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The Rise of Church-State Alliances: Imperial Edicts & Church Councils: 306-565
THE TIMES BETWEEN CONSTANTINE AND THEODOSIUS THE GREAT
THE SONS OF CONSTANTINE
Edward Gibbon wrote in his History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire:
"The sons of Constantine trod in the footsteps of their father, with more zeal, and with less discretion....every indulgence was shown to the illegal behaviour of the Christians; every doubt was explained to the disadvantage of Paganism; and the demolition of the temples was celebrated as one of the auspicious events of the reign of Constans and Constantius."
When Constantine died, his three sons took over the empire, each acquiring a particular region. Fighting over power ensued and when all was finished, Constantine II was dead, Constans was weakened and Constantius stood tallest in the Empire. Unlike his father and brothers, Constantius was an Arian Christian. Thinking that he was promoting the cause of Christianity just as his father did regarding Arianist leaders, he exiled Nicene leaders and confiscated their churches. Constantius banned pagan ritual sacrifice of animals, which was also an ancient traditional Judaic ritual. In the doctrines of Christianity, those sacrifices symbolicly underly the Abrahamic religion of Christianity (and Islam). Most ancient religions embrace the theme of sacrifice in one form or another. Every tribal superstition has a history of trying to bribe the gods by killing something of worth for them. Constantius decreed that participation in these kind of pagan rites became a capital offense. Emulating the attitude set down by Constantius, mobs of Christians attacked and demolished pagan temples, shrines and altars. The irony is that the Christian mythology's most basic theme lies on the foundation of a human sacrifice; the father who sacrifices his son. Christianity's offer of salvation is based on a bloody sacrifice. Jesus' death was a human sacrifice and according to scripture it was planned before the foundations of the world by the deity of the Bible. One can't help but think of this same diety as he orders Abraham to murder his son in a ritual human sacrifice as a sign of faith. It would appear that human sacrifice was not new in Abraham's religion.
The decrees against sacrifices recorded as Codex Theodosianus. 16.10.2 in 341, 16.10.4 in 346, and 16.10.6 in 356 ordered:
"Let superstition cease and the insanity of sacrifices be abolished. Whoever has dared in the face of the law of the divine prince, our father, to make sacrifices, shall have appropriate penalty, and immediate sentence dealt to him."
"It is decreed that in all places and all cities the temples should be closed at once, and after a general warning, the opportunity of sinning be taken from the wicked. We decree also that we shall cease from making sacrifices. And if anyone has committed such a crime, let him be stricken with the avenging sword. And we decree that the property of the one executed shall be claimed by the city, and that rulers of the provinces be punished in the same way, if they neglect to punish such crimes."
"We order that all found guilty of attending sacrifices or of worshipping idols shall suffer capital punishment."
Avenging sword. Capital punishment. Decrees in 357 and 358 further attacked the religious practices of non-Christians. Those deemed sorcerers, magicians, astrologers and augerers were denied the right to practice their craft. Addressing those who claimed to foretell the future and those who wished to know it, the law declared "let the curiosity to know the future be silenced for all forever". The burning stake or the iron comb, an implement of torture and death, awaited those who divined the future.
Exodus 22: 20: "He that sacrificeth unto any god, save unto the LORD only, he shall be utterly destroyed"
CONSTANTIUS & ANTI-SEMITISM
Codifying the ethnic and religious bigotry of the Council of Elvira of 306, the Arian Constantius banned the intermarriage between Jewish men and Christian women. Jewish husbands could be put to death for seducing Christian women to embrace Judaism. This action criminalized proselytizing under penalty of death. Although slavery was extremely common, Constantius took away the Jews' right to own slaves, especially Christian slaves, in a time when economic prosperity depended on the slave trade. This put Jews at a financial disadvantage giving Christians what amounts to special rights, which was clearly the intent. As with the case with Islam and the taxing of non-Muslims within their empire, one has to wonder how many people converted solely to receive the special rights of the state's official religion. To convert in Islam was to lower one's taxes and increase one's prosperity. Adding to the financial problems, if a Jewish slave owner had his slave circumcised he could be fined and face the possibility of being executed. Arian and Nicene leaders had almost everything in common because they both claimed to hold the only truth and sought to persecuate all others. After the Reformation, Catholics and Protestants became indistinguishable regarding draconian enforcements of their vision of Christianity. The persecuted becoming the persecutors is found in every chapter of Christian history because it comes directly from the Bible's dictates regarding acceptable religious beliefs.
In 339 Constantius issued these two decrees regarding Jews, recorded as Codex Theodosianus 16.8.6 and 16.9.2:
[1] "if any one among the Jews has purchased a slave of another sect or nation, that slave shall at once be appropriated for the imperial treasury."
"If, indeed, he shall have circumcised the slave whom he has purchased, he will not only be fined for the damage done to that slave but he will also receive capital punishment."
"If, indeed, a Jew does not hesitate to purchase slaves-those who are members of the faith that is worthy of respect then all these slaves who are found in his possession shall at once be removed. No delay shall be occasioned, but he is to be deprived of the possession of those men who are Christians."
[2] "This pertains to women, who live in our weaving factories and whom Jews, in their foulness, take in marriage. It is decreed that these women are to be restored to the weaving factories. [Marriages between Jews and Christian women of the imperial weaving factory are to be dissolved.]"
"This prohibition [of intermarriage] is to be preserved for the future lest the Jews induce Christian women to share their shameful lives. If they do this they will subject themselves to a sentence of death."
In this intolerant and violent Christian empire, Jews are full of foulness, have shameful lives, are denied equal treatment and need to be subject to capital punishment because of their religion. This the same despicable kind of language found in Martin Luther's The Jews and Their Lies and Adolf Hitler's Mein Kampf. Nazi Germany did not invent anything new regarding the treatment of Jews. They simply amplified the anti-Semitism inherent in European Christianity and its history. The violence against Jews by Christians was already an age old habit in Europe. Burning synagogues and murdering the Christ-killing Jews had been going on for a very long time and was originally begun through church canon and the imperial decrees that made them civil law. Judaism had been a legitmate religion in the Roman Empire but the church could not tolerate that freedom and took steps, century after century, to persecute them. The Nazi's blood laws of Nuremburg prohibiting Jews and Germans from marrying Germans copies of church canon and the despotic edicts of Christian emperors. Their dining car decree forbidding Jews from eating with Germans is right off the pages of the canons of the Council of Elvira at which Christians were forbideen to share a meal with a Jew.
JULIAN THE APOSTATE: NEOPLATONIST EMPEROR WITH A CHRISTIAN ATTITUDE
Born in 331, Julan was the nephew of Constantine and was the last emperor of the Constantinian lineage. His father was Constantine's half brother, Julius Constantius. Due to his age, he and his step-brother's lives were spared during the purges by Constantius after Constantine's death. Although he harbored a bitter grudge regarding Christianity because of the murders of his family members, Julian grew up as a Christian and received the education of a prince in the court of Constantius. His education under the direction of the eunuch Mardonius was based on the classical Greco-Roman model of liberal education founded in grammar and then rhetoric for the advanced student. Educated in classical philosophical traditions, Constantius tried to give him this perspective from a Christian point of view. At this time, a liberal arts education still had value in the courts of the empire. At six years old, there was Eusebius of Nicomedia, a distant relative and a leader of the Arians, who cared for him. All of his teachers were supposed to be Christians because the emperor was concerned about Julian being "seduced to the pagan superstitions". Two of Julian's teachers were the philosophers Nicocles and Hecebolius who were secretly pagan due to fear of the emperors. Religious terrorism is very old and became common starting with the period in which the alliance of the Christian religion and the government developed.
As Julian grew up, Constantius became concerned about Julian's education and had him moved with his brother to a castle in Marcellum in Cappadocia (now eastern Turkey) for six years. In 351, his older half-brother was decreed Ceasar (a Ceasar to an Augustus is like a Vice President to a President) and Julian was allowed to return to Nicomedia. When Julian returned to Nicomedia, he picked up where he had left off and continued classical education. Several great teachers of the day educated Julian. Julian was deeply influenced by the Neoplatonist philosophers Aedesius, Chrysanthius, and Maximus. After Constantius had Gallus executed for treason, he again turned his attention to Julian and had him confined near Milan. Then, following seven months of confinement, the emperor's wife convinced him that Julian was not a threat. Released, Julian returned to Greece in order to continue his quest for scholarship; superficially Christian and thoroughly Hellenist. Not surprisingly, his next teacher was the Neo-Platonist Priscus.
Socrates Scholasticus notes in his Ecclesiastical History, Book 3, that Julian was considered "eminently distinguished for his learning". His university lawn life of books, public fountains, Roman Baths and garden walks abruptly ended when Contantius named him Ceasar in order to delegate some responsibility in ruling the empire. As sole emperor, Constantius was in over is as far as a workload is concerned. All that was left in his immediate family was Julian. In the struggles with his brothers Constans and Constantine after the death of their father, he had killed off many of his relatives that could have one day been responsible leaders. One of those murdered was Julian's father. It is ironic that the pagan Julian was the only one left.
With Julian as Ceasar and being also a successful military commander, the strife and jealousy between Constantius and Julian increased. To Constantius' chagrin, Julian was also a very able and respected administrator and was praised for this by the communities he was responsible for. And Julian did what he could as administrator to undo some of Constantius' moral wrongs. When finally Constantius tried to pry troops from Julian in order to weaken him and strengthen his own military plans, the popular Julian's troops rebelled and proclaimed him emperor. At first Julian refused but after praying to Zeus for guidance he accepted the throne. In Julian's "Letter to the Athenians" he claims that the gods urged him to claim the throne, the Genius (guardian spirit) of Rome even appearing to him in a dream. The conflict between the two was never brought to fruition because Constantius died in the Autumn of that year. As strange as this sounds, Constantius is said to have named Julian as his successor. Whatever the truth is, there is something amazing about Julian's story. His childhood survival of a 'royal' purge by a fanatical Arian cousin; his liberal arts education; his secret life of Hellenism before his reign; and his becoming an emperor trying to revive Roman traditions.
Emperor Julian saw himself as the great restorer of the traditional values of Rome. Like the religious activists in the present age who defend what they see as traditional values, Julan was a zealous religious conservative, defending a thousand years of Roman values and tradition. To the pagan, the Neoplatonist, and the philosophical naturalist of the fourth century, Julian was the savior of Roman tradition and greatness. At this time, non-Christians greatly outnumbered Christians. From the classical scholar to the rural pagans to the religious conservative Neoplatonists, Christanity's attacks on other religions undermined a thousand years of successful social and religious policy. To pagan emperors, officials like Pliny the Younger, and philosophers like Celsus and Hypatia, Christianity was uncivilizing because it attacked the public order with it's fanatical intolerance towards other religions.
Constantius' persecutions had aroused the passions of the Pagans and factored in the initial popularity of Julian. Because Arianist Constantius also persecuted the Nicenes, they too were bitter. Of course, under Constantine, it was the Arianist Christians who were bitter. Reversing the tables, Constantius had not only closed, destroyed and/or confiscated pagan temples, he took aim at Nicene churches and exiled many of their leaders. When Constantius died, Julian was put in a challenging position of addressing their diverse grievances.
The first thing he did was address the Nicene's claims. Julian returned confiscated Nicene churches to the Catholics and recalled some of the exiled Bishops. He urged Arian and Catholic leaders to settle their differences between them but it is probable that he really wished that internal Christological conflicts would weaken Christianity. This was also the view of the Roman historian Ammianus. Constantine had been concerned enough over this division that he ordered the Council of Nicea convened to address the issue of heresy.
Although some of his governors did so without authority, Socrates claims in Book 3 of his history that Julian abstained therefore from excessive cruelties and persecuted few with physical harm. He carried out reprisals and ordered compensation for the damage done to pagan temples, statues and groves. He forced none to sacrifice but "induced many to sacrifice, partly by flattery, and partly by gifts." Socrates also claims that he devised a plan to extort money from Christians by fining those that refused to sacrifice. This is similar to the subtle Islamic practice in their early imperial expansion of taxing those that were not Muslim, while allowing them to practice their faith unharmed.
Julian returned religious liberty to the pagans and ordered the return of temples and other properties that were seized by Christians. This is much like Constantine ordering properties returned to Christians after the persecutions by Decius, Diocletian and Galerius. Julian also began a program of repairing and restoring pagan temples. The wealth confiscated from the pagan properties and treasuries by Constantine and Constantius was returned. Pagan temples and groves opened throughout the region and the great festivals of old resumed.
Socrates speaks of an incident in the province of Phyrgia that portrays the rancorous relations between the pagans and the Christians. He writes in Book 3, Chapter 15:
"Amachius governor of Phrygia [central Turkey] ordered that the temple at Merum, a city of that province, should be opened, and cleared of the filth which had accumulated there by lapse of time: also that the statues it contained should be polished fresh. This in being put into operation grieved the Christians very much. Now a certain Macedonius and Theodulus and Tatian, unable to endure the indignity thus put upon their religion, and impelled by a fervent zeal for virtue, rushed by night into the temple, and broke the images in pieces."
In an equally mad fit of religious zeal, the Christian vandals were executed. It is important to consider this very important fact: it was rare before Christianity came on to the scene that religions attacked each other. It was a generally accepted pagan belief that that the gods did not fight each other. That belief died out many centuries before Christianity appeared and was considered quaint. For most of the previous millenium, the Mediterranean culture did fine with a thousand religions. Religious wars were unheard of before the politically radical religions of Christianity and Islam came on the scene.
The Christian historian Sozomen also wrote of an incident in Book 5, Chapter 15 that reveals some of Julian's agenda and concerns:
"About the same period, the inhabitants of Cyzicus [NW Turkey] sent an embassy to the emperor to lay before him some of their private affairs, and particularly to entreat the restoration of the pagan temples. He applauded their forethought, and promised to grant all their requests. He expelled Eleusius, the bishop of their city, because he had destroyed some temples, and desecrated the sacred areas with contumely, provided houses for the support of widows, erected buildings for holy virgins, and induced pagans to abandon their ancestral rites."
"...The emperor prohibited some foreign Christians, who had accompanied him, from entering the city of Cyzicus, from the apprehension, it appears, that they would, in conjunction with the Christians within the city, excite a sedition on account of religion."
Socrates also speaks of a similar incident in Cyzicus which probably happened previous to Sozomen's incident. The same bishop Eleusius had "totally demolished" the city's Novatian church and Julian ordered it to "be rebuilt, imposing a very heavy penalty upon Eleusius bishop of that city, if he failed to complete that structure at his own expense within the space of two months"
In truth, Julian's limited show of religious tolerance was based mostly in political necessity. It was as empty as Constantine's Edict of tolerance which amounted to an intermission and a prelude to imperial Christianity which did attempt to wipe out religious diversity. He felt about Christianity just as Christians did about paganism. He thought Christianity unclean, impious, and impure. They were atheists who denied and mocked the gods. Like the third century emperors who persecuted Christians; like the Christians who persecuted pagans; I think Julian would have considered outlawing Christianity if he thought he could have gotten away with it. Political neccessity and religious climate prevented such a program. But there is one fact that is irrefutable: Julian behaved like an intolerant Christian towards a competing religion. Towards Christianity, he was intolerant and scheming. Like pagans in a Christian court, Julian made it difficult for Christians to remain in the imperial court or to become provincial governors.
Julian, being a puritanical pagan, was deeply concerned with purity and sanctity in his religious life. Like most religious zealots, he was obsessed with purity. To him, Christianity was unclean and defiled the sacred properties that were seized from the pagans and turned over to the Church during Constantine and Constantius' reign. Consequently, Julian sometimes removed the remains of Christians buried on the sacred properties of the ancients. He even destroyed a few Christian tombs on these properties for the purpose of purifying and cleansing the property. In Julian's mind, the presence of any corpses, especially impious and unclean Christian ones, was intolerable to the great gods of old and must be remedied. Being a pagan who celebrated nature and life, he looked upon Christian churches as tombs. Christians were atheists to Julian and the majority of the people who remained pagan.
Having a classical education was very important to Julian. One of the ways Julian attacked Christianity was to forbid Christians from teaching grammer and rhetoric because he believed they were impious and full of ridicule towards the classical traditions handed down by their forefathers. By allowing them to teach it they would mock it and teach it out of existence. Julian, however devious, was correct about the future, intuitively knowing that if given the power, the clergy, in alliance with the state, sought to outlaw all intellectual and religious diversity, everything classical and everything pagan. And that is just what they did for more than a thousand years. This attitude is still alive and well in the religious fundamentalists of Christianity and Islam, who still seek governments of God and other alliances of religion and government.
Regardless of his bitter sentiments and contempt, Julian as a philosopher knew that it was time for the empire to accept the presence of this new religion and it became a hopeless enterprise trying to extirpate it. And his agenda to paint Christianity as novel and dangerous to the empire had failed. This unwelcomed wisdom also held true for centuries of Christians with unrealistic hopes of wiping out Greco-Roman classicism and naturalism once and for all. In the coming age, after centuries of repression, classicism with its humanities, arts, achitecture and science bursted forth in the late Medieval period and the European Renaissance. This rebirth of humanism layed the foundations of the modern western mind and the rise of modern values of liberty and individuality. Islam became increasingly oppressive after the thirteenth century and intellectuals fled to Europe with their collections. This helped bring about the Renaissance and the scientific revolution because Islam had kept, not destroyed, the classical authors. When the US Constitution was ratified, people were saying it was the "return of the Saturnian Age". They were referring to the Golden Age of the classical era. The Golden Age of diversity, science, humanism and democracy had returned. Athens, not Jerusalem. That age is where these things had their birth. These things were the targets of Christian leaders both in church and state. They were allied in a common cause to wipe out the classical world.
Socrates wrote in Book 3 of his Histories regarding the contraditions of Julian's mind:
"An emperor may be a philosopher in all that regards moderation and self-control; but should a philosopher attempt to imitate what might become an emperor, he would frequently depart from his own principles."
Julian's reign lasted last less than three years. The Roman and Persian obsessions with warring against each other in century after century claimed Julian's life. In a sense, because of his strict Christian upbringing in the court of Constantius under Eusebius of Nicomedia, his approach to Christianity reveals that the religious intolerance found in Christianity and not in pagan doctrine, claimed his mind.
EMPEROR JOVIAN, A PASSING MOMENT IN THE EMPIRE
Right after Julian's death, troops again took the liberty of proclaiming an emperor. Emperor Jovian, a Christian, was the soldier's second choice. The first choice was a high ranking pagan who turned down the purple. The new emperor promoted Christianity and recalled more Nicenes exiled by Constantius. Continuing the calculated onslaught on religious diversity, Jovian also reclosed pagan temples. Jovian ruled for 7 months before he died of a disease "caused by some obstruction" (Socrates, EH, Book 3 Chapter 16)
EMPERORS VALENTINIAN AND VALENS
In Book 4, Socrates tells us "...for Valentinian while he favored those who agreed with him in sentiment, offered no violence to the Arians; but Valens, in his anxiety to promote the Arian cause, grievously disturbed those who differed from them,..."
In 364, after the death of the young pagan emperor Julian and the passing of Jovian, Valentinian, a military tribune, came to power. He ruled the western empire and appointed his younger brother Valens, a commander in the emperor's guard, as co-emperor in the east. Because Julian had mostly allowed Christians to practice their religion during his reign, there was an atmosphere that lent itself to religious tolerance. In fact, both Valentinian and Valens served under Julian and were not required to sacrifice. Due to the need for strong men serving the state, Julian kept Christians in his government. The same can be said about some Christian emperors even though they personally desied, with the blessings of the church, the eventual extinction of pagan diversity and classical philosophies.
Valentinian's edict of toleration has been lost but was mentioned by him later in his reign when he stated, "the laws promulgated by me at the beginning of my reign, which allow each individual to observe the religion with which he is imbued'. Valentinian can be considered somewhat more tolerant of religious diversity than many of his Christian predecessors but nonetheless, in 372 (C.T. 16.3.3) he bent to pressure and banned Manicheans from meeting in Rome. The punishments could include death, but exile and the confiscation of property were the most often used punishments. The Manicheans seemed to be persecuted with every generation and this would not be the last time. Of note is how in the fifth century, Pope Leo and Emperor Valentinian III worked together to decree banishment of the Manicheans from Rome. This happened after the Manicheans fled North Africa due to violent persecutions by the Vandal Kingdom's Arianist Christians. In another related edict, recorded as 16.5.3 in the Theodosian Code, Valentinian and Valens decreed jointly the government's right to seize the properties of the Manichean heretics:
"Whenever there is found a meeting of a group of Manichaeans, let the leaders be punished with a heavy fine and let those who attended be known as infamous and dishonored, and be shut out from association with men, and let the house and the dwellings where the profane doctrine was taught be seized by the officers of the city."
Then, in the next year he officially condemned Donatist Bishops in Codex Theodosians 16.6.1:
Although Valentinian tried to stay out of the Christological controversy, in 370, he upheld a law of Constantine that gave special privileges and exemptions to Nicene Christians in Theodosian Code 16.2.18. Then in 371 he expanded those ecclesiastical exemptions and privileges for Nicene Christians in C.T. 16.2.21. Ironicly, his brother Valens was a zealous Arian. If Valentinian was bit more tolerant of religious diversity and Christian heterodoxy, Valens was just the opposite.
Regarding pagan properties, As C.T. 10.1.8, Valentinian reversed Julian's decrees which returned pagan temples to pagans after they had been confiscated by Christians to be made into churches. What was stolen by the Christians was to be kept by the Christians. What was confiscated should never returned. What was demolished was never rebuilt. Christians retook the temples and returned them to Christian use. What was rightfully plundered by Christians before Julian was to returned the hands of the plunderers. As shown in the last chapter, Emperor Constantine plundered the pagan temples of Asia Minor and Greece in order to decorate his new city of Constantinople. This was the Christian way because, according to scripture, no other religion could ever be tolerated.
Ezekiel 12:24: "For there shall be no more any false vision or flattering divination within the house of Israel."
The somewhat uneducated (by imperial standards because he couldn't read Latin) and crude soldier Valens took up his residence in the great city of Antioch. Antioch was an urban hub for theater, arts, commerce, trade routes, classical philosophy and religious diversity in Syria. Antioch even had it's own Olympics until they were outlawed because they were pagan in origin. Valens and Valentinian didn't bother the pagans too much but ruthlessly persecuted those involved in astrology, divination and magic. Like his brother, Valens was somewhat tolerant towards the majority of pagan folk and this held true in Antioch. In that city, Valens raised the ire of Theodoret because he allowed the pagans their 'mysteries' and festivals.
But where there was tolerance there was also ruthless and violent repression by these two. There was a violent crusade against certain practitioners. Four edicts, recorded as Codex Theodosianus 9:16.7-10, were issued over a six year period to condemned the practice of magic and divination. One of the decrees, issued in 370, C.T. 9:16.8, made the study of magic or teaching astrology capital offenses. Night ceremonies also became capital offenses. The 370 decree mandated "the activities of astrologers to cease, ...public or private, by day or night".
By 371 there were major trials due to these decrees. Intellectuals, philosophers and powerful officials found themselves the targets of the brothers' fearful obsession with astrology and telling the future. In 372 there were mass convictions on Valens' orders. Antioch became a bloodbath according to the writers Ammianus Marcellinus and Libanius. Many were imprisoned, tortured, and executed by ritual strangulation and other nefarious means. Maximus of Ephesus, who worked in Julian's administration, lost his head. To maximize the terror, the philosopher Simonides was burned alive. Accompanying the blood in the streets and prisons, libraries were targeted and pyres of 'illegal' books were burned. Books with predictions or spells or astrology were burned. To placate Valens, even books on the humanities and sciences were burned. And to top this madness off, because a diviner claimed that the next emperor's name began with THEO, Valens had people named Theodore, Theodotus, Theodosius and Theodulus executed. People even changed their names to save their lives. Oddly, one of the most famous emperors of Christian imperialism, Theodosius the Great, emerged next and he was not a friend to Arians, Jews or pagans. One has to understand the bizarre level of superstition in this world. Around every person was swirling hosts of superatural beings and magical powers. At the Council of Elvira, canon 6 revealed the ignorance and superstitionof this world by declaring If someone kills another by sorcery or magic, that person shall not receive communion, even at the time of death, for this action is a form of idolatry. It is through these same deeply held superstition that Christianity was embraced by these people.
According to Socrates Book 4, at this time the churches of Constantinople were under the administration of Eudoxius, who was an Arian. The Nicenes had "one small edifice in the city wherein to hold their assemblies". While in Antioch, Valens also sought to strengthen Arianist Christianity and persecuted the Nicenes. Socrates tells us that after finding out that the Persians were not considering any invasion into Roman lands,
"..Valens employed this season of external tranquillity to prosecute a war of extermination against all who acknowledged the homoousion. Paulinus their bishop, because of his eminent piety, he left unmolested. Melitius he punished with exile: and all the rest, as many as refused to communicate with Euzoius, he drove out from the churches in Antioch, and subjected to various losses and punishments. It is even affirmed that he caused many to be drowned in the river Orontes, which flows by that city."
During this same period of sectarian strife, there arose the Macedonian heresy which did not consider the Holy Spirit co-equal with the Father. To the Macedonians, the Spirit was not an entity in itself. Like the Arians, they didn't believe in any trinity. The Arians didn't consider the son co-equal with the father because the son was begotten by the father and so to Arians, Christ had a beginning in time. So the followers of Arius challenged any notion of coequality of the father and Son. Back in 325 the Council of Nicea had addressed and condemned the Arian doctrine. (In the future, this Christian doctrine would be also addressed and condemned by a General Council of Constantople in 381. This council was the handiwork of an alliance between the clergy and Emperor Theodosius the Great.) In all this Christological confusion, Valens had the misguided notion that because the Macedonian belief was not Nicene trinitarian, it was Arianist. So Valens granted the request of the Macedonians to hold a council in the city of Lampsacus because, as Socrates write in Book 6 of his History, the "emperor supposing they agreed in sentiment with Eudoxius and Acacius, gave them permission to do so".
In this time of agitation in the religious sphere there was also conflict between rival claimants to the throne. While Valens ruled from Antioch, there arose a contender in Constantinople by the name of Procopius. A war started and Valens was distracted from his religious agenda. Valens was the victor and when the military clamor died down, he returned to his religious persecutions. Certainly a surprise to the uniformed Valens, the Macedonian bishops' Council of Lampsacus deposed Arian bishops! Socrates wrote in Book 6:
"The emperor having thus successfully terminated the conflict, immediately began to move against the Christians, with the design of converting every sect to Arianism. But he was especially incensed against those who had composed the Synod at Lampsacus, not only on account of their deposition of the Arian bishops, but because they had anathematized the creed published at Ariminum."
Valens convened a council and attacked the Macedonian doctrine. He demanded Eleusius, the Bishop of Cyzcus to side with the Arian doctrine. Eleusius, fearing violence, exile and church confiscation assented for a time but afterward he changed his mind. Because he had submitted to Valens' demands he thought himself unworthy of the bishopric and urged the churches of Cyzicus to look for another bishop. His churches rallied and insisted that he stay. They loved and venerated him too much to let him leave. Upon hearing of this, the Arian Bishop of Constantinople ordered Eleusius to be replaced by the eloquent orator and Arian, Eunomius. Eunomius soo arrived in Cyzicus with an imperial edict issued by Valens that ordered Eleusius to be ejected from the bishopric. Afterwards, Eleusius and his followers went outside the city for their assemblies. Eventually, Eunomius was driven from the city because the people were unable to endure his parade of language.
Like the pagan Diocletian and the Christian Constantine, Valens persecuted the religious group known as the Novatians. As with nearly every other religious dispute within Christianity during the era of Imperial Christianity, this one was solved by fore. Socrates writes in Book 4:
"The emperor however did not cease his persecution of those who embraced the doctrine of the homoousion, but drove them away from Constantinople: and as the Novatians acknowledged the same [trinitarian] faith, they also were subjected to similar treatment. He commanded that their churches should be shut up, also their bishop they sent into exile"
"for they did not desist from their relentless persecution of those who dissented from them in matters of faith."
"....for many of the clerical body were sent into exile"
In time, Eudoxius, the Arian Bishop of Constantinople died. The Arians appointed Demophilus to take his place but the Nicenes, seeing an opportunity for a popular revolt, elected Evagrius who was then ordained by Eustathius of Antioch, an exiled Nicene bishop that emperor Jovian recalled from exile. Not long afterward, Valens, hearing of the challenge, ordered troops to Constantinople to secure the city for the Arian doctrine. When this was done, troops captured Evagrius and Eustathius and exiled them to separate regions.
About this time, eighty Nicene clerics petitioned the emperor for lenience and tolerance. Valens would have none of this, pretending to be sincere in their presence and secretly ordered the prefect Modestus to put them to death in a way that wouldn't draw attention to their cause. Socrates records this event this way in Book 4:
"The prefect fearing that he should excite the populace to a seditious movement against himself, if he attempted the public execution of so many, pretended to send the men away into exile. Accordingly as they received the intelligence of their destiny with great firmness of mind the prefect ordered that they should be embarked as if to be conveyed to their several places of banishment, having meanwhile enjoined on the sailors to set the vessel on fire, as soon as they reached the mid sea, that their victims being so destroyed, might even be deprived of burial. This injunction was obeyed; for when they arrived at the middle of the Astacian Gulf, the crew set fire to the ship, and then took refuge in a small barque which followed them, and so escaped"
Arians weren't the majority among Christians in the east and all Christians weren't the majority in the empire but nonetheless, they acted as if it was so and sought to force their beliefs on to the others with the use of a church-state alliance. After the much believed bishop Athanasius died, the Arian Christians sought to control the See of Alexandria by placing one of their own in the bishopric. Euzoius, an Arian who resided in Antioch, petitioned Valens and went with the imperial troops to Egypt and took the bishopric from Peter. who had succeeded Athanasius. Lucius the Arian was put in charge of the Alexandrian churches and Peter was imprisoned. Not missing an opportunistic beat, Valens then ordered Palladius, the governor of Egypt, to expell all Nicenes from Egypt. Troops again.
Socrates wrote in Book 4 regarding Valens' persecution of Nicenes:
"The emperor Valens having issued an edict commanding that the orthodox should be persecuted both in Alexandria and in the rest of Egypt, depopulation and ruin to an immense extent immediately followed: some were dragged before the tribunals, others cast into prison, and many tortured in various ways, and in fact all sorts of punishments were inflicted upon persons who aimed only at peace and quiet. When these outrages had been perpetrated at Alexandria just as Lucius thought proper, Euzoius returned to Antioch, and Lucian the Arian, attended by the commander-in-chief of the army with a considerable body of troops, immediately proceeded to the monasteries of Egypt, where the general in person assailed the assemblage of holy men with greater fury
even than the ruthless soldiery."
In this same period there was a civil war among the Goths north of the Danube. This was the time when Goths under the leadership of Fritigernes began to embrace Arian Christianity. According to Socrates, Fritigernes, in his thanks to Valens for coming to his aid against a stronger Athanaric, "embraced the religion of his benefactor, and urged those under his authority to do the same." . This was oe of the ways conversions were achieved. Follow the leader or else. Unfortunately, because Christianity was seen as a violation of the religion of Athanaric's ancestors, many Arian Goths were persecuted and killed.
Arians deposed Nicenes. Macedonians deposed Arians. Nicenes deposed Macedonians. Novatians, like Donatists, barred from communing with the fellowship any who sacrificed in order to save themselves from harm during the persecutions. And on it went in the religious conflicts of the fourth century, setting down the precedents of religious intolerance that characterized most of the history of Christianity. As Diocletian did to Christians and as Constantine and his children did to pagans, they stole each other's properties, committed violence upon one another, rescinded basic inheritance rights long honored in the empire, and exiled people in the name of their brand of Christianity. Unfortunately it is a Christianity with an inherent command for religious uniformity and intolerance, regardless of the sect enacting the policies. They all used the religious intolerance of scripture as their foundation for persecution. Whether Arian, Nicene, Macedonian, or Monophysite, the religious leaders and adherents of these Christian sects took scripture literally and persecuted those with differing beliefs and opinions. Christians ruthlessly persecuted pagans, Jews, philosophers and any other kind of Christian who didn't profess Christianity as they did.
We see this mindset even today as religious conservatives tell us that a Christian who is a social liberal isn't a true Christian. Since the Reformation, many Protestant extremists and their propagandists have labeled the Catholic Church as the whore of Babylon. Just as Nicenes plundered Arian churches and pagan temples, Protestants plundered Catholic churches during and after the Reformation. Even celebrating the Catholic Mass was outlawed in some places. It was a capital offense in some places in Protestant Europe.
Islam's Sunnis and Shi'ites are just the same way. It is the intolerant nature of ancient middle eastern religions from Judaism to Christianity. It should also be noted that Christianity and Islam vesions of the apocalypse are derived from another tribal religion, Zoroastrianism. Like Manicheanism, it came from Persia. The Pentateuch's flood story is also adopted from the flood narrative found on Tablet XI of the oldest existing written story in the world, the ancient Babylonian legend, The Epic of Gilgamesh.
EMPEROR GRATIAN
In 378, Valens met his death in the famous battle of Adrianopolis against the same Goths he had helped in the past. After settling in to their new homes within the Roman territories, these Goths began to pillage and plunder. Valens and his army marched to put down the violence and he was killed in combat. This battle became an historical turning point regarding the influence of the northern tribes upon the Empire.
Emperor Valentinian had two sons, Gratian and Valentinian II. When Valentinian died in 375, Gratian was sixteen and the younger Valentinian was four. Gratian became emperor in the west. When Valens died three years later, he appointed Theodosius as emperor of the east. He was a famed military general from Spain and he was of educated royalty.
Leviticus 20:27:"A man also or woman that hath a familiar spirit, or that is a wizard, shall surely be put to death: they shall stone them with stones: their blood shall be upon them."
The young emperor Gratian deeply resented Paganism and its popularity with its 400 temples in Rome alone. Gratian helped move Rome from a loosely symbolic state supported paganism to a hardline state supported Nicene Christianity. With the reigns of Gratian in the west and Theodosius in the east being strongly influenced by Bishop Ambrose of Milan, the Empire went from periodically persecuting Christians to a church-state alliance of Nicenes persecuting every other religion. This persecution was violent and fanatical; it was ruthless and sought to wipe out an entire culture with its colorful religious diversity and its tradition of philosophy and prototypical science that became the foundation of western science.
In the Roman Senate there was a Pagan altar, the Statue of Victory, before which Senators had sworn for centuries to serve and obey the emperor and the laws of the empire. Young Gratian, with much persuasion from Bishop Ambrose, sought to remove the statue from the senate. Symmachus, a pagan senator pleaded for tolerance from the Christians. Symmachus argued for the right of pagans to pass on Rome's great traditions to their children. Tradition, he pleaded. Like the voice of Symmachus, we hear the same pleas for tradition from certain Christians these days as humanism continues it's centuries of secular triumphs. Today's Reconstructionist Christians cite tradition and convention over and over, trying to eclipse the Constitution's religious neutrality. It hasn't worked well in the courts but the public has been hoodwinked. The pagans believed Rome fell because the people had forsaken the Gods of old and the ancient traditions. (In the USA religious fundamentalists have claimed we were attacked on September 11, 2001 because of our turning our back on Christianity. The problem with this claim is that the United State, governmentally, has never been a Christian nation. The Constitution is religion-neutral and opens the door for a religiously diverse culture. Unbelievers are equal to believers in the Constitution). Bishop Ambrose would have none of this talk of pagan tradition and religious tolerance and urged Gratian to carry out his plan.
Deuteronomy 7:5:"But thus shall ye deal with them; ye shall destroy their altars, and break down their images, and cut down their groves, and burn their graven images with fire."
The Statue of Victory was taken down. In 384 and 391, Pagans sought to restore the statue. Talk of restoring the Statue of Victory in the Roman senate arose this time with support from Eugenius. To a point, pagans had a friend in the nominally Christian Eugenius in the western part of the empire. But again, Ambrose and Theodosius would have none of this pagan tradition and moved against them. After showing Eugenius' representatives with gifts and telling them his position in Rome was secure, Theodosius made war plans. Theodosius struck Rome, killed Eugenius and wiped out all of the remnants of religious diversity and liberty he could find in the west. Like so many zealots in Christian history, Ambrose believed in the forced domination of Christianity over society for its own good. Secular dictatorships are much the same way. Whether religious or secular, dictatorships act in the same ways to oppress liberty. They all demand an ideologically uniform society with fully conforming individuals.
Although the Greco-Roman world was full of religious diversity; although the Empire's pluralist society strengthened the thousand year empire, Ambrose's agenda was based in the belief that the political foundation underlying society was strongest with all of society conforming to the state's official religion. Edward Gibbon, in his work on the decline of Rome says Rome's fall was due to the combination of Christianity and Barbarism. The theocratic imperial attitude demanding rigid and unbending religious uniformity prevailed for a more than a millenium. Eventually it's stranglehold failed and the world found a way to return individualism and pluralism to the west. These were originally classical notions. Even after the Enlightenment, a zealous fundamentalist minority holds this backward position right into the present. These attitudes mean any dissent, whether heresy, pagan, or any competing religion had to be forcefully dealt with, a standard of Christian religious intolerance for centuries to come. There is no hint of any principles of liberty in any of these people's political or religious beliefs. Continuing the orthodox virtue of religious discrimination, Bishop Ambrose also officially spoke out against any Christian marrying a Pagan. Later on, laws were enacted that forbade Christians from interfaith marriages. To this day, this traditional attitude has had authority in many a family's religious and cultural life. It wasn't long ago that it was expected that Catholics married Catholics, Protestants married protestants, Jews married Jews and Muslims married Muslims. Only these old traditions of religious intolerance, and at times an added racism, can form the basis of such attitutes. In the Greco-Roman world, a worshipper of Jupiter had no problem marrying a worshipper of Minerva.
Deuteronomy 6:8-9: If thy brother, the son of thy mother, or thy son, or thy daughter, or the wife of thy bosom, or thy friend, which is as thine own soul, entice thee secretly, saying, Let us go and serve other gods, which thou hast not known, thou, nor thy fathers; But thou shalt surely kill him; thine hand shall be first upon him to put him to death, and afterwards the hand of all the people.'
Unbelievable. For having the wrong religion, we are to put him to death. This is the murdering that is supported by the Bible for having other gods before me. Christians who persecuted and killed in the name of God supported their violence and intolerance with the violent models presented by God in the Bible. Christians who say they weren't real ChristiansGratian, like Valentianian, had some problems with the persecution of Christian heretics and "condemned the cruel policy of his uncle Valens" and "recalled those whom he had sent into exile" (Socrates Book 5). An example of this theocratic ping pong is the story of Melitius. Bishop Melitius was banished by Constantius, recalled by Julian, banished by Valens and then again recalled by Gratian. The story of Bishop Athanasius involves five similarly caused exiles and returns. Like his uncle Valentinian, Gratian tried to stay out of the sectarian squabbles between Arians and Nicenes, but he was still repressive towards the Manicheans. Eunomians and Photinians (Eunomians were basicly Arianist). Manicheans, as you can see by now, were persecuted by pagan and Christian alike. They were always between a rock and a hard place. It is certainly a terrible story. The sanctions against the followers of Eunomius are puzzling because Eunomius taught an Arian creed. Gratian didn't persecute Arians. Sozomen wrote that the church feared Eunomius' intellectuality and persuasiveness and sought to silence him. Photinus, a Bishop of Sirmium, had believed the Son did not exist before the incarnation and was annointed by God; an 'expansion' of God. Photinus was considered a heretic and had been previously condemned at the Synods of Antioch (344) in the east and Milan (345) in the west.
Sozomen (EH VII, i) puts it this way regarding Gratian's decree:
"Gratian, who at this period reigned conjointly with his brother over the whole Roman Empire,
disapproved of the late persecution that had
been carried on to check the diversity in
religious creeds, and recalled all those who had
been banished on account of their religion. He
also enacted a law by which it was decreed that
every individual should be freely permitted the
exercise of his own religion, and should be allowed
to hold assemblies, with the exception of
the Manichaeans and the followers of Photinus
and Eunomius"
The emperor also got involved in the Priscillianist controversy. Because of Bishop Hydatius' petitions, Gratian issued a decree that confiscated Priscillianist churches and exiled Priscillian and his followers. After the synod at Saragossa in 380 that excommunicated Priscillianists, its enforcement fell into the hands of an impulsive and violent man, Ithacius. The Priscillianists sought an audience with the Pope in Rome but were denied access. They sought an audience with Hydatius in Merida and were denied again. They achieved no more when trying to obtain an audience with Bishop Ambrose in Milan. But before they could get an audience with Emperor Gratian was murdered in Paris by the treachery of General Maximus.
But give up, they did not. Instantius, probably the actual leader of Priscillianism, and Salvian, managed to successfully have the decree reversed (Called a rescript). Their churches were then returned to them. This was done through Macedonius, an opponent of Ambrose. Bshops Ithacius and Hydatius went into hiding. But the luck of the Priscillianists did not not last long.
THE USURPER MAXIMUS AND THE PRISCILLIANIST HERESY
In 383, Clemens Maximus of Britain plotted and carried out the murder of Gratian. His soldiers then revolted and declared Maximus emperor. He then made a deal and shared power in the west with Valentinian II. At this point Ithacius, who had persecuted Priscillianists, came out of hiding (Bishop Hydatius had died) and appealed to Maximus to deal tough with the Priscillianists. Maximus acted and ordered the religious leaders of Spain and the Prefect of Gaul to convene a council at Bordeaux in order to deal with the heresy. First, Instantius was summoned and deposed. Priscillian refused to be tried by the episcopate and appealed to the bishops to have his own trial moved to a civil court and he succeeded. The historian Sulpitius in his Chronica II, 51, claims that torture was used to gain a confession in the first trial in which he was found guilty and condemned to death. Sulpitius also chronicled the works of Martin of Tours, an evangelical temple destroyer who rampaged across Gaul for the Nicene church. After the guilty verdict verdict, Priscillian had to be tried in front of the Emperor Maximus for the sentence to be ratified. A French historian, E. Suys, writing in 1925 thinks that it was unlikely that Priscillian was tortured at the first but was tortured before Maximus. Regardless of when, and certainly not a surprse to any, torture appears to have been used. Priscillian was eventually executed along with several others for the crime of not believing correctly.
Officially, Priscillian was convicted of practicing magic, which he wasn't doing because heresy wasn't decreed a capital offense yet. The Nicenes just wanted to kill him any way they could. To complicate the story even more, after Pope Siricius requested a record of the trial, Maximus told the Pope that Priscillian was a Manichean. Decrees had already been in effect that legitimize the confiscation of Manichean churches and properties so Maximus used this angle in order to wipe out the Priscillianists in Spain. In this way, Maximus could both kill Priscillian and confiscate his denomination's churches and lands.
Maximus eventually went too far in his quest for power. In 387, he broke his power sharing deal with Valentinian and Theodosius. He threatened young Valentinian, sent him fleeing for his life to Constantinople, and aroused Theodosius' wrath. Theodosius was a seasoned military leader before he was Emperor. Theodosius then lead his seasoned imperial troops with Valentinian at his side in victory against Maximus. Maximus' troops, fearing Theodosius, bound Maximus up and brought him to the feet of Theodosius who then had him executed.
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