Religious Dissent in Late
Antiquity, 350–450
Kahlos
Maijastina
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‘Heathen,’ they called us. A word we learned from them. If it meant anything, it meant people who don’t know what’s sacred. Are there any such people? ‘Heathen’ is merely a word for somebody who knows a different sacredness than you know.
Ursula K. LeGuin, Voices (London: Orion, 2006), 126
Contents
Acknowledgements xi
Abbreviations xiii
Introduction: Rhetoric and realities 1
Religious dissenters 3
The emperors and the churches 6
Rhetoric and the realities of life 7
The themes of this book 10
SECTION I Imperial and ecclesiastical authority
1. The emperor and the dissenters 17
The rhetoric of public welfare and divine peace 17
Imperial striving for unity 24
2. The realities of legislation 27
Sound and fury 28
Good citizens and infamous dissenters 30
The realities of responsive legislation 33
The local realities of legislation 36
3. The bishops and the dissenters 40
Coping with diversity 41
Coping with the emperor 44
4. The local limits of imperial and ecclesiastical power 50
Patronage and local landowners 51
Laxity or tolerance? 54
5. Authority and aggression 57
The narrative of Christian triumphalism 59
Triumph as legitimation 63
Vigour and violence 67
Initiating aggression 68
Supporting aggression 72
Controlling, punishing, and criticizing aggression 74
Imperial and ecclesiastical authority: Concluding remarks 79
SECTION II People in rhetoric and realities
6. Individuals, groups, and plural possibilities in Late Antiquity 85
Naming, listing, and labelling 88
‘Christians’ and Christian self-perception 90
7. Otherness outside: Making pagans 92
Who were pagans? Stereotypes and realities 94
Flesh-and-blood pagans? 97
The first or last pagans? The self-perception of pagans 100
8. Deviance or otherness inside: Construing heretics 105
The making of heresies—and orthodoxy 106
Making Arians 111
Making Donatists 114
Making Pelagians 116
Heretics and social reality 118
9. Reactions 121
Accommodation: Conversion and conformity 122
Non-violent resistance: Eloquent appeals 124
Non-violent resistance: Silence and self-segregation 127
Confrontations: Verbal and physical violence 131
People in rhetoric and realities: Some conclusions 134
SECTION III Time, place, practices
10. The transformation of practices 139
In search of local religion 140
Sacrifices in Late Antiquity 144
The abhorrence of sacrifice 147
The realities of pollution? 151
Disappearances, continuities, and adaptations 154
11. Economics of practices 158
Competing for resources 159
Competing philanthropic practices 161
Blaming civic philanthropy 165
12. Sacred places and spaces 168
Shared cult places 170
Rhetoric of purification and reality of aesthetization 172
13. Sacred times and spaces 176
Feasts and spectacles 178
Christians and the New Year 180
The reality of popular needs 184
Funerary and martyr cults: Complaints and realities 187
14. Rhetoric and realities of magic 195
Dissenters and magic accusations 197
Roman suspicions and Christian fears 200
From traditional civic rituals to magic 204
From dissent Christianity to magic 206
Your magic, my miracle 207
Time, place, practices: Some conclusions 211
Conclusion: The darkening age or the victory of John Doe? 214
Authority: Attempts to control and define 215
People: Attempts to categorize people 216
Practices: Attempts to control practices 218
Bibliography 221
Index locorum 261
General Index 269
Acknowledgements
Writing the acknowledgements is the most gratifying moment in writing this book. As I have been busy with Religious Dissent in Late Antiquity for several years, there are many colleagues and friends whom I wish to thank for inspiring, guiding, or supporting me through the process.
I wish to acknowledge a debt of gratitude to colleagues in Rome, Perugia, Catania, Granada, Santander, Yale, Oxford, Exeter, St Andrews, Hawarden, Frankfurt, Münster, Göttingen, Aarhus, and Budapest, just to mention a few great scholarly places where I have attended colloquia and conferences over these years and met the authentic res publica litterarum. For their comments, advice, and hospitality, I wish to express my heartfelt thanks to Rita Lizzi, Chiara Tommasi, Michele Salzman, Mar Marcos, Juana Torres, Alessandro Saggioro, Hartmut Leppin, Richard Flower, Morwenna Ludlow, Douglas Boin, Lucy Grig, Noel Lenski, Jan Willem Drijvers, Kate Cooper, Johannes Hahn, Jan Stenger, Anders-Christian Jacobsen, Tobias Georges, Averil Cameron, Neil McLynn, and Marianne Sághy (for even though my thanks may no longer reach her, she will always be in my warmest thoughts).
I am grateful to the entire team at Oxford University Press, especially Stefan Vranka for his patience during the process. I owe special thanks for Ralph Mathisen for taking my book into the Oxford Studies in Late Antiquity series and the anonymous reviewers who meticulously commented on my manuscript, made constructive suggestions, and saved me from many errors. I wish to thank Albion M. Butters for conscientiously and patiently revising my English.
I have had the wonderful opportunity to enjoy academic freedom as a research fellow, both at the Helsinki Collegium for Advanced Studies and the Centre of Excellence ‘Reason and Religious Recognition’, University of Helsinki. Both places have been inspiring, multidisciplinary sites of research and great sources of brainstorming for a classicist and ancient historian, who was encouraged to start thinking outside her frames of Antiquity. I am grateful for Sami Pihlström and
Acknowledgements
Sari Kivistö for steady steering at the Collegium, and Risto Saarinen and Virpi Mäkinen for real recognition at the Centre of Excellence. My thanks are also due to the Ancient Team at the Centre, the leaders of the team, Ismo Dunderberg and Outi Lehtipuu, and the team members, Vilja Alanko, Raimo Hakola, Niko Huttunen, Ivan Miroshnikov, Marika Rauhala, Joona Salminen, Ulla Tervahauta, Siiri Toiviainen, Anna-Liisa Rafael, Miira Tuominen, and Sami Ylikarjanmaa, for their advice over these years. My warmest thanks also go to other members at the Centre—to name just a few of them, Hanne Appelqvist, Sara Gehlin, Heikki Haara, Heikki J. Koskinen, Ritva Palmén, Mikko Posti, and Panu-Matti Pöykkö— for cooperation in the serious sense and community full of laughter, coffee, spinning, and boxing.
I wish to thank my university colleagues Juliette Day, Alexandra Grigorieva, Marja-Leena Hänninen, Mari Isoaho, Tua Korhonen, Mia Korpiola, Antti Lampinen, Ilkka Lindstedt, Petri Luomanen, Nina Nikki, Katja Ritari, and Ville Vuolanto for their collaboration and inspiration. And what would a human be without her dear friends? Thanks for sharing and supporting, Johanna, Helena, Katja, Marja-Leena, Mia, Ritva, Pia, Tuula, and Ulla! This book was in the making for quite a while. This led my spouse, Jarkko Tontti, unfaltering in his encouragement, to make remarks in a manner similar to those which Dorothea uttered to Casaubon in George Eliot’s Middlemarch:
‘And all your notes’, said Dorothea . . . ‘All the rows of volumes—will you not now do what you used to speak of?—will you not make up your mind what part of them you will use, and begin to write the book which will make your vast knowledge useful to the world? . . .’ (George Eliot, Middlemarch, Edinburgh: Blackwood, 1895, p. 147)
Jarkko comforted me that this will be my last book on the last pagans. Well, perhaps not, but it may be time to ‘take it as an opportunity’ and do something else for a change.
Abbreviations
Abbreviations of the most well-known authors follow the conventions of Thesaurus Linguae Latinae and Liddell and Scott, Greek–English Lexicon.
ACO Acta conciliorum oecumenicorum, ed. E. Schwartz. Berlin 1959
AntTard Antiquité tardive
BMCR Bryn Mawr Classical Review
CAH The Cambridge Ancient History
CCSL Corpus Christianorum Series Latina. Turnhout 1954–
CIL Corpus inscriptionum Latinarum. Berlin 1862–
CP Classical Philology
CSEL Corpus scriptorum ecclesiasticorum Latinorum
CTh Codex Theodosianus
CIust Codex Iustinianus
FIRA Fontes Iuris Romani antejustiniani II, ed. J. Baviera & J. Furlani. Firenze 1968
IGLS Inscriptions grecques et latines de Syrie
ILCV Inscriptiones Latinae Christianae veteres. Berlin 1924–1967
ILS Inscriptiones Latinae selectae, ed. H. Dessau. 1892–1916
HThR Harvard Theological Review
JbAC Jahrbuch für Antike und Christentum
JECS Journal of Early Christian Studies
JRS Journal of Roman Studies
JThS Journal of Theological Studies
LCL Loeb Classical Library. Cambridge MA 1912–
MAMA Monumenta Asiae Minoris Antiqua. Manchester 1928–1988, London 1993
xiv Abbreviations
MGH AA
Monumenta Germaniae historica, scriptores antiquissimi
MGH Cap. reg. Franc. Monumenta Germaniae historica, Capitularia regum
Francorum
MGH Leg. Monumenta Germaniae historica, Leges
MGH SS rer. Merov. Monumenta Germaniae historica, Scriptores rerum
NPNF
PG
PL
RAC
RAL
Merovingicarum
Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers
Patrologia Graeca, ed. J.–P. Migne. Paris 1857–1866
Patrologia Latina, ed. J.-P. Migne. Paris 1844–1855
Reallexikon für Antike und Christentum
Rendiconti della classe di scienze morali, storiche e filologiche dell’Accademia dei Lincei
SC Sources Chrétiennes. Paris: Cerf, 1943–
Sirm. Constitutiones Sirmondianae
VC
Vigiliae Christianae
Introduction: Rhetoric and realities
In her recently published The Darkening Age: The Christian Destruction of the Classical World, Catherine Nixey shares a story of the allembracing, ancient world that triumphant Christianity destroyed.1 Nixey’s book is, of course, a non-fiction book aimed at a wider readership, not the academic work of a specialist written for other specialists. Such a straightforward narrative is probably sexier for the media and promises to get more online clicks than a research report filled with unresolved questions and reservations.
In the research of the religious history of the late Roman world, however, we must exercise extreme caution in the construction of such ostentatious narratives. For this reason, Religious Dissent in Late Antiquity is not meant as a grand narrative. Instead, the book challenges those biased accounts that build on simplistic assessments of the categories of ‘paganism’ and ‘Christianity’.
The focus of this book is on the religious dissident groups in the late Roman Empire in the period from the mid-fourth century until the mid-fifth century CE. I am not claiming that this is a pleasant story. By analysing religious dissent in Late Antiquity, I wish to demonstrate that the narrative is much more nuanced than the simple Christian triumph over the classical world. My interpretation is not sexy and sensational. Instead, it looks at everyday life, economic aspects, dayto-day practices, and conflicts of interest.
There are, and there have been, many straightforward melodramatic narratives over the centuries, both in academic research2 and in popular non-fiction works. One of these has been the long-standing debate on the last phases of Roman paganism. According to the traditional view, explicated especially by Andreas Alföldi and Herbert Bloch after World War II, pagan aristocrats were united as a heroic and cultured resistance against the advance of Christianity, and they even rose up in the final battle near the Frigidus in 394. The notion of the last pagan stand was promoted by Alföldi, Bloch, and others especially during and after the war, in a Zeitgeist in which it was perhaps characteristic to construe Christianpagan relations in terms of dichotomy and conflict.
1. E.g., Nixey 2017, 247: ‘The “triumph” of Christianity was complete.’ Nixey repeats the oft-told story of Christian triumph since Edward Gibbon, and before Gibbon, of the Christian church historians.
2. Athanassiadi 2006 and Athanassiadi 2010, 14 interpret the intellectual and spiritual development of Late Antiquity as the change from the ‘zenith of acceptance’ (polydoxie) to the trend towards one-sided thought (monodoxie); for criticism see Papaconstantinou 2011.
Religious Dissent in Late Antiquity, 350–450. Maijastina Kahlos. Oxford University Press (2020).
© Oxford University Press.
DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780190067250.001.0001
Later generations have outlined the world of Late Antiquity in more nuanced ways than the interpretations put forward immediately during and after World War II. The traditional interpretation of conflict has been challenged since the 1960s by Alan Cameron, among others.3 The ‘new radical’ view refutes the idea of the last pagan resistance as a romantic myth and contends that there was neither a pagan reaction in a military sense nor a pagan revival in a cultural sense. The fact that there are now more abundant and multifarious sources available for late antique studies than ever before has also led to further reinterpretations of the religious changes of Late Antiquity (the so-called Christianization) of the late Roman world.
However, the traditional view of conflict tends to live on in modern scholarship. It pops up in different forms, especially in non-specialist books, such as Nixey’s The Darkening Age. Why does the dichotomous and conflictual image of the pagan reaction continue to attract scholars (not to mention the general audience)? It seems that the melodrama of a last resistance with discernible heroes is both dramatic and simple enough to captivate more attention than the mundane, everyday nuances of economic and social issues.4 In Christian literary sources, the more committed or rigorist writers made a lot of noise, and it is this noise that has influenced the tendency to see the religious history of Late Antiquity primarily in antagonistic terms. The problems with these melodramatic grand narratives—either Christian triumphalism (often, but not always, connected with the Christian confessional agenda) or a gloomy decline of classical civilization (often, but not always, connected with a secularist worldview)—is that, in both cases, interpreters fall into the trap of taking the late antique, highly rhetorical sources at face value.
This is why in Religious Dissent in Late Antiquity I address two aspects: rhetoric and realities. Both are necessary for understanding the religious history of the late Roman Empire, particularly the shifting position of dissenting religious groups. In terms of the first, the research focuses on the analysis of discourse used in late antique sources, moving principally in the textual world of the writers. The second aspect involves social and historical research, which surveys the practical circumstances of religious minorities in late Roman society. This approach does not entail an epistemologically naïve distinction between the ‘text world’ and ‘historical reality’. These are not separable. Thus, this research delves into the interplay between the manifest ideologies and daily life found in our sources.
The hundred years under scrutiny, from c. 350 to c. 450 CE, stretch approximately from Constantius II’s reign until the end of Theodosius II’s reign. The time span covers the most crucial years of Christianization after the Constantinian turn and, consequently, the shifts in relative power between religious majorities
3. See also Alan Cameron 2011.
4. For the attraction of melodramas, see Lavan 2011a, lv–lvi.
and minorities. This period witnessed a significant transformation of late Roman society and a gradual shift from the world of polytheistic religions into the Christian Empire.5 However, this shift should not be plotted teleologically. Rather, in the fourth century, a wide variety of religions, cults, sects, beliefs, and practices coexisted and evolved in the Mediterranean world. The coexistence of religious groups led sometimes to violence, but these outbreaks seem to have been relatively infrequent and usually localized.
My purpose in this book is to explore what impact these changes had on the position and life of different religious groups. In the late Roman Empire, constant flux between moderation and coercion marked the relations of religious groups, both majorities and minorities, as well as the imperial government and religious communities. The area under examination is the late Roman Empire, in both the East and West. In my analysis of the status and everyday life of different religious groups, I am not aiming at an exhaustive or systematic treatise on what is clearly a wide-ranging topic. What I propose to provide is a detailed analysis of selected themes and a close reading of selected texts, tracing key elements and developments in the treatment of dissident religious groups. I have concentrated on specific themes, such as the limits of legislation, the end of sacrifices, the label of magic, and the categorization of dissidents into groups.
Religious dissenters
The religious groups under consideration are pagans and heretics. These terms are only shorthand: ‘pagans’ for non-Christians or polytheists; ‘heretics’ for Christians marked as deviants. Furthermore, these terms are relational. Pagans were a creation of Christian writers, of course; there would have been no pagans without the viewpoint of Christians. Likewise, the question of who is a heretic naturally depends on the perceiver.6 I am inclined to call the religious groups under scrutiny religious dissenters or dissidents, as well as deviant groups or religious deviants.
In late Roman society, relations between the religious majorities and minorities fluctuated. Over the course of the fourth century, Christianity shifted from a minority position to the majority one, or at least a strong minority, while the Graeco-Roman religions gradually fell to a minority position, or a silent and weakened majority.7 It is impossible to precisely define the relative proportions
5. The Christian Roman Empire here means the empire governed by Christian emperors, as in many regions it may have remained non-Christian in other aspects.
6. For discussions on the term ‘polytheist’, see Cribiore 2013, 7. The use of the terms ‘pagan’ and ‘heretic’ is covered in more detail in chapters 7 and 8.
7. For the majorities and minorities in Late Antiquity, see Brown 1961; Kaegi 1966, 249; Haehling 1978; Barnes 1989, 308–309; Barnes 1995; MacMullen 2009, 102–103; Alan Cameron 2011, 178–182; and Salzman 2002 on Roman aristocracy; except for Barnes, scholars usually estimate that the majority of the elite remained pagan up to c. 400.
of the religious groups in the Roman Empire. At best, we can make guesstimates. Moreover, the proportions of religious groups varied by area. Therefore, it is problematic to speak of religious minorities, because we cannot specify which groups—for example, pagans or Christians—were in the majority or minority in a specific place at a specific time.
The same applies to the power relations between the Nicene and other Christian groups (e.g., Homoians, or ‘Arians’, as they were called by the Nicene Christians). In certain areas and spheres of politics at specific times, as in the imperial court during the reigns of Constantius II and Valens, the Homoians held the upper hand while the Nicenes (or pro-Nicenes) were at risk of being marginalized as deviants.8 Consequently, for most of the fourth century, the boundaries for the normative orthodoxy were in flux. Thus, what was ‘orthodox’ and what was ‘heretical’ were under continuous negotiation and struggle. Nicene Christianity eventually became the imperially supported church and the mainstream institution as late as the end of the fourth century, calling itself the Catholic Church.9 Nonetheless, in terms of the proportions and power relations that were significant, one cannot overemphasize the regional differences within the Roman Empire.10 What constituted the dominant group in one area did not hold true in another region.
In this book, I examine the ways in which dissident religious groups were construed as religious outsiders in late Roman society. The question of outsiders, or ‘aliens’ (alieni, allotrioi) in relation to ‘our’ religion and society, is a matter of who is outside, but also who is within; accordingly, it requires a formation of a mode of thinking about insiders (nostri, oikeioi).11 Imperial legislation followed the logic that those who were ‘aliens’ or ‘foreigners’ in matters of religion were also aliens or foreigners in the eyes of Roman law.12 Another question is how frequently this judicial infamia was handed down as a penalty and how significantly it influenced dissidents’ everyday lives in practice. Citizenship was only one aspect of social status and practical circumstances.
It is unavoidable that humans divide the world into ‘us’ and ‘them’. Both individuals and groups distinguish themselves from the other and, by construing differences, make sense of themselves. There is no self or collective identity without
8. According to McLynn 2005, 86, in the 380s–390s, the Nicenes did not necessarily enjoy an overall ascendancy; Barnes 1997, 1–16, however, regards Homoians as already defeated by that point. Positions of power are not, of course, the same as the number of adherents.
9. The status of the creed settled in the Council of Nicaea (in 325) came to be recognized only gradually as the divinely inspired and unalterable standard of faith. For the complexities of the fourth-century doctrinal disputes, see Ayres 2004, 139–239; Gwynn 2007; Gwynn 2010; Wiles 1996.
10. Fredriksen 2008, 99 estimates that the groups outside the Nicene church constituted the majority of the total population in the fourth century and perhaps later.
11. The issue of oikeioi and allotrioi in the fourth century is highlighted by Elm 2012, 432.
12. Gaudemet 1984, 7–37. See chapter 2.
an other or others. Subsequently, the other is necessary in the construction of the self, with the self and the other being dependent on and complementary to one another.13 A group or community marks, clarifies, and checks its boundaries through defining the other. To the other are often ascribed the qualities that a group or community prefers not to see in itself. Therefore, the ways in which late antique religious dissenters were construed as a religious other reveal the processes of identity-building in late Roman society. Here identity is not understood as a stable entity but rather as something shaped, probed, and negotiated, being always in the making.14
The use of the term ‘identity’ in classical and early Christian studies has often been criticized. According to critics, identity is a modern and thus anachronistic concept, and is therefore not a proper tool for understanding people in the ancient world. Nonetheless, we are bound to our modern language in other respects as well—I am here writing in modern English, to use just one example. To take my point to the extreme (this is an argument ad absurdum, I admit), to properly remain within the period under scrutiny, should we use the vocabulary and concepts of the ancients only? In the case of the religious dissidents, this would mean employing terms such as ‘divine wrath’, ‘pollution’, and ‘demonic machinery’—all in Latin and Greek. Therefore, while we cannot avoid modern concepts, we can be aware of the hazards of using them. As Denise Buell appositely points out, ‘the problem is not that modern ideas are distorting historical analysis, since we can only interpret the past from the vantage point of the present’.15 Modern concepts like identity and othering, often taken from sociological research, are part of historical analysis from an etic or observer-oriented perspective—that is, observations made from outside. To impose classifications from a purely etic perspective necessarily imports modern categories and conceptions. Therefore, it is imperative to analyse emic terminology as well—that is, the ancient terms and concepts employed in ancient contexts.16 Historical research is a continuous act of balancing between etic and emic perspectives. Nonetheless, it is clear that the emic or subject-oriented approach—that is, from the inside—is not adequate. We need holistic analysis from the outside, but using modern conceptual tools.
The construction of the other is hierarchical, and this applies to late Roman society, too. Making differences is based on power relations: ranking superiors
13. For a general introduction to theories of otherness, see Kahlos 2011a. For a theoretical discussion, see Stuart Hall 1997, 234–238; Green 1985, 49–50; Judith Lieu 2004, 269; Shusterman 1998, 107–112; Gruenwald 1994, 9–10; Woolf 1998; Woolf 2011; Jonathan Hall 1997.
14. For useful discussions on the use of identity in modern scholarship and on the criticism of its use in premodern texts, see Iricinschi and Zellentin 2008b, 2, 11–12 n. 40; Judith Lieu 2004, 11–17; Cribiore 2013, 138.
15. Buell 2005, 4; see also Buell 2005, 14, remarking that ‘the question of the viability of using these [modern] categories . . . is partly about how to formulate an interpretive framework that accounts for historical difference while still being intelligible to the interpreter. . . . We can place modern categories into conversation with ancient ones without effacing their differences.’
16. Headland, Pike, and Harris 1990—esp. Harris 1990, 48–61 and Pike 1990, 62–74. See also Stratton 2007, 14–16 on emic and etic perspectives in the research of ancient ‘magic’.
and inferiors morally, existentially, and/or socially. Very seldom can we speak of groups or communities being held as equals. The representation of a group or individual as inferior, subordinate, alien, foreign, or abnormal—as compared to the self—is called ‘othering’.17 In Late Antiquity, we observe othering discourses and othering patterns of thinking that diminish or entirely ignore common features between the other and the self. The other always includes the repressed aspects of the self. Othering signifies subordination or segregation.
The emperors and the churches
‘Imperial power’ is here understood as the emperors in both the East and the West, the imperial courts, and the administration, as well as the elites closely connected to the courts and in a position to influence imperial decision-making. The most important sources for the imperial discourse of power are imperial proclamations, letters, and legislation. Panegyrics addressed to emperors reveal themes and attitudes important to the elites close to the imperial establishment. In the fourth century, the Roman emperors adopted an increasingly autocratic style of government, and this is apparent in the imperial rhetoric. As we will see in chapter 2, imperial power (like any other form of power) was not self-evidently fixed, but constantly negotiated at every level of law-making and government. The authoritative language of legislation was used not only to manifest imperial power, but also to create and reinforce it.
‘Ecclesiastical power’ refers here to church leaders—mainly bishops, whose authority was increasing during the fourth and fifth centuries. There was no uniform church, and Christian congregations were miscellaneous assemblages of adherents. Therefore, we should speak of Christian churches in the plural rather than the Church in the singular.18 The mainstream church or mainstream Christianity is understood in this case as the Christian inclination that in this period gradually became the dominant church supported by the emperors, usually called the Catholic Church in scholarship. I prefer to avoid the term ‘Catholic Church’, which is problematic because most churches of the period regarded themselves as catholic, meaning ‘universal’. For example, the North African Christian group—called Donatists by their rivals and subsequent generations of scholars—considered itself the catholic church. It regarded its opponents merely as traditores or Caeciliani, basing the name on the rival bishop of Carthage, Caecilianus.19 The terms ‘mainstream church’ or ‘mainstream Christianity’ are also problematic, because it is far from clear which church was prevailing in a
17. ‘Othering’ refers here to the representation of a person or group of people as fundamentally alien from another, frequently more powerful, group. See Stuart Hall 1997, 258–259; J. Z. Smith 1985, 5; Klostergaard Petersen 2011, 19–50.
18. Regarding the problems of speaking of one Christianity, see Salzman 2008, 189 and Hopkins 1998, 90–94. 19. Shaw 1992, 7–14, esp. 8 on the hegemonic domination of the labelling process of Donatists.
specific region at a specific time. The ‘Donatist’ church was dominant in North Africa for most of the fourth century. Furthermore, it was not the same church that enjoyed imperial backing all the time. As is well known, the emperors Constantius II and Valens were sympathetic to the Homoian (‘Arian’) inclination and supported Homoian bishops, while other emperors, especially Theodosius I, showed their support to the Nicene (‘catholic’) inclination—the future mainstream church.
The period under scrutiny saw the Christianization of imperial and ecclesiastical discourses of control. I analyse the ways in which these differed from the earlier discourses of power in regard to religious dissenters. We can observe divergences from earlier rhetoric legitimating Roman and imperial power, but also remarkable continuity.20 Furthermore, when studying the relationship between imperial and ecclesiastical powers, we can see both collaboration and rivalry. The rhetoric of both the imperial government and the leading bishops often argued for a correlation between the unity of the empire and that of the church. In the ecclesiastical discourses of power, we recognize rhetoric of conviction and persuasion as well as that of control and discipline. Averil Cameron’s Christianity and the Rhetoric of Empire: The Development of Christian Discourse (1991) characterized Christian rhetoric as a ‘totalising discourse’ in the sense that it aimed at a comprehensive interpretation of reality, subsuming or excluding other interpretations. The Christian message thereby became a complete worldview.21
Rhetoric and the realities of life
Late antique writers often conveyed a simplified and codified perception of their lived world. This work studies the interplay between the manifest ideologies and daily realities. My analysis of imperial and ecclesiastical rhetoric draws attention to their attempts to eliminate ambiguity or dissent, as well as to ways in which religious dissenters and outsiders were represented in rhetoric. In Graeco-Roman Antiquity, harsh slander was a ubiquitous element in the discursive warfare of political disputes, law courts, conflicts between religious groups, and debates between philosophical schools. Christian writers’ invectives against their theological adversaries, or bishops’ denunciation of pagans, followed well-established conventions of polemic. In the analysis of polemical sources, we should focus on what their rhetoric reveals about their aims and ambitions and how the writers constructed a reality of their own through text. This is a step away from thinking about late antique ecclesiastical writing (for example, heresiological and
20. Discourse here is not simply a collection of sentences. It is not merely a form of knowledge but also a practice, since it confers and regulates power. Discourse and discursive practices are specific to each culture at a given period, and they are thus the historically situated frames of reference that validate what counts as knowledge in a certain historical context. Foucault 1971; Lincoln 1992, 3–5; Perkins 2009, 6–7; Stratton 2007, 18.
21. Averil Cameron 1991, esp. 220–221. See also Hargis 1999, 7–8 and de Bruyn 1993, 406.
hagiographical texts) as sources of information; we should rather understand them as performative or functional texts.
I extend the scope of the analysis to the complexities of social reality, contextualizing the dissident groups and their social circumstances. As mentioned above, the status of groups is studied on different levels of rhetoric and reality. The practical circumstances and complex religious atmosphere can be determined not only from literary sources, but also from archaeological evidence, inscriptions, and papyri. Literary sources may often convey a different picture than the archaeological, epigraphical, or papyrological evidence. A variety of non-literary sources reveal that religious diversity persisted or even increased in Late Antiquity. Whereas a writer could celebrate the destruction of shrines and idols in a certain region, archaeological evidence often reveals a less dramatic picture (for example, the continuity of practices or the simple abandonment and decay of shrines).22 Literary sources—even by the very same author, depending on the perspective or the genre of their writing—give inconsistent representations of the religious and social circumstances. For example, Isidore, a presbyter of Pelusium, magnanimously proclaimed in the 430–440s that Hellenism (that is, paganism) had vanished: ‘Hellenism, made dominant for so many years, by such pains, such expenditure of wealth, such feat of arms, has vanished from the earth.’ At the same time, the very same Isidore was caught up in disputes with pagans, as revealed by his letters addressed to pagan opponents; moreover, he is known to have written a treatise titled Against the Pagans, which is unfortunately no longer extant.23
Other challenges in interpreting our sources are topoi, literary conventions or traditional motifs and themes. In their sermons, bishops made ample mention of pagans, the purpose of which varied according to the motivations of each writer. There are numerous representations of pagans in fourth- and fifth-century Christian literature, which include, for example, the motif of good pagans and the theme of wretched pagans engaged in magical practices. Looking at the texts, it is often clear that we are dealing with rhetorical commonplaces in which the real humans are far away. In other cases, it is equally evident that writers are referring to pagans in factual everyday situations, even though they are treating their subject in adherence to the literary conventions of their erudite tradition. Although various labels and stereotypes, such as pagan blindness and rusticity, are used to depict these people and their practices, they still have some equivalence in quotidian reality. For example, Augustine of Hippo and Maximus of Turin complain of people clinging to idolatrous rituals and taking part in pagan
22. Garnsey and Humfress 2001, 165. See, for example, Goodman 2011, 165–193 on iconoclasm in texts (triumphalism) versus archaeological evidence, and Sears 2011, 231 on a model of inexorable Christianization versus archaeology.
23. Isid. Pelus. ep. 1.270 (PG 78, 344). Trans. Kaegi 1966, 243, modified. For Isidore’s correspondence and discussions with pagans, see Jones 2014, 83–84.
festivities. In addition to these pagans existing and acting in factual social contexts, it is possible to see that they were also used as a theological construction, which functioned as a mirror image in which one’s own theological views and moral conduct could be tested, and defended. Thus, there are pagans and ‘pagans’ in the same way as there are Jews and ‘Jews’ in early Christian literature: theological Jews were vital for the construction of Christian identity.24 The complexity of different levels can be observed in testimonies in which researchers have found local forms of religiosity in Late Antiquity, construed by ecclesiastical writers and councils as ‘magical’, ‘pagan’, or ‘heretical’, according to the literary conventions of the time. We will see, especially in chapter 10, how religious diversity persisted despite the ideals outlined by ecclesiastical leaders and despite the manifestations promulgated by the imperial administration.
Historical sources tend to highlight the dramatic, violent, and spectacular at the expense of repeated routines and undisturbed everyday life. They are also wont to focus on specific and exceptional incidents. They do not make comments on peaceful conditions when everything goes as expected. Therefore, realities here also refer to the compromises made by emperors who tried to manage the diversity that persisted in their empire. Furthermore, the realities of life included daily economic concerns. Dissident groups could be marginalized by directing sanctions against their economic relations and juridical status. It was no minor issue which of the churches (e.g., either the Caecilian or Donatist church in North Africa) enjoyed imperial privileges. Obviously, the social life filled with negotiations and compromises was more complex than church leaders wished.
The day-to-day realities lead us to the problematic concept of Christianization, as the term ‘Christianization’ may refer to both the process and its results.25 As Jitse Dijkstra remarks, it is useful to ask from whose angle we look at Christianization— from our perspective or an ancient perceiver’s. Furthermore, we should consider whether Christianization was the process of a person, a group, a region, or Roman society in general.26 Christianization has as many definitions as there were definers. Each late antique writer, Christian leader, Roman administrator, and individual had a notion of his or her own of what becoming Christian and making the empire, region, or household Christian implied. Each modern scholar also has her or his own views of what constituted Christianization in the late Roman Empire—depending on the scholar’s perspective—be it classics, social history, the history of ideas, systematic theology, biblical studies, church history, religious studies, archaeology, or art history, among other things—not to mention her or his age, gender, nationality, and religious/non-religious inclination. For my part,
24. Kraabel 1985, 219–246.
25. On problems with the concept of Christianization, see Inglebert 2010, 9–17; Busine 2015, 2–5; Leppin 2012, 247–278.
26. Dijkstra 2008, 16–17. Similar problems are involved with the use of the term ‘Romanization’: see Woolf 1998, 5–7.
I look at Christianization as part of a wider process of religious transformations in the Mediterranean world, which embraced what we distinguish and call by the separate names of Graeco-Roman, Christian, Jewish, and Manichaean religions.27
The themes of this book
My discussion starts with Section I: Imperial and ecclesiastical authority, which first focuses on imperial and ecclesiastical rhetoric of power and then observes both the interaction and the power struggle between the imperial and ecclesiastical authorities. The rhetoric of alienation and aggression is counterbalanced by a discussion of the limits of power, such as the realities of making laws. I analyse these dynamics of power on the macro level of the state and church. The chapters explore the development of the legal status of religious dissidents, the attempts to enhance religious unity by both the emperors and bishops’ authorities, and the rhetoric of public welfare. As we will see, the imperial and ecclesiastical discourses in legislation and the canons of church councils were offset by the limits of power—in making and enforcing laws, negotiating power in ecclesiastical disputes, and taking local circumstances, such as the patronage of local landowners, and local diversity into account.
In Section I, the categories ‘pagans’ and ‘heretics’ are treated as a given because imperial and ecclesiastical discourses build and maintain these categories. However, we need to move beyond these categories. Therefore, in Section II: People in rhetoric and realities, I analyse the construction of ‘pagans’ and ‘heretics’. In due course, these categories are questioned and finally deconstructed. Section II surveys both the rhetoric of separation against dissident groups and the relations between religious groups. Social, religious, and cultural encounters were complex moments in which the identities of groups or individuals were never fixed but always multivariable, fluid, and negotiated. The realities and pragmatic solutions of everyday life included accommodation and flexibility in interfaith relations as well as aggression and resistance.
After questioning and deconstructing the ancient and modern use of these categories, we move on to Section III: Time, place, practices, which offers an alternative way of looking at the late antique religious world: through local religion. This is an attempt to get beyond categorization, labelling, and the listing of groups in the imperial and ecclesiastical writings—thus restoring agency to the individuals. The purpose of this section is to show how late antique people were not passive recipients of change, but instead actively took part in creative interaction. Therefore, I explore how the dissident religious groups coped with day-to-day social life in urban and rural communities, and I analyse social, economic, and cultural structures. Rhetoric by emperors and ecclesiastical writers
27. For the religious koine of the Mediterranean world, see Stroumsa 2008, 30.
against practices, feasting, and places was balanced by the realities of everyday life. Many traditional rituals and local communal practices went through a series of metamorphoses in the fourth and fifth centuries, and this section explores the transformations of such practices as sacrificial rituals, as well as their economics and the competition over and sharing of holy places and sacred times. Section III ends with a discussion of how the label of ‘magic’ functioned as a boundary marker between what was understood as the proper religion and the deviant one.
