Drake - Intolerance, Religious Violence, and Political Legitimacy in Late Antiquity

Intolerance, Religious Violence, and Political Legitimacy in Late Antiquity
Author(s): H.A. Drake

Source: Journal of the American Academy of Religion , MARCH 2011, Vol. 79, No. 1
(MARCH 2011), pp. 193-235
Published by: Oxford University Press
Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/23020391
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Intolerance, Religious Violence,
and Political Legitimacy
in Late Antiquity
H.A. Drake*
This article proposes an alternative way to think about the violence

that swept the Roman Empire in the wake of Constantine's conversion
to Christianity. Traditionally seen as the inevitable result of Christian
intolerance, recent experience suggests that this violence can be better
understood by casting a broader net and including political as well as
theological issues. The result shows this violence to be the by-product
of a struggle between emperors and bishops to control access to the
divine. In an age of widespread belief in the active intervention of
deity in human affairs, this "religious" prerogative was fraught with
profound "secular" implications that make our distinction between
"Church" and "State" meaningless. Martyrs play an important role in
this process, but it is a symbolic one. Bishops use martyrs to control
emperors. But, as a famous confrontation between Ambrose of Milan
and the emperor Theodosius shows, bishops also relied on their new
role as patrons of a large and volatile constituency. Their efforts were
abetted by significant rethinking of the meaning of martyrdom and
persecution that followed Julian the Apostate's ill-starred efforts to rein
in Christianity without producing martyrs.
*H.A. Drake, Department of History, University of California, Santa Barbara, CA 93106-9410,

USA. E-mail: drake@history.ucsb.edu. Earlier versions of this paper were read at Hollins, Duke,
and West Georgia State universities. The list of friends and auditors who made substantial
suggestions for improvement is long, but I would be remiss not to thank Thomas Sizgorich,
Christine Luckritz Marquis, Joe Leedom, and my colleagues in the University of California Multi
campus Research Group in Late Antiquity. I owe a special debt to the referees of this journal for
their splendid and insightful criticism.
Journal of the American Academy of Religion, March 2011, Vol. 79, No. 1, pp. 193-235
doi:10.1093/jaarel/lfq064
Advance Access publication on October 25, 2010
©
© The
The Author
Author2010.
2010. Published by Oxford University Press, on behalf of the American Academy of
Religion. All rights reserved. For permissions, please e-mail: journals.permissions@oup.com

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194 Journal of the American Academy of Religion
AN ICONIC MOMENT IN THE history of Christianity in the West

occurred in 390 CE, when bishop Ambrose of Milan threatened to deny
communion to the emperor Theodosius I until he did penance for a
horrible slaughter of civilians in Thessalonika. Although not as dra
matic at the time as it became in subsequent retellings, the incident set
a precedent for episcopal control over the exercise of imperial authority,
and its impact on the Western imagination can still be gauged by the
artistic renderings of Peter Paul Rubens and his talented pupil, Anton
Van Dyck, more than a millennium later.1 Equally well known but less
celebrated is a confrontation between this same emperor and bishop
that took place a bare two years earlier. In 388, an angry mob in the
Syrian town of Callinicum, an important entrepot on Rome's frontier
with Persia, prodded by their bishop, destroyed the town's synagogue.
When the emperor, who was residing in Milan at the time, received the
report from his provincial governor, he ordered the offending bishop to
pay the cost of rebuilding, a decision Ambrose deemed unacceptable.
First in a scolding letter, then at Sunday mass, he challenged the
emperor to rescind the order and exonerate the bishop, winning on
both counts.2
Taken together, these two incidents have long served to illustrate the
growing independence and power of the Church, as Christians flexed
the new muscle they gained through the conversion of the first
Christian emperor, Constantine the Great (r. 306-337). But where
Thessalonika stands for the moral uplift of the new Christian empire
'Rubens' life-sized depiction of Ambrose barring the emperor's entry to the Milan cathedral
hangs in the Kunsthistorische Museum in Vienna. Van Dyck's more modestly sized rendition, with
small but significant changes, is on view in London's National Gallery. This dramatized version of
the event first appears in the Church History of Theodoret, written in Syria in the mid-fifth
century. In contrast to the way later ages read this story, at the time Ambrose was far more discreet
in his negotiations with the emperor, and the best modern study concludes that the bishop's
suggestion that the emperor do penance actually worked to Theodosius's advantage. See McLynn
(1994: 315-330). See also Kolb (1980). For discussion and comparison of the paintings, Wheelock
et al. (1990), esp. 17-25, 100-102. The letter Ambrose wrote to Theodosius on this occasion was
not included in the ten books of correspondence published after his death, but was passed down
independently. It is edited by Zelzer (1982). Ambrose only alludes to the incident in the Funeral
Oration he delivered on the death of Theodosius in 395 (de obit. Theo. 13-14, 27-28); his deacon,
Paulinus, places greater emphasis on the bishop's role in the Life he wrote at the request of
Augustine of Hippo: vit. Ambr. 24., trans. Ramsey (1997: 205f).
2The best modern study is McLynn (1994); on Callinicum, see pp. 298-315. For Ambrose's
version of events, see Ep. Extra coll. 1 (41), ed. Zelzer (1982). There are important differences
between this letter and the one that was published as part of his collected letters, but these do not
affect any of the passages used here. For discussion, comparison and new translation, see
Liebeschuetz and Hill (2005: 27-28, 95-123). Unless otherwise noted, all translations of this letter
are from this version.

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Drake: Intolerance, Religious Violence, and Political Legitimacy 195
taking shape in the aftermath of that reign, Callinicum encapsulates a

darker legacy with which Western historians still struggle—a legacy of
the violence with which Christian zealots, abetted by the ecclesial hier
archy, ruthlessly suppressed the traditional religions of the classical
world, while imperial officials frequently condoned or winked at, and
sometimes actively fomented, the violence.3
For historians of late Rome or early Christianity, a single word long
sufficed to explain this dark turn: intolerance. An argument tracing
back to Edward Gibbon's magisterial Decline and Fall of the Roman
Empire holds that Christians, being monotheists, simply could not
emulate the easy acceptance of other deities that characterizes a polythe
ist system. Hence, as soon as Constantine put into their hands the
means to do so, Christians were bound to suppress alternative paths to
divine truth.4 The imprint of Gibbon's argument may be traced
through the scholarship of the subsequent two centuries; it shows itself
in the once-prevalent master narrative of a "life-and-death" conflict
between Christians and pagans, and a long argument over the "sincer
ity" of Constantine's own conversion, the test of that sincerity being the
degree to which he was or was not willing to suppress non-Christians.5
Intolerance surely played a part in these developments, but closer
investigation has raised questions that this model of tolerant pagans
and intolerant Christians cannot answer. Why, for instance, did
3Symmachus, in a plea for restoration of the Altar of Victory to the Senate house (a move also
opposed by Ambrose), argued that Uno itinere non potest perveniri ad tam grande secretum.
Symmachus, Relatio 111.10, ed. Klein (1972: 104-106). On such exchanges, see Ando (1996). For
Gibbon's position, see next note. For a lucid restatement, see Rives (2005). Galeotti (2002) is an
excellent recent discussion of the principle of toleration; see esp. pp. 20-52. For a nuanced
approach, see Kahlos (2009: 23).
4Gibbon (1909-14, II: 3) placed "intolerant zeal" at the top of his famous list of five reasons for
the success of Christianity. The four other factors were: "the doctrine of a future life," the
"miraculous powers ascribed to the primitive church," Christian morality, and the "union and
discipline of the Christian republic, which gradually formed an independent and increasing state in
the heart of the Roman empire." For Gibbon's intellectual milieu, see Pocock (1999).
5For examples of studies written in the conflict model, see the essays in Momigliano (1963).
MacMullen (1997) places heavy stress on Christian intolerance. O'Donnell (1977) offers definitions
of "pagan" and "Christian" that virtually equate with "tolerant" and "intolerant." Brown (1961) was
pivotal in suggesting that conflict alone could not explain the conversion of the Roman aristocracy,
on which see now Salzman (2002). For Constantine, Burckhardt (1880), trans. Hadas (1949),
though widely discredited for its picture of an emperor whose only concern was power, is still in
print. Baynes (1929) argued for a genuine conversion. Like Burckhardt, Baynes used repression of
other religions as his touchstone of sincerity, concluding that only political considerations stayed
Constantine's hand: "As the years passed, toleration of paganism gave place to active repression"
(357; 2 ed., 19). More recently, Barnes (1981) sees Constantine pursuing a vigorous program to
suppress paganism that included a (lost) law banning sacrifice. In Barnes (1986: 50), he wrote
(with unintended irony), "The law prohibiting pagan sacrifice is the lynch-pin of the thesis that
Constantine carried through a religious Reformation."

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"tolerant" pagans in earlier centuries persecute "intolerant" Christians?

More importantly, why did Christians in Late Antiquity abandon their
hitherto unshakeable faith in the proposition that true belief could not
be coerced? To the latter question, a common answer is that the change
merely shows that Christians never really believed what they had been
saying for three centuries.6 But long after Constantine, Christians con
tinued to worry about the wisdom of coerced faith7 and, as this article
will show, to resist aggressive actions. The intolerance argument is not
so much wrong as incomplete. As a theological explanation, it is mono
chromatic; to understand why polytheists as well as monotheists perse
cute, entire religious systems need to be compared, not simply the
number of gods. More importantly, because it is a theological argument
it ignores the dynamics that the social sciences have helped us to trace
in all groups and organizations. The result is a certain circularity: intol
erance explains the religious violence of Late Antiquity, while the vio
lence in turn proves the intolerance.
It is more accurate, and ultimately more rewarding, to recognize
that in Christianity, as in every organization, there are "hawks" and
"doves." To explain how the one prevails over the other calls for politi
cal and social, not theological, tools. In the case of post-Constantinian
Christianity, this requires a close look at a worldview shared by
Christians and those adherents to traditional religions that, for conven
ience, I will label "pagans."8 Both groups shared a belief in the active
6See, e.g., Shafer (2004: 242), "Given the violent elements of Christian eschatology, the cult of
martyrs, and the merely expedient nature of early Christian nonviolence, it should come as no
surprise that when the Christians gained control of the Roman government, they used violence
against their enemies and each other." Cf. Kahlos (2009: 23), "It is important not to read second
and third-century appeals anachronistically as declarations of universal freedom of religion and
toleration. Instead, it seems that Christian apologists ... were interested only in securing the rights
of their own group." Although dealing with the early modern period, Pettegree (1996: 198)
concluded that toleation was "ever a loser's creed."
7In the life of the early fifth-century bishop Porphyry of Gaza, attributed to Mark the Deacon,
there is a revealing confrontation between the bishop and his own parishioners, who objected to
the violence by which Porphyry made converts: "But some of the believers also said unto the holy
bishop that it behoved him to receive not those who came out of fear, but those whose purpose
was good" Hill (1913: 72). As an anecdote illustrative of Christian sentiment, this passage would
not be affected by arguments that the Life was actually written a century later, on which see
MacMullen (1997: 174 and note 68).
Christians started to use the term "pagan" as a pejorative for non-believers in Late Antiquity,
but although they are aware of this bias, scholars have so far failed to come up with a more neutral
substitute without resort to awkward circumlocutions, such as "people of the place," Chuvin (1990:
9). Fowden (1991: 119, note 1), proposed "polytheists," but this term ignores the presence of
influential pagan monotheists and thus adheres to an even more skewed Christian view. See
Athanassiadi and Frede (1999). In Drake (1976: 53-57), I point out how Eusebius of Caesarea can
confuse modern readers by equating "monotheism" with Christianity and "polytheism" with non
Christians.

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intervention of deity in human affairs that made it harder than it is

today to separate "religious" from "secular" functions.
Comparative study is also useful, and Rome's great neighbor and
adversary, Persia, provides one. The Mazdaean faith that was the official
religion of Persia's shahs was not monotheistic but dualistic, positing a
cosmic struggle between the god of light, Ahura Mazda, who was wor
shipped in temples that preserved his sacred fire, and his evil adversary,
Ahriman, each of whom led a supporting cast of lesser deities.
Nevertheless, Persian shahs frequently persecuted religious minorities.
I will conclude with a brief look at one such instance, a persecution
launched by the shah Yazdgard I in 415, that can be fruitfully compared
with the Ambrose-Theodosius encounter with which this study began.
VIOLENCE AND INTOLERANCE
When scholars decry religious intolerance, more often than

what really is at issue is the violence that intolerance seemingly
duces. Unhappy events of our own time have only served to intens
this concern (Bellinger 2004). But if there is one thing the outburs
religious violence in our day has taught us, it is the peril of using
gion alone to explain such situations. Acts performed in the name
religion by definition have a religious component; but is religion it
the cause, or a means of expressing other grievances? However
answer this question, most scholars would agree that only lookin
one component creates the potential for serious misdiagnosis. For t
reasons, scholars of antiquity have increasingly turned to theories
identity formation and boundary maintenance to understand
violent episodes.9 Using newer strategies, they have uncovered com
assumptions driving seemingly antagonistic groups (Levinson 2
Limberis 2000; Frakes and Digeser 2006; Salzman 2006; Sandwell
Sizgorich 2007), and the role of rhetoric and polemic (Davis 20
Shaw 2006; Kahlos 2009; Stroumsa 2009: 98), and have even cas
their traditional reticence about intruding on later fields of study
identify common components shared by ancient and modern vi
acts (Castelli 2004; Shaw 2009).
9Hahn (2004) concluded from a fresh review of the primary evidence for religious violen
four Late Antique cities that religious considerations alone cannot explain such conflicts
succinct introduction to the issue of identity formation and boundary maintenance,
seminal essays by Barth (1969, 2000). See also the discussion of boundaries in Beard et al.
1:211-244), and the introductory remarks of Frilingos (2009). For examples of studies tha
beyond theology, see Frankfurter (2000), where generational differences are foregrounded; In
(1996) I call attention to the role of social and demographic instability.

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But there is more that historians of antiquity can contribute. As the

editors of JAAR have recently pointed out, significant differences
between the ancient and modern world-views also need to be taken
into account (JAAR 2009: 823). And in a recent AHR Conversation on
religious violence, Stephen Ellis wrote: "even if we were to identify a
violent struggle as being motivated largely by religious ideology, we still
need to ask basic questions about why the struggle turns violent at a
particular time and place" (Benedict et al. 2007: 1448). A number of
recent and important studies have addressed these criteria, looking at a
more aggressive concept of martyrdom that developed in the fourth
century (Gaddis 2005; Grig 2005), and an environment conducive to
religious extremism in general in Late Antiquity (JAAR 2009).
The present study is an attempt to further this work by identifying
circumstances that can lead authorities to condone acts of religious vio
lence. Although I look at some violent episodes that accompanied the
creation of a Christian empire, my aim is not to provide a taxonomy of
this violence but to analyze the environment that led an emperor like
Theodosius to ignore centuries of Roman jurisprudence dealing with
both damage to private property and public disorder in order to placate
an aggressive bishop. To anticipate, the solution here proposed focuses
on one aspect of the phenomenon hinted at but not pursued by Natalie
Zemon Davis in her pathbreaking study of religious riots in sixteenth
century France: the willingness of authorities under certain circum
stances to turn a blind eye when mobs took the law into their own
hands (Davis 1973: 65). As will emerge below, the connection Davis
made in this article between violence and fear of divine retribution was,
if anything, even stronger in Late Antiquity than in the early modern
period. But Davis's focus was on the role of legitimacy in justifying
crowd actions; the focus here is on legitimacy in explaining the actions
of authorities. Thus, while violence plays an important role in this
study, the symptoms of violence are not its central concern. Rather, it is
to identify conditions that can make authorities unwilling or unable to
assert their jealously guarded monopoly on the use of force (Eckstein
1980). In what follows, I will suggest that there is a direct link between
this unwillingness to prosecute religious violence and a new vulner
ability of Christian emperors to charges of what in modern parlance
would be called "being soft on paganism." Not to carry the analogy too
far, this "hard-right" position was significantly abetted by confusion
over the proper definition, and administration, of religious office, a situ
ation that, given the importance of deity in the worldview of Christians
as well as pagans, cannot be considered solely a religious issue; it falls
under a category that today we would label "national security."

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Theodosius's willingness to bend to Ambrose's will over Callinicum

serves as a point of entry because it brings together two of the three
figures central to understanding the political dynamics of this new
Christian empire, an empire in which emperors like Theodosius saw
their role as ultimate guarantor of peace and order contested by a new
power elite in the person of the Christian bishop (Fowden 1978;
Bowersock 1986; Brown 1992, 2002). Pivotal to this test of wills was the
third figure in this drama, the martyr, or, better, the image of the
martyr. It is in the way these three figures interacted that an alternative
explanation for the outburst of religious violence in Late Antiquity
resides.
MARTYRS AND VIOLENCE
The image of the martyrs is what is important for two reasons.

First, with the legalization of Christianity under Constantine, the era of
widespread persecution officially came to an end, leaving it to
Christians to contest among themselves for the right to name and vene
rate martyrs, the exchanges between Donatists and Catholics in North
Africa being but the most famous of such contests (viz. Brown 1963;
Shaw 1992). Second, with fewer actual martyrdoms to witness,
Christians were free to re-imagine the suffering of these early heroes in
ways that better suited present circumstances. As will be seen below,
this re-imagining was part of a wider process that began in the fourth
century and strengthened the case for aggressive Christian measures.
Thus, even though saints and holy men came to share some of the
veneration accorded to martyrs, martyrs and martyrdom remained
central to Christian self-definition. As Robert Markus once put it, "The
martyrs were, after the Apostles, the supreme representatives of the
community of the faithful in God's presence. In them the communion
of saints was most tangibly epitomised" (Markus 1990: 98).
The importance of the martyr's role is illustrated in an incident
recorded by the fifth-century Church historian Socrates. In the 370s,
the emperor Valens, whose own Christianity was more heterodox,
wanted to visit the famous church of St. Thomas the Apostle in Edessa,
without having to share communion with the Nicene congregation that
worshipped there. He gave orders for the church to be cleared and,
when the congregation refused, sent his prefect and a body of troops to
remove them by force. Socrates tells us what happened next:
As the prefect was hastening to the martyr-church with a large force of

soldiers to carry out the emperor's demand, a peasant woman dragging

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her child by the hand cut through the soldiers' ranks in her hurry to
get to the martyr-church. Annoyed, the prefect had the woman
brought before him, and said to her, "Where are you running so
helter-skelter, you wretched woman?" She replied, "To the same place
everybody else is running." To which he said, "Haven't you heard that
the prefect is going to destroy everyone he finds there?" And the
woman said, "I have, and that is why I am hurrying, so that I will be
found there." When the prefect asked, "And where are you dragging
this little child," she replied, "So that he too may be deemed worthy of
martyrdom."10
This response stopped the prefect dead in his tracks. Instead of continu
ing to the church, he reversed course and reported the incident to
Valens, who was wise enough to back off.
Socrates was not an unbiased source (Chesnut 1986: 175-198;
Urbainczyk 1996); his usefulness here and elsewhere in this paper is
not for the accuracy of his account or even the reality of the event, but
for the window he provides into contemporary Christian perspectives.
In this case, the episode he narrates illustrates the powerful pull of mar
tyrdom in the early Christian community, and also the way that fear of
creating martyrs, and thereby provoking even more unrest, could stay
an emperor's hand. Martyrdom was, indeed, a lever Ambrose used to
pry a pardon for Callinicum's bishop out of Theodosius. Proclaiming
his readiness to accept the punishment of the bishop of Callinicum
himself, Ambrose asked Theodosius, "Are you not also apprehensive at
the possibility of his [Callinicum's bishop] speaking out against the
count [i.e., the governor]? For in that case the count will have to make
the bishop either an apostate or a martyr."11
The threat of martyrdom could give emperors pause, but claims to
martyrdom did not go uncontested, as another story told by Socrates
reveals.
In the year 415, some five hundred Egyptian monks swarmed into
Alexandria in support of their pugnacious bishop, Cyril, who was at
that time in conflict with the imperial prefect, Orestes. One over
zealous monk named Ammonius threw a rock at the prefect, striking
him in the head with sufficient force to draw blood. Abandoned by his
guards, Orestes seemed destined to become one more name on the sur
prisingly large roster of imperial officials in Late Antiquity killed by
10Socrates, HE 4.18.5-4.18.8, ed. Hansen (1995). For a comparative discussion of such episodes,
see Shaw (2009). I am grateful to Prof. Shaw for the opportunity to read this article in typescript.
"Ambrose, Ep. 74 (40).7.

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urban mobs. But in his case, the unexpected happened. Overcoming

their own fears, the populace of Alexandria rallied to the prefect's cause
and drove off the monks. Seized and put to the torture (presumably to
get him to implicate Cyril), Ammonius heroically held out to the last,
and a grateful Cyril responded by eulogizing him from the pulpit as a
defender of the faith and immediately enrolling him among the martyrs
of Alexandria with a new name, Thaumasius ("Mr. Wonderful"). But in
this case, the ploy failed. Socrates gives the reason: "Moderates [hoi
sophronountes}," he writes, "even though they were Christians, did not
share Cyril's enthusiasm for this cause, for they perceived that
Ammonius had been punished for his rashness, and that he had not
died under torture for refusing to deny Christ. For this reason, even
Cyril soon let the matter be forgotten" (HE 7.14.10-14.11).
There is no need here to question Socrates' definition of a "moder
ate" Christian. What is important about the story of Ammonius/
Thaumasius is that his failure to become a martyr serves as a reminder
of an easily overlooked truth. Martyrs are such flamboyant figures that
their own suffering and preparation for death frequently draw the lion's
share of scholarly attention, but martyrdom is not simply an act of self
fashioning; there is a community involved in the decision. Martyrdoms
are not automatic: they must be explained, analyzed, and justified. As
Erin Ronsse put it, death is not what makes a martyr "but witnessing,
testifying, publicly arguing for and defending the validity of ideas made
one a martyr" (Ronsse 2006: 284). The Ammonius incident captures
the role played by that broader community, in this case the Christian
population of Alexandria, in the validation and legitimation of a mar
tyrdom. This community knew that the traditional criterion for martyr
dom, suffering as witness to Christ's truth, had not been met in this
case, and not even a powerful bishop used to having his own way could
finesse that sentiment.12
Constantine learned a similar lesson. Early in his career as a
Christian, he rashly assumed that, as emperor, he had the right to
decide who was and was not a martyr. Outraged to learn that Donatist
schismatics were hailing those he had punished as martyrs, Constantine
wrote his vicar in North Africa, "no-one can obtain the blessings of
martyrdom in a manner that is seen to be foreign to and incompatible
with religious truth." Accordingly, he blustered, "those whom I find to
be opposed to right and religion itself... I will cause to suffer the due
12Wessel (2004: 36-37) considers Socrates a biased source but does not dispute the opposition of
"some of the Alexandrian Christians" to Cyril's ploy. On religious struggles in Alexandria, see
Haas (1997: 302-308) and passim; Watts (2010).

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penalties of their madness and their reckless obstinacy."13 Constantine

was soon disabused of this notion, but he worked for the rest of his
reign to control the discourse on martyrdom by constantly praising
martyrs for their irenic traits—patience, fortitude, endurance—and
urging Christians to leave vengeance to God.14
There is another reason for remembering the story of Thaumasius.
Monks are frequently cast as the spiritual heirs of the martyrs and in
many ways they were, their training to deny themselves all but the most
basic human necessities coming to be seen as a form of self-sacrifice
equivalent to that of the martyrs. But the analogy can be carried too
far, at significant cost to our understanding of the religious violence of
this age. Monks were at the forefront of many of the most celebrated
incidents, and the anguished cries of their pagan victims have fixed in
the academic psyche the image of a swarming "black-robed tribe, who
eat more than elephants," "men in appearance [who] led the lives of
swine, and openly did and allowed countless unspeakable crimes."15 By
elision, the damage done by monks and the high regard of contempor
ary Christians for ascetic self-sacrifice become conflated, implying that
the violence was as much responsible as the self-sacrifice for the esteem
in which ascetics were held. To the contrary, there is significant evi
dence of a backlash against monastic violence by the end of the fourth
century, of which the fate of Thaumasius is but a single example.
Another is an anonymous dialogue published about the same time that
included an entire chapter devoted to the question, "Why Monks Are
Held in Contempt by So Many."16
Indeed, it might well be said that the reverence paid to monastics
was not because of, but in spite of, the violence they sometimes
caused. Despite Ambrose's resort to this gambit, for much of the
fourth century and beyond, martyrdom that was won through the per
formance of violent deeds did not go uncontested. Sometime in that
century—probably earlier than later—a council of Spanish bishops
n"Cumque satis clareat neminem posse beatitudines martyris eo genere conquirere quod alienum
a ueritate religionis et incongruum esse uideatur, eos quos contra fas et religionem ipsam
recognuero ... sine ulla dubitatione insaniae suae obstinationisque temerariae faciam merita exitia
persoluere." Ep. ad Celsum, ed. Maier (1987-89, 1, 195-196); trans. Edwards (1997: 194).
14See, e.g., Optatus, Appx 9 and 10 in Maier (1987-9) and Drake (2006).
15For "black-robed tribe," see Libanius, Oration 30.8 (pro templis), trans. Norman (1977): 107—
108; for "swine," Eunapius, trans. Wright (1921: 423). On Libanius's language, see Sizgorich (2007:
89-90). Christian violence is the centerpiece of MacMullen (1997).
>6Quae instituta monachorum; vel quare a multis odio habeantur. Ed. Feiertag and Steinmann
(1994: 3.2). Theodosius himself attempted to banish monks from Constantinople: CTh 16.3.1
(390), rescinded less than two years later (CTh 16.3.2). On attempts in this period to control
monks, see Caner (2002). For the text: Mommsen and Meyer (1962); Eng. trans. Pharr (1952).

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meeting in Elvira ruled that Christians who died in attacks on idol

temples should not be received as martyrs. They took this stand, the
bishops wrote, because "such actions cannot be found in the Gospels,
nor were they ever undertaken by the Apostles."17 This canon of the
Council of Elvira stands as testimony to an irenic tradition in early
Christianity that held true belief could not be compelled, for the
simple reason that God could tell the difference between voluntary and
coerced worship.18
JULIAN AND MARTYRDOM

Ambrose's threat of martyrdom for the bishop of Callinicum was a
clear departure from this position, not just because the attack on a
synagogue fell squarely outside the boundaries set by the bishops at
Elvira, but even more because the grounds for his claim to a martyr's
crown was refusal to pay restitution for property damage. Like
Ammonius's rock-throwing, this act did not exactly amount to a confes
sion of Christ, and Ambrose had to use some pretty fancy footwork to
dodge this point. Arguing that to benefit Christ's enemies was tanta
mount to renouncing Christ, Ambrose sought to obfuscate the issue
with a glorious non-sequitur: "If Julian did not avenge the Church
because he was an apostate, are you, emperor, going to avenge damage
done to a synagogue because you are a Christian?"19
Ambrose's use of the specter of Julian, the nephew of Constantine
who upon becoming emperor in 361 threw off his Christian upbringing
and announced the restoration of the old gods, points to an additional
reason why emperors like Valens and Theodosius were vulnerable to
such threats. The tortured centuries of Rome's relationship with
Christianity prior to Constantine left Christian emperors with an
especially heavy burden to carry whenever they used the coercive
l7Can. 60: Si quis idola fregerit et ibidem fuerit occisus, quatenus in Evangelio scriptum non est
neque invenitur sub Apostolis unquam factum, placuit in numero eum non recipi martyrum. Ed.
Jonkers (1954): 18. The date of the council has been placed in various years of the early fourth
century, but Meigne (1975) argues that the canons as we have them are a compilation of various
councils held in Elvira during the course of that century.
18As observed by Brown (1961). See Tertullian, Ad Scapulam 2.2: Sed nec religionis est cogere
religionem, quae sponte suscipi debeat, non ui, cum et hostiae ab animo libenti expostulentur, and
cf. Lactantius, Divine Institutes, 5.20. Garnsey (1984) has identified Tertullian's argument as the
first instance of toleration asserted as a principle instead of an expedient. For a more skeptical
reading, see Streeter (2006: 229-251); see also Stroumsa (1998). On Lactantius, see Digeser (2000).
More generally, Field (1998).
19Ep. 70 (40).21: Si Iulianus non est ultus ecclesiam quia praevaricator est, tu, imperator,
ulcisceris synagogae inuriam quia Christianus es?

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204
mechanisms of the state against members of their own faith. The

problem was this: because emperors had created martyrs in those early
centuries, every emperor embodied at least the potential of being a per
secutor, a maker of martyrs.20 Undoubtedly, what made Valens rethink
his plan to visit the church in Edessa was the likelihood that any casual
ties from a confrontation would be venerated as martyrs. Although they
resisted it, Christian emperors found themselves more, rather than less,
vulnerable to the charge of being persecutors.
Ironically, Julian himself was too shrewd to play the persecutor.
Instead, through a flamboyant revival of blood sacrifices—anathema to
Christians—and a diversion of state resources from bishops to priests in
a new hierarchy he created for traditional religion, Julian sought to
marginalize Christians and remove the incentives that drove elites to
convert. Julian's Christian upbringing stood him in good stead as he
cast about for wedges that would weaken the faith he had come to
despise and also isolate it from mainstream culture. The historian
Ammianus tells us, for instance, that Julian's decision to restore dissi
dent clergy exiled by his predecessor was not governed by principle so
much as by his certainty that "as this freedom increased their dissen
sion, he might afterwards have no fear of a united populace, knowing as
he did from experience that no wild beasts are such enemies to
mankind as are most of the Christians in their deadly hatred of one
another."21
Ammianus might have been projecting his own conclusions onto
the emperor in this instance, but Julian showed a shrewd understanding
of Christian weaknesses and how to exploit them in more ways than
one. By the simple act of banning Christian rhetoricians, for instance,
he threatened not only the livelihood of Christian teachers but also
Christian access to the training that was the sine qua non of a successful
career in that elite world, even more than a law degree or MBA has
become in ours.22 In a surviving letter, Julian explains his position:
Christians should not be allowed to teach the classics, he writes,
20As observed by Sizgorich (2007: 96): "Within this evolving Christian discourse... the emperor—
even a Christian emperor—was always already a persecutor" Cf. Gaddis (2005: 100): "we may well
conclude that the Christian government's reluctance to employ the sword in specifically religious
matters resulted from a conscious desire to avoid making martyrs of fellow Christians in a manner
that might provoke comparisons to the pagan persecutions."
ll"Quod agebat ideo obstinate, ut dissensiones augente licentia, non timeret unanimantem postea
plebem, nullas infestas hominibus bestias, ut sunt sibi ferales plerique Christianorum expertus."
Ammianus 22.5.4, trans. Rolfe (1972,11:202-203).
22Ammianus 22.10.7 and 25.4.20. On the importance of this training, see Raster (1988), Brown
(1992), Bowman and Woolf (1994), and Gleason (1995).

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because they do not believe in the gods who populate these works.23
Julian says nothing about Christian students, but it would be disingenu
ous to minimize the impact of his law for this reason. Julian's law effec
tively reclassified a body of literature that had always been regarded as
part of a common cultural inheritance as pagan equivalents of
Christian scripture. In doing so, he strengthened the hand of those
Christians who also believed contact with these classics should be
avoided, thereby making higher status Christians doubly vulnerable.
Julian knew exactly what he was doing. With a thorough command of
Christian scripture, he taunted the "Galileans" (as he insisted on calling
them) as hypocrites for coveting wealth, prestige, and power in violation
of their master's teachings.24
Inadvertently, Julian contributed to a significant re-definition of
the criteria for martyrdom that emerged in the second half of the
fourth century. His aggressive efforts to restore the traditional reli
gions of the empire and isolate Christians in a political and cultural
backwater prompted a period of introspection and reflection that was
worked out in the language of martyrdom and persecution.25 By
steering clear of persecution, Julian put Christians in a bind.
From Nero onward, emperors hostile to their faith had always
used the stick of persecution in their attempts to force conformity,
thereby creating the martyrs whose unwavering fidelity inspired
their less heroic brethren. Discursively, Christians had developed
an elaborate repertoire to deal with such attacks, but they lacked
the tools to deal with a hostile emperor who used carrots instead
23Ep. 36, ed. & trans. Wright (1923,111:116-123). The letter has often been linked to a surviving
law enjoining municipal councils to scrutinize the character of teachers (CTh 13.3.5). But that
connection is doubtful. See Banchich (1993) and Matthews (2000: 274-277). Cf. Watts (2006: 70).
See further Hardy (1986) and Limberis (2000). On Julian generally, the classic work remains Bidez
(1930). See also Athanassiadi-Fowden (1981); Smith (1995).
24See, e.g., "Against the Galileans" 206A, trans. Wright (1923: III, 377): Jesus and Paul "never
even hoped that you would one day attain to such power as you have; for they were content if they
could delude maidservants and slaves ..."; 229C, trans. Wright (1923: III, 385): "If the reading of
your own scriptures is sufficient for you, why do you nibble at the learning of the Hellenes?" As
Markus (1990: 30), noted, the divide opened by Julian "made it harder for Christians to
appropriate the culture which came to be seen as the preserve of pagan religion." Cf. Garnsey
(1984: 20): "Until the reign of Julian peaceful competition with paganism had seemed a winning
strategy, and justifiably: with the authority and financial resources of the emperor behind the
Christians, the contest had been unequal."
25Cf. Gaddis (2005: 70): "Discourses of martyrdom and persecution formed the symbolic
language through which Christians represented, justified, or denounced the use of violence." The
generation that followed Julian once was celebrated as a period of "pagan revival," but is now more
accurately seen as one in which the lines between pagan and Christian, and between Christianity
and classical culture more generally, hardened. See Markus (1990: 29) and Brown (1995: 47); for
the earlier view, Bloch (1963).

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of sticks.26 After Julian's death, Bishop Gregory Nazianzen vented his

frustration with these tactics in his Fourth Oration, an invective
against the deceased emperor.27 The oration is often cited for its elo
quent defense of a Christian right to the classical heritage. More per
tinent here is Gregory's complaint that Julian "begrudged the honour
of martyrdom to our combatants."28 Although Gregory insinuated
that Julian really did use compulsion, he was forced to admit that the
emperor managed "not [to] seem to do so, that we might suffer, and
yet not gain honour as though suffering for Christ's sake."29 With
wealth and privilege as the lures, Christians could only show their
resistance by self-denial, a practice that, virtuous as it was, did not
reach the established standard for martyrdom.
CHRISTIAN SELF-DEFINITION
Christians responded to Julian's tactics by rethinking their vocabu

lary, broadening the definition of persecution in a way that allowe
them to brand even non-coercive measures such as Julian's with th
mark of persecution. The change is illustrated by the historian Socrates,
who explained that even though Julian had not, like Diocletian, tried t
force Christians to worship the old gods, he was still a persecutor
because "I regard any attempt to disturb the peace [tarattein tous hesu
chazontos] of those who have placed their hope in Jesus Christ as perse
cution" (HE 3.12). But this more flexible definition of persecution was
itself the result of a much more consequential rethinking of what i
meant to be a Christian. The change shows itself in the way Gregory
handled the problem of Christians who had responded positively t
Julian's overtures. In his invective, Gregory aimed to construct th
opposition to Julian in such a way as to show that Christians were not
his only victims. Hence he began by extending an olive branch to here
tics (ch. 9) and even to non-Christian monotheists (ch. 8). Given thi
agenda, it comes as a surprise to find Gregory firmly closing the door
to one group: Christian backsliders.
26For a Christian view of persecuting emperors, see Lactantius, "On the Deaths of the
Persecutors" (De mortibus persecutorum), written in the early years of Constantine's reign: ed. and
trans. Creed (1984). In general terms, Julian's aggressive program to disestablish Christianity no
merely from government but even more from elite culture had the effect of giving credibility to th
paranoid alarms of Christian militants. See Drake (1996). More generally, Penella (1993).
27Migne (1857), PG 35:532-644; trans. King (1888). See further Elm (2001, 2003). On the
discourse of martyrdom, see Castelli (2004), Gaddis (2005), and Grig (2005).
280r. 4.58. Migne (1857), PG 35:581: tes ton marturon times efthonei tois athletais. Trans. King
(1888: 33).
29Or. 4.58. Migne (1857), PG 35:581; trans. King (1888: 33).

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One party, one kind of souls, do I exclude from the festive assembly
[Gregory proclaimed], though I groan and am pained, and grieved for
them These be they who having come unto the Word superficially,
and through not having depth of earth, forthwith springing up and
peeping forth, upon a brief assault of the Evil One, and a slight blast
of persecution, have withered up and died away.30
Gregory was talking about Christians who succumbed to Julian's temp

tations. Christians who broke under pressure—the lapsi—had been a
problem in previous persecutions, but the rigors of those trials were
understood, and provision made for eventual reintegration into the
community, even if only on one's deathbed. Gregory's rejection of such
a possibility stands in stark contrast to this previous position. He is very
clear about the reason: it was because these lapsed Christians had suc
cumbed to a different kind of pressure. "[F]or the sake of temporary
gain," he explained, "or court favour, or brief power, these wretched
fellows bartered away their own salvation."31
It is not difficult to imagine the class from which these particular
Christians came: ambitious local elites carving out careers in the bur
geoning imperial bureaucracy for themselves and their children by
securing a top-notch education in the great law schools of Rome or
Beirut, the selfsame elites who had found conversion politically advan
tageous in the decades following Constantine, and whom Julian targeted
with his strategy of isolating Christians educationally and culturally.
Although Christian grumbling about these opportunistic parvenus can
be heard as early as Constantine's last years, there is no indication that
they were particularly discriminated against prior to Julian. In fact,
Robert Markus concluded that prior to Julian a "comfortable modus
vivendi" had developed between elite Christians and traditional classical
culture (Markus 1974: 4, cf. Swain 2004: 361).32 Yet as part of the
intense reflection and re-evaluation that followed Julian, these fair
weather Christians came to be regarded as a scandal. Hence Socrates,
describing how Julian "induced many to sacrifice, partly by flatteries,
and partly by gifts," concludes, "Immediately, as if [tested] in a furnace,
30Or. 4.11. PG 35:541, trans. King (1888): 7.

3'Or. 4.11. PG 35:541, trans. King (1888): 7.
32In his Life of Constantine (VC), published shortly after that emperor's death in 337, Bishop
Eusebius of Caesarea expressed concern over the "unspeakable deceit on the part of those who
slipped into the Church and adopted the false facade of the Christian name." Eus., VC 4.54.2,
trans. Cameron and Hall (1999: 174). Later in the century, Augustine of Hippo blamed lax habits
of his own day on indulgence shown during Constantine's reign: Ser. 392, discussed in Brown
(1995: 23-24).

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those who were Christians in fact and those in name only became
apparent to everyone..." (H.E. 3.13).
Thus, Julian's effect was not only to expand the definition of persecu
tion and to polarize Christians and pagans, but also to polarize Christians
themselves. By creating an environment in which aggressive and defiant
Christians now shaped the definition between "real" and "nominal"
members of the faith, his policies were at least partially responsible for
aligning the definition of Christianity more closely to militant behavior.33
This narrowed range of behaviors that could be accepted as "truly"
Christian has hampered our understanding of the momentous changes
that took place in the earlier part of the fourth century right down to the
present day, as evidenced by an obsessive need to separate "real" Christians
from semi, demi, or hemi-Christians (Armstrong 1984; Bonner 1984) and
the long and utterly superfluous debate over Constantine's "sincerity." That
debate was fueled almost entirely by the premise that "real" Christians were
intolerant: since there is abundant evidence that Constantine refused to
coerce others to convert, decriers—of whom Jacob Burckhardt is perhaps
still the best known and most influential—argued that Constantine's con
version was only meant to serve his political ambitions (Burckhardt 1880).
Conversely, supporters have had to find grounds to dismiss these signs as
illusory, leading to contortions that would make a yoga master proud.
Timothy Barnes, for instance, has refused to accept Constantine's Edict to
the Provincials as an edict of toleration—despite phrases such as "Let those
who delight in error alike with those who believe partake in the advantages
of peace and quiet" and "[let all] those who wish to keep themselves away
have their temples of falsehood" (YC 2.56.1)—on the grounds that,
since Constantine does not mention animal sacrifice he must have banned
it, proving his intolerance, and thereby his sincerity.34 Yet, as Peter
Brown once observed, "Nothing, indeed, would have been more distressing
to a member of the late Roman upper classes than the suggestion that
'pagan' and 'Christian' were designations of overriding importance in their
style of life and in their choice of friends and allies."35
33cf„ Gaddis (2005: 92): Julian "underestimated the possibilities inherent in Christian models of
martyrdom If Julian could practice a different kind of persecution, the Christians would
respond with a different kind of martyrdom."
4Barnes (1981: 210), repeated Barnes (1986: 49). On the matter of sacrifices, see Bradbury
(1994), Errington (1988), and note 4 above. Constantine's edict is in Eusebius, De vita Constantini
2.48-2.60, trans. Cameron and Hall (1999: 111-114). The phrases quoted are at VC 2.56.1 (my
translation).
35Brown (1995: 47). Cf., Nora Berend in Benedict et al. (2007: 1435): "The Christian identity of
many earlier people has often been called into question by modern Christians whose criteria are so
different..." For the debate over Constantine's "sincerity," see note 4 above.

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As part of this process, the role of the martyr as essentially a passive

sufferer for the name of Christ expanded to include more aggressive war
riors who took the batde to the enemy, and it made Christians who suf
fered at imperial hands candidates for martyrdom even if their punishment
was due to civil rather than religious disobedience.36 The more aggressive
attitude toward martyrdom that evinces itself in Ambrose's rhetoric
appears to be part of this broader trend. To bolster his assertion that
Theodosius would make a martyr of the bishop of Callinicum, Ambrose
specifically cited the example of a martyr "in the time of Julian,... who
overturned an altar and disturbed a sacrifice, [and] was condemned to
death by a judge " He might as easily have cited the fate of Bishop
Mark of Arethusa in Syria, who under Julian had refused to make
restitution for a pagan temple he had destroyed, rejecting all efforts at com
promise, and whose suffering in captivity was hailed as a martyrdom.37
RELIGION AND POLITICS: "CHURCH" AND "STATE"
To this point, I have used martyrdom symbolically as a means to

uncover the political dynamics of the period. Changes in the way
Christians defined and promoted martyrs exposed some of the broader
changes that were taking place in the new Christian empire; the fact
that, despite occasional missteps such as Cyril of Alexandria's efforts to
canonize "Thaumasius," bishops proved to be far more successful than
emperors as arbiters of a potential martyr's fate goes a long way toward
explaining why Roman officials either sanctioned or turned a blind eye
to acts of religious violence.38 But Ambrose had more arrows than a
potential martyrdom in his quiver. After dangling the specter of
unwanted martyrs before Theodosius, he also warned the emperor that
punishing Callinicum's bishop could provoke civic unrest. "For it is
normal for bishops to restrain crowds and to be lovers of peace," he
wrote, adding archly, "except when they are themselves roused by some
wrong done to God, or by an insult to the Church."39
36Gaddis (2005: 181) has traced a newly aggressive understanding of the martyr's role that began
to appear in this period in sermons and martyr acts that celebrated these heroes not only for
defiance of imperial authority but also for the zeal with which they took the battle to the enemy.
Grig (2005) reaches a similar conclusion. Josef Lossl (2005) discusses the way conflict over the role
of asceticism in this same period affected concepts of martyrdom.
"Ambrose, Ep. 74 (40). 17, in Zelzer (1982). For Bishop Mark, see Sozomen, HE 5.10 and
Gaddis (2005: 94).
38As Honore (2004: 123) observes, "Christian emperors were subject to a set of sanctions in the
next world that might give them pause in this."
39Ep. 74 (40).6, in Zelzer (1982): sacerdotes enim turbarum moderatores sunt, studiosi pads, nisi
cum et ipsi moventur injuria dei, aut ecclesiae contumelia.

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This was no idle threat. Only a few years earlier, Ambrose himself
had demonstrated the control a bishop could exercise over his congre
gation. In 385, the empress Justina wanted to allocate one of Milan's
churches to Arian Christians in her government and military. Ambrose
opposed her vigorously, leading to a tense, year-long standoff that came
to a head in the subsequent Easter season, when Ambrose's flock occu
pied the Portian basilica to prevent the court from using it, then held
out for days against a military blockade.40 Although Ambrose's finger
prints were all over this direct challenge to imperial authority, the court
lacked the means, or the will, to prosecute him, and the basilica thereby
remained safely in orthodox hands. The mastery of his congregation
that Ambrose displayed in this confrontation is the unwritten part of
his challenge to Theodosius two years later over the synagogue at
Callinicum. 1 That confrontation, in turn, reveals a major difference
between bishops and the traditional power elites with which emperors
were accustomed to deal. Whereas the civic elite were completely
enmeshed in a network held together by the imperial center, the bish
opric had developed independent of, and frequently in opposition to,
that structure. In all probability, Constantine did not grasp the signifi
cance of this difference when both faith and purpose led him to divert
resources to the clergy as an alternative infrastructure.42
Emperors were ultimately responsible for controlling these volatile
urban populations, and guaranteeing public order was the duty of the
emperor. For this reason, such situations were major tests of an emper
or's resolve, and even more of his skill: how he responded sent an
important signal about how much vigilantism he was willing to tolerate.
To relax it, as Theodosius did in the Callinicum case, sent disturbing
signals of an emperor's willingness to tolerate breaches of public order
in the name of religion.
Realistically, an emperor had to tolerate quite a lot, for by modern
standards the arsenal he had at his disposal for such moments was alar
mingly barren. Ordinarily, emperors relied on an elaborately con
structed web of ceremony and local ties to keep the peace. When that
40Ambrose gives his version of the event in a letter to his sister, Ep. 76 (20), in Zelzer (1982).
McLynn (1994: 170-196) views the record with a gimlet eye. On the importance of the Portian
basilica, see Colish (2002).
4'The connection between elite culture and popular control has been summed up succinctly by
Swain (2004: 357): "[G]roup cohesion guaranteed power over the masses. The masses participated
in the same system, and elite power depended on this participation." On the role of the bishop, see
Chadwick (1980), Bowersock (1986), Brown (2002), and Rapp (2005). Fowden (1978) remains an
important study.
2On possible administrative motives for Constantine's endowments, see Drake (2000: chap. 8).

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failed, the remaining option was to use urban paramilitary forces—

police, in modern terminology. But these were ever scant, and appear to
have been reduced even further in Late Antiquity.43 His remaining coer
cive instrument was the army. But to deploy military force was both
clumsy and dangerous, as Theodosius found out in 390 at Thessalonika.
In that case, where thousands of civilians were put to the sword by
troops whose general they had lynched, over-reacting was worse than
doing nothing. 4 Yet to do too little threatened to unravel the gossamer
bonds of civil order, which were easily broken. Emperors sat on the
horns of a dilemma: too much force turned them into rogue emperors,
unfit to govern by the rules of civilitas; too little simply invited
contempt.
The trick was to put up with these occasional breakdowns without
seeming to45 What was needed was a strong indication of imperial
readiness to exact the harshest punishment, ultimately combined with
willingness to forbear in the face of true repentance. Antioch's "Riot of
the Statues" in 387 shows how such a situation could be managed with
the utmost finesse. Angered by imposition of yet another special tax,
the citizens of Antioch exploded in an orgy of destruction, getting so
carried away that they committed the ultimate act of defiance by defa
cing images of the emperor. These statues carried a heavy symbolic
charge, being venerated as the actual presence of the emperor himself.
To deface them committed the city to the path of rebellion.46 With
dawn came the awful realization of the extent of their actions and the
probable consequences. Antioch's elite fled the city, remembering,
Libanius tells us, how brutally Diocletian had punished their forebears
for failing to keep the peace.4
What followed was an elaborately choreographed piece of theater
that played out over the course of several weeks. First an investigative
committee of high court officials arrived, heard pleas for mercy from
some of the city's renowned holy men, and imposed certain immediate
43Caraeron (1973: 237) observes that, as a consequence of this decline, "[m]inor disturbances of
the sort an experienced and efficient corps of law-enforcement officers could have settled without
difficulty might mushroom into a major riot." Bradbury (1994) suggests that many imperial laws
were never meant to be enforced, but simply to set a tone.
^For a critical discussion of the sources for this event and its implications, see McLynn (1994:
315-330).
45Brown (1992: 35-70) discusses the delicate handling such situations required.
460n the sacredness of imperial statues, see MacCormack (1981: 67), Smith (1997), and
Ellingson (2003). More generally, Niemeyer (1968). On the riot, Browning (1952) remains a solid
introduction.
47Libanius, Or. 19.45, ed. and trans. Norman (1977: II, 296-297). On flight from the city, see Or.
23 in the same volume.

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penalties that included closing the city's popular leisure sites (baths,
theaters, hippodrome) and suspending its metropolitan status, which
meant the loss of significant prestige and privilege. The commissioners
identified and arrested several ringleaders, then sent their report and
recommendations to the emperor. Simultaneously, Antioch's bishop,
Flavian, hastened to the capital to plead for mercy. While the city
waited for news of the decision on which its fate hung, Flavian's lieute
nant, the charismatic John Chrysostom, delivered a series of sermons
that alternately stoked and calmed their fears.48
The denouement was anti-climactic, Theodosius contenting himself
with the execution of the ringleaders. Still, the importance of such thea
trics as played out in Antioch must not be underestimated. After centu
ries of empire, theorists had long abandoned discussing the traditional
categories of political analysis (monarchy, aristocracy, democracy) to
concentrate on the only form of government that still seemed viable,
monarchy.49 Accordingly, instead of debating the merits of different
kinds of rule, theorists now concentrated on the merits of the ruler,
whose virtues were analyzed with the same care formerly given to dis
cussing the merits of the different kinds of governments. Accordingly,
an emperor's most powerful asset was his prestige, bolstered by his
image as an all-powerful ruler capable of administering terrible
justice.50
This concentration on imperial character explains why prestige
became so overwhelmingly vital for emperors in Late Antiquity. Yet an
emperor put his prestige on the line every time there was a possibility
that an order he gave would not be obeyed. This was therefore an asset
best utilized from afar, through ties to local elites, who regularly burn
ished that image through a constant routine of rituals, ceremonies, and
48Chrysostom, Homilae XXI de Statuis ad populum Antiochenum habitae. Migne (1857), PG 49:
15-222. Trans. Stephens (1889).
49As Cameron (1991: 129) observes, "for Christians and pagans alike in the fourth- and fifth
century empire, writing about government meant writing about an emperor... political theory in
the context of empire entailed panegyric." An exception is an anonymous political tract written
under Justinian in the sixth century, which alludes to contemporary issues in the course of an
apparently archaizing discussion; ed. Mazzuchi (2002), trans. Bell (2009: 123-188). For its
contemporary relevance, Whitby (2006). See further O'Meara (2002). A better contrast is with
Muslim theorists, who continued to debate the traditional categories, though even here it is clear
that the discussion was entirely academic. See Schiitrumpf (2004) and Crone (2004).
50The locus classicus for discussion of the three states is Book 8 of Plato's Republic, echoed by
his student Aristotle in Politics, Book 4. In the second-century BCE, the historian Polybius in Book
6 of The Histories modified this model by positing that the various types succeeded each other in
an inevitable "cycle of constitutions" that he then used to explain Rome's success in conquering
the entire Mediterranean. See in general von Fritz (1954) and Podes (1991). On ancient kingship
theory, Aalders (1969), Lassandro (2000), and Kolb (2000).

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panegyrics that exalted imperial charisma while simultaneously reinfor

cing their own status as its local intercessors and administrators.51 For
this reason, Chrysostom's homilies and Flavian's intercession need to be
seen as twin parts of a single program, with Chrysostom stoking the
fires of repentance in Antioch while Flavian soothed tempers in
Constantinople.
As Ambrose's taunt to Theodosius about his peace-keeping abilities
suggests, bishops had, over the course of the fourth century, emerged as
rivals to the civic elites as brokers of imperial power and prestige.
Theodosius clearly had to take into account this potential role the
bishop could play. Still, Ambrose's efforts to muddy the waters by
asserting religious principles to sanction vandalism was a clumsy ploy
that any first-year law student, then or now, would have easily seen
through. Ambrose himself evidently did not think much of it, for he
went on to make a disclaimer. Perhaps, he conceded, Theodosius was
concerned about law and order. In that case, Ambrose asked, "Which is
more important: a semblance of order or the cause of religion?" His
own answer: "Civic duties [censura] must yield to sacred ones."52
This blithe assertion of the priority of the Church's interests even in
the face of gross violation of basic civic rights seemingly confirms the
argument for Christian intolerance. But underlying Ambrose's argu
ment are certain continuities in ancient thinking about the role of the
state that the model of "tolerant pagan-intolerant Christian" obscures.
Because the modern state is based (at least theoretically) on the notion
of a "social contract" whereby individuals give up certain rights and pri
vileges in return for privileges and protections provided by the larger
group, it is virtually impossible today to think of "The State" as any
thing other than a secular institution. The role of "The Church" today
is similarly circumscribed, limited primarily to preparation for an
51Under Constantine, Bishop Eusebius of Caesarea, the celebrated "Father of Church History,"
showed that Christians were ready to play this game with a panegyric for the emperor's Thirtieth
Jubilee in 336 that juggled the traditional imperial virtues—bravery, justice, clemency, and piety—
in such a way as to emphasize Constantine's piety and project the image of a Christian empire in
which the emperor ruled as a visible manifestation of the Supreme Ruler. See Laus Constantini
(LC) chaps. 1-10, ed. Heikel (1902: 195-223, trans. Drake (1976: 83-102). The remaining chapters
(11-18) are part of a separate address. See Drake (1976: 30-44). Baynes (1934) is an important,
though overstated appreciation of this oration's place in Greek and Byzantine political thought.
See also Maraval (2001: 36-67). On imperial virtues, Wallace-Hadrill (1981) and Norena (2001). In
general, Cameron (1991) and Lassandro (2000).
52Ep. 74 (40). 11 in Zelzer (1982): Sed disciplinae te ratio, imperator, movet. Quid igitur est
amplius? disciplinae species an causa religionis? Cedat oportet censura devotioni. My trans.
Liebeschuetz and Hill (2005: 101) translate the final phrase more circumspectly: "Severity ought to
give way to devotion."

154.59.125.34 on Wed, 12 Jan 2022 20:18:59 UTC
afterlife. The two spheres can, and do, overlap, particularly on questions
of moral behavior, but in general today we define catastrophes such as
famine, fire, or flood as "natural disasters" rather than as signs of divine
intervention.53
The ancient state was founded on an entirely different set of premises:
that divinity did actively intervene in human affairs on a day-to-day basis,
that these interventions manifested themselves not just in the bounty of
crops but also in victory or defeat on the battlefield, and that it was the
primary duty of the leaders of the state to assure that such interventions
would be beneficial. When the gods were offended, they punished the
entire community, not just the perpetrators; it was therefore incumbent
upon civic leaders to maintain the goodwill of the gods. Under such cir
cumstances, it is misleading to classify divine service as strictly a "reli
gious" function, doubly so in the case of the Roman emperor, whose
offices since the time of Augustus, the first emperor, included that of pon
tifex maximus, head of the state religion. This worldview explains pagan
persecution of Christians far better than the one, preferred by Gibbon
and others, that Christians brought it upon themselves by their rigid
intolerance.54 Disaster was so regularly a cause of Christian persecution in
the second century that the apologist Tertullian could mock it in an
Apology addressed to the emperor: "If the Tiber floods, or if the Nile
doesn't," he observed in this famous passage; "if there is a drought or an
earthquake, a famine or a plague, suddenly the cry goes up 'Christians to
the lion!"'55 These persecutions serve as a reminder not to read religious
conflicts in the ancient world through clearly defined categories of
"Church" and "State," because in the ancient world these spheres were
deeply intertwined: the ancient "state" was also a religious institution, a
"church." It is not at all clear that the conceptual categories needed to dis
tinguish between "Church" and "State" even existed.
Constantine's Vision of the Cross changed the deity, but did not
change the landscape. This continuity is best illustrated by comparing
the language of one of the most ardent of Christianity's persecutors
early in the fourth century with an edict issued more than a century
later by the Christian emperor Theodosius II, "Against Jews,
53For a succinct discussion of the "secularization theory" and its effect on modern concepts of
"public/private religion," see Casanova (1994) esp. 11-39. I am grateful to the JAAR's reviewers for
calling this work to my attention.
54See, e.g., Gibbon (1909-14, II: 87), "But the princes and magistrates of ancient Rome were
strangers to those principles which inspired and authorized the inflexible obstinacy of the
Christians in the cause of truth."
55Apol. 40, ed. Dekkers (1954): Si Tiberis ascendit in moenia, si Nilus non ascendit in arva; si
caelum stetit, si terra movit; si fames, si lues, statim Christianos ad leonem!

154.59.125.34 on Wed, 12 Jan 2022 20:18:59 UTC
Samaritans, Heretics, and Pagans." Just as the persecutor Maximin Daia

took it as self-evident that "it is due to the kindly care of the gods that
the earth does not refuse the seed sown... [or] that the sea is not
swollen and raised on high by blasts of intemperate winds," and that
this care was jeopardized by Christian "impiety," so Theodosius II com
plained that "the embittered perfidy of the pagans" had caused "the
succession of the seasons [to] be changed, and the temper of the
heavens [to] be stirred to anger." To resolve the problem, he concluded,
"the venerable majesty of the Supernal Divinity must be appeased."56 In
both cases, the rulers assumed the regular intervention of a divine
force, and in both they took for granted their duty to placate that force.
This continuity with ancient thought puts Ambrose's demand to give
priority to religion in a very different light. To modern ears, it is outra
geous, one further proof of the effect of Christian intolerance. But it con
formed to the logic of late Roman imperial ideology, which stressed above
all else the emperor's pietas, which in turn insured the all-important
goodwill of a divine world that was directly involved in human affairs.
Christianity did not create this ideology; its outlines can be discerned in
the policies of the first emperor, Augustus. For a variety of reasons that
are not fully understood but that include a decline in the legitimating
authority of the Senate, the example of a resurgent and religiously unified
Persia, and an overall mood of heightened religiosity in the empire itself,
this divine tie started to be expressed with particular urgency no later
than the middle of the third century (Dodds 1965; MacMullen 1976;
Rives 1999; Drake 2000: 113-153). It is not mere coincidence that this is
also the period when Christians, for the first time, were subjected to
empire-wide persecution. The reasons for this change in imperial policy
are still debated, but two cornerstones of late Roman imperial ideology
seem highly likely components. The first of these was that the emperor
must demonstrate close ties to a divine comes or "companion," the
second that successful execution of his office demanded unanimous rec
ognition of these ties.57 As in so many other ways, Christianity is best
seen as responding to, rather than initiating, these changes.
This context also clarifies the reason for conflict between bishops and
emperors in Late Antiquity: it was not because Christians were asserting a
56pianda est superni numinis veneranda maiestas. Nov. Th. 3.8, ed. Mommsen and Meyer (1962:
2: 7-11), trans. Pharr et al. (1952: 490). Daia's edict is recorded in Eus., HE 9.7.8, trans. McGiffert
(1890: 361).
57The classic article is Nock (1947). On the importance of consensus in late Roman political
thought, see Lim (1995). On changes in imperial religion, Haas (1983), Rives (1999), and Selinger
(2004).

154.59.125.34 on Wed, 12 Jan 2022 20:18:59 UTC
claim to the separation of Church and State, or that emperors were

intruding into territory where they did not belong. It was, rather, that for
the first time emperors had to share the privilege of access to the divine
with a class that had established its own, independent lines of communi
cation with that very potent source. Moreover, in these early decades of
the Christian empire, the problem was not that bishops asserted an inde
pendent sphere of authority, but that all too often they were contesting
with emperors for control of the same sphere of authority. Ambrose's
demand is part and parcel of this ancient conceptual landscape. Indeed,
his whole argument only makes sense in the context of the traditional
understanding of the State as a religious institution, wherein rulers have a
duty to maintain the goodwill of divinity. Far from advocating a separ
ation of Church and State, he was, instead, merely arguing for a different
set of priorities. To use a domestic analogy, he did not want to remodel
the house; he simply wanted to rearrange the furniture.
What is palpably different in Ambrose's demand that the emperor
give priority to religion over law was his assertion of the bishop's right
to decide when God or Church had been offended. Arguably, to make
this case, the most effective club in Ambrose's arsenal was neither the
prospect of martyrdom nor fear of mob action, but his tactical use of
space. His letter to Theodosius had succeeded in getting the emperor to
cancel the penalty that he had imposed on the bishop of Callinicum.
But his further pleas to have the entire case dropped evidently went
unheeded at court (McLynn 1994: 303). Only at Sunday mass did he
win the emperor's attention. Using the Biblical confrontation between
King David and the prophet Nathan in his sermon, Ambrose insinuated
a similar role for himself with Theodosius. The emperor got the
message. "As I descended," Ambrose wrote his sister, "he [Theodosius]
said to me: 'You were talking about us.'"58 The setting is thus the most
likely reason Theodosius gave in to the bishop. Faced with an embarras
sing disruption in the rhythm of the mass, where Ambrose was in
control, the emperor might well have decided that his consent was a
small thing that changed nothing: Callinicum, as Ambrose artfully
implied, simply was not worth the trouble. Still, the fact that the
emperor had put himself into a setting where he could be manipulated
58Ambrose gave a detailed account of the event in a letter to his sister: Ep. extra collectionem 1
(41). 27 in Zelzer (1982): Ubi descendi ait mihi: 'De nobis proposuisti.' "Nobis" is usually translated
as a "royal we" ("you were talking about me") but the point of Ambrose's sermon that Theodosius
evidently got was his stress on the relationship between David and Nathan, which makes "us"
more appropriate. I am grateful to Emily Albu for this suggestion.

154.59.125.34 on Wed, 12 Jan 2022 20:18:59 UTC
so easily speaks volumes about the changes that were taking place in
the ancient power structure.59
Underlying the freedom of speech that Ambrose exercised on this
occasion was a significant political shift. Under the Principate, senators
occasionally were able to assert such freedom because of the central
role their institution played in confirming imperial legitimacy. With the
legalization of Christianity, and more importantly, with the role
Christianity increasingly played in confirming the emperor's legitimacy,
bishops—especially bishops like Ambrose with Senatorial backgrounds—
began to assert their own corporate interests. In this particular sense,
Christian bishops had co-opted both the legitimating role and the strong
corporate identity that had characterized the Senate under the
Principate.60 What this conflict shows, therefore, is that the new situation
created by Constantine was not that religion was more important in gov
ernment affairs than it had been before, but that the emperor now shared
with bishops the responsibility for maintaining this crucial relationship
with divinity. Since jurisdiction over sacred matters was now being
shared, the approval of bishops became central to an emperor's legiti
macy. As bishops jockeyed for control of sacred office with emperors,
imaginative re-use of the concepts of martyrdom and persecution became
potent weapons. In this post-Constantinian world, religious violence is
best seen as part of a larger negotiation.
NATIONAL SECURITY
The failure of emperors to control the discourse of martyrdo

combined with the power of bishops to label emperors as persecutor
goes a long way toward explaining religious violence in Late Antiqui
Thus, even though Julian took pains to avoid the mistakes of the pe
cutors, he ended up in their company when Gregory Nazian
reshaped the emperor's hostility into persecution, while others reco
gured the criteria for martyrdom to include those aggressive
once condemned by bishops at the Council of Elvira. The result w
powerful new tool bishops could use to bring recalcitrant officials t
59On this change, see now McLynn (2004: 270): "The changing ceremonial interactions bet
emperors and bishops might indeed prove as important for an understanding of this relatio
[between 'State' and 'Church'] as the more narrowly political, or the more abstract ideolog
trajectories that are charted in the standard accounts."
60This is probably the best meaning to assign to Constantine's enigmatic assertion to be "bish
of those outside" (episkopos tdn ekton) the Church (Eus., VC 4.24)—that he was creatin
himself a position that would allow him to function as primus inter pares in the episcopate, ju
earlier emperors had shared in the corporate identity of the Senate. See Drake (2000: 225-231).

154.59.125.34 on Wed, 12 Jan 2022 20:18:59 UTC
heel. But as the Thaumasius incident showed, the bestowal of martyr

dom still required the assent of a broader community, and aggressive
actions by themselves did not always convince that community that its
interests were being served. Officials could fend off the demands of
bishops whose aggressive instincts overstepped community bounds.
The value of thinking of the religious challenges of Late Antiquity as
threats to "national security" is that it helps isolate the role of intolerance
in this period. Intolerance is hardly a monopoly of Christianity, or any
other religion. Every community identifies behaviors that it believes
cannot and should not be tolerated, and this is especially true with regard
to behaviors that appear to threaten the security of that community.
Because religion plays a role in shaping community identity, religious
values frequently become the means of defining such boundaries. In this
sense, and in this sense only, can intolerance serve as a useful diagnostic
tool, albeit one that should not be limited just to Christianity, or to
monotheistic religions more generally. In every other sense, intolerance
impedes our ability to understand the process by which militants take
control of a community, because that process is basically social and politi
cal. At the start of this article, I cited Gibbon for the emphasis he gave to
Christian intolerance; now, near its end, it is time to cite his enduring
contribution to study of this issue, which was to insist that the study of
Christian success must be taken out of the hands of theologians. "The
theologian may indulge the pleasing task of describing Religion as she
descended from Heaven, arrayed in her native purity," he wrote at the
start of chapter 15. "A more melancholy duty is imposed on the historian.
He must discover the inevitable mixture of error and corruption which
she contracted in a long residence upon earth, among a weak and degen
erate race of beings" (Gibbon 1909-14, II: 15). Except that he is far too
eloquent, Gibbon for this view could be called the father of social science.
Intolerance is simply too slender a reed on which to hang our
understanding of the coercive turn Christianity took in the aftermath of
Constantine's conversion. Rather than take such a development for
granted, as the intolerance model encourages us to do, it is better to
look for tools that can help us understand how militants gain control of
a community. By focusing on threats to "national security," by which I
mean threats to core community values, we use a more flexible tool that
can also be applied to a broader range of situations.
A brief look at an incident in the history of Rome's great eastern
rival might help clarify these points.
The Persian Shah Yazdgard I (399-420) proclaimed a toleration for
Persian Christians that lasted for most of his reign, until Bishop Abdas
of Susa was emboldened to provoke an attack on one of the fire temples

154.59.125.34 on Wed, 12 Jan 2022 20:18:59 UTC
of the dominant Mazdaen faith. At first, all Yazdgard asked was restitu
tion, but when Abdas refused, Yazdgard sent the bishop to the gallows
and ordered the destruction of his church. Christians in Persia never
again enjoyed the license they had been given by Yazdgard.61 The situ
ation virtually shouts for comparison with Theodosius's handling of the
destruction of the synagogue in Callinicum. Like the bishop of
Callinicum, Abdas engaged in an act of property damage, and in both
cases a bishop spurned a demand for restitution. But whereas
Theodosius backed down in the face of Ambrose's threats, Yazdgard's
response was swift and unequivocal. What accounts for the difference?
The motives of the perpetrators are not the issue: Abdas and the
unnamed bishop of Callinicum might have been intolerant or simply
foolish; in either case, they merely represent the violent elements that
are at large in any society. Instead, what matters in both cases is the
ruler's response. In both cases that response was determined at least in
part by pressure from influential clergy. While their aims were different—
Ambrose to defend, the Mazdaeans to punish the offender—both suc
ceeded not because one ruler was more or less intolerant than the other
but because in each case the clergy spoke for a religious establishment
whose role in validating the ruler's legitimacy could not be ignored.
While the bishop of Callinicum benefited from the institutional role of
his religion, Abdas's role in confirming Yazdgard's rule was negligible
compared with that played by the Mazdaean clergy.
The Persian example shows how broadening the study of religious
violence in Late Antiquity to include social and political issues can help
us understand both the violence itself and the role of intolerance in its
occurrence. It is useless to ask whether Theodosius was more or less
intolerant than Yazdgard. The difference is not that Theodosius was
intolerant, but that he was compromised. Like the Mazdaen clergy,
Christian bishops in Late Antiquity came to play an important role in
legitimating an emperor's rule. It is true that emperors learned to
burnish their credentials with this constituency by taking, or allowing
others to take, aggressive action against perceived enemies: then as now,
it was easier to fend off militants by supporting their agenda than to
offer a reasoned alternative. But rather than simply accept these actions
as the inevitable result of intolerance, it is more useful to ask how
61Theodoret, HE 5.38, ed. Scheidweiler and Parmentier (1954). There are reasons to doubt this
account. See Van Rompay (1995). McDonough (2008a) sees the story as a means of exonerating
Yazdgard. For Yazdgard's relations with Christian clergy and use of bishops in his administration,
see McDonough (2006, 2008b). Gaddis (2005: 197-201) considers the same episode for what it
reveals about Christian martyrdom.

154.59.125.34 on Wed, 12 Jan 2022 20:18:59 UTC
militants were able to make such demands in the first place. The answer
is complex, but one part of it certainly resides in deep-seated Christian
anxieties about a return to persecution, revived in part by Julian, but
even more by the hardening of boundaries that followed in his wake.
More elastic definitions of martyrdom and persecution allowed militants
to seize control of a discourse that had previously been deployed in
support of freedom of worship and passive suffering.62
The situation was exacerbated by the novel powers of Christian
clergy, which clashed with the traditional prerogatives of Roman emper
ors. In the eastern empire, very strict protocols eventually were devel
oped that clearly delineated the rights and obligations of both emperors
and bishops in a way that maintained the emperor's charismatic auth
ority in the Christian community and blunted episcopal pretensions.
But in the west the dissolution of imperial authority prevented such a
modus vivendi from being achieved until relatively recent times, and
then only by making a radical conceptual break with the premises of
the ancient state.63 In the interim, confusion about their relative roles
made it easier for bishops to conflate civic with religious disobedience
and correspondingly more difficult for Christian emperors to punish
civic crimes performed in the name of religion.
Although it sounds chillingly clinical to say so, the religious violence
of Late Antiquity is best understood as a means of working out these
new relationships. Until that happened, imperial legitimacy too easily
became hostage to extremist criteria.
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Intolerance, Religious Violence, and Political Legitimacy in Late Antiquity

Author(s): H.A. Drake

Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/23020391

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This article proposes an alternative way to think about the violence

*H.A. Drake, Department of History, University of California, Santa Barbara, CA 93106-9410,

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AN ICONIC MOMENT IN THE history of Christianity in the West

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taking shape in the aftermath of that reign, Callinicum encapsulates a

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"tolerant" pagans in earlier centuries persecute "intolerant" Christians?

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intervention of deity in human affairs that made it harder than it is

VIOLENCE AND INTOLERANCE

When scholars decry religious intolerance, more often than

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But there is more that historians of antiquity can contribute. As the

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Theodosius's willingness to bend to Ambrose's will over Callinicum

MARTYRS AND VIOLENCE

The image of the martyrs is what is important for two reasons.

As the prefect was hastening to the martyr-church with a large force of

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urban mobs. But in his case, the unexpected happened. Overcoming

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penalties of their madness and their reckless obstinacy."13 Constantine

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meeting in Elvira ruled that Christians who died in attacks on idol

JULIAN AND MARTYRDOM

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mechanisms of the state against members of their own faith. The

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of sticks.26 After Julian's death, Bishop Gregory Nazianzen vented his

Christians responded to Julian's tactics by rethinking their vocabu

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Gregory was talking about Christians who succumbed to Julian's temp

30Or. 4.11. PG 35:541, trans. King (1888): 7.

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As part of this process, the role of the martyr as essentially a passive

RELIGION AND POLITICS: "CHURCH" AND "STATE"

To this point, I have used martyrdom symbolically as a means to

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failed, the remaining option was to use urban paramilitary forces—

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panegyrics that exalted imperial charisma while simultaneously reinfor

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Samaritans, Heretics, and Pagans." Just as the persecutor Maximin Daia

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claim to the separation of Church and State, or that emperors were

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The failure of emperors to control the discourse of martyrdo

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heel. But as the Thaumasius incident showed, the bestowal of martyr

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Aalders, G. "Nomos empsuchos." In Politeia und Res

Ando, C. "Pagan Apologetics and Christian Intolerance