Constantinople to Chalcedon

Shaping the World to Come

Patrick Whitworth

• Publisher: Sacristy Press
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781910519493
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Christian Theology

The period covered by this book (AD 381–451) is the first in which the church can be said to have exercised a dominant role in political history. For some it is the period in which the church lost its innocence. Yet without the innovations of Constantine and his successors, it is hard for us to imagine what Christianity might have been. Without this time of consolidation and increasing conformity, Europe would not have existed as we now know it—nor, for that matter, would Islam.

It is one of Whitworth's merits to show that the great doctrinal formulae which we owe to this epoch were framed with reverent care by men of profound conviction; at the same time, we are left in no doubt that the church, then as now, was as secular an institution as any other. This book is neither an apology nor a polemic, but the real history of real people who were trying to uphold eternal truths in a fallen and transitory world.

The clear and faithful, rapid yet detailed narrative that Patrick Whitworth presents here will be equally enjoyable and instructive for those who lament the rise of Christendom and for those who daily give thanks for it; both will admire the accuracy and candour with which he takes us, chapter by chapter, through the political convulsions which accompanied each advance in theological speculation.

— Mark Edwards, Professor of Early Christian Studies, University of Oxford

Part 1: Church and State

Chapter 1

The Last Days of the Roman Empire

Adrianople lies some 200 kilometres north-west of Constantinople, on the road that leads up to the Balkans. It was near Adrianople that, on 9 August 378, the Emperor of the Eastern Empire, Valens, faced a formidable force of Goths, both Greuthungi and Tervingi, led by their leader Fritigern. [1] The Goths themselves traversed the Danube to the north of Adrianople in 376, after an attack by the Huns, who were pressing ever westwards from their home on the Hungarian plain, seeking booty and more land. Some 90,000 Goths, with a potential fighting force of 20,000 trained soldiers, crossed the Danube pursued by the Huns. The Huns, a nomadic people who lived a restless life on the steppes beyond the Sea of Azov, depended “on their superb skills of horsemanship and a ferocious fighting spirit”. [2] Harassed and defeated, the Goths were allowed by Valens to breach the boundary of the Danube and enter the Empire. Valens had been persuaded that they would in time make useful recruits for the Roman army, thereby freeing local farmers to produce crops rather than fight. [3]

For a century or more, the Roman Empire had been used to the migrations of Germanic tribes to within its borders. The task of defending a 2,000-mile border along the Rhine and Danube had become increasingly difficult. Hadrian had built defences, and the Emperors Diocletian and Constantine, following the defeat of Decius by the Goths in 251, [4] had followed a similar policy of defences made up of forts, garrisons, walls and ditches. [5] Once again Valens faced the familiar problem of settling hard-pressed and hungry Goths within Roman borders. This incursion was to go disastrously wrong, however, and the Roman legions suffered one of their most crushing defeats since that at the hands of Hannibal, five centuries previously.

The background to this defeat was that the Goths, having crossed the Danube, had been badly treated by a Roman commander in Thrace, comes rei militaris, named Lupicinus. Knowing the near starvation of the Goths and Tervingi, “he bargained dog meat for slaves” and massacred an embassy sent to him by their leader Fritigern. [6] Fritigern was himself kidnapped, but later released on the advice that holding him would only further incite his people. [7] However, the damage had been done to any possible trust developing between the Roman authorities and the incoming Goths. The latter began looting villages for food in the region of Marcianopolis. Lupicinus drew up his forces west of Marcianopolis in response, but in the ensuing battle, the Roman army was swept aside by the combined Gothic tribes, their legions’ standards were captured, and Lupicinus fled the field. [8] Having secured the support of the Huns by giving them copious amounts of captured booty, the Goths were ready to settle more permanently in Thrace. A campaign was now mounted against the Goths by the Roman army in both the Western and Eastern Empire, bringing Gratian, the western Emperor, together with his uncle Valens, to the fray. Before the armies could combine, Valens moved against his adversary, seeking glory for himself. In the spring of 378, Valens left Antioch to pursue and attack the Goths, spurred on by news of his nephew Gratian’s victories over the Lentienses in February that year. [9] He wanted similar glory in battle.

Valens left the city of Adrianople, depositing his seal of office and field treasury there and moving with his army of some 20,000 legionaries and cavalry to meet Fritigern’s army of a similar size. [10] It was a hot August day, and after a long march they found the Gothic camp, with the wagons drawn up in a huge circle or laager around the perimeter. [11] Fearing incineration in the Gothic fires, and after a bungled parley in which Fritigern asked for hostages of rank, but none were forthcoming until too late, skirmishes among over-eager troops precipitated the battle. Roman forces were unable to breach the laager. Fierce hand-to-hand combat ensued. Gothic cavalry broke Roman lines and soon the legions were put to flight. Valens, trying to escape the slaughter, was killed by an arrow, and nearly two thirds of his forces were killed. [12] It was the worst Roman reverse since the capture and defeat of the Emperor Valerian by the Persians at the Battle of Edessa in AD 260. Indeed, the Roman chronicler of this period considered it the worst defeat of Roman power since Cannae (216 BC) in the Second Punic War. In light of the defeat, the western Emperor, Gratian, decided it would be impossible to rule both East and West, so while stationed at Sirmium (present day Mitrovica in Serbia) he summoned a young Spanish general, the grandson of Constantius II, only 33 years of age, but already in retirement on his estates in Spain because of his father’s dramatic downfall and execution. His name was Flavius Theodosius. He was given the rank of magister equitum and on 19 January 379 at Sirmium Gratian crowned him Emperor or augustus in the East. [13]

Theodosius

It was a well-tried Roman tactic to crown an impressive general augustus. It had happened before and it would happen again, especially when the existing emperor by blood was a minor, or simply an ineffective ruler or commander. Constantine had been proclaimed Emperor by his troops in York in 306, although it would be some time before he secured the Empire. [14] Valentinian I was likewise proclaimed Emperor by the army on 26 February 364, as was his brother Valens in the same year, in succession to Jovian. [15] Theodosius had already proved himself a capable military commander, so his choice followed the same principle.

Theodosius’s immediate task, for which he had been crowned augustus, was to secure the Eastern Empire, Constantinople and its surrounding territories from further Gothic encroachment and also to subjugate the Goths within the borders of the Empire. Early efforts to pacify the Goths almost proved a failure. In the immediate aftermath of the battle, Theodosius was able to defeat smaller bands of Goths into which their host had been split. They were too weak to take the well-fortified city of Constantinople, which was defended by the archers of Queen Mavia. [16] The city walls were strengthened, but it was Theodosius II who greatly extended them—and it is these great walls that survive till today.

Two powerful concentrations of Gothic power had emerged a year after Theodosius’s accession in the spring of 380. One was led by Fritigern and was established in Macedonia and Thessaly; the other by Allortheus and Saphrax in Pannonia. The latter were taken on by Gratian’s forces and were eventually settled as confederate allies within the Empire, while Theodosius engaged the Goths in Thrace, but was heavily defeated. [17] Not only was Theodosius defeated, but he fell seriously ill in the winter of 380–381 and baptism was administered, a sign of approaching death. Because of poor strategy and inability in siege warfare, the Goths could not press their advantage. Having fled domestic intrigues at home, King (reik) Athanaric of the Tervingi, now at loggerheads with the other Tervingi leader, Fritigern, was welcomed by Theodosius at court in Constantinople. [18] Athanaric was visibly impressed by the splendour of Constantinople: its palaces, squares, hippodrome, ceremonial, churches and splendid position on the Bosporus. He declared, “Truly the emperor of Rome is a god on earth and whoever lifts a hand against him is asking for death”. [19] Despite such protestations of loyalty and awe, Athanaric fell ill and died soon after. Seeing an opportunity to bind Athanaric’s followers to himself, Theodosius gave him a magnificent funeral, thereby helping to reconcile the Tervingi to Roman rule.

On 3 October 382, Theodosius’s magister militum, Saturninus, signed a treaty with the Goths. [20] Little is known of its content, but the result was the settlement of the Goths along the Danube in Lower Moesia, Thrace, Dacia Ripensis and Macedonia. The Goths retained their own military structure and henceforward fought alongside Romans as allies or foederati. [21] The result was the pacification of these barbarians and at least a temporary solution to this latest incursion into the Eastern Empire.

The Empire, both East and West, depended on manpower, taxes, and a trained and disciplined army for its survival, both against persistent attacks in the form of barbarian encroachment from without and against the all too regular emergence of usurpers from within. In the later stages of the Empire, money, men, taxes, and trained soldiers were in ever-shorter supply, while the external and internal threats only increased. After the defeat at Adrianople, one of Theodosius’s first objectives was to rebuild the army, the better part of which—the eastern field army—had been lost. Theodosius made Thessalonica, with its great harbour and strategic communication, his centre of operations. Roads radiated out from the city to Constantinople, north to Naissus and Illyricum and eventually west to Rome along the Via Egnatia. Making Thessalonica his headquarters, Theodosius put in place a number of laws in order to fill the ranks of the army: the sons of soldiers were “combed out of the ranks of the bureaucracy . . . landowners were pressurised for recruits” and Gothic prisoners and deserters were pressed into service. [22] Not even self-mutilation was seen as a reason for exemption to conscription and military service. The ranks had to be filled at all costs.

The Roman army was divided into two parts: the field army and the army that guarded the borders, and this was a recent development since Constantine’s day. Prior to Constantine, field armies were often assembled and dispersed by Rome and their commanders, but after his victory over Licinius in the east in 324, he kept these field armies (comitatenses) in existence as a defence of the Empire. [23] Two new commands were created, Magister Peditum and Magister Equitum, answering only to the Emperor and on a level with the authority of the praetorian prefect. The comitatenses or field army were garrisoned in strategic cities and contained first class infantry and cavalry, and what we would today call special forces.

A second force in the army was the limitanei, who guarded the borders. Found in border towns, forts or outposts, they were more static by implication, less well trained, on lower pay and with less status. [24] The protectors, who were sometimes in attendance in the court, provided a kind of officer staff college. For its strength and leadership, the army had come to depend on barbarians, that is, the tribes beyond the Rhine and Danube who constantly sought space within the Empire. Like Napoleon and his Grande Armée which invaded Russia, the Roman army had been for some time, and especially since the Emperor Diocletian, a multi–national force with groups of Franks, Saxons, Alamanni, Vandals, Quadi, Sarmatians, and later Goths, serving together in the legions or cavalry. Indeed, some of the great emperor-soldiers like Aurelian, Diocletian and Constantine were to come from the Danube provinces of Illyricum. The art of leadership in the army was to meld this disparate organisation, made up of a patchwork of tribal groups, into a united fighting force. Sometimes Gothic or Germanic tribes represented in the army found themselves defending the Empire against fellow tribesmen who were seeking space in the Empire. At such moments, the loyalty of these barbarian groups of soldiers depended on pay and promotion of some of their number to positions of real power in the imperial structure; indeed, some of the very top barbarian commanders even married into the imperial family. Such commanders included Bauto and Arbogast (both Franks, thought to be father and son), Richomers, a Frank, and Stilicho, a Vandal. All rose to the very apex of power in the Empire by virtue of their military careers, and of them we shall hear more.

An army must be paid, however, and to continually sustain a field army of hundreds of thousands was an on-going struggle. In the mid to late fourth century there was more fighting to be done, far more troops needed, and less booty to be taken. [25] Consequently, more taxes had to be raised to sustain this increasing military burden. The actual imperial bureaucracy had been greatly strengthened by Diocletian and Constantine, who increased it in size by at least a hundred new smaller provincial governorships and other posts. [26] The tax system was radically overhauled “with annual assessments on all usable goods and services . . . resembling Domesday Book in thoroughness”. [27]

Traditional unpaid public services were also integrated into the system. Urban commerce was taxed, and corruption and venal practices unearthed and punished wherever possible. An annual budget for the whole Empire was calculated from Diocletian onwards, and the rich and landed as ever passed on much of the burden of taxation to the much more vulnerable peasants who were “terrorised and maltreated”. [28] In cities, others took on civic obligations, called curiales, of repairing aqueducts and theatres, and road building. These duties had once given civic status, but were now onerous and came into force by virtue of limited property ownership to the value of 25 igurea of land. [29] What was once a privilege now became a burden, with no mitigating social perks, to the point where the only way out was further progression up the career ladder to the role of honorati, or the super rich.

In fact, the division between the hugely wealthy and the more ordinary middle class only grew. A typical senatorial income has been estimated at about 120,000 solidi, which was coinage introduced by Constantine in c.312, with each coin weighing 4.5 grams of gold, compared with about 1,000 solidi which was the salary of an upper government official, and 5 for a peasant. [30] Like a modern billionaire, at the very top sat a senator like Symmachus, the leader of the Senate in Rome in 384, [31] who could afford to spend 2,000 pounds of gold to celebrate his son’s praetorian games. [32]

As with late nineteenth-century Russian aristocrats, many retired to the relative isolation of their estates or villas. Only a few metropolitan cities attracted great wealth, and minor government officials exacted their last penny’s worth from the peasantry. [33] It was like Gogol’s Dead Souls. Trade diminished between cities and as much as emperors tried to reverse the trend towards personal aggrandizement at the expense of the bulk of the population, it continued. [34] Sitting pretty in all this was the church, which was given special privileges by Constantine, in particular that it need not pay taxes. In consequence, literally hundreds of thousands became monks, denuding agriculture of much-needed labour. [35] For an Empire that was hard pressed from migrations of warlike tribes from across the Rhine and Danube, these trends, taken together, created a recipe for great vulnerability. In addition, there were internal divisions created by usurpers, which only weakened the Empire further. But before facing any further ructions in the Empire, Theodosius set about restoring the orthodoxy of the church.

Theodosius and the Church

Soon after becoming Emperor in the East, Theodosius pinned his colours to the orthodox mast in a soldierly kind of way. As a seventeenth-century soldier in Oliver Cromwell’s army would have said, “Trust in God and keep your powder dry”, Theodosius pronounced that he defined orthodoxy as “the form of religion handed down by the Apostle Peter to the Romans and now followed by Bishop Damasus (of Rome) and Peter of Alexandria”. [36] What it lacked in finesse, the pronouncement made up for in directness. To the chagrin of many citizens of the imperial city, no mention was made of the See of Constantinople, only of its urban rivals, Rome and Alexandria. Yet right away Theodosius deposed the Arian Bishop of Constantinople, Demophilus. Following the sudden death of their previous president, Meletius of Antioch, a church council in Antioch that was seeking to suppress the followers of Apollinaris (who denied the full humanity of Christ) issued an invitation to Gregory of Nazianzus to become the next Bishop of Constantinople and president of their council. Theodosius supported this invitation.

For about fifty-five years the effects of the Arian controversy h...

Table of contents

• Foreword
• Preface
• Acknowledgements
• Abbreviations
• Part 1: Church and State
• Part 2: Out of Africa
• Part 3: Shaping the World to Come
• Brief chronologies
• Glossary of Terms
• Notes
• Bibliography