Theodosius I had launched a determined attack on paganism but many areas of the eastern empire still remained pagan and only gradually absorbed Christianity. In fifth-century Athens it was still possible for a Platonist such as Proclus to have his own school and conduct his own pagan rituals, including prayer to Asclepius, the Greek god of medicine, whose temple remained in use. The Athenian school of philosophy survived in fact into the sixth century when it was finally closed down by Justinian and the philosophers dispersed to Persia. (See chapter 5, ‘The Closing of the Athenian Schools, in Edward Watts, City and School in Late Antique Athens and Alexandria, Berkeley and London, 2006.)
However, classical Greek culture was on the defensive. By the late fourth century the gymnasia of the Greek world had disappeared. There was a marked decline in the use of books and church leaders freely abused ‘philosophers’ and the Greek tradition of empirical thought. In this Christianity linked itself back to older traditions of pre-scientific thinking which had, of course, always predominated in everyday life and which could find support from Paul’s attack on the ‘wisdom of the wise’. Local temples continued to be closed down by determined bishops or sacked by vigilante groups made up of monks. They had been given full backing by Theodosius’ legislation of the early 390s. Alexandria saw widespread violence between Christian and pagan, both sides incensed by what were seen as attacks on their religious beliefs by the other. The centuries-old culture of pharaonic Egypt was also finally stifled. The temple of Isis at Philae was closed in ad 536 and at Karnak wall paintings and reliefs were covered with rough plaster and the temple buildings adapted to the use of convents and monasteries. ‘See what blessings God’s Christ came to bestow on us, since through His teachings in the gospels he has redeemed even the souls of the Egyptians from such a disease of lasting and continued blindness so that most of the people of Egypt have been freed from this insanity,’ exulted the church historian Eusebius.
The spread of Christianity was inseparable from its absorption of pagan values and culture. In the cities it was the bishops who assumed the responsibilities of the old classical elites. As in the west bishops tended to come from the traditional ruling classes and preserved the paideia, the civilized ways of behaviour of a leisured elite for whom personal relationships were an art form in themselves. Once elected they held office for life so could parade themselves as typical aristocrats. Bishops’ palaces became increasingly resplendent, very similar to the palaces of local governors, and were now built in the centres of cities. Such energetic building programmes echoed those of the Greek cities of the second century (and might even include baths and bridges). There remained a tension between the bishops’ role as builders of churches opulently adorned with fine marbles and mosaics and their explicitly Christian role of providing for the poor. When a bishop failed to conduct himself appropriately he became very vulnerable. It was the clumsiness of John Chrysostom, the bishop of Constantinople, in exercising diplomatic and personal skills that led to his falling out with the court and his expulsion from office in 405 despite the tumultuous support of the poor. (See the studies by Rapp and Brown cited on p. 614.)
The demise of the old city governments also left the bishops responsible for the maintenance of order. Some were appointed defensor civitatis, ‘judge of the city’ So it was that the bishop of Antioch excused his late arrival at the Council of Ephesus in 431 on the grounds that he had been busy suppressing riots and another bishop of Antioch wrote to a colleague, ‘It is the duty of bishops like you to cut short and to restrain any unregulated movements of the mob’ On occasion bishops even had to defend their cities against marauding bands of monks. By the sixth century, bishops were expected to help oversee the audit of city finances and pass on protests against provincial governors to the emperor. They were encouraged to act as the moral guardians of the secular administration.
A glimpse of the relationship between church and state can be seen in surviving records from southern Egypt. When raids into the empire from Nubia caused a mass of refugees to flee northwards up the Nile the abbot Shenoute took responsibility for feeding them for three months from the bake-houses of his monastery. His gesture was recognized by the imperial authorities, who granted him a tax exemption on the lands of his monastery. Again, further south, on the exposed frontier itself, bishop Apion of Syene is found petitioning the emperor for more troops with which to protect his churches and people. The petition went all the way to Theodosius II, was endorsed by him in his own hand, and then sent to the military commander of southern Egypt for action. In both cases church initiatives receive state responses.
The newly agreed Christian orthodoxy of ad 381 (see above, p. 615) was difficult to impose. ‘Arianism’ in its various forms remained strong and there were many Christian communities (especially, inscriptions show, in Anatolia—the work of Stephen Mitchell in his Anatolia: Land, Men and Gods in Asia Minor, 2 volumes, Oxford, 1995, is excellent on this) where local traditions of Christian worship were resistant to decrees from far-off emperors. Now a new controversy arose. It was over the nature of Christ. His divinity had been emphasized by the Nicene creed, now established as orthodoxy (small ‘o’ is used here to describe approved doctrine), but while the Nicene creed had settled one problem it highlighted another, the extent to which a Jesus elevated to consubstantiality with the Father could combine divine and human natures. Nestorius, installed as bishop of Constantinople in 428, argued that Christ was one person but with human and divine natures coexisting in the same body. Nestorius himself tended to emphasize the human nature of Christ, stressing, for instance, that when Christ suffered on the cross he did so as a human being (otherwise what had Christ actually had to go through to save us?). Nestorius was bitterly opposed by Cyril, bishop of Alexandria, whose own interpretation was that Christ, while appearing in human form, was predominantly divine. (This conflict was intensified by the bitterness of Alexandria over the elevated status of Constantinople.) Those who emphasized the divinity of Christ were later to be known as Monophysites. Intertwined with this dispute was the complementary one over the correct title for Mary. Cyril and Monophysites wished to proclaim Mary as Theotokos, bearer of God, Nestorius preferred Anthropotokos, man-bearer, but was prepared to compromise with Christ-bearer.
These debates were intensified by the granting of tax exemptions and patronage to those who accepted what was defined by the emperor of the time as orthodoxy. Disputes over doctrine could easily degenerate into struggles over the control of resources. As Gregory of Nazianzus observed of a conflict between two rival bishops: ‘The pretext was souls, but in fact it was desire for control. . . of taxes and contributions which have the whole world in miserable confusion.’ These disputes risked upsetting the good order of the empire, one reason why the emperors played such a major role in enforcing an agreed orthodoxy and were so eager to use councils as a means of settling them. A council held in Ephesus (where by tradition Mary had spent her later life) in 431 accepted the concept of Mary as Theotokos, thus by implication condemning Nestorius. (It is interesting that the dismantling of the vast temple of Diana, a rival goddess no less, appears to have taken place at this time.) Nestorius, who had been locked out of the Council by Cyril, was forced into exile for the rest of his life and Theodosius ordering the burning of his writings in 435. The issue was still not settled, however. A second Council of Ephesus, held in 449, took the Monophysite position which was imposed by force on the assembled bishops by Dioscorus, the new bishop of Alexandria. The Council was immediately condemned by the bishop of Rome, Leo I, as ‘a robber council’.
These two councils had, in fact, operated largely free of imperial control, but the new emperor, Marcian, had learned the lesson. He summoned another council, this time at Chalcedon across the Bosporus from Constantinople, in 451. Marcian himself presided at key sessions. Hailed as the ‘new Constantine’, he made sure that the proceedings were rigorously controlled by imperial officials. Finally a formula was drawn up. Christ was proclaimed to have the two natures, human and divine (a phrase taken from Leo), within the same undivided person. This was, in fact, close to what Nestorius had argued in the first place. As a concession to the supporters of Cyril of Alexandria, Mary’s title as Theotokos, ‘Mother of God’, was confirmed.
The Chalcedonian formula was welcomed by the west (and remains orthodoxy in the western churches to this day). Leo, who did not attend the Council himself, benefited by seeing many of his own views incorporated into the formula and a confirmation that ultimately the bishop of Rome had supremacy over all other bishops. However, he took offence at the confirmation that the bishop of Constantinople should be second in authority only to the bishop of Rome. This decision was equally unpalatable to the bishops of Alexandria and Antioch.
There were other lasting tensions. By taking a compromise position the Council of Chalcedon had isolated extremists of each side. One group, taking its inspiration from theologians of the east Syrian city of Edessa, continued to emphasize the distinct human nature of Christ. (They are sometimes called the Nestorians, but their emphasis on Christ’s humanity was more pronounced than anything put forward by Nestorius.) They eventually formed the separate ‘Church of the East’, most of whose adherents were in Persia. The church survived successfully for many centuries, even managing to send missionaries as far east as China in the thirteenth century. Meanwhile the Monophysite position claimed the adherence of many in Syria and Egypt and separate churches, the Coptic and Syrian Orthodox churches, eventually emerged.
The Council of Chalcedon had therefore succeeded in creating a religious division that made a nonsense of the emperor as ruler of a people united in a single church. The whole debate had been marked by high levels of violence and intimidation and any further compromise was to prove impossible. The Monophysites, in particular, were intransigent and any move to accommodate them within the church now risked offending the church in the west. The foundations had been laid for final breakdown between eastern and western Christianity, the schism of 1054, which persists to this day.
World History
