| HOME ARTICLES & COMMENTARY: TOC: The Rise of Church-State Alliances: Imperial Edicts & Church Councils between 306-565: Emperors Constantine through Justinian: The Rise of Protestant Alliances of Church and State: Martin Luther and the German Reformation The Rise of Protestant Alliances of Church and State: Ulrich Zwingli and the Swiss Reformation The Constitution and the Commandments The Classical Temple Architecture of Washington, DC A History of Religious Tests: 312 to 1961 American Founders on Church-State Alliances The Bible and the Quran: A Scriptural Comparison Religion and Women's Suffrage Religious Tradition and Interracial Marriages The Slaves of Jefferson and Washington and the 1782 Virginia Law of Manumission Slavery and the Churches Gays & Social Conservatism as a Coercive Tool of the State Einstein's Religion The Changing Religious Identification of America Moral Hypocrisy in the Bible Belt Ring Species, Evolution and why Intelligent Design isn't science. Who am I : Why this project? : Contact me INFO & EYE OPENERS FROM OTHERS: Court Holdings on Church and State Historical Revisionism: On David Barton's Christian Nation Biblical Archeology Review Special: Captivity, Exodus, and Conquest Sexual Orientation in Nature The Biological Basis of Morality by Edward O. Wilson MEDUSA HEADWEAR  Buy High Quality PolarTech 200 Fleece Headwear From the Author | In the multicultural city of Antioch, Chrysostom delivered his homilies against the Jews. In describing the Jews and their religion of Judaism, Chrysostom used loaded terms such as ignoramuses, impious, wretches, dogs, Jewish wolves, bull-headed, brutes, and wild beasts. They have driven Christ away. Their synagogues are dens of brigands, the abode of Satan. They have crucified Christ and their souls are the abode of the devil. The Jewish disease must be guarded against. Jews are thieves, impure, debauchers, rapacious, misers, crafty, oppressors of the poor. 'Israel is dispersed because they murdered Christ'. Jews call the cross an abomination and their religion is null and useless to those who know the true faith. The entire set of Chrysostom's bizarre anti-Semitic rants is part of the exhaustive and indispensable Medieval Internet Sourcebook created and operated by Paul Halsall at Fordham University. The site is a repository for documents oif the time. Professor Halsall also operates major sourcebooks for Ancient history, Modern history and Byzantine studies. Other document sourcebooks include: African | East Asian | Indian | Islamic | Jewish | LGBT | Women's | Global | & Science |. His Pretorian Prefect Rufinus persecuted pagans, burned down their temples, and oppressed their religious life. Eventually Rufinus would be assassinated by his own troops in front of the emperor. Then there was the Grand Chamberain Eutropius who place the fiercely orthodox John Chrysostom in power as the Patriarch of Constantinople. Eutropius was eventually tried and executed for what his generals considered bad war politics. Then there was Eudoxia, who was considered very beautiful, very intelligent and very fertile, who gave the emperor four heirs. Brilliantly, she leveraged her strengths and successfuly acquired a great deal of imperial power. Eudoxia would become one of the few Roman women crowned Augusta. Roman Empresses were rare. The culture of the Mediterranean, the Levant, and southwestern Asia were generally hostile to the notions of equality and rights of women. After years of mutual enmity, Eudoxia became powerful enough to have the Archbishop Chrysostom deposed and exiled. After Eudoxia, there was the Pretorian Prefect Anthemius who worked hard to aggressively Christianize the empire in the last five years of Arcadius' rule. Under the influence of Eutropius, Arcadius made life easier for Jews than some of his predecessors had. Arcadius made decrees that somewhat protected Jewish commerce and religious life. But this should be qualified. In 397 he still decreed, recorded as Codex Theodosianus 9.45.2, that Jews couldn't become Christians based on economic motives. This was at a time when Christians had more civil and economic privileges than heretics, pagans and Jews so many did indeed convert for this reason. But Jews were different to the clergy and the Christianizing elements in the imperial court. Judaism had been an official religion in the pagan empire but to the powers of the Christianized empire, they killed Christ. Arcadius' brother Honorius, the emperor of the west, moved away from tolerating Jews, decreeing laws against Jews along with the standard persecution of pagans and heretics. A terrible world was coming into existence. In 395 an edict, recorded as C.T. 16.10.13, was issued by Arcadius and his brother Honorius, ruler of the west, that forbade anyone from entering a Pagan temple. In 396 Arcadius decreed that paganism would be treated as high treason. The emperors had Hierophants, priests. and followers rounded up and imprisoned for treason. This the same kind of mindset we see in the American God and Country ultra-nationalist crowd that consider any dissent as treasonous. The Nazis used the same kind of militant nationalist propaganda. In 397, Arcadius continued his persecution and ordered all pagan temples still standing to be demolished. Prefect Rufinus directed mobs of newly baptized Goths, led by zealous monks, to burn cities which had Paganism at the center of their religious life. Dion, Delphi, Megara, Corinth, Argos, Nemea, Lycosoura, Sparta, Messene, Phigaleia, Olympia and others were targeted. Thousands of Hellenes were murdered or sold into slavery and their many pagan temples and shrines were burned to the ground. When the mob burned down the Eleusinian Sanctuary, its Hierophant of Mithras and it's priests were burned alive. In 398, the Fourth Council of Carthage banned everyone, including Christian Bishops, from reading pagan books. Like the most extreme of the religious right, they did not respect anyone's inherent right to privacy. Even the study of these literary works was a ciminal offense. In that same year, Porphyrius, Bishop of Gaza, under the orders of Arcadius, ordered all but nine pagan temples destroyed in the region. In 399, a decree was issued (C.T. 16.10.16) which ordered the Pretorian Prefect Euthychianus to destroy the remaining pagan temples throughout the empire where this could be accomplished. Part of that decree reads: "For when they are torn down and removed, the material basis for all superstition will be destroyed" In 400, Bishop Nicetas acting under this edict destroyed the Oracle of Dionysius in Vesai. He then proceeded to forcible baptize all the people in the area. Under Arcadius' orders, Pophyrius had the last nine pagan temples destroyed in Gaza. In Carthage, Christian mobs lynched pagans and destroyed their temples and shrines. A year later, John Chrysostom used this decree to tear down what was left of the Temple of Artemis in Ephesus, burning the Marble in kilns to make cement for the Christian Empire's use. The rest of the stones from this building known in history as one of the Seven Wonders of the World would be used to build churches and buildings for the State. The next year, a Synod in Chalcedon ordered excommunication for Christians that kept good relations with their non-Christian relatives. This excommunication was perpetual and continued even after their death. In 407 Arcadius would outlaw more non-Christian acts of worship. This decree carried on the doctrines similar to what the Council of Elvira had ordered a century before in these canons: Canon 15 "Christian girls are not to marry pagans, no matter how few eligible men there are, for such marriages lead to adultery of the soul." Canon 16 "Heretics shall not be joined in marriage with Catholic girls unless they accept the Catholic faith. Catholic girls may not marry Jews or heretics, because they cannot find a unity when the faithful and the unfaithful are joined. Parents who allow this to happen shall not commune for five years" Canon 17 "If parents allow their daughter to marry a pagan priest, they shall not receive communion even at the time of death" Canon 50 "If any cleric or layperson eats with Jews, he or she shall be kept from communion as a way of correction." To the emperors, there were just too many pagan temples and shrines. In 408, Arcadius and Honorius ordered all sculptures in pagan temples to be confiscated. Private ownership of pagan sculpture also became a criminal offense. Bishops increased the persecution of pagans, burning as much of their writings as they could get away with. In 408, at the yoiung age of 31, Flavius Arcadius died. With Arcadius being overshadowed by others, the last years and his death remain a mystery. His son Theodosius who was the grandson of Theodosius the Great succeeded him as emperor in the east. He is known as Theodosius the Younger. Acts:19:19-20 "Many also of those who were now believers came, confessing and divulging their practices. And a number of those who practiced magic arts brought their books together and burned them in the sight of all; and they counted the value of them and found it came to fifty thousand pieces of silver. So the word of the Lord grew and prevailed mightily." "Augustine must bear the fatal charge of being the first as well as one of the ablest defenders of the frightful cause of persecution and intolerance. He was the first to misuse the words Compel Them To Come In - a fragmentary phrase wholly unsuited to bear the weight of horror for which it was made responsible. He was the first and ablest asserter of the principle that led to the Albigensian crusades, Spanish armadas, Netherlands' butcheries, St Bartholomew massacres, the accursed infamies of the Inquisition, the vile espionage, the hideous balefires of Seville and Smithfield, the racks, the gibbets, the thumbscrews, the subterranean torture-chambers used by churchly torturers who assumed 'the garb and language of priests with the trade and temper of executioners,' to sicken, crush and horrify the Revolted Conscience Of Mankind .. It is mainly because of his later intolerance that the influence of Augustine falls like a dark shadow across the centuries. It is thus that an Arnold of Citeaux, a Torquemada, a Sprenger, an Alva, a Philip The Second, a Mary Tudor, a Charles IX and a Louis XIV can look up to him as an authorizer of their enormities, and quote his sentences to defend some of the vilest crimes which ever caused men to look with horror on the religion of Christ and the Church of God." |
Much of the Reformation's intolerance and persecution was based not only in the religious intolerance of scriptures, but in Augustine and other saints' militant approach to other beliefs and traditions. Like the historian Eusebius, Augustine believed in total uniformity of opinion and fought all religious diversity as enemies of God. Democracy was anarchy and chaos. With that belief accompanied the conviction that persecution was a duty of true believers. After all, God both orders and uses violence against unbelievers in the Bible. By using force, religious diversity was to be eliminated in the name of Christ. In the name of Christ, the age old tradition of religious freedom in a pluralist society should be wiped out and all people should adhere to the dogma of the saints which is continually ratified by imperial decrees.
Augustine considered any ideas that differed from the fundamentals of the Christianity he outlined as dangerous to society and the road to hellfire. Augustine sought an enforced religious uniformity in the empire. In the early years as Bishop of Hippo, he first combated pantheism which held that God was everywhere and in everything; that God was in Nature and Nature in God. To pagans nature and the gods could not be separated. After that Augustine fought and promoted the persecution of the Donatists, Manicheans and Arianists. Before his conversion, he had been a Manichean and then a Neoplatonist. Both are very conservative religious viewpoints.
The Donatists were a Christian sect with very strict standards for church membership. In many places in North Africa, Donatists outnumbered Nicene and Arian Christians. They had their own churches, societies, and hierarchy. Augustine and the Donatists conflicted over how sacraments were to be administered and they differed on how those that renounced Christianity during persecutions could re-enter the communion of the church. The Donatists refused to allow anyone who committed what they considered a mortal sin any readmission to the church either. Regardless of this sect's genuine religious fervor, and it was certainly militant conservative piety to the extreme. It was heresy to Augustine and heresy had to be stamped out by whatever means necessary, including the use of force and intimidation. Since most religious and secular leaders of the times believed people were unable to govern themselves or open their eyes to the truth, Augustine led the way to instituting a persecution against the Donatists. With the State joining in, we again see the tyranny of church and state unions.
In 405, with Augustine leading the drive to destroy Donatism, Honorius reinstated the older laws put in place by the Pagan Emperors Decius and Diocletian in 303. Donatists were among the Christians that were persecuted by the Roman State. Diocletian had ordered their churches to be destroyed, their books burned, and their faith outlawed. The next year, in his fourth edict, Diocletian ordered all to offer incense to idols under penalty of death. With Honorius' edict, they could not meet for any worship or fellowship as it was declared a capital offense. Donatists lost the right to hold public office, own private property or pass it on to their children or spouses. Like so many 'undesirables' since Constantine's support of Nicene Christianity, Donatists lost their testamentary rights of making wills or inheriting from others. The empire seized the properties and gave them to the church. Donatists now had to worry about other Christian fanatics instead of the pagan Diocletian.
Honorius wasn't just concerned with the Donatist heresy. He acted against Montanists in 404 with a decree that was so harsh it forced Montanists to convert to Catholicism out of fear. Then in 407 he persecuted Manicheans, Montanists and Priscillianists with the decree of Codex Theodosianus 16.5.40. At the same time, Pope Innocent I confiscated many churches of Novatian Christians in Rome as would the Archbishops in Alexandria in the near future.
With the Visigoths threatening Italy, the persecution of Donatists subsided for a while but not for long. In 412 Honorius issued more laws against the Donatist Christians. This edict went beyond condemning the belief system by adding laws meting out harsh fines for the Donatist clergy, laity and wives. These fines were to be paid in varying amounts of Gold or Silver and the penalty depended on the station of that person within the Donatist community.
For a while in the Christian Empire some pagan practices were allowed. One of these rarities in religious tolerance was astrology but in 409 an imperial edict was issued that made astrology a capital offense. In 414, recorded as Theodosian Code 16.5.54, emperors Honorius and Theodosius the Younger decreed in an edict to Julianus, the Proconsul of Africa:
"We decree that the Donatists and the heretics, who until now have been spared by the patience of Our Clemency, shall be severely punished by legal authority, so that by this Our manifest order, they shall recognize that they are intestable and have no power of entering into contracts of any kind, but they shall be branded with perpetual infamy and separated from honorable gatherings and from public assemblies. Those places in which the dire superstition has been preserved until now shall surely be joined to the venerable Catholic Church, and thus their bishops and priests, that is, all their prelates and ministers shall likewise be despoiled of all their property and shall be sent into exile to separate islands and provinces."
Over the years, because Donatists were extremely puritanical and zealous, many committed suicide rather than give up and convert. If they were orthodox Christians of the empire; if they had been the victors, they would be history's martyrs. It is the victors that write history and shape the values of the future. If Donatists or Arians had won the dogma battles, we would now have a different pantheon of saints. The Nicenes would be the villains. Instead Donatists were regarded as heretics to be despised and persecuted. In these time's, Augustine, Cyril and Ambrose had done their best to forcibly wipe out heresies and paganism wwith the aid of the State. The saints joined Christian Emperors in advocating pain and persecution against any religious diversity in the Empire. Saints so influenced the imperial court that the boundaries between church and State disappeared over time.
In 416 a synod in Carthage met to deal with the heresy of Pelagianism and condemned it. Pelagians were Christians that denied Augustine's doctrines of Original Sin and Christian Grace but based their religion on the life of Jesus. A synod of Numidian bishops met in Mileve and also rejected it. Both synods reported their findings to the Pope and asked for confirmation. Augustine was also involved in the Pelagian controversy. Augustine had written major works on these two doctrines and intended to make sure that any opposition was crushed. Immediately after the synods, Augustine and four other African Bishops sent a letter urging the Pope to condemn Pelagitis and his teachings. Innocent died before the letter arrived. The next Pope (Zosimus) hesitated to affirm the condemnation and several letters were exchanged. With the May of 418 letter from the African bishops combined with the steps Honorius took against the Pelagians, Pope Zosimus was won over. He then issued a condemnation in his Tractoria. In it he defended the dogma and truth of the Nicene Creed and Holy Catholic Church. Zosimus also became involved with the controversy surrounding the heresy of Priscillianism. The 380 synod at Saragossa had addressed and condemned Priscillianists, excommunicating and exiling them, but the heresy remained strong.
With her power in the imperial court, she enacted edicts that persecuted heretics, Jews and pagans. Pulcheria was a fanatical Nicene and her government reflected this extremism. Pledging perpetual virginity, she kept her vow even after marrying Marcian, the next emperor of the east. Perpetual virginity as a sacred concept was not new with Christianity. It was highly regarded by Neoplatonists, Manicheans and many pagan sects. In fact the pagan Senator Symmachus was deeply troubled by virgins who left their positions.
In 415, a decree, recorded as Codex Theodosianus 16.8.22, was issued in Theodosius' authority, which banned the building of new synagogues and ordered the destruction of existing ones in areas with weak defenses. That same year, under Theodosius' authority, a decree, recorded as Codex Theodosianus 16.10.21, declared pagans unable to participate and serve in government or the military. By 416, a majority of non-Christian army officers, public employees and members of the judiciary had been dismissed. Those that stayed converted or pretended to. These laws would have a ruthless effect on the direction of the next century and the condition of the empire's undesirables; the Jews, the pagans and the heretics.
In order to force Christianity upon the world, all opposition would have to be crushed and silenced. In Alexandria, Cyril received permission from Pulcheria and Theodosius to destroy all the pagan temples. Cyril even went even as far as destroying the monasteries of those monks that disagreed with him. He had hardly taken office when he took aim at the Novatian Christians, plundering and confiscating their churches. What Cyril was doing to the Novatian Christians and their churches wasn't new. Actions against Novatians had one hundred and sixty years of persecutions behind them, going back to the pagan emperors Decius and Diocletian's persecutions which started with Decius' decree of 250. The Arianist Christian
Emperor Valens also had attacked their faith in the years before Theodosius the Great was emperor. Throughout all this, one must wonder why the persecuted become the persecutors in so many instances in history. Everyone must have known that payback was endless. It seemed to be an all or nothing situation with these religions and the surrounding strife. The clergy also jumped in. Cornelius, who became Pope in 251 had written to Fabius of Antioch and claimed that Novatia was possessed by Satan.
In 415, Cyril took aim at the Synagogues with armed Christian mobs. Many Jews were murdered in the streets and in their homes, while most were driven from the city. Their properties were then confiscated by the Church or demolished by the mobs. All this had Pulcheria's and the Nicrene clergy's enthusiastic stamp of approval on it. Cyril's mobs of hermits, monks and true believers plundered synagogues, burned down classical libraries and massacred the Jews and pagans they met on the streets. All this angered the Prefect Orestes who considered Cyril as usurping his civil authority. Mob violence and riots seemed to be a way of life in Alexandria's religious communities at this time. In one riot organized by Cyril to address the alarmed Prefect Oestes, five hundred zealous monks descended upon the city to aid Cyril. In a painful example of the atmosphere of the times, a monk named Ammonius hit Prefect Orestes on the head with a rock. The prefect executed the monk and Cyril celebrated his martyrdom in church.
In an example of this continuing religious madness, fanatical Christian mobs in the streets of Alexandia attacked the celebrated scholar, the woman Hypatia. Hypatia was a pious Neoplatonist, a teacher of philosophy and a mathematician. She was said to have lived a very chaste life. In Neoplatonism, chastity is highly regarded. To Cyril and his mobs, Hypatia was a pagan and was under the influence of the Devil. And she was a learned woman of great influence, something the church despised. Paul had made it clear in 1 Timothy 2:11-14 that women are to learn in silence with all subjection. But suffer not a woman to teach, nor to usurp authority over the man, but to be in silence. For Adam was first formed, then Eve. And Adam was not deceived, but the woman being deceived was in the transgression.
Hypatia's rare accomplishments for the times and her prestige made her a perfect target for the mobs. In 415, one of the mobs under the leadership of Peter, the Reader of Cyril's Church, murdered Hypatia. They dragged her from her cart and proceeded to cut her flesh from her bones with sharpened Abalone shells while she was still alive. They paraded around the pieces of her body through the streets and then threw them into a fire with all of her books at a place called Cynaron. Revealing the ethical bankruptcy developing in the new Christian world, no one was punished for her murder. In that same year Theodosius supported Cyril by ordering the expulsion of any remaining Jews from Alexandria. That same year new persecutions started again against pagan priests in Augustine's territory of North Africa.
Is it any wonder that historian W. Franz Walch writes of Cyril on page 932 of his exhaustive Ketzerhistorie,
"Can a man read such a character without a shudder? And yet nothing is fabricated here, nothing overdrawn, nothing is done but to collect what is scattered in history. And what is worst: I find nothing at all that can be said in his praise".
From around 428 until his death in 444, Cyril's life was zealously involved in Christological debates about the differing views as to the nature of Christ. Was he man; was he divine; was he both, did he have a soul? Was he half man and half God or both fully man and fully God? Was his soul that of a man or was it divine? Did he have a man's mind or was it God's? Did he have the mind of God in a human body? All these arguments caused a great deal of violence and discrimination. These controversies led to the legal tradition of
Trinitarian religious tests in oaths of office that continued right through the Reformation and lasted right into the modern western era in coloniasl religious tests of America. Cyril's main target at this time was the Nestorians. Nestorius was a disciple of the school at Antioch. His Christology stood in opposition to that of the Arian Christians, another condemned heresy. Because of these disputes on the nature of Christ, many types of Councils were convened over the early centuries to address them. Constantine's Council of Nicea was convened in order to mainly address Arian Christianity. So, in 431, The Council of Ephesus was organized in order to deal with the Nestorian controversy, which posited that Christ was composed of two natures; one divine and one human but the human was completely overwhelmed by the divine. Nestorius not only rejected the Trinitarian Nicene Creed, he rejected the growing Mother of God movement. To Nestorius, Mary was the Christ-bearer but not the God-bearer and it infuriated the Nicene clergy. The council also addressed the remants of Pelagianism which was still a problem in Britain and Gaul. It was no longer a problem in the eastern church.
Pelagianism believed that even if Adam hadn't sinned, he would have still died; that Adam's sin had no consequence for humanity, just himself; that children are born in the same state as Adam was in before his fall; that humanity neither dies by the first Adam or is resurrected in the Christ; that the Mosaic Law was just as good a path to heaven as the Gospels. Pulcheria was a devout Nicene Christian but it wasn't Nestorius' anti-Nicene doctrines of Antiochian Incarnation that troubled her the most. It was his opposition to the increasing importance in the church of the Mother of God movement, which he preached eloquently against. In 428 Theodosius had consecrated Nestorius as the Bishop of Constantinople. In quick order, Nestorius presented his zeal against heretics. It was no saner than Cyril's.
Within a week of his consecration, Nestorius had an Arian church destroyed. And within a month, he persuaded Theodosius to issue a harsh edict addressing the heretics. He had the churches of the Macedonians in the Hellespont seized and he took action against the Quartodecimans. Like Cyril, Nestorius also attacked the Novatians. Unfamiliar with the disposition of the persecution of Pelagians in the west, Nestorius overlooked the Pelagian refugees that had moved into the east. He inquired regarding the Pelagians in a letter to Pope Celestine but was afforded no reply. That was lucky for them considering his treatment of others.
By early 429, Nestorius began his attacks on the Mother of God movement. Like Empress Pulcheria, Cyril was Mad about Mary so one can imagine how he took to this development. Pulcheria, who was a strong supporter of this Theotokos movement, took notice and then took action with the help of Cyril. Pulcheria organized the opposition within Constantinople's clergy, who was not warm towards the Antiochian stranger in their See. Nestorius wanted a council assembled to hear him out. Pope Celestine condemned the doctrines, delivering the sentence through Cyril of Alexandria. At the Council, Cyril eulogized Mary:
"Blessed be thou, O Mother of God! Thou rich treasure of the world, inextinguishable lamp, crown of virginity, scepter of true doctrine, imperishable temple, habitation of him whom no space can contain, mother and virgin through whom He is, who comes in the name of the Lord. Blessed be thou, O Mary, who didst hold in thy womb the infinite one, thou through whom the blessed Trinity is glorified and worshipped, through whom the precious cross is adored throughout the world, through whom heaven rejoices and angels and archangels are glad, through whom the devil is disarmed and banished, through whom the fallen creature is restored to heaven, through whom every believing soul is saved"
Nestorius didn't stand a chance against the forces arrayed against him. The council condemned and deposed Nestorius and his doctrines. Helping Cyril to destroy Nestorius were Eusebius and Eutyches, who would eventually become enemies at the councils of 448, 449, and 451. The emperor took quite a while to act but finally ratified the decision. Here was the power of the two-headed monster of church and state. This followed a confirmation from Pope Sixtus III, Celestine's successor. The Nicene Creed was upheld, Cyril's Christology was victorious, Nestorianism was declared a heresy and Nestorius was deposed and exiled. In the future Council of Chalcedon, Cyril's writings during the Nestorian controversy are key to the council's definition of faith and its canons.
Finding a safe haven in the court of Theodosius, Valentinian was then reaffirmed as Nobilissimus, setting him back on track to the throne. Not much later, in 424, he was finally decreed Ceasar. His future marriage to Licinia Eudoxia was also arranged at this time. She was the daughter of Theodosius. At this point Theodosius sent a military force to remove the usurper Johannes from the throne. After Johannes was deposed and executed in 425, Theodosius placed his young cousin on the throne. Like Pulcheria's powerul regency in the youth of Theodosius, there was a regent in the early life of Valentinian who made the important decisions of the empire. In this case it was his deeply religious mother Galla Placidia until Valentinian married Eudoxia in 437. After that, Valentinian's General Aetius wielded the most influence on the emperor.
How Aetius obtained his power in Valentinian's court is interesting and gives us an example of the court and military intrigues of those days. Aetius was one of Johanne's generals when Johannes grabbed power at Honorius' death. Run off when Johannes was deposed and executed, Aetius formed an alliance with the Hun army and then negotiated his way back into the imperial court as Valentinian's Magister Militum under the regency of Galla Placidia. This is the same Aetius who defeated Attilla and his Hun army at Chalons, leaving 165,000 dead. In a major blunder, Aetius failed to capture Attilla when he retreated. Aetius would regret this mistake because after regrouping and then abandoning any designs on the east, Attilla would thunder through Gaul into Italy itself, burning and plundering town after town in an attempt to build a new empire upon the infrastructure of a dying western Empire. The church succeeded admirably at this, though. Eventually in 454, after three decades of Aetius' influence, Valentinian had Aetius and his closest associates assassinated. Seeking sole power seems to be the motive behind the murders. I suppose letting Attilla go might have had something to do with it.
A strong supporter of the Roman Papacy, Valentinian not only strengthened the Nicene cause with clergy-friendly laws, he plundered for them. He presented Pope Syxtus III with 2000 pounds of silver for building a tabernacle at the Lateran Basilica and a Gold ornament representing Christ and his Apostles for the Confession of Saint Peter. Similar to Constantine's plunder of pagan temples for the building of Constantinople, Valentinian stole pagan wealth for the church. Since the time of Constantine, pagans continually saw the gold, silver, and jewels of their temples, shrines and libaries plundered for the new religion's buildings and the Empire's new Gold coinage.
"Our search has discovered in the City a great many followers and teachers of the Manichaean impiety, our watchfulness has proclaimed them, and our authority and censure has checked them: those whom we could reform we have corrected and driven to condemn Manichaeus with his preachings and teachings by public confession in church, and by the subscription of their own hand, and thus we have lifted those who have acknowledged their fault from the pit of their iniquity by granting them room for repentance. A good many, however, who had so deeply involved themselves that no remedy could assist them, have been subjected to the laws in accordance with the constitutions of our Christian princes, and lest they should pollute the holy flock by their contagion; have been banished into perpetual exile by public judges."
"And all the profane and disgraceful things which are found as well in their writings as in their secret traditions, we have disclosed and clearly proved to the eyes of the Christian laity that the people might know what to shrink from or avoid: so that he that was called their bishop was himself tried by us, and betrayed the criminal views which he held in his mystic religion, as the record of our proceedings can show you."
Our search? This sounds like Calvin's religious police sneaking around theocratic Geneva looking for sin. In these times, the images of the Gestapo, the KGB, the Shah's secret police, agents of the Shar'ia Court or the Taliban's religious police come to mind. The constitutions of Christian princes are the edicts and decrees recorded in the Codes of Theodosius and Justinian. Here is the alliance of the church and the State with the State becoming a hand of the church and the church becoming a hand of the imperial court. Here is a world where religious dissent is a criminal view. Because of these edicts, the church was able to extend its coercive power beyond the church congregations into the public at large. Time and time again, we find letters of religious leaders asking Christian emperors to enact their canon as secular law. With the Manicheans it was this way. According to Leo, Manicheans in Rome were tried by secular judges under public laws and banished forever by them. It is because of the State adopting the canons laws of the church that these persecutions continued. So it is no surprise that in 445, at Pope Leo's bidding, Valentinian joined other Christian princes in decreeing Manicheans guilty of sacrilege. The decree prohibited them from living in the cities and forbade them from becoming lawyers and judges. And then the Pope sought to have them persecuted in the countryside. This is what we now call ethnic cleansing.
The Manicheans had fled to Rome, as did Nicene Christians, from the religious persecutions of the Vandal Kingdom of North Africa. Vandals were Arian Christians and they, like Nicenes, had no tolerance for other religions. Now they couldn't live there, either. It would appear that regardless of the Christian alliance with the government, whether Arian, Nicene, Nestorian, or Monophysite, Manicheans were persecuted. This is an important lesson about the intolerant nature of the Christian religion. No matter what sect was in power, the level of intolerance was very similar. No other religion was tolerated by any of the Christian sects and they were also just as violent towards each other. All of them justified their actions with scripture.
Valentinian was not the first to label disagreement as treason. Shown above, in 396 the Emperor Arcadius did it with paganism. In the same year, Valentian issued another decree on July 8, 445 that reinforced and insulated the power of the Papacy decreed in June. From Documents from the History of Christianity
"Certain it is that for us and our Empire the only defence is in the favour of the God of heaven; and to deserve it our first care is to support the Christian faith and its venerable religion."
"Inasmuch then as the primacy of the Apostolic See is assured by the merit of St. Peter, prince of the episcopate, by the rank of the City of Rome, and also by the authority of a sacred Synod, let not presumption endeavour to attempt anything contrary to that See."
"For then at length will the peace of the churches be everywhere maintained, if the whole body acknowledges its ruler."
"..but in order that not even the least disturbance may arise amongst the churches, or the discipline of religion appear in any instance to be weakened, we decree by this perpetual edict that it shall not be lawful for the bishops of Gaul or of the other provinces, contrary to the ancient custom, to do anything without the authority of the venerable Pope of the Eternal City; and whatsoever the authority of the Apostolic See has enacted, or may hereafter enact, shall be the law for all."
"So that, if any bishop summoned to trial before the Pope of Rome shall neglect to attend, he shall be compelled to appearance by the Governor of the Province, in all respects regard being had to what privileges our deified parents conferred on the Roman Church."
"Wherefore your illustrious and eminent Magnificence is to cause what is enacted above to be observed in virtue of this present edict and law, and a fine of ten pounds is at once to be levied on any judge who suffers our commands to be disobeyed."
Another translation can be read here from Paul Halsall's Internet Medieval Source Book. It is an excerpt from page 72 of J. H. Robinson's Readings in European History.
Valentinian flatly declared that the first care of the Empire is to support the Christian faith and its venerable religion. He then gives primacy to the Roman See's power, proclaiming its laws shall be the law for all. He then orders that the civil authorities do the Papacy's doctrinal policing if a member of the clergy refuses to show up in Rome when summoned. Valentinian strengthens the government support of Nicene Christianity, endows their religious courts with the final judicial say in many matters, and establishes the use of the civil authorities as religious police. The problem in Gaul was also heresy. Beyond the Alps, in Gaul, and down through Spain and into North Africa Arian heresy was a potent religious force with its splendid rich churches. Rome had lost North Africa to the Arianists, Gaul was threatened, and the Archimandrate Eutyches with his Monophysitism was gaining ground in the east.
Around 444, Eutyches begun the preaching of his one nature Christology. According to Philip Hughes', in the Chalcedon chapter of his The Church in Crisis: The History of the General Councils, complaints moved the emperor on February 16, 448 to issue "an edict which renewed all the laws enacted against the Nestorians, and a law against all books which did not conform to the faith of Nicaea, and Ephesus, and of Cyril's twelve anathemas." Banning books was Theodosius' solution. Ban them and burn them.
Dividing his time between the safety and softness of Fortress Ravenna and the responsibilities of Rome, the emperor Valentinian went on to become a weak and petty ruler. Although weak as a ruler, he was a very devout Nicene and strongly supported the Papacy while the western empire fell apart. During his rule, Rome withdrew from Britain and failed to stem the tide of the Burgundians, Franks and Attila's Huns. Barbarians chose Arian Christianity over Nicene Christianity. The Empire also lost Africa to the Arian Vandals, who like the Nicenes when in charge, plundered the churches of other Christians and took them over.
Not until the next century did an emperor try to reunite the empire by taking back North Africa and Sicily. Emperor Justinian succeeded for a time with the military might of his Magister Militum, Belisarius, but the war put the empire into debt. Justinian's crusades were very expensive for the empire. Belisarius recaptured parts of North Africa, Sicily and Italy and the two emptied the treasury just when the plague hit Constantinople in the Sixth century. Compounding his fiscal blundering and his religious agenda was his huge and costly church building projects. This was also a time when there were some earthquakes in the region and the Christian emperors still kept Roman tradition and saw it as its duty to provide relief to the victims of disasters. The court historian and author Procopius of Ceasarea provides what he claims are firsthand accounts of Justinian's long reign. He was also General Belisarius' personal biographer and assisted him on some of his military campaigns. One of his works is about Justinian's many expensive building projects which were mostly churches for the clergy. One work about the Court of Justinian and his wife Theodora was not released until he had died. He explains why in the preface: Justinian would have had him killed for releasing The Secret History. For more on Justinian see my article, The Times of Emperor Justinian
Without the authority of imperial decrees to enforce the Nicene Creed in century after century of doctrinal wars, it is plausible that Christianity would never have unified as a predominately Nicene belief. Afterall, it had already splintered a great deal by the time of Constantine and that is why he joined with the clergy and called for the Council of Nicea in 325. Left to themselves, people were not going to be herded into only Nicene pastures. It took the force of the State to make that happen.
Like the doctrinal controversies of the past, the Eutychian controversy would require the aid of imperial decrees and ratification for resolution. Without the alliance of church and state to enforce and prosecute all dissenters for nearly fifteen-hundred years of Nicene Roman, Byzantine and Protestant churches, the world could have possibly become a very different place with a very different religious and political history. The resolution of the Eutychian controversy with the General Council of Chalcedon and the imperial decrees that followed would be of the same species. The church leaders once again begged for and acquired the power of the State to force doctrinal compliance upon the population. As with other doctrinal battles in which the church employed the might of the State, it appears that doctrinal uniformity in the late 440s could be accomplished no other way but by force of law.
The main part of the story of these councils begins at a local one at Constantinople in late 448. Towards the end of the council, Eusebius of Doryleum brought charges of heresy against Eutyches, an elderly and very influential Archimandrate. Eutyches was about ninety years old, headed a monastery of about three hundred monks on the outskirts of Constantinople and was now becoming a problem for the Nicene clergy. These charges against Eutyches eventually lead to both the Robber Council in August of 449 and the General Council of Chalcedon in late 451. According to Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Series II, Volume XII, Eusebius was of a "reckless and intemperate" nature, and proceeded to declare Eutyches was a "blashpemer and madman". This petty ad hominem language towards those deemed religious opponents was not new in the rising Nicene Church. One is reminded of John Chrysostom's homilies which seen together are nothing short of a monument of childish ad hominems. It was Theodosius' father, Emperor Theodosius the Great and the western Emperor Gratian who issued an imperial edict that decreed all heretics were "demented and insane". In February, 380, Theodosius and Gratian had issued their decreed which legally sought to wipe out religious diversity and any religious liberty that remained. Recorded as Codex Theodosianus 16.1.2, and here is sourced from The Corpus Juris Civilis by S.P. Scott, A.M., 1932, Volume 12, p 9-12, 125 where you can read the rest of this historically important codification of religious intolerance.
"We order all those who follow this law to assume the name of Catholic Christians, and considering others as demented and insane, we order that they shall bear the infamy of heresy; and when the Divine vengeance which they merit has been appeased, they shall afterwards be punished in accordance with Our resentment, which we have acquired from the judgment of Heaven.
Not to be outdone in the religious flamefests of the times, in a short letter To the Bishops throughout Italy, Pope Leo also uses this kind of labeling to address dissenters. Manicheans are described with these terms: "craft of the devil, plague, pollute, dirt, contagion, pestilence, criminal views, pit of iniquity." In another letter To the Bishop of Aquileia, while addressing the heresy of Pelagianism, Leo uses the same kind of crude terminology calling their views "poisonous exhalations" and "evil beliefs." In his letter To Turribius, Bishop of Asturia, Upon the Errors of the Priscillianists, Leo uses words such as "disease, remnants of an ancient plague, filthy puddle, poison, dirt, blasphemous errors/secrets/fables," and "madness." Ridiculous as it seems, these people were the leaders of the world. Indeed, these same kind of people are now the Imams, Mullahs and Ayatollahs of today's radical Islam. The worst of the religious right has this temperament regardless of their religion. Christianity of late aniquity was no different than the wild men of today's Islam. They have the State to do their work because without the State, religion as a social force of law is generally left to itself to evolve. With the State's power, the evolution of religion can be halted permanently.
Although this local synod in Constantinople was called to take up other matters, Eusebius used it to accuse Eutuches. The two had been friends and allies with Cyril, who presided in prosecuting Nestorius at the General Council of Ephesus back in 431. After Eusebius' violent tirades at the council were quieted down by the more level headed, the council agreed to summon Eutyches. Eutyches did not show up until after the third summons and when he did he was accompanied by a large crowd of monks, soldiers and a high government official, the Patrician Florentius.
After the council, Eutyches claimed in his letter to Pope Leo,
"Their holinesses summoned me to reply to his accusation: but though I was delayed by a serious illness besides my advanced age, I came to clear myself, knowing well that a faction had been formed against my safety. And, indeed, together with a writ of appeal to which my signature was appended, I offered them a statement showing my confession upon the holy Faith. But when the holy Flavian did not receive the document, nor order it to be read, yet heard me in reply utter word for word that Faith which was put forth at Nicaea by the holy Synod, and confirmed at Ephesus, I was required to acknowledge two natures, and to anathematize those who denied this."
Patrician Florentius was an official of the empire and an ally of the emperor's most influential and powerful minister, the eunuch Chrysaphius. To make this situation even more complicated, Eutyches was Chrysaphius' godfather. To Eutyches, his old friend Eusebius who campaigned with him and Cyril against Nestorius was now a dangerous enemy. And by dangerous, I am speaking of the bodily harm that came to many due to their beliefs. What most don't realize is that many councils were not orderly senatorial events. They tended to be attended by the most zealous with violence breaking out on many occasions. Wild monks and the military were sometimes involved. If you have ever seen old men in some legislative bodies outside the USA on TV punching and kicking each other, you get an idea of the atmosphere that permeated some of these assemblies. Rigged from the start, Eutyches was condemned and deposed by this local council.
The powerful and influential Archimandrate Eutyches was not going down easy and appealed to both the Pope and the Emperor. In his letter to Pope Leo in 448, Eutyches complained regarding Eusebius.
"..the wicked devil has exercised his evil influence upon my zeal and determination, whereby his power ought to have been destroyed. Whereupon he has exerted all his proper power and aroused Eusebius, bishop of the town of Dorylaeum, against me, who presented an allegation to the holy bishop of the church in Constantinople, Flavian, and to certain others whom he found in the same city assembled on various matters of their own: in this he called me heretic, not raising any true accusation but contriving destruction for me and disturbance for the churches of God."
The devil made me do it! Then in the next section of the letter, Eutyches claims,
"..without listening to any thing which I said, they broke up the Synod and published the sentence of my degradation, which they were getting ready against me before the inquiry. So much slander were they factiously making up against me that even my safety would have been endangered had not the help of God at the intercession of your holiness quickly snatched me from the assault of military force."
"Yet nevertheless I stand in jeopardy of my life as a heretic. I beseech you not to be prejudiced against me by their insidious designs about me, but to pronounce the sentence which shall seem to you right upon the Faith, and in future not to allow any slander to be uttered against me by this faction, nor let one be expelled and banished from the number of the orthodox who has spent his seventy years of life in continence and all chastity, so that at the very end of life he should suffer shipwreck."
Here was the emerging radical Christian world of violence and persecution where one's doctrinal beliefs meant more than one's ethics, one's compassion, one's sense of justice or one's honesty. So you see, it was for good reason that Eutyches showed up with monks, a military escort of his own, and a high ranking government official. Under the influence of Eutyches, Chrysaphius, Florentius, and probably many others, Theodosius called for an examination of the acts of that council. Both the emperor and Patriarch Dioscorus of Alexandria then rejected the local council's judgement on Eutyches. Then on March 30th, the emperor called for a council to be at Ephesus over which Dioscorus of Alexander would preside. Pope Leo had received notification from Theodosius on May 5, 449 that a council was being called but Leo still felt a council was unnecessary. In his letter To Theodosius dated June 21, Leo wrote:
"Wherefore although every consideration prevents my attendance on the day which your piety has fixed for the councils of bishops : for there are no precedents for such a thing, and the needs of the times do not allow me to leave the city, especially as the point of Faith at issue is so clear, that it would have been more reasonable to abstain from proclaiming a synod: yet as far as the Lord vouchsafes to help me, I have bestowed my zeal upon obeying your clemency's commands, by appointing my brethren who are competent to act as the case requires in removing offences,.."
The point of Faith at issue is so clear? Evidently not. Also sent that day was a letter to Flavian in which Leo first protests but finally accepts the need for a council.
Pope Leo's solution for the Eutychian controversy after the local council of Constantinople was not another council but to have all the bishops accept what is known to us as The Tome of Leo, dated June 13, 449. This letter to Flavian was a major Nicene creedal statement that, in Leo's view, needed only to be subscribed to by all in order to clear up the matter. It was that simple to Leo. Circulated widely, more bishops signed on to it before the General Council in Chalcedon of late 451 than during it.
Another rigged synod from the start at the new council in Ephesus, Pope Leo's delegates were silenced by Dioscorus' soldiers while the emperor Theodosius forbade any of those who voted against Eutyches in 448 to vote in this council. More troops again. The Tome of Leo was brought by Flavian to be read at the council but Dioscorus prohibited that and had a prepared letter from Theodosius read instead. Eusebius was also silenced and kept surrounded in the nave, which is the central area of the church. Far from the doors of escape, it would appear.
As the Acts of the council against Eutyches were read, shouts of "One nature!, burn Eusebius!, cut him in two, the man who wants to divide Christ"and "away with Eusebius! Burn him!" filled the hall. Neither Flavian nor Eusebius were allowed to speak for themselves yet they were summarily condemned, ordered deposed and sentenced to banishment. This council had violent moments that included the use of the military. The secretaries of the Bishops were forcibly prevented from taking notes and many were beaten. It is said by some in that time that Flavian died from his injuries only 3 days later. There were one hundred thirty five votes to condemn, depose and banish the two while at the same time Eutyches was restored to his original position and authority.
After the results found their way across the empire, the Ephesian council's findings brought howls of protests from both east and west. The howls brought demands for a General Council and some kind of imperial remedy. Considered a rogue council, it has been called the Robber Council by Trinitarians ever since.
After the council, Leo received a letter from Theodoret,, Bishop of Cyrus, in which he reported,
"For when we expected a stilling of the waves through those who were sent to Ephesus from your holiness, we have fallen into yet worse storm. For the most righteous prelate of Alexandria [Dioscorus] was not satisfied with the illegal and most unrighteous deposition of the Lord's most holy and God-loving bishop of Constantinople, Flavian, nor was his wrath appeased by the slaughter of the other bishops likewise. But me, too, he murdered with his pen in my absence, without calling me to judgment, without passing judgment on me in person, without questioning me on what I hold about the Incarnation of our God and Saviour."
"He that sees all things knows how I have been stoned by the ill-famed heretics that have been sent against me, and what struggles I have had in many cities of the East against Greeks, Jews, and every heretical error. And after all these toils and troubles, I have been condemned without a hearing."
Leo then writes in Letter #59 To the Clergy and People of the City of Constantinople to begin applying some pressure upon Theodosius to correct the findings of the Robber Council. He tells them that in order to succeed, they must win the favor of the Christian princes. In it, he praises the people of Constantinople for their resistance to the errors of Eutyches and Dioscorus but more important was his strategy to influence the imperial court and use the machinery of the State to decide what religion is correct.
"And since, besides God's aid, you must win the favour of catholic Princes also, humbly and wisely make request that the most clement Emperor be pleased to grant our petition, wherein we have asked for a plenary synod to be convened; that by the aid of God's mercy the sound may be increased in courage, and the sick, if they consent to be treated, have the remedy applied."
Also sent at this time were letters to Pulcheria, who Chrysaphius had run out of the imperial court, asking for her to help to bring about a condemnation of Eutyches and to Theodosius to call a council in Italy. A few months later, in 450, after moving back to Rome, while at the Feast of the Chair of Saint Peter, Emperor Valentinian and his mother Galla Placidia met with Pope Leo to discuss the Eutychian controversy. Unfortunately for the Nicene orthodoxy, nothing would be done until after the death of Theodosius and the acclamation of Emperor Marcian. Theodosius and Chrysaphius had succesfully insulated Eutyches from further prosecutions for the time being. Theodosius looked the other way in this matter. It is a sure bet that Chrysaphius, the godson of Eutyches, played a large part in this matter.
Not looking the other way was the devout mother of Valentinian, Galla Placidia, who wrote Theodosius of the meeting with Pope Leo in Rome and asks for another council to take care of the controversy:
"When on our very arrival in the ancient city, we were engaged in paying our devotion to the most blessed Apostle Peter, at the martyr's very altar, the most reverend Bishop Leo waiting behind awhile after the service uttered laments over the catholic Faith."
"For no slight harm has arisen from those occurrences, whereby the standard of the catholic Faith so long guarded since the days of our most Divine father Constantine, who was the first in the palace to stand out as a Christian, has been recently disturbed by the assumption of one man, who in the synod held at Ephesus is alleged to have rather stirred up hatred and contention, intimidating by the presence of soldiers, Flavianus, the bishop of Constantinople, because he had sent an appeal to the Apostolic See, and to all the bishops of these parts by the hands of those who had been deputed to attend the Synod by the most reverend Bishop of Rome, who have been always wont so to attend, most sacred Lord and Son and adored King, in accordance with the provisions of the Nicene Synod."
"For this cause we pray your clemency to oppose such disturbances with the Truth, and to order the Faith of the catholic religion to be preserved without spot, in order that according to the standard and decision of the Apostolic See, which we likewise revere as pre-eminent, Flavian may remain altogether uninjured in his priestly office, and the matter be referred to the Synod of the Apostolic See, wherein assuredly he first adorned the primacy, who was deemed worthy to receive the keys of heaven: for it becomes us in all things to maintain the respect due to this great city, which is the mistress of all the earth; and this too we must most carefully provide that what in former times our house guarded seem not in our day to be infringed, and that by the present example schisms be not advanced either between the bishops or the most holy churches."
Later, in a letter to Theodosius on this matter, Leo drops that issue and once again petitions the emperor regarding the Eutychian controversy, writing,
"But if any dissent from the purity of our Faith and from the authority of the Fathers, the Synod which has met at Rome for that purpose joins with me in asking your clemency to permit a universal council within the limits of Italy; so that, if all those come together in one place who have fallen either through ignorance or through fear, measures may be taken to correct and cure them,..."
So confident was he of his strategy, Leo wrote Pulcheria to tell her he looked forward to the council in Italy (Letter #70). But things were about change dramaticly because soon after the above letter (#69) was sent to Theodosius on July 17, 450, Theodosius suddenly died due to a fall off a horse on July 28, 450. Some say it was a suspicious incident but who can ever know but those who were there? Because some saw Theodosius as a Eutychian Monophysite, right or wrong, foul play is entirely possible in the chaotic religious atmosphere of that time. Violence between Nicenes, Arians, Monophysites and other Christian interpretations was common because they all considered themselves protectors of Christian Truth and nothing should be allowed to stand in their way. We see the same kind of personalities in radical Islam. The key here is that all the different Christian sects had that same Biblically founded religious intolerance towards other beliefs. Throughout history, the clergy and their allies of the State, regardless of their dogma, has almost always attempted to force, by whatever means available, whether social, legislative, economic, judicial or by the military, their particular Christian view on others.
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