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ARTICLE
NAVIGATION: You are presently looking at Part 17.1  How Christianity emerged as such a worldly force is an intriguing tale given all the persecution the early Christians were subjected to. Our excerpt today from Tom Lee's exploration of the origins of Christianity looks, in part, at the place where the Church first began to get official recognition as the religion of a state. No it wasn't from Rome but from Armenia.  Armenian Triumph and Roman Passion – Part 17.1 The extraordinary legacy from Armenia... When Diocletian came to power the Mediterranean world was still recognizably the world that had been bequeathed to his heirs by Augustus Caesar three centuries before: one vast unified Empire ruled from Rome. Diocletian realized that the Empire was too large to be governed by one man. The city of Rome's day as the capital was over. It took nine years to finalize the details of the division. It was not until 293 that the new system was fully operational. The first Augusti were Diocletian himself, based at Nicomedia, and his old friend and hatchet man Maximian at Milan. The Caesars were Constantius in Gaul and Britain, and Galerius on the Danube. All were Dalmatian provincials. On the edge of the Empire the state of Armenia, long a pawn in the power struggles between Rome and Persia, was beginning to assert itself against the Persians who were at that time weakened by civil disturbances within their own borders. In 286 the Armenians succeeded in driving out the last of the invaders who had controlled their fortunes for almost fifty years. Her native pagan religions and priests had been destroyed and replaced forcibly by Zoroastrianism. Being imposed, it was not a congenial faith to the mass of the population. An extraordinary Christian called Gregory (known as the Enlightener or Illuminator) stepped into the breach and filled the vacuum. Like many of the saints of this period his life has been seriously obscured with fabulous legend. He is supposed to have been the son of a Parthian who had murdered King Khosrov I of Armenia. The baby Gregory was taken to Caesarea in Cappadocia where he was baptized and brought up. He married there and had two sons before returning to Armenia where he succeeded in converting King Tiridates III to Christianity at about the same time as the victory over the Persians; this after fourteen years of incarceration in a pit, presumably at the hands of the Zoroastrians, who were opposed to his mission. Having been consecrated as a bishop at Caesarea, Gregory spent the remainder of his life preaching and organizing the church in Armenia. Tiridates III helpfully destroyed the Zoroastrian sanctuary at Ashtishat that had been built on a pagan foundation, and erected a church in its place. He decreed Christianity the official religion of his country, the first ruler in the world to do so. For liturgical purposes, the Armenians still observe the Julian calendar so that January 19 in our Gregorian calendar is for them both Christmas and Epiphany, the feast of the magi's fabled visit to the newborn Jesus. The origins and birth of Constantine...
Diocletian made use of dynastic marriages to cement the loyalty of his co-rulers. Galerius, originally a herdsman and considered by some a muscle-brained Vulcan, put aside his first wife and married Valeria, Diocletian's daughter, of whom he was evidently fond. Constantius, also of humble origins, but claiming noble connections and already adopted by Maximian, set aside his Christian concubine, Helena, to marry the stepdaughter of Maximian. The child of Constantius and Helena, the boy Constantine, was kept as a trainee in the traveling court of Diocletian, gaining a considerably better education than his father could normally have provided. He was also, possibly, a hostage for his father's continued loyalty. As such he'd have learnt to keep his own counsel, while mastering the usual courtier skills of sycophancy, deception and duplicity. As a child Constantine accompanied the emperor's party to suppress a rebellion in Egypt. Once he was old enough he became an officer in the bodyguard, first of Diocletian, possibly along with the legendary St. Sebastian, and then of Galerius. With the latter he fought against the Persians (297-8) and probably accompanied him to the conquered capital Ctesiphon in Mesopotamia. At first Diocletian showed no animosity to Christians. The Church profited, as did all other institutions, by the re-establishment of. public order. Stately churches arose. Christians came to high civil position; some were officials of the imperial courts. Then, after nearly twenty years, urged by Galerius, who had only hatred and contempt for Christians, mainly because of their pacifist beliefs, Diocletian consulted the oracle of Apollo at Miletus and determined upon repression. Repression from Diocletian... The pagan priests claimed that the presence of Christians hampered the effectiveness of their sacred rites. An edict in 303 commanded that Christian churches be destroyed, and the Christian scriptures burned. Sacred vessels were confiscated, all meetings for worship were forbidden, and Christian officials were removed from office and deprived of citizenship. A few months later a second edict ordered the arrest of the clergy. This latter was confined to the East, but the prisons couldn't accommodate so many and in the autumn an amnesty was granted on condition of sacrifice to the gods. In answer to the emperor's edict, a Christian rhetorician, Arnobius of Sicca Veneria (present day Le Kef, Tunisia) wrote a work in seven books Adversus Gentes, according to Jerome, but which is entitled Adversus Nationes in the only (9th century) manuscript that has survived. His work is hardly kosher by modern theological standards. Arnobius held the heathen gods to be real beings, but subordinate to the supreme Christian God, and in a streak of Gnosticism, affirmed that the human soul is not the work of God, but of an intermediate being, and is not immortal by nature, but capable of putting on immortality as a grace. He defended the rightness of monotheism and Christianity (deus princeps, deus summus) and the divinity of Christ, he believed proven by the rapid diffusion, the influence in civilizing barbarians and the consonance with the best philosophy. Christianizing Plato, he refuted pagan idolatry as filled with contradictions and openly immoral, demonstrating his point with curious information concerning the forms of idolatrous worship, temples, idols, and the Graeco-Roman cult practices of his time. Marcellinus succeeded Caius as bishop of Rome in June 296. We know little about him except that he was a Roman. He is said to have bowed to the new law and burned incense to the emperor; then he repented his apostasy and died a martyr during the general persecution of 304. There followed a four-year interregnum with no bishop of Rome. In Egypt, bishop Peter of Alexandria went into hiding. Some said he had fled the country. When the metropolitan of the Thebaid, bishop Melitius of Lycopolis, paid a visit and found that worship had been abandoned he was scandalized, and proceeded to ordain two priests to minister to the faithful. One is believed to have been Arius, of later fame, or infamy. Bishop Peter hastily returned and had Melitius arrested, but a Melitian schismatic church survived for many years. Arius soon left the Melitians and was reconciled with the orthodox church, becoming, at first, a trusted and popular presbyter in Alexandria. In 308 the persecution slackened long enough for the election in Rome of Marcellus as bishop. He is said to have tried to reorganize the parishes and their administration but was apparently denounced by a rebellious faction within the church, captured and condemned to work as a menial dung-shoveler in the stables of the imperial post horses. The ancient church of San Marcello is built over the Catabulum or stables of the imperial central post office. Diocletian retired from public life in 304, emerging again in 305 only to announce his abdication and permanent retirement to Split in Dalmatia, while Maximian stepped down at Milan and retired to Lucania in southern Italy. Constantius and Galerius were promoted to Augusti, and most people expected that Constantine would become one of the Caesars. But Galerius held the greater power and promoted Severus and his nephew Maximinus. The disappointed Constantine petitioned to be allowed to join his father in Gaul or Britain and eventually was granted permission to leave Galerius' court. Promoted to Emperor, Galerius' spite and anti-Christian fanaticism were unrestrained. Aided by his Caesar Maximinus, Galerius produced a minor blood-bath in his part of the empire. But the persecution did not strike everywhere with equal ferocity. In Gaul, Britain and Spain, Constantius destroyed some churches but no one was executed. When he died at York in July 305, his legions, mostly composed of Goths and Celts, proclaimed his son Constantine as emperor. Like his father, Constantine worshipped the Unconquered Sun, and emulated in his hairstyle and appearance the various images of Apollo, but his mother Helena and his half-sister Anastasia were Christians. Anastasia means resurrection.
Galerius was not pleased but accorded Constantine the title of Caesar, while promoting Severus to Augustan purple. But at Rome, Maxentius, the son of Maximian, insensible to pity, enforced the laws against the Christians, and was resentful at being passed over by the emperor. Cruel, capricious, ironic, with an assertiveness of will and fearless of the consequences, he rose in rebellion against Galerius. Constantine cautiously acknowledged Galerius, while Maximian, tired of pottering in his garden, returned from retirement to support his son. To bolster and stress their friendship Maximian gave his daughter Fausta in marriage to Constantine. Severus marched on Rome from Milan in 307, but was repulsed and fell back to Ravenna. Promised amnesty the gullible rebel surrendered to Maximian, but was subsequently executed by Maxentius who added Severus' army to his own. A few months later Galerius marched towards Rome, but hesitated, and then retreated. He tried to persuade Maximian to step down once more and asked Diocletian to return to the throne, but the old man, happy in his retirement, refused. In a desperate move Galerius appointed a former comrade in arms, Licinius, who had never served as Caesar to replace Severus, and offered to recognize both Constantine and Maxentius if they accepted the lesser title of son of the Augusti, which he also conferred on Maximinus. The miffed heirs-apparent acceded for a while then reneged and demanded and received recognition as Augusti. The empire was thus divided into five portions. Anthony — the founder of Christian monasticism... Meanwhile, in Egypt, in the strange quiet and the clear shining darkness of the desert night, age had moderated the vehemence of the demon's erotic onslaught on Anthony, and he felt able to face his fellow men. In 305, at the age of fifty-five, he began to accept disciples. A colony of them settled in huts and caves around his fort, and he spent several years teaching them and organizing them into a community. He even visited Alexandria a couple of times. Anthony is accepted as the founder of Christian monasticism. Gaunt and leather-faced, towards the end he retreated from mankind again and spent the remainder of his life as a solitary in the desert. Isolation enveloped him, and his austere lifestyle is said to have sustained him to the great age of 105. A synod of bishops at Elvira in Spain, in 305, ignoring the parlous state of politics, was obsessed with sex. Almost half the eighty-one canons of the council dealt with it. The strict sexual code bade bishops and other married clerics to abstain from their wives. Other canons dealt with premarital relations, divorce, abortion, adultery, and marriage with Jews and heretics. Canon fifty forbade Christians to eat with Jews, and canon sixty-seven declared: "It is forbidden for a woman, whether baptized or catechumen, to have anything to do with long-haired men or hairdressers." A hundred years earlier Clement of Alexandria had condemned beardless men with long hair as dangerously effeminate. Another curiously un-Christian clause forbade the clergy from giving the last rites to known pederasts.  ARTICLE
NAVIGATION: You are presently looking at Part 17.1 IMAGE CREDITS: The image of St Anthony the Great used in the footer quote, part of a painting by Hieronymus Bosch was sourced from Wikipedia. The headline image was sourced from a wonderful website of mosaics: www.classicalmosaics.com/ Clicking on the images in the body of the article will take you to the original source.
What are your thoughts on this commentary? You can contribute to the discussion in our forum. ©2009 Tom Lee (Star Concepts LLC) 15633 N. 17* Drive, Phoenix, AZ 85023-3409 |
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Doco 035: 25Jan12
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