History Of Ancient Civilization

He was master of the West, Theodosius of the East. The contest between them was not only one between persons; it was a battle between two religions: Theodosius was Catholic and had assembled a council at Constantinople to condemn the heresy of Arius (381); Maximus was ill-disposed toward the church. The engagement occurred on the banks of the Save; Maximus was defeated, taken, and executed.

The ancient religion of the Gentiles did not disappear at a single stroke. The Orient was quickly converted; but in the Occident there were few Christians outside the cities, and even there many continued to worship idols. The first Christian emperors did not wish to break with the ancient imperial religion; they simultaneously protected the bishops of the Christians and the priests of the gods; they presided over councils and yet remained pontifex maximus. One of them, Julian (surnamed the Apostate), openly returned to the ancient religion. The emperor Gratian in 384[178] was the first to refuse the insignia of the pontifex maximus. But as intolerance was general in this century, as soon as the Roman religion ceased to be official, men began to persecute it. The sacred fire of Rome that had burned for eleven centuries was extinguished, the Vestals were removed, the Olympian games were celebrated for the last time in 394. Then the monks of Egypt issued from their deserts to destroy the altars of the false gods and to establish relics in the temples of Anubis and Serapis. Marcellus, a bishop of Syria, at the head of a band of soldiers and gladiators sacked the temple of Jupiter at Aparnæa and set himself to scour the country for the destruction of the sanctuaries; he was killed by the peasants and raised by the church to the honor of a saint.

Soon idolatry persisted only in the rural districts where it escaped detection; the idolaters were peasants who continued to adore sacred trees and fountains and to assemble in proscribed sanctuaries.[179] The Christians commenced to call "pagans" (the peasants) those whom up to this time they had called Gentiles. And this name has still clung to them. Paganism thus led an obscure existence in Italy, in Gaul, and in Spain down to the end of the sixth century.

The heresies were usually attempts to explain the mysteries of the Trinity and of the Incarnation. The most significant of these heresies was that of Arius; he taught that Christ was created by God the Father and was not equal to him. The Council of Nicæa condemned this view, but his doctrine, called Arianism, spread throughout the East. From that time for two centuries Catholics and Arians fought to see who should have the supremacy in the church; the stronger party anathematized, exiled, imprisoned, and sometimes killed the chiefs of the opposition. For a long time the Arians had the advantage; several emperors took sides with them; then, too, as the barbarians entered the empire, they were converted to Arianism and received Arian bishops. More than two centuries had passed before the Catholics had overcome this heresy.

As long as the Christians were weak and persecuted by the state, they fought among themselves only with words and with books; but when all society was Christian, the contests against the heretics turned into persecutions, and sometimes into civil wars.

From the second century there were among the Christians heretics who professed opinions contrary to those of the majority of the church. Often the bishops of a country assembled to pronounce the new teaching as false, to compel the author to abjure, and, if he refused, to separate him from the communion of Christians.

The decisions reached by these councils had the force of law for all Christians: the decisions are called Canons[177] (rules). The collection of these regulations constitutes the Canon Law.

In this century began the councils, the great assemblies of the church. There had already been some local councils at which the bishops and priests of a single province had been present.

The Christians even under persecution had never dreamed of overthrowing the empire. As soon as persecution ceased, the bishops became the allies of the emperors. Then the Christian church was organized definitively, and it was organized on the model of the Later Empire, in the form that it preserves to this day. Each city had a bishop who resided in the city proper and governed the people of the territory; this territory subject to the bishop was termed a Diocese

When Constantine marched against his rival, he took for his ensign a standard (the labarum), which bore the cross and the monogram of Christ. His victory was the victory of the Christians. He allowed them now to perform their religious rites freely (by the edict of 313), and later he favored them openly. Yet he did not break with the ancient religion: while he presided at the great assembly of the Christian bishops, he continued to hold the title of Pontifex Maximus; he carried in his helmet a nail of the true cross and on his coins he still had the sun-god represented. In his city of Constantinople he had a Christian church built, but also a temple to Victory. For a half-century it was difficult to know what was the official religion of the empire.

When the religion first concerned the world of the rich and cultivated people, they were interested simply to deride it as one only for the poor and ignorant. It was precisely because it addressed the poor of this world in providing a compensation in the life to come that Christianity made so many proselytes. Persecution, far from suppressing it, gave it more force. "The blood of the martyrs," said the faithful, "is the seed of the church." During the whole of the third century conversions continued, not only among the poor, but among the aristocracy as well. At the first of the fourth century all the East had become Christian.