Europe: A History (56 page)
Disturbances in the heart of the Empire inevitably weakened links with the periphery. In the fifth century, important peculiarities developed on the one hand in the ‘Celtic fringe’, and on the other hand in the Caucasus. The Celtic Church had adopted Christianity from Gaulish, anchorite monks. Its bishops were peripatetic hermits, and through the practice of single-handed consecration, extremely numerous. Ireland, which had never formed part of the Empire, was systematically evangelized by St Patrick (c.389–461), a Roman citizen from western Britain who landed in Ulster in 432. In this way Ireland had been secured for Christianity before the blanket of Anglo-Saxon heathenism fell over the rest of the British Isles. The Irish would repay their debt, [
BRITO
]
ZEUS
T
HE
statue of Zeus was transported to Constantinople from the shrine at Olympia following the last Olympiad in
AD
396. By then it was over eight centuries old, and had been long established as one of the ‘wonders of the world’. Completed c.432
BC
by the exiled Athenian Pheidias, whose statue of Athena graced the Parthenon, it consisted of a gigantic ivory figure, wreathed and enthroned, some 13 metres high. Plated in part with solid gold, it portrayed the Father of the Gods holding a statuette of Winged Victory in his right hand and an inlaid, eagle-topped sceptre in his left. It had been described in detail both by Pausanias and by Strabo, who said that if the God moved, his head would go through the roof. Suetonius reports that when the Emperor Caligula’s workmen had tried to remove it in the first century
AD,
‘the God cackled so loudly’ that the scaffolding collapsed and the workmen fled. So it stayed in situ for three more centuries. When it was finally consumed by the flames of an accidental fire in 462, in the capital of the Christian Emperor, Leo I, Olympia was already deserted. In 1958 German archaeologists excavating the temple workshops at Olympia found a terracotta cup inscribed with the graffito ‘I BELONGED TO PHEIDIAS’.
1
BRITO
P
ELAGIUS
(
c
.360–420) was a Welshman, or at least a Celt from the British Isles (‘Pelagius’ was once thought to be a Graeco-Roman caique of his name, Morgan). His friends called him ‘Brito’. He was a Christian theologian, and one of the few from Western Europe who participated in the leading doctrinal debates of his day. He lived at a time when orthodox doctrine, as formulated by the Greeks, was beginning to crystallize. Though his views were deemed heretical, he was none the less a vital contributor. He was a contemporary of St Augustine of Hippo, whom he provoked into formulating what became the definitive statements on such central issues as Divine Grace, The Fall of Man, Original Sin, Free Will, and Predestination. Together with another Briton, Celestius, whom he met in Rome, he laid emphasis on man’s capacity for virtuous action through the exercise of will, in other words, on responsible conduct. His central concept, known as ‘the power of contrary choice’, is contained in the formula
Si necessitatis est, peccatum non est; si voluntatis, vitiari potest
(If there be need, there is no sin; but if the will is there, then sinning is possible). He also held that the first step towards salvation must be made by an act of will.
These views were rejected partly because they were thought to minimize God’s grace and partly because they attributed sin to individual failings rather than to human nature. The label of Pelagianism is generally attached to theological standpoints which deny or limit Original Sin. They figured strongly in the seventeenth-century debates surrounding Arminius and Jansen. (See pp. 492, 502.)
In 410, having fled the Gothic siege of Rome, Pelagius and Celestius took refuge in North Africa, where further doctrinal charges were laid against them. One of the Councils of Carthage condemned six cardinal errors:
That Adam would have died even if he had not sinned.
That Adam injured himself alone, not the human race.
That new-born children, like Adam at birth, are without sin.
That the human race does not die through Adam’s death or sin.
That the law, as well as the gospel, gives entrance to Heaven.
That there were men without sin even before Christ’s coming.
Pelagius sailed for Palestine, only to find that Augustine’s
De peccato-rum meritis
(On the Merits of Sinners) had singled him out for attack. He survived one inquisition; but he was lost when the sympathies of Pope Zosimus were won over by the African bishops. In an edict of 30 April 418 the Emperor Honorius condemned him to confiscation and banishment. The Venerable Bede showed no sympathy for his ‘noxious and abominable teaching’:
Against the great Augustine see him crawl,
This wretched scribbler with his pen of gall!
1
A movement to reconcile Pelagius with Augustine developed round the works of Bishop Honoratus of Aries (c.350–429). It held that Divine Grace and Human Will are coefficient factors in salvation. This ‘semi-Pelagianism’ was condemned at the Council of Orange (529). But its home, at the monastery of St Honorat on the Isle de Lerins off the Côte d’Azur, did not close. St Vincent of Lerins (d. 450) invented the famous ‘Vincentian Canon’ whereby all theological propositions can be tested against the threefold criteria of ecumenicity, antiquity, and consent. The monks of Lerins published the definitive edition of St Hilary’s
Life of Honoratus
in 1977.
2
The Armenian Church came into being when the province still belonged to the Empire. Like its Celtic counterpart, it lost all direct contact with the centre and became eccentric in all senses of the word. When the Celts were turning to Pelagianism, the Armenians were turning to Monophysitism. Christianity had reached Georgia in 330, when the ruling house was converted by a Cappadocian slave-girl. Being one step removed from Armenia, it was less exposed to Asian politics and maintained closer links with Constantinople. (The Georgian Church had a separate and continuous history until forcibly incorporated into Russian Orthodoxy in 1811.) In 431 a third General Council was held at Ephesus, thereby creating a series. The seven General Councils recognized as binding by both East and West were Nicaea I (325), Constantinople I (381), Ephesus (431), Chalcedon (451), Constantinople II (553), Constantinople HI (680–1), Nicaea II (787). The Council of Ephesus condemned the Nestorian heresy. Gibbon called it an ‘ecclesiastical riot’. Like its predecessors and successors, it was convened by the Emperor in Constantinople, who claimed the highest authority in Church affairs. It was entirely dominated by bishops from the East. The bishops in the West accepted the decisions, but with growing reluctance.
Doctrinal divergences persisted over the seemingly incurable habit of christological hairsplitting: over Christ’s nature, over Christ’s will, over Christ’s role in the genesis of the Holy Ghost. Does Christ have one single nature, that is, divine, or a dual nature both human
and
divine? The Orthodox leaders supported Diophysitism, and in the Definition of Chalcedon (451) affirmed the formula of One Person in Two Natures, ‘unconfusedly, unchangeably, indivisibly, and inseparably’ united. The Monophysites were condemned; but they continued to flourish in the East. The empress Theodora was a Monophysite, and so were the majority of Christians in Armenia, Syria, and Egypt. Does Christ have one will or two? Pope Honorius carelessly used the phrase ‘one will’ in a letter to Constantinople in 634. But the Orthodox leaders supported Diothelitism, which
they affirmed at the sixth General Council in 681. The Monothelites were condemned, and the delegates of Pope Agatho acquiesced in the Council’s ruling. Within the Trinity of Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, does the Holy Ghost proceed from the Father, as the sole fount of divinity, and hence
through the Son
, or does it proceed jointly, from Father
and Son
together? Constantinople held to
per filium
(through the Son); Rome held to
filioque
(and the Son). The matter first surfaced in 589 in Spain, and by the ninth century was causing major ruptures. It has never been resolved.
The attraction of monasticism grew in proportion to political and social disorder. Eastern practices, both anchorite and communal, spread to the West. The earliest communal monasteries preceded the fall of the Western Empire. St Martin founded Ligugé in 360. But the greatest influence was that of Benedict of Nursia (c.480–550), who formulated the most widely adopted of all monastic rules. As imperial authority shrank, especially in the former Western provinces, the monasteries increasingly served as oases of classical learning in the barbarian desert. The conjunction of Christian teaching with an appreciation of Greek philosophy and the Latin authors had long been accepted in the East, especially in Alexandria; but in the West it had to be cultivated. The central figure in this regard was Flavius Magnus Aurelius Senator (c.485–580), known as Cassiodorus, sometime governor of Italy under Theodoric the Ostrogoth. Retiring to a monastery after the arrival of Belisarius, he advocated a system of education where sacred and profane subjects were seen as complementary; and he started the collection of ancient documents. It was none too soon, [
ANNO DOMINI
] [
BAUME
]
In the seventh century the shock of Islam changed the contours of the Christian world for ever. It ended the cultural unity of the Mediterranean lands and broke the dominance which they had always exercised over the northern outposts. By overrunning Persia, Syria, and Egypt, it determined that three of the five recognized Patriarchs—in Antioch, Jerusalem, and Alexandria—would be forced to operate
in partibus infidelium
. The politics of the Christian Church was reduced from a healthy five-sided arena to a bitter two-sided contest between the Greek Patriarch in Constantinople and the Latin Patriarch in Rome. Before Islam, the Patriarch of Rome spoke with one Latin voice against four Greeks; after Islam, it was one to one. And the Roman Church enjoyed a greater margin for manoeuvre. Moreover, the threatening quarrel with the Monophysites in the East was not resolved. The new Muslim rulers proved more tolerant of heresy than Orthodox Christians had been. So the Monophysite Armenian, Syrian, and Coptic Churches were never recalled to the fold.
Most importantly, perhaps, Islam cut Christianity off from the rest of the world. Before Islam, the Christian Gospels had reached both Ceylon and Abyssinia; after Islam, they were effectively excluded for centuries from further expansion into Asia or Africa. Most Christians never saw a Muslim during their lifetime; but all of them lived in Islam’s shade. Islam, in fact, provided the solid, external shield within which Christendom could consolidate and be defined. In this sense, it provided the single greatest stimulus to what was eventually called ‘Europe’.
ANNO DOMINI
F
OR
six centuries after the birth of Christ, very few people were conscious of living in ‘the Christian Era’. Indeed, the basic chronology of history since ‘Christ walked in Galilee’ was not established before the work of Dionysius Exiguus, a Greek-speaking monk from Scythia Minor and friend of Cassiodorus who died in Rome c.550. It was the idea of Dionysius that the counting of years should be based on Christ’s Incarnation and that it should begin on the Day of the Annunciation, when the Virgin Mary had conceived. He fixed this date, Day One of Year One, at 25 March, nine months before the birth of Christ on 25 December. All previous years, counted in receding order, were to be designated
ante Christum
(AC), or ‘Before Christ’ (BC). All subsequent years were to be ‘Years since the Incarnation’, or
Anni Domini
, ‘Years of Our Lord’
(AD).
There was no Zero Year.
1
Many more centuries elapsed before the Christian Era, or Common Era, gradually came into use, first in the Latin Church, later in the East. The Venerable Bede (673–735), who was the author of a book on chronology,
De Temporibus
, had fully accepted the new system when he wrote his
History of the English Church and People
in the early eighth century.
In the mean time, all sorts of local chronologies prevailed. The most usual system was that of regnal years. Historical time was measured by reigns and generations. Dates were determined by their point in the reign of a particular emperor, pope, or prince. The model was in the Old Testament: ‘And it came to pass in the fourth year of King Hezekiah, which was the seventh year of Hoshea, son of Elah king of Israel, that Shalmaneser king of Assyria came up against Samaria and besieged it…’
The Christian Era had to compete with numerous rival chronological systems. The table of Greek Olympiads, the four-year cycles between Olympic Games, which began with the Olympiad of Coroebus on 1 July 776 BC, was continued until the end of the fourth century
AD.
The Babylonian Era of Nabonassar, which was used by the Greeks of Alexandria, was known in medieval times from the works of Ptolemy. Its starting-point was equivalent to Wednesday, 26 February 747 BC. The Macedonian Era of the Seleucids, which began with occupation of Babylon by Seleucus Nicator in 312 BC, was widely used in the Levant. Known to the Jews as ‘the era of contracts’, it was used by them until the fifteenth century. The Roman Era was based on the passage of years since ‘the Foundation of the City’ [
AUC
.
] In Spain, the Era of the Caesars can be traced to the conquest of Iberia by Octavian in 39 BC. Adopted by the Visigoths, it remained in force in Catalonia till 1180, in Castile until 1382, in Portugal until 1415. The Muslim Era of Hegira, which marks the flight of the Prophet from Mecca, corresponds to Friday, 16 July
AD
622. It remains in force throughout the Muslim world.
Not surprisingly, given the complications, the calculation of the birth of Christ by Dionysius Exiguus has since turned out to be faulty. Dionysius equated Year One with Olympic Era 195 (1), with 754
AUC,
and, mistakenly, with ‘the Consulship of C. Caesar, son of Augustus, and L. Aemilius Paullus, son of Paullus’. In reality, there is nothing to show that Christ was actually born in
AD
1. According to whether one follows St Luke or St Matthew, the Christian Era began either in the last year of Herod the Great (4
BC
) or in the year of the first Roman census in Judaea
(AD
6–7).
For Christians as for Jews, the prime historical date was the Year of Creation, or
Annus Mundi
. The Byzantine Church fixed it at 5509 BC, which remained the basis of the ecclesiastical calendar in parts of the Orthodox world, in Greece and in Russia, until modern times. Jewish scholars preferred 3760 BC—the starting-point of the modern Jewish calendar. The Coptic Church, like the Alexandrians, fixed on 5500 BC. The Church of England, under Archbishop Ussher in 1650, picked 4004 BC.
The critical comparison and harmonization of oriental, classical, and Christian chronologies awaited the great Renaissance scholar Joseph Scaliger (1540–1609). Scaliger’s
De Emendatione Temporum
(The Reform of Dates, 1583), written with Protestant interests in mind, coincided with the reform of the Julian calendar by Pope Gregory XIII. It marks the beginning of chronological science, and of modern concerns about the standard measurement of historical time.
2
The Gregorian Calendar, however, known as ‘New Style’ (NS) and introduced into the Catholic countries of Europe in 1585, was not universally accepted. Most Protestant or Orthodox countries stayed with the Julian ‘Old Style’. They adopted the New Style as the spirit moved them: Scotland in 1700, England in 1752, Russia in 1918. So long as the two calendars co-existed, all international correspondence had to be conducted with reference to both. Letters had to carry the two versions of the date— ‘1/12 March 1734’ or ‘24 October/7 November 1917’.
As a result, numerous curiosities prevailed. Since the discrepancy between the calendars amounted in the seventeenth century to ten or eleven days, it was possible to sail across the English Channel from Dover and arrive in Calais in the middle of the following month. Similarly, since the Old Style year began on 25 March and the New Style year on 1 January, it was possible to leave Calais in one year and to reach Dover in the previous year. Europe did not work in full synchrony until the Bolshevik government abandoned the Old Style. Nothing happened in Russia between 31 January 1918 (OS) and 14 February (NS). From 1918 to 1940, the Soviet communists imitated the French revolutionaries by abolishing the seven–day week, replacing the names of days with numbers, and counting the ‘Years of the Revolution’ from 1917.
3
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[VENDéMIAIRE
]
