3. The Christianized Empire.
After the failure of
a great persecution and a tyrannical development
of
the empire, the Emperor Constantine granted to the
Church in A.D.
313 full freedom of worship and the
restitution of confiscated goods.
Henceforward, he in-
creased his favors to the
Christians, and the Church
began to move into a privileged position. It
could be
argued that his interests as an emperor would recom-
mend an alliance with an institution that
carried
power; but there are signs that he was a sincere be-
liever, though pagan in his manner of
believing—too
sure that the Christian God was the one who
was
victorious in battle and helped him to outwit his ene-
mies. All this came as the climax of the Christian
interpretation of history that had been developing—
with the
Hebrews regarded as the fathers of civili-
zation, their language the original one, the language
of God;
Christianity being the return to the original
religion of mankind, the one
from which the Jews had
lapsed (only to be partially rescued by Moses)
while
the Greeks had declined still more—the Church being
the heir of the wisdom of both Jews and Greeks, how-
ever, and the Incarnation coinciding neatly with the
establishment of the Roman Empire, the era of peace.
It seemed
that, at this culminating moment, when the
empire itself was becoming
Christian, churchmen were
willing to attribute to a Christian emperor the
kind
of divinity that they had refused to concede to his
predecessors.
Henceforward it became almost consistently true
that all who wished to gain
imperial favor or to hold
office or to make their way in society would have
every
motive for joining the Church; and the conversion of
the Roman
Empire—hitherto a matter of persuasion
and not without its
risks—was to be continued by the
strong arm of the state. This
was almost bound to
introduce corruptions in the Church itself, and to
in-
crease the danger of a formal
Christianity, mixed with
paganism and thinking in pagan
terms—the danger also
of official compromises with paganism. It
was perhaps
natural, but it was unfortunate, that when there were
parties in the Church, one or more of these (not merely
the orthodox, but
sometimes the heretical) should ap-
peal to the
emperor, even when he was not inclined
to intervene. This had its special
dangers, for in A.D.
325 Constantine himself, having called the first ecu-
menical council at Nicaea, put himself
behind the
decree of that Council, condemning the Arian heresy,
but
within less than three years was induced to change
his mind.
Stranger still, men so convinced that they spoke for
the right
religion—and so sure that government and
power should be at the
service of God—were soon
advocates of persecution; and the
process in this case
was so understandable that nobody today can feel
sure
that, living in the same period and sharing the same
assumptions
about religion, he would have decided
differently. Some who were slow in
their conversion
to the practice appear to have been brought over when
the victims of persecution declared later in life that
they were now glad
that they had been coerced.
Already, in the reign of Constantine, there arose
issues which were to
trouble the Church for a long
time. One of them was the Donatist schism,
which
arose out of the later persecutions and was directed
against
bishops who had consented to the handing over
of sacred books to the
magistrates. It led to the erection
of a counter-church in
Africa—bishop confronting
antibishop—with violence,
persecution, atrocities,
self-immolation, and streaks of the revolutionary
and
the apocalyptic. An extravagant, though serious and
understandable, religious issue received tremendous
leverage from social
discontent and possibly a sort of
nationalism, and from hostility to the
Roman establish-
ment. The trouble lasted
for a century, almost until
the barbarians overran the province.
Shortly before 325, Arius, who wished to guard the
sovereignty of God the
Father, and may not have been
far enough from paganism to reject all ideas of subor-
dination in the deity, produced a
doctrine which, while
asserting the divinity of the Son, secured a clear
reduc-
tion of status for Him. The
controversy tore the Church
apart until A.D. 381, and it is perhaps not too
much
to say that for a longer period than this a great deal
of the
ecclesiastical conflict lay between men who
wished to assert both the
complete divinity and the
complete humanity of Christ, but could not agree
on
the formula that would ensure the one without deplet-
ing the other. The formula adopted at Nicaea,
homoousion (consubstantial with the Father) had al-
ready been rejected in a part of the eastern Church
that had
reacted against a heresy of an opposite tend-
ency. It was uncongenial to some because in any case
it could not
claim to be scriptural. Various shades of
the Arian and Nicene formulas
were attempted by one
party and another, who suggested “like the
Father”
and “of like substance with the
Father,” though there
emerged one group that diverged further
than Arius
and declared that there was no likeness at all. The
emperors provided a complicating factor—now hesi-
tating, now changing their minds, now plumping for
a
form of Arianism. The West remained firm in its
support of the Nicene
formula, but subtle differences
arose when technical terms had been
translated into
Latin, and the West was later than the East in con-
fronting the earlier heresy that had
constituted the
opposite danger. At a moment when a great work of
reconciliation was being achieved, there emerged an
emperor who was a
Westerner and a pious man, and
he clinched the matter by an edict in 380,
and a second
ecumenical council, that of Constantinople, 381, which
confirmed Nicaea.
If the Church had become more worldly and more
contentious, its power to
inspire renunciation and the
life of the spirit was reasserted in the
development of
monasteries. There had been analogies to this in other
parts of the globe, but Christianity had had from the
first an ideal of
chastity and poverty, and the sufferings
of the martyrs had kept its
self-denying aspects alive.
The Egyptian anchorites are anterior to the
victory
of the Church in the empire, and, when they appear,
they have
strange features, particularly their obsession
with the battle against the
vast multiplicity of
demons—a battle which could only be won by
the
repudiation of the world, a tremendous disciplining of
the body,
and a conquest of all ordinary emotions. It
was a battle not to be won by
the man who lived as
a citizen in society; and, though
prayers—sometimes
repeated in what seems to be an incredibly
mechanical
manner—contributed to the objective, the
movement
was one which needed the greatest care by the Church.
Nor is
it clear how much of its deeper Christian char-
acter may not have been contributed retrospectively
by the influential literature that it provoked. We are
told,
however, that Saint Anthony, when he went to
a solitary life in the desert
in A.D. 271, was moved by
the injunction: “Sell all that thou
hast and give to the
poor and follow me.” The Egyptian desert
offered a
remarkable opportunity, and great numbers followed
his
example. Something that almost seems like a com-
petition in asceticism may have developed here and
there—and warnings against spiritual pride in this
connection
appear early in Egypt—but out of his very
loneliness the hermit
was to contribute something of
rare quality to the inner life of the
Church.
The anchorites came to rudimentary forms of
grouping for certain purposes,
but it was Saint
Pachomius who, in about A.D. 320 or 323, brought to
the problem an essentially organizing mind and estab-
lished the community principle. He prescribed rules
for a whole order of monasteries; and, now not only
renunciation but also
obedience was important, while,
besides vigils, readings from the Bible,
prayer, and
contemplation, there was greater emphasis on manual
labor.
The hermit was to have a significant history in
Palestine and Syria, but
Saint Basil the Great, from
about A.D. 357, produced a community ideal
which
superseded this and became current throughout the
Greek world.
Before the middle of the century the
news had reached the West and very
soon ascetic
groups were being founded there, though it was not
until
something like two hundred years later that Saint
Benedict established his
famous Rule that became the
guide for Westerners. The whole movement, the
liter-
ature that arose from it, and the
spiritual teaching it
produced had a great effect on the Church in
general;
and in the fourth century important people, including
a
surprising number of the leading intellects, associated
themselves with it,
at least during part of their lives.
In its ultimate extension, it was to
have by-products
of an unpredictable kind—especially its
contributions
to cultural and even economic life. It may have been
in
one sense a protest against the growing worldliness
of the fourth-century
Church, or an attempt to find
a new pattern of renunciation, in some cases
perhaps
even an escape from civic obligations. But it became,
from the
religious point of view, an eminently creative
thing.
It is a whole Christian version of civilization that
comes to the front in
the fourth century. Biblical
scholarship has advanced and become a
technical affair.
Eusebius not only reconstructs the story of the
Church
but has an interpretation of world history. The ancient
culture
receives a Christian shape, and the transmuta-
tion sometimes shows originality. The greatest intel-
lects of the time, and some of the most imposing Chris-
tian figures of any age are the Fathers
of the Church
who cluster in the latter half of the century—almost
all of them highborn, enjoying the best education of
the time, and trained
in the monastic movement, yet
emerging also as great men of the
world—Saint Basil,
Saint Ambrose, Saint Jerome, Saint Augustine,
and
many more. In a period of influential bishops, particu-
larly Saint Ambrose in Milan, the reign of
Theodosius
I (379-95) saw paganism forbidden, heretics pursued
by the
government, Catholic orthodoxy the official
religion of the whole empire,
and the spiritual author-
ity boldly asserting
its right against the temporal. The
piety of the lower sections of society
made itself evi-
dent in the further development
of the cult of martyrs
and the veneration for relics, as well as in the
eagerness
for pilgrimages.
Early in the fifth century, Saint Augustine had to
meet an important
accusation from the paganism that
still asserted itself, particularly in
some of the aristoc-
racy. Barbarian raiders
had even reached the city of
Rome. The tragedy that was falling upon the
West was
being ascribed to the desertion of the pagan deities.
Augustine answered the charge in his City of God.
