III. The Christian Roman Empire

1. III. The Christian Roman Empire 312 - 590 AD

2. III. The Christian Roman Empire Synopsis:- The Emperor Constantine (312 – 337 AD) is a key figure in Christian history. After his conversion Christianity moved from hiding into social and political prominence and became the religion of the Empire. The Church became linked to the power of the state and assumed moral responsibility for society. Secularization of the Faith was inevitable, but not without protest from rank and file monks. The latter was rapidly quelled, however, when barbarians laid waste the western part of the Empire.

3. III. The Christian Roman Empire • In the late 3rd century AD, the Roman empire was near anarchy. Imperial succession was usually violent and often murderous. • Diocletian, a Roman general from the Balkans, stole power in 284 AD by slaying his rival to succession with the sword. • To avoid his own forceful removal, the wily general divided the Empire in two and took control of everything from his base in Nicomedia (northern Turkey). • Two years before his death he began, for reasons unknown, an Empire wide purge of Christians. • This, the last pogrom, ended only with the succession of Constantine as a result of battle. Constantine ascribed his victory to a vision he had of the cross, as a result of which, he immediately converted to Christianity.

4. III. The Christian Roman Empire Power moves to Byzantium • 18 years after his succession, Constantine chose to move the capital of the Roman Empire to Byzantium, which he renamed Constantinople. • Persecution, gladiatorial combat and crucifixions were ended and Sunday was made a weekly holiday. • Zealous Christians anticipated global conversions. But there was a price to pay. • Whereas persecution in the past had maintained a Church of conviction, the new era saw many flock to the Church for political and social reasons. • The Church rushed headlong towards secularization.

5. III. The Christian Roman Empire The Trinity questioned • While oppression had unified the Church, liberation promoted division. • The doctrine of the Trinity met the greatest challenge. • Alexandria was the focus of division. The Bishop, Alexander, contended with his pastor, Arius, who promoted the supremacy of the Father. Eusebius, Bishop of Nicomedia (across the Bosphorus from Constantinople) sided with Arius. So, the political capital of the Empire (Nicomedia) was in dispute with the academic centre. • This led to riots in Alexandria and forced Constantine to call a council in Nicea, close to Nicomedia. • The outcome of this was the Nicene Creed which remains today the standard orthodox expression of the Trinity from Anglicanism to the Greek Orthodox Church . • Despite this apparent agreement, the Arian question rumbled on for another 50 years, leading Constantine, then his successors, to banish or exile numerous churchmen. Offices within the Church became driven by the whim of the Emperor .

6. III. The Christian Roman Empire The ascetic life • Growing corruption within the Church drove many Christians into isolation. • Around 140 AD a document appeared (The Shepherd of Hermas) which emphasized the precepts of faith, hope and love but also promoted greater extremes of self denial in order achieve greater sanctity. • In its most stringent form, the hermit might turn to celibacy or deny himself food, social interaction or the maintenance of personal hygiene. • Eccentricity was never far away (eg, Simeon Stylides got away from it all by retreating to the top of a stone pillar for 36 years).

7. III. The Christian Roman Empire The monastic life • In about 320 AD, these extremes, which could never attract more than a fringe element of the Christian Church, took a significant step forward by the institution of monasteries, based on communal regimented living patterns which avoided the extremism of the hermit. These took root in Egypt and spread rapidly to Syria and Turkey and finally widely across Europe. • The monastic life gained popularity because, based on poverty, chastity and self discipline, it helped to restore to the true believer the commitment of an earlier age.

8. III. The Christian Roman Empire The monastic life • But monasticism also assumed tasks of enormous benefit to the Faith. Monasteries became centres for study, translation, writing and scholarship. Within them arose significant libraries of religious writing. They tasked themselves with preserving early Christian parchments. • And monasteries ultimately became spiritual fortresses set apart from the world. • Sadly, however, their organizational skills increased their prestige and wealth, leading to loss of discipline and corruption. Nor did they, by any stretch of the imagination, represent the Scriptural view of Christian society.

9. III. The Christian Roman Empire Augustine---A man of vision • Augustine was born in 354 AD in the town of Tagaste in Algeria. His parents, pagan father and ardent Christian mother, insisted that he be educated in the best school in Carthage, where he met a girl who bore him a son. • His mother influenced a fruitless religious quest within him, and in 383 AD he headed for the City of Rome. • A year later, at the age of 30 he was offered a Chair at the University of Milan to which he moved with his mother, son and some African friends. The local Bishop, Ambrose, stirred his sense of impotence and sin, and, by study of the Scriptures, he found peace. “Not in rioting and drunkenness, not in immorality and debauchery, not in strife and envying; but put on the Lord Jesus Christ”. Romans 13; 13. • Baptized by Ambrose in 387 AD he then set out for his home in North Africa. On the way his mother and son died. Distraught and against his will, he was ordained an elder in Hippo and soon moved up to be Bishop. • False teaching on the Deity of Christ and original sin was rife. Augustine’s life experience led him to conclude that the gift of God is the only route to salvation.

10. III. The Christian Roman Empire Building for God • Augustine was 56 when Rome was sacked by Alaric the Visigoth. Refugees from the City flooded into Hippo, Augustine’s parish. • Augustine’s thoughts turned to comparing the world of the temporal to the vision of the Eternal. • Self interest, he concluded, drove worldly ambition, which, in the end, was destined to crumble. Sacking of Rome, 410 AD • But, the Church was the only community on earth that had a vision beyond time and was laying up treasure that would never see corruption. This concept, laid out in his writings “The City of God” has influenced Christian thinking even until now. • Augustine died in 430 AD when his parish of Hippo, ironically, was on the point of capitulation to a Vandal invasion.

11. III. The Christian Roman Empire Origins of the Roman Catholic Church • Constantine’s move to Byzantium in 330 AD divided the “catholic” church; and when Rome was sacked in 410 AD, church authorities looked more and more to the seat of the Holy Roman Empire in the Bosphorus. However, an attack on Rome in 452 AD by Attila changed all that. • Unknown to Rome, Attila’s army was debilitated. So, when Bishop Leo of Rome pleaded for mercy, Attila readily agreed. Leo’s stock soared. • The church in Rome was prominent for several reasons:- • It was wealthy and charitable, with a good reputation. • It had up to 30, 000 members and 150 clerics. • It was linked to Peter and Paul. • That said, the new Emperor, Theodosius, in 381 AD called a council in Constantinople but did not invite Rome’s participation. His aim was to make the Bishop of Constantinople central to the church. • Rome responded by calling a Synod the next year and claimed supremacy (“thou art Peter, and upon this rock----”). • The Bishop of Constantinople was subservient to the Emperor. No constraint limited the power of the Bishop of Rome, and in the Eternal City, church leadership took pre-eminence. Division between east and west was inevitable.

12. III. The Christian Roman Empire Leo the Great; The first Roman Catholic Pope • Leo’s triumphal return from his parley with Attila and his political power in the weakened environment of Rome encouraged him to seize power in the church and City . The primacy of the Roman Catholic Church was finally sealed when the local Imperial authority (Valentine III) mandated throughout Gaul attendance at the Papal court. Leo meets Attila • Leo’s supremacy took a knock in 455 AD when the City was again invaded by Vandals from Carthage. Leo pled for the City not to be sacked, but it was looted, an act which was a lesser evil to the population. So, Leo’s authority was curiously strengthened. The Roman Catholic Church had taken power.

13. III. The Christian Roman Empire Pagan Europe finds Christianity • In 410 AD the Roman Empire was invaded (by Alaric) for the first time in 600 years. More attacks from the north were swift to follow until the last vestiges of the Empire were crushed in 476 AD. • Fifty years prior to this missions had been sent north, and, surprisingly, the earliest Christians appeared on the fringes of Europe rather than at its centre. Raids to western England by the Scots/Irish captured and transported one Patrick, from a Christian family, to the Emerald Isle. Following escape back to England he became convinced that his life work lay in Irish mission. This decision resulted in the western seaboard turning to Christianity. All of this occurred before the Roman Church had emerged. Patrick • Later missions from the Roman Church to central Europe resulted in mass conversions. Reverence for and worship of the saints became widespread there.

14. III. The Christian Roman Empire Christian Britain • Patrick and Columba in Ireland and Scotland respectively had spread the gospel through the Celtic fringe, but conversion of the English came from an initiative from Rome. In 596 AD, Pope Gregory sent a party of Benedictine monks under Augustine to England. They settled in Canterbury and were welcomed by the Christian Queen Bertha. Her husband, Ethelbert, was an early convert and Canterbury became a focus for Christianity. Augustine was the first Archbishop there. Columba Iona • A pincer movement from the Celtic north and Kent in the south spread Christianity throughout the British Isles, but the Celts had predated the Roman Church invasion from the south. Doctrinal differences had to be resolved. • A Synod was called in Whitby in 664 AD and there the Celtic Christians bowed to the Roman Church practices. Britain, like the rest of western Europe moved progressively into the orbit of Rome.