3
Pagan Culture
A Spiritual Crisis
The conversion of the emperor Constantine (305-337) was sudden and in some ways mysterious, but it did not occur entirely out of the blue. Perhaps unrecognized even by most Christians, for three centuries, certain elements in Roman culture were helping to prepare for the triumph of the new faith.
From at least the time of Augustus, the mood of the Roman world had been one of spiritual restlessness and searching, verging at times on despair. Augustus was partially successful in reviving the old religion, but the spiritual crisis persisted.
For Romans, fulfillment was to be achieved by being a good citizen, but citizenship had little meaning under even the best of authoritarian rulers, while under tyrants like Nero, and amidst the ubiquitous violence and instability of the military emperors of the third century, life could be a nightmare.
The citizen’s basic religious duty—participating in the required rituals of sacrifice—was easily, even mechanically, discharged. This simple religion had nothing to say about the meaning of life except that men were under the power of inscrutable Fate, which left people free to seek for meaning in any way they could.
Pessimism
Some looked for it in philosophy or in what were called the mystery cults—Near Eastern religions that promised to unlock the hidden secrets of the universe but whose inner teachings and practices were revealed only to their devotees. These religions were profoundly pessimistic, often teaching that the world was ruled by demons and offering deliverance from the endless cycle of meaningless repetition.
Christianity, on the other hand, taught that time is not revolving but moves in a purposeful direction, so that what begins in time culminates in eternity. The coming of Christ, a unique and unrepeatable event, destroyed the ancient view of history as cyclical.
Philosophy
The weaknesses of Roman religion were the weaknesses of Greek religion as well, weaknesses that had helped stimulate philosophical speculation—a search for meaning through the use of human reason rather than in the myths. Philosophy was considered a search not merely for intellectual understanding but for a way of life, for true happiness. There was a rarified kind of monotheism found, for example, in the philosopher Epictetus (d. ca. 100) and the last of the “good emperors”, Marcus Aurelius.
As they were with most aspects of high culture, the Romans were not highly creative philosophically, and they readily acknowledged their debts to the Greeks. Completing what Alexander the Great (356-323 B.C.) had begun, the Roman Empire spread Greek civilization wherever it conquered.
Stoicism
Stoicism (named for a kind of courtyard where philosophers walked and talked) was perhaps the most widely followed of the philosophies, a high-minded doctrine teaching that the soul is a breath of the transcendent Logos and that the key to happiness is freedom from desire and the calm acceptance of Fate (hence the popular concept of a Stoic as someone who endures pain uncomplainingly). Stoicism taught an elevated moral code, but it was cold and viewed history as a circular process that the individual could not overcome. Many Stoics, like Marcus Aurelius, emphasized a detached devotion to duty and despised Christians as overly passionate and fanatical.
Epicureanism
Epicureanism (named after its founder) taught that the events of life are random, and it aimed to liberate people from the fear of death by celebrating the pleasures of life. While it could degenerate into the crude hedonism of “Eat, drink, and be merry”, at its best it urged sensual moderation and extolled the higher pleasures like beauty and love.
Christian Wisdom
Some serious-minded pagans, after being disillusioned with every philosophical school, found their way into the Church. Justin Martyr was a philosopher who opened a school at Rome. To Justin, Jesus was the ultimate philosopher, and he believed that all truth is one, hence all truth is the truth of God. He was the first Christian apologist, and he aimed, if possible, to persuade Marcus Aurelius himself.
Unlike the various philosophies, Christianity did not appeal only to intellectuals or to those who had the leisure to contemplate life’s mysteries but, like all great religions, could be made intelligible and personally relevant to a wide variety of people. Its credibility lay partly in the fact that it appealed to a recent historical person, Jesus Christ, rather than to remote mythical beings. Also, the Christian Scriptures contained a rich and coherent account of its beliefs, in contrast to the diffuse myths of the pagans.
The Christian emphasis on human free will, albeit impaired by sin, was a liberating alternative to belief in Fate. Christianity recognized the ultimate emptiness of a purely earthly existence, offered hope of eternal life, and laid down an inspiring ethic based on love and the practical discipline necessary to achieve it. In contrast to the mystery religions, Christianity did not promise the deliverance of the soul from the body but the salvation of the whole man. Suffering was not abolished but sublimated to higher ends.
The Conversion of Constantine
Although their numbers were not large, a significant number of educated, aristocratic Romans had been attracted to Christianity well before the time of Constantine. Thus his sudden conversion may not have seemed bizarre to at least some cultured people.
In Hoc Signo Vinces
The exact circumstances of Constantine’s conversion are uncertain. His mother, St. Helena (d. 330), was already a Christian, but an account written some years later reported that on the eve of the crucial battle of the Milvian Bridge in 311, Constantine saw a vision of the cross or of a chi-ro, with the words, “In this sign you shall conquer.” As a result, he had the chi-ro put on the standards and armor of his soldiers, but along with the symbolism of Sol Invictus—the Unconquered Sun—which had become a dominant Roman cult. Victorious over his enemies, Constantine became the undisputed ruler of Rome and attributed his victory to the God of the Christians.
An Imperfect Conversion
Constantine underwent an equivocal kind of conversion, at first failing to understand the most elementary teaching of Christianity—that there is only one God—so that for a time Jesus continued to share official status with the Sun. His approach was entirely in keeping with the polytheism that prevailed throughout the ancient world, allowing the gods of other peoples to be incorporated into the Roman pantheon (“all the gods”), their power added to that of the Roman gods. Only gradually did Constantine grasp the true nature of the faith he had imperfectly embraced, and in some ways, he remained unconverted, baptized only on his deathbed and then by a bishop of heretical beliefs.
At its simplest, conversion to Christianity was the recognition of a new power in the world, far superior to the old. Through her sacraments and her symbolism, the Church made unseen spiritual beings visible. But the old powers remained real for some time, and, as on the shields of Constantine’s soldiers, both Christian and pagan symbols appeared side by side in public places. Some people practiced both Christian and pagan rituals, praying to both the one God and the many.
Emperor under God
Ironically, Diocletian’s fanatical efforts to wipe out the Christian movement may have contributed to its triumph, by demonstrating its profound strength, which made it suitable to serve as a new spiritual basis for the Empire. Christianity had proven to be one of the few living forces in Roman culture. With the conversion of Constantine, the authority of the emperor was affirmed as divinely ordained, a comprehensive order whose task was to maintain justice in the world.
Toleration and More
The stages of the religious revolution succeeded one another very rapidly. Complete toleration was granted to Christianity by the Edict of Milan of 313, and the emperor soon returned all confiscated Church property, exempted the Church from taxes and the clergy from military service, and appointed bishops to be civil judges in their local communities.
A Moral Revolution
By his decrees, Constantine also sought to bring about a kind of moral revolution: establishing Sunday as the day of rest, in commemoration of Christ’s Resurrection; abolishing crucifixion; forbidding the branding of criminals on the face, since the face is the image of the soul; depriving slave-owners of the power of life and death over their slaves. Usury (excessive interest on loans) was condemned, there was a widespread freeing of slaves, and charitable works were extolled.
He expressed horror at the bloodiness of pagan sacrifices, in contrast to the unbloody sacrifice of Christ, but the bloody games in the circuses were not suppressed for another century, until a monk ran into the amphitheatre in protest and was torn to pieces by the beasts.
Christianity revitalized the Roman family as the basis of all social life by enjoining fidelity on both husband and wife—holding up Paul’s ideal relationship between them as like that of Christ and His Church—and including even slaves as part of the family. Because sexual relationships were permitted only within marriage, slaves were now allowed to marry. Constantine enacted a series of severe laws concerning sexual conduct, including death by torture for any man who seduced a virgin. The new order curbed patriarchal authority in one important respect—no longer did fathers have power of life and death over their newborn children.
Divorce had been easy among the Romans, but in Constantine’s decrees, it was allowed to women only if their husbands committed murder or practiced magic and to men only if their wives were unfaithful, sold their bodies, or induced abortions. For the most part, the Church recognized the legitimacy of a second marriage after divorce, if the couple did suitable lengthy penance. The “Pauline privilege” allowed a Christian to separate from a pagan spouse (“Do not be mismated with unbelievers” [2 Cor 6:14]), but often a Christian wife was the instrument of her husband’s conversion.
The True Cross
Though a moral reformer, Constantine was also ruthless and cruel, even to the point of having his wife and his son murdered because of a suspicion that they were plotting against him. The murders so disturbed his mother, Helena that, as expiation of her son’s sins, she set off on her famous quest for the true Cross, which led eventually to the unearthing of three crosses near Jerusalem that were venerated as the execution instruments of Jesus and the two thieves.
The Church Triumphant
Mass Conversion
The emperor’s official endorsement of Christianity naturally stimulated many conversions to the Church, so that before long a majority of people were at least nominally Christian. Motives for conversion were undoubtedly mixed: there were those who had wanted to convert but had been afraid; those who took the imperial endorsement as a guarantee of truth; those who, sincerely if superficially, merely adopted the prevailing beliefs of their culture; and those who calculated that in worldly terms it was not a bad thing to profess the same religion as the emperor.
A New Rome
Just as Diocletian had realistically divided the governing power of an empire too large to be ruled effectively by one man, so Constantine realistically reached a hitherto unthinkable conclusion: the capital of the Empire of Rome did not have to be Rome. In every respect—density of population, wealth, social and cultural sophistication—the Near East was superior to the West, and, if the emperor could only adequately rule half the Empire, it was the Eastern half that merited his efforts. Thus in 330, Constantine transferred his capital to the old city of Byzantium, renamed as Constantinople (modern Istanbul), at the exact point where Asia and Europe come together.
It was a decision that would have momentous consequences for the Church. Although at certain periods there continued to be an emperor in the West, subject to the emperor at Constantinople, the transfer of the capital gave the popes an independence from imperial control not enjoyed by the Eastern patriarchs. Having ceased to be the political capital of the Empire, Rome’s primary significance was now as the capital of the Church, the epithet “Eternal City” acquiring primarily a religious rather than a political meaning. Rome’s center was now the Vatican hill, believed to be the site of Peter’s martyrdom and burial.
Julian the Apostate
Paganism still survived. One of Constantine’s successors, his nephew Julian (361-363), was called the Apostate because he renounced the Christian faith that he felt had been forced on him by some of the very people who had murdered members of his family during the interminable dynastic conflicts. During his brief reign, there was some localized persecution of Christians, although it was not official policy.
Julian tried to reinstate the old cults in their favored positions, requiring Christians to pay for the building of pagan temples. Showing a subtle understanding of Christian beliefs, he ordered the rebuilding of the Temple at Jerusalem to refute the claim that Judaism had been replaced by Christianity. But the builders kept encountering problems that stopped the project, something that Christians took as a divine sign. The Julian interlude cast light on the precarious nature of some conversions: the bishop of Troy in Asia Minor, for instance, once showed the emperor a collection of idols he had saved and said that he had become a Christian only in order to keep the old religion alive in secret.
Julian’s efforts were reversed after his death in battle, when, according to a contemporary legend, he cried out, “O pale Galilean, you have conquered!” Pagan temples survived for a time, although they were sometimes destroyed by mobs who thought they were the haunts of devils. Most Christians probably considered paganism tolerable so long as they did not pollute themselves by contact with pagan rites.
The End of Paganism
The Western emperor Gratian (359-383) renounced the title of high priest, and in 391, the emperor Theodosius I (379-395) forbade all pagan worship and closed the temples, although pagans continued to hold public office until the time of Justinian I (527-565), who closed the school of philosophy at Athens, the final sign of Christianity’s victory.
But pagan loyalties survived sufficiently for some people to charge that the misfortunes of the Empire were caused by its abandonment of the gods. St. Augustine (d. 430), bishop of Hippo (North Africa), wrote his seminal work The City of God primarily to refute the claim that the sack of Rome by barbarians had that cause. On the contrary, he asserted, the cause was Rome’s own innumerable sins.
Religious Coercion
Some Church leaders, notably Ambrose, condemned forced conversions. But—momentous for the later history of the Church—Augustine, after first rejecting the practice, reluctantly accepted it in the case of the warlike Donatists, who were an acute pastoral problem in his own diocese. His justification was Jesus’ parable of the man who gave a banquet and whose final command to his servants, with regard to those they would meet in the streets, was “compel [them] to come in” (Lk 14:23). Augustine pointed out that, even if the first generation of converts was coerced, their descendants might embrace the faith with sincerity.
Wheat and Tares
After Constantine’s conversion, it was sometimes the practice to baptize large numbers of people who had not undergone the earlier kind of rigorous catechumenate. This too had its justification in Augustine, whose City of God demonstrated that the Church was not an elite community of saints but a place where wheat and tares grow side by side until the final harvest. Beyond practical expediency, the practice of mass conversions was justified by belief in the objective power of the sacraments, independent of subjective dispositions, so that those who received baptism were cleansed of their sins and received an infusion of grace.
Natural Law
From the Stoics, Christians got the concept of natural law, an idea that allowed a particularly fruitful interplay between pagan philosophy and divine revelation. Paul had spoken of the law of God written on the hearts of men, and the philosophical idea of natural law seemed to be a recognition of that reality. Natural law transcended civil law and was the basis on which all human law was to be judged. Beyond natural virtues, there were “theological” virtues pertaining to God—faith, hope, and charity—that are not attainable by human effort and could only be achieved through divine grace.
The Christian State
Although the Gospel promised freedom, even in pagan times the Church never questioned the coercive authority of the state, something that was rendered necessary by the Fall. Because sinful men could not be relied upon to do good and avoid evil voluntarily, they needed the state to suppress bad behavior through the threat of punishment.
At the same time, Christianity also offered membership in a universal community that transcended the Empire itself. The Church was a universal state that would ensure peace and justice. She represented the common unity of mankind that was greater than the unity of the Empire.
In the East, attitudes to the state went much further than mere acceptance. Bishop Eusebius of Caesarea (d. 339), the first Christian historian, declared that the Empire itself was the Kingdom of Christ and Constantine the new David. But Constantine’s conversion turned out to be a mixed blessing, in that he could not prescind from his imperial authority in dealing with religious matters of which he had an incomplete understanding. Thus, from the beginning, the power of the emperors threatened the Church’s integrity.
Constantine approached the great theological controversies of his reign (see Chapter Four below) primarily as conflicts that threatened the peace of the Empire, a concern that was not unwarranted, since the great religious disputes provoked murders, riots, and other violent conflicts. Constantine regularly intervened to settle disputes in accord with the political situation at a given moment. Each ecclesiastical faction had its partisans at court, vying with each other for imperial support.
Whereas the East saw church and state as one, the West tended to see them as two distinct societies. In contrast to Eusebius and other Eastern bishops, St. Hilary of Poitiers (d. ca. 368) and St. Ambrose affirmed both loyalty to imperial authority and a vigorously independent Church.
Episcopal Office
Ambrose was prefect of the City of Milan—the imperial representative—when the bishop died. Fearing strife between two rival factions, Ambrose presided over the election of a new bishop, and during the proceedings someone (reportedly a child) shouted out his name, and he was speedily acclaimed as bishop. As yet a catechumen, he first received baptism, then was ordained deacon, priest, and bishop on successive days.
Ambrose and his people saw his acclamation as a manifestation of the divine will, but, in worldly terms, it was also a sign of changing times. However important the prefect of the city might be, he was less important, in the eyes of eternity and perhaps in the eyes of history as well, than the bishop, who represented an institution that was increasingly important, even as the authority of the Empire waxed and waned in the West. A few years later, also in Milan, Augustine renounced the study of rhetoric, a skill that might have brought him political preferment, in order to become a monk and eventually, under circumstances similar to those of Ambrose, a bishop.
An increasing number of bishops were taken from the upper ranks of society, and when imperial authority collapsed in the West in the fifth century, it was they who emerged as the natural leaders of society, fulfilling the role of the old Roman senators. When necessary, they were the only force capable of withstanding the imperial bureaucracy. Conscientious bishops believed that their own souls were imperiled by the sins of their people, since at the Last Judgment they would be held accountable for their flocks.
Care of the Needy
Almsgiving (from the Latin word for “kindness”) was a way of atoning for one’s sins. The bishops functioned as spokesmen for the poor, and the Church became the organizer of charities and the principal agency for the distribution of poor relief, keeping stores for the needy and in times of emergency even selling liturgical vessels for that purpose (at Antioch the Church reportedly supported three thousand widows and orphans). Julian the Apostate goaded his fellow pagans to imitate the Christians in their generosity, while the great patriarch of Constantinople, St. John Chrysostom (“the Golden-Tongued”, d. 407), excoriated the people of his city, especially the rich, for their injustices and their neglect of the needy (He antagonized people by his bluntness and was soon deposed.)
The Ecumenical Councils
There had always been meetings of Church leaders to settle disputed questions, such as the “Council of Jerusalem” that addressed the issue of the necessity of Jewish practices for Christian converts. But beginning in the fourth century, there was a long series of councils by which definitive ecclesiastical judgments were rendered. The ecumenical council (from the Greek word for “the world”) was a gathering of the bishops of the entire Church, while provincial councils or synods represented particular regions and were binding only on those regions, unless adopted elsewhere. The participants (“Fathers”) of such councils were primarily the bishops as successors of the Apostles, who were believed to be guided by the Holy Spirit. Little distinction was made between bishops and theologians, because most of the great theologians of the age were bishops, who often engaged in theological speculation in order to address pressing questions that had arisen in their jurisdictions.
Dioceses
Diocletian divided his vast Empire into local administrative units called “dioceses”, which also became the name of the territory ruled by a bishop. The authority of bishops in their dioceses was carefully defined. The Council of Sardica (modern Sofia) in 341 forbade bishops from being “translated” (changed to another place) from one see (“seat”) to another, in keeping with the tradition whereby bishops were considered married to their sees. (After the great theologian St. Gregory Nazianzen [d. 389] had been made patriarch of Constantinople, he was forced to resign because of that rule.) Sardica also admonished bishops to respect the boundaries of other bishops’ sees, forbade them to be absent from their sees for more than three successive Sundays, and set up a process for investigating bishops accused of misconduct, with final appeal to the see of Rome.
Also in the fourth century, episcopal sees were gathered into “provinces”, each of which was under a “metropolitan” (later called an archbishop), who exercised general oversight over the sees of his province. The need for such a system was dictated mainly by the large number of sees—about five hundred in North Africa alone—required by the fact that the bishop was expected to have close contact with his people, who gathered around him for the Eucharist.
Parishes
The early Christians were an urban people, if for no other reason than that cities provided the best opportunity for evangelization. The pagani were literally the rural people—those who had not yet heard the Gospel and still worshipped the old gods. But with the end of persecution, and with sudden numerical growth, “stational churches”—what were later called parishes—were established in the larger cities. In Rome, the pope went each Sunday in solemn procession to one of these churches, where he celebrated the Eucharist surrounded by all his clergy. Gradually, each church was placed under the jurisdiction of a priest, which then made large sees possible. As the Church spread into the countryside, the bishop no longer presided solely over an urban church but gained responsibility for a wide geographical territory.
Church Finance
Beginning with Constantine, churches were often endowed by having the income from particular properties assigned to their use, income that was sometimes confiscated from pagan temples. Bishops essentially controlled that wealth, and gradually the clergy came to be paid regular salaries. The accumulation of property was considered yet another result of the Fall, something that God allowed so that the rich could help the needy.
The Jewish custom of tithing—giving a tenth of one’s income to the Temple—was not generally practiced by Christians. Bishops reminded their flocks that all money given to the Church had to be voluntary. (Chrysostom uttered a modern-sounding complaint in one of his sermons, expressing exasperation that, as often as he reminded his hearers of the need to increase their donations, it did no good.)
The episcopal office now became desirable in worldly terms, something that had not been true under persecution, giving rise to complaints about luxury-loving prelates who flaunted their wealth and power. In the later fourth century, George of Cappadocia (d. 361), patriarch of Alexandria, who had been a dishonest merchant before being elected bishop, was murdered after he systematically exploited the episcopal office for financial gain.
Social Classes
Converts came from all social classes (there was even a professional wrestler called “The Creeper”), and care was taken to distinguish between social classes on earth, which were legitimate, and the Kingdom of Heaven, where they did not exist. Without condemning wealth or social status, the Church was egalitarian: in the Kingdom relationships between rich and poor were almost inverted, as saintly beggars could be superior to princes, and slaves might be more exalted than their masters. One bishop forbade his deacons to make room for aristocratic latecomers to the Eucharist but commanded them to find seats for the poor.
Marriage and Celibacy
There was no Christian nuptial ceremony in the early centuries, so that in some ways marriage remained a matter of civil law, although by 400, couples who had been married according to civil law would subsequently go before a priest for a blessing. The essence of marriage was consent, something that in effect made the formal act of betrothal already a marriage.
The importance of renunciation was upheld even at the cost of sacrificing lesser goods like marriage. Orthodox Christianity looked on marriage very favorably, but the Church judged that severe asceticism (a term derived from the training undergone by athletes) was also necessary, in order to overcome the hedonism of the pagan society.
Based on the example of Jesus and the words of Paul, the Church valued virginity more highly than marriage, while rejecting the Gnostic error of condemning human sexuality altogether. Virgins were a recognized category of Christians, and they had great prestige for having foregone marriage for the sake of the Kingdom. Jesus’ exhortation to His followers to leave their families in order to follow Him was taken quite seriously—it was believed that the Apostles had done precisely that, leaving their wives and children to be cared for by their extended families. (Thus the Gospel mentions Peter’s mother-in-law but not his wife.)
The procreation of children was considered the principal purpose of marriage, along with the Pauline concession of marriage as a remedy for lust (some theologians even held that sexual intercourse was at least a venial sin even for married couples, because it surrendered to lust). Widows were discouraged from remarrying, on the grounds that—past the childbearing age—they were motivated by the desire for sexual pleasure.
Clerical Celibacy
Cultus among the Romans designated the duties and rituals centered on the worship of a particular god, and Christians adapted cultic elements of worship from both the Romans and the Jews, including the idea of the priest as someone set aside to officiate at the rituals. There was a Jewish tradition that only a celibate (the Latin word for the “unmarried”) could mediate between God and man, so that Jewish priests separated from their wives during the times when they were exercising their office. Although St. Paul extolled celibacy, most clergy in the early centuries were probably married. But virginity, which was considered total dedication of the individual to God, gave unmarried women a prestige that often exceeded that of priests, making it seem appropriate that priests too should be celibates.
Clerical Celibacy
Quite early, neither priests nor deacons were permitted to marry after ordination and may have been required to abstain from sexual relations with their wives. (Gregory Nazianzen succeeded his father as a bishop, but the younger Gregory may have been born before his father was ordained.) In the East, the requirement of perpetual marital continence was in time limited to bishops, who were eventually prohibited from marrying at all. Priests and deacons could still not marry after ordination and were required to be continent on days when they celebrated the Eucharist. (As with other moral imperatives, the law of celibacy was often violated, and contending factions in the Church accused each other of licentiousness.)
A monk named Jovinianus (d. 405) was condemned by the Church in both Rome and Milan for arguing against celibacy, fasting, and other kinds of asceticism. He provoked a characteristically fierce polemic from St. Jerome (d. 420),1 who as a priest at Rome had served as secretary to a pope. But Jerome harmed his argument by appearing to condemn marriage altogether, and this and other instances of his extreme asceticism caused him to leave Rome to become a hermit in Bethlehem.
Women in the Church
Following Jewish custom, men and women were probably separated in orthodox Christian assemblies, and the only evidence that women may have exercised priestly responsibilities in the early Church are the occasional denunciations of Gnostic practice. A few tomb inscriptions commemorate a presbytera or an episkopa—feminine forms of the words for “priest” and “bishop”—but they probably honored the wives of male clergy, who were sometimes given titles indicating their husbands’ ranks.
Church Buildings
Constantine turned over some pagan temples to be used as churches and at his own expense built great new churches at Rome and Jerusalem, a large one at Rome that came to be dedicated to St. John the Baptist and was the official seat of the pope. (The nameLateran derived from the family that had once owned the site.) In Constantinople, he built two major churches dedicated to Christ—the Hagia Eirene (“Holy Peace”) and the Hagia Sophia (“Holy Wisdom”), the second of which, rebuilt by Justinian, still survives as a museum.
Sometimes, with obvious symbolic intent, Christian houses of worship were constructed over old temples, such as San Clemente in Rome, which was built over a temple of the Persian god Mithra, and another Roman church called Santa Maria Sopra Minerva (“St. Mary above Minerva”). The great circular temple of the Pantheon became Santa Maria Rotonda (“round”). Like human converts, churches—both new and adapted—were solemnly anointed with oil as part of their consecration to God.
The pagan temples were primarily houses of the gods, not places of worship, so that the Christians, instead of adapting the temple style to their own use, most commonly used the style of the basilica (from the Greek word for “ruler”)—halls where public business was transacted. Basilicas were symmetrical, oblong buildings with shallow peaked roofs, supported in the interior by double rows of columns. As churches, they were often elaborately decorated, usually with mosaics, especially of Christ reigning from on high in glory, presiding over the “business” of His people. In Roman basilicas, the official chair (cathedra) of the magistrate was placed at one end, in a semi-circular alcove called the apse, where clients approached him to ask for justice or mercy. Now the altar was placed in the apse, with the bishop’s cathedra behind it. (Among the titles adopted by the bishop of Rome was “Supreme Pontiff”, a name taken directly from the pagan Roman priesthood. Pontiffs were literally “bridge-builders”, although the exact meaning of the title is uncertain.)
Churches often had separate baptistries, partly for privacy, because adult converts had to remove their clothes and descend naked into the pool before presenting themselves to the assembly in the white robes of purity. Baptistries and pools were often octagonal, since the risen Christ was Himself called the eighth day of Creation.
It was considered appropriate that every kind of riches be devoted to the worship of Christ, who had triumphed and who ruled over the universe. Chalices, candlesticks, and other liturgical vessels were fashioned of gold and precious gems, as was the cross itself, even though it had been a shameful instrument of death. Churches often had elaborate mosaic floors, their walls hung with rich tapestries. As the Eucharist came to be celebrated in permanent houses of worship, the communion table was replaced by a marble altar that was appropriate to the offering of sacrifice, an altar that also symbolized the sacrificial victim, Christ Himself, so that the priest kissed the altar during the Eucharist.
The Liturgy
The official worship of the Church came to be called the liturgy, the Greco-Roman name for a donation made to a temple to subsidize the official rites. The Christian liturgy was a coming together of the “horizontal” synagogue and the “vertical” Temple—both instruction and community and the expectation of the heavenly Kingdom. The Church’s new freedom led to the increasingly solemn and elaborate celebrations—as always, more so in the East than in the West.
Entrance Rite
Liturgies began with processions in which all ranks of the clergy participated, accompanied by singing or chanting, and over time, some of those chants and litanies, such as the Kyrie (“Lord, have mercy”), were incorporated into the liturgy itself. Incense, which in ancient times was a sign of honor to important people, was used both to honor God and to symbolize prayers rising to Heaven, just as the incensing of the faithful by a deacon symbolized God’s blessing descending on them. Candles were used not merely for material light but as symbols of the Light of Christ brought into the world. The ceremonial kiss, or greeting of peace, was a pagan custom that was enacted in the Christian liturgy when the procession reached the sanctuary, where the clergy greeted one another and kissed the altar and the Gospel book. The laying on of hands was the ancient symbol of blessing and continued to be used in the rite of ordination. However, the sign of the cross gradually replaced it as the distinctive Christian form of blessing.
Prayers
“In the name of the Father. . .” was an ancient Christian blessing that became the formal preliminary to all public prayers. The Latin word oratio, which was a formal address to the gods, to public officials, or to the citizens, was now used to mean a liturgical prayer that followed a stereotyped rhetorical form—a set formula of praise, followed by a succinct summary of the petitioners’ needs, concluding with a dignified request to be heard in the name of Jesus. The song of the angels on Christmas was originally a part of Morning Prayer but also came to be chanted in processions and was in time expanded into the Gloria, the ultimate hymn of praise, an exuberant acknowledgment that the worship of God is the most fundamental human duty.
Readings
As in the synagogue, psalms were sung before each of the three scriptural readings, which consisted of one from the Old Testament, the second usually from Paul, the third from one of the Gospels. At one time, the readings each Sunday began at the point where they had ended the previous week, so that the entire Scripture would eventually be read. But gradually, particular passages came to be assigned for particular days. Because the Gospel was the Word of Christ Himself, its proclamation was accompanied by particularly solemn ceremonies: the presentation of the book by the deacon to the celebrant, the celebrant’s blessing of the deacon, the procession to the place of proclamation, the incensing of the book, the kissing of the book by the deacon, and the solemn reminder, “This is the Gospel of the Lord.” Priests eventually took over the primary responsibility for preaching, although deacons continued to have that authority.
Ad Orientem
Ordinarily, the celebrant did not face the congregation. Instead, both he and the congregation faced eastward, toward the rising sun, the symbol of the Resurrection and the Second Coming of Christ. (The dead too were often buried facing east, in preparation for their own resurrection.) Kneeling, which was often the posture of adoration in the Old Testament, was introduced at certain points in the liturgy, although standing probably remained the ordinary posture of the faithful. Liturgical dancing was found only in heretical sects and was explicitly disapproved by Ambrose, Augustine, and others.
Offertory
The priest washed his hands at the Offertory not only because they were soiled by the gifts he handled but because the ritual washing of the hands was an ancient preparation for prayer. The Sanctus—“Holy, holy, holy”, from the words of Isaiah (Is 6:3)—was also an early part of the liturgy, recognizing that it was celebrated in union with the heavenly hosts.
Bread
Although Jesus had used unleavened bread at the Last Supper, as required for the Passover, both leavened and unleavened bread were used in the Eucharist in the early centuries. Leavened bread—brought by the laity from home—was sometimes baked into symbolic shapes like crowns or wreaths and stamped with sacred symbols. Leavened bread gave off crumbs, which priests and people were commanded to treat with the utmost reverence.
Consecration
From the beginning, the priest’s recitation of the words of Jesus—“This is my body . . . this is my blood” (Mt 26:26, 28; Mk 14:22, 24; Lk 22:19, 20)—was the crucial moment of the Eucharist. In the earliest Eucharists, the complete account of the Last Supper was read, at the conclusion of which the transformed bread and wine were shown to the people as the Body and Blood of Christ. In the East, an epiklesis, in which the priest called upon the Holy Spirit to bring about this transformation, was considered essential to the sacrifice, but in the West, this was not a particular prayer but a general petition that the offering be found worthy.
Communion
As congregations grew in size, it may have been customary for the laity to remain in their places as deacons brought Communion to them. Eventually, the laity began to approach the altar, although not too near—altar rails were introduced as early as the fourth century. Communion was probably received in cupped, newly washed hands, with the left hand made into a “throne” for the right hand that received the sacred host with the priest’s solemn announcement, “The Body of Christ”.
Dismissal
An element of imperial court ceremonial was incorporated into the liturgy in the command, “Ite missa est” (roughly, “go, you are sent”), the traditional words dismissing people from attendance at court. From this, by the year 400, the Eucharist in most Western countries was called by some variation of missa.
Vestments
For the first few centuries, the celebrant probably did not wear distinctive vestments, and when he began to do so they were seen as St. Paul’s “armor of God”, which the priest put on in order to signify that he was not acting in a purely human capacity. They were based on ordinary Roman garments: the alb (“white”), which was the basic male robe; the cincture (“binding”), which was the belt that held the alb closed and signified the wearer’s readiness to face the world; the amice, which was a kind of hood; the maniple, which was a towel either carried or tied to the wrist and used to purify the sacred vessels; and the chasuble (“little house”), which was the cloak that covered all the rest. In particular, the scarf called the stole became the essential priestly garment, to be worn for all celebrations of the divine mysteries.
The deacon wore a coat called a dalmatic, with his stole over one shoulder, both so arranged as to keep his right arm free for the various tasks he performed during the liturgy. Beginning in the fourth century, bishops carried shepherd’s staffs or crooks as symbols of their office.
Baptism
Baptism could be administered by pouring as well as by immersion. The ceremony obviously signified washing, but immersion also symbolized death and resurrection—the convert descended into the depths, then rose out of them. The power of baptism to remit sins was so great that rigorists held that sins committed after baptism were possibly unforgivable, and this motivated some people—Constantine but also future saints such as Basil, Gregory Nazianzen, Ambrose, Augustine, and Chrysostom—to delay receiving it. On the other hand, the formulation of the doctrine of Original Sin in the later fourth century made baptism, especially of infants, imperative, lest the person die unshriven and damned. (Prior to Constantine, infant baptism also protected against infanticide, by making the child a member of the family, formally accepted by his father.)
Divine Office
The continuity between Judaism and Christianity was manifest in the incorporation of the Psalms—understood as referring in various ways to Christ—at the heart of Christian prayer, especially in the daily prayers that came to be called the Liturgy of the Hours or the Divine Office (“duty”). The Psalms were often chanted, and, as in the Old Testament, singing was considered an especially appropriate way of worshipping, so that various hymns were also composed and introduced into worship. As bishop of Milan, Ambrose was in a sense the founder of Christian hymnology. Musical instruments were sometimes used in pagan worship to ward off demons, so that at first they were forbidden in Christian rites. But they were gradually accepted, to the point where Augustine wrote a treatise on the theological significance of music in which he made the famous remark that “He who sings, prays twice.”
The major bishoprics—Rome, Antioch, Alexandria, Carthage—possessed liturgical authority that was followed by less prestigious sees. Greek, Latin, and Syro-Aramaic were the important liturgical languages, but various regional Rites developed, such as the Gallic, the Coptic in Egypt, the Chaldean in Mesopotamia, the Mozarabic in Spain, and the Syro-Malabar in India.
Liturgical Languages
The Church at Rome remained predominantly Greek into the third century, when Latin was adopted because it was the spoken language of the people, leaving the Kyrie as the last remnant of the old Greek liturgy. In contrast to some other Rites, Rome’s liturgy was characterized by a kind of sober restraint, seldom employing poetry or imaginative imagery and reciting the prayers in a kind of monotone that eschewed dramatic effect.
Confession
Public confession was increasingly common, and grave sins required heavy penances, such as fasting, wearing rough garments, not bathing or shaving, and abstaining from marital relations. Some theologians thought that the gravest sins—murder, apostasy, adultery, abortion—could be forgiven only once in a lifetime. The period of probation after confession was long (a quarter of a century in extreme cases), during which the individual was excommunicated (“out of communion”), until finally readmitted in a special ritual that might be implemented in stages over several years: first standing outside the church during the Eucharist, then remaining in the vestibule, finally rejoining the worshipping community but still excluded from the sacrament. Penance was often accompanied by dramatic expressions of remorse, some of it spontaneous—spiritual teachers urged penitents to weep real tears—some of it ritualized.
Weddings
The first Christian wedding liturgies made their appearance during the fourth and fifth centuries, their relative lateness perhaps reflecting the belief that a true marriage was brought about not by the action of the priest but by the mutual vows of the couple.
Patron Saints
The Roman institution of the patron—a kind of father who bestowed favors on his loyal followers—was now applied to the saints, most of whom were invoked for special purposes: the Armenian bishop-martyr Blaise (d. ca. 315) against diseases of the throat, for example; the Roman virgin-martyr Cecilia (d. ca. 300) by musicians; the Italian bishop Erasmus (d. ca. 300), who had been disemboweled, for intestinal disorders. The saints were regarded as friends of God who served as intercessors for sinful mankind, images of Christ who served as new models of sanctity after the age of the martyrs had ended. Unsophisticated people might unwittingly treat the saints like a pantheon of pagan gods, each with a specific identity and power, but the learned also embraced their cults with the correct attitude.
Pilgrimage
The new freedom that the Church enjoyed in the fourth century made possible the practice that would be the summit of popular piety for many centuries—the pilgrimage. The sites of the martyrs’ graves were carefully remembered, and with the end of persecution, increasingly elaborate shrines were built over them, establishing a close connection between the martyrs and the local community, with a special emphasis on the saint’s healing powers. The pilgrimage meant coming into contact with the holy person’s relics and asking for special blessings.
Originally, all Christians were seen as pilgrims, perpetual wanderers who were not at home in the world. The new pilgrimage (Helena’s quest of the true Cross was an early example) was not a formality. It was very long (several years) and fraught with dangers of various kinds, including bandits and diseases, so that pilgrims often died on the way, something that was considered a kind of blessing, because the pilgrimage was a symbol of the soul’s journey toward Paradise and a pilgrim who died on route was practically assured of Heaven.
The chief pilgrimage places in the early centuries were Jerusalem and Rome, the latter in order to visit the tombs of Peter and Paul. Although the new city of Constantinople claimed to have received the faith from St. Andrew the Apostle, Peter’s brother, it had no martyrs, hence no relics, which required its bishops to make strenuous efforts to obtain some.
Church and Culture
Besides the political problems created by the sudden conversion of the Empire, there were even more profound cultural issues, in that Christians lived in the shadow of the very rich and ancient Hellenistic civilization that had achieved great things in every area of life—philosophy, poetry, art, science. Just as the hostile Empire provided the political and physical framework within which the Church could spread, the seemingly alien Hellenistic civilization provided the cultural framework. With their triumph, Christians in effect became the custodians of that civilization. Difficult though it would have been to achieve, they might have tried to destroy Hellenistic civilization as irredeemably pagan, and, had they done so, the later history of the world would have been unimaginably different.
Art
Christian art developed beyond the simple copying of familiar images. Jesus was no longer portrayed as a youth but in a much more vigorous and commanding way, with the dark hair and beard that were an accurate representation of a Jew of the first century. Despite warnings about the dangers of idolatry, Christians began to make religious statues and other sculpted figures. The symbol of the cross had been used sparingly in the early centuries and was almost always shown empty, to announce Christ’s triumph over death. The devotion was greatly stimulated by Helena’s discovery in the Holy Land, and crosses with the image of the suffering Jesus became increasingly common. Certain images could be recognized as depicting saints because the subjects had around their heads the luminous circle called the nimbus (“cloud”) or the halo (a circular platter).
Literature
If in a sense pagan philosophies like Stoicism were neutral, pagan art and literature were not, because they were often based on the myths of the gods and they distracted people from the Gospel. St. Augustine lamented that he had shed more tears over Virgil’sAeneid than over his own sins, and, conversely, Julian forbade Christians to teach literature, because of its link to the old gods. The myths, though, could be ridiculed as fictions embodying absurd stories of all-too-human gods—a fact that could be seen as lessening their value, but that also lessened their danger. After some uncertainty, most educated Christians concluded that Christians could read poetry for its beauty and wisdom without compromising their faith. There developed also a substantial body of Christian poetry and hymnody.
Architecture
The early Church sanctified space. The church building was the place where the heavens opened and were glimpsed by man, a sense that was even stronger in the East than in the West. (Chrysostom taught that “fear and shuddering” were the appropriate emotions during worship.) The building was centered, as the Temple had been, on the marble altar of sacrifice, which now signified Christ, often surmounted by an imposing canopy and surrounded by paintings on the walls. Burial took place both in the underground catacombs and in cemeteries. Since Christians had to be buried in consecrated ground, cemeteries were usually next to churches, plots of land from which the unbaptized, the excommunicated, and suicides were excluded.
The Calendar
The Church also sanctified time, adapting the Roman calendar but abolishing all civil holidays, which to the Romans were also religious feasts. The entire calendar now became a cycle of feasts: beginning originally only the Sabbath, with later the addition of a few of the major feasts of Jesus, then commemorations of the martyrs, and finally feasts assigned to other saints as well. (The Church commemorated martyrs on the days of their deaths, which were considered to be the days of their births into Heaven.)
But despite some efforts to change their names, the Roman religion survived permanently in the West in the months of the year named after the gods Janus, Mars, Maia, and Juno; the feast of purification (Februarius); and Julius Caesar and Caesar Augustus; and in the days of the week dedicated to the sun, the moon, and the god Saturn, followed by the numbering of the seventh through tenth months.
Advent
The pre-Christmas season of Advent (“coming”) was observed in Gaul as early as the fourth century, with the gathering darkness of December appropriately conveying the darkness of the world before the coming of the Savior. The feast of the Nativity of the Lord (later called “Christ’s Mass” in England) coincided closely with the winter solstice (December 21) and the pagan feast of Sol Invictus.
Christmas
Whether or not the Christian feast was celebrated at that time for that reason, it was regarded as highly appropriate to displace Sol Invictus and to welcome Christ, the Light of the world, at the beginning of winter. Converts were told that in honoring the sun they had unwittingly been honoring their Savior.
Epiphany
In the East, the feast of the Epiphany (January 6)—the first manifestation of Jesus to the Gentiles—was equally as important as Christmas and was eventually introduced into the West.
Annunciation
If Jesus was born on December 25, He had to have been conceived on March 25, which in time became the feast of the Annunciation, the day of the Incarnation. Because the day on which Christ came into the world began the new dispensation, March 25 was officially observed as the start of the new year, although local customs varied in this regard.
Lent
The season of Lent (in northern Europe named after a pagan feast of returning spring) was first observed in the fourth century, its discipline permitting but one meal a day and no wine or meat at all. The church at Jerusalem began the customs of the Palm Sunday procession and the Good Friday veneration of the cross, both of which spread to the West.
Easter
The feast of Christ’s Resurrection (later called “Easter” in the North, after a pagan feast) was, except for the Sabbath, the first Christian feast to be celebrated, earlier than the Nativity. The Easter Vigil was a ritual watch at Jesus’ tomb, beginning in darkness, then relighting the lamps and recapitulating the history of salvation through lengthy Scripture readings. In the early centuries, there were sharp disputes over Easter’s date, with some local churches using the spring equinox as their guide and others the Jewish Passover; either way it coincided with the earth’s coming to life after the dead time of winter.
Popular Piety
Christmas, Easter, and other feasts continued to have pagan undertones, in accordance with the Church’s decision to adapt pagan civilization rather than to suppress it. The summer solstice—the day on which the sun reached its zenith (June 21)—eventually became the feast of St. John the Baptist, because he had said of Jesus, “He must increase, but I must decrease” (Jn 3:30). To a degree, the pagan feasts survived underground, along with their familiar customs, such as the abundance of lights at the two solstices.
This strategy was not without its perils. Over the centuries, pagan and Christian elements often mingled indiscriminately in popular piety, so that unsophisticated people might fail to understand their true Christian meaning. But in the early centuries, the Church approached pagan civilization almost as though it were an estate sale—the soul had gone out of it, so that the newcomers were free to take from it whatever things they found useful and to incorporate them into an entirely different network of belief. The Church was confident that she could absorb pagan civilization rather than be absorbed by it.
Monasticism
When the Church emerged from persecution to become a favored institution, and believers no longer risked suffering and death, the standards of membership were inevitably lowered, which for some Christians meant that a more demanding faith was now required.
Desert Hermits
There were pagan hermits, but Greco-Roman civilization had little respect for them, because men were supposed to live primarily as citizens. (The Greek word idiot meant someone who shirked the duties of public life.) Similarly, the Qumran community that separated itself from the world in a radical way was a dramatic departure from Jewish tradition.
Around the year 270, in the Egyptian desert, a man named Paul became the first known Christian hermit, and in the next century, St. Anthony of the Desert (d. 356) became the model Christian monk (from the Greek monos, meaning “one”), living first in a hut on the edge of a village, then gradually moving farther and farther away.
The Hermit’s Life
As Jesus Himself had done in the desert, the monk in his solitude tested himself against devils, who possessed the power both to assault and torment him physically and to subject him to every kind of temptation. Anthony devoted himself to prayer, fasting, and all-night vigils, to conquer not only the demands of the body but also the subtler temptations of the soul as well, to offer himself to God in a continuous, lifelong martyrdom. He first experienced a prolonged sense of abandonment in his retreat but finally received a vision of Christ, an alternation of dryness and illumination that became characteristic of much of later Catholic spirituality. After achieving peace, Anthony began to give spiritual counsel to others and even went to Alexandria to oppose heresy, dying there at age 105.
Flight from the World
At first, monasticism was not considered a special way of life but merely the renunciation of the world that all Christians were called upon to make. But as it did become a distinctive way of life, the terms monk, hermit, anchorite (originally someone who fled in order to avoid paying taxes), and cenobite (from the word for “cell”) were used interchangeably. Most monks were male, but there were some women. They did not live in literal deserts but in marginal places—abandoned forts, even old tombs—where they had access to minimal food and water. Famously, St. Simeon Stylites (d. 459) lived for thirty-seven years on top of a pillar (stylos) in Syria, receiving life’s necessities by letting down a basket on a long rope.
Monks had a number of motives for fleeing the world: imitation of Jesus’ own forty days in the desert; the most extreme kind of ascetical self-discipline, with no regular shelter or supply of food; a life devoted entirely to prayer. Ultimately, the monk, alone in the desert, had to confront his own soul and in the process to confront Satan, as Jesus had confronted him. Monks were revered as men of great spiritual power, able to effect cures and, having wrestled with Satan and overcome him, able to protect others from his onslaughts. They were thought to possess extraordinary powers of exorcism. Monasticism spread rapidly, so that around the year 400 there were said to be seven thousand monks in the Near East.
Monks as Martyrs
Monasticism was considered a continuation of the tradition of martyrdom, the reaffirmation of the contradiction between Church and world, making the significance of the monks’ lives both negative and positive—fleeing from the corruption of civilization in order to seek a greater treasure. (Some monks, however, manifested attitudes of misogyny and a hatred of marriage that bordered on the Gnostic condemnation of the flesh.)
A Higher Charity
While the desert monks had seemingly turned their backs on the human race, they justified themselves by what they regarded as the highest kind of charity—praying for their fellow men and serving as living reminders that Christians have no lasting city Love of God and neighbor were not considered separate obligations. Because of sin, neither could be achieved except through divine grace, which a life of self-denial helped make possible.
Ambrose distinguished two acceptable ways of living the Christian life—the monastic calling and an ordinary life of virtue in the world, including especially fasting and almsgiving, that was sufficient for salvation. But the monastic writers tended to allow no such distinction and often implied that their manner of life was the only authentic one, to which every Christian must sooner or later come. While recognizing that few people would actually choose their lifestyle, they taught that the renunciation of all worldly satisfactions was the only road to Heaven, albeit it might be achieved in stages.
Abbots
Those considered the wisest and holiest were called Desert Fathers or Mothers. The abbot or abbess (from the Aramaic word abba—“loving father”—by which Jesus addressed His own Father) was the novice monk’s experienced guide. They left a body of writings that were avidly read by others, so that the monk’s life served as a kind of benchmark by which Christians in the world measured the degree of their own discipleship of Christ.
Disorders
There were, however, problems with the culture of the desert monks. Some were former criminals or had otherwise led wicked lives, and they retained certain rough, even violent, edges. Having rejected the world, monks were held in some suspicion by the authorities of both church and state, who saw them almost as anarchists but who could not ignore their great spiritual authority.
The paradox of monasticism manifested itself quite early, in that, as they became famous for their holiness, monks like Simeon Stylites attracted crowds of people to hear their teachings, to be healed, or to settle disputes. Sometimes monks left the desert and returned to the cities, where they acted like Old Testament prophets, castigating the people for their sins, taking sides in theological disputes, even participating in riots.
The monastic life was a charism, a lay vocation that was sometimes in tension with the sacramental Church. Monks were dependent for the sacraments on nearby village priests and sometimes went for years without partaking of the Eucharist. Some allowed their ascetical practices to degenerate into a kind of athletic competition over who could fast the longest or sleep on the hardest ground, adopting practices that seemed both ostentatious and pointlessly difficult. Some were driven insane by the solitary life.
Pachomius
The Egyptian monk Pachomius (d. 346) was the first to gather male hermits into communities. Basic to his rule were the two practices that were considered essential to all subsequent monastic life: common prayer at appropriate hours of the day and some kind of labor, following the examples of both Martha and Mary.
Monks were to be cenobites, living near one another in separate cells but sharing prayer and daily tasks in common, eating two meals a day (never meat or cooked food), and fasting completely on Wednesday and Friday. Some of the early monasteries were in effect large towns, and Pachomius placed great emphasis on the necessity of labor and economic self-sufficiency, assigning tasks to monks according to their skills.
Pachomius’ sister Mary drew female hermits into communities, and when Jerome went to Palestine, he was followed by a group of devout noble women whom he had guided in Rome, who formed monastic communities of their own, based partly on Pachomius’Rule, something that to a great extent superseded the traditional category of virgins.
Wandering Holy Men
Although Pachomius and others did much to regularize monastic life, in the East there continued to be a significant number of freewheeling “holy men” who had no official status but were greatly venerated by the people. The extremes of Eastern monasticism were repugnant to the West: Augustine scorned those he called “long-haired frauds” who exploited popular credulity.
Obedience
Crucial to the subsequent development of monasticism, the radical element in Pachomius’ Rule was the obligation of complete obedience to the abbot, who became the superior of the community. Pachomius’ Rule was of almost military strictness, according to which monks were to work out their salvation not by self-chosen practices but by submitting to a regimen, the disciplining of the will that was itself the most meritorious form of asceticism. The more extreme kinds of bodily asceticism were even forbidden or discouraged, as manifestations of self-will.
Thus, paradoxically, the word monk ceased to mean “one” or “alone” and began to designate someone who lived in a community, although hermits never completely disappeared from the Church, especially in the East.
Basil
St. Basil (d. 379) was a monk of Asia Minor—later a bishop—whose Rule became the basis for most Eastern monasticism. He condemned the hermit life as self-centered and extolled small monastic communities in which monks could live as brothers and where the Divine Office and manual work took up virtually the whole day.
As it developed, monasticism in both East and West demonstrated the ability to combine asceticism with engagement in social and cultural activity. Basil preferred that monasteries be near towns, so that the monks could serve the needs of the people and be associated with schools, orphanages, and guesthouses, a custom that would have a profound effect on later civilization.
Gregory Nazianzen
Eastern monasteries also became centers of learning. Gregory Nazianzen called monasticism the “true philosophic life”, because only there did the individual achieve genuine gnosis. Developing an idea of Origen, both Gregory Nazianzen and St. Gregory of Nyssa (Basil’s brother, d. ca. 395) saw the soul’s inner unity with Christ as the purpose of prayer and hence of the monastic life. The soul is made to know God and desires to return to Him, but its way is impeded by sin and the seductiveness of worldly images.
Nazianzen described interior spiritual states but warned that God is found not in such experiences but in transcending all experiences. The ultimate test of authentic spirituality is the love between the soul and God, which overflows into love of mankind.
A New Sanctity
Monasticism broadened the concept of sainthood. Previously, only martyrs were commemorated in the liturgy, and they alone were called saints. But at the end of the fourth century, that title was conferred on the Gallic monk and bishop Martin of Tours (d. 397), a former Roman soldier, who had introduced monasticism into the West before serving as a bishop. Thus began the tradition by which non-martyrs were venerated for their heroic virtue, classified as either confessors or virgins.
Cassian
St. John Cassian (d. ca. 433), after living the monastic life in the East, founded a monastery at Marseilles according to Pachomius’ Rule. Ascetical practices were of no value unless they led to love of God and neighbor, Cassian declared, and he warned against excess—extreme fasting was as bad as gluttony. His Rule, which was followed by all successful later Western monastic enterprises, was moderate and balanced, acknowledging the hermit’s life as the highest monastic vocation but considering it suitable only for a few and only after years of living as a cenobite.
Augustine of Hippo
A few years later, Augustine founded a monastery in North Africa and wrote a rule based not on the desert but on the primitive church, providing that monks should also be priests. As happened to Augustine himself, monks were increasingly elected bishops, because of their reputations for holiness, their celibacy, and other ascetic practices deemed appropriate qualities for the episcopal office. Augustine himself wept at having to leave his monastery, and some monks even fled to avoid election as bishops.