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The Making of Christian Communities in Late Antuquity and the Middle Ages

Wimbledon Publishing Company

The Disruptive Impact of Christianity in Late Roman Cappadocia

Raymond Van Dam

The successful spread of Christianity into the Roman empire has long been one of the most intriguing and most challenging of issues for ancient historians and patristics scholars. The challenge has always been to invent an explanation that is neither so generalized that it becomes historically meaningless, nor so precise that it has no relevance beyond a few specific examples. Modern studies of the rise of Christianity typically start at the beginning of the process by outlining the factors that distinguished Christianity from rival religious cults and that made Christian beliefs and behavior somehow more attractive, more acceptable, more desirable. In his Mission and Expansion of Christianity in the First Three Centuries, still an influential account a century after its publication, the great patristics scholar Adolf Harnack explained the success of Christianity in terms of a whole list of attributes, among them more aggressive proselytism, more attractive doctrines, more attractive institutions of charity and social assistance, and better organization. From the beginning Christianity 'possessed, nay, it was, everything that can possibly be considered as religion'.

Such a triumphalist account is, of course, already wholly compromised. With our unavoidably retrospective viewpoint we historians are always one step behind, as we explain the obvious and account for the evident. At the time, both in the early Roman empire and well into Late Antiquity after the conversion of emperors, the eventual success of Christianity was not a necessary, nor even a predictable outcome. In the later fourth century men still ridiculed Christianity for its beliefs and its behavior. As Basil of Caesarea once preached about the end of the world and the regeneration of life through God's judgment, some in his audience 'let loose a loud guffaw'. Only in retrospect does that mockery seem hollow. Christianity was furthermore not very widespread. The recent efforts to improve the standing of Christianity by claiming that by the early fourth century it was already prominent in Roman society are merely modern attempts to create a context that downplays the genuine surprise of the Emperor Constantine's decision to ally himself with Christianity.

During the fourth century Christianity was still not immediately acceptable, and it was still a cult with serious limitations. Its success, even with the patronage of emperors, was certainly not assured. One other factor also hinted at the difficulty of its spread. Often the practices and beliefs of Christianity conflicted with local traditions and conventional practices. Because of the writings of the three Cappadocian Fathers, Basil of Caesarea, Gregory of Nazianzus and Gregory of Nyssa, the region of Cappadocia (as well as the neighboring region of Pontus) is well enough documented during the fourth century to serve as a test case. Cappadocia is seemingly an odd selection as a test case, since in the history of the ancient classical world it had consistently been peripheral, on the geographical edges of the lowlands and coastal regions where great civilizations and cultures flourished, on the political margins of the great kingdoms and empires. In the highlands of central and eastern Asia Minor the spread of Greek culture and the imposition of Roman rule had not been all that successful or thorough. The determined survival of local customs and indigenous languages had undermined the possibility of cultural uniformity, and the lingering commonness of so-called bandits had highlighted the limitations of administrative totality. Well into Late Antiquity the outback of Cappadocia remained under-Hellenized and under-Romanized. This inability to introduce Greek culture or to impose effective imperial rule was a preview of the limited impact of Christianity in the region. Even with the support of emperors Christians could anticipate the survival of pagan cults and the appearance of variant forms of Christianity.

Nor were church leaders very adept at accommodating local customs and indigenous traditions. Because churchmen like the Cappadocian Fathers often preferred to confront native practices and beliefs, the spread of Christianity was thoroughly disruptive in local society. This chapter is a brief introduction to some of the consequences of this disruption in Cappadocia during the fourth century. Christian churchmen introduced new regulations about acceptable behavior, for instance regarding permissible marriages, and they imposed a new hierarchy of clerics and bishops who all served for life. These new standards conflicted with traditional patterns of marriage, and with the usual expectations of rapid turnover among most magistrates and priests (Section 1). Because churchmen had limited means of enforcement, they had to find a legitimation for this new morality and new hierarchy instead in the rhythms of history and the characteristics of the natural environment (Section 2). The intrusive impact of Christianity did not stop with introducing and then legitimating new behavior, however. These new histories and new legends themselves became disruptive, as they crowded out the old legends and myths that cities and families already used to explain their cults and their prominence (Section 3). In many cases all that remained by the later fourth century were disconnected fragments of these old legends. One such myth had apparently highlighted the original ancestor of all Cappadocians, the mysterious Mosoch the Founder (Section 4).

The issue here is not merely the rise of different fads in historical interpretation, a process with which modern historians are all too familiar. Instead, facts, content, data vanished wholesale. In order to introduce and justify new behavior and new expectations, communities had to imagine themselves differently. The rise of Christianity resulted in both the remembering of new, more relevant legends and the forgetting of old, outdated legends.

I. New Patterns of Behavior

In the mid-370s Basil responded to a series of questions from another bishop about discipline and penance. Basil's replies took the form of a long series of chapters or canons, which in modern editions are numbered consecutively through three of his letters. Most of these questions sought advice on the penalties for various sins and misdeeds. Since some of the questions mentioned specific cases and specific people, it is possible to assume that they were raising genuine issues of immediate concern for the pastoral duties of bishops. Several of these canons discussed the penalties for clerics who had committed sins, such as sexual misbehavior. The common penalty for such wayward clerics was the loss of their offices: 'the [previous ecclesiastical] canons order a single penalty to be applied to fallen [clerics], dismissal from their office'. Basil suggested that clerics who took up arms against bandits should be deposed from their offices, while priests who had unwittingly become involved in an 'illegal marriage' should be prevented from performing their clerical duties, although they could keep their offices. He likewise suggested that priests and deacons who had expressed only an intention of sinning should be excluded from the celebration of the liturgy.

Basil's comments introduce one of the most notable characteristics of the ecclesiastical hierachy that differentiated it from many pagan priesthoods, and from other hierarchical institutions in the Roman empire. This distinguishing characteristic was the lifetime tenure of bishops and clerics. When local aristocrats had served as priests in municipal or provincial cults, they had typically held their priesthoods for a year or so, and they had also often held priesthoods in different cults, sometimes concurrently. Their service as municipal magistrates also typically lasted only a year or two, although they might repeat their offices. The honorific inscriptions that cities or family members set up to honor these local aristocrats customarily commemorated not the length of their tenures as priests or magistrates, but the number of positions they had held and the number of times they had held them. In the early second century, for instance, Sebastopolis in Pontus honored the career of a local aristocrat who, in addition to having served for life as a priest in the imperial cult, had also held some municipal magistracies 'many times' and served as supervisor of the city's market 'even more often'.

In the imperial administration a similar pattern of short tenures in office and long interruptions of retirement was common. Only the emperors had lifetime tenure, and only the emperors were even expected to hold their office for life. The normal pattern for imperial office-holders was to combine occasional service of a year or so in a sequence of increasingly more prestigious offices, punctuated by long periods of retirement. The career of Symmachus, one of the most notable of the senators at Rome during the mid-and later fourth century, was typical. Symmachus held four major offices, a governorship in Italy, a governorship in Africa, the prefecture of Rome, and a consulship in 391, each for about a year, each separated by intervals of six to ten years. The upper levels of the imperial administration hence accommodated many men through rapid turnover. At Rome, for instance, there were over one hundred known prefects of the city during the fourth century, some of whom held the office for only a few months. In 351 alone five men held the office. Among pagan priests, among municipal magistrates and among the top magistrates in the imperial administration, short tenures and rapid turnover were the normal state of affairs.

In contrast, within the ecclesiastical hierarchy the normal expectation was of lifetime tenures. Once men were ordained as clerics, they served for the remainder of their lives. They could move up within the hierarchy, eventually becoming deacons and priests and perhaps even bishops, but they could not drop out to hold secular offices or to resume a life of leisured retirement and then perhaps return for another stint as a cleric. Bishops were even more restricted, since they were supposed to remain attached for life to their particular sees and not transfer to another city. At least in theory, competent bishops at small sees could not move up to become bishops at larger sees.

Basil's comments about the discipline of clerics hence reflected the consequences of the imposition of this new pattern of lifetime tenures as clerics and bishops. Clerical service had to be associated with an irreproachable life. Because lifetime tenure for all clerics and the permanent attachment of bishops to their sees hampered the potential for promotion and upward advancement, it became all the more important both for the men who became bishops and for those who remained lesser clerics to agree that moral and spiritual qualities alone had been the differentiating factors. Lifetime tenure furthermore made it difficult to remove wayward clerics. If they misbehaved, it was not possible simply to wait for the end of their tenure and replace them. But by associating their penalties with personal misbehavior, Basil and other bishops could resort to disciplinary sanctions that included outright dismissal from office. A new pattern of lifetime office-holding led to new regulations, new sanctions, and new expectations.

A second set of examples of disruptive practices that the spread of Christianity introduced involved those predictably contentious topics, sex and violence. Several of Basil's responses discussed permissible marriages. Basil was particularly intent upon insisting that a man or a woman could not marry the sister or brother, respectively, of a first spouse, or that a man could not marry his brother's wife (that is, the same prohibited marriage from the opposite perspective). Such marriages were presumably among those that he classified as 'a union of forbidden kin', which were subject to the same penalty as adultery. As elaboration upon his opinions Basil referred to another letter in which he had discussed such second marriages. In that letter Basil had countered the possibility of marriage between in-laws with several different arguments. He directed one argument against the apparent endorsement of a fellow bishop by suggesting the possibility of forgery. A second argument was necessary to contradict the implication of Leviticus 18:18 that seemed to allow a man to marry his wife's sister after his wife's death. Basil countered by claiming that this legislation applied only to 'those in the Law', that is, to Jews. Yet another argument highlighted definitions of kinship. Basil argued that because marriage made husband and wife into 'one flesh', as Matthew 19:5-6 had described the union, the wife's sister acquired kinship with the husband, and that hence the husband could no more have a relationship with her than with his own sister. And since 'the regulations about kinship are applicable to both men and women', a woman could likewise not have a relationship with her new 'brother', her husband's brother. He furthermore argued that a marriage between a man and his wife's sister would cause too much turmoil for the man's children. The children from his first marriage would be uncertain about his new wife, since they would not know whether she would behave with the hostility of a stepmother or the affection of an aunt, and the children from his second marriage would be uncertain whether they were the siblings or the cousins of the children from his first marriage.

These were not effective arguments. Basil had to suggest that someone had impersonated the bishop in order to explain away his endorsement, he had to stretch his exegesis of the biblical passages to claim that ties by marriage were similar to ties by blood, and he had to resort to unflattering stereotypes about the hostility of stepmothers to claim that they would be hostile to their new stepchildren. The primary weakness of Basil's arguments, however, was that they seemed to take so little account of actual practices. Within the senatorial aristocracy of Rome during the late Republican and imperial periods, for instance, high mortality rates and the demands of shifting political alliances had made divorce and remarriage very common and created blended families that often included a step-parent and half-siblings. Among Roman senators of the fourth century marriage between kin was still common. Among non-aristocrats premature deaths would likewise have left surviving spouses who were still young enough to contemplate remarriage. Since older men often married young women of a different generation, it would have been common for a young stepmother to be about the same age as her adult stepchildren, a likelihood that Basil seemed to acknowledge by classifying the infatuation between men and their stepmothers as the equivalent of incest. Remarriages were hence common, and so was uncertainty over permissible relationships among step-relatives, half-siblings and former relatives by marriage.

Basil also ignored the fact that strategies of marriage involved more than simple definitions of permissible relationships, since apprehensions about fiscal arrangements, dynastic succession and perpetuation of the family name also entered the calculation. One concern involved dowries: marriage of a deceased wife's sister would presumably imply that a husband could continue using his first wife's dowry. Another concern involved the family legacy: marriage of a deceased husband's brother would prevent a woman from being forced into a disadvantageous marriage that might produce a competing set of heirs, or simply from being left unmarried. Within the Roman aristocracy such concerns about property and succession had sometimes led to marriages between first cousins, step-siblings and descendants of half-siblings. In Roman law restrictions on permissible marriages had focused much more on considerations of differences in rank and status than on ties by blood or marriage. In the end, Basil too seems to have recognized that he was facing a difficult fight in trying to restrict marriages between in-laws. At the conclusion of his letter he simply hoped that this 'sacrilegious practice' would remain where it was now common and not contaminate his own region.

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Excerpted from The Making of Christian Communities in Late Antuquity and the Middle Ages by Mark Williams. Copyright © 2005 Wimbledon Publishing Company Ltd. Excerpted by permission of Wimbledon Publishing Company.
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