The Fall of the Roman Empire (24 page)

It remains to discuss the rifts between the Christian authorities and members of two other religions which they oppressed, religions that were neither pagan nor Christian: the Manichaeans and the Jews.

Manichaeanism is still today the faith of millions of ordinary people, if they only knew it. This forceful doctrine survived from the third to the fifteenth centuries, demanding from its adherents an absolute belief in the distinction between good and evil. Both were eternally co-existent, and therefore it upheld the widespread instinct that, since we cannot admit God's responsibility for the evil things of this world, they must have been created by some other agency. This dualism, known as Gnostic (from
gnosis,
knowledge), was reputed to go back to Simon Magus, who is denounced in the Acts of the Apostles. In the second century AD, dualist places of worship were set up over extensive areas of the Roman provinces, declaring that the creator of the world and its evil was not God but an Independent Maker (Demiurge).

But most of these sects eventually became merged in Manichaeanism, the creed Mani began to preach in c.240 in Mesopotamia. Identifying the eternal contrasts of good and evil with Light and Darkness, Mani established an elaborate, well-organized church, and his religious ambitions exceeded even the Empire-wide universalism of Constantine and his ecclesiastics, since he planned to found a spiritual community that would conquer the entire world. Within less than a century, his doctrines had spread throughout vast regions of the Roman world; and successive Imperial governments, first pagan and then Christian, treated this growth of Manichaeanism as a major threat.

Diocletian, who persecuted the Christians, introduced savage sanctions against the Manichaeans as well, apparently regarding them as potential instruments of Rome's Persian foes. Nevertheless, their devotees were now arriving in the capital itself, and before long they spread to southern Gaul and Spain. The Christian Emperors, who treated them as severely as their predecessors had, felt anxiety, in the words of the Theodosian Code, because the Manichaeans proselytized among 'persons of the lower classes'.

They must indeed have appeared to represent some quite special threat, since even the unbigoted Valentinian I felt unable to include them in his general programme of toleration, and sent out orders that their property should be confiscated. Yet this was the very time when the Manichaeans obtained their most distinguished convert, Augustine, whose nine years of adherence to their views left their distaste for the world permanently in his heart - but added zest, after he had left Manichaeanism, to his endeavours to convert to true Christianity all who had once strayed to false and heretical doctrines, as he himself had earlier done.

In 383 Gratian, Theodosius I and Valentinian II reinforced previous anti-Manichaean legislation in savage terms. And this sort of hostile attitude was soon the cause of a tragedy. For it resulted in the first Christian execution of a man for his religious views. The victim was Priscillian, a Hispano-Roman who had attracted a substantial spiritual following. Although he was elected bishop of Avela (Avila) in Spain, his extreme ascetic contempt for our sordid physical existence caused the hierarchy to suspect he was a Manichaean. In 384 therefore, with the approval of the usurper Magnus Maximus, he suffered condemnation by a church synod at Burdigala (Bordeaux), and in the following year, after being judged guilty of sorcery and immorality, he was executed.

The court that passed the death sentence was a secular one. Nevertheless, it was for his religious opinions that Priscillian was sentenced, and the precedent was deeply ominous. Disunity in the Empire had indeed reached a destructive height when the authorities, secular and ecclesiastical alike, could take the decision to kill someone for such a reason. St Martin of Tours objected strongly to the execution, declaring that church and state should each be content to occupy itself with its own affairs. Even Ambrose, who generally favoured rough treatment of heretics and schismatics, was appalled, and he and Pope Siricius excommunicated the men who had brought the fatal charges.

The persecution of the Manichaeans by Theodosius I drove them underground for a time, yet proved so ineffective, in the long run, that during the fifth century they still greatly prospered, especially in Spain and in Gaul. Pope Leo i (440-61) was alarmed to find Manichaean infiltrators in his own congregation; and another two harsh laws against them were published by Valentinian III shortly afterwards. No other sect was so severely attacked, or was rejected with such extravagant emphasis.

The Manichaeans, however, continued to live on in the East for many centuries. And in the West, too, dualism proved ineradicable, and Manichaeanism had many spiritual heirs under various different designations. A full eight hundred years after the fall of Rome, St Louis ix of France was misusing the name of 'Crusade' to try to suppress similar faiths all over again.

The Jews, too, received unfavourable treatment from the Christian rulers of West and East alike. It was now a matter of centuries since the First and Second Roman Wars or Jewish Revolts had ended in terrible failure and the suppression of the national homeland. Yet the millions of Jews of the Dispersion, throughout the Roman Empire and Persian Mesopotamia, survived and maintained their faith. In Israel itself, too, although the old Jerusalem had been obliterated and replaced by a Roman settlement, life revived among Jewish communities in other parts of the country, and these were soon granted Roman recognition once again, under their own autonomous Patriarchate and Council.

Relations with Rome flourished under the Patriarch Judah I ha-Nasi ('the Prince') (135-219), who is also traditionally regarded as the principal organiser of the Mishnah, that massive repository of Jewish tradition and belief. But then paganism ceased to be the official religion of the Empire. Why was it that Christianity, and not Judaism, took its place? They had so very much in common, including nine-tenths of their ethical background. But once again, like the pagan religions, Judaism could never win over the bulk of the population, because the world hankered after a saviour: and the Jews had no historical Messiah to offer.

Ever since the life and deeds of Jesus had first been recorded, relations between the two communities had been hostile. The Gospels contained much anti-Semitic material, designed to show to the Roman authorities that Christians had nothing to do with the First Jewish Revolt. On the Jewish side, the
Toledoth Yeshu
described Jesus as a sorcerer, the Son of Uncleanness.

Jews had feared the rise of Christianity as one of the ultimate plagues announcing the end of the world. And when it became the official church of the Empire, their situation duly worsened. They were attacked for having caused the death of Jesus: Bishop Severus of Antioch told his colleague at Beroea (Aleppo) that 'the whole community should be penalized for participating in that sin'. Yet it could also not be forgotten that Jesus himself had been a member of their race, and had fulfilled many of their prophecies, so that they were the witnesses, however involuntarily, to the glory of his mission.

That being so, there could be no question of suppressing the Jews by force, like pagans or Manichaeans or heretics. Nevertheless, their treatment by the Christian Emperors remained equivocal and grudging. Because they had prepared the way for Jesus and had given him human birth, they could not be forcibly stamped out. Yet since, on the other hand, they had repudiated and killed him, their lives ought to be made as miserable as possible. So the bishops demanded; and so the Emperors ordained. True, the Sabbath was legally tolerated, Jewish sacred property was declared inviolate, and rabbis enjoyed the privileges of the Christian clergy. But at the same time measure after measure was taken by Roman officialdom to lower the status of synagogues, to forbid conversions or reconversions to Judaism, to prevent intermarriage between the two communities, and to eliminate any conceivable defiance of Christian ecclesiastical domination.

Jewish hopes momentarily rose when Julian, in his attempt to depose Christianity, authorized the rebuilding of the Temple at Jerusalem, nearly three hundred years after its destruction following the First Revolt. But Julian died before his plans came to fruition. There was another comparatively favourable moment when Theodosius I endeavoured to treat the Jews with greater liberalism than he showed in the handling of pagans and heretics; and after his death his Eastern minister Eutropius maintained the same policy. Yet it was not long before the Jewish situation deteriorated again. In 415, the Patriarch Gamaliel vn was subjected to penal measures, and when he died four years later the office of the Patriarchate itself was soon abolished, and its finances annexed by the government. Then the Code of Theodosius n systematized all the numerous recent sanctions directed against the Jewish faith. Their constant references to its foul, abominable, outrageous, lethal, sacrilegious perversity makes gloomy reading.

No doubt the Imperial bark was somewhat worse than its bite, being intended to placate the more fanatical Christian clergy. But it was perilous that such clerics were continually inciting their congregations to hold similar views. Ambrose, for example, informed Theodosius I that the reason why the usurper Magnus Maximus had fallen was because he had impiously commanded the reconstruction of a synagogue which had been burnt down at Rome - and that was why Theodosius must cancel his order to reconstruct a similar building that had been destroyed in the East.

Augustine, too, no less than twenty times in his surviving writings, strikes the old sour balance once again, declaring these obstinate people 'witnesses of their own iniquity and the Christian truth'. The fifth-century Bishop Theodoret of Cyrrhus (Kurus in southern Turkey) complained that the Jews still felt superior to the Christians; and Jerome implausibly accused them of hoping to gain supreme political control. The poet Rutilius Namatianus, in a passage full of brutal contempt for Judaism, even declared that this had already happened, and that the conquered race had subdued its conquerors - 'their belief is a plague that creeps back again after it has been rooted out'. Sidonius, on the other hand, happens to have a good opinion of a Jew, Gozolas - 'he is a man whom I should like as a person, if I did not despise his religious faith'. Yet even that grudging word of appreciation, anticipatory of the notorious saying 'some of my best friends are Jews', was exceptional. On the whole, we have a mournfully divisive picture.

It has recently been asserted that the final split and separation between Christians and Jews 'is going to be seen by many scholars, both Christian and Jewish, as a greater disaster by far than any subsequent schism within the Christian church itself. If not a full union, then at least an alliance between the Christians and the very numerous Jews throughout the Empire could have provided a united front against which internal Christian disunities might have seemed less significant. It would thus have strengthened the declining Roman world: whereas the exact opposite occurred, and the bitter hostility between Christians and Jews became just one more of the many disharmonies which weakened the Western Empire's will to defend itself and thereby contributed to its collapse.

'It seems to me impossible to deny', concluded Arnaldo Momigliano, 'that the prosperity of the church was both a consequence and a cause of the decline of the state.' And what contributed above all to this decline was the application of religious coercion; for it achieved precisely the opposite of its unifying aims, powerfully accelerating the forces of disintegration and dissolution.

VI

THE UNDERMINING OF EFFORT

12

Complacency against Self-Help

We must now turn from official divisive actions to the ways of thinking that lay behind them. And it will be found that neither pagan nor Christian habits of thought helped the government very much in its unsuccessful struggle to ensure national survival.

For the pagans, on the whole, relied too complacently on the glories of the past, and the theologians preached doctrines that minimized the importance of serving the state. Each of these two philosophies in its turn, therefore, increased the massive national disunities by setting up its own characteristic attitude
against
the attitudes that were needed if the Empire was to be saved.

First, the pagans. Their ancient educational habits still flourished. Indeed their purveyance of the classical tradition kept the field to itself, since the Christians had no rival educational theory or practice to offer. And the teachers of the time adhered to the old pattern of the Seven Liberal Arts - Grammar, Rhetoric, Dialectic, Arithmetic, Geometry, Astronomy, and Music; though the last four were now scarcely taught.

Within the limited field required, academic merit was exceptionally well rewarded. But promotions were strictly controlled. Julian asserted the Emperor's right to revise professorial appointments made by local authorities. Salary grades were fixed by Gratian. An edict of 425 asserted the sole control of the state over

education, and penalized the opening of institutions of learning by unauthorized persons.

Rome was still the greatest of the state universities. Valentinian I took vigorous measures to keep its students in order. If freshmen came from outside the city, they must have permits from the governors of their provinces, declaring them to be fit and proper persons to attend the university. Details of their qualifications were requested, and they were expected to outline a proposed course of study, for which the approval of the city prefect was required. On reporting for work, they must communicate their addresses to the functionaries known as the Censuales, whose business it was to note these residences on their files.

It was also the duty of the Censuales to give warnings of the dangers of dissolute behaviour and excessive addiction to public shows; and students who were recalcitrant could be sent away or flogged. No doubt also, more boldly than their modern successors, the university authorities echoed the admonition of John Chrysostom, the bishop of Constantinople: 'Do not let your son's hair grow long - Nature disallows it, God has not sanctioned it, the thing is forbidden.'