Download PDF | Byzantium and Europe (History of European Civilization Library)-Harcourt Brace & World (1970).
221 Pages
I TRANSITION FROM ANTIQUITY AND THE EMERGENCE OF BYZANTIUM
CHAOS OF THE THIRD CENTURY
The Byzantine empire was born of the third-century crises which transformed the world of antiquity, and though the elements of continuity between the Byzantine world and the world of antiquity are clear and undeniable, so too are the differences. During the course of this momentous transformation the empire lost its Latin-pagan appearance and gradually assumed a Greek-Christian form, though to be sure Byzantium, like the Roman empire, remained a polyglot, niulti-national and polysectarian state during the greater part of its existence. The difficulties which the Roman empire experienced in the third century were largely the rcsult of imperfections in the cinpire’s political, social and cultural institutions.
It was these innate laws, rather than the power of the barbarian nations, which prostrated the state and threatened to destroy it in the half-century which preceded the reign of Diocletian. Perhaps the single most serious defect in the whole system was the lack of a regularized iniperial succession. By the third century the oft-repeated phrase ‘succession by successful revolution’, came to describe only too truly the established pattern in the accession to the throne of the Caesars. Iynastic sentiment had failed to take root, and the emasculated schate was usually, though not always, powcrless, so that the armies became the ultimate arbiters in the promotion and removal of cmpcrors.
Ambitious generals and rapacious troops combined to produce a period of short reigns and violent successions. In the lulf-century preceding the rcign of the great reformer Diocletian there were about twenty rulers (most of whom dicd violent deaths) with an average reign of two and a half ycars. This situation had a highly deleterious cffect. In so vast an empire the degradation of the iuler to the status of a tool of the armics and the accompanying perversion of the military function were disasters of great magnitude. For the individual around whom the whole system revolved was divested of all respect and authority, and the armies were consumed in sclfish enterprises at the expense of the defence of the frontier.
The lack of political stability undoubtedly further aggravated an ccononuc malaise which beset the empire throughout the third century. The causes of this were far more complex than in the case of the political disturbances. The economic ills of the empire included such factors as an unfavourable balance of trade with the Orient, decreasing returns from taxation and disturbance of economic life by the increased civil strife and barbarian raids, the high incidence of the plague and depopulation, increase in the donations paid to the troops and rising administrative expenses. Government had recourse to debasement of the coinage whereby gold moncy virtually disappeared and silver coin was transmuted into copper moncy. This debasement induced a metcoric inflation with the result that socicty began to rely increasingly on a barter cconomy.
A profound transformation in the moral and spiritual life of the cmpire was also clearly apparent. The religions of the Grecks and Romans had exhibited their greatest vitality when the polis or civitas was still the focal point of men’s thoughts and actions. But even then the character of Graeco-Roman paganism had been morc patriotic than ethical and spiritual. By the third century, at a time when municipal patriotism had been deprived of any substantial basis, Graeco-Roman paganism was largely an historical fossil which promused the individual little.
The Oriental mystery cults, combining that mystery, pomp, and ceremony which so appeal to man’s emotional character, contrasted sharply with the prosaic indifference of much of Gracco-Roman paganism to man’s necds. The appeal of the castern religions was not exclusively emotional because they also provided a rationale for living the ethical life in this world. Thus if a man shared in the cult of a particular deity and lived according to proper cthical precepts, he wasassured of the reward of immortality in the afterlife. This offered further comfort to men ata time when socicty was conuing apartat the seams, and rapacity was often as characteristic of government officials as of bandits and pillaging barbarians.
It has been plausibly supposed that the religions of the East became such formidable competitors to classical paganism not only hecause of their greater emotional and ethical appeal, but also because the cults had a superior intellectual level. With the rise of philosophy in the Greek world, knowledge had become the special preserve of the philosopher, and was divorced from religion. In the East, where the priestly classes remained a repository of both secular and religious knowledge, there was not this sharp separation between religion and knowledge. Even though it is truc that philosophers did increasingly concern themselves with questions of religion, they did so on such an elevated plain that it remained beyond the comprehension of the masses.
Whatever the reasons, there is no doubt that by the third century the trickle of the Nile and the Euphrates into the Tiber had become a torrential flood, and the sccts of Mithra, Christ, Cybele, the Jews, Isis and Osiris had spread throughout the empire. This dispersion or dissemination not only acted as a powerful catalyst in the rcligious and ethical domains, but was to have a profound effect on the political and artistic forms of the succeeding centuries. The revolution which the spread of the Oriental mystery religions effected in ihe world of the third century, has not attracted the attention its significance warrants. The triumph of Christianity in the fourth century obscured the importance of the third-century phenomenon in the cyes of Christian intellectuals, who were prejudiced against (‘hristianity’s competitors.
In modern times, though scholars have appreciated the orientalization of Graeco-Roman paganism, laymen are much more familiar with the barbarian invasion from the north than with the religious invasion from the cast. The barbarian penetration of the impcrial borders was accompanicd by wars, destruction and dcath, so that the phenomenon was then, and is now, more readily perceptible. Oriental religions triumphed in thousands of insignificant daily cncounters, seldom accompanied by any spectacular acts. It is only at the end of this cumulative process that the effect was visible, and by then it had become such an integral part of society that it was taken for granted.
The internal disorganization of the empire greatly facilitated the onslaught of foreign peoples on the cmpire’s northern and eastern frontiers. In Europe the imperial defences along the Rhine and Danube were increasingly penetrated by the Germanic tribes. Beginning on a small scale in the reign of Alexander Severus, these raids attained major proportions by the middle of the century. Saxon pirates rendered the English Channel unsafe, while in 256 the Franks crossed the Lower Rhine, and in slightly more than a decade imperial troops were battling the raiders in both Gaul and Spain. The Alemanni crossed the Rhine in the south and reached as far as northern Italy before being halted. The most powerful of the Germanic tribes seem to have been those of the Goths who in 251 killed the emperor Decius and inflicted the most scrious Germanic defeat upon the imperial troops since Varus’ Icgions had been destroyed in the reign of Augustus. Emboldencd by their spectacular successes, the Goths not only extended their depredations to the heart of the Balkans (their allics, the Heruli, appeared before Athens in 269), but, taking to the sca, raided the coasts of the Marmara, Black, and Aegean Seas. Claudius Gothicus temporarily halted these attacks south of the Danube, but Aurelian withdrew the last Roman legion from Dacia in 270 and the Goths occupied it unhindered.
In the cast the danger did not appcar in the form of a new people, as it had in Europe, but in the form of a new dynasty. The Parthian state, which had ariscn at the expense of the Hellenistic kingdom of the Seleucids, had by the early third century degencrated into a looscly-held congeries of vassal states. In the southern district of Persia arose a family of fire priests who successfully rebelled against the Arsacids and in 224-26 defeated the last Parthian ruler, Artabanus V, and destroyed the Parthian state. In 226 Ardashir, of the family of Sassan, was crowncd shahanshah and a new era in the history of the Near East began, for the emergence of the Sassanids represented more than a mere change of dynasty. This nco-Achemenid state, which soon absorbed the former lands of the Arsacids, was a morc centralized and powerful state than that of the Parthians — a fact which the Romans did not in the beginning appreciate. This new monarchy represents the first stage in the process by which the Iranian people rejected the last vestiges of Hellenism. The establishment of Zoroastrianism as the official religion of the state, the appearance of a highly-developed hierarchical religious structure with a mobadhan mobad (a sort of Zoroastrian pope) at the apex and the establishment of a canonical text of the Avesta, were factors which gave the Sassanid theocratic state an external similarity to yzantium. The highly stratified social structure with its rigid caste system, however, was immobilized to an extent far beyond anything | iocletian (the son of a freedman) could have conceived.
The first Sassanid rulers regarded themselves as heirs of the last | arius and desired to bring about a re-birth of the Oriental empire which Alexander and his generals had overthrown. Sassanid and Roman (and later Byzantine) armies soon clashed in the border regions of the upper Tigris and Euphrates, Syria, and Armenia. The sipnificance of the change in dynasties became clear in 260 when Shapur I defeated the Roman armies and captured the emperor Valerian. The unexpected but timely appearance of Odenathus of Palmyra and his queen Zenobia halted any further Sassanid conquests and the empire enjoyed a certain respite. Palmyra, as a traditional caravan city living from the proceeds of itinerant commerce and merchants, had become a blooming commercial centre of the typical oasis type, and its prosperity was evident in the thin veneer of Graeco-Roman culture assumed by its Arab inhabitants. By 264 the Arabs of Palmyra had defeated the Persians, restored the boundaries of the Roman empire and acquired the temporary gratitude of Rome.
Though the eastern and northern boundaries of the empire had been restored by the latter half of the century (with the exception of the withdrawal from Dacia), the pressures of Germans and Persians remained constant, awaiting the opportunity which the weakness of the empire would present in the late fourth and fifth centurics.
REFORMS OF DIOCLETIAN AND CONSTANTINE It was indeed fortunate for the empire that two rulcrs of unquestionable ability assumed direction of affairs in these critical times. Diocletian (284-305), pre-eminent as an administrator rather than a soldier, had made his way in the Roman cursus honorum from the bottom to the very top of the official hicrarchy. During these years in the imperial administration he had had ample opportunity to witness the evils besetting the state, and came to the throne rich in that experience so necessary to successful reformers. His successor Constantine, though he rose by violent means, also concerned himsclf with reform and his reign was in many ways complementary to that of Diocletian. The half-century of reform associated with the rcigns of these two monarchs does not represent a sudden departure from the general development of the third century, for the immediate predecessors of Diocletian had already begun the task of taming the administrative, economic, and political chaos, and had attained sonic modest successes. But it was Diocletian and Constantine who realized the significance of the trend and brought to a successful conclusion this process of change by institutional reform ona large scale. Their measures were not promulgated and put into cHect throughout the empire at a given moment, but rather took shape in a pieccmeal fashion during the five and a half decades which scparated the accession of Diocletian and the death of Constantine.
It had become obvious to Diocletian that his great cmpirc, so beset by internal problems and foreign attacks, could no longer be cffectively wiclded by a single ruler with the administrative means cmployed until then. He therefore created the institution of the tetrarchy in the hope that two augusti and two cacsars would succeed where one augustus had failed. In 286 he appointed Maximian augustus in the west, and in 293, when he clevated Constantius and Galerius as caesars in the west and cast, the tetrarchic reform was completed. This institutional advice was successful during the rcign of Diocletian and provided the empire with more cfficient government and defence against foreign attacks.
But the establishment of the tetrarchy had a bearing on another problem, the clevation and stabilization of the impcrial office within the realm. Diocletian had supposed that the system of two supcrior rulers, seconded by thcir caesars and heirs, would largely put an end to usurpation by the ambitious. More significant in the attempt to create respect for imperial authority was the orientalization of the monarchy. This orientalization had been going on throughout the third century, and could be seen in the puerile cfforts of Elegabalus or in the coinage of emperors such as Geta and Aurclian.
Morcover, certain clements of absolute monarchy had long been present in Greek political tradition. In later times Justinian traced the origins of imperial sovereignty to the action of the Roman senate in 24 BC freeing the augustus from the compulsion of the laws and thus transferring sovereignty from the people to the ruler. But if even in this earlier period there was a divine element bchind the auctoritas of the augustus, it was in the third century that the princeps was transformed into an Oriental, divine, absolute monarch. Diocletian’s arrangements completed the transformation. ‘Proskynesis’ or ‘adoratio’ (the castern ceremony of gcnuflection addressed to divinity), purple robes, jewelled diadems, belts, and sceptres became permanent parts of the imperial tradition.
The emperor, ruler by divine gracc, was the sole fount of law. Seclusion of the monarch, an Oricntal practice by which the person of the ruler was removed from contact with the profane, was carefully balanced by the splendid official ceremonials, at which his power and glory were displayed to the citizens and courtiers. Constantine’s conversion to Christianity, it is true, necessitated an adaptation of the imperial cult to the demands of a stringent monotheism. But the adaptation which resulted, Byzantine kingship, was to all purposcs the same as that which emerged under Diocletian. The emperor (as the friend of Christ) and his empire (as a reflection of the heavenly kingdom) were divinely inspired and protected. The Oriental ceremonies attendant upon court ritual remained one of the most characteristic of all Byzantine practices.
Administratively and militarily the measures of Diocletian and Constantine were calculated to facilitate internal control and defence from foreign attacks. But the chief threat to imperial power was internal rather than external, and this problem was given preference. The greatly expanded bureaucratic apparatus was centralized in the imperial consistory, made up of the highest financial and administrative officials of the court, who addressed the emperor not only on routine administrative matters, but on high policy as well. In the provinces the reforms of Diocletian and Constantine weakened potential rebels by removing heavy concentrations of power from the hands of officials. As the power of any given official was directly rclated to the size and wealth of the area which he governed, the provinces were doubled in number and their size reduced. More radical were the complementary measurcs by which civil and military authority were thenceforth scparated in such a manner that ambitious provincial officials who might contemplate rebellion were cHectively hamstrung.
Neverthcless, the problem of defence against Persians and Germans meant that military considerations were not far behind considerations of imperial centralization. The old traditional military fronticrs and policics of the Roman past were maintained. The emperor repaired the old border fortresses and town walls, new forts were built, and the limitanei (or frontier militia) retained their defence stance on the Rhine, Danube, and Euphrates. But as this older arrangement was no longer sufficient to contain the attacks of Germans and Persians the military principle of defence in depth was adopted. The emperors created mobile field armies stationed in the heartland of the provinces rather than on the borders. Such armies in Anatolia or the central Balkans could protect provincial life from pillaging barbarians who had broken through the frontiers or be used to reinforce the borders. In the capital, new forces were added to the crack imperial troops who accompanicd the emperor. Even within the armics, however, the principle of separation of powers, which sought to protect the emperor from insubordination, was opcrative, and superior command of cavalry and infantry was divided.
The reforms of the late third and carly fourth centuries greatly increased state expenditure on account of the considerable increase in military and bureaucratic personnel. This situation caused Lactantius to complain that the number of beneficiaries had begun to grow greater than the number of taxpayers, and the increased financial outlay at the end of the century proved to be more than the already strained economy could bear. Debasement of the coinage and inflation in the preceding period had created havoc with government salaries (which were largely fixed) and with prices. The famous edict of prices (AD 301) bears witness to the government’s concern and also to its failure to fix the cost of living. If the state were to survive, it was imperative that its economic life be brought into harmony with harsh reality, and this is precisely what Diocletian accomplished. Realizing the inadequacy of the taxes which the government collected in cash, Diocletian developed the old levies in kind, the annonae, which had provided the armies with their physical necessities. The annona, formerly an extraordinary tax, was henceforth applied to the rural population on an annual basis.
The new system of taxation freed the government from the vicissitudes of monetary debasement and price fluctuations, for it now paid its officials and troops largely in foodstufts and clothing. It also forced the government to keep the peasants on the soil to cultivate it and necessitated systematic assessments of the arable land, types of agricultural production, and population. The tax apparatus which arose was to have a long life in the Byzantine cmpire and was also to affect the tax structure of the Islamic world. The new system enabled the government to formulate an annual budget based on the agricultural produce of the empire. Yet it would seem that Diocletian and Constantine did not intend to abandon completely a money economy. Both instituted coinage reform with the issues of good silver and gold coins. Constantine took the gold coin of Diocletian (struck at 60/lb.) and struck the solidus (72/Ib.) which was to become the money of international exchange par excellence until the eighth century when it would share that distinction with the gold dinar of the Arabs. Every five years the traders and craftsmen of the towns, who were free from the annona, paid a cash tax known as the chrysargyron.
It was in the field of religion that the policies of the two empcrors contrasted most sharply, for Diocletian remained pagan and Constantine embraced Christianity. The triumph of Christianity is to be understood primarily in terms of two historical facts. First, Christianity was one of those Oriental mystery cults which, as a result of their message and organization, and because of the peculiar conditions of the third-century Roman world, had played an important part in transforming the emotional climate of the Mediterranean lands.
The victory specifically of Christianity, rather than of some other Oriental religion, was in large part due to the favour with which Constantine and his successors regarded it. Christianity had cxisted for some three hundred years prior to Constantine, and yet at the time of Constantine's conversion, it was the religion of a very small minority in the Mediterranean world. Its victory was the result of state support, just as in Sassanid Persia, where the ruler supported Zoroastrianism, Christianity remained a minority religion, and in Egypt and Syria, where Christianity had spread and bloomed, the Arab conquest eventually entailed the decline of Christianity and the spread of Islam. In the same way, the Turkish conquest of Anatolia and the Latin preponderance in southern Italy and Sicily meant the replacement of Greek Christianity by Islam and Catholic Christianity respectively ; while perhaps the most interesting example of the principle cuius regio cius religio was the Iberian peninsula where Christianity and Islam alternated in consonance with the pulse of Arab and Christian military successes.
From the end of the first century, until Constantine made Christianity the favoured religion, the reward which the state meted out to those who professed Christianity was death. In actual practice, however, though the legal status of Christianity did not change, the Christians were tolcrated, and by the end of the second and the carly third century they had not only successfully prosclytized among the upper classes but had also become an accepted part of the cmpire’s socicty.
The ‘peace’ between the Roman state and the Christian Church was, however, violently disturbed by the events of the third century which brought to the throne men of a new breed. These were the soldier-emperors from Illyricum who felt that in order to save the state the old religious practices and ways must be followed.
This revival of Roman paganism reactivated the waning hostility between the state and the Christians. When Decius persecuted the Christians in the years 249-51, it was not so much becausc he despised Christianity as a religion, but because the Christians refused to sacrifice to the gods, and he felt that the safety of the state could only be assured by prayers to the gods. Thus the Decian persecution was politically, rather than rcligiously, motivated. The Illyrian emperor Valens renewed discriminatory measures in an effort to destroy the corporate life of the Church. When he fell a victim to the Persians, the Christians could rejoice at their good fortune and Gallienus promptly returned the confiscated Church property. Thereafter state persecution of the Christians ceased until the reign of Diocletian and many Christians entcred state service.
Diocletian himself observed the ‘peace’ with the Christians for the greater part of his rcign. Probably he would have been satisfied with the status quo had it not been for his caesar Galerius. But the latter, supported by a circle of neo-Platonists, was a determined opponent of the Church and did everything in his power to persuade his augustus to move against the Christians. A series of incidents, rightly or wrongly blamed on the Christians, and the consent of the oracle of the Milesian Apollo, brought Diocletian round to the sentiments of his caesar. The emperor and Galerius issued four edicts between 302 and 305 which revived the statc’s persecution of the Church. Christian churches, scriptures, and liturgical books were to be destroyed; Christians were henceforth forbidden to assemble and were placed outside the law; and all men, women, and children who refused to sacrifice were to be put to death. Many abandoned their profession of Christianity because of the fearful persecutions, but such a great number remained steadfast that they filled the prisons and jails, with the result that there was no room for criminals.
In 303, when Diocletian celebrated his viccnnial in Rome, he ordered that all the jailed Christians be forced to sacrifice so that the prisons might be emptied. Actually Galcrius abandoned the persecution in 311, asa result of a fatal illness which he believed to be the vengeance of the Christian God, and surprisingly issued an edict of tolerance. But the status of Christianity became definitive only when Constantine removed his political rivals, Maxentius in 312, and Licinius in 324. Anxious over the issue of the conflict with Maxentius, Constantine was satisfied that the Christian God had indicated His support in the approaching struggle. The appearance of the cross in the heavens with the legend ‘In this shalt thou conquer’, and the vision in which Christ instructed Constantine to manufacture the labarum, instilled Constantine with a confidence in Christ’s support which later seemed to him justified by the results. The emperor did not immediately accept the exclusive nature of Christianity ; but the clergy were so pleased with the new turn of events that they did not object to the pagan practices which Constantine continued.
It was, of course, his defeat of Maxentius in the battle of the Milvian Bridge which marked the beginning of the ultimate triumph of Christianity, for even though it did not become the exclusive religion of the state, it now enjoyed imperial preference. Constantine became a lavish patron of the Church, supporting it with generous gifts and privileges, and simultaneously confiscating the treasures of the pagan temples.
The Church had miraculously acquired a generous patron, but it had simultaneously taken on a powerful master. The tradition of the Roman emperor as pontifex maximus survived, in a modified form, in Byzantine caesaropapism. Convinced that the unity and survival of his empire depended upon the unity of the Church, Constantine used the imperial power and prestige in an effort to heal the disputes which were now arising among the bishops. In an attempt to heal the Donatist conflict he received petitions from the bishops, called a council, exiled bishops, and made use of persecution. His behaviour in the Arian controversy illustrates how fully developed his caesaropapism was. It was he who initiated the call for an ecumenical council, brought the bishops to Nicaea and maintained them at state expense, presided over and directed the dcliberations and enforced upon the bishops the theological solutions which he preferred. Asin so many other institutional transformations, Constantine left his indelible mark on the relations of Church and state in the east.
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