The Conflict Between Paganism and Christianity in the Fourth Century

235 Pages·1963·8.132 MB·Italian

by  Arnaldo (ed.) Momigliano

THE
CONFLICT BETWEEN
PAGANISM AND
CHRISTIANITY
IN THE
FOURTH CENTURY
ESSAYS EDITED BY
A R N A LD O M OM IGLIANO
PROFESSOR OF ANCIENT HISTORY
IN THE UNIVERSITY OF LONDON
OXFORD
AT THE CLARENDON PRESS
Oxford University Press, Amen House, London E.C.4
GLASGOW NEW YORK TORONTO MELBOURNE WELLINGTON
BOMBAY CALCUTTA MADRAS KARACHI LAHORE DACCA
CAPE TOWN SALISBURY NAIROBI IBADAN ACCRA
KUALA LUMPUR HONG KONG
© Oxford University Press 1963
FIRST PUBLISHED I963
REPRINTED LITHOGRAPHICALLY AT THE
UNIVERSITY PRESS, OXFORD
FROM CORRECTED SHEETS OF THE FIRST EDITION
1964
P R E F A C E
relations between Paganism and Christianity in the
T h e
fourth century seemed a suitable theme for a course of
lectures at the Warburg Institute. The eight lectures here
collected were delivered in the academic year 1958-9 and
are published as they were delivered. It was, however, con­
sidered expedient to translate into English the two lectures
which were given in French and the one which was in
German. The lecturers were left free to choose their own
subject and to add the notes they wanted for publication.
Specialists will judge each paper on its individual merits. For
the general reader I have added, by way of introduction, a
few pages on the problem of Christianity and the decline
of the Roman empire. They were originally part of the
two Taft Lectures which I delivered in the University of
Cincinnati in 1959.
A. M.
December i960
University College London

C O N T EN T S
Introduction. Christianity and the Decline of the
Roman Empire i
By professor A. momigliano, University College "London
i. The Social Background of the Struggle between
Paganism and Christianity 17
By professor a. h. m. jones, University of Cambridge
11. Pagans and Christians in the Family of Constantine
the Great 3 8
By professor j. vogt, University of Tubingen
h i. Christianity and the Northern Barbarians 56
By professor e. a. Thompson, University of Nottingham
iv. Pagan and Christian Historiography in the Fourth
Century a.d. 79
By professor a. momigliano
v. The Survival of Magic Arts 100
By dr. a. A. BARB, Warburg Institute, London
vi. Synesius of Cyrene and Alexandrian Neoplatonism 126
By professor h. i. marrou, Sorbonne
vii. Anti-Christian Arguments and Christian Platonism:
from Arnobius to St. Ambrose 151
By professor p. courcelle, College de Trance
viii. The Pagan Revival in the West at the End of the
Fourth Century 193
By professor h. bloch, American Academy in Rome and
Harvard University
Figs. 1-16 between 218-219
Index 219
IN T R O D U C T IO N
Christianity and the 'Decline o f the Ploman Empire
ARNALDO MOMIGLIANO
T
I may perhaps begin with a piece of good news. In this year
1959 it can still be considered an historical truth that the Roman
empire declined and fell. Nobody as yet is prepared to deny that
the Roman empire has disappeared. But here the historians begin
to disagree. When we ask them to tell us when the Roman empire
disappeared, we collect an embarrassing variety of answers. The
more so because there is a tendency to identify the beginnings of
the Middle Ages with the end of the Roman empires a tendency
which would have given no little surprise to medieval men who
firmly believed in the continuity of the Roman empire. There
are, of course, historians who see the Middle Ages making their
appearance and the Roman empire sinking into oblivion with the
conversion of Constantine in 312 or with the inauguration of
Constantinople in 330. And there are historians who would delay
the end of the Roman empire to that year 1806—more precisely
to that day 6 August 1806—in which Napoleon I compelled the
Austrian emperor Francis II to underwrite the end of the Holy
Roman empire. Between these two extreme dates there are plenty
of intermediate choices. There are still traditionalists ready to
support the once famous date of September 476, when Romulus
Augustulus lost his throne; and there are more sophisticated re­
searchers who would prefer the death of Justinian in 565 or the
coronation of Charlemagne in 800—when the Roman empire was
in a way replaced by two Roman empires. Another favourite
date is the fall of Constantinople in 1453 as the end of the new
Rome. Uninhibited by such a variety of opinions, Professor
Arnold Toynbee has succeeded in adding one which at first sight
seems to be of remarkable originality. He has reproached Gibbon
for not understanding that the Roman empire began to decline
four centuries before it was born. Indeed, Professor Toynbee
maintains that the crisis of Roman civilization started in the year
, 431 b.c. when the Athenians and the Spartans came to grief in
the Peloponnesian War.1 But this opinion is really not original:
it is in fact curiously reminiscent of an old Marxist point of view.
Until recently Marxist historians have held that the crisis of
classical civilization started with the Peloponnesian War or at the
latest with the Gracchan movement. Only lately have Russian
historians begun to realize that their position verged on absurdity.
It is tempting to laugh at this game of finding a date for the end
of the Roman empire, especially when the date is four centuries
before the beginning of the Roman empire. But it is obvious that
the game is after all not so futile as it looks. A date is only a
symbol. Behind the question of dates there is the question of the
continuity of European history. Can we notice a break in the de­
velopment of the social and intellectual history of Europe ? If we
can notice it, where can we place it ?
Historians, theologians, and political theorists have medi­
tated on the decline and fall of Rome for centuries. Toynbee
might defend himself by saying that the ancients pondered about
the decline of Rome before Rome gave any clear sign of de­
clining. They reflected on the causes of the fall of Rome even
before Rome fell in any sense. Professor Mixcea Eliade rightly
observed that the Romans were ‘continuously obsessed by the
“end of Rome” \2 The problem of the decadence of Rome was
already formulated by Polybius in the second century The
b .c .
idea that Rome was getting old is clearly expressed in Florus, an
historian of the second century a.d.3 After the sack of Rome by
Alaric in 410 the decline of Rome became the subject of the most
famous of all philosophic meditations on history—St. Augustine’s
Civitas dei. The Roman empire continued to survive, but people
knew that something had happened. They spoke of translatio
imperii—of the transition from the old Roman empire to the new
Holy Roman empire of Charlemagne and other German emperors.
Nobody doubted that the continuity of the Romaii empire con­
cealed a change. Indeed, about a.d. 1000 Otto III dreamt of re­
viving the old Roman empire: he spoke of renovatio imperii
Romanorum. But the greatest of the Latin poets of the eleventh
century, Hildebert of Lavardin, was under no illusion about the
1
A Study of History, IV, pp. 61-63. E. Ch. Welskopf, Die Produkfionsverhallnisse im alten
Orient und in dergriechisch-romischen Antike (Berlin Akad. ,1957), gives some idea of Marxist his­
toriography on the ancient world. Cf. K. F. Stroheker, Saectdum, i (1950), 433-65; F. Vitting-
hoff, ibid, xi (i960), 89-131; K. F. Stroheker, ibid, xii (1961), 140-57.
2 M. Eliade, Cosmos and History, reprint (New York, 1959), p. 76.
3 Cf. H. Werner, Der Untergang Roms (Stuttgart, 1939); S. Mazzarino, La Fine del mondo
antico (Milano, 1959).
state of Rome: ‘Par tibi, Roma, nihil, cum sis prope tota ruina.’1
The thought of reviving old Rome, old classical civilization, be­
came the inspiration of the humanistic movement in Italy in the
fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. This implied the awareness
that the Christian civilization of earlier centuries was something
profoundly different from the classical world of Rome. Let us
remind ourselves—because this is essential—that our problem of
the decline of Rome is a product of Italian humanism. In that
atmosphere Flavio Biondo wrote his history of Italy ‘ab incli-
natione Romanorum imperii’ towards the middle of the fifteenth
century. He dated the decline of Rome from the sack of Rome in
410. The Goths, the barbarians, started the decline of Rome.
Since Flavio Biondo each generation has produced its own
theory or theories on the decline and fall of Rome.2 Gibbon was
heir to a long tradition of thought on the subject. Until the end
of the eighteenth century few responsible historians followed
Biondo in attributing the decline of Rome' to the German in­
vasions. Rather, causes of the decline were sought inside the
empire. Machiavelli and Paruta in the sixteenth century tried to
discover the cause of the decline of Rome in its constitution. In
the early eighteenth century, more exactly in 1734, Montesquieu
published his Considerations sur la grandeur et. la decadence des
Romains. By subtle analysis Montesquieu showed two of the
main reasons for the fall of ancient Rome to be the power of the
army and excess luxury. Later in the century, Christianity was
made responsible for the decline of Rome. There is an anti-
Christian note in Montesquieu which becomes loud in Voltaire
and loudest of all in Gibbon’s Decline and Fall. Gibbon focused
attention on Christianity as the main factor of change and, as he
thought, of decadence in the structure of the Roman empire. It
was not until the nineteenth century that the German invasions
came to be generally regarded as the key to the understanding of
1 Text in The Oxford Book of Mediaeval Latin Verse, ed. F. J. E. Raby, 1959, p. 220. On
Hildebert see W. Rehm, Europaische Romdichtung, 2nd ed. (Miinchen, i960), pp. 43-61. Cf.
P. Schramm, Kaiser, Rom und Renovatio (Leipzig, 1929; 2nd ed., Darmstadt, 1937); R. Folz,
L ’Jdee d’empire en Occident du V e an XIV' siecle (Paris, 1953); E. Anagnine, II concetto di
rinascita attraverso il medio evo (Milano, 1958); W. Goez, Translatio Imperii (Tubingen, 1938).
1 For what follows cf. W. Rehm, Der Untergang Roms im abendlandischen Denken (Leipzig,
1930); A. Momigliano, ‘La formazione della moderna storiograha sull’impero romano’,
Rivista Storica Italiana, 1936 (reprinted in Contributo alia storia degli studi classici, Roma,
1953, pp. 107-64); S..Mazzarino, Storia romana e storiografia moderna (Napoli, 1934); id.,
La Fine del mondo antico, 1939; A. Heuss, Romische Geschichte (Braunschweig, i960),
pp. 492-8, 391-600. On Gibbon see especially G. Giarrizzo, E. Gibbon (Napoli, 1934);
G. J. Gruman, History and Theory, i (i960), 73-83.
the end of old Rome. During the nineteenth century nationalism
prevailed, and historical research was mainly in German hands:
it is not surprising that German scholars should believe that the
German invasions sufficed to explain the birth of the Middle
Ages. The most coherent alternative view was elaborated by
Marx and his followers when they claimed that the Roman empire
fell because its social structure, founded as it was upon slavery,
was teplaced by the feudal economic system.
In more recent years the picture has become more complex.
The enormous vitality of the Byzantine empire has been re­
cognized, and it has been shown that much of its political and
cultural tradition is of Greek or Roman origin. While older
Byzantine scholars like Professor Charles Diehl stressed the
oriental character of Byzantine civilization, a more modern
school of thought has maintained, in Professor Baynes’s words,
that the Byzantine empire was the result of the fusion of the
Hellenistic with the Roman tradition.1 There is also an increasing
realization of the part played by Islam in the social changes of the
Mediterranean world during and after the seventh century. Other
scholars like the Hungarian Professor A. Alfoldi and the Ger­
man Professor F. Altheim invite us to look beyond the borders
of the empire at the nomadic tribes of non-German origins—
Sarmatians, Huns, Slavs—who directly or indirectly contributed
to changing the ways of life of Europe after the third century a.d.
As I have said, even the Marxists are no longer able to defend
their tenet that the crisis of ancient civilization started at the end
of the fifth century b.c. Recent discussions in the leading periodi­
cal of the Russian historians, the Vestnik Drevnej Istorii, show
that they have been shifting their positions. A book published
in 1957 by a very intelligent historian, Mme E. M. Staerman,
denies that there was a clear-cut struggle between slaves and slave­
owners. She emphasizes the variety of social forms to be found in
the Roman empire, and the need of avoiding generalizations.2
But the most important discussion on the topic of social
1 N. H. Baynes, Byzantine Studies and Other Essays (London, 1955), p. 69 (from an essay of
1930). Cf., for instance, F. Dolger, ‘Rom in der Gedankenwelt der Byzantiner’, Zeitschr.f.
Kirchengeschichte, lvi (1937), 1-42, now in Byzanz und die europdische Staatenmelt (Ettal, 1953),
pp. 70-115.
2 E. M. Staerman, Krizis Rahovladel’c eskogo Stroja v Zapadnych Provincijach Rimskoj Imperii
(Moskva, 1957). Cf. the discussion in Vestnik Drevnej Istorii (1953-5), which was provoked
by an article by Mme Staerman. Two of the contributions to this discussion are translated
in the collective volume, Etat et classes dans Fantiquite esclavagiste (Paris, 1957). Cf. also E. M.
Staerman, ‘Programmes politiques & l’epoque de la crise du IIIe siecle’, Cahiers Hist. Mondiale, iv
(1958), 310-29. More recent discussion is summarized in Vestnik Drevnej Istorii, 1961,4, 30-31.
changes in the Roman empire remains that which developed in
the last forty years between the followers of the Belgian scholar
H. Pirenne and the followers of the Austrian A. Dopsch.1 As we
all know, Dopsch substantially claimed that no break in con­
tinuity is noticeable in the Western world as a consequence of the
German invasions. There was considerable redistribution of
land, but the legal forms of ownership remained essentially
Roman, city life survived, there was no return to natural eco­
nomy, no interruption of the great trade-routes, and no inter­
ruption in the transmission of cultural goods. Pirenne accepted
Dopsch’s view that the German invasion did not put an end to
the Graeco-Roman social structure, but contended that the
ancient ways of life were disrupted by the Arabs: they played the
part that more conventional historians used to attribute to the
Germans. In Pirenne’s opinion the Arabs destroyed the unity of
the Mediterranean, paralysed the trade between East and West,
drained the gold away from the West, and displaced the centre of
civilized life from the Mediterranean to the North Sea. The West,
having been cut off from Byzantium, had to look after itself. The
coronation of Charlemagne was symbolically the answer given
by the West to the challenge of Mohammed’s followers. Thence
the somewhat unexpected title of Pirenne’s great book, Mohammed
et Charlemagne.
It is perhaps right to S"ay that Rostovtzeff was in essential
agreement with Pirenne against Dopsch. Of course, he found the
cause of the decline of the cities not in the intervention of the
Arabs, but in the revolution of the peasantry against the city-
dwellers. But Rostovtzeff, like Pirenne, was a bourgeois in the
classical sense: he identified civilization with city life and saw the
end of the classical world in the decline of the cities.
Now it is clear that all this recent research is unified by a
common interest in the structural changes of the social organiza­
tion of the Roman empire. It is also undeniable that researchers
are less and less prepared to maintain that a simple formula can
cover the enormous variety of local situations within the Roman
empire. We are learning to respect regional differences as much
as chronological sequences. We begin to see that what is true of
France in the fourth century is not necessarily true of Spain,
Africa, or Italy, not to speak of Syria or Egypt.
1 Large bibliography in W. C. Bark, Origins of the Medieval World (Stanford, California,
1958). Notice on Pirenne, A. Riising, Classica et Mediaevalia, xiii (1952), 87-130.