Chapter 38
The social, political, and cultural values promoted by Christian empresses, emperors, clergymen, and male and female lay leaders, artists, and writers played a powerful role in the transformation of the late antique Roman world into the medieval West and the Byzantine Empire. It should be clear by now, however, that Christianity and its ecclesiastical institutions were not alien imports to that world, but organically grew out of it. Christianity is deeply rooted in Judaism, and the Judaism of the first century c.e. had been permeated by the culture of the Hellenistic Greek world that Rome inherited. The Jewish people had lived in that world for 300 years before the Roman annexation of Judea. The early Christian missionary Paul was a highly Hellenized, Greek-speaking Jew who claimed Roman citizenship. He did much to spread Christianity beyond the Jewish community in the first century c.e. and shape Christian theology. The new religion that he spread grew by converting the pagan population of the Roman world. For 300 years, many of the great leaders and thinkers among Christians were converts who had been steeped in Classical literature, rhetoric, and philosophy. The Christian desire not to be of the world while in it was impossible for any human being, even the most rigorous ascetic, to attain fully. Christianity, then, must be seen as part of the systemic evolution of the Roman world. It was as much an effect of that world’s gradual transformation as it was a cause.
Transmitting the Roman Classical legacy
Even as Christianity was helping to transform Classical Roman civilization, it was spreading the legacy of that civilization far beyond its traditional boundaries. Ireland (Hibernia) had been known to Greek and Roman mariners and geographers since at least the late seventh century b.c.e. The famous Roman general Agricola had even contemplated invading it from Britain under the Flavians. Nevertheless, active contact with the Greeks and Romans had been minimal, and their cultural influence had been commensurate. By the fifth century c.e., however, contact with the Celts in Britain had brought Christianity to some of those living in the south of Ireland. Prosper of Aquitaine wrote that in 431 Pope Celestine I sent a deacon named Palladius to believers in Ireland. A few years later, a British bishop named Patricius (Patrick) came to missionize pagans in northern Ireland. He had once been taken there as a slave before escaping back to Britain. In thirty years, he had created a flourishing Church, which was based in rural monasteries because Ireland was devoid of cities.
Although they were independent of the urban-based episcopal system led by the bishop of Rome, the Irish monks were deeply immersed in the Latin Christian tradition. They produced an extensive Latin literature of poetry, letters, sermons, saints’ lives, biblical commentaries, and inspirational tales. Safe from the Germanic migrations that swamped the Roman West, the Irish developed a strong scholarly tradition. Irish missionaries like Columba (ca. 521–ca. 597) and Columbanus (d. 615) transferred it to northern Britain and Gaul in the sixth and seventh centuries. Some of the earliest manuscripts of late Latin authors and the Latin Bible are preserved in Irish manuscripts.
By 595, Britain had been lost to the Roman Empire for at least 150 years. The pagan Saxons had driven the Christianized Celtic population to the western parts of the island, and Irish missionaries had reevangelized mainly the North along the Scottish border. At that point, however, Pope Gregory the Great saw an opportunity to convert the Saxons to Christianity through the Roman Catholic Church. The Saxon king Ethelbert of Kent had married Clovis’ great-granddaughter Bertha, a Roman Catholic. Gregory called upon a Benedictine monk who came to be known as St. Augustine of Canterbury (not to be confused with the earlier St. Augustine of Hippo). He was to lead missionaries to Ethelbert’s court at Canterbury in hopes of converting his kingdom. After a two-year delay, the missionaries finally arrived at Canterbury. They quickly succeeded in converting Ethelbert, and Gregory made Augustine the first archbishop of Canterbury. After that, he rapidly evangelized neighboring Anglo-Saxon kingdoms. The Celtic Christians of the West and North, however, differed with the Roman Church over the date to celebrate Easter (the Paschal controversy), the appropriate tonsure for monks, and the independence of bishops. Many of these issues were finally resolved at the Council of Whitby (663–664), and Celtic Christianity was effectively united with the Church of Rome.
In East Africa, Arabia, and the Far East, Christian sects that have been labeled heretical did the most to transmit the Greco-Roman legacy beyond the traditional bounds of the Roman world. The Ethiopian kingdom centered at Axum (Axumis, Auxume) and the kingdoms of Nubia had enjoyed considerable commercial and diplomatic contact with the Empire for a long time. Their conversion to Christianity linked them even more closely to the cultural and intellectual world of Late Antiquity. Nubia, extending up the Nile between Aswan and Ethiopia, comprised three kingdoms that were eventually united by the kingdom of Nobatia. In 542, Empress Theodora sent Monophysite missionaries to convert the region. As a result, Nubian Christians aligned with the Monophysite Copts in Egypt, along with whom they were cut off from the Orthodox Church at Constantinople by the Arab Conquest. The cultural heritage of this wealthy kingdom has only recently received serious attention.
South of Nubia, the Ethiopian royal family at Axum had been converted to Christianity by the mid-fourth century, apparently through the efforts of two brothers. One of them, Frumentius, supposedly was consecrated the first bishop of Axum by Athanasius of Alexandria. After the Council of Chalcedon in 451, Ethiopian Christians sympathized with the Monophysites and received a number of influential Monophysite refugees from Syria and Egypt. They founded so many churches and monasteries that Cosmas Indicopleustes, a sixth-century merchant in the Indian trade, asserted that Ethiopia was thoroughly Christianized.
A rich body of Christian writings appeared in the ancient Ethiopic language, Ge’ez. The Septuagint and New Testament, the Life of St. Anthony, the monastic rules of Pachomius, and many other Greek texts were translated into Ge’ez. The only complete text of the apocryphal book of Enoch exists in an Ethiopian translation. Many other Ethiopian translations of important Greek, Arabic, and Coptic originals are still awaiting proper scholarly attention.
In 523, King Kaleb of Ethiopia (514–542), in alliance with Justin I, sent an expedition across the Red Sea to South Arabia to rescue Christians who were being persecuted by an ally of Persia. Syriac Christians had been particularly active in spreading Christianity to the Arabian Peninsula. They were so successful that Islamic traditions mention a Christian cemetery and an icon of Mary and Jesus at Mecca and claim that Mohammed conversed with monks and other Christian Arabs. Indeed, Syriac Christians communicated Greek logic, rhetoric, and science along with Christian mysticism and even theology to the Arabs.
In the Far East, Syriac Monophysite and Nestorian missionaries spread Christianity to India and China. The so-called “Thomas Christians” in India today are descended from the early Indian converts. A Nestorian missionary named Mar Sergis was working in Lint’ao (Lintan) 300 miles west of the Chinese capital at Xi’an (Sian) by 578. A-lo-pen was preaching Nestorian Christianity in Xi’an itself by 635 and placed Christian Scriptures in the library of the Emperor T’ai-Tsung. He probably helped to translate the still-extant Treatise on Jesus the Messiah into Chinese. The story of his career and a list of thirty-five Chinese Christian books are preserved in the Treatise of Veneration. Many later writings, artifacts, and ruins of the early Chinese Christians have survived and show the interaction of Christianity and Buddhism along the ancient Silk Road. Buddhism survived later official persecution in China, but Christianity did not.
In the Caucasus region, Armenia had become the first officially Christian nation when Gregory the Illuminator (ca. 240–332) converted King Tiridates III. The Armenian bishop Mashtots (361/362–440) and Sahak, the Syriac bishop of Samosata (Samsat), invented the first alphabet for Armenian. They turned it into a literary language by initiating the translation of the Bible and other early Christian texts, which provided the foundation for later original work by Armenian scholars and theologians. Works by many important Greek authors whose originals are lost survive in Armenian translations. After Chalcedon, the Armenians, too, became Monophysites and spread that version of Christianity to other peoples of the Caucasus.
The Imperial Church
As Christian missionaries spread Rome’s cultural legacy beyond the traditional boundaries of the Classical world, the Church also preserved Rome’s imperialistic spirit. In the East, where Constantinople maintained the imperial political and military apparatus, the Byzantine rulers and Orthodox patriarchs (bishops) became so firmly united in the cause of Empire that the term Caesaropapism has often been used to describe the relationship between the Church and the secular state. In the West, where the secular apparatus of the senate and the Caesars disappeared, the bishops of Rome (popes) erected an ecclesiastical structure in its place.
The rise of ecclesiastical power
While the power of the Roman emperors and their officials in the West declined during the fifth and sixth centuries, Christian ecclesiastics gained increasing control over civic and secular affairs. During the first three centuries c.e., Christians had created an ecclesiastical administrative structure outside of, but parallel to, the secular administrative system. It had spread through the network of cities that were the basis of Roman imperial control. By the fourth century, many cities had churches headed by an official whose title was the Greek word for overseer, episkopos. From the Latin transliteration, episcopus, are derived episcopal and related words in English. Germans corrupted the pronunciation episcopus into Bischof, which came into English as bishop through the Anglo-Saxon dialect of German.
The bishop’s church was called a cathedral (from the Greek word for his throne, kathedra). From it, he might control other churches and Christian institutions such as hospitals, orphanages, old-age homes, and homeless shelters in his city and its surrounding territory, which constituted his “see” (from the Latin sedes, “seat”). Other churches and institutions within the see might be independent dioceses and parishes with their own endowments and clergy, but a bishop and his cathedral church would certainly have the most prestige in comparison.
Christian bishops in individual Roman provinces had created provincial councils called synods (congresses) modeled on the secular provincial councils made up of leading representatives from municipal curiae (p. 366). Bishops usually met once or twice a year to discuss common issues in the provincial capital (metropolis, mother city). The bishop of the metropolis presided. Therefore, the metropolitan bishop came to exercise influence over the bishops in other churches of the province. The Council of Nicaea formalized the authority of metropolitan bishops in 325. It also recognized the extraprovincial primacy of sees in great cities like Alexandria, Antioch, Rome, and Carthage. As a result, a hierarchy of bishops reflecting the administrative hierarchy of cities in the Roman imperial system had emerged. Thus, the administrative organization of Christian churches mirrored that of the Roman government.
When Constantine sought to enlist this organization in the effort to restore peace and stability to the Roman world under his leadership, it became even more like the administrative apparatus of the Roman Empire. In 314, Constantine summoned bishops from the western provinces to the largest synod yet held. It met at Arelate (Arles) to deal with the Donatist controversy in North Africa (pp. 586–7). In 325, he summoned the Council of Nicaea, which was the first ecumenical council because bishops from the whole Empire were invited, although virtually all who came were eastern (pp. 589–9). The next six ecumenical councils, which are the only other ones accepted as such by both the Greek Orthodox and Roman Catholic churches, were also summoned by emperors.
Clearly, bishops were now very important people. The ecclesiastical and imperial hierarchies had been joined at the top. Bishop Hosius of Corduba (ca. 257–ca. 357) was one of Constantine’s major advisors. After the establishment of the eastern court at Constantinople, resident and visiting bishops, whom subsequent emperors frequently consulted, constituted a perpetual (endemic) council. As Constantine and his Christian successors bestowed money, power, and privileges upon the Church and its clergy, aristocrats saw an opportunity to acquire leadership and prestige through the control of important episcopal sees. In Constantine’s restored Empire, the Church became a new vehicle of civilian power for the traditional aristocracy of a world that had become increasingly dominated by upstarts and “barbarians” through the military.
Christian congregations gave a bishop a well-organized group of supporters whom he could mobilize against secular and ecclesiastical rivals through effective preaching. He also had significant wealth at his disposal. imperial donations and private bequests to churches and Christian charitable foundations had placed large amounts of money and property in episcopal hands. Constantine himself had set a precedent by granting to the churches of Rome estates with incomes totaling over 400 pounds of gold a year. Leaving something to the Church in one’s will became customary for Christians of all classes. Moreover, the Church had to pay only the regular taxes on its lands, which were free from extraordinary imposts and the burden of corvées.
As a result, bishops of large churches enjoyed impressive incomes. John Chrysostom said that the church at Antioch had revenues equal to those just below the wealthiest citizens. In the first half of the sixth century, the church at Ravenna enjoyed annual rents of 12,000 solidi, and at the beginning of the seventh century, the bishop of Alexandria had 8000 pounds of gold in his treasury. Such resources allowed the bishops of major sees to exercise patronage and maintain staffs or retinues greater than those of secular aristocrats and even rivaling those of imperial officials.
According to one document, the bishop of Ravenna annually received 3000 solidi, 880 fowls, 266 chickens, 8800 eggs, 3760 pounds of pork, and 3450 pounds of honey as well as an unspecified number of geese and quantity of milk. That income fed his household and provided gifts and banquets for the people whom he cultivated in maintaining the dignity of his office. At the great church in Constantinople, Justinian tried to limit the ordained staff to 525, not to mention additional personnel like gravediggers, funeral attendants, and parabalans (stretcher-bearers for the sick and infirm). At Constantinople alone, the funeral attendants numbered 950 under Justinian. At Alexandria in the early fifth century, Cyril had a force of 500 rugged parabalans at his disposal as he tried to overawe imperial prefects and other rivals in the violence that led to the murder of Hypatia (p. 636).
It is no wonder that emperors and imperial officials were willing to grant as much respect to bishops as they did to wealthy secular aristocrats, renowned pagan orators and philosophers, or charismatic holy men. They needed the cooperation of these powerful men to maintain control at the local level. Bishops, therefore, could exercise greater freedom of speech, parrhesia, than many in dealing with imperial authorities. They also had greater opportunities to catch the ear of a Christian emperor. Bishops could use this influence on behalf of their cities to obtain relief from taxes, assuage the wrath of an angry emperor, or secure imperial gifts and benefactions.
The resources and respect commanded by a bishop could allow him to assume the leadership of his entire community when the secular powers failed. In 451, for example, Bishop Anianus of Orleans (Cenabum, Aurelianum [d. 453]) successfully organized the defense of his city against the Huns. The great Gallo-Roman aristocrat Sidonius Apollinaris (p. 702) had risen all the way to consul and prefect of Rome when he turned to the Church and around 445 became bishop of Clermont (Augustonemetum) near Gergovia. He organized resistance to the Visigoths and was imprisoned when they were victorious. They soon reinstated him, however, and acknowledged his leadership of the local Roman population. In 540, Megas, bishop of Beroea (Aleppo) in Syria, vainly tried to save his city from the Persians in the face of apathetic Roman authorities.
In the East, the prominent metropolitan bishops of Alexandria, Antioch, and Constantinople had perpetuated the intercity rivalries of the old civic elites. These rivalries frequently manifested themselves in bitter doctrinal disputes as each bishop tried to assert the dominance of his city’s theological position. The Arab conquests of the seventh century put an end to that situation by leaving Constantinople as the largest surviving Christian see of the Greek East. After that, the interests of church and state in the Byzantine Empire became indissolubly linked.
The rise of Rome
In the West, the abandonment of Rome for Milan as the emperors’ principal residence in the mid-third century had long prepared the way for the separate authority of the pope, bishop of Rome. When Alaric and the Visigoths besieged the city in 408, Pope Innocent I stepped into the political vacuum and tried to save the city. Pope Leo I intervened to save Rome from Attila the Hun in 450 and managed to negotiate with the Vandals in 455 to lessen the fury of their sack. Under Julius I (337–352), the Council of Serdica (343) tried to settle the dispute between Athanasius and his Arian opponents (p. 638). It declared that Rome, as the apostolic see of St. Peter, could hear appeals from other bishops. Carthage was the only real rival of Rome in the West, but it did not have an apostolic connection. Therefore, Roman bishops increasingly held primacy in the West and claimed it in the East. In 381, the First Council of Constantinople (Second Ecumenical Council) proclaimed Constantinople as the “New Rome,” second in primacy only to “Old Rome.”
The emperors Gratian and Valentinian III issued decrees in support of the popes in ca. 378 and 445. After the western line of emperors ended in the late fifth century, Pope Gelasius I (492–496) virtually declared himself joint ruler in a letter to the eastern Emperor Anastasius. He used the image of “two swords” that governed the world: the spiritual authority of the bishop of Rome as Vicar of Christ and the temporal power of the emperor. After the adversities following Justinian’s death, Pope Gregory the Great (590–604) set out to conquer the West for Rome once more, not with new legions, but with loyal missionary bishops. They would enlist the armies of heretic and pagan nations in the cause by converting their kings and queens to Rome’s faith. Rome in the West would now be the Church.
Suggested reading
Brown , P. The Rise of Western Christendom: Triumph and Diversity, A.D. 200–1000. Rev. ed. Malden, MA and Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2013.
Jenkyns , R., (ed.). The Legacy of Rome: A New Appraisal. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992.