A revised and upgraded version of this page can be found at www.stopthereligiousright.org/marcian.htm. All of this site's webtv hosted pages are being revised and upgraded on an HTML Editor and moved to a new server.
The Rise of Church-State Alliances: Imperial Edicts & Church Councils: 306-565
PAGE 2: EMPEROR MARCIANUS, POPE LEO & THE COUNCIL OF CHALCEDON
BACK TO PAGE 1: THE TIMES OF EMPEROR THEODOSIUS THE YOUNGER & THE COUNCIL OF EPHESUS
When Theodosius the Younger died, there was no apparent heir and Pulcheria took the throne. Chrysaphius was killed but it is hard to tell from the accounts as to whether Pulcheria or Marcian were responsible. Futhermore, whether he was executed or outright murdered is still a question. Nevertheless, these new imperial Christian rulers did things in the imperial court the old fashioned way. Kill or be killed. Theodosis had no sons and his daughter Eudoxia, had married Valentinian. With Pulcheria as Augustus, a marriage was arranged by herself and the military leadership with the aim using the Theodosian dynasty to legitimize the next emperor. At the top of this heirarchy was Aspar, the magister utriuque militiae of the Empire. Because Aspar was both an Arian Christian and a German (of the Alani), he had little chance of becoming emperor. To the clergy he was a barbarian and an heretic. To the nobility he didn't have the bloodline. He was fine for defending the empire but he surely was not one who could lead it. Nonetheless, Aspar was a kingmaker and his assistant and second most powerful in the military, the pious trinitarian Marcianus, would be negotiated to the throne by this broker of power. Even after Marcianus's death, the influence of Aspar would lead to the rule of Emperor Leo I, who would reign for 17 years (457-474).
Little is known concerning Marcianus's life before his rise to power but most sources agree on the simplest issues. The Emperor Marcianus, also called Marcian, was probably born in Thrace around the year 392. Ancient Thrace was an area in the Balkan peninsula north of the Aegian Sea that is presently a region shared by Greece and Bulgaria. Raised in a military family, Marcian eventually rose through the ranks of the empire's military heirarchy to the highest places of authority. Eventually he became assistant to Arbaduras and then his son Aspar, the eastern empire's military Commander in Chief. In his later years Marcian became a tribune and a senator, representating the common people and the soldiers. This arrangement by Pulcheria and Aspar which formally brought Marcian into the Theodosian dynasty was widely supported by both the military and the Roman Senate.
Arianist Christians were unacceptable as Emperors to a powerful Nicene clergy that had risen since Constantine began the government subsidies and the granting of special rights to the Nicene church. The government built churches, it helped pay the clergy, and it gave its clergy exemptions from responsibilities and taxes. It even confiscated heretic churches and handed them over to Nicenes. (Arians and Monophysites did the same thing to Nicenes) It raised ecclestiastical courts to the authority of the secular courts. This arrangement is very similar to the position of Islamic Sharia courts in the judicial systems of some Muslim nations. The church also succeeded in making sure the inheritances of the intestate and undesirables were given to the church. It was fast becoming improbable that another Arian or pagan would ever reach the throne again.
The major controversy at this time was the debate between the Monophysite and Nicene Christological views. Most of the others had been successfully oppressed into oblivion by the alliance of church councils and the imperial decrees petitioned for by the church. This growing requirement for a Nicene point of view in government would exist in mandated religious tests in Europe and the USA right up through and beyond the American Revolutionary War period. Although Protestant, the requirement was still a Nicene test and oath. Reformation Protestantism was as savage and demanding as the Christianity of late antiquity.
On August 25, 450, four weeks after the death of Theodosius, Pulcheria crowned Marcian. The coronation ceremony of Emperor Marcian incorporated an important first because it was personally blessed in person by Anatolius, the Patriarch of Constantinople. Not only was Marcian's rise to power supported by the military and the Senate, it was strongly supported by the religious leaders in both the east and the west. Not only was the coronation blessed by the Patriarch of Costantinople, it was enthusiasticly supported by Pope Leo. At Marcian's acclamation, church and state continued their merger and their increased loss of clear boundaries. The ritual blessing of Marcian's coronation by this leader of the eastern church was a significant event in this growing alliance. In the future more steps would be taken to marry church and state.
As a result of Aspar's negotiations with Pulcheria, Marcianus was to make important promises in return for his acclamation to the throne. Marcian was to support Pulcheria's passionate promotion of Theotokos, the rising Mother of God Cult, and religious policies which required the active enforcement of Nicene orthodoxy. As a consequence of this arrangement, Marcian joined the rarely broken 150 year procession of emperors who supported the church-state alliance begun by Emperor Constantine. Only Constantius, Julian and Valens clearly broke with the Nicene model even though they still adhered to using forceful and at times violent government policies to promote a specific religious viewpoint. This is in stark contrast to the millenium old Roman republican model, a tradition which for most of Rome's history, was a model of religious tolerance and diversity. Although the Roman Empire had a mix of paganism and the state, it's particular paganism was largely symbolic because there were no doctrines, no dogma, and no cosmology. With the Christian state it was far from symbolic, with the religion's viewpoints becoming enforced policy. Religious doctrine became law. It should be noted that the pagan Emperor Julian did not use violence but had other tricks up his sleeve: his policies issued from his belief that Christianity was unclean, its believers deceived, and its churches were tombs of the dead due to the corpses of the saints buried in them. Julian attacked Christians by doing things like banning their use of the classics in their schools. His excuse was that Christians mocked the classical thinkers and shouldnt have access to them. I think that this strategy also sought an economic impact because without a good classical education in the empire, people went nowhere. This is much like the strategy of Christian emperors who made it increasingly difficult for Jewish businesses to own and keep slaves. A Jew was outlawed from having a slave that professed Christianity so slaves converted for this reason alone. Jews were even forbidden to convert to Christianity for economic reasons in a time when many did just that. There were a great deal of special social and economic rights for those who followed the church-state alliance's will.
Only as Christianity ascended and its increasingly influential clergy attacked all other religions as pestilence, plague and evil did the state take a serious interest in attacking Christianity. In Rome, religious diversity was social capital; a building block of social order. In the Roman world, diversity was conservative tradition that had worked for a 1000 years; in Rome, religious diversity was considered a major foundation in the Empire's enduring stability. To attack the empire's solid foundation of religious diversity was to attack the brilliance and power of Rome itself. Attacking other religions could lead to civil unrest and rip the strong social fabric of the empire. Rome's might was also in its diversity, a social attribute which is now supported and protected by modern rights based constitutions.
Classical scholar Ramsay MacMullen, on page 13 of his book, Christianizing the Roman Empire: A.D. 100-400 spells out the situation regarding religious diversity in the Roman Empire before Constantine's decrees:
It followed in their logic, or at least in their practice, that no deity could inflict wrong on another. In Homer's day, perhaps, things had been different. That was long ago and mere myth. Only the Christian propagandists recalled it, to raise laughs, or eyebrows, against their rivals. Living worshippers in the world we are considering instead entered a shrine of Isis to put up a vow or an altar to Aphrodite, and the priest let them. They worshiped Mithras in Hadad's temple. West or east, wherever one looked, there reigned a truly divine peace and undisturbed religious toleration".
In many respects Rome provided for a greater level of religious freedom than was seen again until after the American Revolution. But just as deviant religious groups have often discovered limits to the scope of freedom of religion in America, so too in Rome not just anything was licit. In particular, from time to time Jews and then Christians were deemed to be "atheistic" for their condemnation of false gods. ... although Christians stood in formal, official disrepute for much of the first three centuries, informally they were free to do pretty much as they wished, in most places, most of the time.
Even more profound is a statement found in J.B. Bury's masterpiece, History of the LATER ROMAN EMPIRE: from the death of Theodosius I to the death of Justinian on page 348:
The existence of the State Church made a profound difference in the political and social development of the Empire. The old State religion of Rome was often used as an instrument of policy, but perhaps its main political value was symbolic. It involved no theory of the universe, no body of dogma to divide the minds of men and engender disputes. The gods were not jealous, and it was compatible with the utmost variety of other cults and faiths. For the Christian Church, on the contrary, a right belief in theological dogmas was the breath of its life, and, as such questions are abstruse and metaphysical, it was impossible to define a uniform doctrine which all minds would accept. As the necessity of ecclesiastical unity was an axiom, the government had to deal with a new problem, and a very arduous and embarrassing one, such as had not confronted it in the days before Constantine. Doctrine had to be defined, and heretics suppressed.
Continuing, Professor Bury strikes to the heart of the matter regarding the nature of the religion of the Bible:
Again, the Church, which once had claimed freedom for itself, denied freedom to others when it was victorious, and would not suffer rival cults. Hence a systematic policy of religious intolerance, such as the Greek and Roman world had never known, was introduced.
Just as the Church Fathers and Reformation Protestants did, today's radical religious right of all the major faiths attack diversity and attack it from many angles. Race, religion, gender, culture, ethnicity, sexual orientation are some of their targets. Although the First Amendment's guarantees open a wide door to a multicultural society like Rome's, the religious right, during every expansion of liberty, whether it be religious tolerance, abolition, suffrage, desegregation, or equal rights for the gay and lesbian community still preaches that diversity will destroy America. Civilization will crumble. I am reminded of how Pat Buchanan described the decadence of the Weimar Republic of Germany. By the way, it was Hitler that ended that decadence of liberty and democracy in post WW1 Germany.
The empire went from religious diversity in antiquity with a humanistic live and let live attitude to oppressing it with the laws of church-state alliances. It took the best ideas of the European Enlightenment found in the American Enlightenment to bring us back to this open, multireligious and multicultural society. In the Classical, Renaissance and Enlightenment periods, the argument for natural rights was at the heart of the defense of individual religious choice and the resultant society's religious diversity. Chuch-State alliances, regardless of the sect or heresy, consistently rejected the notion of rights of conscience and considered religious dissent as sickness, madness or evil. There can only be one conscience for all and the marriage of church and state was essential for the strict compliance sought after by religious leaders.
After Marcian's acclamation, the coronation ceremony would increase even more in it's religiousity. Just as the ceremony evolved from Constantine to Marcian, it would grow more intensely religious after Marcian. Here are some examples of this evolution that would continue for over a thousand years. Tragicly, for the free world, there are still fundamentalist Christians that want to return to this church-state model. This same model that Christian fundamentalists want lies at the root of the religious, social and political problems in the oppressive, violent and Medieval world of Islam.
In 473, the Patriarch Acacius recited prayers before the crowning of Emperor Leo II.
In 491, when the Senate and other influentials were making their choice of the next emperor, Anastasius, the presence of the opened Gospels took center stage as the new emperor recited an oath to protect the Nicene faith and introduce no novelty or heresy into the church. The Patriach then recited a prayer and the Kyrie eleison. The acclamations of the Senators and notables that followed were profoundly religious in content.
Beginning in 602, with the coronation of Emperor Phocas in the east, the rite became a formal religious ceremony held in a cathedral. An example of the prayer by the Patriarch given in the Catholic Encyclopedia's article on coronation begins like this:
O Lord, our God, the King of kings and Lord of lords, who through Samuel the prophet didst choose David Thy servant to be king over Thy people Israel; do Thou now also hear the supplication of us unworthy and behold from Thy dwelling place Thy faithful servant whom Thou hast been pleased to set as king over Thy holy nation, which Thou didst purchase with the precious blood of Thine only-begotten Son: vouchsafe to anoint him with the oil of gladness, endue him with power from on high, put upon his head a crown of pure gold, grant him long life.....
After the crowning the congregation erupted with three repetitions of, Holy, holy, holy, Glory to God in the highest and on Earth peace. The church sacrament of Holy Communion followed the crowning and then the senate and clergy prostrated themselves in adoration of their Christian emperor and protector of the faith. The Cantors then shouted,
Glory be to God in the highest; this is the great day of the Lord; This is the day of the life of the Romans!
It is also noteworthy that until the Russian revolution, the Czar, which means Ceasar, was coronated in a cathedral. The new Emperor was required to recite the Nicene Creed, the Holy Spirit is invoked, a litany proceeds and the metropolitan, the bishop who is head of that ecclesiastical province but ranks right below the province's patriarch, says, In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost, Amen.
Following that, the metropolitan addresses the new Czar, declaring:
Most God-fearing, absolute and mighty Lord, Emperor of all the Russias, this visible and tangible adornment of thy head is an eloquent symbol that thou as the head of the whole Russian people art invisibly crowned by the King of kings, Christ, with a most ample blessing, seeing that He bestows upon thee entire authority over His people.
All of the rituals and liturgies of church-state pomposity were thrown out in the US Constitution. The Presidential oath is short and secular, demanding an oath to the Constitution as the "supreme law of the land". The 6th article bans religious tests and confessions of faith as a requirement for public service. The 1st amendment requires the disestablishment of religion from government. In fact, the use of the Bible in courtrooms and in oaths of public service is based on Medieval religious traditions, not on the new order for the ages found in the United States Constitution. It should be abandoned because it does not represent all of the American people. The United States is a land of religious and ideological heterodoxy and the Bible forbids this same heterodoxy, threatening death in the Old Testament and eternal torments in the New Testament. Using the Bible in oaths of office is a religious declaration and is symbolic of a time of great injustice, religious persecution of dissenting opinions and of course the violence perpetrated perpetually under church-state alliances. In fact, a comparison of the first amendment and the first commandment reveal they express contradictory values and represent polar opposites. There is no greater antithesis to the liberties of the First Amendment and the ban on religious tests in the Sixth Article than the totalitarianism of the First Commandment and the Bible's punishments for religious incorrectness. The demands for religious correctness are no different than the demands for political correctness. With a government that is allied with specific religious beliefs, they are one and the same thing.
Starting with Constantine, the emperors increasingly took upon themselves the role of ecclesiatical authorities while at the same time increasing the authority of religious courts to the level of the secular courts. Unfortunately for the millions who lived afterward, the record clearly shows us that not much good regarding liberty and democracy would come from this unholy alliance.
With Emperor Marcian's acclamation by church and state, many things were about to change. He would soon put a General Council on a fast track to deal with the Eutychian controversy.
The first correspondence between the new emperor and the Pope seems to be letter #76 of Leo's letter collection found in the Nicene and Post-Nicene Series in which Marcian tells Leo that he should attend a council in Constantinople or help in arranging a more convenient location. Marcian could not go far from Constantinople because there were rumblings again on the Persian front. Conflicts between Persia and Mediterranean civilizations went back to before Alexander the Great.
On the same day, Augusta Pulcheria wrote to Leo (#77) assuring him of Anatolius' orthodoxy and begged him to assist her husband in the council arrangements. The reason for Leo's doubt was that Dioscurus was responsible for Anatolius' placement as Bishop of the See of Constantinople. Some good news to Leo was that Marcian had recalled the exiled bishops of the Robber Council. The problem of the errant bishops remained. The violence of the two councils had made many choose safety over the intimidation and violence of the militants. As you may know by now, Arians exiled Nicenes, Monophysites exiled Nicenes, and Nicenes exiled them all. And they all were violent towards each other because of their passionate claim of exclusive truth. In the 4th century, Bishop Athanasius went into exile several times due to the Christological swerving of the church-state. During the fourth century the empire's church-state alliance bounced back and forth between Nicene and Arian with the usual sequence of exiled and deposed bishops.
Also mentioned in the letter is that Flavian's body had been exhumed and moved to the Basilica of the Apostles in Constantinople.
This kind of belief about saint's burials is why the pagan Emperor Julian considered Christian churches to be unclean tombs of death. To Julian, corpses defiled holy places. The Gods represented life. To pagans, the places of the gods were places of life, healing and light; decomposing bodies didn't belong in sacred places. In these times we can look back at the worship and veneration of the body parts of saints over the next millenia and admit that Julian might have been on to something. There is certainly something dark about valuing the body parts or relics as they are called, of dead bodies.
Leo responded to Pulcheria in letter #79 dated April 13, 451. Pulling back the covers for the evolving marriage church and state, Leo praises the Empress Pulcheria for her zeal against the attacks of wicked men. (Leo means Nestorius and Eutyches). If you remember Eutyches' complaints to Leo, he mentioned that the devil used Eusebius to persecute him. In this letter the treatment goes around once again when Leo claims the devil contrived by the means of Eutyches, who had no soundness of mind. You were wicked, mad and a tool of the devil if you disagreed with someone's doctrine. Recall that in Theodosius and Gratian's edict that outlawed all religions but the Nicene Christian one, all the rest of the people were demented and insane. The stage being set would not only attack the doctrines of dissenters at the coming council, but a multi-directional attack would be mounted: their sanity and their intellect would be savagely attacked. The Pope also notified Pulcheria that Eusebius who fled after the Robber Council, was now living safely with the Pope.
At the same time Leo finally wrote to bishop Anatolius (#80), noting his pleasure at him having proven himself orthodox by signing on to Leo's Tome. Highlighting the religious environment in the period, Leo speaks of the penitents among those backsliding bishops who did not remain constant against violence and intimidation, but gave their assent to another's crime when terror had so bewildered them, that with hasty acquiescence they ministered to the condemnation of the catholic and guiltless bishop (Flavian), and to the acceptance of the detestable heresy (of Eutyches).... Violence, intimidation and terror was the atmosphere of these Christology debates. Many point to the Crusades, the Inquisition, the intolerance of the Reformation or Europe's great religious wars as full of violence and persecution but it began much earlier and had much to do, as it did in those circumstances, with the emergence of Christianity as a force of the state. It ha been a continuing theme from the beginning of the church-state alliances. Regarding the unrepentant bshops, Leo goes off into his world of ad hominem attacks once again, claiming that by not forsaking their condemned heresy, they condemn themselves by their perversity... Not only were you demented, insane, wicked, of an unsound mind, and a tool of the devil, you engaged in perversion if you are not a politically correct Nicene Christian.
On that same April day, Leo sent a letter (#82) to Emperor Marcian in which he congratulates him for his zeal regarding the peace of the church. What that means is that he suppots anyone who makes everyone Nicene as Theodosius and Gratian originally decreed after the Council of Constantinople of 381. As with all authoritarian regime, both secular and religious, there was the belief that conformity was required for a stable society. Leo again sets the stage for intolerance regarding doctrinal debates by telling Marcian, now in these latter days unlearned and blasphemous inquiries are set on foot, which of old the Holy Spirit crushed by the disciples of the Truth, so soon as the devil aroused them in hearts which were suited to his purpose. Here we go again. (And let's note that there are always those that claim we are in the latter days) In Leo's world, to have a different view is blasphemous and is part of the devil's work. As far as Leo is concerned, there still is no real need for a synod because it would be most inopportune that through the foolishness of a few we should be brought once more into hazardous opinions, and to the warfare of carnal disputes, as if the wrangle was to be revived, and we had to settle whether Eutyches held blasphemous views, and whether Dioscorus gave wrong judgment,.. Once again we see that in the eyes of Leo, it is abhorrent to allow a free debate on these issues. It is clear that his wish is to shut everyone up and prevent an airing of views. It is carnal and blashpemous to question the Nicene doctrine. In this, Leo would have his way because Marcian would issue an edict that forbid these arguments in churches. In his June 24, 451 letter to the bishop Paschasinus of Lilybaeum, who would later become one of his delegates at Chalcedon, Leo makes this claim, A like blasphemy, therefore, is to be abhorred in Eutyches, as was once condemned and overthrown by the Fathers in former heretics: and their example ought to have benefited this foolish fellow, in putting him on his guard against that which he could not grasp by his own sense, lest he should render void the peerless mystery of our salvation by denying the reality of human flesh in our Lord Jesus Christ. For, if there is not in Him true and perfect human nature, there is no taking of us upon Him, and the whole of our belief and teaching according to his heresy is emptiness and lying.
The problem with this claim is that it is a distortion of the facts. It wasn't the Fathers that overthrew Arianism or Nestoriansm or any other heterodoxy. It was the combination of the clergy, the emperors, and the imperial decrees that made church canon law the law of the land. Constantine did it with Nicea in 325. Theodosius the Great did it with Constantinople in 381. Theodosius the Younger did it with Ephesus in 431. And Marcian would do it with Chalcedon. In reality, the church had little power over people without the state's edicts. Without the state's interference, Arianism, Nestrorianism and Monophysitism would have continued as much stronger Christian churches. In fact, Isaac Newton regarded the worship of the trinity as blasphemy. If he had ever admitted to his heresy, his academic career would have abruptly ended due to the power of the Nicene trinitarian church in the universities. A good view of Newton's religious beliefs can be found in NOVA'S show, Newton's Dark Secret. (Read Transcript) In Newton's day Arianism continued in the beliefs of the Soconians. Christian Arianism is presently found in the Jehovah's Witness doctrines. Unitarianism - Universalism is basicly Arianist and Deist, rejecting the Bible as the word of God but considering it having many worthwhile metaphors. The deist philosopher Thomas Jefferson was attacked as an infidel and an atheist by the Federalists in the 1800 and 1804 presidential campaigns because he rejected the virgin birth, godhood and resurrection of Jesus.
Leo and Marcian never really completely succceeded in wiping out Monophysitism. A century later, Justinian would call for a general council in 553 at Constaninople to deal with, guess what? The Monophysite controversy. The Monophysitism of the Eutychian controversy was never wiped out and survived from late antiquity to the present as the Coptic Church. But it's growth and popularity were certainly diminished by the imperial decrees that aided the religious intolerance of the Nicene clergy
We see a lack of ecclesiastical power now in the United States where the government is forbidden to establish any religious doctrine and religious tests for oaths of office are outlawed. Because evangelicals tend to be driven about making all confess to their version of Christianity, they are desperately trying to return us to the world of religion and government alliances. Like the bishops of old, they can't enforce any of their creeds without the power of the state. But the bishops of old did indeed have the power of the state with them. This would continue right into the European Enlightenment and would also be seen in the governments influenced Reformation. Calvin's Geneva was a hardline theocracy with religious police roaming the streets in constant search for sinners just as the Taliban did in Afghanistan. Today, as in every religious right movement, we see the religious conservatives trying to create laws which incorporate their hardline religious viewpoints. Over the centuries the focus of the religious right on liberties has changed but the message has always been the same: Laws must be based upon scripture as we interpret scripture and God's natural law, as we see natural law, must be obeyed. They fought religious liberty. They fought the end of slavery. they fought the vote for women. They fought mixed race marriages. They fought desegregation and the civil rights acts. They fight reproductive rights. They fight equality for gays and lesbians. Prayers in public schools and laws against gay unions of any kind are typical of attempts to have the state enforce their dogma. Conservative religion seems to have always been an enemy of the principles of liberty, choice and pluralism. Thomas Jefferson) correctly noted in his letter to Alexander von Humboldt, on December. 6, 1813, History, I believe, furnishes no example of a priest-ridden people maintaining a free civil government. This marks the lowest grade of ignorance of which their civil as well as religious leaders will always avail themselves for their own purposes. As soon as Constantine had power, the authoritarian regime uniting church and state started and grew. Nothing good has ever come of this alliance of religion and government because religious fanaticism, a force of division and bigotry, has always blinded people regarding the lessons of the past.
So, Leo isn't telling the true story of how heresy was put down. As his letters show, like all the rest of the bishops, he has always begged the state to intercede in order to enforce Nicene Creeds. Simply put, without the force of the state, people will choose what religion they wish. Without imperial decrees the Nicene church would have never grown into the religious hegemony it became. Freedom of heresy, because heresy means choice, is what the free nations of the world have adopted in their laws and constitutions. We have the freedoms of choice. We have liberties of conscience, which the religious right detests. The sixth article and the first amendment are antithetical to the first commandments and the great commission which were the driving forces behind centuries of religious intolerance and violence in Eastern, catholic and protestant regimes. Free conscience has never been pleasing to religious conservatives anywhere or in anytime. Ann Coulter demonstrated the view of the religious extremists when she said we should kill Muslim leaders and then convert the people to Christianity.The religious right knows they need the power of the state to make any headway to make their beliefs the values of the land. And so it was with Leo.
On May 17, 451 Marcian issued an edict, also in Valentinian's name, that a General Council would be convened in Nicea with the intention of clearing up the Eutychian Monophysite controversy. Not only was the council ordered, but in the words of the Catholic Encyclopedia, he ordered all metropolitan bishops with a number of their suffragan bishops to assemble the following September at Nicaea in Bithynia, there to hold a general council for the purpose of settling the questions of faith recently called in doubt.
On June 26, 451, Leo sent a letter to the bishops who were meeting at Nicea. In it, he exhibits duplicity regarding the secular powers of the state, saying, I had indeed prayed, dearly beloved, on behalf of my dear colleagues that all the Lord's priests would persist in united devotion to the catholic Faith, and that no one would be misled by favour or fear of secular powers into departure from the way of Truth...
Departing from the way of Truth because of fear of the state? Here is a mountain of hypocrisy coming from the pen of Leo. Did not every General Council use the secular powers of the state to order others to depart from their perception of the way of Truth? The bishops pleaded and the emperor intervened. The bishops voted in their councils and the emperor ratified their decisions with imperial decrees. How else could they control such large numbers of Christian heretics, Manicheans and pagans? How else but outlawing them could it work? There was no other way. This is a great example of the blindness of radical religion in it's attempt to use the state to incorporate it's religious beliefs. This mindset is identical to that of radical Islamists who want Islamic theocracies. When people call America's religious right the American Taliban there is a ring of truth. These are the same people who opposed giving women the vote. Having a Supreme Court made up of the Religious Right would be similar to Iran's ruling council which is made up of conservative religious leaders. Leo certainly believes "You certainly can't use the state but we can because we really do have the way of Truth." This is the religious madness that the American founders ended with their New Order for the Ages which gave the world its first religion-neutral government that also protected its citizen's liberties of conscience, extending them to speech, writing and assemblies. This had never happened in governments with religious tests. To Jefferson, freedom of religion included freedom from religion. Where John Locke supported discrimination against Catholics and unbelievers, Jefferson and Madison sought to put all religious viewpoints on equal footing before the law. The Virginia Statute and the US Constitution succeeded admirably at this task. In his 1808 letter to the Virginia Baptists, he clearly points out the importance of equal rights of conscience for unbelievers, too.
Because religious belief, or non-belief, is such an important part of every person's life, freedom of religion affects every individual. State churches that use government power to support themselves and force their views on persons of other faiths undermine all our civil rights. Moreover, state support of the church tends to make the clergy unresponsive to the people and leads to corruption within religion. Erecting the "wall of separation between church and state," therefore, is absolutely essential in a free society.
During almost fifteen centuries has the legal establishment of Christianity been on trial. What have been its fruits? More or less in all places, pride and indolence in the Clergy, ignorance and servility in the laity, in both, superstition, bigotry and persecution.
Torrents of blood have been split in the old world, by vain attempts of the secular arm, to extinguish Religious disscord, by proscribing all difference in Religious opinion.
Because the proposed establishment is a departure from the generous policy, which, offering an Asylum to the persecuted and oppressed of every Nation and Religion, promised a lustre to our country, and an accession to the number of its citizens. What a melancholy mark is the Bill of sudden degeneracy? Instead of holding forth an Asylum to the persecuted, it is itself a signal of persecution. It degrades from the equal rank of Citizens all those whose opinions in Religion do not bend to those of the Legislative authority. Distant as it may be in its present form from the Inquisition, it differs from it only in degree. The one is the first step, the other the last in the career of intolerance.
Patrick Henry's religious establishment bill which would turn back the clock and return Virginia to the old order and tax all citizens to support the spread of Christianity. To Madison, the bill was a sudden degeneracy. But Henry was a part of the religious right so he could not understand the principles of liberty. The first 2 paragraphs of Henry's Bill stated:
Whereas the general diffusion of Christian knowledge hath a natural tendency to correct the morals of men, restrain their vices, and preserve the peace of society; which cannot be effected without a competent provision for learned teachers, who may be thereby enabled to devote their time and attention to the duty of instructing such citizens, as from their circumstances and want of education, cannot otherwise attain such knowledge; and it is judged that such provision may be made by the Legislature, without counteracting the liberal principle heretofore adopted and intended to be preserved by abolishing all distinctions of pre-eminence amongst the different societies or communities of Christians;
Be it therefore enacted by the General Assembly, That for the support of Christian teachers, [amount] per centum on the amount, or [amount] in the pound on the sum payable for tax on the property within this Commonwealth, is hereby assessed, and shall be paid by every person chargeable with the said tax
Almost 34 years after Madison, father of the Constitution, addressed the Virginia House on the matter of church-state alliances, he would state in a letter to Robert Walsh on Mar. 2, 1819 that,
The civil Government, though bereft of everything like an associated hierarchy, possesses the requisite stability, and performs its functions with complete success, whilst the number, the industry, and the morality of the priesthood, and the devotion of the people, have been manifestly increased by the total separation of the church from the State.
John Adams was also aware of the church-state legacy of violence and oppression. As President he signed the Senate ratied Treaty of Tripoli of 1797 which stated in Article 11 that the government of the United States was not in any way founded on the Christian religion. Later on in his life, (December 27, 1816) Adams wrote to F.A. Van der Kamp on , saying,
But how has it happened that millions of fables, tales, legends, have been blended with both Jewish and Christian revelation that have made them the most bloody religion that ever existed?
Two months after ordering the new council, on July 12, 451, the emperor Marcian seems to respond to the controversies with an edict that outlawed these often violent arguments in churches, in private homes and in the streets. This law is recorded as C.T. 1. 7. 5. Leo's strategy is working as we see the state outlaw speech regarding the discussions on the nature of Christ and of God. Privacy is also under attack, a common tactic in the worst of modern dictatorships. This kind of legal action to support a certain religious (or non-religious) viewpont is precisely what the American founders knew had to be outlawed on a constitutional level.
Although Leo initially thought little of having a council and thought his Tome could solve everything, he did continually, as I have shown in his letters, plead to the emperors and the empress for government intervention. This can only mean an imperial decree was sought. How else could the emperor have helped but in ordering the heretics to quit? They did it every time in the past so that was what was expected of the imperial court. On July 20, 451 Leo continues his theocratic stategy with a letter (#95) to Pulcheria Augusta. In it he recognizes the order for the council by Pulcheria and Marcian and heaps praises upon them both mostly because of their Nicene doctrinal agreements. One statement is that he wants the coming council to be observed with moderation, pointing finger at the Council at Ephesus where Eutyches and Bshop Dioscorus triumphed and troops intimidated. But Leo never speaks of the discordant nature of the local Synod at Constantinople that started the mess. He omits that Eutyches feared for his life enough that he brought monks and some of his own soldiers to insure his safety. Eusebius of Dorylaeum was not a peaceful person and was given to violent tirades. So it was not just Ephesus and the Eutychians. They were all guilty; Nicenes and Monophysites alike as were the Arian Christians during the fourth century in the times they held the power or had enough influence to persecute Nicenes. Philip Hughes notes:
The situation could not have been more serious than the scandal of Ephesus left it. Except that Dioscoros had not excommunicated the pope, he had all but arrayed the East in open opposition to Rome and the West, the dividing line being the principle that the only true exposition of the Christian faith was not Leo's Tome, but the Alexandrian formula of Cyril as used by Dioscoros. A faction of bishops, powerful because it had the full support of the state, dominated all the churches of the East, as, one hundred years earlier, in the worst days of the Arian terror.
In Leo's letter, he makes clear that he has no tolerance for religious diversity when he tells the Empress, If, therefore, your clemency deigns to reflect upon my motives, it will be satisfied that I have acted throughout with the design of bringing about the abolition of the heresy without the loss of one soul; and that in the case of the authors of these cruel disturbances I have modified my practice somewhat in order that their slow minds might be aroused by some feelings of compunction to ask for lenient treatment.
People who didn't agree with Leo's Nicene view had slow minds. It is true that Leo's tone moderates over the year before this letter but nevertheless, it is part of a strategy to bring about the abolition of heresy. If one reads the historians Eusebius and Sulpitius one sees that intolerance is a virtue. When Martin of Tours destroyed temples, Sulpitius heaped praise upon him. Indeed, there seems to be an air of boasting religious intolerance that runs through the entire Catholic Encyclopedia. What Pope Leo means is that he wants to wipe out religious diversity of all kinds with the help of the state. It means having dissenting speech, writing and assemblies outlawed. How else could he wipe it out? Only an imperial decree could convince people to leave their previously believed way of Truth. Threats worked. Taking away people's rights worked. Exiling their religious leaders worked. Taking away their testamentary rights worked. Destroying or confiscating people's libraries, temples and churches worked. Making non-Nicene religious belief a treasonous act worked. Nothing else had worked with the pagans, the Christian heretics, the Manicheans or the Jews so it was up to the government to establish the Truth by outlawing the other religions and making life very difficult for religious dissenters. And so it was with church and state when Leo wrote (#94) Marcian to tell him he wished him success as long as it adheres to the Faith once delivered to the saints.
On Ocober 8, 451, the Council was convened. Between 500 and 600 bishops attended the Council of Chalcedon. That is far more than at any other General Council in this crucial period of the rise of church-state alliances from Constantine through Justinian. Due to the rumblings on the Persian front, Marcian chose Nicea but even that site was not close enough. Eventually they all met in the Basilica of Saint Euphemia in Chalcedon which lies directly across the waters of the Bosphorus from Constantinople. In a display of church-state alliance, the council was presided over by nineteen imperial commissioners who were powerul officials of the state and the representatives of the Roman See. The Papal delegates would lead the bishops and the commissioners would ratify the results of the council. Like Anatolius blessing the coronation of the emperor, the emperor's commissioners would bless the Nicene Church's canons. One emperor would decree for the Arian church, another would decree for the Nicenes and yet another would support the Monophysites. Violence accompanied each change, with the state supporting the intolerance of the winners. Without the intervention of the state, Christianity would have splintered into many competing sects. If emperors didn't join the Nicene church in their strategy of intolerance, Donatists, Novations, Arians, Monophysites, Pelagians, Montanists, Manicheans, Priscilianists and many more would have continued and possibly thrived.
Adding some spice to the situation, between the scheduled council at Nicea for September 1st and October 8th at Chalcedon, Dioscurus excommunicated the Pope! This tactic only made the situation worse for Dioscurus who would be, as was Eusebius at the Ephesian Council that reinstated Eutyches, kept surrounded in the nave of the church. At Ephesus, the bishops cried out against Eusebius in the nave while in Chalcedon, the bishops of Antioch and Asia Minor shouted against Dioscorus, while Theodoret was cursed by the Alexandrians. (Above, I have cited one of this same Theodoret's letters to Leo regarding his treatment at Ephesus) At Ephesus, Dioscorus was Eusebius' accuser. At Chalcedon it was the reverse. Hughes notes It was a storm that only the lay commissioners could have controlled, with their guards in support. Theodoret was also asked to take a seat in the nave. While Dioscorus was to be denied a vote, Theodoret was not. At Ephesus, all the bishops that voted against Eutyches in Constantinople were denied a vote. Finally Eusebius began his case against Dioscorus by reading from the proceedings of Ephesus. Dioscorus replied that the council was ordered by the emperor and the bishops were united. To this the place erupted once again with many pointing out the threatening atmosphere used to get the votes. Again, only the commissioners and the imperial soldiers could quiet the bishops down. Ironicly, it was the imperial soldiers at Ephesus that created the threatening atmosphere in support of the Eutychians. One Nature!
Finally they got down to reading the Nicene Creed of 325, the Exposition of the 150 Fathers with its addition of the Holy Spirit as co-equal to the Father at Constantinople in 381, the first and second, letters of Cyril to Nestorius, the Creed of Union formulated in 433 and the Tome of Leo. While the bishops at Ephesus cried out that God had spoken through Dioscorus, after the reading of the Tome at Chalcedon the bishops cried out that It is Peter who speaks through Leo! This what we all believe! The next day, Dioscorus stayed away and the council passed sentence in his absence. According to Hughes, the Alexandrians and Egyptians were terrified and did not oppose the sentence. The sentence was then ratified by the emperor Marcian and Dioscorus was stripped of his rank and exiled 250 miles away to Gangra in Bythnia which is now northeast Turkey. Five bishops who were Dioscorus' aids fared better and were reinstated to their Sees. My guess is that the threatening atmosphere of Ephesus brought them into line and at Chalcedon they signed Leo's Tome.
The emperor required that a new creed be written but almost all of the bishops felt nothing needed to be changed. All that needs to be done is to affirm Leo's Tome and the canons of the councils. Thirteen Egyptian bishops wanted to be able to affirm their traditional faith, the faith of Saint Mark, of Nicea, of Athanasius and Cyril. The other bishops shouted them down and demanded that they sign Leo's Tome. The Alexandrians begged, When we get home we'll be murdered.... We do not want to seem to disobey the council. But kill us here if you like. We are willing; rather than to return to be killed at home for betraying the chief See of Egypt. In this emerging Christian world of religious intolerance supported by an alliance of church and state, violence was the expected norm and would be for more than a thousand years.
Since the bishops were not in the mood for a new definition, the commissioners drew one up, hoping to please even the more divided parties. A compromise was not what they wanted and the hall erupted again. A majority suported it and the Antioch delegation opposed it. The Pope's representatives would not even give it any consideration and told the council, If you will not accept the letter of the blessed Pope Leo, make out our passports, that we may return to italy and the General Council be held there. The commissioners were bewildered and thought that a committee might be able to formulate it better. With this, the hall erupted once again with shouting about Nestorius, Mary being the Mother of God and that Christ is God.
Can you imagine 600 religious zealots yelling at each other in a church? This all reminds me of the present attitude found in radical Islam. These people kill each other for much the same reasons Arains, Monophysites and Nicenes did; as Catholics and Protestants did.
The commissioners sought the advice of the emperor, who again insisted on a new defining creed supporting Nicea and Leo's letter. Eventually they came up with a combination of the definitions of the councils of 325 and 381, two letters of Cyril and Leo's letter. Read the Chalcedonian Definition of Faith. At the end of the Definition and preceding the Canons, the Fathers stated:
Since we have formulated these things with all possible accuracy and attention, the sacred and universal synod decreed that no one is permitted to produce, or even to write down or compose, any other creed or to think or teach otherwise. As for those who dare either to compose another creed or even to promulgate or teach or hand down another creed for those who wish to convert to a recognition of the truth from Hellenism or from Judaism, or from any kind of heresy at all: if they be bishops or clerics, the bishops are to be deposed from the episcopacy and the clerics from the clergy; if they be monks or layfolk, they are to be anathematised.
You were commanded not to think otherwise! Here is an asault on the natural rights of conscience. A religion, not yourself, is to determine your values and beliefs. Again we see the iron fisted intolerance of the church leaders in these times. If this were just a private organization, they would have some merit in doing this but the state has no place enforcing bigotry and intolerance. The state has no place determining your thoughts or your speech unless it harms another. Private organizations should have the right to maike their own rules from within for those that choose to be in the group. There could be Arain churches with their rules; Monophysites with theirs, Nestorians and so forth with theirs. But this is an effort of both church and state, with the state supporting the Nicene church's oppression of dissenting religion, speech and writing. Before I address the emperor's actions after the council I would like to take a look at a couple of canons.
Canon 14 reads:
Since in certain provinces readers and cantors have been allowed to marry, the sacred synod decrees that none of them is permitted to marry a wife of heterodox views. If those thus married have already had children, and if they have already had the children baptised among heretics, they are to bring them into the communion of the catholic church. If they have not been baptised, they may no longer have them baptised among heretics; nor indeed marry them to a heretic or a Jew or a Greek, unless of course the person who is to be married to the orthodox party promises to convert to the orthodox faith. If anyone transgresses this decree of the sacred synod, let him be subject to canonical penalty.
Like the Council of Elvira in 306, Christian heterodox, Judaic or pagan spouses are forbidden. The Fathers at Chalcedon really don't want anyone in the church machinery to get married (sex is carnal) but if they do they can't marry anyone who is not Nicene. Unfortunately, this kind of religious and ethnic bigotry found in the monotheistic religions of the world is alive and well in conservative corners. Starting in 306 and affirmed by this general council, religious and ethnic bigotry became a virtue. It is no surprise that the Old Testament forbids marrying a pagan and also encourages the destruction of their places of worship. Only in recent times have the religious and ethnic traditions against interfaith and interracial marriages been challenged.
Canons 15 and 16 read:
No woman under forty years of age is to be ordained a deacon, and then only after close scrutiny. If after receiving ordination and spending some time in the ministry she despises God's grace and gets married, such a person is to be anathematised along with her spouse.
It is not permitted for a virgin who has dedicated herself to the Lord God, or similarly for a monk, to contract marriage. If it is discovered that they have done so, let them be made excommunicate. However, we have decreed that the local bishop should have discretion to deal humanely with them.
Nuff said.
AFTER THE COUNCIL
On November 12, 451 Emperor Marcian issued a decree (Codex 1.11.7) that made a capital crime of reopening of closed pagan temples, offering sacrifices. burning incense, libations, and decorating temples with flowers, inside or out. Libations were the ritual offerings of wine or olive oil.
On February 7, 452, Marcian and Valentinian together issued an edict which enforced Chalcedon's Definition of Faith and its canons and made them the law of the empire. This had the effect of making the previous councils' canons the law. These previous councils had condemned many more faiths needed to be added to the list of offenders. The dissenters' churches and literature were confiscated and their clergy deposed, exiled and replaced. People lost their jobs, their properties, their testamentary rights, and their standing in their communities. Using the same strategy used against pagans, their properties were taken over by the Nicenes and their books were burned. This had begun with Constantine, who plundered pagan temples and libraries of their wealth all over Greece and Turkey in order to build his new captal city of Constantinople. The edict is recorded as Codex Justinianus 1.1.4. Discussions of these theological questions were outlawed because these matters had been officially settled by the clergy and the state. Debating the nature of God was now closed to the people; the marketplace of ideas was now a criminal enterprise in this new empire. Disputing the decree was threatened with heavy penalties. This expanded the authority beyond that of his July, 451 edict that outlawed the discussion of the nature of Christ in churches and banned religious meetings in private homes. Like Emperor Arcadius' making paganism an act of treason, like Valentinian's decree that it was treason to challenge the primacy of the Roman See, Marcian joined the clergy to punish religious dissent. Then on March 13, 452, Marcian re-issued this same decree in the East.
Pressured by Nicene leaders, Marcian issued an edict on July 6, 452 that repealed Theodosius' law that was instigated by Eutychians against Flavian, Eusebius, and Theodoret. Theodosius had believed that their views were heretical. Eutychian's claimed that Flavian, Eusebius, and Theodoret's views were Nestorian. Nestorianism was the issue of the last General Council, held in Ephesus in the year 431. This rescript restored Eusebius and Flavian's honor in the church. Back and forth, round and round they went.
On July 17th of 452 those who denied the Nicene doctrine were ordered to leave Rome. According to the Catholic Encyclopedia, Marcian's laws produced uniformity at Constantinople and in the neighbourhood of the Government, but he could not enforce them so successfully in Syria and Egypt. A few years back, Leo and Valentinian had together forced all the Manicheans out of Rome. They had fled from North Africa because of the persecutions by the Arianist Christians. As the Manicheans were forced out of the city into the rural areas, Leo sent letters (as shown previously) to the clergy there to encourage persecution.
Piling it on on July 28, 452, Marcian decreed heavy fines and restrictions against the monophysite Eutychians. As the council at Chalcedon had decreed, one wasn't even allowed to think anything different from authorized Nicene thoughts. This same edict also demanded that the Alexandrians accept their new Patriarch. Punishment awaited those who openly disagreed. With the replacement of Dioscurus with Proterius, street violence broke out in Alexandria. Marcian enforced the decree by sending 2000 troops to Egypt, who then, alongside their soldiering, raped the women and girls of Alexandria. In Alexandria, the Nicene clergy and adherents could not win without the imperial decrees and the sword of the state to enforce them.
Three years later, on August 1, 455, Marcian re-issued the above edict with added penalties against Eutychians that were decreed previously against the Apollinarians. This law also contained more laws against pagans and ordered a heavy hand against them. The historian Evagrius Scholasticus, who covered 431-594, writes of the situation right after Chalcedon in Book 2, Chapter 5 of his Histories:
On his taking possession of his see, a very great and intolerable tumult arose among the people, who were roused into a storm against conflicting opinions; for some, as is likely in such cases, desired the restoration of Dioscorus, while others resolutely upheld Proterius, so as to give rise to many irremediable mischiefs.
Thus Priscus, the rhetorician, recounts, that he arrived at Alexandria from the Thebaid, and that he saw the populace advancing in a mass against the magistrates: that when the troops attempted to repress the tumult, they proceeded to assail them with stones, and put them to flight, and on their taking refuge in the old temple of Serapis, carried the place by assault, and committed them alive to the flames:
that the emperor, when informed of these events, despatched two thousand newly levied troops, who made so favourable a passage, as to reach Alexandria on the sixth day; and that thence resulted still more alarming consequences, from the license of the soldiery towards the wives and daughters of the Alexandrians:
that, subsequently, the people, being assembled in the hippodrome, entreated Floras, who was the military commandant, as well as the civil governor, with such urgency as to procure terms for themselves, in the distribution of provisions, of which he had deprived them, as well as the privileges of the baths and spectacles, and all others from which, on account of their turbulence, they had been debarred: that, at his suggestion, Floras presented himself to the people, and pledged himself to that effect, and by this means stopped the sedition for a time.
Around the same time as the riots in Egypt some of the Eutychian monks who were at Chalcedon organized a rebellion in Palestine under a monk named Theodosius. Arson, vandalism and killing ensued as the angry, betrayed monks sought to punish the bishops of the council and the imperial court for outlawing their faith, exiling their leaders and confiscating their churches. The Bishop of Scythopolis was assassinated and Jerusalem's Bishop Juvenalis barely escaped his life as the violence escalated. The Eutychians, who were a majority of the Christian population in Jerusalem, then elected Theodosius as their bishop. When the emperor heard of this rebellion, he ordered those responsible punished and sent a garrison of soldiers to end the rebellion.
Nor did even the wilderness in the neighbourhood of Jerusalem preserve its tranquillity, unvisited by this commotion.
For there arrived in Palestine some of the monks who had been present at the council, but were disposed to harbour designs in opposition to it; and by lamenting the betrayal of the faith, exerted themselves to fan into a flame the monastic body.
And when Juvenalis, after obtaining restitution to his see, had been compelled to return to the imperial city, by the violence of the party who claimed the right to supersede and anathematise in their own province, those who, as we have already mentioned, were opposed to the acts of the council of Chalcedon, assembled in the church of the Resurrection,
and appointed Theodosius, who had especially caused confusion in the council, and been the first to bring a report of its proceedings, and respecting whom, at a subsequent period, the monks of Palestine alleged, in letters to Alcison, that having been convicted of malpractices in relation to his own bishop, he had been expelled from his monastery:
and that at Alexandria he had impugned the conduct of Dioscorus, and, after having been severely scourged as a seditious person, had been conveyed round the city on a camel, as is usual with malefactors.
To him many of the cities of Palestine made application, with a view to the ordination of bishops. Among these was Peter the Iberian ; to whom was committed the episcopal helm of the city called Majumas, in the neighbourhood of Gaza.
On being informed of these proceedings, Marcian, in the first place, commands Theodosius to be conveyed near his own person, and sends Juvenalis to rectify the past, with an injunction that all who had been ordained by Theodosius should be ejected. Many sad occurrences followed the arrival of Juvenalis, while either party indulged in whatever proceedings their anger suggested.
In 454, the Valentinian issued an edict by which Jews were forbidden to disinherit their children who became Christians. This order continued the state's coercive evangelical strategies started by Constantine. (Decrees are listed at the Constantine page) This steady stream of laws stripped away the religious, economic, property, and testamentary rights of those who were not religiously correct. This was part of a strategy to handicap religious dissenters in diverse ways in order to exert a controlling influence in several areas of their lives. Constantine had decreed it unlawful for a Jew to own a Christian slave, although a Christian could own one. A Jew who converts a Christian or circumcizes a slave faced the death penalty although exile and/or the loss of testamentary rights were the most common punishments. This kind of religious extremism is still alive and well in Islam where fanatics think converting from Islam to Christianity is a crime worthy of the death penalty. With the evolution of the church-state dictatorship, many emperors made special punishments for this who returned to their previous religion. Both religions are anchored in the religious intolerance found in the commands of the Judaic diety. Stoning the unbelievers and apostates is a very old idea and it still has adherents in the extreme wings of both religions. Constantine's slave law handicapped the Jewish businessman who, like his Christian competitor, relied on slaves to make a living. In the competition of the marketplace, this gave Christians an immediate economic advantage over the Judaizers. In times of legalized slavery, the bottom line of every commercial enterprise was enhanced by slave labor so Jewish business leaders were immediately handicapped by an unstable and smaller slave resources. The law that freed them from their Jewish masters upon conversion to Christianity sought to weaken and disrupt the Jewish business community. Constantine also decreed than no Jew could sit in judgement over Christians in any trial. The 306 Council of Elvira forbade Christians from socializing with, having sexual relations with, eating with, or marrying a Jew. At Elvira, people were ordered to end their friendships and socializing with the unbelievers. The 5th century regional Council of Clermont banned Jews from the legal professions. Justinian's sixth century decree banned Jews from becoming lawyers and judges.
Aside from the religious coercion coming from the church-state machine, it wasn't all bad during Martian's rule. He was an able administrator with another able administrator who was always in the shadows. It was Aspar, Marcian's military superior before he was acclaimed emperor. It is hard to tell how much influence he had but evidently some thought it was too much because he and his two sons were butchered in the palace in 471. With Marcian and Aspar in power, there came a steadying of politics and an economic growth. With few military campaigns of any major consequence (Saracens in Syrian; Blemmyes in Egypt), they replenished the treasury that Theodosius and Chrysaphius had nearly emptied. Immediately, under Marcian and Aspar, there were to be no more extortion payments. Marcian supposedly said For Attila I have Iron but no Gold. Although there were some earthquakes, there were no great natural disasters with famine and/or disease following. The empire had a history of providing for the people in natural disasters and such. The Persians were not invading yet and Attila's Huns were in a mess in the west. The Battle of Chalons in Gaul claimed 165,000 lives as the west's magister militum Aetius routed the Huns. The Franks were also rising up against the Hun incursions. With Attila's unexpected death in 453, the huge Hun Empire quickly fell apart. One story says that Marcian's politics could have possibly been behind Attila's sudden death and his sickness was part of a cover-up. Like Theodosius' unexpected death, we will never know if they were actually assassinated. After Attila's death, Marcian quickly moved to make allies of the tribes that were under the iron fist of the Huns. They might decide to invade the Empire's territory so making allies of them was important. Also dying that year of 453 was the Empress Pulcheria.
Marcian lowered the taxes on the Senatorial aristocracy and landowners. He also changed the laws so Senators could finally marry freeborn poor women, (humilis). Marcian kept the Senate content. Years later, Emperor Justin's edict (520) would expand on this and Senators could finally marry lowborn women, (infames). This enabled his adopted nephew Justinian to marry the mime actress Theodora. Whether they were expanding liberty or just making a larger supply of women for the rich is anyone's guess.
Marcian died in 457 at the age of 65. Some say it was Gangrene of the feet.