The Christian Church in the Age of the General Councils, 325–787
By the time of the first General Council at Nicaea in 325 (see p. 205), the Christian Church headed the largest religious community in the Empire. Since the Edict of Milan, it benefited from the policy of toleration; and it had the support of the reigning emperor. But its position was not entirely secure. It was not the established state religion, and it had many enemies in high places. It had made few inroads beyond the Empire. Progress, from the Christian point of view, and particularly from that of the ‘Orthodox’ party led by Athanasius, was going to be bumpy, [
IKON
]
Under Constantius II (r. 337–61) there was a brief resurgence of Arianism. Not for the last time, Athanasius was banished. In 340, when the Goths were still resident to the north of the Danube delta, they were converted to Christianity in its Arian form. As a result, when the Ostrogoths and the Visigoths entered the Empire and established their kingdoms in Italy, Gaul, Spain, and Africa, they took their Arianism with them. They presented a major obstacle to the spread of Orthodox Christianity among the barbarians, [
BIBLIA
] Another change of tack came with the Emperor Julian (r. 361–3), a philosopher-monarch known in the Christian tradition as ‘the Apostate’. Educated in the Christian faith by people
who had murdered his family, ‘he had always declared himself an advocate of Paganism’. The end result was an edict of general toleration, and a last interval of respite for the Roman gods. ‘The only hardship which he inflicted on the Christians was to deprive them of the power of tormenting their fellow subjects.’ There is no evidence for the legend that his last words were
Vicisti Galilaee
, ‘Thou hast conquered, O pale Galilean’.
18
These experiences shook the Trinitarian party from their complacency. Athanasius in the East and Hilary of Poitiers (315–67) in the West, who had led the opposition to Constantius and Julian, were succeeded by the generation of the Church’s most brilliant and commanding Fathers. John Chrysostom (347–407), the ‘Golden Mouth’, Bishop of Constantinople, was the greatest preacher of the age, who ruffled many feathers in high society. Basil the Great (330–79), Bishop of Caesarea, came from a remarkable family that claimed no fewer than eight saints. He is generally accounted the founder of communal monasticism. His brother, Gregory of Nyssa (335–95), and his friend, Gregory of Nazianus (329–89), were both prominent theologians, who carried the day at the Second General Council at Constantinople (381). In the West, the Pannonian Martin of Tours (315–97) completed the evangelization of Gaul. Ambrose of Milan (c.334–97) was the leading ecclesiastical politician of the age. The Dalmatian Jerome (c.345–420) was the leading biblical scholar of the early church. The African, Augustine of Hippo, was probably the most influential of the Church Fathers.
Their efforts bore fruit in the reign of Theodosius (r. 378–95), who was the last emperor to rule both East and West and who gave his support to the Trinitarian party. Theodosius was a Spaniard, son of a general, and a man of ferocious temper. He turned to the Trinitarians for the simple reason that his predecessor, Valens, had been killed by the Arian Goths. Under his protection the Second General Council ratified the Nicene Creed. Trinitarian Christianity was supported with the force of law; Arianism was banned; paganism was persecuted. This is the point where the Trinitarians could start to enforce their claim to orthodoxy, and to condemn their rivals past and present as ‘heretics’, [
INDEX
] [
RUFINUS
] [
ZEUS
]
To many believers in subsequent centuries, this ‘triumph of Christianity’ was celebrated as a wonderful achievement. Theodosius was awarded the epithet of ‘Great’. But there was little in the teaching of Christ to recommend such a close association of spiritual and political authority. Moreover, Theodosius was hardly an example of Christlike virtue. In 388 he killed his co-emperor, Magnus Maximus; and in 390 he wreaked terrible revenge on the city of Thessalonika for daring to permit a rebellious riot. He ordered his officers to invite the whole population to the Circus, as if to the Games, and then to slaughter all 7,000 in cold blood. For this crime he was constrained by Ambrose to perform public penance, and he died in Milan, somewhat better apprised of the religion to which he had given such signal services.
Theologian and bishop, St Augustine (354–430) had trained as a rhetorician, and had once been an advocate of Manichaeanism. He was converted to
Christianity in Milan in 386. His willingness to admit to human weaknesses makes him the most appealing writer. His
Confessions
, which recount the emotions of a young man called to renounce the comforts and pleasures of the worldly life, stand in stark contrast to the polemicist disputing with Donatists, Manichaeans, and Pelagians. Yet he analysed and systematized the intricacies of those doctrines with such mastery that he left little to be done until Thomas Aquinas almost 800 years later. He stressed the primacy of love in a way that almost recommends libertinism.
Dilige et quod vis faç
(Love and do what you want) and
Cum dilectione
hominum et odio vitiorum
(Love the sinner and hate the sins) were two of his maxims. At the same time, he stressed the necessity of the institutionalized Church.
Salus extra ecclesiam non est
(there is no salvation outside the Church), he wrote; also
Roma locuta est; causa finita
. (Rome has spoken; the case is closed.) The most popular of his 113 books,
De Civitate Dei
(The City of God), was inspired by Alaric’s sack of Rome, and describes a spiritual city built on the ruins of the material world. Nothing could be more expressive of the age. Augustine spent over thirty years as Bishop of Hippo in his native Africa, living by an ascetic rule that later inspired a number of Church orders including the Augustinian Canons, the Dominican (Black) Friars, the Praemonstratensians, and the Brigittines. He died in Hippo besieged by the Vandals.
INDEX
E
ARLY
Church tradition credited Pope Innocent I (r. 401–17) with the first list of forbidden books, and Pope Gelasius (r. 492–6) with the first decree on the subject. The Gelasian decree adds lists of recommended and of supplementary reading to its pronouncement on the canon of authentic Scripture. Modern scholarship, though, doubts that the decree had any connection with Gelasius. What is certain is that the Church always guarded its right to pronounce on the propriety, or impropriety, of the written word. From the fifth to the fifteenth centuries, it placed any number of bans on individual authors, from Arius and Photius to Hus and Pico della Mirandola (1486). A further step was prompted by the advent of printing. Though there is some dispute again about precedence, Pope Innocent VIII (r. 1484–92) either initiated or consolidated the rule that all publications should receive a bishop’s licence, [
PRESS
]
Thanks to the flood of books produced during the Renaissance and Reformation, the Church hierarchy increasingly sought guidance from the Vatican; and the Council of Trent demanded action. The result was the
Index Librorum Prohibitorum
or ‘Guide to Prohibited Books’ drawn up by Paul IV in 1557. Owing to dissensions in the Vatican, that first version was suppressed; and it was the second version of 1559 which was eventually published. Revised yet again at the request of the Council, the Tridentine Index of 1564 set the norm for subsequent practice. In addition to the list of authors and works which had earned the Church’s disapproval, it set out ten criteria for judging them. Since 1564 Rome’s ‘Blacklist’ has been constantly extended. Its rules were modified in 1596,1664,1758,1900, and 1948. (See Appendix III, p. 1274.)
Over the years the Index has been subject to much criticism. It was always ineffective, in that the prohibited titles could always find a publisher in Protestant states beyond the Vatican’s reach. What is more, since forbidden fruits always taste sweeter, the Index could seriously be charged with actively promoting what it sought to suppress. Enemies of the Church were always quick to cite it as proof of Catholic intolerance. From the Enlightenment, liberated intellectuals have never failed to pour ridicule both on the individual decisions of the Index and on its very existence. Given the tally of world-beaters and best-sellers which it has tried to oppose, one can see the reason why.
On the other hand, the Index has to be judged in context. Every authority in modern Europe, whether secular or ecclesiastical, Protestant, Catholic, or Orthodox, has shared the Vatican’s desire to control publications. Censors were at work in all European countries until the second half of the twentieth century. Many of those vociferous in condemning the Papal Index have failed to see a contradiction when they themselves seek to suppress books. One has only to look at some of the times and places in which the classics of European literature have been banned by authorities other than the Vatican:
| AD 35 | Homer | Opera omnia | Roman Empire |
| 1497 | Dante | Opera omnia | City of Florence |
| 1555 | Erasmus | Opera omnia | Scotland |
| 1660 | Milton | Eikonoklastes | England |
| 1701 | Locke | Essay on Human | |
| Understanding | Oxford University | ||
| 1776 | Goethe | Sorrows of Werther | Denmark |
| 1788–1820 | Shakespeare | King Lear | Great Britain |
| 1835 | Heine | Opera omnia | Prussia |
| 1880 | Tolstoy | Anna Karenina , | |
| and others | Russia | ||
| 1931 | Marie Stopes | Opera omnia | Republic of Ireland |
| 1939 | Goethe | Opera omnia | Spain |
| 1928–60 | D. H. Lawrence | Lady Chatterley’s Lover | Great Britain 1 |
Of course, there is a fundamental liberal position which holds that all publications should be permitted, even when material is manifestly blasphemous, subversive, incitatory, obscene, or untrue. It demands that people tolerate what they abhor. This position was tested in the 1980s by so-called ‘revisionist history’, which denies the reality of the Jewish Holocaust, or by the Islamic
fatwah
pronounced on Salman Rushdie’s
Satanic Verses
. In practice, many liberals shrink from the application of their own absolute principles. Every society, and every generation, has to determine its stance in relation to the shifting line between the acceptable and the unacceptable.
2
Nor is it appropriate to compare the Papal Index with contemporary totalitarian censorship. In Nazi Germany 1933–45, and in the Soviet world 1917–91, all works were officially considered banned until specifically approved. In this regard, the principle of episcopal licensing might be judged more repressive than the Index.
In 1966 the head of the Vatican’s Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith announced that the prohibition of publications had been suspended. By that time, the Index contained some 4,000 titles.
Much of the above information derives from an impeccable source, each of whose eighteen volumes bears evidence of a favourable episcopal decision—
NIHIL OBSTAT
(There is no impediment) and
IMPRIMATUR
(Let it be printed).
3
RUFINUS
R
UFINUS
Tyrannius of Aquileia (c.340–410), sometime associate of St Jerome, made his name on two related scores—as the Latin translator of Greek theological works, especially by Origen, and as author of the earliest book printed by the Oxford University Press. His commentary on the Apostles’ Creed, the
Expositio Sancti Hieronymi in symbolum apostolo-rum
, was printed in Oxford by Theodoric Rood of Cologne, and completed on 17 December 1478. It began, alas, with a misprint, an ‘x’ having been lost on the frontispiece, where the publication date appeared (wrongly) as M CCCC LXVIII.
1
Since then, OUP’s list has seen both its ups and its downs:
Charles Butler,
The Feminine Monarchie Or a Treatise Concerning Bees
(1609)
John Smith,
A Map of Virginia
(1612)
Robert Burton,
The Anatomy of Melancholy
(1621)
The Book of Common Prayer, and Administration of the Sacraments
(1675– )
The Holy Bible, Containing the Old Testament and the New
(1675– )
Edmund Pococke (ed.),
Specimen Historiae Arabum
(1650)
— Maimonides,
Porta Mosis
(1655)
— Greg. Abulfaragii historia compendiosa dynastiarum
(1663)
[Richard Allestree]
The Ladies Calling: by the Author of the Whole Duty of Man
(1673)
Johann Schaeffer,
A History of Lapland
(1674) H. W. Ludolf,
Grammatica Russica
(1696)
William Blackstone,
Commentaries on the Laws of England
(4 vols.. 1765–9)
F. M. Müller,
Rigveda-Sanhita: Sacred Hymns of the Brahmins
(1849–73)
Lewis Carroll,
Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland
(1865)
Norman Davies,
God’s Playground: A History of Poland
(2 vols., 1981)
Reputedly, OUP’s most remarkable feat was in 1914, when a team of Oxford historians went into print in support of Britain’s war effort. The manuscript of
Why We Are at War
was delivered on 26 August, barely three weeks after the outbreak of war. The 206-page volume was edited, typeset by hand, printed, bound and ready for distribution by 14 September. Times change.
2