Christianity, Book-Burning and Censorship in Late Antiquity

Dirk Rohmann

• Publisher: De Gruyter
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9783110485554
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: History of Christianity

It is estimated that only a small fraction, less than 1 per cent, of ancient literature has survived to the present day. The role of Christian authorities in the active suppression and destruction of books in Late Antiquity has received surprisingly little sustained consideration by academics. In an approach that presents evidence for the role played by Christian institutions, writers and saints, this book analyses a broad range of literary and legal sources, some of which have hitherto been little studied. Paying special attention to the problem of which genres and book types were likely to be targeted, the author argues that in addition to heretical, magical, astrological and anti-Christian books, other less obviously subversive categories of literature were also vulnerable to destruction, censorship or suppression through prohibition of the copying of manuscripts. These include texts from materialistic philosophical traditions, texts which were to become the basis for modern philosophy and science. This book examines how Christian authorities, theologians and ideologues suppressed ancient texts and associated ideas at a time of fundamental transformation in the late classical world.

1The Great Persecution, the Emperor Julian and Christian Reactions

In the first two chapters, I shall investigate those forms of book-burning and censorship that were sanctioned or tolerated by the Roman authorities. In the first chapter, I shall concentrate on two key events, initiated by pagan emperors of Late Antiquity, the Great Persecution and Julian’s school reforms, as well as on the respective reactions by Christian authors. I shall also argue that, while there have always been times when the Roman state did prohibit certain subversive ways to express one’s opinion, such as magic and divination, aggravated forms of censorship, such as book-burning, first occurred during the period of Late Antiquity. This chapter will therefore ask for the reasons why this period was a special one in regard to censorship. Within this consideration of Late Antiquity, it will also explain the censorship legislation in the age of Constantine as a reaction to the preceding Great Persecution. I will argue that contemporary Christian authors developed a number of strategies to ridicule and denigrate competing discourses and to blame the persecutions of the recent past on the influence of pagan philosophy. By contrast, they labelled Christianity as the true philosophy opposed, entirely or partly, to many of the philosophical schools of the past. I shall discuss the pertinent passages of Christian authors such as Lactantius, Eusebius, John Chrysostom and Gregory of Nazianzus. This understanding of censorship will also lay the groundwork for a later discussion of censorship legislation after Christianity became the state religion.

1.1Laws against Astrologers and Magicians before the Fourth Century

Magic was common and widely practised in the ancient world, as attested in papyri and other material evidence such as amulets and tablets, containing magic spells, love charms or invocation formulae. Magic was bound up in the rituals and cultures surrounding the gods, religious pantheon, and religious practices of the Roman Empire. It was therefore attached to acts of miracle-healing, divination, astrology, and prediction. But scholars like the natural historian Pliny the Elder regarded magic as treachery to be separated from medicine, religion and research in the stars as early as the first century.55 Magic worked because it was suitable to summon demons.

The burning of magical books also had powerful political, social and religious connotations that informed the cultural milieu in which these acts occurred. Within these contexts, the act itself took on the performative aspects of a ritual. Its development in this sense claimed the power of that which it was trying to replace. According to the Christian apologist Hipollytus of Rome (early third century), pagan magicians could burn magical notes to communicate with “demons.”56 The Christian appropriation of the act therefore inverted this, taking the spiritual nature of the act of burning itself but using it to avert demonical power.

The association of the written word with something magical was long standing in the Roman world. For example the term carmen (“poem, song, writing”) originated as an archaic invocation within the context of pagan cults or pagan philosophical schools.57 The term also came to be used with regard to harmful magic.58 The Law of the Twelve Tables, the earliest codification of law in Rome, already ruled the death penalty against incantations of carmina as harmful magic, aligning this charge with slander.59 Slanderous carmina continued to be punished in the imperial period.60 In Late Antiquity harmful carmina came to be associated with illegitimate pagan cult practice.61

Laws prohibiting and limiting its usage predate Christian times. Some emperors, such as Vespasian and Domitian, even expelled oppositional philosophers from the city of Rome in the context of bans of magic and astrology. However, as I have argued elsewhere, it seems probable that blanket bans were rarely enforced and that all edicts and subsequent expulsions were temporary and regionally limited. I have also argued elsewhere that while some books were burnt as a consequence of treason trials in the first century AD, there is no clear evidence that books were destroyed in accordance with laws against magicians, astrologers and philosophers before the Christian period.62 Astrologers were granted pardon apparently without requiring them to burn their books.63 Thus the evidence is against Speyer’s conclusion that magic books were regularly persecuted as early as during the Republic.64 His conclusion is based on the assumption that the Sententiae, legal opinions misattributed to jurist Iulius Paulus, were written already in the High Empire and reflect the practice of book-burning during the Republican period. Yet while there is no evidence for precedents from the Republican period, modern research shows that these legal opinions were revised and published perhaps in the age of Diocletian (284–305). They were affirmed by Constantine and again by the Law of Citations from 426.65 It is worth quoting the relevant passage:66

No one is permitted to have books on the magic art in his possession. And anyone who is found in possession of such books, will lose his property, the books will be publicly burnt, and he will be deported to an island. Less privileged people will be executed. Not only the practice but also the knowledge of this art is prohibited.

The final sentence marks a change in the legal attitudes towards suspicious writings and may be the addition of a later, possibly Christian, copyist.67 It is certainly true that punishments of astrologers became harsher in the late-imperial period: those who had knowledge of this art were to be thrown to the beasts or crucified while magicians (magi) were to be burnt alive.68 We do not know with any certainty when these laws were initially enforced, but Diocletian is the first emperor in Late Antiquity known to have ordered the destruction of books: books owned by the Manichaeans, Egyptian alchemists and Christians. A law issued by the emperors Diocletian and Maximian ruled a general, empire-wide ban on astrology: “To learn and practise the art of geometry is to the public interest. But the damnable art of astrology is illegal.”69 At this time, the term ars mathematica seems to have been limited to astrology because it was explicitly separated from the related field of geometry. No such separation was made in corresponding laws under the Christian emperors.

Diocletian’s aim was to rebuild the Roman Empire after it had suffered a long period of crisis. In doing so, he introduced a greater amount of state-control on a political and spiritual level. This lead him, among other things, to attempt to control books. As we will see in the next section, he also held Christians responsible for the instability of the recent past.

1.2The Great Persecution

There is no firm evidence that the Roman state burnt Christian religious books before Christianity became a major religion in the early fourth century. Epiphanius, bishop of Salamis in the late fourth century, mentions books from the Judaeo-Christian tradition found in wine jars at several occasions after the early persecutions.70 Christians could have hidden them to avoid being identified as such. In fact, the Gnostic gospels of Nag el Hammadi have been discovered in wine jars in Egypt.71 However, this does not mean that they were hidden in response to the Roman authorities attempting to destroy Christian books.

Initiated by Diocletian and his junior partner Galerius, the Great Persecution (303–311) is the first and only case where Roman authorities attempted to destroy visible monuments of Christianity such as assembly places and Bibles, because previous persecutions had created an increasing number of martyrs and therefore strengthened the appeal of Christianity. As Christian texts are the only sources that refer to the burning of Scripture and their accounts are likely exaggerated the question is: how was book-burning during the Great Persecution recorded by near contemporary Christian sources, exactly what books were burnt and what attitudes emerged in Christian texts in reaction to this?

To answer this, we need to position the Great Persecution within Diocletian’s broader religious policy. The underlying motivation for any religious persecution probably was the emperors’ quasi-divine status that was in conflict with Christian monotheism. Diocletian also had some poor experiences with Christians serving in the military. Before the Great Persecution, Diocletian ordered that books representing other groups be burnt. Although there is little evidence that has survived from these groups that would give further information, we know that in 297 Diocletian issued an edict against the Manichaeans: their spiritual leaders were to be burnt alive along with their scriptures.72 Manichaeism itself was a popular dualistic religion that originated in third-century Mesopotamia, combining syncretistic elements from Christian Gnosticism, Buddhism and Zoroastrianism. Diocletian also had books concerning the alchemy of gold and silver searched out and burnt in Egypt to cut off the rebellious Egyptians from these resources.73

A few years later, the co-emperors Diocletian and Galerius ruled similarly against the Christians on 23 February 303. In their presence, the prefect of the East had a church searched for objects of Christian worship in Nicomedia, which had recently become the East’s capital city: “The Scriptures were found and burnt.”20 In consequence, “imperial edicts were published everywhere, ordering that the churches be razed to the ground and the scriptures be destroyed by fire.”74

That Diocletian’s edict against the Christians and others of similar content were actively enforced is shown by several known Martyr Acts and Passions, recording the suffering of martyrs (although it must be noted that these are of variable historical value).75 Although the edict was valid empire-wide, most of the evidence suggests that it was most rigorously enforced in North Africa. This region was of particular interest for the Catholic sources because the Donatist schism later emerged from here. The Donatists refused to accept indulgence towards those Christians who had surrendered their books during the Great Persecution. According to a tendentious Catholic Passion probably of the early fifth century, the Donatists believed that whoever had thrown the scriptures into the fire was destined to burn in hell in retaliation.76 The underlying issue was particularly important in cases of bishops accused of having surrendered books, but desiring to keep their offices as the Donatists were unwilling to respect their legitimacy.

According to an official document from 19 May 303 preserved by Christian authors, in the Numidian city of Cirta the local curator had a Christian assembly place searched and people interrogated. Although they surrendered one large codex, bookshelves were otherwise found empty, leading some Christians present to denounce seven Christian lectors for concealing the books. On further investigation the authorities recovered 36 codices from these lectors.77 According to another contemporary document churches were also destroyed and Christian scriptures burnt at Zama and Furni near Carthage in Africa Proconsularis. The houses in which Christian books were found were to be destroyed as well.78 Probably authentic, this document is preserved as an attachment to the anti-Donatist work of Optatus of Milevis (in Numidia), who claimed that enforcing the burning of scripture had caused many individuals to suffer martyrdom.79

To a lesser degree, book-burning is also attested outside of North Africa. Eusebius, the Chur...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Preface
• Contents
• Introduction
• 1 The Great Persecution, the Emperor Julian and Christian Reactions
• 2 Fahrenheit AD 451 – Imperial Legislation and Public Authority
• 3 Holy Men, Clerics and Ascetics
• 4 Materialist Philosophy
• 5 Moral Disapproval of Literary Genres
• 6 Destruction of Libraries
• 7 The Post-Roman Successor States
• Conclusion
• Bibliography
• Index of persons
• Subject index
• Index of passages
• Endnotes