 1: 21, but compare 39), it obviously refers to no more than the immediate situation: see 2: 1 and much of the following narrative, esp. for example 6: 56. 12 a [On the Samaritans, see A. D. Crown, The Samaritans (Tu¨bingen, 1989).] & & ›æ ø æı MºŁ & 13 I accept KŒ ø Øa Øø [‘he came from the borders of & & Tyre through Sidon’] as a preferable textual reading to ŒÆd Øø MºŁ [‘he came Sidon’], though I doubt whether the territory of Sidon was in fact involved; compare D. E. Nineham, Saint Mark (Pelican Gospel Comm., 1963), p. 203. [On the cities of the Decapolis, see Millar, Roman Near East, 408–14; I. Browning, Jerash and the Decapolis (London, 1982).] 14 A curiously roundabout route: see Nineham.

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Mk. 5: 20 which brings out most clearly what I am trying to emphasize: that in these cases Jesus is clearly in the country district attached to a polis and not in the actual polis itself. It needs to be taken with its whole context: the story of the demoniac out of whom was cast the legion of devils (Mk. 5: 1–20; Mt. 8: 28–34; Lk. 8: 26–39), whether this is to be located at Gadara or Gerasa,15 both of which were cities of the Decapolis. In all three synoptics Jesus is in the cho¯ra of the city, and the incident is pictured as taking place beside the lake of Galilee; the demoniac comes out of the city (Lk. 8: 27) and indeed was always ‘in the tombs and in the mountains’ (Mk. 5: 2–5); afterwards the swineherds go into the city (Mt. 8: 33), and they tell the story in ‘the polis and the agroi’ (Mk. 5: 14; Lk. 8: 34), whereupon people (‘the whole polis’: Mt. 8: 34) come out to Jesus (Lk. 8: 35) and beg him to go away—in Lk. 8: 37 it is ‘the whole multitude of the pericho¯ros of the Gerasenes’ who do this. When Jesus tells the former demoniac to go home and publish the news of the divine work, he proclaims it, in Luke (8: 39), ‘throughout the whole polis’, and in Mark (5: 20) ‘in the Decapolis’. 15 Variant readings exist in each case for the name of the city into the cho¯ra of which Jesus goes at the beginning of the story: the best reading in Mark and Luke is & ˆ æÆ ø ), & & ˆÆÆæ ø ). & ‘Gerasa’ ( N c &æÆ ø in Matthew, ‘Gadara’ ( . . . ø In some MSS of all three Gospels there also occurs the reading ‘Gergesa’ ( . . . & ˆ æª ø ): & ø this goes back to Origen, Comm. in Johan. vi.41, p. 150, ed. E. Preuschen, in the GCS Origen 4 (Berlin, 1903) [trans. R. E. Heine, Origen, Commentary on the Gospel according to John Books 1–10 (Fathers of the Church 80; Washington, 1989), 6 §§ 208–11, pp. 225–6], who realized that the distance from the lake of Galilee of both Gerasa (nearly 40 miles) and Gadara (5 or 6 miles) is considerable, and in order to allow the swine to ‘run violently down a steep place into the sea’ proposed to & ŒÆºı Ø æØ"Æ substitute a place he called Gergesa, ºØ IæÆ Æ æd c ı º ; æd m Œæ e ÆæÆŒ fi & º fi [‘an ancient city near the lake which is now called Tiberias; near it is a cliV which is right next to the lake’]. It has been suggested, however, that Origen was simply exercising his ingenuity on the basis of Gen. 10: 16. A place with some such name as Gergesa may have existed: in the 6th century Cyril of Scythopolis (a city of Decapolis) refers to a locality in this area which he calls Chorsia (Vita Sabae 24, p. 108.14 ed. E. Schwartz, Kyrillos von Scythopolis ¼ TU 49, ii, 1939), and this may correspond with the modern Kursi—which however is said to have no precipice. But there is no trace elsewhere of any ‘Gergesa’, and even if such a place existed it cannot have been more than a ko¯me¯, whereas the whole story demands that it be a polis, and indeed (see Mk. 5: 19) a member of the Decapolis, as were Gerasa and Gadara. There was, by the way, another city of the Decapolis, namely Hippos (the old Susitha), lying to the east of the lake of Galilee and possessing a territory which included villages that adjoined the territory of Gadara (Jos. Vita [ix] 42), but it is never mentioned in the New Testament.


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The situation is exactly the same on the two occasions on which Jesus is said to have visited the territory of cities outside his main area of action. It is not in Caesarea Philippi itself that he is found, but in its ko¯mai (Mk. 8: 27) or mere¯ (Mt. 16: 13);16 and when he visits Phoenicia it is to the mere¯ or horia of Tyre and Sidon that he goes (Mt. 15: 21–2; Mk. 7: 24, 31), and he is there approached by a woman ‘from those horia’. When multitudes come to him on another occasion from Tyre and Sidon, it is from their paralios (coastal district, Lk. 6: 17). There is one reference in Matthew (11: 21) and Luke (10: 13) to the doing of ‘mighty works’ in Tyre and Sidon; but (and this nicely conWrms what I have been saying) this is simply part of the reproach to the ‘cities’ (in reality, ko¯mai) Chorazin and Bethsaida (and Capernaum) that if the mighty works which had actually been done in them had been performed instead in Tyre and Sidon, they would have repented!16 a It will have been noticed that I have said nothing so far about the Wrst two Palestinian cities which I put at the head of my list above: Sepphoris and Tiberias, the only two real poleis of Galilee, which had been founded by Herod Antipas.17 There is the best of reasons for this: just as we hear nothing in the Gospels of Sebaste (the polis of the Samareitis), so we hear not a word of Sepphoris, and Tiberias is mentioned only in the fourth Gospel (Jn. 6: 1, 23; 21: 1) in connection with the lake that bore its name, better known to us as the lake of Galilee. Yet Sepphoris was only about four miles from Jesus’s home village of Nazareth, and Tiberias is on the shore of the lake of Galilee at almost the nearest point to Nazareth. One can understand that Jesus would not wish to enter Sebaste, a predominantly pagan city; but both Sepphoris and Tiberias were thoroughly Jewish in population and religion, even if their civic institutions (those of Tiberias at any rate)18 were of the standard Greek pattern, and even if Sepphoris 16 Nineham pp. 219, 228 n., is unnecessarily puzzled by the use of the perfectly correct expression ko¯me¯ in Mk. 8: 23, 26, 27. 16 a [On Tyre and Sidon, see Millar, Roman Near East, 285–95.] 17 Sepphoris (re-founded): Jos. AJ 18. 27. Tiberias: Jos. BJ 2. 168; AJ 18. 36–8; Vita 37; and see M. Avi-Yonah, ‘The Foundation of Tiberias’, in Israel Exploration Journal, 1 (1950–51), pp. 160–9. For both these cities, see Jones, Cities, pp. 274–8. 18 See Jones, Cities, p. 462 n. 67. Compare also Tessa Rajak, ‘Justus of Tiberias’, Classical Quarterly, 67, ns 23 (1973), pp. 345–68, esp. 346–50.

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was to be exceptionally pro-Roman during the great Jewish revolt of 66–70.19 Yet it need not surprise us to Wnd no record of Jesus’s presence in either of these cities: they were both regarded with hatred by the Galilaeans in Josephus’s army in 66,20 and Jesus would no doubt have seen them as belonging to an alien world. In Mk. 1: 38 it is the nearby ko¯mopoleis (the substantial villages) of Galilee in which he contemplates preaching: that represents the reality. I dare say that some New Testament scholars may object that I have made far too much of topographical evidence in the Gospels which they themselves are in general reluctant to press.21 To this I would reply that I am not using any of the Gospel narratives for any topographical purpose: it is a matter of indiVerence to me whether, for example, the pericope containing the ‘confession of Peter’ (Mk. 8: 27 V.; Mt. 16: 13 V.) is rightly located near Caesarea Philippi rather than anywhere else. Nor have I drawn any conclusions from uses of the word polis. My one purpose has been to demonstrate that the synoptic Gospels are unanimous and consistent in locating the mission of Jesus entirely in the countryside, not within the poleis proper, and therefore outside the real limits of Hellenistic civilization. It seems to me inconceivable that this can be due to the evangelists themselves, who (as we have seen) were very likely to dignify an obscure village like Nazareth or Capernaum22 with the title of polis but would certainly not ‘down-grade’ a locality by making it a country district if in their source it appeared as a polis. I conclude, therefore, that in this respect the evangelists accurately reXect the 19 See Jos. BJ 3. 30–4; Vita 30, 38–9, 103–4, 124, 232, 346–8, 373, 394–7, 411. (Tiberias had quite an inXuential pro-Roman element: see Jos. Vita 32–42, 155 et seq., 381, 391; compare 82 etc.) 20 For Tiberias, see Jos. Vita 98–100, 381–9 (esp. 384), 392; for Sepphoris, 374, 384; compare 30, 375–80. [For Tiberias and Sepphoris, see Millar, Roman Near East, 358–9, 369–70.] 21 Opinions diVer greatly here, and none of the New Testament scholars I have read has an approach at all similar to mine. There is some good material in G. Schille, ‘Die Topographie des Markus-Evangeliums, ihre Hintergru¨nde u. ihre Einordnung’, in Zeitschrift des Deutschen Pala¨stina-Vereins, 73 (1957), pp. 133–66, but his interests too are quite diVerent from mine. 22 The well-known synagogue that has been excavated at Capernaum was built more than a hundred years after the time of Jesus. Josephus, in the whole of his works, makes no reference to Nazareth and at most two to Capernaum: BJ 3. 519 (a mere spring), and perhaps Vita 403 (the village of Kepharnokos).


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situation they found in their sources; and it seems to me that these sources are very likely indeed to have presented a true picture of the general locus of the activity of Jesus. Within a generation the message of Jesus had been transformed into what is sometimes described (perhaps not unfairly) as Pauline Christianity. This process cannot be understood by the historian (as distinct from the theologian) unless it is seen as the transfer of a whole system of ideas from the world of the cho¯ra to that of the polis23—a process necessarily involving the most profound changes in that system of ideas. And in my opinion it is in this process of transformation that the most serious problems of ‘Christian origins’ arise. Jesus, then, lived and taught within an area which was neither Greek nor Roman but wholly Jewish.24 As I mentioned earlier, Galilee, within which by far the greater part of the activity of Jesus apparently took place, was not even a Roman province during his lifetime: it was still a Roman ‘client kingdom’, until 39 part of the tetrarchy of Herod Antipas, the son of Herod the Great. Of course Jesus was well aware of the Roman imperial power that had already engulfed Judaea as a tributary province and could easily swallow up the remaining petty client kingdoms of Palestine whenever it wanted to. But he may well have had virtually no direct contact with the Roman imperial administration before his Wnal arrest and trial, on the pretence that he was a political agitator, indeed a ‘resistance leader’. Even the ‘publicans’ (publicani in Latin, telo¯nai in Greek) who crop up in the Gospels, such as Matthew (or Levi the son of Alpheus),25 will have been employed by Herod Antipas, the tetrarch, and not by the Roman governor of Judaea—who by the way at this date, as we know from a recently discovered inscription, had the title

23 See esp. n. 6 above. Here I should like to mention an excellent article which is relevant to the one aspect of this vast subject named in its title: Heinz Kreissig, ‘Zur sozialen Zusammenstellung der fru¨hchristlichen Gemeinde in ersten Jahrh. u.Z.’, in Eirene, 6 (1967), pp. 91–100. 24 This is best brought out, in my opinion, in the admirable recent book by Geza Vermes, Jesus the Jew: A Historian’s Reading of the Gospels (London, 1973): see esp. pp. 48–9. 25 In Mk. 2: 14 it is Levi the son of Alpheus, and Levi also in Lk. 5: 27, 29; in Mt. 9: 9 it is Matthew.

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not of procurator but of praefectus.26 How much contact Jesus had with Greek culture it is not possible to say, but I think it is likely to have been minimal. Now the Graeco-Roman world was obsessively concerned with wealth and status. In regard to the vast majority of the members of the upper classes whom we happen to know about from literary evidence or from honoriWc or funerary inscriptions or otherwise, it is of course their oYcial careers which are best known to us; we seldom have any details of their wealth.27 But wealth was by far the most important determinant of status. Ovid put it beautifully in three words: dat census honores, ‘it is property that confers rank’ (Amores iii. viii. 55). In the time of Jesus virtually all the great fortunes belonged to Romans rather than Greeks; but in the Greek world there had always been wide variations of wealth and poverty, and these had become much more pronounced now that the democracy which had Xourished in the Wfth and fourth centuries was gradually being extinguished by the joint eVorts of the Greek propertied classes and the Romans.28 The Greeks, from archaic times through the Classical and Hellenistic periods and on into the Roman age, habitually expressed political complexion and social status in a fascinating vocabulary which is an inextricable mixture of socio-economic and moral terminology, with two sets of terms applied more or less indiscriminately to the propertied and the non-propertied classes respectively. On the one hand we have not only words which mean property-owning, rich, fortunate, distinguished, well-born, inXuential,29 but also, as alternatives for virtually the same set of people, words having a basically 26 See Schu¨rer p. 358 and n. 22. [For the complex interaction between Roman emperors and their client kingdoms in the Levant during this period, see Millar, Roman Near East, ch. 2.] 27 Richard Duncan-Jones, The Economy of the Roman Empire: Quantitative Studies (Cambridge, 1974), gives a useful list of 29 of the largest fortunes known to us under the principate, ranging from HS 400 million to about 2 million (app. 7, pp. 343–4), and a detailed analysis of the wealth of one particular Roman of distinction whom we know much better than most: Pliny the Younger (cap. 1, pp. 17–32). 28 I shall explain how this happened in CSAGW. 29 For example ƒ a P Æ #

; ºØØ; Æ &Ø ; PÆ

; ª &æØØ;

Pª &Ø ; ª Æ&ØØ; ı Æ ; ı Æ&ÆØ.


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moral connotation and meaning literally the good, the best, the upright, the fair-minded and so forth.30 And on the other hand we Wnd applied to the lower classes, the poor, who are also the many, the mob, the populace, words with an inescapably moral quality, meaning essentially bad.31 Even Solon, often regarded as the founder of the Athenian democracy, could say in one of his poems that he had made laws equally for the kakos and the agathos32—for the ‘lower class’ and the ‘upper class’, of course, rather than ‘the bad’ and ‘the good’; but nothing could alter the social fact that the upper class were ‘the good’, the lower class ‘the bad’. The Roman governing class was as thoroughly devoted to property as the most wealth-conscious of the Greeks. No surviving Greek writer is quite as explicit about the overriding importance of property rights as Cicero, the earliest known to me in a long line of thinkers, extending into modern times, who have seen the protection of private property rights as the prime function of the state. In the De OYciis, for example, after asking what greater mischief there could be than an equal distribution of property (aequatio bonorum . . . qua peste quae potest esse maior?), Cicero goes on to declare that states were established above all with the aim of preserving property rights (ii.73, compare 78, 83–5; i.21). Let us now turn back to the Jewish world inhabited by Jesus. The contrast between Jewish and Graeco-Roman attitudes to questions of wealth and poverty comes out vividly in the account given in chapter 4 of Luke’s Gospel of the public preaching of Jesus at Nazareth. (The 30 For example ƒ IªÆŁ , ŒÆºd ŒIªÆŁ ; æ ; KŁº ; ¼æØØ; ºØØ; Ø&ÆØ; Ææ

; KØ ØŒ Ø& . I know of no detailed examination of the use of these Greek terms comparable to that of J. Hellegouarc’h, Le Vocabulaire latine des relations et des partis politiques sous la Re´publique2 (Paris, 1972), who studies the use of the corresponding Latin terms boni, optimi, optimates etc. on pp. 484–505, and the equivalent of those given in n. 31 below (for example plebs, populus, populares, mali, improbi etc.) on pp. 506–41. But see R. A. Neil, The Knights of Aristophanes (London, 1909), pp. 202–9, app. ii, ‘Political use of moral terms’. 31 For example (a) ƒ

(sometimes used almost in the sense of ‘the deserv& ing poor’), ¼æØ (the propertyless), ø ; (b) ƒ ºº ; e ºŁ ; › Zº ; & › ; ƒ ØŒ ; (c) ƒ ŒÆŒ ; Łæ ; æ ; Øº ; e Œ"ŒØ . Compare MacMullen, Roman Social Relations, app. B: ‘The Lexicon of Snobbery’, and the works there cited on p. 138. 32 Solon, fr. 24.18–20 (ed. E. Diehl, Anthologia Lyrica Graeca, i3. 45); compare fr. 23.19–21; fr. 1.33.

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part I am interested in does not occur in parallel accounts in the other synoptics.) Jesus reads from the 61st chapter of Isaiah, opening with the words, ‘the spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor’ (Lk. 4: 18). Now the word for ‘poor’ used here by Luke, as in the Septuagint version of Isaiah, is pto¯choi, a very strong word indeed, which very often in Greek means not just the poor but the down-and-out, the destitute, the beggar—Lazarus in the parable is a pto¯chos (Lk. 16: 20, 22). Classical scholars will remember the appearance of Poverty (Penia) as a character in the Plutus of Aristophanes (lines 415–612), and how angry she becomes when Chremylus refers to Penia and Ptocheia as sisters: no, says Penia, the pto¯chos has nothing, whereas her man, the pene¯s, may toil and scrape, but he has enough to live on (lines 548–54).32 a I must just mention here that although the word pto¯choi does also appear in the Septuagint version of Isaiah 61: 1, it there translates a Hebrew word which is sometimes better rendered—as indeed it is in the Authorized Version—by ‘the meek’. But this takes us into irrelevant questions, which I am anyway not competent to deal with, of the various shades of meaning of the Hebrew words expressing poverty, lowliness and the like. Some of these are as ambiguous as the English word ‘humble’, which can be purely social or purely moral or a mixture of the two. The only point I need make here is that in the Hebrew terminology, unlike the Greek, poverty and a lowly station in life are often associated with the moral virtues.33 But let us return to Jesus. In Matthew’s version of the Beatitudes, in the so-called ‘Sermon on the Mount’ (Mt. 5–7), Jesus is made to say ‘Blessed are hoi pto¯choi to¯i pneumati, the poor in spirit’ (we might say, ‘humble at heart’), ‘for theirs is the kingdom of heaven’; and ‘Blessed are those who hunger and thirst after righteousness, for they 32 a [For Christian conceptions of and attitudes to poverty and their impact on the secular classical world, see E. Patlagean, Pauvrete´ ećonomique et pauvrete´ sociale a` Byzance (Paris, 1977); P. Brown, Poverty and Leadership in the Later Roman Empire (Hanover, 2002).] 33 Perhaps it will be suYcient if I merely give a few references to the massive work of S. W. Baron, A Social and Religious History of the Jews, which cites much modern literature: i2 (New York, 1952 and repr.) pp. 152 (with 364 n. 25), 262–7, 278 (with 414 n. 36); ii2 (1952 and repr.) pp. 46, 241–2, 256, 269–74. See below, n. 33a.


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shall be Wlled’ (5: 3, 6); but Luke’s corresponding version, in the ‘Sermon on the Plain’ (6: 17–49), has simply ‘Blessed are ye poor’ (pto¯choi, without qualiWcation), ‘for yours is the Kingdom of God’, and ‘Blessed are ye that hunger now’ (not ‘hunger after righteousness’), ‘for ye shall be Wlled’ (6: 20–1). In both cases, of course, the fulWlment of the blessings is intended eschatologically: they will be realized not in this world but only in the Age to Come. And even the Lucan version is echoing the large number of passages in the Old Testament (especially in the Psalms, Isaiah, Proverbs and Job) in which the poor and lowly as such are treated with special reverence— several diVerent Hebrew expressions are involved. In the thoughtworld of Palestinian Judaism, out of which Jesus came, it was not so much the rich and inXuential from whom the moral virtues were to be expected, as in the Graeco-Roman world, but the poor. An illuminating recent treatment of the Beatitudes by David Flusser33 a shows interesting connections with some of the literature of the Dead Sea sect. Although Flusser is sure that it is Mt. 5: 3–5 which ‘faithfully preserves the saying of Jesus and that Luke 6: 20 is an abbreviation of the original text’, he nevertheless insists that ‘Matthew’s ‘‘poor in spirit’’ also has a social content’.34 The main element in the preaching of Jesus was the message, ‘repent, for the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand’. The meaning of this is that the end of the whole present dispensation is near: God will intervene and bring to a speedy end all the powers of this world. In preparation for these earth-shaking events men must repent of their sins and obey the law of God. In another sense of the expression ‘Kingdom of Heaven’ (or ‘Kingdom of God’), that kingdom is within man’s power to grasp now:34 a if he repents and follows the right way of life, he can to that extent enter into the kingdom even before the 33 a D. Flusser, ‘Blessed Are the Poor in Spirit’, in Israel Exploration Jnl, 10 (1960), pp. 1–13. I agree with Vermes p. 241 n. 53 that Adolph Bu¨chler, Types of JewishPalestinian Piety from 70 B.C.E. to 70 C.E. (Oxford, 1922), is ‘a rich mine of information rather than a valid historico-critical assessment of the data’. 34 p. 11, compare pp. 6–8. 34 a Particularly interesting is the article by C. H. Roberts, ‘The Kingdom of Heaven (Lk. XVII.21)’, in Harvard Theological Review, 41 (1948), pp. 1–8, showing that the & in Lk. 17: 21 is most likely to mean that the much-disputed expression K e 'ø kingdom is ‘within your power’ (‘It is a present reality if you wish it to be so’, p. 8), rather than ‘within you’ or ‘among you’.

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Wnal cataclysm. Various consequences follow from this. One of the most important is that the possession of wealth is a positive hindrance to entering into the kingdom. ‘It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the Kingdom of God’, said Jesus, after the man seeking eternal life who ‘had great possessions’ had gone away disconsolate on being told to sell all that he had and give it to the poor.35 (Incidentally, this story is commonly referred to nowadays as that of ‘The Rich Young Man’, and that is certainly what Matthew calls him; but Mark and Luke make it clear that in their minds young is what he is not!)36 There is one respect in which Matthew’s account diVers radically from that of the other two synoptics: Matthew (19: 21) inserts into the command of Jesus the qualiWcation, ‘If you would be perfect’ (ei theleis teleios einai), which is not in Mark (10: 21) or Luke (18: 22); and, as we shall see presently, it is in Matthew’s formulation that the passage is invariably quoted by the early Fathers.37 Luke (16: 19–31) is the only evangelist to give us the parable of Lazarus—who, as I said earlier, is speciWcally a pto¯chos, here quite rightly translated ‘beggar’. Expositors seldom bring out the fact that the terrible fate of the rich man (Dives, as we usually call him) is clearly seen as a direct result of his great wealth, for he feels (verses 27–8) that Lazarus alone will be able to teach his Wve surviving brothers how to avoid a similar fate. I need not cite any of the 35 Mk. 10: 17–31; Mt. 19: 16–30; Lk. 18: 18–30. For an interesting variant, see the extract from the so-called Gospel according to the Hebrews, quoted for example by Albert Huck, Synopsis of the First Three Gospels (9th edn., rev. by H. Lietzmann, English edn. by F. L. Cross, Oxford, 1957), p. 145 n., from E. Klostermann and E. ¨ berlieferung der Matthaüserkla¨rung des Origenes ¼ TU 47, 2 (1931), pp. Benz, Zur U 91–2; there is an English trans. in M. R. James, The Apocryphal New Testament (Oxford, 1924 and repr.), p. 6. [See also J. K. Elliott, The Apocryphal New Testament: A Collection of Apocryphal Christian Literature in an English Translation based on M. R. James (Oxford, 1993), 10–11.] 36 In Mark and Luke he says he has observed the commandments KŒ : it is Matthew who calls him › Æ Œ . Incidentally, it is only Mark (10: 21) who says that Jesus ‘loved him’ (or is it ‘caressed him’?). 37 For a desperate attempt by a modern Christian scholar to retain, here and in the Beatitudes, the Matthaean version in preference, although realizing that the other is much more likely to be the historically true one, see Christophe pp. 37–8. Would it be unfair to paraphrase his exegesis by saying that Mark and Luke have what Jesus more probably said, Matthew what a modern Christian feels he must surely have meant?


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other evidence38 showing that the possession of any substantial amount of property was regarded by Jesus as a positive evil, because it was only too likely to ensnare its possessor and divert him from the primary task of seeking the Kingdom of God. There is just one other New Testament passage, again in Luke alone, which I wish to mention: the MagniWcat.39 Here we Wnd an interesting variant on the eschatological conception we have noticed already, according to which in the Age to Come the poor and hungry will be satisWed. We are still within the realm of eschatology, but the desired result is now conceived—in one form of the tradition of Jewish apocalyptic—as having been in some mysterious way achieved already. ‘He hath put down the mighty from their seats and hath exalted them of low degree. He hath Wlled the hungry with good things and the rich he hath sent empty away.’ In the Greek the ‘mighty’ are the dynastai, and Thomas Hardy took his title, ‘The Dynasts’, explicitly from this passage.40 In fact nothing of the sort had actually happened: the dynasts were now more Wrmly in control than ever, as the Roman principate began its long era of power. The picture in the MagniWcat, in which the events are represented as having in a mystical sense occurred already, was a pleasantly harmless one from the point of view of the dynasts, who certainly cashed the blank cheque Saint Paul later wrote them when he said, ‘The powers that be are ordained of God’, and enjoined strict obedience to the civil authorities.41 38 Cadoux pp. 61–6 quotes as usual all the texts, even if his interpretations cannot always be accepted. 39 Lk. 1: 46–55 (esp. 52–3). See Joseph Vogt, ‘Ecce ancilla domini’, in Vigiliae Christianae, 23 (1969), pp. 241–63, repr. in Vogt Sklaverei u. Humanita¨t (2nd edn. ¼ Historia, Einzelschr. 8, 1972), pp. 147–64, 168. 40 See Thomas Hardy, The Dynasts, After Scene (p. 522 of the ‘Papermac’ edition 1965), where the Semi-chorus 1 of the Pities has the line, ‘Who hurlest Dynasts from their thrones’, and Hardy quotes the Greek of the MagniWcat in a footnote. The term dynaste¯s, in the sense of a chief or prince, occurs from the 5th century bc onwards (see for example Thuc. vii. 33.4), and in the Hellenistic period becomes almost a technical term for the ruler who is not actually a king. Thus in oYcial formulae referring to ruling authorities, dynasts are linked with kings, cities and peoples (ethne¯), in various combinations: see for example OGIS 229.11; 383.172–3, 228–9; 441.129–30, 131–2; SIG3 581.64; Diod. xix.57.3. 41 Rom. 13: 1–7; Titus 3: 1; compare 1 Pet. 2: 13–17; 1 Tim. 2: 1–2. There has been a long controversy over the nature of the ‘powers’ (exousiai) to whom every soul is

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I shall waste little time on the so-called ‘communism’ of the earliest apostolic community, which appears only momentarily in the opening chapters of Acts, while the Christian church was a single small body,42 and then ceases altogether, to reappear only within single monastic communities from the early fourth century onwards. This situation, which was already characteristic of certain Essene and other communities among the Jews,43 is entirely absent from the remainder of the New Testament, and even in the early chapters of commanded to be subject, in Rom. 13: 1. It should be suYcient to refer to Clinton D. Morrison, The Powers That Be (¼ Studies in Biblical Theology no. 29 (1960) ), who has exhaustive bibliographies. The reader should be warned, however, that the author is a theologian and not a historian, and that some of his statements are such as no ancient historian could accept—for example p. 125: ‘Since the State was part of the cosmic order established by the Ruler of All . . . the ancients considered subjection to the State a religious duty, and anarchy was synonymous with atheism. Wise and godly men had no alternative but submission to this order, and no doubt the Christian conscience was largely tempered by this common understanding.’ Apologists for Paul must try to do better than this. 42 Acts 2: 44–5; 4: 32–7; 5: 1–11; cf. Jn. 12: 6; 13: 29. I need refer only to Rudolf Bultmann, Theology of the New Testament (trans. K. Grobel; New York, 1952 and repr.), i, p. 62: ‘It is self-evident that in an eschatological congregation awaiting the near end of the world no special economic system was set up. What is often called the community of property in the earliest Church on the basis of Acts 2: 45; 4: 34 V. is in reality a practical sharing of property on the basis of love. To call this actual communism is out of the question, for it lacks both a social programme and organized production.’ 43 For the ancient Greek and Latin texts relating to the Essenes, see Antike Berichte ¨ bungen, no. 182 u¨ber die Essener, ed. Alfred Adam ¼ Kleine Texte fu¨r Vorlesung und U (Berlin, 1961; new edn. by C. Burchard, Berlin, 1972). There is of course a large literature on the Essenes: see the select bibliography in vol. 9 of the Loeb edition of Josephus, by L. H. Feldman (1965), app. D, pp. 561–3. This has been growing since the appearance of the ‘Dead Sea Scrolls’, emanating (in my view) either from the Essenes themselves or from a closely related sect. For a useful recent bibliography dealing with all the recent discoveries in the Judaean desert, see Schu¨rer i, pp. 118–22. G. Vermes, The Dead Sea Scrolls (Penguin, 1962 and repr.) is the best English version: see esp. pp. 29–30. And compare R. de Vaux, Archaeology and the Dead Sea Scrolls (London, 1973), esp. 129–30. Doubtless Jewish inXuences also lie behind such passages in the ‘Apostolic Fathers’ as Didache 4.8 (contrast 1.5–6; 4.9, 11); Hermes, Shepherd, Vision iii.vi.6 (contrast for example Mandate ii.4–6; Similitude ii.5–10); Barnabas 19.8. [The subsequent bibliography on the Essenes and the Dead Sea Scrolls is very substantial; see, for example, E. Schu¨rer, The History of the Jewish People in the Age of Jesus Christ, iii, rev. Engl. trans. by G. Vermes et al. (Edinburgh, 1986), 380–469; J. A. Fitzmyer, The Dead Sea Scrolls: Major Publications and Tools for Study (Atlanta, 1990); and from a diVerent perspective, P. F. Esler, The First Christians in their Social Worlds (London, 1994), ch. 5.]


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Acts it is clear that communal ownership was not complete, and in any event had nothing to do with communal production. Later references which have sometimes been taken wrongly as evidence of a continuance of community of property are no more than idealizations of a situation in which charity is conceived as complete, as when Tertullian says, ‘omnia indiscreta sunt apud nos, praeter uxores’ [‘Among us all things are held in common, with the exception of wives’] (Apol. 39.11), or when Justin boasts that Christians share all their property with one another (I Apol. xiv.2). At this point, before I go on to consider the attitude of the fathers to the question of property-ownership, I want to turn aside and deal with early Christian attitudes to the speciWc problem of slavery, which of course is partly one aspect of the larger question of property in general, for slaves ranked very high indeed among the forms of property considered essential for the good life in classical antiquity. The main organizational diVerence between the economy of the ancient world and our own is that in antiquity the propertied classes derived their surplus, which enabled them to live as they pleased, not from the exploitation of free wage labour (which was relatively rare and was never of any great importance in the economy) but from unfree labour44—that of chattel slaves above all, but also to some extent that of serfs (such as the Spartan helots or the majority of the coloni of the later Roman empire) or of debt-bondsmen. Of course, a very large part of both agricultural production and manufacture was carried on by small independent peasants and artisans; but anyone who wanted to live as a gentleman and have time to spend on such things as politics or philosophy45 or just a life of pleasure would have to rely mainly on exploiting slave labour. (There was hardly any alternative, except the letting of land or houses to tenants.) Now of course in a class society, especially one resting largely on servile labour, the governing class will have to keep the threat of force up its sleeve, to ensure the subservience of those at whose expense it 44 I shall have a great deal to say about this in CSAGW and can omit the evidence here. [For slavery at Rome, see Class Struggle, ch. 3.4; K. R. Bradley, Slavery and Society at Rome (Cambridge, 1994).] 45 According to Arist. Pol. i.7, 1255 b35–7, such a man would not even trouble himself with the supervision of his slaves but would entrust it to an overseer.

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lives; and the Greeks, and even more the Romans, could treat refractory slaves with extreme harshness. During the debate in the Roman senate in 61, on whether there should be the traditional mass execution of all the four hundred urban slaves of Pedanius Secundus, the Praefectus Urbi, who had been murdered by one of his slaves, the conservative lawyer Gaius Cassius told the nervous senators, ‘You will not restrain that scum except by terror’; and the execution was duly carried out, in spite of a vigorous protest by the common people of Rome, who demonstrated violently for the relaxation of the savage ancient rule—which, incidentally, was still the law in the legislation of the Christian emperor Justinian Wve centuries later.46 But a ruling class seldom tries to rule by force alone; some kind of ideology is usually devised which both justiWes the privileged position of the rulers and also seeks to persuade the ruled that the existing state of aVairs is only right and proper and is even in their ‘own best interests’. Two main types of philosophical justiWcation of slavery were constructed by the Greeks and Romans.47 The Wrst, the famous theory of ‘natural slavery’, which is implicit in Plato’s thought and fully developed by Aristotle, grew naturally out of the historical fact that most Greek slaves in the classical period were barbaroi—strictly, non-Greeks, but ‘barbarians’ is normally used as the translation of the corresponding Greek and Latin words, as it is so convenient in practice, if often technically incorrect. Aristotle’s theory was based upon the proposition, which he regarded as self-evident, that certain people (including virtually all barbarians) are slaves by nature, in the sense that they are actually better oV when subjected to a master: for 46 The story is given by Tac. Ann. xiv.42–3. It is strange that some standard works, such as W. W. Buckland, The Roman Law of Slavery (Cambridge, 1908), pp. 95 etc., and W. L. Westermann, The Slave Systems of Greek and Roman Antiquity ¼ Mem. Amer. Philos. Soc. 40 (1955), p. 82, speak of the S. C. Silanianum as ordering only the torture of the murdered master’s slave household. It is quite clear that if they failed to give aid to their murdered master (whether killed by a fellow-slave or anyone else), all those slaves sub eodem tecto were held to be guilty and were not merely tortured but executed: see CJ vi. xxxv.12 (Justinian, ad 532); and many passages in Dig. XXIX.v, for example 1. §§ 18, 21, 22, 26, 27, 28, 31, 33; 3. §§ 16, 17; 14; and esp. 19. Many heirs must have been very angry at being thus robbed of valuable property! 47 My treatment of this subject here is somewhat over-simpliWed, and I have cited little ancient evidence; but there is a rather fuller analysis in my [The Class Struggle in the Ancient Greek World: From the Archaic Age to the Arab Conquests (1981; corr. imprint, London, 1983), 416–18].


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such a person, slavery is both beneWcial and just. The essential view of Plato and Aristotle was nicely expressed, more vividly than by either of them, by the Virginian slaveowner, George Fitzhugh, in 1854: ‘Some men are born with saddles on their backs, and others booted and spurred to ride them; and the riding does them good’!48 (Fitzhugh, of course, was quoting, and contradicting, some famous words spoken on the scaVold in 1685 by the English radical, Richard Rumbold.)49 One passage in Aristotle’s Politics that is particularly interesting is the one containing the advice that all slaves should be oVered the reward of ultimate emancipation (vii.10, 1330 a32–3): Aristotle promises to give his reasons later, but unfortunately never does so. If we read this advice with earlier passages explaining how the slave can beneWt from his association with his master, we may see a fairly precise parallel, at the individual level, with the theory of the ‘tutelage of backward nations’, one of the main planks in the ideology of modern western imperialism. The other type of philosophical justiWcation of slavery, which is particularly associated with the Stoics, has its antecedent in a statement in the Politics of Aristotle (i.6, 1255 a25–6), which denies the very name of slave to the man who does not deserve to be in a condition of slavery—or, as we might say, denies that the man who does not deserve to be in slavery is ‘really’ a slave at all. This, and not the theory of ‘natural slavery’, became the standard view of thinking slaveowners in Hellenistic and Roman times. Even before Aristotle wrote there had been protests against the hypothesis of ‘natural’ slavery50 and even against the assumption that barbarians are naturally inferior to Greeks. Indeed, the theory of ‘natural slavery’ is not at all prominent in antiquity after Aristotle’s time, and when it does reappear it is mainly applied to peoples rather than individuals.51 48 George Fitzhugh, Sociology for the South, or the Failure of Free Society (Richmond, Va., 1854), p. 179. 49 See The Good Old Cause. The English Revolution of 1640–1660, Its Causes, Course and Consequences2. Extracts from contemporary sources, ed. Christopher Hill and Edmund Dell (2nd edn., rev. 1969), p. 474. 50 See my The Origins of the Peloponnesian War, p. 45. 51 As it had sometimes been earlier, for example in Arist. Pol. vii.14, 1333 b38 V., esp. 1334 a2. [For discussion of Aristotle’s concept of natural slavery within the context of his overall philosophy, see F. D. Miller, ‘Naturalism’, in C. Rowe and M. SchoWeld (eds.), The Cambridge History of Greek and Roman Political Thought (Cambridge, 2000), 320–43, at 332–6.]

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This may be in a merely rhetorical context, as when Cicero stigmatizes Jews and Syrians as ‘peoples born for slavery’ (De Prov. Cons. 10), but we also Wnd it seriously stated by a speaker in Cicero’s dialogue De Republica (iii.25/37) that a nation can beneWt from being in a state of complete political subjection (servitus) to another.52 There were, however, some distant but powerful echoes of the ‘natural slavery’ theory in much later times, when it played a highly signiWcant role in Christian Spain in the controversy concerning the rightfulness of enslaving negroes, and the Indians of the Caribbean and of central and south America, in the Wfteenth century onwards. At the great debate ordered by Charles V at Valladolid in 1550, to decide whether Christian Spaniards might lawfully wage war upon Indians and enslave them, before even preaching the faith to them, Aristotle’s doctrine was accepted in principle by both the leading disputants: the great scholar Juan Gines de Sepu´lveda and the Franciscan friar Bartolome´ de las Casas. (The main book in English on this topic, upon which I am relying here, bears the delightful title, Aristotle and the American Indians.)53 The main point of disagreement, it seems, was simply the factual question whether or not the Indians were ‘natural slaves’; it was hardly questioned that negroes were. In the Hellenistic period onwards, Greek and Roman thought on the subject of slavery, with hardly an exception, provides a set of uninspired variations on a single theme: that the state of slavery— like poverty and war, or liberty, riches and peace—is the result of accident, of Fortune rather than of Nature, and that it is a matter of indiVerence, aVecting externals only; that the good and wise man is never ‘really’ a slave, even if that happens to be his actual condition, but is ‘really’ free; that it is the bad man who is ‘really’ a slave, because he is in bondage to his own lusts—a wonderfully comforting set of doctrines for slaveowners. (I fancy that such austere philosophical notions are of greater assistance in the endurance of liberty, riches

52 The source of Cic. De Rep. iii.24/36 to 25/37, ed. K. Ziegler (6th edn., 1964) is often said to be Panaetius, but I agree with H. Strasburger, ‘Poseidonios on Problems of the Roman Empire’, in JRS 55 (1965), pp. 40–53 (esp. pp. 44–5 and n. 50) that this is unjustiWed. 53 It is by Lewis Hanke (London, 1959).


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and peace than of slavery, poverty and war.) Ingenious developments can be found of this or that aspect of the standard view I have just described, and of course some authors emphasize one aspect of it, others another; but there is a general dreary similarity of sentiment. I think the fourteenth oration of Dio Chrysostom is probably the most entertaining example I know of this kind of perverse ingenuity. It is often said that Christianity introduced an entirely new and better attitude towards slavery. Nothing could be more false: Jesus accepted slavery as a fact of his environment,54 just as it is accepted in the Old Testament; and his followers accepted and adapted the prevailing Graeco-Roman view which I have just described. The signiWcance of the oft-quoted text in Colossians (3: 11), ‘There is neither Greek nor Jew, circumcision nor uncircumcision, barbarian, Scythian, bond nor free’ is better understood in the light of the parallel text in Galatians (3: 28): ‘There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female; for ye are all one in Christ Jesus’. There is ‘neither bond nor free’ in exactly the same sense as there is ‘neither male nor female’: these statements are true in a strictly spiritual sense; the equality exists ‘in the sight of God’ and has no relation whatever to temporal aVairs. The distinction between slave and master in this world is no more seen as needing to be changed than that between male and female. For Saint Paul, Jesus has set all his followers free—from the Xesh and all its works.55 The exhortation to the Christian slave to regard himself as ‘Christ’s freedman’ (in the same sense that the Christian who is a free man is ‘Christ’s slave’, 1 Cor. 7: 22) may well have aVorded him greater spiritual comfort than the pagan slave could obtain from the familiar philosophic view that if he was a good man he was ‘really’ free already; but it was basically the same view. And if, 54 See esp. Lk. 17: 7–9 (addressing potential slaveowners); also Mk. 12: 2–5 (¼ Lk. 20: 10–12; compare Mt. 21: 34–6); 13: 34; Mt. 10: 24–5; 13: 27–8; 18: 23 V.; 22: 3–10 (compare Lk. 14: 17–23); 24: 45–51; 25: 14–30 (compare Lk. 19: 13–22); Lk. 12: 37–8; 43–8; 15: 22, 26; and other texts. [For an important discussion of the limitations to Christian radicalism in the ancient world, including on the question of the propriety of slavery, see P. Garnsey and C. Humfress, The Evolution of the Late Antique World (Cambridge, 2001), ch. 9, esp. pp. 206–10.] 55 See for example Bultmann i, pp. 243–5, 246, 249, 331–3, 340–3; ii. pp. 205, 214, compare 230–1.

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as by philosophic pagans, Christian masters are brieXy enjoined to treat their slaves fairly,56 the yoke of slavery is fastened even more Wrmly upon Christian slaves as the emphasis on obedience to their masters becomes even more absolute. Certain phrases in the Pauline epistles,57 such as that in Ephesians (6: 5), exhorting slaves to obey their masters ‘with fear and trembling, in singleness of heart, as unto Christ’, had sinister implications which were made explicit in two post-apostolic works, the Epistle of Barnabas (19.7) and the Didache (4.11): they expressly tell the slave that he must serve his master ‘as a counterpart of God’ (ho¯s typo¯i theou), ‘in reverence and fear’. I know of nothing that goes as far as that in pagan literature. Whatever the theologian may think of Christianity’s claim to set free the soul of the slave, therefore, the historian cannot deny that it helped to rivet the shackles rather more Wrmly on his feet.58 It performed the same social function as the fashionable philosophies of the Graeco-Roman world, and perhaps with deeper eVect: it made the slave both more content to endure his earthly lot, and more tractable and obedient. Saint Ignatius, in his Epistle to Polycarp (4.3), is anxious that Christian slaves should be neither despised nor ‘puVed up’ 56 In the New Testament, the only relevant passages I can Wnd are Coloss. 4: 1; Ephes. 6: 9; also Philem. 10 V. (esp. 16–18), a special case, Onesimus having been converted by Paul (10). [Ste. Croix expanded his thought on Gal. 3: 28 in one of the chapters for his projected volume on ‘Early Christian Attitudes to Women, Sex and Marriage’, although the essence of his argument, that the Pauline text must be interpreted solely in a spiritual sense, is encapsulated here. Much of the longer version was to be occupied with arguments against modern feminist theologians whose views, in Ste. Croix’s judgement, lacked proper historical grounding.] 57 See Ephes. 6: 5–8; Coloss. 3: 22–4; 1 Tim. 6: 1–2; Titus 2: 9–10; 1 Pet. 2: 18–20. Compare 1 Cor. 7: 20–4: here there has been much dispute about the meaning of vv. 20–1, which must certainly be taken as an injunction against seeking manumission, both because of the ei kai (‘even if ’: the force of this is missed in the Authorized Version and by many commentators) and because of the gar at the beginning of v. 22. The sense is, ‘Let each man remain in the calling (occupation) wherein he was called (converted to Christianity). Were you a slave when you were called (converted)? Don’t let it concern you; but even if you are able to become free, be content with your present condition, for he who was called in the Lord (converted), being a slave, is the Lord’s freedman; similarly, he who was called being a free man is a slave of Christ’. Paul’s point is that the believer’s earthly condition, as slave or free, is of no importance. 58 In his article, ‘Slavery, Christian’, in Hastings’ Encyclopaedia of Religion and Ethics, II (London, 1920 and repr.), p. 604a, L. D. Agate felt obliged to admit that the Church tended, ‘owing to its excessive care for the rights of the masters, even to perpetuate what would otherwise have passed away’. I doubt, however, if slavery would have ‘passed away’ any earlier in the absence of Christianity.


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(me¯ physioustho¯san); that they should ‘serve the more, to the glory of God’; and that they should ‘not wish to be set free at the public cost, lest they become slaves of lust’. (I confess that I Wnd the last phrase somewhat inconsequential, nor can I see exactly how an even more intense degree of labour on the part of the slave can enhance the glory of God.) The Wfth Canon of the Council of Elvira (in the late third century or the early fourth) punished with no more than seven years’ excommunication even the intentional Xogging to death by a woman of her slave-girl—perhaps one who had received the sexual attentions of the woman’s husband.58 a And baptism seems to have been refused to a slave by at least some churches without the consent of his master—perhaps only at Wrst if a Christian one,59 but later even if a pagan.60 Such a sacriWce of the immortal soul of a would-be Christian slave to the property-rights of a master seems to me indefensible on Christian premises. The situation changed not at all when Christianity succeeded to the seats of power in the fourth century, and the Church61 assumed a position even in the public life of the Roman empire of the fourth and following centuries which I can only compare, functionally, with the role of what President Eisenhower called ‘the military-industrial complex’ in the United States today.61 a Saint Augustine at least admitted that slavery was an evil in principle; but with that extraordinary perverse ingenuity which never ceases to astonish one, he saw it as God’s punishment upon mankind for the sin of Adam.62 (It did 58 a [For the date of Elvira, see Ch. 2 above.] 59 See Hippol. Apost. Trad. 15 (ed. Bernard Botte, Hippolyte de Rome: La tradition apostolique d’apre`s les anciennes versions2 ¼ SC 11 b, 2nd edn., 1968) ¼ xvi. 4 in the English trans. by Gregory Dix, The Treatise on the Apostolic Tradition of St. Hippolytus of Rome2 (1968, 2nd edn. rev. by H. Chadwick). The date of the Apost. Trad. is very close to 215. 60 Can. Hippol. x. 63 (pp. 76–7, ed. H. Achelis, TU 6, 4, 1891); compare the Arabic version, with a French trans., in R. G. Coquin, Les Canons d’Hippolyte ¼ PO 31, 2 (1966), can. 10, p. 95 ¼ 363. 61 Strictly, the expression ‘the Church’ is a theological rather than a historical concept, for the Christians were never anything like a united body, and each sect (including of course the Catholics) had a habit of denying the very name of Christian to all ‘heretics’ and ‘schismatics’—that is to say, those who were not within its communion. But the expression is too convenient to be abandoned entirely. 61 a [For this comparison, cf. Ch. 5, p. 202 n.5] 62 Aug., esp. CD xix. xv–xvi. [By contrast, Gregory of Nyssa, in the passages from his Fourth Homily on Ecclesiastes 2: 7 quoted by Garnsey and Humfress, Evolution,

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not occur to him that it might be thought blasphemous to attribute to an all-just Deity such a singularly indiscriminate method of collective punishment.) In thus suggesting that ‘justly was the burden of servitude laid upon the back of transgression’ Augustine represented slavery as something divinely ordained, and gave the institution an even weightier justiWcation than it had ever received from pre-Christian thinkers since the days when theories of ‘natural slavery’ were abroad. Indeed, Augustine and Ambrose went so far as to think that slavery could actually be good for the slave, an instructive form of correction and a blessing even63—for, as Ambrose put it, ‘the lower the station in life, the more exalted the virtue’.64 I have not been able to Wnd in any early Christian writer anything like a demand for the abandonment of slavery or even for a general freeing of existing slaves. The nearest thing I know to this is in one of the Hymns on the Nativity (surviving only in Syriac) of Ephraim of Nisibis and Edessa in Mesopotamia: here Ephraim makes Mary say, ‘Let the man who owns a slave give him his freedom’.65 But immediately there follow the words, ‘so that he may come and serve his Lord’; and in one of his Hymns on the Epiphany Ephraim makes it clear that in his eyes it is through baptism that the slave and the free man are equated66—the standard Christian view. I have not even been able to discover any attack on slavery in heretical works, comparable to the Pelagian onslaught on riches which I shall mention presently. At least two Christian scholars of modern times, C. J. Cadoux and 207, asserted that slavery was a sin of pride against God since it had not existed in the Garden of Eden and contravened God’s hierarchy of creation. But, as Garnsey and Humfress note, Gregory’s line of argument is exceptional.] 63 Aug. CD xix.xv; Ambr. Ep. 77.6 (‘is qui regere se non potest et gubernare, servire debet . . . pro benedictione igitur huiusmodi confertur servitus’ [‘those who cannot control and govern themselves ought to be slaves . . . and so servitude of this type is given as a blessing’ ¼ M. M. Beyenka, Saint Ambrose, Letters (Fathers of the Church 26; New York, 1954), 47]. 64 Ambr. Ep. 2.19 (‘quo status inferior, eo virtus eminentior’ [‘the more lowly their status the more exalted their virtue’, Beyenka 15]). Among other passages in Ambrose dealing with slavery, see Ep. 37 passim [Beyenka 54]; 63.112 [Beyenka 59]; 75.4–5 [Beyenka 69]. 65 Ephraem Syrus, Hymn. de Nativ. xvii.8, p. 80, in the German trans. of E. Beck, CSCO 187 (¼ Syr. 83), 1959. For this and the passage cited in the next note, see Vogt pp. 161–2. 66 Ephraem Syrus, Hymn. de Epiph. iv.6–8 (p. 143).


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R. M. Grant,67 have declared that the gnostic Acts of Thomas 68 attack the very institution of slavery on the ground that all men are equal before God. In the text I see nothing of the sort, but only an expression of sympathy for slaves whose masters lay burdens on them as brute beasts and refuse to treat them as men like themselves. In the Roman lawyers (apparently pagans to a man), from the second or third century of the Christian era to the sixth, we sometimes Wnd the admission that slavery was contra naturam, iuri naturali contraria.69 (Slavery indeed seems to have been regarded by at least some of the lawyers as the only feature of the ius gentium that did not form part of ius naturale.)70 This is a line of thought that can be traced right back to the unnamed thinkers of the Wfth or fourth century bc who are said by Aristotle to have declared that slavery, because it was based on force, was contrary to nature and wrong—not merely ‘not according to nature’ (ou kata physin) but ‘contrary to nature’ (para physin), a signiWcant diVerence.71 This line of thought may or may not have descended to the Roman lawyers through the Stoics. Certainly some Stoics—the ex-slave Epictetus, for example72—may occasionally have spoken as if they actually disapproved in principle of possessing slaves. But this is all ultimately unreal, part of the smokescreen of plausible ideas by which the more fastidious thinkers of antiquity concealed from themselves the unpalatable truth about a ruthless world of which they were trying to make the best they could, according to their lights. The unreality of all this talk emerges most clearly from Epictetus’s description of the 67 Cadoux p. 454 (with the Greek text in n. 5); R. M. Grant, Augustus to Constantine: The Thrust of the Christian Movement into the Roman World (London, 1971), p. 301. 68 Act. Thom. 83, in Acta Apostolorum Apocrypha ii.ii.198–9, ed. M. Bonnet (Leipzig, 1903). There is a good English trans. in James at p. 402. [For the Syriac version, with Engl. trans., see A. F. J. Klijn, The Acts of Thomas: Introduction, Text, and Commentary (2nd edn., Leiden, 2003).] 69 Dig. i.v.4.1 (Florentinus); xii.vi.64 (Tryphoninus); i.i.4 (Ulpian); Inst. J. i.ii.2. 70 See H. F. Jolowicz and Barry Nicholas, Historical Introduction to the Study of Roman Law3 (Cambridge, 1972), pp. 106–7. 71 See my The Origins of the Peloponnesian War, p. 45. 72 See Gnomologium Epicteteum 36–7 (pp. 486–7 in H. Schenkl’s Teubner text of Epictetus, 1916) ¼ fr. 42–3 Schweighaüser. [Although it is very unlikely that this collection of aphorisms preserves genuine words of Epictetus, this does not aVect Ste. Croix’s point that a Stoic expressing ‘Epictetan’ views articulated this opinion.]

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ex-slave who ends up by becoming a senator: he is then subject, says Epictetus, to ‘the fairest and sleekest slavery of all’!73 If being a senator was slavery, it was slavery in a Pickwickian sense, a kind of slavery which the vast majority of the population of the GraecoRoman world would have embraced eagerly enough.72 a In early Christian thought, then, I have been able to Wnd little or nothing that goes even as far in rejecting slavery as the purely theoretical statements of the Roman lawyers to the eVect that it is ‘contrary to nature’. And at this point I must mention one thing that has long puzzled me. I realize that on Christian principles a good case can perhaps be made for accepting the condition of slavery for the slave, in the way that Stoics and Epicureans accepted it, as well as Saint Paul and so many of the other early Christians, as something external and unimportant. This is so, even for those who might not go all the way with Cardinal Newman when he declared that according to the teaching of his church ‘it were better for sun and moon to drop from heaven, for the earth to fail, and for all the many millions who are upon it to die of starvation in extremest agony, as far as temporal aZiction goes, than that one soul, I will not say, should be lost, but should commit one single venial sin, should tell one wilful untruth, though it harmed no one, or steal one poor farthing without excuse.’74 But what of slavery as it aVects the master? Surely the Christian who prays not to be ‘led into temptation’ should proceed to renounce the total irresponsible domination over fellow human beings which belongs to the master of slaves and is only too likely to lead him (as we know it did) into the gravest temptation, to commit acts of cruelty and lust? I do not know when this was Wrst realized; but it was evident to the genius of Tolstoy, who in a remarkable passage in War and Peace makes Prince Andrey tell Pierre that what is most evil about serfdom is its eVect upon those masters who have the power to punish their serfs as they please, and who, in doing so, ‘stiXe their remorse and become hardened’.75 I can only conclude that what 72 a [For discussion of Stoic views of slavery, see Bradley, Slavery, 134–40; P. Garnsey, Ideas of Slavery from Aristotle to Augustine (Cambridge, 1995), ch. 9.] 73 Epict. Diss. iv.i.40, p. 360, ed. H. Schenkl (1916). 74 J. H. Newman, Lectures on certain DiVerences felt by Anglicans in submitting to the Catholic Church (London, 1850), p. 199; (new and rev. edn., Dublin, 1857), p. 190. 75 The conversation occurs in book V, during Pierre’s visit to Andrey at Bogucharovo.


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prevented the Christian church from admitting the dangerous, brutalizing eVect of slavery (and serfdom) upon masters was the irresistible force of social reality—what I would call, with Marx, the class struggle:75 a the absolute necessity for the dominant classes of the Graeco-Roman world to maintain those social institutions upon which their whole privileged position depended, and which they were not willing, or even able, to forgo. I cannot speak from personal knowledge of Christian literature much after the sixth century; but I would say that I know of no absolute condemnation of slavery as an institution by any Christian writer during the Middle Ages: statements I have seen quoted from Theodore the Studite, Smaragdus Abbas and others always have some particular limited application.76 I dare say it is only my own ignorance, but I know of no general, outright condemnation of slavery inspired by a Christian outlook, before the petition of the Mennonites of Germantown in Pennsylvania in 168877—a sect very like the Quakers, outside the main stream of Christianity. Christian writers have often emphasized attempts by Christians to prevent or at least discourage enslavement; but these eVorts were rarely if ever extended for the beneWt of those outside the Christian fold, and writers who have drawn attention to them have often failed to mention that condemnation of the sin of enslaving Christians is commonly accompanied by the tacit admission that enslaving nonbelievers is permissible, and even praiseworthy if enslavement is followed by conversion to the faith—a conversion which perhaps in some cases could hardly be attained by other means. So much for slavery. I turn now to the more general problem of the attitude of the early fathers to the question of property-ownership.78 76 For Smaragdus, see R. W. and A. J. Carlyle, A History of Medieval Political Theory in the West, i2 (London, 1927), pp. 208–9; David Brion Davis, The Problem of Slavery in Western Culture (New York, 1966), pp. 92–3. There is a great deal of interesting material in the latter work (the best general account of its subject) on Christian attitudes to slavery; compare also C. R. Boxer, The Portuguese Seaborne Empire 1415–1825 (London, 1969; Pelican 1973), for example pp. 20–5, 66 et seq., and esp. pp. 265–8. 77 A text often reprinted: see for example Documents of American Hist.,5 ed. H. S. Commager (New York, 1949), pp. 37–8, no. 26. And see Davis pp. 308–9. 78 The bibliography is vast, and I will only refer to Christophe, pp. 55–214; and Jean Gaudemet, L’E´glise dans l’empire romain IVa–Va sie`cles (Paris, 1958),

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There are of course considerable diVerences of emphasis, but I think it would be true to say that with hardly an exception all the orthodox writers seem to have no serious qualms in accepting that a Christian may own property, under certain conditions, the most important of which are that he must neither seek it avidly nor acquire it unjustly; that he ought not to possess a superXuity but only a suYciency; and that what he does have he may use but must not abuse: he must hold it as a kind of trustee79 (if I may be permitted to use that peculiar technical term of English law) for the poor, to whom he must give charity. This last condition, the necessity for almsgiving, is the one upon which there is most insistence: the whole conception of course descended direct to Christianity from Judaism;80 and here the Christian churches do seem to have gone far beyond the ordinary pagan standard. (There are some interesting remarks about the absence of similar organized activities among the pagans, in the works of the emperor Julian.)81 Occasional anticipations of the Christian ideas I have just outlined can be found in earlier Greek authors, as when Euripides makes Jocasta say that mortals do not hold their property as their own private possession: it belongs to the gods, and mortals merely have the care of it; the gods, whenever they want it, take it back again (Phoen. 555–7). I shall return in a moment to the question of almsgiving, which is worth special attention, and I shall also have something to say on the question of suYciency or superXuity of property. But I must Wrst add a rider to what I have said about the general early Christian view of pp. 569–73 (compare pp. 694–8 on almsgiving), who give suYcient references to other modern work. A. R. Hands, Charities and Social Aid in Greece and Rome (London, 1968), deals mainly with the pre-Christian world, as does H. Bolkestein, Wohlta¨tigkeit und ArmenpXege in vorchristlichen Altertum (Utrecht, 1939). [For comments on the divergent Stoic views on private property, see J. Annas, ‘Cicero on Stoic Moral Philosophy and Private Property’, in M. GriYn and J. Barnes (eds.), Philosophia Togata, i (Oxford, 1989), 151–73, at 167–70.] 79 Of many possible examples I will cite only Jerome, Ep. 130.14 (to the very wealthy Demetrias). 80 See below, and some of the passages cited in n. 33 above. 81 For Julian, see esp. (1) Ep. 84a (ed. J. Bidez and F. Cumont, Iuliani Imp. Epist., Leges etc. [1922] ¼ 84a Bidez [Bude´] ¼ 49 Hertlein ¼ 22 W. C. Wright [Loeb iii]). 429c–30a, 430bcd (compare 430d: no Jew is a beggar); (2) Ep. 89b (Bidez–Cumont and Bidez ¼ Wright ii. 296–339). 305bcd; compare (3) Misopog. 363a; (4) Orat. vii (ad Heracl.). 224bc. I have not been able to make use of Ju¨rgen Kabiersch, Untersuchungen zum BegriV der Philanthropie bei dem Kaiser Julian (Wiesbaden, 1960).


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property-ownership. The words of Jesus to the rich man seeking eternal life, which I discussed earlier, were not entirely disregarded; but it seems that the unqualiWed version of Mark and Luke was conveniently forgotten and the words of Jesus were always quoted in Matthew’s formulation (19: 21), in which the direction to sell all and give to the poor was prefaced by the qualiWcation, ‘If you would be perfect’. Out of scores of passages I have come across in the fathers I have not found one that even notices the discrepancy between the Matthaean text and that of Mark and Luke. So complete was the refusal to recognize the existence of any other version than that of Matthew that when Clement of Alexandria, in his Quis dives salvetur?, sets out Mark’s narrative of the whole story in extenso in his own text, explicitly as his source, he inserts Matthew’s ei theleis teleios einai, at the point that corresponds to Mt. 19: 21, without any indication that these words are not in Mark.82 Saint John Chrysostom is even at pains to put the conditional clause in the forefront and to make out that Jesus did not merely say to the rich man, ‘Sell what you have’: he actually rubs it in, expanding the words of Jesus into ‘I lay it down for your determination. I give you full power to choose. I do not lay upon you any necessity’.83 Thus, by quoting the statement of Jesus in its qualiWed, Matthaean form, the fathers were able to make use of the standard distinction between ‘precept’ and ‘counsel’: the command to sell all became literally a ‘counsel of perfection’.84 And I think it would be true to say that after the rise of monasticism in the fourth century there was a tendency to take ‘If you would be perfect’ to refer essentially to the adoption of the monastic life: thus when Jerome presses on his rich friend Julian the desirability of ridding himself of all his possessions (again of course on the basis of the Matthaean text we have been considering), he is clearly advising him to become a monk.85 82 Clem. Alex. Quis dives salvetur? iv.6; cf. x.1. The standard edition of this work is by O. Sta¨hlin, 2nd edn. by L. Fru¨chtel, GCS 172¼Clemens Alex. iii2 (1970), pp. 158–91. English readers will Wnd useful the Loeb edn. by G. W. Butterworth (London, 1919 and repr.), in which The Rich Man’s Salvation is printed mainly in Sta¨hlin’s text, with a good facing English trans. and some notes, on pp. 270–367. 83 John Chrys. Hom. II De Stat. 5 (PG 49 (1859), col. 40). 84 Among very many examples see Aug. Ep. 157.23–39. 85 Jerome, Ep. 118, esp. §§ 4, 5, 6 (init.), 7 (init.). Compare Ep. 60, to Heliodorus, where the priest Nepotian is said to have lived in practice the life of a monk (§ 10) and

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We can now return to almsgiving. There is an enormous amount of evidence of the high value attached to almsgiving by early Christian thinkers which it would be superXuous to quote, and I shall concentrate on two passages, one from a Latin and one from a Greek father, both of which emphasize the expiatory character of almsgiving and thus demonstrate the Jewish roots of Christian thinking in this Weld. Optatus, in his work against the Donatists, had occasion to allude to almsgiving when speaking of the visit of certain imperial emissaries (Macarius and others) to Africa in 347, in order to make charitable distributions provided by the emperor Constans.86 He Wrst claimed, on the strength of Proverbs 22: 2, that it was God who had made both the poor and the rich, and he then proceeded to explain that God had a very good reason for establishing this distinction: it would of course have been perfectly possible for him to give to both classes at once, but if he had done so, the sinner would have had no means of atoning for his faults (si ambobus daret, peccator quae sibi succurreret invenire non posset). To drive his point home, Optatus now quotes what was for him another inspired and canonical work, Ecclesiasticus (3: 30): just as water quenches Wre, so do alms atone for sin (sic eleemosyna extinguit peccatum).87 Later, the theology of almsgiving—if I may call it that—may have become more subtle (that is beyond the scope of this paper), but whenever almsgiving is being discussed, the notion that it can be an atonement for sin is seldom absent. This is certainly true of the second example I said I would give of the Christian concept of almsgiving, from a Greek father. This comes from the work by Clement of Alexandria, usually referred to by its Latin title, Quis dives salvetur?, which is actually the earliest thus fulWlled Mt. 19: 21. [For Christian attitudes to property and its uses, see P. Brown, Power and Persuasion in Late Antiquity (Madison, 1992), ch. 3, esp. pp. 89– 100; idem, Poverty, esp. ch. 3; W. J. Sheils and D. Wood, The Church and Wealth (Studies in Church History 24, 1987; brief discussion in G. Clark, Christianity and Roman Society (Cambridge, 2004), 107–11). For a heretical exception to the Christian acceptance of property, see Garnsey and Humfress, Evolution, 197–203, for discussion of a Pelagian text.] 86 Optatus iii. 3, pp. 74.19 to 75.3, ed. C. Ziwsa, CSEL 26 (1893) [M. Edwards, Optatus: Against the Donatists (TTH; Liverpool, 1997), 63]. This work was published about 365–6, and a revised edition was issued some twenty years later. 87 Compare another apocryphal passage, Tobit 12: 9; and, from the Old Testament itself, Prov. 13: 8; Dan. 4: 27 (LXX).


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treatise to provide a detailed justiWcation of property-ownership by Christians, and is perhaps the most important work of its kind. Clement puts most eloquently the argument that almsgiving can actually purchase salvation, and he exclaims, ‘What a splendid commerce! what divine trading!’88 Needless to say, almsgiving often played an important part in penance.89 Too often, however, it seems to have been resorted to as a means of self-advertisement,90 contrary to the admirable prescription of Jesus in Mt. 6: 1–4. The early Christian attitude to property-ownership, as I have described it, is open to criticism from more than one direction. I shall concentrate on two respects in which it can now be seen to be unsatisfactory: Wrst, the exceedingly important role it allotted to almsgiving; and secondly, its notion that a suYciency of wealth was harmless enough, even if a superXuity was dangerous. Until quite recently, of course, charity was accepted by the great majority as an entirely admirable thing; and it is only in our own generation that a large number of people have begun to criticize powerfully the whole principle of organized charity within the community as a remedy for social evils, not only because it provides the giver with a moral justiWcation of his privileged position but also because it is increasingly felt by the recipient as something degrading, as a derogation from human dignity—a feeling with which, I must say, I myself entirely sympathize. (In the conception of the ‘welfare state’, such as it is, everyone contributes if he can; and he receives what he does receive not as charity, but as a social right—a fundamentally diVerent principle.) The almsgiving upon which the early Christians so prided themselves, therefore, appears to many of us nowadays in a very much less attractive light than it did in its own time and for centuries afterwards. My other criticism of the early Christian position concerning property-ownership is that the concept of a ‘suYciency’ of property, whenever it was introduced, 88 Clem. Alex. Quis dives salvetur? (n. 82 above), xxxii. 1 (p. 181); compare xix.4–6 etc. The Greek of the words I have quoted in the text is J ŒÆº & Kæ Æ ; J Ł Æ Iªæ &Æ ; and the passage continues, T Ø& ÆØ æ"ø Ø IŁÆæ Æ ::: º &ı & c Æ $ªıæØ ; J ºØ Œº. Kd Æ ; i øæ fi ; 89 A good brief account of the whole diYcult subject of penance is given by Gaudemet pp. 78–87, 667–81. 90 See for example Paulinus of Nola, Ep. 34. 2, 7, 10 (CSEL 29, pp. 303–12).

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was always left vague and was no better deWned than by some such imprecise formula as non plus quam necesse est [‘no more than is necessary’],91 with the result that anyone except the ancient equivalent of a multi-millionaire could feel that he had no superXuity. Pliny the Younger could claim that he had no more than a ‘modest fortune’ (Sunt quidem omnino nobis modicae facultates [‘our resources are indeed quite modest’], Ep. ii.iv.3), yet he cannot have been worth much less than twenty million sesterces92 and counts among the two or three dozen richest Romans we happen to know about during the principate,93 even if his assets were hardly more than a Wfteenth or a twentieth part of those attributed to the richest men of all, who may have owned three hundred or even four hundred million—and who themselves did not approach the great imperial families in wealth. The great fortunes became greater still in the fourth and Wfth centuries,94 and in those days it was even easier for the well-to-do to feel that they were possessed of only ‘modest fortunes’.95 The orthodox Christian position that I have outlined was held with only minor variations by virtually all the great names:96 in the west, Irenaeus (who of course thought and wrote in Greek), Tertullian, Cyprian, Lactantius, Hilary of Poitiers, Jerome, Augustine, and John Cassian; in the east, Clement of Alexandria, Gregory of Nyssa, Gregory of Nazianzus,97 John Chrysostom,98 and Theodoret. So far 91 Pelagius (?), De Divit. ii (p. 32, ed. Haslehurst: see n. 124 below). Yet this is a work which is far more hostile to riches than most: see below. 92 See Duncan-Jones pp. 17–32, esp. pp. 18 n. 4, 32 n. 6. 93 Ibid. p. 343 (no. 21 in app. 7). 94 See A. H. M. Jones, The Later Roman Empire (Oxford, 1964), 2, pp. 554–5. 95 See Gaudemet p. 573, who alludes to ‘le diYcile proble`me de la mesure’ [‘the diYcult problem of proportion’] in this regard. After asking what proportion of his wealth the rich man was expected to spend in charity, he replies, ‘Son superXu doit assurer le nećessaire a` ceux qui sont dans le besoin. Notions imprećises dont il serait vain de chercher la de´termination’! [‘His surplus had to provide necessities for those in need—vague notions which it would be futile to try to pin down!’] 96 Christophe gives much of the material. 97 Four lines in a poem by Greg. Naz. (Carmina Theologica ii.xxxiii.113–16) are worth quoting: ‘Cast away all and possess God alone, for you are the dispenser of riches that do not belong to you. But if you do not wish to give all, give the greater part; and if not even that, then make a pious use of your superXuity’ (&Ø æØØ& P% Ø). 98 I have quoted above Chrysostom’s exegesis of Mt. 19: 21. As he is often justly remembered as a specially vehement and eloquent denouncer of the very rich, it is


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I have found only three partial exceptions among the non-heretical writers. The Wrst, Origen, I do not yet feel that I know well enough to be able to give a fair summary of his attitude. But I have noticed that Origen refused, for example, to countenance prayers for temporal beneWts of any sort,99 and that, unlike Clement, he did not try to allegorize away those biblical texts which attack wealth, while interpreting literally those usually quoted as permitting it—very much the reverse, in fact.100 I would say that the very idea of wealth tended to make Origen feel uneasy. And he is insistent that priests must give up all property.101 Much the same is true of my second exception: Basil, in whose writings contradictions are found which cannot be resolved except by admitting that Basil, whose whole thought was of a thoroughly monastic cast, sometimes applied to the outside world precepts which were really applicable only to a monastic community, in which the renunciation of all individual property was possible in a way that was simply impracticable in the Graeco-Roman world at large.102 My third exception, perhaps a rather surprising name in this connection, is no less than Ambrose, certainly in the social sense one worth also recalling his curious defence of the wealth of Dives (in the parable of Lazarus) as God-given: see his Homilies on Lazarus iii.4 (PG 48 (1859), cols. 996–7); vi.9 (cols. 1040–3), summarized by Christophe pp. 138–9. See also Otto Plassmann, Das Almosen bei Joh. Chrys. (Diss., Bonn, 1960), a collection of material not utilized to much eVect. 99 He even took ‘Give us this day’ (Mt. 29: 11) or ‘day by day’ (Lk. 11: 3) ‘our daily & bread’ to refer to incorporeal bread, food of the spirit: see his De Orat. (— æd P ) 27, pp. 363–75 ed. P. Koetschau, in GCS Origenes ii (1899). 100 See for example Orig. Comm. in Matth. xv.14–20, esp. 15, pp. 391–5, ed. E. Klostermann, GCS 40¼Origenes x (1935) [also R. Girod, Commentaire sur l’E´vangile selon Matthieu (Paris, 1970)]. Compare xv.20 (pp. 405–9), where Origen points out that it is only diYcult, and not impossible, for a rich man to be saved— though it is clear that in his mind a divine miracle is needed, comparable to getting a camel through the eye of a needle! And see also Orig. C. Cels. vii.18, pp. 169–71 ed. Koetschau; see n. 99 above. 101 See Christophe p. 93 for a French trans. of the main passage: Hom. in Genes. xvi.5. 102 The treatment of Basil’s thought is perhaps the best part of Christophe: see his pp. 107–29, esp. 108–12, 119–21, 123–5, 128–9. Decisive in favour of the view that Basil did not regard the mere ownership of property as an evil is Basil’s so-called ‘Shorter Rules’ no. 92 (PG 31, col. 1145; Christophe p. 108); compare the ‘Longer Rules’ no. 18 (PG 31, col. 965; Christophe pp. 128–9). [For discussion of the complexities of Basil’s writings on ascetic matters, see P. Rousseau, Basil of Caesarea (Berkeley, 1994), ch. 6, esp. pp. 196–201.]

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of the most exalted of all the early Christian fathers—he was a member of the senatorial aristocracy, the son of a praetorian prefect of the Gauls and, at the time of his appointment to the bishopric of Milan in 374, the governor of the province of Aemilia and Liguria, of which Milan was the capital. (I know of no other early father who could be considered his social equal, except Paulinus of Nola.)102 a Now Ambrose is far from consistent in his attitude to property rights; and some recent continental commentators, in their anxiety to rescue him from any such heinous oVence as a belief in ‘communism’ (one monograph is entitled, Il preteso comunismo di San Ambrogio),103 have given rather perverse interpretations of some of his writings, in particular a famous passage in the De OYciis Ministrorum (i.132) containing the words usurpatio ius fecit privatum [‘taking possession made private rights’].104 The fact is that in such passages Ambrose shows great uneasiness on the whole question of 102 a [On Ambrose in general, see N. McLynn, Ambrose of Milan: Church and Court in a Christian Capital (Berkeley, 1994), although there is no speciWc discussion of his attitudes to property rights.] 103 By J. Squitieri (Sarno, 1946). It will hardly repay the eVort of reading it. 104 It is absurd to pretend, as for example Squitieri and Christophe have done (see Christophe pp. 168–74), that in De OYc. i.130–2 Ambrose is simply agreeing with Cicero, and that his ‘usurpatio’ [‘taking possession’] is equivalent to Cicero’s ‘vetus occupatio’ [‘long-standing occupation’] (Cic. De OYc. i.20–22) [there is a French trans. of de OYciis Ministrorum: M. Testard, Saint Amboise, Les Devoirs, i (Paris, 1984), 158]. In § 131 Ambrose makes a Wrst objection to Cicero’s ‘iustitiae primum munus’ [‘the Wrst function of justice’]; and in § 132, whereas Cicero had accepted the rule that while common possessions should be used for the common good, a man could use private possessions for his own good, Ambrose now, with the words ‘next they thought it a form of justice that one should treat common public property as public, but private as private’, raises a second objection to the Ciceronian position: after the passage beginning ‘sic enim deus’ [‘for thus God’], for which there is no parallel in Cicero, he says, ‘natura igitur ius commune generavit, usurpatio ius fecit privatum’ [‘therefore nature created communal rights while taking possession made private rights’], and he then carefully omits the sentence (‘ex quo . . . societatis’) at the end of Cicero’s § 21 which is the climax of Cicero’s argument, asserting that it is right for a man to retain what he has acquired and that anyone else who seeks to annex it will be violating a law of human society—a quintessentially Ciceronian statement. Ambrose’s use of the word usurpatio too is decisive, and Christophe’s arguments (pp. 172–4) against Calafato are obviously worthless. His conclusion that Ambrose is here ‘maintaining the legitimacy of private property’ has no justiWcation. Of course in several other passages, listed by F. Homes Dudden, The Life and Times of St. Ambrose (Oxford, 1935), 2, pp. 548–50, Ambrose takes private property for granted, although in others again (see pp. 545–7) he regards it with aversion.


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property rights.105 Yet he can allegorize away the statement of Jesus contained in all three synoptics (Mk. 10: 25; Mt. 19: 24; Lk. 18: 25) that it is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the Kingdom of God; he can say that not all paupertas is sancta [‘poverty’ is ‘sacred’] nor all divitiae necessarily criminosae [‘riches’ necessarily ‘evil’], and that in good men riches can be adiumenta virtutis [‘aids to virtue’];106 and of course he accepts almsgiving as the great panacea through which the taint of riches can be removed:107 thus alone can riches become ‘the ransom of a man’s life’ and ‘the redemption of the soul’,108 for almsgiving ‘purges from sin’.109 And so, when Ambrose says that God intended the whole earth and its produce to be the common possession of all men,110 and continues, sed avaritia possessionum iura distribuit [‘but greed apportions the laws of possession’], he nevertheless goes on to accept the existing situation, provided the property-owner gives to the poor. His attitude is very nicely brought out in a passage in the De Helia et ieiunio (76), where he tells the sinner to redeem himself from his sins with his own money, thus using one poison to subdue another: Et venenum frequenter antidoto temperatur, hoc est veneno venenum excluditur, veneno mors repellitur, vita servatur [‘and poison is often tempered by an antidote; that is to say that poison is driven out by poison, that death is driven away and life is preserved by poison’]—wealth itself is a poison, but almsgiving, which redeems from sin, turns wealth into sin’s antidote! Augustine seems not to have been troubled about property rights. With characteristic ingenuity he extracts an argument in his favour even from the parable of Lazarus: Lazarus, we are told, went to 105 On the whole I accept the account given by Homes Dudden 2, pp. 545–50. However, when he summarizes Ambrose’s attitude (p. 547) as ‘But wealth is not only unproWtable: it is positively demoralizing’, most of the passages he proceeds to quote (though by no means all) require the substitution for ‘wealth’ of ‘avarice’ or ‘seeking after wealth’. 106 Ambr. Expos. Ev. Luc. viii.70–2, 13, 85 (in CSEL 22.iv). 107 See Homes Dudden, 2, p. 548 nn. 5–8. 108 Ambr. Ep. 63.92 [Beyenka 59], quoting Prov. 13: 8 and perhaps also Dan. 4: 27 (LXX). 109 De Helia et ieiunio 76, quoting Tobit 12: 9. 110 Ambr. Expos. in Ps. cxviii, Sermo 8.22; compare De Viduis 4–5; De Nabuth. 2, 11; Expos. Ev. Luc. vii. 124, 247.

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Abraham’s bosom; well, Abraham was rich!111 (As this and many other such passages show, the level of argument in this Weld is not always high, and some may feel some sympathy for the Pelagian who turned one of Augustine’s own favourite weapons against him by advocating a Wgurative interpretation of Abraham in the parable!)112 Sometimes in the fourth century the poor are warned that they must not think they can take the initiative and demand even the necessary minimum of subsistence from those Christians who had vast possessions. Two centuries earlier Irenaeus, citing the scriptural parallel of the Israelites ‘spoiling the Egyptians’ at the time of the Exodus,113 had expressed some sympathy for the man who, after being compelled to give years of forced labour to another, makes oV with some small portion of his property.114 But now Gregory of Nyssa is careful to show that no such initiative can be justiWed by an appeal to the ‘spoiling of the Egyptians’ in Exodus as a precedent.115 At this point I should like to mention one minor passage which is not very well known generally and indeed may come as a surprise to those who remember the condemnation by Saint Cyprian and the other western bishops of the libellatici of the Decian persecution, who had purchased certiWcates falsely stating that they had complied with the imperial order to sacriWce, and were treated as lapsi, though of a less serious kind than those who had actually sacriWced or oVered incense. The text I have in mind is the twelfth ‘canon’ in the Canonical Letter issued at Easter 306, during the ‘Great Persecution’, by Saint Peter, bishop of Alexandria,116 acquitting of any religious oVence those who had purchased immunity from sacriWcing, on the ground that they had sustained a loss of property in order to save their souls. It is interesting to Wnd here a very diVerent (and surely much more sensible) attitude from that which had prevailed in the west during the Decian persecution just over half a century 111 See for example Aug. Ep. 157.23–4; compare Serm. xiv.4 etc. 112 See the Pelagian De Divit. (cited in n. 124 below) ix.1–3 (pp. 50–2, ed. Haslehurst). 113 Exod. 3: 21–2; 11: 2; 12: 35–6. 114 Iren. Elench. iv.xxx.1–3, ed. W. W. Harvey (1857). 115 Greg. Nyss. Vita Moys. ii pp. 67–8, ed. H. Musurillo, in Greg. Nyss. vii.i (Leiden, 1964). 116 See my ‘Aspects of the ‘‘Great’’ Persecution’, in Harvard Theological Review, 47 (1954), pp. 75–113, at p. 84 n. 44 [above, Ch. 1, p. 46].


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earlier. As it happens, our evidence from the west in this respect is for the Decian persecution only and from the east for the ‘Great Persecution’ only; but I have argued elsewhere that we can put all this evidence together and conclude that in the east the purchase of immunity from sacriWcing was not regarded as sinful in either persecution.117 If we may ignore some passages in early Judaeo-Christian writings, it is only in the mouths of heretics that we Wnd an unqualiWed denunciation of private property ownership. Usually, of course, we know nothing of their arguments, all our information being derived from orthodox condemnations of their views. In this category are at least four or Wve strains of heretical thought. First, there is the second-century work On Justice ascribed by Clement of Alexandria to Epiphanes and attacked by Clement as a Carpocratian gnostic product which advocated not only equality and community of property but also community of women118—although I must say, I accept the view recently advanced that Clement’s biographical and historical information about the author of this work, Peri dikaiosune¯s, is worthless, although his actual quotations from it are genuine;119 I believe it may have nothing to do with gnosticism or Christian heresy. I need only give the briefest mention of the unimportant, if much discussed, Pseudo-Clementine Homilies, the Wfteenth of which especially has some material denying to those who have chosen the heavenly kingdom the right to property in anything except bread and water and a single garment, and insisting that in them the possession of other property would be a sin, which could only be taken away by the abandonment of that property.120 Among genuine Christian heretics there are the followers of Eustathius of Sebaste condemned in the Synodal Letter of the mid-fourth-century council of Gangra for 117 See Ibid. esp. pp. 87–8 [above, Ch. 1, pp. 49–50]. 118 Clem. Alex. Strom. iii (ii) 5.1 to 9.3, pp. 197–200 in GCS 52 ¼ Clemens Alex. ii3, ed. O. Sta¨hlin and L. Fru¨chtel (1960), esp. 6.1 to 8.1. 119 See Heinz Kraft, ‘Gab es einen Gnostiker Karpokrates?’, in Theologisches Zeitschrift, 8 (1952), pp. 434–43. 120 Ps.-Clem. Homil. xv. vii–x, esp. vii.4–6, ix.2–3, pp. 215–17, ed. B. Rehm, in GCS 42 (1953). The Homilies in their present form date from the 4th century but seem to derive from an original of the 3rd or even 2nd century, which may have emanated from a Jewish-Christian sect with gnostic tendencies. See also Christophe pp. 96–8, using a French translation.

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denying the possibility of salvation to rich people who do not give up all their possessions;121 there are also the fourth-century dualists denounced by Cyril of Jerusalem, who rejected the ownership of property, with all other physical things, as belonging to the province of the devil;122 and Wnally there are the various ascetic sects described as encratites and Xourishing especially in Asia Minor, such as the apostolics or apotactites who are attacked in the 370s in the Panarion of Epiphanius for preaching that complete abstention from property (as well as marriage) was a necessity for all Christians.123 Unfortunately, we have no details of the arguments by which any of these sects sought to justify its interpretation of scripture against the orthodox position. I have been able to discover only one single surviving work which argues at length that the mere possession of wealth creates a tendency to sin and that it really is best to divest oneself of all one’s possessions. This is a work probably written in the Wrst decade of the Wfth century, the De Divitiis, one of a group of Pelagian works published by Caspari in 1890.124 This has been attributed by de Plinval to Pelagius himself, and by others to one of 121 Mansi ii (1759), col. 1102; C. J. Hefele and H. Leclercq, Histoire des Conciles; d’apre`s les documents originaux, i.ii (Paris, 1907), p. 1032: the Eustathians are said to believe that the rich who do not give up all their property have no hope of salvation. (Compare also the Epilogue to the Canons.) It is interesting to Wnd, both from the Synodal Letter and from Canon 3 of this council (Mansi, col. 1101; Hefele-Leclercq ii.ii, 1034), that the Eustathians had also been inciting slaves to leave their masters, apparently to become monks: Can. 3 anathematizes anyone who ‘on a pretext of piety, teaches a slave to despise his master and to leave his service, and not to serve him with goodwill and all honour’. 122 Cyril Hierosol. Catech. viii.6–7 (Migne, PG 33, cols. 632–3). 123 Epiphan. Panar. Haer. lxi, esp. i.1; iii.1 (pp. 380, 382, ed. K. Holl. in GCS 31 ¼ Epiphan. ii, 1922); compare Aug. De Haeres., Haer. 40; and see also Basil, Ep. 188, can. 1; 189, can. 47; C. Th. xvi.v.7, 11, compare 9; CJ i.v.5. [See Garnsey and Humfress, Evolution, 192–7, for brief discussion of some 4th-cent. radical ascetics, and more generally P. Brown, ‘Asceticism: Pagan and Christian’, in Averil Cameron and P. Garnsey (eds.), CAH xiii: The Late Empire A.D. 337–425 (Cambridge, 1998), ch. 20, 601–31.] 124 Pelagius (?), Tractatus de Divitiis, ed. C. P. Caspari, Briefe, Abhandlungen und Predigten aus den zwei letzten Jahrhunderten des kirchlichen Altertums und dem Anfang des Mittelalters (Christiania, 1890), pp. 25–67, repr. in PL Suppl. 1 (1958), cols. 1380 et seq. and by R. S. T. Haslehurst, The Works of Fastidius (London, 1927), pp. 30–107: the last has a good facing English trans. There are other Pelagian works touching on the same theme, for example the Epist. ii ad Geruntii Wlias (De contemnenda haereditate), in PL 30, cols. 45–50.


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the followers of Pelagius: Fastidius, Coelestius or Agricola. It has been much discussed in recent years.125 I will only remark that although this remarkable treatise does recommend divesting oneself of all property (thus ‘transferring it from earth to heaven’, xix.4), it does not actually condemn suYcientia [‘suYciency’], and it regards even wealth not as an actual sin (vii.5) but as a peccandi occasio [‘an opportunity for sin’] (xix.3), something that is very likely indeed to result in sin; if we keep the commandments of the New Testament, then per divitiarum contemptum, peccatorum aufertur occasio [‘through contempt for riches the opportunity for sins is removed’] (x.1). The most radical passage goes so far as to treat the existence of the few rich as the reason why there are so many poor: pauci divites pauperum causa sunt multorum; and so tolle divitem et pauperem non invenies, ‘get rid of the rich and you won’t Wnd any poor’ (xii.2). There is, however, not a word to suggest that this desirable end can be achieved by anything but religious persuasion; and—rather strangely, perhaps—there is no appeal to the ‘primitive communism’ (if I may call it that) of the earliest apostolic community at Jerusalem,126 and indeed no advocacy at all of community of property, even as a theoretical ideal. I know of no evidence that any Pelagian ever advocated the reform of secular institutions. I will only add that this work, the De Divitiis, in spite of some over-ingenious arguments and the usual inXated rhetoric, seems to me a far better approximation to the thought of Jesus, as expressed in the synoptic Gospels (Luke especially), than at any rate the principal work on the orthodox side, Clement’s Quis dives salvetur?, from which I quoted earlier.127 Clement, of course, makes adroit use, here as elsewhere, of the 125 By Haslehurst; Georges de Plinval. Pe´lage: ses écrits, sa vie et sa re´forme. E´tude d’hist. litte´r. et relig. (Lausanne etc., 1943), esp. pp. 160–2, 189–91, 221–3; J. N. L. Myres, ‘Pelagius and the End of Roman Rule in Britain’, JRS 50 (1960), pp. 21–36; W. Liebeschuetz, ‘Did the Pelagian Movement have Social Aims?’, Historia, 12 (1963), pp. 227–41; John Morris, ‘Pelagian Literature’, JTS ns 16 (1965), pp. 26–60; Liebeschuetz, ‘Pelagian Evidence on the Last Period of Roman Britain?’, Latomus, 26 (1967), pp. 436–47; Peter Brown, Religion and Society in the Age of St. Augustine (London, 1972), pp. 183–207, 208–26 (the last particularly informative on Pelagius’s circle). None of these works deals exclusively with the De Divit., but they all bear upon it in one way or another. 126 The only allusions I notice in the De Divit. (those in x.5, 6) to the earliest apostolic community make no reference to its ‘communism’. 127 See pp. 26–7 [p. 357] above and nn. 82, 88.

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allegorical method of interpretation which had been invented by pagan Greek scholars in the classical period and perfected by Hellenistic Judaism in regard to the Old Testament (Philo provides some extraordinary examples); this type of exegesis Xourished extravagantly at Alexandria in particular.128 Clement does not scruple to make use of the argument (cap. 13) that only if a man possesses some property can he do the things the Lord requires: feed the hungry and give drink to the thirsty, clothe the naked and entertain the homeless—as Zacchaeus and others entertained the Lord himself (Lk. 19: 1–10). ‘What sharing (koino¯nia) would be left among men,’ he asks, ‘if nobody had anything?’ This at least is not quite as feeble as the passage in which Aristotle (Pol. ii.5, 1263 b5–14) pretends that the very great delight of doing a kindness to friends or guests or comrades is possible only when there is private ownership of property— as if generosity or liberality could be expressed only in the form of material beneWts. It is time to sum up. Why did early Christianity so signally fail to produce any important change for the better in Graeco-Roman society? Why did slavery and kindred forms of unfree labour such as the colonate persist, without Christians even realizing that they were evil in themselves and that they tended to brutalize both slaves and masters? Why after the empire became oYcially Christian, did the extremes of wealth and poverty throughout the Roman world (and especially in the west) become even greater, with enormous wealth concentrating in the hands of the senatorial class, and taxation becoming decidedly more oppressive? Why did punishments become even harsher and torture even more prevalent?129 128 For the use of allegory by Clement, in Quis dives salvetur?, see esp. v.2–4; xi.2–3; xiv.1–6; xv–xvii; xviii–xx; xxvi.2–7; xxvi.8 to xxvii.2. The most complete account I have found of allegory, from the beginnings to the time of Augustine and Gregory Nazianzen, is Jean Pe´pin, Mythe et alle´gorie: Les Origines grecques et les contestations judeó-chre´tiennes (Paris, 1958). R. P. C. Hanson, Allegory and Event: A Study of the Sources and SigniWcance of Origen’s Interpretation of Scripture (London, 1959) hardly goes back behind Jewish and Hellenistic allegory (pp. 11–64). For the earlier stages, see J. Tate, in Oxford Class. Dict.2 (1970), pp. 45b–6b (‘Allegory, Greek’ and ‘Latin’), and his articles there cited in Class Rev. 1927 and Class. Quart. 1929, 1930 and 1934 [see also A. Louth, Discerning the Mystery (Oxford, 1983), 96–131]. 129 I discuss all these questions in CSAGW.


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The standard answer to all these questions is familiar to all of us: Jesus himself and the early Christians were concerned exclusively with the relations between man and man, or man and God, and not at all with social, economic or political institutions—with the relations between men and men, if I may use that expression. That does not seem to me a very good answer, even as far as it goes, for although the New Testament writers (like the early fathers) concentrate on questions of individual morality and make no attempt to prescribe a general code of economic or political behaviour, they do make a series of statements on political and economic questions which the Church duly accepted as canonical and inspired: Saint Paul’s disastrous ‘The powers that be are ordained of God’, which I quoted earlier, is only one among many such pronouncements. But can the traditional Christian position, which I have outlined, provide a satisfactory answer to my questions, even if it is adjusted in such a way as to shed those unpleasant features of early Christian thought such as the acceptance of slavery and of political autocracy which so many Christians today are unwilling to endorse? This of course is a matter of opinion. I will only say that in my opinion it was precisely the exclusive concentration of the early Christians upon the personal relations between man and man, or man and God, and their complete indiVerence, as Christians, to the institutions of the world in which they lived, that prevented Christianity from even having much eVect for good upon the relations between man and man. I suggest that the relations between man and man in any organized human society are severely conditioned by the relations between men and men—between diVerent states, and between diVerent classes and groups within states, relations governed as a rule by criteria very diVerent from those which can be applied between man and man. It has often been realized that Christianity has been conspicuously unsuccessful in preventing wars between nations. It took the Church a long time to evolve a doctrine of the ‘just war’130—although 130 The evidence for early Christian views on military service and war is most fully set out by Cadoux, pp. 51–7, 116–22, 183–90, 269–81, 402–42, 564–96. See also Gaudemet pp. 706–9, who gives a brief summary of the main 4th/5th century views (esp. those of Augustine, who went further than many early Christians in defending war), with bibliography. Recent work, including the article by R. H. Bainton, ‘The Early Church and War’, in Harvard Theological Review, 39 (1946), pp. 189–212, is

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incidentally even the early Roman republic had had a doctrine of the bellum iustum, derived from the principle of fetial law: that no war was acceptable to the Roman gods unless it was a defensive war, waged to protect Rome or her allies.131 And the doctrine of the just war has never come to very much, because any country that goes to war can always justify itself easily enough in its own eyes. As for what I would call the class struggle, I cannot see that the Christian churches have done much more than either deplore it in principle or ignore its very existence; and all too often they have explicitly underwritten the existing social and economic order in its crudest form. ‘The rich man in his castle’—but I need not go on. Pope Pius XI’s encyclical, Quadragesimo anno, of 1931, admits that the class struggle had been a serious danger forty years before, but then proceeds to speak of this danger as having been largely dispelled by Leo XIII’s Rerum novarum—an opinion which has hardly been conWrmed by the events of the years since 1931. There have, needless to say, been a few striking exceptions within the churches who have broken right away from their oYcial policy, from John Ball in 1381132 to Camilo Torres in our own time.133 When the early Hebrew prophets, or Plato and Aristotle, tried to formulate a vision of the good society, they thought Wrst in terms of the Israelite nation or of the Greek city: for Plato and Aristotle, the society as such had Wrst to be good, to have good institutions, before men could lead the good life within it. Their successors, in both cases, brieXy reviewed by Jacques Fontaine, ‘Christians and Military Service in the Early Church’, in Concilium, 7.1 (1965), pp. 58–64. [For detailed consideration, see J. F. Ubina, Cristianos y Militares: La iglesia antigua ante el eje´rcito y la guerra (Granada, 2000); brief discussion in M. Whitby, ‘Emperors and Armies, 235–395’, in S. Swain and M. Edwards (eds.), Approaching Late Antiquity: The Transformation from Early to Late Empire (Oxford, 2004), 156–86, esp. 175–9.] 131 Itself nicely criticized in Cic. De Rep. iii.12/20, ed. K. Ziegler (6th edn., 1964) preserved in Lact. Div. Inst. vi.ix.4: it was the means by which the Romans gave their aggression the appearance of legitimacy (‘per fetiales bella indicendo, et legitime iniurias faciendo’). 132 The most convenient English version of the relevant part of Froissart is Froissart’s Chronicles, ed. and trans. by John JolliVe (London, 1967), caps. 73–4, pp. 236–52 (esp. 237–8). The traditional English version is Froissart’s Cronycles, trans. by Sir John Bouchier Lord Berners, I, 4 (Oxford, 1928), pp. 1095–1121 (esp. 1096–7). 133 Revolutionary Priest: The Complete Writings and Messages of Camilo Torres, ed. John Gerassi (1971; paperback in Pelican Latin American Library, 1973).


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tended to despair of creating a good society: for them, either the individual man (the Stoic, in particular) had to discover how best to live his personal life in an indiVerent if not hostile world, or else there was a Good Time Coming, but it would be achieved by some supernatural agency. In the latter case one could comfort oneself by imagining (as in Jewish apocalyptic) that in some mysterious way the desired result had been achieved already: the passage in the MagniWcat which I quoted earlier provides a good example. At the present time there is a debate going on among Christians whether (to use the language I have employed) it may not be absolutely necessary to reform the relations between men and men—in particular the relations between states and between classes within states—in order that the relations between man and man may not be for ever distorted and damaged. Among these relations between men and men, I would suggest that a central role is played by property relations, including in particular the ownership of property and the way in which production is organized. Those of us who watch the debate within the churches, even from the outside, may feel that careful study of what actually happened in the early Christian centuries, both in the Weld of ideas and in actual social life, might well shed some useful light on current problems and controversies, and as a result might have a powerful eVect upon the future of man.


Index of Passages Acta Conciliorum Oecumenicorum I.iv 261–2 II.i.29:17–29 279 II.i.30:21–9 279 II.i.65, §§5 299 II.i.66, §§13–14 300 II.i.69–70, §§26–4 264, 301–2, 310–11 II.i.70 §§43–6 264, 268 II.i.73, §51 277 II.i.75, §54 312 II.i.76, §61–4 304, 314–15 II.i.87–8, §§121–30 309 II.i.94, §§179–84 304, 313 II.i.97, §§191–2 314 II.i.103 276 II.i.115, §§284–5 299 II.i.138, 276 II.i.139–40 276 II.i.140, §491 310 II.i.140–1, §§496–7 310 II.i.142, §§521–2 305 II.i.153–6, §§576–614 277 II.i.157, §624 308 II.i.172, §776 305 II.i.173, §792 308 II.i.175, §814 306 II.i.178, §§838–42 277 II.i.180–1, §§858–61 312–13 II.i.191, §964 303 II.i.204, §4 283 II.i.274, §§5–7 284, 305 II.i.277–8 266 II.i.279–80, §§30–44 268, 283 II.i.305, §§12–14 282–3 II.i.306–10 316–17

II.i.312, §78 313 II.i.320, §22 284 II.i.321, §25 285 II.i.368, §13 303 II.i.411 266 II.ii.24–33 274 II.iii.312, §94.42–3 282 II.iii.313–14, §94.50–4 282 Acta of Second Ephesus, p.17.45–6 291 AE 1942/43.81 74, 86 1955.81 87–8 Agathias, History 1.7.3 246–7 Ambrose, Expositio in Ps. 118 8.22 363 de Helia et Ieiunio 76 363 Letters 2.19 352 72.9 241 de OYciis Ministrorum 1.130–2 362–3 2.30.153 162 de Virginibus 3.7.32–6 163–4 Ammianus Marcellinus 22.5.3–4 222, 247, 260 27.3.12–13 210, 248 Aristophanes, Plutus 415–612 340 Aristotle, Politics 1255a25–6 347 1330a32–3 347 Athanasius, Apologia de fuga sua 22 161 Augustine Brev.Coll. 3.13.25 49, 74, 83, 160, 174 City of God 1.16–28 163 19.15–16 351–2

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Index of Passages

Augustine (cont.) c. Cresconium 3.27.30 49, 85 c. Epist. Parmen. 3.13 221 adv. Fulgentium 26 51–2 Letters 93 221 157.23–4 357, 363–4 173.6 209 173.10 221 Sermones 326.2 75 Aurelius Victor, de Caesaribus 39.30 69, 71 Basil. Homily 18 175 Bible Colossians 3.11 349 I Corinthians 7.22 349–50 Ephesians 6.5 350 Galatians 3.28 323, 350 Luke 1.46–55 343 4.18 340 6.17–49 341 8.26–39 334 9.52 333 14.23 222 16.19–31 340, 342 17.11 333 2 Maccabees 194 4 Maccabees 194–7 Mark 5.1–20 334 7.31 333 Matthew 5.3–6 340–1 8.24–34 334 19.21 342, 357 22 221–2 Cassiodorus, Variae 2.27 247 10.26 248–9 Cicero, de Natura Deorum 1.61 142 3.2.5 203 3.5–9 141–2

de Legibus 2.14 143 2.18–22 142 de OYciis 1.20–2 362 2.73 113–14, 339 de Re Publica 3.25/37 348 CIL 8.2345–7 (ILS 631–3) 74 8.5526 (ILS 651) 75 8.4764 (ILS 644) 53, 86, 88 8.6700 52, 74, 85, 89 8.4766 87 Clement of Alexandria, Quis dives salvetur? 4.6 357 13 368 32.1 358–9 Stromateis 4.4.17.1–3 158 4.10.76.1–77.3 158 7.11.66.3–67.2 158 Cod. Theod. 16.5.34 39 16.5.60 204 16.7.3 209 Collatio Mosaicorum et Romanorum Legum 15.2.2 126 Commodian, Instructiones 2.21 159 Council of Ancyra, Canons 1 63–4 1–9 47 Council of Arles, Canons 13–14 92–3 Council of Elvira, Canons 101–2 1 93–5 2–4 90–1 5 351 25 93 45–6 91 55 91 59 91 60 91–2, 159 73 92 Cyprian Ad Demetrianum 205 De Lapsis 3 59–60 7–8 44–5

Index of Passages Letters 43.31 60 81.1.4 159 Didache 4.11 350 Digest 1.5.4.1 353 1.18.3 121 1.18.13 121 48.2.6 115 48.19.4–5 126 48.19.30 119 Ephrem, Hymns on the Epiphany 4.6–8 352 Hymns on the Nativity 17.8 352 Epictetus, Diss. 4.1.40 354 4.7.6 192 Epistle of Barnabas 19.7 350 Eusebius, HE 3.28.6 139, 205 4.9 120 4.14.6 139, 205 4.15.7–8 157–8, 166, 170 4.17.8–13 165 5.1 120, 128, 167 6.3.4–5 168 6.5.5–6 169 6.41.11 60 7.11.9 140 8.1.2 134 8.6.6 84, 174 8.6.8–9 84 8.6.10 37, 82 8.9.5 66–7, 83, 131, 176 8.13.11 71 8.13.12–13 70 8.30.19 215–16 9.10.8 31, 140 10.5.18–20 217 10.6.1–5 217 MP 1.1–2 43, 179 1.5 177

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2.1 44 3.1 38, 43 3.2–4 131, 177 4.1 62 4.6–8 61 8.6–8 178 11 178–9 11.31 64 13.1 65 13.11 64 13.12 59, 79–80 Oratio ad Sanctos 24–5 73 Eutropius 9.26 10.1 71 Evagrius 1.11 245 2.5 245, 317 2.10 282 3.14 207, 241 Firmicus Maternus, de Errore 28.10 220 29.1–2 220 Gesta apud Zenophilum 92 Gregory the Great, Register 1.34 251 Gregory of Nazianzus Orations 4.82–4 182 43.6 161 Carm. Theol. 2.33.113–16 360 Hippolytus, Elenchus 9.12 45, 167–8 Ignatius, Letter to Polycarp 4.3 350–1 Letter to Romans 4–5 133, 189 7 133, 189 Irenaeus, adversus Haereses 3.3.4 137, 205

376

Index of Passages

Irenaeus (cont.) Elenchus 4.30.1–3 364 John Chrysostom, Homily II on the Statues 5 357, 360 Joinville, Life of St Louis 228–9 Julian, Ep. 36 248 37 248 40 248 41 248 Justin, 1 Apol. 68 118–19 Justinian, Novel 42.1.2 223 Lactantius, De Mortibus Persecutorum 7.2 69 8.3–4 69–70 11.8 39 13.2.3 160 17.3–4 72–3 17.8 73 18.1–7 73–4 Divine Institutes 4.28.11 235 4.30.13 209 5.19.21 235–6 Leo, Ep. 62–4 277 88 278 172 212 Libanius, Ep. 914 239–40 1253 239 Lucian, The Death of Peregrinus 186–8 Malalas, Chronicle 11.5 185 11.10 132–3, 189–90 Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 11.3 146, 192–3 Michael the Syrian, Chronicle 11.6 319 Novel of Justinian 77.1.1 208 141 208

Novel of Theodosius 3, pref. 8 207 Optatus, 1.13 52 1.15 52 1.22 70, 96, 216 2.25 52 3.3 216, 358 3.5–7 220 3.8 52, 85 Appendix 1 39 Appendix 2 51, 84 Appendix 3 206, 209 Appendix 7 216–17 Appendix 9 218 Appendix 10 218 Origen, Comm. In Johannem 6.41 334 28.23 159 Contra Celsum 8 193 Passio Abitinan Martyrs 48, 140 of Agape 47 of Carpus 166 of Cassian 172 of Crispina 54–5, 81–3 of Cyprian 144, 159, 170 of Dasius 173 of Euplus 56, 130, 175 of Fabius 75–6 of Justin 166 of Marcellus 172 of Marianus and Jacob 170 of Maxima, Donatilla & Secunda 76 of Maximilian 171 of Perpetua 169, 190–2 of Phileas and Philoromus 176 of Philip of Heraclea 43, 47–8 of Pionius 170

Index of Passages of Polycarp 157–8, 166 of Polyeuctus 169 of Scillitan martyrs 112, 127, 147 of Theodoret 45 of Typasius 75, 173 Pelagius, Tract. de Divitiis 366–7 Peter of Alexandria, Canonical Letter 5–7 63 8–11 45, 155, 160–1 11 65 12 50, 364 Pliny, Letters 10.65 118 10.96 42, 110–12, 123–4, 126–7, 146, 148–50, 208 10.97 40, 110, 112, 148–9 Praxagoras of Athens 71 Procopius, Buildings 1.1.9 246 Secret History 13.7–8 246 Wars 5.3.5–9 246, 270 Prudentius, Peristephanon 3 174 4 172 Ps.-Dionysius the Areopagite, Ep. 8 250 Salvian, De Gubernatore Dei 5.2.5–11 242 Sententiae Pauli 5.21.2 119–20 Socrates, EH 4.32 238–9 4.33.7 243 5, preface 243 5.22.1 243 7.3 225–6

7.15.11 211 7.29.4–13 243 7.29.5 207 7.41.4–7 243 Sozomen, EH 7.15.11 211 Suetonius, Nero 16.2 108, 147 Symmachus, Relatio 3.10 240 Tacitus, Annals 14.42–3 346 15.44.3–8 108–9, 148 Histories 5.5 135 5.9 115 Tertullian, ad Nat. 1.7 119 ad Martyras 1.1 186 ad Scapulam 2.2 234 5.1 131–2, 167 Apologeticum 2.17 128 24.6 233–5 27.2.3 146 39.11 345 40.1–2 136 46.4 136 de Corona Militis 1.4.4–5 158–9 Themistius, Or. 5, 67b–70d 237–8 Theodore the Studite, Ep. 2.152 251 Theodoret, EH 3.15 182 4.15 206–7 5.39 182, 184 Zachariah, HE 4.10 282

377

General Index Abd al-Rahman II, emir 184–5 Abdas 162 Abiram 220 Abitinan Martyrs 48, 69, 74, 81, 83 Abthunga 52 Acts, Passions; see individual martyrs AdelWus 272 Aedesius 65, 177 AelaWus 137, 206 Aemilia, province 362 Aemilianus 170 Aetherius of Smyrna 308 Aetius, archdeacon 300, 308 Aetius, patrician 273 Afra of Augusta Vindelicorum 57–8, 69 Africa 49, 54–6, 70–2, 74–6, 79, 81–2, 88–9, 94–5, 97, 117, 123, 144, 158, 165, 173–4, 183–4, 191, 206, 216, 218–19, 358 Proconsularis 49, 51–2, 79, 82, 84–5 African Passions 54, 75–6 Agape of Thessalonica 38, 47 Agapetus of Synnada 226 Agapius 65, 69, 177 Agatharcides of Cnidus 332 Agathias, historian 246–7 Agathonice 166 Agricola (Pelagian) 367 Agricolanus, Aurelius 172 Alamanni 247 Alan, Alans 289 Alexander, doctor from Phrygia 167

Alexander the Great 188, 329, 331 Alexander, Palestinian martyr 170 Alexander of Alexandria 212, 219 Alexander of Gaza, volunteer 177–8 Alexander, volunteer at Caesarea 177 Alexandria 60, 67, 137, 168, 170, 210, 264, 271, 278, 283, 299, 313, 316–17, 368 Patriarch’s power 261 Almsgiving, see Christians, charity Alpheus of Caesarea 44, 65, 85, 177 Altar of Victory 240–1 Alvar 185 Ambrose 162–4, 198, 221, 226–7, 241, 352, 361–3 Ammaedara (Haidra) 79–81 Ammianus Marcellinus 25, 210, 222, 247–8, 260 Amonius 180 Amphilochius of Side 281 Anastasius, emperor 245 Anatolius, magister militum 255, 287–94, 297, 318 connection with Theodoret 291–3 Anatolius of Constantinople 278, 282, 284–5, 290, 296 Ancyra, Council of 47–8, 50, 63, 95, 97–8 Andrew, Abba 314 Antioch 84, 127, 133, 163–4, 177, 179–80, 182–3, 215, 219, 271, 295, 298 Antiochus IV Epiphanes 193 Antonines 41, 121, 132, 193, 198

General Index Antoninus, Arrius 131, 167 Antoninus, Valerius 87 Antoninus, volunteer 65, 177 Anullinus 54–5, 67, 83, 85–6 Apollinarii, heretics 244 Apollinaris, senator 293 Apollonius, martyr 69, 113 Apollonius of Sioout 161 Apologists 112, 128–9, 136, 203 Apostasy, Apostates; see under Christianity Apphianus 65, 177 Aphthartodocetist 318 Aqua Viva 86 Aquila, Subatianus 169 Arabs 224, 228, 319 Aramaic 331 Arcadius, martyr 75 Ares, martyr 178 Arian controversy, Arians 97, 206, 216, 218–19, 236, 241, 243, 248, 250, 260, 289, 300 Arimathea 332 Aristotle 346–8, 353, 370 Arius, heresiarch 212, 219, 222 Arles, Council of 48, 92, 95–8, 103, 217 Armenian Church 262 Arnobius 134 Artabius, governor 248 Artemius, martyr 181 Ascalon 178, 331 Asclepiades, deacon 284 Asclepius, Palestinian martyr 65 Asia, continent 329 Asia, province 115, 118, 131, 166–7, 313 Asia Minor 72, 111, 225, 271, 299, 328, 366 Asiana 298 Aspar 289, 297

379

Asturica (Astorga) 94 Athanasius of Alexandria 64, 161, 219, 239, 295 Atheism 11 Atticus of Constantinople 226, 243 Attila the Hun 272–3, 289–90, 299, 314 Augusta Vindelicorum 57 Augustine 11, 75, 141, 143, 159, 162–4, 209, 221, 223, 226, 351–2, 360, 363–4 allegory in 221–2, 364 beˆte noire 222, 323, 364 Augustus 114, 117–18, 135 Aurelian, emperor 215–16, 219 Aurelius the African 300 Auxentius 65 Babylas, martyr 183 Bacchanals, Bacchic cult 151, 204, 234 Bagai 87 Balbus 141 Balkans 38, 70–2 Ball, John 370 Barbarians 242, 260, 289, 346 Barhadbeshabba 280 Barnes, T.D. 19, 23, 88, 99, 103–4, 158, 166, 191, 247 Barsauma, archimandrite 312–13 Basil of Ancyra 181 Basil of Caesarea 175, 361 Basil of Seleucia 304, 308 Basilides, Gnostic 140 Basilides, soldier 169 Bassus 47 Baynes, Norman 28, 37, 107, 180, 227–8, 271, 314, 319 Beatitudes 340–2 bellum iustum 369–70 Bernice 163–4

380

General Index

Besas, soldier 170 Bethlehem 332 Bethsaida (Julias) 332, 335 Bithynia 110, 279 Boniface, presbyter 282, 286 Books; see under Christianity; also traditio Bosporus 279 Bostra 247 Bowersock, Glen 19, 230 Boyarin, Daniel 33 Britain 55, 70, 72, 96 British Israelites 10 Brown, Peter 17, 24, 26, 157, 232 Bury, J.B. 24 Busiris of Ancyra 181 Byzacena 49, 72, 82 Caecilian 96, 217 Caecilius 141 Caesaraugusta (Saragossa) 94 Caesarea (Cappadocia) 78, 175, 181 Caesarea (Palestine) 43–4, 61, 63–5, 84–5, 131, 168, 177–8, 331 Caesarea Paneas 332 Caesarea Philippi 332, 335–6 Calanus 188 Callinicum 239, 249 Callistus, Pope 167–8 Calvisianus, corrector 56, 130 Cameron, Averil 24–5, 246–7 Candidianus, comes domesticorum 275–6 Capernaum 332–3, 336 Cappadocia 137, 175, 179 Caracalla 166 Carpus 166 Carthage 51, 60, 74, 159, 162, 169, 191, 217 Councils at 83, 162, 184, 308–9 Casae 86

Cassian, excerptor 172 Cassiodorus 249 Cassius, Gaius 346 Castellum Elephantum (RouVach) 85 Catana 130, 175 Catholic, see Orthodox Catulinus 92 Celestine, Pope 261, 275 Celsus 193 Celsus, Domitius 217 Cephalitan estate 76, 79–80 Cerinthus 137, 205–6 Chalcedon, Council of 102, 210, 227–8, 241, 255, 259–319 chanting, noise at 267–8, 301–3, 306, 308, 310–13 Church of Euphemia 298–9 coercion at 272–4 commissioners at 268–9, 282–94, 298–303, 307, 316–18 Creed of 272, 284, 287, 305, 318 Fifth Session 284 First Session 264, 281, 298, 315–16, 318 Fourth Session 282, 315–16 interruptions 266 numbers at 281–2, 298, 304 providential role 281 recording of 307–10 seating 298–9 Second Session 268, 283 Sixth Session 264, 288, 298 sources for 265–70 subscriptions to 281–2, 298, 304–5 Third Session 264, 281–3, 288, 298, 315 Chalcedonians 245 Charity, see Christians Charles V 348

General Index Chione 38, 47 chora, see Countryside Chorazin 332, 335 Christian Church 31–2, 38, 202, 214–15, 260, 351, 369–70 Christianity, Christians abominations, crimes, Xagitia 109, 111, 120, 128–9, 145, 148–51, 203 allegory 27, 221–2, 364, 368 apostasy, apostates 41–2, 44–6, 48, 50, 84, 90, 94, 117, 120, 123, 127, 149, 157, 177, 182, 186 ascetics, monks 8, 312–13, 357–8, 361 beastly 257 books 45, 47–9, 52–3, 56, 76–7, 80, 84, 92, 140, 160, 174 catechumens 90–1 charges against 14–15, 122–3, 128–9, 144; see also Christianity, abominations, name charity 356, 358–60, 363 clergy 37, 92, 123, 144, 184 communion, exclusion from 90–4, 187, 274, 316–17 confessors 59–60, 63, 93, 154, 186 debtors 45, 160 deplorable, repellent attitudes 68, 190, 325–6 destructive eVects of 229–30, 318–19 exaggerations 68, 122–3, 131, 167, 174 exclusivity of 16, 133–4, 139–40 factions, feuding 129, 209, 212–13, 216, 219, 222, 240, 243, 260, 271, 301–2 fanaticism 7, 158, 183–5, 192 Xight of 64, 123, 161

381

fundamentalist 325 hostility towards 11, 67–8, 108–9, 122, 129, 136–8 identity 33–4 immunity 49–50, 123, 364; see also libellatici, libelli pacis intolerance of 4–7, 16, 18, 133–4, 152, 228, 234, 243 lapsi 47–8, 59, 94–5, 97, 155, 364 magistrates, service as 95 name 110–11, 146, 148–9, 152, 199–200 obstinacy of 15, 54, 124–7, 144–7 persecution by 5, 7, 17–18, 180, 201–4, 208, 211, 214, 217–29, 243, 247–50, 326 priesthoods (pagan) 90–1 property, plate 47–8, 84, 92, 140, 215–16, 219, 328, 344–5, 351, 355–71 provoke Jews 107–8, 150 rhetoric 17–18, 128, 232, 235 sacriWcing 42, 44–9, 51–4, 59–63, 67, 83–4, 90–5, 98, 241, 364 stantes 60, 62–3 upper class 44, 180, 184 use secular powers 215–19, 224 see also sacriWce test, Slavery, Volunteer Martyrs Christology 262, 268, 303, 305 Alexandrian 263, 271, 295, 316 Antiochene 271, 291, 294–5 One Nature 261, 279, 294–5, 302–3, 310, 319 Two Nature 262, 278, 284–5, 301, 310, 319 Chrysaphius 273, 291, 293 Cicero 141–3, 203, 339, 348, 362 Cilicia 178, 319 Circumcellions, see Donatists Cirta 51, 53, 59, 87, 218

382

General Index

Cities, poleis 328–33 Class Struggle 255, 355, 370–1 Clement of Alexandria 130, 158–9, 357–61, 365, 367–8 Cluny 228 Codex Theodosianus 166, 204, 267 Coelestius 367 cognitio extra ordinem 14, 113–14, 116, 145 Commodian 159 Commodus 113 Confessors; see Christianity Constans 358 Constantine I 24, 46, 73, 77, 96–7, 100, 103, 106, 171, 204–5, 212, 236, 248, 260, 267, 272, 294, 296 coercion by 215, 217–18, 223–5 support for Catholics 216–19 Constantine, commissioner 290, 293 Constantine, deacon 308 Constantine, magistrianus 302 Constantinople 208, 226, 271, 273, 276, 298, 304 Council of (381) 276, 305 Council of (553) 318 Synods of 448/9 276–7, 294, 305, 307–8 Constantius I Chlorus 54–5, 70, 95–6 Constantius II 181, 219, 238, 247 contumacia; see Christianity, obstinacy Coptic Church 262 Cordoba (Cordova) 185 Corinth 114, 266 Cotta 141, 203 Councils (Church) 255, 274, 277; see also individual locations acclamations at 267–8, 309

Acts, accuracy, completeness of 266–7, 277, 284, 296, 308–10 compilation of 310 subsciptions to 298, 310–12 control of 268, 270, 275–81, 284–7, 294, 297 pressures at 272, 284, 301, 304, 310–13 procedures 306–7 translation at 299–300 violence, disruption at 268, 275, 278, 309–14 Countryside, chora 328–31, 333–7 Cozbi the Midianite 220 Crispina of Thagora 54–5, 58, 76, 80–3 Crispinus, deacon 309 Crispus 96 Cynegius, prefect 240 Cynics 188 Cyprian 44, 49, 59, 94, 130, 144, 155, 159, 162, 170, 186, 360, 364 Cyril of Alexandria 180, 262, 264, 269, 275, 291–2, 294, 299 at First Ephesus 261 Twelve Anathemas 261, 264, 273, 296 Cyril of Heliopolis 181 Cyril of Jerusalem 366 Cyril of Scythopolis 334 Cyrrhus 292–3, 295 Damascus 129 Damasus, Pope 58, 210–11, 222, 248 Daniel of Carrhae 263 Danube 70, 72 Daphne 183 Dasius of Durostorum 173 Dead Sea Sect, see Essenes Decapolis 332–4

General Index Decius, emperor; Decian persecution 12, 21, 40, 42, 44, 50, 59–62, 64, 67–8, 73, 93–4, 106–7, 123, 137–40, 166, 169–70, 186, 364–5 delatores, delation 92–3, 110–11, 120–1, 123 Delehaye, H. 28, 156, 166, 172, 174, 190 Demetrianus 205 Demetrianus, notary 309 Demophilus 250 dies turiWcationis, turiWcatio 46, 49, 51–3, 76–7, 85, 89 dies traditionis 46, 89 Digest 126 Dio Chrysostom 349 Diocletian 16, 37, 42, 53–4, 58, 65, 69–74, 77, 107, 130, 139–40, 160, 166 Edict, First 35, 38–9, 41–3, 49, 51, 55, 67, 84, 92, 96, 175 Edict, Second 37, 42, 44, 92 Edict, Third 37, 44, 52 Edict, Fourth 20, 38, 41–4, 46, 49–51, 53–6, 58–9, 61–3, 68, 72, 74, 79–81, 83, 86–8, 92, 98, 104 health 72–3 superstitions 73 Diogenes of Cyzicus 265–6, 313 Dionysius of Alexandria 60, 140 Dionysius, prison visitor 178 Dionysius, volunteer 177 Dioscorus of Alexandria 257, 263–4, 274, 277–84, 291, 295–6, 298–304, 317 at Second Ephesus 262, 288–300, 305–6, 309–13 at Chalcedon 307, 312–16 deposition of 268–9, 281–3, 299–300, 316, 318

383

Disasters 133, 136, 205 Domitian, emperor 12, 111, 117–18 Domnina 163–4 Domninus, martyr 65, 179 Domnus of Antioch 263, 279, 296 Donatists, Donatist controversy 48, 50–2, 70, 77, 81, 96–89, 130, 162, 180, 183–4, 192, 198, 206, 209, 212, 215–19, 248, 309, 358 Donatus 66 Donatus of Calama 49 Donatus of Mascula 51, 53, 85 Dorotheus 84 Durostorum 181 Easter 243 Edessa 247–8, 289–90, 352 Egypt, Egyptians 55, 60, 66, 77–8, 131, 140, 175, 178, 204, 209, 225, 228, 239, 280, 282–3, 319, 329 Egyptian bishops 264, 298, 301–2, 310, 315–17 Egyptian martyrs 65–7, 131, 176, 178 Egyptian monks 275 Eisenhower, President 202, 351 Eleazar 195–6 Elijah, martyr 178 Elijah, prophet 250–1 Elvira, Council of 80, 89–104, 130, 159–60, 351 Emerita (Merida) 94, 174 emperors Caesaropapism 217, 275 decisions of 69–71, 118, 120–1, 239–40 Genius, Tyche of 112, 122 relations with Church 204, 206–7, 214–19, 223–4, 227, 237–41, 249, 255, 260, 264, 270, 272, 274–81, 284–5, 294, 297, 301, 305

384

General Index

emperors (cont.) worship of 111 Engels, F. 9, 11 Ennatha of Gaza 65 Epagethus, Vettius 167 Ephesus, Ephesians 137–8, 205–6, 212, 266, 303 First Council of 261, 263, 268, 275–7, 299, 305, 307 Second, ‘Robber’, Council of 262–4, 269–73, 277–8, 280–1, 283, 288, 291, 293, 296–7, 301–8, 310–17 Ephraim 332 Ephraim of Nisibis 352 Epictetus 192, 353–4 Epicureans 354 Epiphanes 365 Epiphanius 225, 366 Epiphanius of Callisura 319 Essenes 341, 344 Ethiopic Church 262 Eubulus of Batanaea 179 Eulalia of Merida 92, 98, 174 Eulogius of Toledo 185 Eulogius, tribune 277, 312 Eumeneia 67 Eunomius, bishop 206–7 Eunomius, envoy 217 Euplus of Sicily 56, 130, 175 Eusebius of Caesarea 37, 46, 59, 61–6, 71, 79–80, 129, 131, 157, 160, 164, 176–9, 205, 212–13, 215, 244, 294 Eusebius of Dorylaeum 263, 276, 283, 285, 300–1, 306–7, 309–11 Eusebius of Samosata 206, 309–11 Eustathius of Beirut 306 Eustathius of Sebaste 365 Eutherius 160

Eutyches, archimandrite 263–4, 271, 273, 276–8, 290, 292–6, 303, 305–8, 310, 312, 316 Eutychius of Constantinople 221, 249, 262 Evagrius of Epiphania 245–6, 257, 268–9, 280 Fabius, soldier 75–6, 173 Fastidius 367 Faustus, volunteer 56, 92, 98, 174 Felix, Antonius 114 Felix of Abthunga 51 Felix of Acci 103 Felix of Thibiuca 48, 54, 74 Firmilian, governor 66, 136 Firmus 216 Fitzhugh, George 347 Flavian of Constantinople 262–3, 273–4, 276–8, 290, 292, 294, 296, 301, 303, 305–8, 311, 313 Flavian of Philippi 307 Xogging, see torture Florentius, patrician 276, 290, 292–3, 295, 305, 308 Florian of Lauriacum 57 Florus, Valerius, governor 51–3, 74–5, 80, 84–9 Foucault, Michel 33 Franks 247 Frend, W.H.C. 5, 19, 26, 49, 79–85, 87, 89, 99, 290 Fundanus, C. Minucius 118–19 Fundanus of Abitina 48–9 Furni 49 Gadara, Gadera 44, 334 Galerius, emperor 21, 54, 61, 70–4, 77, 107, 139 Galicia 172 Galileans 192, 248

General Index Galilee 330–7 Galileo 315 Galillenses 147 Galla Placidia 277 Gallic martyrs 196 Gallienus 38, 76, 78 Gallio 14 Gallonius 74 games 90, 131, 177, 196–7 Gangra, Council of 365–6 Garnsey, Peter 31, 232, 245 Gaul 55, 70–2, 96 Gaulanitis 332 Gaza 137, 178–9, 331 Geertz, CliVord 31–2 Genethlius 287 Genoa 249 Gerasa 334 Gergesa 334 Germantown, Pennsylvania 355 Germanus, volunteer 65, 177 Gibbon, Edward 4, 6–9, 30, 129, 135, 159, 230 Gildo 216 Gnostics 4, 140, 158, 225, 353, 365 Gordius of Caesarea 175 Gorgonius 84 Goths 243, 249 government 40, 63, 106–7, 109, 138, 148–51; see also emperors, provinces ineVectiveness, limitations of 117, 224–5, 232 Gratian, emperor 219 Great Syrtis 72 Greece 71 Gre´goire, Henri 28, 89, 97, 100, 165 Gregory, commander 319 Gregory, pope 251 Gregory of Antioch 245 Gregory of Nazianzus 161, 182, 360

385

Gregory of Nyssa 360, 364 Hadrian, emperor 114, 118–19 Hadrian, martyr 179 Hadrumetum 72, 74 Hardy, E.G. 13, 26, 28, 151–2 Hardy, Thomas 343 Harnack, Adolf 26 Hecataeus of Abdera 332 Helena 272 Helpidius, count 277, 312 Heracles 188 Heraclius, emperor 25, 224, 318–19 heresy, heretics 137, 183, 209, 211–15, 218–19, 221–3, 245, 248–50, 351, 365; see also Arians, Marcionites, Montanists Hermes 47 Herod the Great 132, 197, 324, 332–3, 337 Herod Antipas, the Tetrarch 330, 335, 337 Herodotus 246 Hierocles, prefect 177 Hilary, pope 302–3 Hilary of Poitiers 219, 360 Hippolytus 167–8, 171 Hippos (Susitha) 334 historians, history 156, 202, 255, 337, 350 ecclesiastical 17, 25–6, 105, 119, 202 Oxford 25, 28–9 Roman 25–9, 34, 105–6 Homer 43, 179 Honigmann, E. 303 Honoria, Augusta 273 Honorius, emperor 309 Hopkins, Keith 31 Hume, D. 7, 229–30

386

General Index

Huns 273 Hypatia 210 Ibas of Edessa 263, 291, 318 Iconoclasts 251 idols, breaking, striking of 153, 174, 181, 193, 199, 210 Ignatius of Antioch 132–3, 189–90, 192, 199, 212, 350 Illyricum 71, 280, 290 bishops of 285, 298–9, 301 images, see idols Immanuel prophecy 325 immunity; see libellatici incense 51–3, 84–5; see also dies turiWcationis Innocentius 75 interpreters 299–300 Irenaeus 190, 205, 212, 360, 364 Irenaeus of Tyre 263 Irene 38 Isis 151, 234 Islam 197–8, 230 Italian martyrs 57–8 Italy 56–7, 70, 72, 95, 97, 273, 328 ius divinum 141–2, 203 Jacobites 262 Jacob of Cyrrhus 295 Jacobus, Numidian martyr 170 James the Just 108 Januarius, volunteer 56, 92, 98, 174 Jerome 162–4, 226–7, 357, 360 Jerusalem 178, 271, 298, 315, 317, 332, 367 Jesus 333–43, 349, 357, 359, 369–70 Jews 8, 17, 33, 114, 127, 135, 137, 193–8, 201, 222, 224, 228–9, 234, 239, 243, 249, 251, 323, 326, 330, 333, 335–6, 344, 348–9 hostility to Christians 27, 107–8

inXuence on martyrs 19–20, 132, 195–8 martyrs 19, 132, 193–8 synagogues 167–8 use as insult 301–2 Job 325 John, apostle 137, 205–6 John Cassian 360 John Chrysostom 164, 196, 271, 357, 360 John Nesteutes 250 John Rufus 257, 280, 314–15 John Scholasticus 249 John of Antioch, bishop 261, 275, 291 John of Antioch, historian 185 John of Germanicia 296 Joinville 228–9 Jones, A.H.M. 23, 25 Josephus 132, 197, 212 Jovian, emperor 237–9, 243–4 Jovinian, monk 226–7 Judaea 115, 122, 193, 330–2, 337 Judas, rabbi 197 Julian, emperor 78, 180–3, 216, 222, 238–41, 247–8, 356 Julian, friend of Jerome 357 Julian, slave 179 Julian of Lebedus 309 Justin, Roman martyr 121, 166, 212 Justin II, emperor 251 Justina 241 Justinian, emperor 208, 221–3, 225, 241, 245–6, 248–9, 318, 346 Juvenal of Jerusalem 271, 277, 288, 298–9, 304, 309, 315, 317 Juventius, guardsman 182 Koch, H. 89, 93–5, 100 Korah 220

General Index Lactantius 39, 46, 66, 69, 71, 96, 119, 130, 134, 139, 160, 171, 209, 218, 231, 233, 235–6, 241, 244, 360 Lamasba 87 Lambaesis 86–7, 170 Lane Fox, Robin 79, 99 Last, Hugh 24, 29, 148, Law, Roman 113–16, 118–22, 128, 145, 353–4 access to 36 enforcement of 224–5 processes of 113–20, 123–4 rhetoric of 204–5, 207 savagery of 223 Legio (Leon) 94 Leo, I, Pope 264, 268–9, 272–4, 277, 279, 283, 286, 290, 299, 301, 303, 319 Tome of 263, 266, 278, 282–3, 285, 290, 293, 296–7, 307, 312, 316 Leo XIII, Pope 370 Leontes 168 Letters of communion 93 Levi, son of Alpheus 337 Libanius 210, 237, 239–41, 247–8 libellatici 49–50, 364 libelli pacis 186 Liberius of Emerita 96–7 Licinia Augusta 277 Licinius, emperor 24, 106, 175, 212 Liguria 363 Louis IX 228–9 Lucentius of Ascoli 286 Lucian 144, 188 Lucilla of Cirta 82 Lucius, martyr 113, 121, 165 Lucretia 163 Lugdunum, see Lyons Lusitania 96 Lyons 120–1, 167

387

Macabees 132, 193–9 Macarius 52, 358 Macedon 71 Macedonia 248 Macedonians (heretics) 226 Macedonius of Merum 181 MacMullen, Ramsay 225, 230 Macomades 75, 86–8 MagniWcat 343, 371 Magnus, silentiary 276–7 Magnus Maximus 249–50 maiestas (treason) 122–3, 235 Malalas, John 185, 189 Malchus, Palestinian martyr 170 Manichees 39–40, 139, 201, 204, 224, 239, 242, 301–2, 311 Marcellinus, pope 58, 76–7 Marcellinus, tribune 309 Marcellus, soldier 172 Marcellus of Apamea 211, 240 Marcian, African martyr 75 Marcian, bishop 51 Marcian, emperor 264, 272–4, 278–80, 284, 288–91, 293, 296, 314, 317–18 at Chalcedon 287, 290 letters, instructions of 102, 279, 283, 297 Marcian, African martyr 75 Marciana of Caesarea 165 Marcion, Marcionites 33, 170 Marcuclius 92 Marcus Aurelius 41, 119–20, 146, 157, 166, 170, 192–3, 199 Marianus, Numidian martyr 170 Marinianus of Synnada 313 Marinus of Aquae Tibilitanae 49 Maris of Chalcedon 182 Maris the Persian 318 Mark of Arethusa 181 Martialis, ex-magister 286–7, 294

388

General Index

Martialis, Spanish volunteer 56, 92, 98, 174 Martin of Tours 173, 250 Martyrs; see under individual names veneration of 130, 157, 185–6 Marx, Karl 9, 11, 113, 355 Marxism 9 Mary, virgin 226, 228, 261, 285 Christotokos 261 Theotokos 260, 284 Mascula 87 Maternus, Firmicus 208, 220 Matthew 337 Matthias, rabbi 197 Mauretania 82, 165, 172 Mauretania Caesariensis 75–6, 173 Mauretania Tingitana 97, 100 Maurice, emperor 250 Maxentius, emperor 59, 97, 100, 180, 216 Maxima, Donatilla & Secunda 76, 80–1 Maximian, emperor 54–5, 57–8, 69–73, 75–6, 96, 130 Maximilian 171–2 Maximinus Daia, emperor 38, 61–2, 72, 129, 136 Maximinus Thrax, emperor 168 Maximus, guardsman 182 Maximus of Antioch 278–9, 302 Maximus of Carthage 51 Maximus of Ephesus 238 Meigne, M. 101–3 Meletius 47 Melitene 37 Memnon of Ephesus 275 Menalius 52 Mennonites 355 Mensurius of Carthage 45, 49, 67, 130, 160, 168, 174 Merum (Phrygia) 181

Messianic prophecy 325 Miaphysites; see Monophysites Michael the Syrian 228, 298, 319 Milan 227, 241, 363 Edict of 209–10, 212, 231, 233 Milevis 52–3, 76, 85, 89 military service, see soldiers Millar, Fergus 14, 23 Miltiades of Rome 58, 217 Mithras, Mithraism 88, 214 Moesia 181 Mohammed I, emir 185 Momigliano, Arnaldo 24 Mommsen, Theodor 12, 14, 27, 115 Monophysites 227–8, 245, 249, 262, 270, 279–80, 298, 310, 314–15, 318–19 Monotheletes 318 Montanists 130, 132, 155, 158, 191, 198 Montesquieu 4, 6–8 Musurillo, H.A. 145 Nain 332 Nazareth 332, 335–6, 339 Neocaesarea, Council of 97–8 Nepotian, priest 357 Nero, emperor 12, 108–9, 111, 117, 119 Nestorians, Nestorian views 261, 278, 280, 284, 301–2, 307, 310 Nestorius 207, 209, 243–5, 260–1, 263–4, 268, 275, 280–1, 294, 296, 302–3 Newman, Cardinal 354 Nicaea 279, 283 First Council of 98, 103, 243, 263, 276, 305 Second Council of 251 Nicene Christianity 204, 240–1; see also Orthodoxy

General Index Nicomedia 35, 67, 70, 73, 84, 160, 174 Nile 136 Nisibis 352 Nock, Arthur Derby 138 Nomus, quaestor 289–90, 292–3 Noricum 56–7 Novatian, Novatians 212, 244 Numidia 52, 59, 74, 82–9, 183, 216, 218 bishops of 51–2, 74 Numidia Cirtensis 53, 75, 87–9 Numidia Militiana 74, 85–8 Numidia Proconsularis 54–5, 171 Old Testament, sinister inXuence of 220–1 Olympius, envoy 217 Omar 319 Onesiphorus of Iconium 282, 313 Optatus, Aristius 77 Optatus of Milevis 52, 209, 220, 358 Orestes, prefect 180 Oriens 298 bishops of 284, 299–300, 309–13 Origen 130, 158–9, 168, 171, 193, 361 Orthodox, Orthodoxy 17, 137, 204, 206, 209, 212, 217–19, 227–8, 249, 262, 264, 270, 278, 280, 289, 298–9, 301, 309–10, 318–19 Ossius (Hosius) of Cordoba 97–8, 102–3 Ovid 338 Oxyrhynchus 78 Paeïs, volunteer 177 Paeon 166 Pagans 15, 17, 19, 27, 30, 204, 250; see also Polytheists

389

compassion for Christians 64 cult acts 150–1, 203, 214 religious feelings 112, 127, 134–6, 138–9, 142, 202–5, 208 paideia 232, 239 Palestine 53, 61, 64–6, 80, 131, 177–8, 185, 239, 323, 337 bishops of 298–9, 301 Palestinian martyrs 64–6, 176–9 Palladius, praetorian prefect 287–8, 290 Pamphilus, owner of Porphyry 65, 179 Pamphilus, Palestinian martyr 65 Pannonia 58, 70, 72 Panopolis 280 Papylus of Thyatira 166 Parables, Gospel stories Great Supper 221–2 Lazarus 342, 361, 363–4 Rich Young Man 342, 357, 363 Tares 221 Paschasinus of Lilybaeum 282–3, 286 Passions 42, 68–9, 165 Paternus, governor 144 Patricius 291 Paul of Cirta 49, 59, 92 Paul of Emesa 291 Paul of Samosata 215, 219 Paul of Tarsus 11, 33, 14, 212–15, 324, 343, 349–50, 354, 369 apologists for 344 beˆte noire 323 Paul, Palestinian martyr 65 Paulinus of Nola 362 pax dei 211 pax deorum 15–16, 133, 200, 203, 211 Pegasius of Ilium 241 Pelagia 164 Pelagians 352, 364, 366–7

390

General Index

Peraea 331 Peregrinus (Proteus) of Parium 186–8 Perennis, prefect 113 Pergamum 166 Perpetua 169, 190–2 Persecution 23, 31, 106, 121, 201–4, 208–10, 217–18, 238, 248–50, 326 machinery, mechanics of 60–8, 127 phases 12, 16, 106, 144 religious motivation 4, 15, 30, 34, 127, 133–8, 143, 150–2, 200, 203, 211 targets 38 Persia, Church in 162, 184 Pessinus 181 Peter of Alexandria 46, 50, 63, 95, 98, 130, 155, 158, 160–1, 175, 364 Peter of Terracina 251 Peter, imperial slave 84 Peter, Palestinian martyr 65 Phaeno 65–6, 176 Phileas of Thmuis 176 Philemon 165 Philip of Heraclea 43, 47–8 Philip the Tetrarch 332 Philippi 138 Philo 135, 368 Philoromus 176 Philosophers 136, 142, 346–8, 350, 353 Phineas, grandson of Aaron 220, 250–1 Phoenicia 178, 335 Photius, patriarch 294 Phrygia 67, 157, 165, 181, 226 Pilate, Pontius 122 Pionius 60, 69, 170 Pius XI, Pope 370

Placitus, ex-magister 286 Plato, 325–6, 346–7, 370 beˆte noire 323 Plerophories, see John Rufus Pliny the Younger 28, 42, 108, 110–11, 117, 119–20, 124–7, 144, 146, 148–51, 208, 267, 338, 360 Polycarp 121, 130, 137, 157–8, 196, 205 Polyeuctus of Melitene 169 Polygamy 324 Polytheism, Polytheists 211, 229–30, 240; see also Pagans Pontica, diocese 298 Pontus 71, 110, 137, 178 poor, see poverty Poppaea Sabina 109 Popper, Karl 326 Porphyry, philosopher 296 Porphyry, slave 179 Potamiaena 169 poverty 363–4, 366–8 Greek attitudes to 340 Jewish attitudes to 340–1 moral connotations of 339, 341 Priscillian 250 Priscus, historian 289 Priscus, Palestinian martyr 170 Proclus of Alexandria 243 Procopius, historian 246–7, 270 Procopius, quasi-volunteer 42, 65, 179 Procopius, usurper 239 Procopius of Scythopolis 84 Proculus 165 Promus 178 Property; see Christianity, property Prosdoce 163–4 Proterius of Alexandria 210, 317 Protogenes, prefect 289, 292–3

General Index provinces, governors of 12, 14, 28, 39, 43–4, 65–7, 75, 106, 114–22 governors’ attitudes 16, 128, 131–2, 167, 177, 180, 214, 225–6, 339 Prudentius 57, 98, 174 Ps.-Dionysius the Areopagite 245, 250–1 Ptolemy, Ptolemaeus, martyr 113, 121, 165 Ptolemies 331 public opinion 121, 129, 138, 150, 157 Pulcheria 261, 264, 271, 273–4, 278–80, 284, 287–9, 294, 296, 301, 314, 318 Puritans 10 Quintianus, Aurelius 53, 75, 86–9 Quintus 157, 165–6 Raetia 56–7 Ramsay, W.M. 13, 28. Ranilda 248 Ravenna 72, 272 Reccared I 224 records; see under Councils, Acts relics 188, 291 religio, religiones 31, 214, 232–6 Restitianus the African 300 Restituta 75 Rhine 70 riches, see Wealth riots 107, 150 anti-Christian 122 Christian 210–11, 279, 317; see also Christianity, factions Robinson, Henry Crabb 141 Roman Empire 12, 16, 26, 69, 244–5, 329

391

Roman religion 15, 141–4, 203–4, 235, 370 study of 27, 29, 202–3, 232 Romanus, commissioner 294 Romanus, martyr 44 Romanus, volunteer 65, 84, 177 Rome 58, 77, 100, 106, 108, 113, 121–2, 133–4, 148, 151, 166, 189–90, 227, 248–9, 267, 271–2, 284–5, 291, 299, 314, 317 Romulus, volunteer 177 Rufus, count 295 Rumbold, Richard 347 Rusicade (Philippeville) 87 Rusticus 165 Sabas, Goth 184 SacriWcatio; see under Christianity, sacriWcing sacriWce certiWcates 59–63; see also libellatici sacriWce test 33, 40–2, 125, 127–8, 140, 147 Said, Edward 33 Sallustius, quaestor 204 Salsa of Tipasa 75, 165 Salutius Secundus 238 Salvian 242, 245 Samaria 331, 333 Samaritans 204, 251, 333 Sardinia 147, 167 Sardis 225 Saturninus, companion of Perpetua 192 Saturninus of Abitina 54, 74 Saturninus, Vigellius 112, 117 Saturus 169, 191 schism, schismatics 183, 211–15, 218–21, 260, 351 Scillitan martyrs 69, 112, 121, 147 Scythia, Scythian 349

392

General Index

Sebaste (Samaria) 331, 333 Secundus, Pedanius 346 Secundus of Tigisis 74, 160, 174 Seeck, Otto 314 Seleucids 331 Seleucus, ex-oYcer 179 Senate, senators 36, 134, 241, 266–7, 287, 354 Senator, envoy 290, 292–3 Sepphoris 331, 335–6 Severans, Severan period 41, 139, 166 Severus, Septimius 119 Severus, Tetrarch 58, 72, 97 Severus of Antioch 223 Sherwin-White, A.N. 14, 114, 116, 124–6, 144–51 Sicily 56, 175, 328 Sidon 331–3, 335 Silvanus of Cirta 39 Siricius, Pope 226 Sirmium 70 Sisebut 251 slavery, slaves 167, 323, 345–55, 368 as punishment 36 Christian attitudes to 349–55, 369 punishments of 167, 223, 242, 346, 351 Smaragdus Abbas 355 Smyrna 158, 165, 196 Socrates, historian 181, 236, 238–9, 242–5, 268, 294 soldiers 75, 158–9, 169–73, 182, 312–13, 369 Solon of Athens 339 Sophronius of Tella 263 Southern, Richard 29 Sozomen, historian 181, 211, 238–9, 244, 268, 294 Spain 49, 56, 70–2, 79, 82, 90–1, 93–8, 100, 103–4, 123, 172, 174, 184, 250–1

Sparta 345 Speratus the Scillitan 127 Sporacius 287, 292 Stein, Ernst 273 Stephen, protomartyr 108 Stephen of Ephesus 309, 312 Stoics 141, 347, 353–4, 371 Stratelates 291 Suetonius 108, 147–8, 203 suicide religious 154, 163–4 subscriptions; see Chalcedon, subscriptions to superstitio, superstition 31, 134–7, 139, 143, 145, 147–52, 232–3 Sychar of Samaria 332–3 Syme, Sir Ronald 23 Symeon Stylites 295 Symeon Stylites the younger 251 Symmachus 210, 237, 239–41 Syria, Syrians 37, 44, 53, 71, 77–8, 129, 181, 187, 211, 219, 228, 239, 295, 313, 319, 348 Syrian Orthodox Church 270 Tacitus 108, 135, 147–8, 203 Tarraco 100 Tatian, city prefect 290, 293 Tatian of Merum 181 Taurus 72 taxation, taxes 77–8, 232, 292–3 temples 94, 126 destruction of 162, 181–2, 210–11, 240 Tertullian 112, 119, 122–3, 128, 131, 136, 155, 158–9, 167, 169, 171, 186, 191, 231, 233–6, 241, 360 Tetrarchs, Tetrarchy 42, 69–72, 95–6, 179

General Index Thalassius of Caesarea 277, 288, 309, 314–15 Thamugadi, Timgad 74, 86–7 Thebaid 66, 82, 131, 176 Thecla, Palestinian martyr 65 Themistius 210, 237–40 Theodahad 248–9 Theoderic the Amal 249 Theodore of Claudiopolis 304, 306 Theodore of Mopsuestia 263, 318 Theodore the Studite 251, 355 Theodoret of Cyrrhus 162, 182, 184, 206–7, 244, 264–5, 311, 360 correspondence of 269, 291–3, 296–7 exclusion from Second Ephesus 263, 277, 295–6, 301 restoration at Chalcedon 268, 294–8, 301–3, 307, 310, 314 Theodosia of Tyre 178 Theodosius I, emperor 202, 219, 240–1, 249 Theodosius II, emperor 207, 243–4, 261–2, 264, 272–8, 289, 291–2, 295–7, 299, 301 Theodosius, monk 317 Theodosius of Synnada 225–6 Theodoulus of Merum 181 Theodulus, slave 179 Theologians, Theology 27, 269–71, 285, 288, 319, 325, 337, 350 Theopaschite formula 241, 318 Theophilus of Alexandria 240, 271 Theopistus 280 Theveste 54, 171 Thessalonica 38, 71 Thibilis (Announa) 87 Thomas of Edessa 291 Thrace 70, 298 Three Chapters 318 Thurlow, Lord 141

393

Tiber 136 Tiberianus, governor 185 Tiberias 331, 335–6 Tiberius, emperor 203 Tiberius Constantine, emperor 249–50 Ticinum 100 Timolaus, volunteer 177 Timothy, martyr 65 Timothy Aelurus 257, 315 Tingis (Tangier) 172 Titus 118 Toledo 185 toleration 152, 202–3, 209–10, 218–19, 229–51 Tolstoy 354 Torres, Camilio 370 torture, judicial 36, 41–2, 53, 63, 66, 76–7, 95, 117, 127–8, 157, 174–5, 178, 181, 227, 368 traditio, traditores 46–9, 51–3, 74, 95–6, 98 Trajan 25, 40–1, 110–11, 117, 119–20, 132, 144, 148, 151–2, 185, 208, 267 Trier 72, 250 Tripolitania 74, 82 turiWcatio; see dies turiWcationis Typasius, veteran 75, 173 Tyre 179, 331–3, 335 Ulpian, jurist 117, 119, 121, 126 Ulpian, martyr 65, 179 Urban, governor 66 Urbicius 291 Urbicus, Q. Lollius 165 Ursinus 210, 222, 248 Vahram V 184 Valens, emperor 206, 238–9 Valens, Palestinian martyr 65

394

General Index

Valentina, volunteer 178–9 Valentinian I, emperor 224, 239, 242, 247 Valentinian II, emperor 241, 249 Valentinian III, emperor 207, 272–3, 277 Valentinian, prefect of Illyricum 290 Valentinians 248 Valerian, emperor 36, 40, 68, 93, 107, 139–40, 145, 170 Valerius of Caesaraugusta 98 Valladolid 348 Vandals 163, 300 vengeance, divine; see wrath Verona List 74, 85 Veronicianus, secretary 299 Vespasian, emperor 118 Victor of Cirta 39 Victor of Rusicade 49 Vienne 120, 196 Vigilius, pope 318 Vincentius, archdeacon 56, 98 Vincomalus, magister oYciorum 286–8, 290, 292, 297 Visigoths 224, 273 Volunteer Martyrs 33–4, 44–5, 56, 65–8, 81–5, 93, 129–33, 145, 150, 153–93, 197–200 dangers of 155, 162, 197–8

oYcial disapproval of 32, 45, 91–2, 130, 155–62, 165, 168 war, Just; see bellum iustum wealth, riches 338–9, 341–3, 356–71 basis for charity 358–60, 368 moral terminology for 338–9 suYciency of 356, 359, 367 Weinstock, Julius 141 Williams, Bernard 231 wrath, divine 136–7, 200, 204–8, 218 Yahweh 10, 325–6 Yarmuk 319 Yazdgard I 162, 184 Zacchaeus 368 Zacchaeus, martyr 44, 65 Zachariah rhetor 269, 280, 314 Zama 49 Zarmanus, Zarmarus 188 Zealots 192 Zebinas, volunteer 65, 177 Zeno, emperor Henoticon 207, 241, 318 Zeno, magister militum 289, 291 Zimri the Israelite 220 Zoilus, senator 293

REVELATION

Christian Persecution, Martyrdom, and Orthodoxy

Martyrdom

Orthodoxy

Martyrdom

Orthodoxy

Oates, Joyce Carol - Martyrdom

Martyrdom and Rome (Wiles Lectures)

Martyrdom of Polycarp

Oates, Joyce Carol - Martyrdom

The Myth of Persecution - How Early Christians Invented a Story of Martyrdom

The Years of Persecution

Chesterton, G.K. - Orthodoxy

Martyrdom and Identity: The Self on Trial

Moral Purity and Persecution in History

Persecution and the Art of Writing

Orthodoxy and the Courts in Late Antiquity

Anti-Judaism and Christian Orthodoxy: Ephrem's Hymns in Fourth-century Syria (Patristic Monograph Series 20)

Persecution and the Art of Writing

Orthodoxy and the Courts in Late Antiquity

Being Reconciled: Ontology and Pardon (Radical Orthodoxy)

Cities of God (Radical Orthodoxy)

Jewish and Christian Liturgy and Worship (Jewish and Christian Perspectives)

Radical Orthodoxy: A New Theology

Truth in Aquinas (Radical Orthodoxy)

Forgiveness and Christian Ethics

Christian Dior and I

Pagan and Christian Rome

The Christian and Anxiety

Churchgoing and Christian Ethics

Mysticism: Christian and Buddhist

Coleridge and Christian doctrine

Christian Persecution, Martyrdom, and Orthodoxy

Martyrdom

Orthodoxy

Martyrdom

Orthodoxy

Oates, Joyce Carol - Martyrdom

Martyrdom and Rome (Wiles Lectures)

Martyrdom of Polycarp

Oates, Joyce Carol - Martyrdom

The Myth of Persecution - How Early Christians Invented a Story of Martyrdom

The Years of Persecution

Chesterton, G.K. - Orthodoxy

Martyrdom and Identity: The Self on Trial

Moral Purity and Persecution in History

Persecution and the Art of Writing

Orthodoxy and the Courts in Late Antiquity

Anti-Judaism and Christian Orthodoxy: Ephrem's Hymns in Fourth-century Syria (Patristic Monograph Series 20)

Persecution and the Art of Writing

Orthodoxy and the Courts in Late Antiquity

Being Reconciled: Ontology and Pardon (Radical Orthodoxy)

Cities of God (Radical Orthodoxy)

Jewish and Christian Liturgy and Worship (Jewish and Christian Perspectives)

Radical Orthodoxy: A New Theology

Truth in Aquinas (Radical Orthodoxy)

Forgiveness and Christian Ethics

Christian Dior and I

Pagan and Christian Rome

The Christian and Anxiety

Churchgoing and Christian Ethics

Mysticism: Christian and Buddhist

Coleridge and Christian doctrine

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