Heirs of Roman Persecution

Studies on a Christian and Para-Christian Discourse in Late Antiquity

Éric Fournier, Wendy Mayer, Éric Fournier, Wendy Mayer

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2019
• Print ISBN: 9781032088198
• eBook ISBN: 9781351240673
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Historia
• Subtopic: Historia antigua romana

The subject of this book is the discourse of persecution used by Christians in Late Antiquity (c. 300–700 CE).

Through a series of detailed case studies covering the full chronological and geographical span of the period, this book investigates how the conversion of the Roman Empire to Christianity changed the way that Christians and para- Christians perceived the hostile treatments they received, either by fellow Christians or by people of other religions. A closely related second goal of this volume is to encourage scholars to think more precisely about the terminological difficulties related to the study of persecution. Indeed, despite sustained interest in the subject, few scholars have sought to distinguish between such closely related concepts as punishment, coercion, physical violence, and persecution. Often, these terms are used interchangeably. Although there are no easy answers, an emphatic conclusion of the studies assembled in this volume is that "persecution" was a malleable rhetorical label in late antique discourse, whose meaning shifted depending on the viewpoint of the authors who used it.

This leads to our third objective: to analyze the role and function played by rhetoric and polemic in late antique claims to be persecuted. Late antique Christian writers who cast their present as a repetition of past persecutions often aimed to attack the legitimacy of the dominant Christian faction through a process of othering. This discourse also expressed a polarizing worldview in order to strengthen the group identity of the writers' community in the midst of ideological conflicts and to encourage steadfastness against the temptation to collaborate with the other side.

Chapters 15 and 16 of this book are freely available as downloadable Open Access PDFs at http://www.taylorfrancis.com under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives (CC-BY-NC-ND) 4.0 license.

1 The Christian discourse of persecution in Late Antiquity

An introduction¹

Éric Fournier

DOI: 10.4324/9781351240697-1

At the end of 408, the North African schismatic group called “Donatists” by our Nicene Christian sources imagined that the recent imperial legislation, which had been directed against them, had been nullified following the death of the magister militum Stilicho in August 408. In response, North African Nicene bishops sent an embassy to Ravenna to ensure the continuing validity of past “anti-Donatist” laws (Aug. Ep. 97.2–3). The Nicene bishops were successful in their petition, and on January 15, 409, Honorius’ court issued the following statement: “The Donatists and the rest of the vain heretics and the others in error who cannot be converted to the worship of the Catholic communion, that is, the Jews and the gentiles, who are commonly called pagans, shall not suppose that the provisions of the laws previously issued against them have diminished in force.”² The text went on to stress the connivance of judges, whom it threatened with forfeiture of their social rank, their office staff with a fine of twenty pounds of gold, and deportation and loss of property for members of the municipal senate. Many more similar legal measures targeted Donatists increasingly severely under Honorius.³

Three-quarters of a century after the successful defense of Rome’s anti-Donatist legislation by the Nicene bishops of Africa, the Vandal king Huneric repromulgated these very same laws, only this time it was Nicene, not Donatists, who were targeted.⁴ What is interesting, for present purposes, is Victor of Vita’s perception of these measures and presentation of these events as a persecution.⁵ Indeed, invoking a scriptural citation to undermine the Vandal strategy as lacking intelligence, as he often does in his narrative, Victor writes:

‘without understanding what it said and the things it asserted’ (1 Tim 1:7), they [Vandals] did not blush for shame in deploying against us [Nicenes] a law which our Christian emperors, seeking to do honour to the catholic church, had previously issued against them and other heretics, to which they added many things of their own, just as seemed good to their tyrannical power.⁶

This vignette taken from my own field of research, which could be easily multiplied to the numerous late antique instances of claimed persecution, illustrates the topic of the following contributions and its complexities.

The subject of this book is the discourse of persecution used by Christians in Late Antiquity (c. 300–700 CE). More specifically, through a series of detailed case studies, it investigates how the conversion of the Roman Empire to Christianity changed the way that Christians and para-Christians (Manichaeans) perceived the hostile treatments they received, either by fellow Christians or by people of other religions – “pagans” under Julian and Muslims during the Islamic conquest period at the beginning of the seventh century. Although it would be logical to assume that after Constantine’s conversion to Christianity in the fourth century and the increasing support for the faith by Rome’s emperors – with the notable exception of Julian (361–363) – Christian claims to be victims of persecution would cease, this was far from the case as even Augustine realized.⁷ In fact, late antique sources are filled with examples of Christians who claimed to be persecuted. How do we explain this phenomenon? In what ways were late antique persecutions different from those that occurred before the “little peace of the Church”? Is the traditional opposition posited between orthopraxy and orthodoxy – Romans ­persecuted early Christians by imposing a ritual (sacrifice), whereas Christians persecuted by imposing belief – valid when considering the difference between Roman persecutions of Christians and late antique claims to be persecuted?⁸

A closely related second goal of this volume is to encourage scholars to think more precisely about the terminological difficulties related to the study of Christian persecution. Three decades ago, in a study of Valens’ recall of the Nicene exiles, Rochelle Snee argued that “deposition and exile were primarily matters of politics under Valens, as was the case under Constantius, and were not true religious persecution.”⁹ Although this conclusion is to be welcomed for its political interpretation of Christian sources presenting a strong case for their own religious view of events, it implicitly assumes a universally accepted and stable definition of persecution. But what exactly constitutes a “true” persecution? And from whose perspective should we attempt to answer this question? Indeed, despite sustained interest in the subject, few scholars have sought to distinguish between such closely related concepts as punishment, coercion, physical violence, and persecution. Often, these terms are used interchangeably.¹⁰ Although there are no easy answers, an emphatic conclusion of the studies assembled in this volume is that “persecution” was a malleable rhetorical label in late antique discourse, whose meaning shifted depending on the viewpoint of the authors who used it. Persecution is therefore an emic term, because claims of persecution ­typically come from victims and are not objective phenomena. Like beauty, it resides in the eye of the beholder.

This leads to our third objective: to analyze the role and function played by rhetoric and polemic in late antique claims to be persecuted. Throughout the period under consideration, the Christian Roman state and its successor kingdoms attempted to impose the confession they considered orthodox upon their (sometimes reluctant) subjects using various levels of coercion. The authority to do this was based on the claims of a monopoly of truth made by partisan Christian ministers and the power to legislate faith inherited from the Roman Empire, in which rulers were responsible for maintaining the pax deorum. Moreover, the newly Christian Roman Empire blended the traditional civil ideal of concordia with the biblical precept of neighborly love. Ironically neighborly love, expressed as a concern for fellow Christians, could become intolerance when coupled with the power of the state to coercively impose “truth” upon those perceived to be heterodox.¹¹ The reaction to coercion was the counterclaim to be victim of persecution, which constituted a discourse, a rhetorical tool of empowerment for dispossessed and disempowered Christian groups. This often took the form of invective and attacking Christian rulers as persecutors was part of this process.¹² From a political perspective, then, “persecution” became a claim used by dominated groups of Christians to attack the legitimacy of the dominant Christian faction. Disempowered Christians used “corrosive discourses,” such as the rhetoric of persecution, as a means of resistance, as a weapon against their ideological foes, in order to oppose their subjective claims to truth.¹³

The difficulties associated with the history of persecution after Constantine, the terminology used to describe it, and the rhetorical nature of the term itself, can clearly be seen in the example of the Vandals presented at the opening of this chapter. Both Honorius and Huneric used the same anti-heresy legislation, and yet it is only the Vandals who earn the label “persecutor” directly and indirectly in our Nicene sources.¹⁴ In response to Huneric, Victor of Vita presents Nicene bishops as declaring “We are Christians (christiani sumus), we are bishops, we hold the one, true apostolic faith!”¹⁵ Christiani sumus had by Victor’s time become a topos evoking martyrological literature of earlier centuries, in which Christian martyrs publicly proclaimed their faith to the point of their own deaths (“witness” is the original meaning of the Greek term μάρτυς). Victor’s use of this expression casts the Vandals as persecutors, associating them with their infamous Roman predecessors in the mind of the reader. This is a good example of rhetorical construction (the use of a topos evoking earlier persecutions) that conveys a polemical point of view, specifically that the present persecution of North African Nicenes stood in continuity with past persecutions of Christians by “pagan” Roman emperors. These claims also operate as a form of invective and of apology, depicting the target as the evil villain in a polarized world.

Even Constantine, who is typically heralded as a model to follow by Patristic sources, could in the right circumstances be cast as a persecutor.¹⁶ The highly tendentious Donatist Passion of Donatus of Avioccala, for example, transformed the first Christian emperor into a persecuting tyrant, just as Victor of Vita had done in the case of Huneric.¹⁷ The author of the passio ascribed to the Devil the emperor’s order that “Donatist” church buildings be seized and transferred to what councils of bishops decided was the Catholic faction in Africa.¹⁸ The result, according to the hagiographer, was a repeat of earlier pagan persecutions of Christians: soldiers enforcing the imperial decision ruthl...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half-Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Foreword
• Acknowledgments
• Abbreviations
• Contributors
• 1 The Christian discourse of persecution in Late Antiquity: An introduction
• PART I The later Roman Empire of the fourth and fifth centuries
• PART II Post-Roman kingdoms of the Western Mediterranean (fifth to seventh centuries)
• PART III Eastern Mediterranean in the fifth to seventh centuries
• PART IV Theorizing persecution discourse
• Index