The History of the Medieval World: From the Conversion of Constantine to the First Crusade by Susan Wise Bauer Page A
Authors: Susan Wise Bauer
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“Permit us, I beseech you, to transmit in our old age to our posterity what we ourselves received when boys. Great is the love of custom.”
But even more central to the argument of Symmachus was his understanding of faith; he could not see why it was necessary, for the triumph of Christianity, to do away with all reminders of the old Roman religion. His appeal continues:
Where shall we swear to observe your laws and statutes? by what sanction shall the deceitful mind be deterred from bearing false witness? All places indeed are full of God, nor is there any spot where the perjured can be safe, but it is of great efficacy in restraining crime to feel that we are in the presence of sacred things. That altar binds together the concord of all, that altar appeals to the faith of each man, nor does any thing give more weight to our decrees than that all our decisions are sanctioned, so to speak, by an oath…. We look on the same stars, the heaven is common to us all, the same world surrounds us. What matters it by what arts each of us seeks for truth? 9
This was indeed the question, and Theodosius would have answered that as long as the citizens of the empire searched for truth by many means, they would have no single loyalty to hold them together. Already the division of the empire into two or three parts had sounded the death-knell for any chance that the empire would be held together by any identity as Roman citizens; already the Western Roman Empire and the Eastern Roman Empire had begun to assume different characters.
Ambrose, the bishop of Milan, opposed the applications; his answer to Symmachus laid out the exclusive theology that made Christianity so useful to the emperors.
What you are ignorant of, that we have learnt by the voice of God; what you seek after by faint surmises, that we are assured of by the very Wisdom and Truth of God. Our customs therefore and yours do not agree. You ask the Emperors to grant peace to your gods, we pray for peace for the Emperors themselves from Christ. You worship the works of your own hands, we think it sacrilege that any thing which can be made should be called God…. A Christian Emperor has learned to honour the altar of Christ alone…. Let the voice of our Emperor speak of Christ alone, let him declare Him only Whom in heart he believes, for the king’s heart is in the Hand of God. 10
Ambrose was a hard and uncompromising man, but he understood what was at stake. The altar of Christ alone : it was the only hope for unification that Theodosius had left, and it was a powerful hope.
Yet this power for unity was not without its complications for Theodosius. In 390, the year after the first of the Theodosian Decrees was issued, he ran afoul of the church he was trying to make use of, and Ambrose excommunicated him—the first time that a monarch was ever punished by the Christian church for a political action.
The action was a fairly straightforward, if cruel, act of retaliation. Over in Pannonia, a Roman governor had run into troubles at a tavern; drinking late one night, he had “shamefully exposed” himself, and a charioteer sitting next to him at the bar had “attempted an outrage.” 11 The routine drunken pass turned into an incident when the governor, embarrassed, arrested the charioteer and threw him in jail. Unfortunately, he was one of the most popular contestants in a chariot race to be run the next day, and when the governor refused to release him in time for him to compete, his fans rioted, stormed the governor’s headquarters, and murdered him.
Theodosius cracked down immediately and put to death everyone who had a hand in the riot—a purge that swept up a number of people who had simply been standing around watching. Ambrose was appalled by this injustice. When Theodosius next arrived in Milan to check on the affairs in the western part of his domain, Ambrose refused to allow him to enter the church either for prayer or for the celebration of the
But even more central to the argument of Symmachus was his understanding of faith; he could not see why it was necessary, for the triumph of Christianity, to do away with all reminders of the old Roman religion. His appeal continues:
Where shall we swear to observe your laws and statutes? by what sanction shall the deceitful mind be deterred from bearing false witness? All places indeed are full of God, nor is there any spot where the perjured can be safe, but it is of great efficacy in restraining crime to feel that we are in the presence of sacred things. That altar binds together the concord of all, that altar appeals to the faith of each man, nor does any thing give more weight to our decrees than that all our decisions are sanctioned, so to speak, by an oath…. We look on the same stars, the heaven is common to us all, the same world surrounds us. What matters it by what arts each of us seeks for truth? 9
This was indeed the question, and Theodosius would have answered that as long as the citizens of the empire searched for truth by many means, they would have no single loyalty to hold them together. Already the division of the empire into two or three parts had sounded the death-knell for any chance that the empire would be held together by any identity as Roman citizens; already the Western Roman Empire and the Eastern Roman Empire had begun to assume different characters.
Ambrose, the bishop of Milan, opposed the applications; his answer to Symmachus laid out the exclusive theology that made Christianity so useful to the emperors.
What you are ignorant of, that we have learnt by the voice of God; what you seek after by faint surmises, that we are assured of by the very Wisdom and Truth of God. Our customs therefore and yours do not agree. You ask the Emperors to grant peace to your gods, we pray for peace for the Emperors themselves from Christ. You worship the works of your own hands, we think it sacrilege that any thing which can be made should be called God…. A Christian Emperor has learned to honour the altar of Christ alone…. Let the voice of our Emperor speak of Christ alone, let him declare Him only Whom in heart he believes, for the king’s heart is in the Hand of God. 10
Ambrose was a hard and uncompromising man, but he understood what was at stake. The altar of Christ alone : it was the only hope for unification that Theodosius had left, and it was a powerful hope.
Yet this power for unity was not without its complications for Theodosius. In 390, the year after the first of the Theodosian Decrees was issued, he ran afoul of the church he was trying to make use of, and Ambrose excommunicated him—the first time that a monarch was ever punished by the Christian church for a political action.
The action was a fairly straightforward, if cruel, act of retaliation. Over in Pannonia, a Roman governor had run into troubles at a tavern; drinking late one night, he had “shamefully exposed” himself, and a charioteer sitting next to him at the bar had “attempted an outrage.” 11 The routine drunken pass turned into an incident when the governor, embarrassed, arrested the charioteer and threw him in jail. Unfortunately, he was one of the most popular contestants in a chariot race to be run the next day, and when the governor refused to release him in time for him to compete, his fans rioted, stormed the governor’s headquarters, and murdered him.
Theodosius cracked down immediately and put to death everyone who had a hand in the riot—a purge that swept up a number of people who had simply been standing around watching. Ambrose was appalled by this injustice. When Theodosius next arrived in Milan to check on the affairs in the western part of his domain, Ambrose refused to allow him to enter the church either for prayer or for the celebration of the
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