Aurelius Augustine was born on November 13, 354 at Tagaste
in the Africa diocese of the Western Roman empire.
His father
Patricius was a pagan until shortly before
he died in 371, but
his mother Monica was a devout Christian.
Augustine wrote his Confessions soon after he was
consecrated assistant bishop
of Hippo in 396.
This remarkably innovative book is a long prayer
to God that
confessed his faith and described his life with its
human errors
up to the year 387 when he was baptized during Easter.
Augustine began his Confessions by asking whether he
should
pray for help or praise God, whether he must know God
before
he can ask for aid, or whether
humans can learn to know God through
praying.
He admits that he does not know where he came from before
he was born into this life, but he is grateful for the mercy
he
found in the world as he was nursed.
He observed that even infants
without language become
jealous of a foster-brother at the breast.
At school Augustine was beaten if he was idle at his studies.
He thanked God for what he learned, because others only
aimed
to satisfy the desire for poverty
called wealth and infamy known
as fame.
He was punished for not wishing to study, but in retrospect
he believed that every soul brings punishment on itself.
Yet he
observed, "We learn better in a free spirit of curiosity
than under fear and compulsion."1
He asked patience for people
who are more concerned with
rules of grammar than with the eternal
rules of human relations
such as when we damage our own hearts
by persecuting others.
Augustine confessed that he stole from
his parents' larder to trade for toys.
Even when he was caught
cheating, he would not give in.
In adolescence Augustine found difficulty in distinguishing
true love from murky lust even though his mother warned him
about
fornication, especially with another man's wife.
Yet he did not
want to be less depraved than his fellows.
With his peers he stole
pears, only to give them to pigs,
because they found pleasure
in doing what was forbidden.
Augustine compared human faults with
the perfection of God.
Pride only pretends to the superiority
that is God's.
Ambition is only craving for honor and glory,
but
only God is glorious.
The powerful use cruel weapons, but God
is omnipotent.
The lusty crave winning love, but God's charity
and love of truth are more rewarding.
The inquisitive seek knowledge,
but God knows all.
You are innocent even of the harm which overtakes
the wicked, for it is the result of their own actions.
Sloth poses as the love of peace: yet what certain
peace is there besides the Lord?
Extravagance masquerades as fullness and
abundance: but you are the full, unfailing store
of never-dying sweetness.
The spendthrift makes a pretense of liberality;
but you are the most generous dispenser of all good.
The covetous want many possessions for themselves:
you possess all.
The envious struggle for preferment:
but what is to be preferred before you?
Anger demands revenge:
but what vengeance is as just as yours?2
Augustine realized he must have enjoyed the company
of those
committing the crime,
as he was bewitched by this unfriendly friendship.
Augustine aimed to be a persuasive speaker to gratify his vanity,
but he was lifted into the love of wisdom by reading Cicero,
which made the scriptures seem unworthy.
He fell in with sensualists
and clever speakers, greedy for gain
in the illusion of liberty
instead of loving the greater good of all.
Their willingness to
explain their religion philosophically led
Augustine to accept
Manichaean teachings
for nine years until he was 27.
For money
he taught the art of speaking to those
who wanted to win debates.
He lived with an unnamed woman as a mistress;
but he was faithful
to her.
Later he realized that to cling to any beauty outside
of God
or the soul is only clinging to sorrow.
Now he commands
his soul to lead
instead of following the flesh.
Under Manichaean
influence he believed that evil is a
substance that leads to crimes
of violence and sins of passion.
Now he realizes that free will
makes him responsible
for his own errors that become his punishment.
Augustine studied astronomy, which helped him realize that
Mani was trying to
teach about scientific questions,
of which he was ignorant.
Because Mani claimed to know
what he clearly did not,
Augustine concluded that Mani
lacked wisdom
and was not the divine person he claimed to be.
Augustine hoped that the Manichaean expert Faustus would
be able
to answer his questions, but he could not.
While teaching rhetoric
in Carthage, Augustine found that
the students were too disruptive;
so he moved to Rome,
where he hoped they would be more disciplined.
In order to leave his mother
he had to deceive her about his departure.
She cried and prayed for him.
In Rome Augustine continued to associate
with Manichaeans,
who believed that an evil force,
not themselves,
was committing the sin.
Augustine found that this made his sin
incurable until
he later realized that he was responsible as the
sinner.
Augustine was hired to teach literature and speech in Milan,
where he met Bishop Ambrose.
There he was joined by his devoted mother.
Now Augustine began
to favor the Catholic teaching of the
church that asked him to
believe certain things
but did not claim it could prove them.
He found in the practicality of living that many things had to
be
taken on trust in order to accomplish anything.
He lived with
his close friends Alypius and Nebridus.
Alypius had been seduced
by gladiatorial games,
and Augustine tried to free him
from the
"spell of this insane sport."
Augustine was hoping to
marry a girl, but he had to wait
two years until she was old enough.
This caused his mistress to leave him and go back to Africa.
A
slave of lust, he took another mistress out of wedlock.
Intellectually he was still trying to find the cause of evil.
He repudiated the Manichaeans, because he thought they were
full
of evil while denying they were capable of committing it.
He was
trying to grasp the idea that we do evil because
we choose to
do so by our free will,
and we suffer from it because of God's
justice.
He adopted the belief that all things are good and that
evil
is not a substance, all substances being made by God.
Those
who find fault with the creation
he considered bereft of reason.
Even vipers and worms are good
although they are in the lower
order of creation.
Wickedness, he decided, is a perversion of
the will
when it turns away from God.
Augustine went to Suplicianus, a teacher of Ambrose,
who told him about the dramatic conversion
of the pagan rhetorician
Victorinus.
A man in the Emperor's household named Ponticianus
told
Augustine and Alypius about the Egyptian monk Antony
and
the monasteries; there was even one near Milan.
In the past
Augustine had prayed for chastity; but part of him
was not ready
for it and would add "but not yet."
Now he experienced
a struggle between two parts of himself.
He thought his will wanted
to dedicate himself completely
to God; but another will still
opposed his making the decision.
He was held back by his old attachments.
Finally when he read a passage from Paul's letter to the
Romans (13:13-14), he decided to give himself to Christ
and spend no
more time on nature's appetites.
Alypius applied the next passage
of Paul's letter to
himself
about making room for a man of delicate conscience.
Augustine
no longer desired a wife
but stood firmly now in his faith.
He
quietly retired from the market by completing
his teaching up
to the autumn holidays.
After a visit to the country with Alypius,
his mother
and others, Augustine took his 15-year-old son Adeodatus,
who was "born of my sin," back to Milan.
Adeodatus died
about two years later.
Augustine decided to return to Africa;
but just before he left, his mother Monica died.
Augustine began investigating his own mind and wrote
particularly
about memory, trying to explain how it works.
He worked to free
himself of temptations.
He was more afraid of the uncleanness
of gluttony
than unclean meat.
He believed he could not trust
even his own mind based on
its experience as much as God's mercy,
because even those
who have improved might pass
from a better
to a worse condition.
In addition to sensual pleasures he found
that his mind
could be tempted by idle curiosity.
In the last
three books of his Confessions Augustine
discussed Genesis
and the problem of time.
He concluded that we only are impelled
to do good
after being inspired by the Holy Spirit.
Prior to that,
he believed that
the human impulse is to do wrong.
Yet God is
always good.
He hoped to find rest in the presence of God.
To
understand this truth we must seek it;
when we do, the door will
be opened.
In 386 and 387, before he was baptized,
Augustine held discussions
with his mother and friends.
In the evening he wrote his own thoughts
in Soliloquies.
In these Augustine conversed with Reason.
He believed that by loving the soul he also loved his friends.
Humans are worthy of being loved because they have reason,
even
if they sometimes make a bad use of it.
Between his baptism and
ordination Augustine wrote a dialog
with his son Adeodatus on
the teacher called The Master
in which he adapted Platonic
ideas by suggesting that
the Christ within is the changeless power
of God.
Every soul can consult this wisdom.
Christ is revealed
according to each person's capacity
depending on whether one's
will is good or bad.
Thus things are known by consulting this
inner teacher, Christ,
making knowledge depend on illumination.
During this period Augustine also started writing
On Free
Choice of the Will, but he did not finish it until 395.
In
the first book he asserted that each evil person
is the cause
of one's evil-doing.
Otherwise it would not be just for God to
punish evil deeds.
Augustine believed that murder is not a sin
when a soldier kills an enemy or an official executes a criminal.
He also wrote that an unjust law is not a law.
He believed that
no one can force a soul to be a slave to lust.
A spirit armed
with virtue can overcome a vicious spirit.
Augustine believed
that happiness and sorrow
result from good and bad will.
Eternal
law orders us to turn our love away from temporal
things to the
purity of the eternal.
Yet loving temporal goods is not punished
unless one takes
them dishonestly from others.
Although humans
are given free will, they can turn it to sin.
In the third book
Augustine tries to explain how God's
foreknowledge is not inconsistent
with freedom of the will.
Our personal experience is that nothing
is so completely
in our power as our own will.
He argues that
God foreknows our power of will;
but he did not explain how God's
foreknowing the results
of our actions does not pre-determine
them.
In 391 Augustine went to the Numidian port at Hippo
and was quickly ordained by the bishop Valerius
amid the acclamation of
the congregation.
Valerius asked him to preach on Sundays, and
Augustine
began giving sermons such as the one in which
he condemned
drunkenness as a relaxation of morals.
The sermons were written
down as they were delivered,
and more than 400 remain.
Alypius
had been made bishop of Tagaste,
and Valerius got Augustine appointed
assistant bishop of Hippo in 396.
Valerius died a year later,
and Augustine became bishop.
Much of his time was spent arbitrating
cases to prevent
Christians from bringing formal legal actions
before non-believers.
Augustine believed that killing was always
wrong
unless a soldier or public officer was acting
not for himself
but to defend others.
He interpreted that not resisting evil does
not mean
we should neglect the duty of restraining people from
sin.
He acknowledged forgiving of sins after baptism.
He decided
the only unforgivable sin
is remaining impenitent until death.
However, his belief that only the Catholic Church possessed
the
Holy Spirit led to the unfortunate conclusion
that not being a
Catholic was an unforgivable sin too.
In writing against the Manichaean Faustus in 397
Augustine
suggested that the real evils of war are the
love of violence,
revenge, cruelty, implacable enmity,
wild resistance, the lust
for power, and so on.
Force may be required to inflict punishment
against these
in obedience to God or some lawful authority.
Thus
in some circumstances
Augustine believed that good men undertake
wars.
Augustine wrote the first three books of
On Christian Doctrine in 397,
but the last book was written thirty years later.
In this
work he held that the spiritually mature person
in faith, hope,
and love no longer needs the scripture
except for instructing
others.
To correct scripture Augustine held that whatever in its
literal sense is inconsistent with purity of life or correct
doctrine
should be interpreted figuratively, carefully
meditating on it
in order to find an interpretation
that tends to establish the
reign of love.
Augustine recommended that the Christian teacher
should pray before preaching.
He concluded that the main aim is
to help the hearer
understand the truth, hear it with gladness,
and practice it.
He exhorted teachers to fulfill their responsibility
by leading
a life in harmony with the teaching,
showing a good
example to all.
Augustine also wrote influential catechetical
instructions
and a long work, The Trinity.
In a handbook
called Faith, Hope, and Charity
he was one of the first
to establish the idea of purgatory,
and he adamantly maintained
his belief in eternal hell
against the Origenist view that it
would eventually end.
Augustine held to the view that God's mercy
is unmerited
by sinful humans and is given only by the grace of
Christ.
Augustine wrote works praising virginity, the good of marriage,
the good of widowhood, and continence.
Shortly before becoming
bishop he wrote On Lying.
He noted that not all false statements
are lies,
if the person believes it is true.
Some justify telling
some lies for "doing good," while others
believe we
must never lie,
following the decalog against bearing false witness.
Augustine argued that the mind should not
corrupt itself for the
sake of its body.
He made an exception for the case when lying
may be
the only way of preventing someone
from forcing one to
do an unclean act.
Augustine described eight kinds of lies.
The first five are
definitely to be avoided and are
1) what concerns religion,
2) what helps no one and hurts someone,
3) what helps one but hurts another,
4) what is for the desire of lying, and
5) what pleases others in agreeable talk.
The next two are what hurts no one and helps someone as
6) when someone demands money from someone unjustly
and one knows where it is, or
7) if a judge is interrogating for a capital case.
Although these are controversial, Augustine believes that brave
and truthful men and women should still tell the truth.
8) is what hurts no one and does good
by preserving one from corporal defilement.
The examples of the scriptures and saints are not to lie.
Augustine
concluded that we should follow the commandment
and not lie at
all; but if a person does lie,
the further down the scale toward
the eighth the less the sin.
The Priscillianists believed it right
to conceal their heresy
by lying, and some Catholics wanted to
pretend they were
Priscillianists in order to penetrate their
group;
but Augustine opposed this hypocritical practice, asking,
"How then by a lie shall I rightly be able to prosecute lies?"3
After the Donatist bishop Maximin rebaptized a Catholic
deacon, Augustine tried to resolve this ecclesiastical conflict
by mediation without the Catholics appealing to the imperial
power of Rome or the Donatists
using the rebellious Circumcellions.
Augustine
was able to get the Donatists to join his side
in a debate against
the Manichaean Fortunatus.
Augustine affirmed that evil springs
from choice of the will,
while Fortunatus argued that evil is
co-eternal with God.
Under Gildo's leadership the Donatist church
grew,
and in 397 his stopping the departure of grain ships to
Italy
forced a confrontation with Rome.
Augustine contacted Fortunius
to try to arrange a conference,
and they agreed not to bring up
the excesses of the bad men
on either side; but a larger conference
Augustine proposed was never held.
The Roman navy invaded and
destroyed Gildo and many
Donatist partisans, including their bishop
Optatus of Timgad.
In the coming years continuing imperial edicts
would repress the Donatist sect.
Augustine himself was in danger
from Donatists and the Circumcellions.
An attempted kidnapping
failed
because his guide took a wrong road.
Once returning home
from Calama, he was ambushed,
wounding some of the men with him.
To counter Donatist ideas Augustine wrote On Baptism in
401.
The Donatist bishop Petilian complained to Augustine that
Catholics
carried on a war against them,
and the Donatists' only victories
were to be killed or escape.
He asked how he could justify this
persecution
since Jesus
never persecuted anyone.
Augustine replied by suggesting that
Christian love meant ecclesiastical unity.
Petilian angrily charged
that love does not persecute
nor inflame emperors to take away
lives
and plunder people's goods.
He accused Augustine of still
being Manichaean and blamed
him for introducing monasteries to
Africa.
Augustine found Christ persecuting when Jesus
expelled
merchants from the temple with a whip.
Vincentius, an
old friend of Augustine from Carthage and a
leader in the Donatist
sect of Rogatists, was shocked that the
Hippo bishop favored using
state power to quell Donatists
in order to force them into the
Catholic church.
Augustine argued that Paul
was struck blind on the
Damascus road and that Elijah killed false
prophets.
Many Donatists were joining the Catholic unity
because
they feared the imperial edicts.
He also referred to the parable
of the banquet in Luke
14
when later guests were compelled to come.
In 411 Emperor Honorius sent Marcellinus to solve the
Donatist
problem by holding a conference at Carthage that was
attended
by 286 Catholic bishops and 284 Donatist bishops.
After a week
of debate
Marcellinus decided in favor of the Catholics.
Soon
an imperial edict authorized confiscating all
Donatist property
and fining their clergy.
Any who persisted as Donatists lost their
civil rights,
and some were deported.
Marcellinus also complained
to Augustine that Christian
teaching contradicted the duties of
Roman citizens,
especially the not resisting evil with evil
when
the empire was being invaded by barbarians.
Augustine would eventually
answer Marcellinus
in his book, City of God.
Augustine
also appealed to Marcellinus not to use capital
punishment on
Donatists so they would not be martyrs.
Finally about 420 Donatists
led by bishop Gaudentius fortified
the cathedral at Timgad and
threatened to set it on fire
if they were attacked.
The confrontation
went on for several months while
Gaudentius reminded the officer
that Jesus sent out
fishermen, not soldiers, to spread the faith.
Augustine refused to see them as martyrs and considered
their
threatened suicide a mad aberration.
Yet he wrote it would be
better for them to perish in their
own fire than burn in the eternal
fire of hell.
No commemoration remains at this site,
and what
resulted is unknown.
Augustine also placed celibacy above marriage.
He approved
of marriage to one person only,
and he opposed fornication before
marriage,
adultery after it, and divorce.
Only death could terminate
a marriage, and sexual intercourse
should be limited to what was
necessary to produce children.
Pelagius and his friend Coelestius
believed that the doctrine
of original sin with its implied weakness
of human nature
led to moral weakness, because people believed
only
the grace of God could help them.
They visited Africa, and
Pelagius went on to Jerusalem.
Coelestius was condemned by a council
of bishops
presided over by Augustine in 412 and then left Africa.
He did not believe that
Adam's sin extended to the entire human
race.
Pelagius believed that people are born in a neutral state
without virtue or vice;
Adam and his descendants sin by choice.
Pelagius also ridiculed the idea that God has selected a few
for
salvation while condemning a majority to be lost,
because it mocked
the idea that God wants all to be saved.
Augustine held to the
conviction that baptism is essential
to salvation regardless of
one's age.
Pelagius was accused by a Palestinian council in 415
but escaped censure, though under pressure from Africa
eventually
Pope Zosimus condemned
both Pelagius and Coelestius.
Yet Augustine believed that love is the essential quality
that
distinguishes the true Christian.
Whatever you do, he advised,
do it with love;
for who can do ill to someone one loves?
If you
love, you cannot but do well.
Augustine traveled to the capital
of Mauretania at Caesarea
in order to prevent the annual civil
battle between two hostile
factions of families, and he was able
to stop the bloodshed.
Honorius also issued edicts against any
bishop who would
not condemn the views of Pelagius, and in 419
a bishop
from Italy, Julian, was deposed and banished.
Julian
wrote against the views of the "Carthaginian" Augustine,
and the Hippo bishop countered with his own arguments.
Julian
criticized Augustine for denigrating sexual desire,
which Julian
considered ordained by God.
Julian also charged his adversary
with denying free will
because of his view that God predestined
some for salvation and others to damnation.
Julian believed that
humans do good or evil by free will,
assisted by God's grace or
incited by the devil.
He asserted that if God created humans,
they cannot have evil in them;
if sins are forgiven, children
cannot be condemned
for the sins of their parents.
Augustine wrote
his response in Against Julian in 421,
citing scriptures
and quoting Ambrose.
After Alaric pillaged Rome in 410, many blamed Christianity
for having weakened the Roman empire.
The pagan Volusianus complained
to Marcellinus,
who in turn wrote to Augustine.
He began his immense
work, The City of God, in 413
and did not complete it until
426.
In the preface Augustine undertook to defend the glorious
city of God, attempting to convince proud men of the power
of
humility, and he must also write of the earthly city
that lusts
to dominate the world by bending nations to its yoke.
From the
earthly city come the enemies
against whom the city of God must
be defended.
He observed that the cruelties suffered in war
may
incite the corrupt to reform their lives.
Providence may test
with afflictions
even the virtuous and exemplary.
Even the barbarians
spared many for Christ's sake.
Instead of believing that the gods
could have saved Rome
from destruction, Augustine argued that
Rome had kept the gods alive for a long time.
Those who blamed
Christ for what they deserved to suffer
did not seem to realize
that they were spared
for the sake of Christ.
Augustine showed
from history that temples and statues
of gods were not usually
spared during war.
He believed that the good also suffer in this
earthly life,
because they loved sweet things
and did not feel
compunction while others sinned.
Augustine believed that the happiness of a city springs
from the same source as that of individuals,
because it is many individuals
associating harmoniously.
Virtue governs the good life from the
seat of the soul
rendering the body holy by acts of will.
As long
as the will remains unyielding to crime,
what others perpetrate
on the body lays no guilt on the soul.
Thus even a woman who is
raped does not lose her chastity,
because she has not lost her
virtue.
He argued against suicide as a means to protect chastity.
Augustine believed that anyone who kills a human being,
whether
another or oneself, is guilty of murder.
The reward for good Christians
is not possession of earthly things.
The bad and good seem to
gain those.
Yet Augustine found those of pure soul,
who were outraged
by the soldiers, to be free of guilt.
Augustine argued that the pagan fables and theatrical
performances
corrupted the virtues of the early Romans,
and in his view those
gods did not teach good laws
nor the right moral code.
Thus Plato banned the poets from his
Republic.
As Rome's
morals declined, it increased its craving for world
power and
the enjoyment of obscene ceremonies.
Augustine believed that the
pagan gods
were unclean and lying spirits.
He compared a wealthy
person with one of moderate means.
The rich person suffers from
excessive fear and worries
because of feverish greed, while the
modest person is content
and has good relations, is self-restrained,
morally chaste, and at peace.
Augustine considered rule by the
good a blessing for humanity,
while the wicked inflict greater
harm on themselves
because of the greater wrong they can do ruling.
A good person, even a slave, is free; but a wicked person,
even
if a king, is really a slave;
for the wicked have to serve many
vices.
Augustine did not credit the Roman empire's expansion to
its
gods anymore than the military conquests of the previous
Assyrian,
Persian, or Alexandrian empires were due to theirs.
Cicero emphasized freedom of choice
and in doing so denied
foreknowledge.
For Augustine this meant giving up God to make
humans free;
for his faith held both.
He believed that God is
aware of all things,
including the human choices made willingly.
The early Roman desire to live free or die soon developed
into the love of domination as they won wars,
led by ambitious men
like Julius Caesar.
The values of honor, glory, and power of Caesar
triumphed over
the virtue of Marcus Cato.
Augustine advised that the love of
praise
should yield to the love of truth.
Christian martyrs exemplified
a greater humility.
For virtue to serve human glory is
as shameful
as it is to serve bodily pleasures.
Even the wars depended on
God's mercy and justice.
God rewarded the piety of
Constantine
and Theodosius with prosperity.
Augustine reviewed Roman religion
and found no mention of eternal life.
In turning to ethics Augustine noted that the greatest good,
the goal of ethics, is sometimes supplemented with extrinsic
goods
like honor, glory, and wealth.
For Plato
the good life is virtuous
and is based on the love of God.
However,
Augustine criticized the view of Apuleius that
intermediary spirits
or demons between God and humans
may be rightly used for magic.
Christians may revere martyrs; but they do not offer them
sacrifices
nor do they convert their sins into sacred rites.
Augustine did
not agree that demons are better beings
than humans, because he
accepted the popular belief
that demons are evil beings.
For Augustine
only Christ should be the mediator
between humans and God.
Angels
in his Christian theology Augustine placed
above the demons, because
their love of God
makes them holy; he believed angels have higher
knowledge
and are never mistaken like demons.
From the divinity and sacrifice of the Christ Augustine derived
his belief in the day of judgment, resurrection of the dead,
eternal
damnation of the wicked, and an eternal kingdom
of a glorious
city of God whose citizens
will forever enjoy the vision of God.
Yet he believed that by love of what is good a person
may increase
in the love of what is right and
decrease love for what is evil
until one's entire life is transformed and made perfect.
Evil
is never absolute, because it only exists
as relative defects
in what is good.
He believed that it is good for vitiated natures
to be punished by justice.
No one is punished for natural defects
but only for deliberate faults.
Even a bad habit began in the
will.
Augustine believed that the whole universe is beautiful,
and ugliness is only a limited perception of part of the whole.
In such a case we should use faith to accept
the greater master
work of the Creator.
All natures are good by their existence
with
their own beauty and peace.
Changing things become better or worse
depending on
whether they promote the good governance of the Creator.
The dissolution of mutable things in death
is part of the divine
process.
The angels who fell turned away from God
to themselves
by the sin of pride.
There is no efficient cause of evil will;
but evil will is the efficient cause of a bad action.
Greed is a defect in a person
who desires gold more than justice.
Lust is not a defect in bodies but in the soul who loves
corporal
pleasures more than temperance.
Augustine believed that shame
resulted from the sin of lust.
Boastfulness is loving the applause
of others,
and pride is loving one's own power more than another's.
The evil will is its own cause because it starts the evil
in mutable
spirits, and it does so by deserting the way of God.
Thus vices
may injure.
For Augustine human will is all-important, because
if it is
badly directed, the emotions will be perverted;
but if
it is well directed, they will be worthy of praise.
The person
who lives according to God does not hate other
people but should
hate the sin
because of the corruption while loving the sinner.
Once the vice is cured, only love remains.
Augustine noted how
the Stoics aim to replace desire with will,
joy with contentment,
and fear with caution.
For Augustine fear should be replaced with
love.
Augustine divided humanity into those who live
according to man and those who live according to God,
and so he wrote of two
cities or human societies.
One is destined for eternal life under
God,
the other for eternal punishment with the devil.
The earthly
city loves self in contempt of God,
while the heavenly loves God
in contempt of one's self.
Augustine found the beginning of his
city of God in the
martyrdom of Abel and its opposite
in Cain's
murdering his brother.
His city of man is full of contention
and
divided by wars and domestic quarrels.
A city that raises its
standard in war is enthralled in its
wickedness; even when it
conquers,
its victory is spoiled by pride.
Or if it considers
human vicissitudes and future failure,
its triumph is only momentary.
The earthly city loves domination
instead of being of service
to others.
Augustine observed that the city of man was and remains
in a chronic condition of civil war.
The two largest earthly empires
that arose were first the
Assyrian
in the East and then the Roman
in the West.
For Augustine the city of God places the supreme good
in eternal
life and the supreme evil in eternal death,
and the method he
recommends for finding this life is faith.
Virtue, the highest
of human goods, comes with education
and is one unending war with
evil inclinations within ourselves.
Augustine affirmed the traditional
virtues of temperance,
prudence, justice, and courage.
He interpreted
justice as the soul being subordinate to God
and the body being
subordinate to the soul.
He found conflict even in one's own house,
as scripture warns.
Even in a peaceful city some men sit in judgment
of others,
causing much grief and misery;
for no human judge can
read the human conscience.
Thus many innocent witnesses are tortured
to try to gain information.
The accused may be tortured to find
out if they are guilty.
Beyond the city is the world community, which has one war
after
another involving tremendous slaughtering of men.
Developing empires
have even worse conflicts within from
civil wars and social uprisings
that create anxieties for humans living in fear.
Augustine admitted
that a good ruler will only wage wars
that are just, though a
truly good person
would be compelled to wage no wars at all.
For
Augustine a just war is only justified
against an unjust aggressor.
The end of genuine Christian virtue is the greatest peace.
Yet
many go to war to make their enemies their own and
impose their
will on them, calling it peace.
Sinful people hate human equality
and love to impose
their sovereignty over their fellow humans.
They hate the just peace of God,
preferring their own unjust peace.
Augustine defined peace
as the ordered equilibrium of all its
parts.
For the irrational soul this means its appetites;
for the
rational soul it is the harmonious correspondence
of conduct and
conviction; for the soul and body together
it is a well-ordered
life and health;
between a mortal person and the Creator it is
ordered
obedience guided by faith under God's law;
between persons
it is regulated fellowship;
in the home it is authority and obedience
between members of the family;
in the political community it is
authority and obedience
among citizens; and the heavenly city
has harmonious communion of those who find joy in God.
The earthly city uses temporal goods for worldly peace,
but
the heavenly city enjoys eternal peace.
God teaches loving God
and one's neighbors.
The fundamental duty is to look out for one's
own home.
Augustine believed that God did not mean for a person
to have dominion over other persons but persons over beasts.
Slavery
resulted from sin;
but those who commit sin are slaves of sin.
For Augustine being a slave of a man is not as bad
as being enslaved
to passion.
Slaves by serving loyally with love may become free
of fear
until the injustice is ended.
Those living in the heavenly
city should also obey the civil laws
of the earthly city so that
the two cities may make common cause,
though Augustine noted there
is often religious conflict.
In the ancient Roman
republic he found little true justice,
which should recognize
the rights of all
and give each one's due.
For Augustine pagans,
who do not worship the one God,
lack religious control of soul
over body
and reason over appetite and therefore true justice.
Thus by his religious definition any city
that is not monotheistic
is unjust.
For Augustine there can be no true virtue without true
religion.
Augustine observed that the good may be unfortunate
and the
wicked fortunate, a seeming injustice in this world;
but God's
judgments are inscrutable, and all will be made just
in the divine
judgment at the end of the world.
Following scripture, Augustine
believed that in the last judgment
the Jews will believe; the
antichrist will persecute the church;
Christ will judge; the dead
will rise; the good will be separated
from the bad; and the world
will suffer from fire but be renewed.
Augustine countered arguments
of those who believed
that the punishment of hell is not everlasting.
In the last book Augustine described the eternal bliss of the
city of God and how its citizens will be clothed
with the personal
immortality the angels never lost.
Augustine cited several miracles
as proof of Christian teaching.
Fallen humans have the two resources
of law and education
to learn the authority of holy doctrine.
The purpose of all punishment is to dispel ignorance and
control
untamed desires, though Augustine did not explain
how this is
true for eternal punishment.
Augustine concluded by describing
the final beatific vision
of the saints before thanking God.
The
City of God would be very influential for more than a
thousand
years, and there are more manuscript copies of it
than of any
book except the Bible.
In 428 a youth from Hippo named Hilary and the theologian
Prosper
wrote to Augustine from Gaul that people
in Marseilles were disturbed
by his "new theory"
which they believed made preaching
useless.
How could the number of the elect be fixed?
Does it not
depend on human free will?
If God already has determined salvation
and damnation,
would that not undermine all human effort?
Augustine
replied to them in The Predestination of the Saints
and
The Gift of Perseverance, holding to the idea that
people do not believe in order to be elected
but that they are elected
to believe,
usually quoting Paul for support.
He argued that Paul
believed as he does
and yet continued to preach.
In 430 the Vandals
besieged Hippo.
Augustine wrote a letter to Bishop Honoratus arguing
that the priest should stay with his flock
instead of fleeing
to another city.
In the third month of the siege Augustine became
ill,
and he died on August 28.
Thanks to a mutual respect for each other's empires,
the treaties
Rome made with Persia by Jovian in 363
and the one negotiated
by Stilicho between Theodosius
and Shapur III in 387 would last amid relative
peaceful co-existence
throughout the fourth century.
Persians built and defended northern
defenses,
and Rome supplied gold to help pay for them.
In 395
the Huns invaded Armenia, Cappadocia, and
northern Syria, making
it even more important
to continue this arrangement.
According
to the historian Procopius, just before
Arcadius died in 408,
he sent a letter to
Yazdgard I (r. 399-421) asking the Persian
monarch
to be the guardian of his young son Theodosius II.
The
next year Yazdgard granted Christians
freedom of worship and restored
their churches.
Persian fears of Christians intriguing for Rome
were relieved when the Christian church of Iran
became independent
of Constantinople.
Yazdgard kept the peace with the Roman empire;
but in the year before he died, a bishop destroyed a
Zarathustran
fire temple in Susa,
stimulating the persecution of Christians.
After Vahram V (r. 421-438) had won a struggle for power,
a large
Persian army attacked Roman territory;
but neither side was victorious
though many may have been killed.
Bishop Acadius of Amida was
credited with selling
church plate to redeem 7,000 Persian captives.
Anatolius negotiated a truce for a hundred years,
and it lasted
nearly that long
until early in the sixth century.
Armenia continued to be divided with the Persian vassal
Khusrau
ruling over the most extensive territory in the east,
while the
western portion was loyal to the Roman emperor
Arcadius and was
ruled by Arsaces until the long Arsacid
dynasty finally ended
with his death about 430.
Then the Roman military took control
of this area.
Persian king Yazdgard II (r. 438-459) studied all
the religions
but persecuted Jews and Christians.
His attempt
to convert Armenia to the Zarathustran faith led to
a rebellion;
but he marched an army into Armenia and carried
off to Iran the
leaders of the great families and clergy.
Under Peroz (r. 459-484)
wars against the Ephthalites
or white Huns and famine devastated
Persia.
Jews were persecuted, and Christians were divided into
the
sects of the Nestorians and the Monophysites,
partly because bishops from Persia and Armenia
did not attend the Catholic church
councils.
Thus the Eastern half of the Roman empire had relative
stability on that side while the Western suffered
more incursions
from Germans and Huns.
Theodosius had
briefly reunited the Roman empire
under the rule of one man for
the last time;
but with his death in 395 his 10-year-old son Honorius
reigned
in the West, and 17-year-old son Arcadius ruled the East;
both were to be guided by the commander Stilicho,
who was born
a Vandal.
He was opposed though by Rufinus, Praetorian Prefect
of the East, who had accused Tatian and his son Proculus
of corrupt
administration as prefects of the East
and Constantinople;
Proculus
was beheaded, and Tatian was banished.
Rufinus even stigmatized
their country Lycia
by not allowing anyone from there
to be an
officer in the imperial government.
The Latin poet Claudian wrote two books against Rufinus
accusing
him of extorting oppressive taxes, bribery,
unjust confiscations,
forced and fictitious wills by which
he gained inheritances of
his enemies, the public sale of justice,
and other corruption.
Claudian exaggerated the evils of Rufinus, because
he favored
his patron Stilicho;
but much of it was probably true.
The Goths
selected Alaric as their leader and ravaged Thrace
and Macedonia
before advancing on Constantinople.
Rufinus dressed as a Goth
and persuaded them to march west.
Lucian used money his father
Florentius had extorted
from Gaul to get Rufinus to appoint him
Count of the East;
but when Lucian refused to favor the Emperor's
uncle,
Rufinus went to Antioch and had
Lucian condemned and cruelly
punished.
Rufinus tried to marry his daughter to Arcadius, but
the
Emperor preferred the beautiful Eudoxia,
the daughter of Bauto,
a Frank general serving Rome.
The East still lacked troops that had been moved west
for the
war against Eugenius.
Stilicho was to return with them, and he
imposed the will
of Theodosius,
giving Honorius dominion over Thrace.
Rufinus got Arcadius to
call for Stilicho from the conflict with
the Visigoths in that
region, and the Gothic officer
Gainas marched the imperial legions
to Constantinople.
Rufinus met the troops of Gainas but was assassinated
by them, and this was blamed on Stilicho.
Meanwhile Huns from
the north
invaded Mesopotamia and ravaged Syria.
With Rufinus
dead the eunuch chamberlain Eutropius
dominated the government
of Arcadius.
By intrigue Eutropius managed to kill and appropriate
the
wealth of military commanders Abundantius and Timasius.
Claudian
also wrote two books of poetry against Eutropius,
criticizing
his greedy ambition
and exaggerating his sale of offices.
The
poet wrote that the only passion the mutilated body
of Eutropius
could indulge was the passion for gold,
and he even wondered whether
the
effeminate slave could blush or feel shame.
In 396 the Visigoths led by Alaric moved south into Greece,
taking Boeotia, Athens, Megara, Corinth, Argos, and Sparta.
Athens
was spared, but the temple at Eleusis
was plundered,
according to Eunapius by a band of fanatical monks
accompanying the Gothic army.
Thus the Eleusinian
mysteries, which had given Hellenic culture
a mystical basis
in agricultural symbolism for eighteen centuries,
were no longer
celebrated.
About this time Claudian wrote the poem
The Rape
of Proserpine describing that part
of the founding myth of
these mysteries.
The story of the underworld's king Pluto coming
from
underground by chariot to carry off the daughter of the
barley mother Ceres (Demeter) symbolizes
civilization's
development of agriculture in the raping of the
earth
that led to wars over property.
Ironically this poem marking
the end of those mysteries that
were founded when the Greeks were
at that stage coincides
with the invasion of the Goths and Huns,
whose populations
had increased to the point where they too must
find enough
land to settle down into an agricultural way of life.
In Claudian's poem Jupiter compares his reign
to his father's
golden era.
Wealth blunts the minds of men.
I arranged that necessity, mother of invention,
would spur their lazy minds so that, little by little,
they might discover the cause of things that are
both hidden and open to view.
An age of industry replaced a golden age....
Can a life that is hidden in a forest
bring happiness to one who is more than animal?4
Stilicho led forces across from Italy and met Alaric at Elis.
They made an agreement, and Alaric withdrew to Epirus
being recognized
as master of Illyricum.
The Senate in Constantinople resented
Stilicho entering
Greece and declared him a public enemy,
while
Claudian flattered Honorius with empty praise.
In 397 the Donatist Gildo withheld grain in Africa,
though
Stilicho supplied Rome from Gaul and Spain.
The Roman Senate unanimously
declared Gildo a
public enemy and sent Stilicho against him with
an army
of about 10,000 led by Gildo's brother Mascezel,
whose
children had been murdered by their uncle
when Mascezel had taken
refuge in Milan.
Yet the senators allowed their wealthy class
the option of
paying 25 solidi for each recruit they had
to provide.
From that time and in the next fifteen years
nine
imperial edicts on desertion
and the concealment of deserters
were issued.
The African forces refused to support Gildo,
who
was put to death or committed suicide.
According to the historian
Zosimus, the jealous Stilicho
had his bodyguards murder Mascezel
while he was crossing a bridge.
Claudian celebrated Stilicho's
victory in his poem
The War Against Gildo in which Mascezel
is barely mentioned, and the poem
ends abruptly after one book.
Stilicho consolidated his power in the west by marrying
his daughter
Maria to Emperor Honorius.
In the East in 397 Arcadius enacted a law that anyone who
conspires
against the emperor or an imperial official shall be
punished
with death or confiscation; even knowledge of a
wrong intention
if not revealed or soliciting to pardon
a traitor could be equally
criminal.
The next year Eutropius seems to have led a successful
campaign driving barbarians back to the Caucasus,
and his elevation
to consul in 399 stimulated Claudian
to turn his invective poetry
against the eunuch.
Italians were scandalized by a eunuch consul
as a violation of their traditions,
and the West refused to recognize
his consulship.
The German Gainas, who had been directed by Stilicho
to lead the Eastern army back to Constantinople,
had become Master of
Soldiers.
Ostrogoths in Phrygia led by Tribigild invaded Galatia,
Pisidia,
and Bithynia, as Arcadius was retiring to a resort
at
Ancyra for the summer of 399.
Generals Gainas and Leo, a friend
of Eutropius,
were sent against the invaders.
Synesius, a philosopher
from Cyrene arrived in Constantinople
and wrote against Germans
in the state, arguing that
giving arms to foreign Germans was
like a
shepherd trying to tame the cubs of wolves.
Gainas secretly
reinforced the Ostrogoths and got his own
Germans to revolt, resulting
in the death of Leo.
While pretending to be overwhelmed by Ostrogothic
power,
Gainas urged Arcadius to meet Tribigild's deman
of deposing
Eutropius.
The empress Eudoxia also turned against Eutropius,
who fled for sanctuary in the church St. Sophia.
There he was
protected by John Chrysostom,
who preached on the vanity of the world.
Eutropius surrendered
when offered his life
and was banished to Cyprus.
Eutychian was replaced as Praetorian Prefect of the East
by
Aurelian as the anti-German party triumphed.
Gainas openly allied
with Tribigild,
and they plundered the Propontis.
Apparently they
got Aurelian replaced by an unknown
person referred to as Typhos
in a literary work
by Synesius called Egyptians.
The Patriarch
Chrysostom persuaded Gainas to banish
rather than kill the three
hostages Aurelian, Saturninus,
and John, the lover of Empress
Eudoxia.
Gainas marched into Constantinople with his army
and
ruled there for the first half of the year 400.
Then when the
Goths left the capital,
many were trapped in a church and killed.
The one called Typhos fell,
and Aurelian again became Prefect.
Gainas became a declared enemy and plundered Thrace.
At Abydos
the Goths ran into the imperial navy
commanded by the loyal Goth
Fravitta.
The troops of Gainas were defeated, and he was driven
to the Hun king Uldin, who cut off the head of Gainas
and sent
it to Arcadius.
Thus the East escaped the barbarian threat,
and
Stilicho could no longer plot against them.
Stilicho became consul
in Rome,
venerated again by the poetry of Claudian.
In 401 Vandals led by Radagaisus invaded Noricum and Raetia.
While Stilicho's army was stopping them,
Alaric crossed the Italian
Alps to capture Aquileia.
Stilicho gathered Goth auxiliaries and
returned to Italy,
and on Easter in 402 at Pollentia his forces
captured
Alaric's camp and some of his family.
Negotiations resulted
in Alaric leaving Italy.
The next year Alaric attacked Verona
and was again defeated
by Stilicho, who nonetheless allowed the
Goths to occupy
Dalmatia and Pannonia so that they could help
him
annex Eastern Illyricum.
Emperor Honorius visited Rome and
celebrated with games.
An appeal by Christian poet Prudentius
led to the prohibition
of gladiatorial games after the aged monk
Telemachus
tried to separate two combatants in the Colosseum
and
was killed by the stones of angry spectators.
Honorius closed
the Colosseum in 405.
In the East John Chrysostom
criticized rich nobles,
many of whom had a dozen or more mansions
and a thousand
or more slaves, who were often brutally treated.
He preached that the marriage rights of the wife
are equal to
those of the husband.
John opposed granting the Arian Goths a
church in the capital,
but he visited the church of the orthodox
Goths often.
Empress Eudoxia wanted Arcadius to tear down the
heathen
temples in Gaza and build a church there.
In 401 John
Chrysostom investigated Ephesus bishop
Antoninus for simony
and other offenses,
and Chrysostom went beyond his jurisdiction
in
replacing at least thirteen bishops.
Chrysostom himself was
accused of various offenses
by his archdeacon John; but he did
not appear at the
Synod of the Oak, where he was condemned mostly
by Egyptian bishops and deposed.
Chrysostom
requested a general council and withdrew from
Constantinople;
but the ire of the people on his behalf
and an earthquake frightened
Eudoxia into inviting him back.
After Eudoxia celebrated a silver
statue of herself erected
by city prefect Simplicius near St.
Sophia church,
Chrysostom
raged against her as a Herodias.
A council met in 404 and ordered Chrysostom
to remain
in his palace during the Easter celebrations.
On June
20 Arcadius banished Chrysostom.
That night a fire broke out in St. Sophia, beginning
from the archbishop's chair and spreading to the
Senate-house next door.
Investigators blamed the conflagration
on Chrysostom
or his friends.
An Italian Synod declared the condemnation of Chrysostom
illegal
and demanded a general council; but efforts
on his behalf by Western
Emperor Honorius were
to no avail, and Chrysostom
died in exile in 407.
Eudoxia had died of a miscarriage in 404,
and Arcadius died in 408.
As Theodosius, the son of Arcadius,
was only seven years old,
in this interval Praetorian Prefect
of the East Anthemius
was prime minister, while much of Asia Minor
was devastated by Isaurian brigands.
Anthemius improved the navy
on the Danube,
and after a famine in 408
he re-organized the Egyptian
grain supply.
Germans in the West with mostly Ostrogoths
invaded northern
Italy in 405.
Even the Emperor's estates were not exempted from
the law
that penalized those refusing to supply the army by requiring
them to provide four times what was due.
The force led by Radagaisus
attacked Florence;
but the next year Stilicho recruited slaves
by offering them
freedom and two pieces of gold.
With nearly 20,000
men he forced the Germans to retreat to
Fiesole, where they were
starved into surrender.
The Germans who were not slaughtered were
sold as slaves;
even though Radagaisus capitulated, he was beheaded.
However, the Rhine was left undefended, and late in 406
Germans
began pouring into Gaul,
and the same year King Gunderic led the
Vandals into Spain.
Stilicho turned to Illyricum, stimulated by
the imprisonment
of ecclesiastical emissaries sent by Honorius
to complain
about the Eastern Emperor's treatment of John Chrysostom.
Stilicho closed Italian ports to ships from the East.
While Alaric
was holding Epirus for Honorius,
Jovius was appointed Praetorian
Prefect of Illyricum.
However, Alaric marched his army to Noricum
and demanded 4,000
pounds of gold from Rome.
Stilicho persuaded the Roman Senate
to send the money.
When Stilicho's daughter Empress Maria died,
Honorius married her sister Thermantia.
Stilicho managed to get
the federated Franks
to fight for the Roman empire.
Invading Alans
divided when their king Goar also sided
with the Romans in Gaul;
but after the Asding king Godeigisel
was killed along with thousands
of Vandals,
the other Alan king Respendial defeated the Franks
and plundered Mainz, massacring many inhabitants
who took refuge
in a church.
The Alans invaded Belgica and ravaged much of Gaul.
The land north of the Alps to the Rhine had been effectively
taken
over by the Suevi, Vandals, Alans, and the Burgundians,
who would
retreat behind the Rhine no more.
Honorius learned of his brother's death in 408
while returning
to Ravenna.
Stilicho persuaded the Western Emperor to allow him
to go to Constantinople to protect young Theodosius,
while Alaric
was sent as a master general of
imperial armies against Constantine
in Gaul.
The minister Olympius made Honorius suspect that
Stilicho
was going to kill Theodosius, causing a military revolt
that killed
many of the top officials attending on Honorius.
Stilicho marched
to Ravenna, but there he was executed
by Heraclian, who was rewarded
by being made Count of Africa.
Stilicho's son Eucherius was killed
at Rome,
and Honorius repudiated his virgin wife Thermantia.
Stilicho's
edict against traders from the East was rescinded.
Emperor Honorius excluded from office those who were not
Catholic,
rejecting many skilled pagans and Arian barbarians.
This policy
led Roman troops to massacre families of
barbarian auxiliaries,
causing 30,000 foreign soldiers
to join Alaric in Noricum.
Alaric
offered to withdraw into Pannonia for more money
and an exchange
of hostages;
but Honorius, guided by his minister Olympius, declined.
So in 408 Alaric entered Italy
for the third time and besieged
Rome.
The Senate reacted by having
Stilicho's widow Serena strangled.
As Romans suffered hunger and plague, Alaric demanded
all their
goods, leaving them only their lives.
Honorius agreed to send
the treasure of Rome,
and Alaric withdrew to Etruria, as barbarian
slaves
from Rome swelled his army to 40,000.
A garrison of 6,000
sent from Dalmatia to protect Rome
were almost all killed or captured
by Alaric's army.
Olympius sent some troops against a force of
Goths and Huns led by Athaulf, Alaric's brother-in-law.
This dangerous
alliance stimulated the enemies of Olympius
to replace him with
Jovius as Praetorian Prefect of Italy.
Jovius was a friend of
Alaric and negotiated with him,
but Honorius refused to grant
lands for the Goths to settle
and put slaves in the army by promising
them emancipation.
Alaric blockaded Rome again and appointed city prefect
Attalus
the new emperor with himself as military leader
and Athaulf as
Chief of the Domestics.
To protect the grain they sent Constans
with Roman soldiers
against African count Heraclian, who was loyal
to Honorius;
but Constans was killed.
Jovius joined the side of
Alaric.
Alaric besieged Ravenna,
but Honorius was reinforced by
the East.
In 410 Alaric deposed Athaulf and met with Honorius;
but negotiations were broken off when the
Visigoth Sarus attacked
Alaric's camp.
Alaric marched on Rome for the third time and allowed
his troops to sack the city, though as an Arian Christian
he had
the churches spared;
he died before the end of 410.
To succeed
him, the Ostrogoth Athaulf
was elected king of the Visigoths.
The Emperor required provincial governors to return
to Rome guildsmen who had fled.
Men were not allowed to marry out of their
guild;
if a woman did so,
her husband had to follow her father's
occupation.
The imperial administration often had difficulty doling
out
in Rome bread, pork, wine, and oil, instead of merely
the
wheat that had been supplied in previous eras.
In the provinces
assemblies no longer elected
their municipal magistrates.
The
curia were now landholders
who owned more than 25 jugera.
Their duties of collecting taxes or paying the costs themselves
had become so onerous that curiales had to be compelled
to remain
in their positions, as the class became weaker.
Such pressures
and the failure of coloni farmers to pay
their taxes resulted
in wealthy landowners increasing their
holdings, while they often
avoided paying taxes themselves.
The increase of dependent tenant
farmers under rich
landlords and the making of most occupations
hereditary
gradually would develop into the feudal system.
In Britain Marcus had been proclaimed emperor;
but in 407 he
was killed and replaced by Gratian.
Four months later a soldier
named Constantine replaced
Gratian and crossed with his army over
to Gaul,
leaving Britain open to invasion by Saxons, who took
over
the country about 410 when Honorius wrote to the British
the empire could no longer defend them.
Gaining Gallic legions,
Constantine took control of the
eastern strip of Gaul, while the
Vandals, Suevians,
and Alans ravaged the rest of Gaul.
The next
year an imperial army led by Sarus crossed the
Alps and defeated
Constantine but then returned to Italy.
Constantine sent his Caesar
Constans to invade Spain
and later made him Augustus (emperor)
too.
In 409 the beleaguered Honorius recognized
Constantine as
a legitimate emperor.
Constans left his general Gerontius in charge
of Spain
and returned to Gaul.
Asdings led by King Gunderic, Silings,
Sueves, and Alans
crossed the Pyrenees and invaded Spain.
Gerontius
negotiated with them and appointed
a new emperor named Maximus.
The influence of Rome's Bishop Innocent may have stimulated
the
409 law expelling the mathematici (diviners and sorcerers)
from Rome and all Italian cities.
In 410 the Roman empire had six emperors:
Honorius and his
nephew Theodosius, Attalus at Rome,
Constantine and Constans at
Arles, and Maximus at Tarragona.
Honorius sent generals Constantius
and Ulfila to regain Gaul.
The army of Gerontius fled, and Gerontius
returned to Spain;
there his troops turned against him, and he
was killed.
Constantine was besieged at Arles; reinforcements
from the
Alamanni and Franks were defeated,
and his general Edobich
was treacherously killed.
Constantine and his son were sent to
Honorius,
who put both of them to death in 411.
In Gaul Burgundian king Gundahar and Alan king Goar
proclaimed
the Gallic Roman Jovinus emperor.
In 412 King Athaulf led the
Visigoths across the Alps
with the captives Placidia and Attalus.
Sarus with only twenty men was captured
by Athaulf's army and
put to death.
When Jovinus appointed his brother Sebastian Augustus
also,
Athaulf sent envoys to Honorius in Ravenna and soon sent
him
the heads of both Jovinus and Sebastian.
Such upstart tyrants
also stimulated Count Heraclian of Africa,
who tried to attack
Italy, was defeated,
and, after fleeing back to
Carthage, was beheaded in 413.
He had stopped the grain supply,
causing hunger
in the Gothic camp.
Athaulf tried to take Marseilles, but he was repulsed
and wounded
by Boniface.
However, Athaulf was able to capture Narbonne, Bordeaux,
and Toulouse, and he married the sister of Honorius, Placidia,
who apparently shifted his ambitions in the Roman direction.
Yet
when Honorius did not respond,
Athaulf proclaimed Attalus.
Deprived
of provisions by Constantius,
Athaulf wasted Aquitane,
burned
Bordeaux, and went to Barcelona in 415.
Attalus was abandoned
and captured by Constantius.
Athaulf and Placidia had a son named
Theodosius,
but he soon died.
Athaulf himself was murdered
by
a follower of Sarus in revenge.
So many poor men had lost everything
and in desperation
joined marauding bandits that in 416
the Emperor
proclaimed a general amnesty for such crimes.
Singeric, a friend of Sarus, claimed the kingship
and had Athaulf's
other sons killed.
This usurper was slain after only seven days,
and Wallia was duly elected king of the Visigoths.
He got 600,000
measures of grain for his people in exchange
for returning Placidia
and fighting for the empire
against barbarians in Spain.
Constantius
had long been in love with Placidia,
and he married her on the
first day of 417.
Wallia attacked the Silings in Baetica, capturing
their king.
He also subjugated the Alans, while the Asdings and
Suevians
were accepted as Federates by Honorius.
The resisting
Silings were practically exterminated,
and escaping Alans joined
the Asding Vandals,
making Gunderic "King of the Vandals
and Alans."
Wallia's Goths were rewarded with the Gallic
province
of Aquitania Secunda, gaining two-thirds of the land
while Romans only retained one-third.
The other Teutonic kingdom
in Gaul
was the Burgundians on the Rhine.
When Wallia died in
418, Theodoric I, grandson of Alaric,
was elected Visigoth king.
That year Honorius established an assembly to meet annually
at
Arles to represent seven governors in southern Gaul.
In Spain
Vandals led by King Gunderic blockaded the Suevians;
but an imperial
force led by Asterius forced them to abandon
the blockade, and
the Vandals migrated to Baetica.
In the East in 413 regent and praetorian prefect Anthemius
had a wall with numerous towers erected around
Constantinople
that would make it
very difficult to attack the city.
Later city
prefect Cyrus had walls constructed
along the seashore too.
16-year-old
Pulcheria became Augusta in 414,
and Aurelian succeeded Anthemius
as Prefect of the East.
Pulcheria took control of her younger
brother's education
and removed the eunuch Antiochus.
Theodosius
was gentle and
reluctant to inflict capital punishment.
In troubled Alexandria in 412 the patriarch Theophilus was
succeeded by his nephew Cyril, who coveted power
in order to extirpate
paganism and persecute Jews.
The distinguished mathematician and
Neo-Platonic
philosopher Hypatia was in her forties and was much
admired
for her beauty and wisdom, lecturing to large crowds.
Cyril hated her because she was the friend
of the pagan prefect
of Egypt, Orestes.
Cyril menaced the Jews so much that
they reacted
by massacring some Christians.
Cyril then banished all Hebrews
and allowed
Christians to plunder their property.
500 monks publicly
insulted Orestes, and one
who hit him with a stone was executed;
he was treated as a martyr by Cyril.
In 415 another mob of monks
called parabalani,
who were supposed to tend the sick,
seized Hypatia,
because they believed she hindered a reconciliation
between Orestes and Cyril.
They dragged her to a church, tore
off her garments,
and dismembered her body.
The ecclesiastical
historian Socrates
held Cyril morally responsible for this atrocity.
In 421 Theodosius married Athenian-educated Eudocia,
and two
years later she was declared Augusta.
Also in 421 Honorius allowed
Constantius to be crowned
Augustus and his wife Placidia Augusta;
but in Constantinople they were not recognized
by young Theodosius
and his sister Pulcheria.
Constantius died seven months later,
and Placidia took refuge with her family in Constantinople.
After
reigning 28 years Honorius died in 423.
A usurper named John was
proclaimed emperor at Ravenna,
but Theodosius and Pulcheria supported
Placidia and her
4-year-old son Valentinian, Placidia agreeing
to return
Dalmatia and part of Pannonia to the East.
Theodosius
exiled John's envoys and sent a large army
commanded by Ardaburius
and his son Aspar,
accompanied by Placidia and Valentinian.
The
fleet was scattered in a storm,
and Ardaburius was captured and
taken to Ravenna.
Aspar attacked the city;
John was captured and
publicly executed
before Aetius arrived with 60,000 Huns.
Aetius
as a boy had been a hostage
with Alaric and with the Huns.
Aetius
agreed to support Placidia, and the Huns were
bought off with
money and returned to their homes.
At Rome Valentinian III was
named Augustus in 425.
Like the 4th century, the 5th century had little noteworthy
literature that was not of a religious nature.
Claudian's panegyric
poetry and his Rape of Proserpine
were already mentioned.
Later Sidonius would also use poetry to praise
the emperors Avitus,
Majorian, and Anthemius.
One anonymous comedy called Querolus
survives from the early 5th century.
It is the only Roman comedy
extant after Terence
and the only Roman play extant after Seneca.
The play is dedicated to the poet Rutilius Namatianus.
It satirizes
many current religious
and philosophical ideas indirectly.
Querolus asks the household god why the wicked prosper
and
the good suffer; but the god shows him that
since he has committed
thefts, lies, and adultery
according to the times, his woes are
his own fault.
The god advises him to know the character and vices
of people and avoid parties, wine, and crowds.
When asked what
he wants,
Querolus asks for moderate wealth and military honors.
Since he has no military skill, the god offers him money
and tells
him to put his trust in a deceiver,
to help those who plot against
him,
and to welcome thieves into his house.
Querolus does so,
as Mandrogerus poses as a fortune teller
and brings Swindler and
Sardanapallus in to get an urn of gold
the late father of Querolus
told Mandrogerus he could share
with his son Querolus if he used
no fraud.
They remove a chest with the urn but find only ashes.
So they throw the urn back into the house;
it breaks, and Querolus
discovers the gold.
Then Mandrogerus returns to show the letter
from the father
and get his share even though he tried to cheat.
Finally Querolus adopts him into his house, because
Mandrogerus
can recite the latest decree concerning parasites.
Not much is known about the life of the Neo-Platonist
philosopher
Macrobius.
He may have been a prefect in Spain in 399,
proconsul
in Africa in 410, and grand chamberlain in 422.
Macrobius in his Saturnalia portrayed several prominent
pagan aristocrats
in a discussion held
during the three days of that festival.
Praetextatus,
in whose house they talk, had been proconsul
of Achaea under Julian
(361-363), was praetorian prefect
under Theodosius I, and was
consul in 385;
he had been initiated into many cults of Syria
and Egypt
and was known for his priestly lore.
Flavianus also
rose to power under Julian and retired during
the reign of Valentinian
I; but when Gratian ruled,
he joined the circle of the poet Ausonius
and as proconsul of Africa tolerated heretics.
Flavianus became
prefect of Italy in 393 and supported the
rebellion of Eugenius,
restoring the
altar to Victory in the Senate-house.
When Eugenius
was defeated by Theodosius in the battle
on the Frigidus in 394,
Flavianus took his own life.
They are joined by the rhetorician
Eustathius
and the critic Servius.
These men were also friends of the most prominent pagan
of
this era, Symmachus, whose letters
describe the lives of wealthy
pagans.
He was best known for his speech which failed to persuade
Emperor Gratian to restore the statue to Victory
in the Roman
Senate in 382.
His letters indicate that women had gained greater
social
prestige in this era, and that often pagan men
had sympathetic
Christian wives.
Symmachus wrote that Furiola founded a hospital,
and Gratian's widow Laeta fed the starving people
in Rome during
the siege by Alaric.
The guests in the Saturnalia claim that their society
has less
luxury and dissipation than earlier ones,
and they disdain
to associate with actors.
When Euangelus mocks the idea that God
cares about slaves,
Praetextatus responds that he values people
not by their status but by their character.
He suggests they treat
their slaves with gentle goodness
and admit them into their intimate
conversations.
He says that their ancestors removed the pride
of the master
and the shame of the slave
by making them part of
their families.
Everyone is a slave of God or Fortune.
Even the
greatest bear the yoke.
A slave is really a fellow servant subject
to the same chances and changes.
The real slave is the person
in bondage to passions.
No servitude is more shameful than that
which is self-imposed.
Treat your slave as a friend,
for it is
better to be loved and respected than feared.
Of course Praetextatus
referred to household slaves;
it is difficult to imagine a rich
landowner
having close friendships with hundreds of workers.
Macrobius' Commentary on Cicero's "Dream of Scipio"
preserved that portion of Cicero's
Republic for posterity
and described a mystical cosmology
using Pythagorean ideas.
He saw the universe as a hierarchy of
God filled with the
divine presence in a great chain of being
from the highest stars to the lowest animals.
Mind in contact
with matter becomes a soul.
All below the moon is mortal
except
the higher principle in humans.
The soul descends through the
seven spheres.
The planets represent the harmony of the spheres
with Saturn
standing for human intellect, Jupiter for practical
morality,
Mars for spirited emotions, and Venus for sensuality.
He also observed that Venus and Mercury orbit the sun.
Macrobius emphasized the cardinal Hellenic virtues,
held out
the prospect of reward after death, and believed
in the divine
origin and destiny of the human soul.
Being in a body is a kind
of death
until one dies to sin and corporeal passion.
However,
one must not terminate one's imprisonment
by suicide, because
such an act
rebels from the Great Master.
One must continue to
work for improvement during this
probation in order to win a better
reward.
Degraded souls who cling to the mortal elements after
death
do not ascend into the divine world
but return to be born
again in a body.
The only way to achieve eternal happiness is
by virtue.
Although civic virtue may control the passions,
Macrobius
recommended cleansing virtues
to eradicate them by turning from
glory to conscience.
John Cassian was born about 365 and grew up in a wooded
area
of Europe with no monks; but he was well educated and
while young
he renounced the world and joined a monastery
in Bethlehem with
his friend Germanus.
The two gained permission to visit the monasteries
in Egypt
and stayed there seven years.
They were welcomed by Pinufius,
abbot of a famous monastery,
who had previously fled that responsibility
to go as an
unknown monk to Bethlehem, where he had been assigned
to Cassian's cell until his identity
was discovered and he was
sent back.
Cassian and Germanus were inspired by Abbot Piamun
to
seek the Anchorite life of isolation;
but after visiting Abbot
Paul's monastery
with more than two hundred monks
they were influenced
by Abbot John to learn obedience
from the community life of the
Cenobites.
Yet another abbot named Theonas drew them back to
Anchorite
asceticism by giving them
his cell and building another for himself.
After returning to their brothers in Bethlehem,
Cassian and Germanus
went back again to Egypt
to explore more monasteries in the valley
of Nitria,
where as many as 5,000 monks lived.
In 399 the Abbot
Paphnutius allowed the letters of
Alexandrian bishop Theophilus
against the
Anthropomorphite heresy to be read, and their view
of the Godhead became less materialistic.
About 400 Cassian and Germanus went to Constantinople,
were
ordained deacons and put in charge of the treasury.
When John
Chrysostom was banished in 404,
Germanus and Cassian were sent
with letters to
Bishop Innocent in Rome,
where Cassian was probably
ordained a priest.
Eventually Cassian went to Gaul and in 415
he founded a
nunnery and the monastery of St. Victor at Marseilles,
where he served as abbot until his death some time after 432.
About 420 Cassian wrote The Institutes of the Cenobites
and
the Remedies for the Eight Principal Faults
as instructions
for establishing other monasteries in the area.
He first described
the simple dress of the monks and then
the canonical system of
nocturnal and daily prayers
and psalms which he adopted from Egypt.
The fourth book is on renunciation and includes the story
of Pinuficius
leaving his monastery.
The last eight books are on the spirit
of the eight principal
faults, which are gluttony, fornication,
covetousness,
anger, dejection, laziness, ambition, and pride.
Cassian described the discipline of the monks
as being athletes and soldiers of Christ who,
when they have conquered the flesh, still must fight against
principalities, powers, and world-rulers.
In writing on dejection he emphasized patience
and learning how
to get along with everyone.
In a long work entitled Conferences completed by 428
Cassian described what he and his friend Germanus learned
from
their meetings with various Egyptian monks.
In the first conference
Moses discussed the monk's goal,
which Cassian and Germanus believed
is the sovereignty of God.
Moses said that to achieve that one
must have a clean heart,
and the reward of that sanctification
is eternal life.
For this purpose monks take on loneliness, fasting,
vigils,
work, reading scriptures, and virtuous activities
in order
to rise to higher levels of love.
Anything that could trouble
the purity and peace
of the heart must be avoided as dangerous
even if it may seem useful or necessary.
Because of temptations
on all sides the mind cannot
be free of turbulent thoughts; but
zeal and diligence
can decide which thoughts to cultivate.
Moses
said that all thoughts come from God, the devil,
and ourselves,
and we must discern their origin.
In the second conference Moses
continued to discuss
discernment, which is necessary for one
to
reach the heights and perfection.
He told of how Hero was deluded
that he was
free of danger and died after falling into a well.
Moses recommended humility first
and obeying the scrutiny of elders.
Discernment keeps one free of the two excesses,
which are too
much self-denial and carelessness.
In the third conference Paphnutius
described the three renunciations.
The first relates to the body and involves
giving up riches and
worldly goods.
The second renunciation repels vices and passions,
and the third draws one away from the visible world
to the unseen
spirit.
In the 4th book with Abbot Daniel on lust,
they found
the third factor in the conflict
between flesh and spirit is the
human will.
In the 5th book the ascetic Serapion told them
of
the eight principal faults.
In the 6th book Theodore reminded
them that evil
cannot be forced on anyone against one's will.
In encountering an inconstant mind and spiritual evils
in the
7th and 8th books, Serenus suggested
the answer is relying both
on help from God
and on the power of free will.
Isaac discussed prayer in the 9th and 10th conferences.
First
one must remove all cares of bodily things, worries,
memories,
and feelings of anger, sadness, and desire.
Next comes building
virtue.
Thus before praying one must act as one
would wish one
to act while praying.
The purified soul will be lifted up by its
natural goodness.
Isaac listed four types of prayer as supplicating
or petitioning,
offering or promising, pleading for others, and
giving thanks.
The three ways to direct a wandering mind are
vigils,
meditation, and prayer.
In the 11th conference Chaeremon observed
that the
three things that keep people from sin are fear of hell
or earthly laws, hope and desire for heaven,
and goodness itself
and the love of virtue.
Fear and hope for reward are imperfect,
but Chaeremon
saw these as stages toward the perfection of revering
love.
In the 12th and 13th books Chaeremon discussed
chastity and emphasized that the grace of God
is more important than human
effort.
Nestoros discussed spiritual knowledge in the 14th conference.
First one must know one's sins and how to cure them.
Second one
must discern the order of virtues in order to
shape one's spirit
by their perfection.
The practical side of knowledge
has many
professions and disciplines.
Nestoros divided the contemplative
side of knowledge
into historical or empirical interpretation
and three levels
of spiritual insight he called allegory, anagoge,
and tropology.
History is the past, and the empirical is the perceptible.
Allegory finds another meaning by symbolism.
Anagoge includes
prophecy of the future or the invisible.
Tropology is the ethical
teaching
designed for amending one's life.
Nestoros reminded his
listeners of the importance
of humility and that it is impossible
to acquire
spiritual knowledge with an unclean heart.
As the prophet
Hosea wrote, to attain spiritual knowledge
you must first sow
integrity for yourselves.
In the 15th conference Nestoros said
that spiritual gifts,
such as healing and prophecy, may be caused
by the merit
earned by holiness or may be for the edification
of the church
or may even be a trick worked by demons.
Saints
do not make selfish use of their ability to work miracles.
Nestoros
argued that it is a greater miracle to root out luxury,
restrain
anger, and exclude depression than it is
to cast out unclean spirits
or sickness from someone else.
In the 16th book on friendship Joseph emphasized that love
not only belongs to God but is God, and in the next book
Joseph
warned against making absolute promises and
discussed in what
circumstances lying might be justified.
Three kinds of monks are
defined by Piamun
in the 18th conference.
First are the cenobites
who live together in community;
they began with the apostolic
preaching.
Second are the anchorites
who are first trained in
monasteries
and then choose solitude; they started when Paulus
and Antony fled persecution
into the desert of Egypt.
Piamun deplored the third group he called
sarabites.
These include anyone who tries to be a hermit without
first
being trained in a community or who does not receive the
sacrament on feast days of the church or who keeps no rules
or
who makes up one's own rules without consulting the
experience
and judgment of earlier fathers.
He wished the sarabites made
better use of the money
they got with bad objectives.
Piamun also
believed that envy is the hardest vice to cure.
In the 19th book John debated the merits of cenobite
community
living versus being an anchorite hermit.
Pinufius in the 20th
book on penitence
indicated the value of forgetting past sins.
In the next three books Theonas discussed different levels
of
goodness, explored nocturnal illusions, and reminded
Cassian that
no one is completely free of sin.
In the 24th and last book of
the Conferences
Abraham discussed the practice of asceticism.
In 428 Emperor Theodosius II appointed a monk from
Antioch named Nestorius as patriarch of Constantinople,
and he began persecuting
Arians, Novatians,
Quartodecimanians, and Macedonians, getting
Theodosius
to enact strict laws against heresy.
Yet Nestorius
sympathized with the free will doctrine
of the Pelagians, and
he welcomed and interceded
on behalf of Julian, Coelestius, and
others in exile.
Nestorius objected to describing Mary as the
"mother of God" and the use of images.
In 430 his adversary
in Alexandria, Bishop Cyril,
accused Nestorius of twelve anathemas
and threatened
to depose him if he did not recant in ten days.
The next year at the council of Ephesus Cyril
and his Egyptian bishops deposed Nestorius
before Antioch patriarch John even arrived.
Then both Nestorius and Cyril were
deposed by the Emperor's council.
The Roman legates attended the assembly of Cyril
and signed the
decree against Nestorius.
Nestorius did not attend, and his house
had to be
protected by soldiers from armed mobs.
Public sentiment
and Pulcheria urged the Emperor
to let Cyril resume his position;
Nestorius, complaining that Cyril had used bribery,
was declared
sacrilegious;
he was sent into exile, and his books were ordered
burned.
During this controversy Leo, the Archdeacon at Rome,
asked
his friend Cassian to refute the new heresy,
and Cassian wrote
seven books against Nestorius.
In this work Cassian opposed the
Nestorian and Pelagian
heresies that were condemned at Ephesus.
He is considered a Semi-Pelagian because he took a moderate
view
between the Pelagian doctrine that humans are not
inherently sinful
and the view of the prominent Augustine
that divine grace has
pre-destined
by election some to be saved.
Cassian believed that
human freedom was only weakened
by the fall, that humans are sick
but can be saved by
cooperating with the grace of the divine physician.
In many cases human will initiates, and in others, such as with
Matthew and Paul, God overcomes a resisting will.
About the time
Cassian died, Prosper of Aquitane wrote
a book defending Augustine's
views on grace and free will
against the Pelagianism of Cassian.
About 450 Prosper wrote The Call of All Nations in which
he held that God wills all to be saved;
but some are not saved,
because they do not cooperate.
Yet he still held Augustine's view
that
God foreknows who will be elected.
While Valentinian III was a child,
Empress Placidia ruled the
West.
When King Theodoric led the Goths to besiege Arles in 427,
her supreme commander Felix sent Aetius to relieve the city.
The
peace of 430 kept the Goths in the
territories granted to Wallia.
In Lower Belgica Salian Franks led by
Merovingian king Chlodio
invaded Artois.
Imperial forces led by Aetius defeated them at
Vicus Helenae.
Using many Huns in his army,
Aetius now had the
power to replace Felix in 429.
In Britain Vortigern came to power about 425
and ruled there
for about thirty years.
The first known king of the Picts was
Drust, son of Erp,
who was said to have reigned from 414 to 458.
According to the chronicler Nennius, the Picts invaded Britain
in the fourth year of Vortigern's reign.
The Dane Hengest and
his brother Hors, who had been exiled
in Germany, arrived and
were made commanders by Vortigern.
With Saxon help the British
were able to
counter-attack and drive away the Picts.
In 429 the
Catholic church sent Auxerre bishop Germanus
to Britain in order
to retrieve Christians
from their Pelagian heresy.
In the 430s
Vortigern was challenged by Ambrosius,
who was said to have made
war on him in 437.
In Africa Count Boniface seemed to be more interested
in enhancing
his own power than
in repelling incursions by the Moors.
Placidia
recalled him; but he refused to go,
and three commanders sent
against him were killed in 427.
The next year an army headed by
a new count, Sigisvult,
seized Hippo and Carthage.
Boniface called
in the Vandals from Spain.
Castinus had led an army of Romans
and Goths against
the Vandals in Baetica; but they were defeated,
and Castinus fled to Tarragona.
Vandal king Gunderic died in 428
and was succeeded by his brother Gaiseric.
In 429 about 80,000 Vandals crossed over to Mauretania.
To
counter this threat, Placidia sent
Darius to reconcile Boniface,
and he made a truce with Gaiseric;
but Boniface's proposals were
not accepted,
and Gaiseric plundered eastern Africa,
invaded Numidia,
defeated Boniface,
and besieged Hippo in 430.
Aspar sailed with
an army from Constantinople
to relieve the siege; but the next
year he and
Boniface were defeated, as Hippo was taken.
Placidia
tried to replace Aetius with Boniface;
but Aetius would not submit,
causing a civil war.
Boniface won a battle near Ariminum
but then
died of a wound.
Aetius escaped to Dalmatia and the court of Hun
king Rugila.
Somehow Aetius regained his position
as Patrician
at Ravenna in 434.
In Africa Valentinian's ambassador Trygetius
made a treaty
with Gaiseric allowing the Vandals to retain the
Mauretanias
and part of Numidia, but they had to
pay an annual
tribute to Rome.
The regency of Placidia was waning, and Aetius as
Master of
Soldiers sent Huns against the Burgundians,
killing perhaps as
many as 20,000 of them in 436
and ending the first Burgundian
kingdom at Worms.
The peasant revolt of the Bagaudae was also
quelled
after their leader Tibatto was captured.
Visigothic king
Theodoric besieged Narbonne.
Aetius sent Litorius to subdue the
rebels in Armorica,
and Litorius also relieved the siege of Narbonne.
Avitus negotiated a truce; but the Goths
soon attacked Roman territory
again.
Litorius drove the Goths back to their capital at Toulouse
but was defeated and fatally wounded near there.
These Goths had
become independent of Rome.
Valentinian III married Licinia Eudoxia
in 437
at Constantinople; but even though his wife was beautiful,
he engaged in affairs with other men's wives.
The Alans and Burgundians
were settled as federates.
Some Alans were in Valence, and others
under King Goar settled near Orleans in 442.
The next year the
Burgundians
found a permanent home in Savoy.
However, Aetius pushed
the Ripuarian Franks
back across the Rhine.
Reduced income from
Gaul led to new taxes
on sales and the senatorial class in 444.
About 442 the Saxons led by Hengest took control of Britain.
The British appealed to Aetius, but he was busy with the Huns.
About 446 Roman troops made their final departure
from Britain, and Armoricans and Celts
though federates were essentially independent.
Germanus returned and was more successful
at persuading the Pelagians.
After ten years of Saxon rule
the British were victorious at Richborough.
However, at a diplomatic conference about 458 Hengest
and the
Saxons massacred about 300 of Vortigern's elders
and imprisoned
the king, who had to relinquish
the districts of Essex and Sussex.
In the next year many Britons migrated to Brittany.
English resistance
to the Saxons in the 460s was led
by Ambrosius Aurelianus, a Roman,
whose parents
had worn the purple before they were killed.
Ambrosius
would die about 475 and be succeeded by Arthur,
and the war would
go on for about thirty years.
Gaiseric soon violated the treaty; by the time he captured
Carthage in 439 revenue was no longer coming from Africa.
In 440
to maintain their armies Theodosius II and
Valentinian III made
concealing deserters a capital crime.
Gaiseric attacked Sicily,
and in 442 a new treaty with
Rome was more favorable to the Vandals.
Gaiseric strengthened his alliance with Rome by marrying
his son
Huneric to Valentinian's daughter Eudocia;
but to do so Huneric
renounced his wife,
the daughter of Theodoric.
He accused her
of attempting to poison him
and had her face mutilated, which
resulted in enmity
between the Vandals and Visigoths.
The Vandals
made Carthage their new capital;
its senators were deported;
all
the churches were made Arian,
and Catholics were persecuted.
The
Vandals were the first Teutonic people
to develop a Mediterranean
navy.
Gaiseric seems to have abolished the assembly of the
Vandal
people, and he made his kingship hereditary.
In Spain Suevian
king Rechiar married another
daughter of Theodoric in 449 and
devastated the province of Tarraconensis.
A new university was founded in Constantinople in 425
that
endowed ten Latin and ten Greek grammarians,
five Latin and three
Greek rhetors,
two chairs in jurisprudence and one in philosophy.
In 429 Theodosius II established a commission of
nine men to collect
all the Roman constitutions,
and a code was jointly issued by
him
and Valentinian III nine years later.
After Rugila died about
433, Attila and his brother Bleda
ruled the Hun empire that stretched
from the Baltic
and the Alps in the west to the Caspian Sea in
the east.
Theodosius agreed to pay 700 pounds of gold annually
to the Huns and surrender any deserters.
In 441 while imperial
armies were fighting both Vandals
and Persians, the Huns besieged
Ratiaria,
captured and plundered it, continuing up the Danube.
Approaching Constantinople, Attila took Philippopolis,
Arcadiopolis,
and the fort at Athyras.
After imperial troops returned from battling
Vandals and
Persians, a treaty was negotiated by Anatolius in
443
in which the Emperor agreed to triple the
annual gold tribute and pay 6,000 pounds at once.
Attila now had his brother Bleda
killed
and became sole ruler of the united Huns.
Empress Eudocia, visited Egypt and Jerusalem,
and on her return
to Constantinople she formed a
close friendship with the pagan
Cyrus of Panopolis,
who was prefect of the East and of the city.
An intriguing eunuch named Chrysaphius Zstommas got
Pulcheria
to retire to another palace and made Theodosius II
suspect that
his wife Eudocia was having an affair
with Paulinus, whom the
Emperor put to death in 444.
The alienated Eudocia had gone to
Jerusalem the year
before; but the jealous Theodosius sent Saturninus
to investigate, and he slew her confidants,
the priest Severus
and the deacon John.
In revenge Saturninus was assassinated.
Illyrian
provinces were suffering from Hun plundering,
and the imperial
government went broke buying off
the invaders while Chrysaphius
controlled the policy.
In 447 the Huns devastated Lower Moesia
and Scythia.
Constantinople was threatened, and many people fled.
Another treaty in 448 left a stretch
along the Danube uninhabited.
Chrysaphius tried to have Attila assassinated;
but the plot was
discovered by Attila,
who let the eunuch live and agreed
not to
cross the Danube.
Theodosius died in 450.
Before he died, Theodosius II chose the officer Marcian
as
his successor, and Pulcheria agreed to be his nominal wife
to
preserve the dynasty.
Marcian began by executing Chrysaphius,
and he stopped
paying tribute to the Huns and ended the practice
of selling administrative offices.
He also changed the law to
recognize marriages
to women of low social status.
Marcian called
the fourth ecumenical council at Chalcedon,
and by his death in
457 the treasury had been replenished.
Pulcheria died in 453 and
left all her possessions to the poor.
In 448 the historian Priscus accompanied the ambassador
Maximin
to the court of Attila and described what he saw.
A Scythian,
who had been captured and made a slave
before winning his freedom
by fighting against the Romans,
was critical of the Roman system
of justice.
But the condition of the subjects in time of peace
is far more grievous than the evils of war,
for the exaction of the taxes is very severe,
and unprincipled men inflict injuries on others,
because the laws are practically not valid
against all classes.
A transgressor who belongs to the wealthy classe
is not punished for his injustice, while a poor man,
who does not understand business,
undergoes the legal penalty, that is if he does not
depart this life before the trial, so long is the course
of lawsuits protracted, and so much money
is expended on them.
The climax of the misery is to have to pay in order
to obtain justice.
For no one will give a court to the injured man
unless he pay a sum of money
to the judge and the judge's clerks.5
In response Priscus argued that lawsuits take a long time
because
of the concern for justice.
He added that Romans treat their servants
better than the
Scythian king treats his subjects, admonishing
them,
as they do their children, to abstain from evil.
Romans
were not allowed to inflict death
on their servants as Scythians
did.
In 449 Valentinian's sister Justa Grata Honoria intrigued
against her brother with her lover Eugenius,
who was caught and put to
death.
She was forced to marry the rich senator
Flavius Bassus
Herculanus.
To get out of the hated marriage, Honoria sent a eunuch
with her ring, asking for help from Attila, who claimed her
as
his bride and wrote to Theodosius II
demanding half of Valentinian's
territory.
Theodosius advised his fellow emperor to hand over
Honoria;
but when he died, and Marcian stopped the tribute to the
Huns,
Attila decided to invade Gaul, writing to the Goths that
he was against the Romans and to Ravenna
that he aimed at Rome's
enemies.
In 451 Attila led a large army of his own Huns along with
Gepids
led by King Ardaric, Ostrogoths led by chiefs
Walamir, Theodemir,
and Widimir, Scirians, Heruls,
Thuringians, Alans, and others.
At the Rhine they were joined by Burgundians
and Ripuarian Franks.
Aetius called up the federated Salian Franks and
Burgundians of
Savoy along with the Celts of Armorica;
King Theodoric's Visigoths
were neutral but were
persuaded by senator Avitus to join the
Romans
when Attila invaded the Loire.
Together the Roman army
led by Aetius and the Goths
were able to keep the Huns out of
Orleans.
A bloody battle at Mauriac killed tens of thousands,
including Theodoric.
Aetius refrained from destroying his old
allies, the Huns,
and he persuaded Theodoric's son Thorismud to
return
to the Visigoth capital at Tolosa (Toulouse).
Attila still
claimed Honoria as a bride and invaded Italy
the next year, taking
Aquileia and razing it to the ground.
In Rome Emperor Valentinian
sent Pope Leo and
senators Avienus and Trygetius to negotiate
with Attila,
who, faced with plague, hunger, and reinforcements
sent from the East by Marcian, decided to retreat.
Attila died
in 453, and the German vassals led
by the Gepid Ardaric, who had
been Attila's chief advisor,
revolted against the Huns and defeated
them
at a battle near the Nedao River in Pannonia,
breaking up
the short-lived Hun empire.
Marcian allied with the Gepids, assigned the Ostrogoths a
federate
in northern Pannonia and the Rugians one north
of the Danube,
while some tribes settled in
depopulated Illyricum and Thrace.
The senator Petronius Maximus persuaded Valentinian III
that he
should kill Aetius before that man had him murdered.
On September
21, 454 in court the Emperor himself attacked
Aetius with his
sword, slaying him with the assistance
of his eunuch chamberlain
Heraclius.
Praetorian Prefect Boethius was killed at the same
time,
and important friends of Aetius were summoned
to the palace
and dispatched too.
When Heraclius persuaded Valentinian not to
give the
position of Aetius to Maximus, the latter sent
two barbarians to assassinate Emperor Valentinian
and his chamberlain six months
later.
All this allowed Salian Franks led by Chlodio to take
Cambrai
and proceed to the Somme, while Ripuarian
Franks and Alamanni
crossed the Rhine again.
The wealth of Petronius Maximus enabled his faction
to win the purple over the faction of Maximian,
who had been steward
of Aetius.
Maximus wanted to marry Empress Eudoxia;
but she was
so repelled by the idea that it was said
she appealed to the Vandal
Gaiseric.
As Gaiseric's forces approached Rome, people scattered,
and the abandoned Maximus was killed by a mob while fleeing.
Three
days later Rome's Bishop Leo met Gaiseric at the gates
to prevent
a massacre and conflagration while the
Vandals plundered the city
for two weeks in June 455.
The Vandals then returned to Africa
loaded with booty and
thousands of captives, including Empress
Eudoxia
and her two daughters, Eudocia and Placidia.
Placidia
was already married to the Roman Olybrius,
and Huneric married
Eudocia.
Carthage bishop Deogratias sold church gold and silver
to purchase the freedom of some captives,
and two churches were
converted
into hospitals to treat the sick.
In 453 Visigothic king Thorismud had been assassinated by
his brothers Theodoric and Frederic after threatening them.
Avitus,
master of the imperial military in Gaul, was visiting
the new
king Theodoric II at Tolosa when he learned
that Petronius Maximus
was dead.
Avitus was proclaimed emperor by the Goths.
Avitus,
accompanied by his son-in-law poet
Apollinaris Sidonius, crossed
the Alps;
but neither the senators nor the soldiers
made him welcome
at Rome,
and Marcian would not recognize him.
Theodoric II resumed
federate status and quelled
an anti-imperialist uprising in Spain,
inducing his
brother-in-law Rechiar to restore
Carthaginiensia
to the empire in 454.
Gaiseric had taken over more of Africa
and
now invaded again with sixty ships.
Avitus sent general Ricimer,
son of a Sueve
and a Visigothic princess,
to Sicily with an army,
and he defeated the
Vandals in Corsican waters in 456.
Hunger
in Rome caused Avitus to
dismiss his federate troops,
and he had
bronze statues melted down to buy food.
Allied with the Romans,
Visigothic king Theodoric II
marched an army to Spain, where he
defeated
the rebellious Suevians near Astorga.
Meanwhile Ricimer
and Eudoxia's friend Majorian
rebelled against Avitus, who fled
to Arle
and was captured at Placentia.
Avitus was made bishop
of Placentia
but died on the way to Auvergne.
For six months there
was no emperor in the West.
After Marcian died, Eastern Emperor Leo nominated Majorian,
and he was proclaimed Western Emperor in April 457
as Ricimer
was declared Patrician.
Majorian granted universal amnesty on
back tribute and debt
to the government, and he restored provincial
jurisdiction over the collection of taxes.
He encouraged the people
to meet in local assemblies
in order to elect a representative
to protect the poor
from the tyranny of the rich and to inform
the Emperor of any imperial abuses.
Majorian took an army of Germans
into Gaul,
forced the Burgundians at Lugdunensis (Lyons) to surrender;
as punishment he imposed heavier taxes,
though they were later
remitted.
Aegidius with imperial reinforcements
drove the Goths
back from Arles.
Majorian was content with Theodoric
accepting
again federate status.
Sidonius contributed a panegyric to Emperor
Majorian,
portraying Rome as the warrior queen of the earth
with
Africa at her feet pleading for help against the Vandals.
An imperial
expedition of 300 ships organized in Spain
by Majorian was defeated
by the Vandal navy in 460,
and Gaiseric made Majorian accept a
humiliating treaty.
After visiting Arles, Majorian returned to
Italy without
an army and was beheaded by officers
of Ricimer
at Tortona in 461.
Two army masters threw off their allegiance—
Marcellinus and
Aegidius.
Marcellinus had to leave Sicily after Ricimer
bribed
his Hun soldiers to abandon him.
Marcellinus went to Dalmatia,
where he ruled
under the Eastern Emperor Leo.
The Vandals and
Moors ravaged Sicily, and diplomats from
Ricimer could do nothing;
but Leo got Gaiseric to return
some Theodosian women, though Eudocia
stayed with her
husband Huneric with a dowry of territory in Africa.
Ricimer then asked Leo to mediate between Marcellinus
and Gaiseric,
and Marcellinus was persuaded
not to war against the Romans.
Aegidius
in Gaul was kept from invading Italy by allowing
Burgundian king
Gundioc to occupy Lyons.
Goths extended their territories in Spain;
but Frederic's Goths were kept from crossing the Loire
when they
were defeated by Aegidius near Orleans in 463
with the aid of
King Childeric of the Salian Franks.
Ricimer ruled in the West,
though Libius Severus was
proclaimed emperor a few months later;
after the death of Severus in 465,
no successor was appointed
for seventeen months.
Marcian had died in 457 without
choosing a successor for the
East.
The Alan Aspar was disqualified as an Arian
but he chose
the orthodox Christian Leo, a Dacian
who had served in the army directly under him.
Aspar's son Ardaburius was made
Master of
the Soldiers in the East.
To counter the many Germans who had
joined the
imperial army, Leo recruited Isaurian mountaineers,
and he married his daughter Ariadne to their chieftain
Tarasicodissa,
who changed his name to Zeno.
In 467 Leo had the patrician Anthemius
proclaimed Emperor of the West.
An expedition against the Vandals
said to have involved
1113 ships in 468 commanded by Basiliscus
scattered the
Vandal fleet near Sicily; but Gaiseric gathered
a new fleet
and destroyed the navy of Basiliscus so badly that
the
general was suspected of having been bribed by Aspar,
who
had opposed the campaign.
Marcellinus had briefly recovered Sardinia
for the West;
but he was assassinated in Sicily,
and Gaiseric
soon regained Sardinia and later Sicily.
The costly armaments
had bankrupted Constantinople's
treasury of its 100,000 pounds
of gold.
The next year Zeno led the campaign
against the Hun invasion
of Thrace.
Aspar tried to have Zeno assassinated,
but he escaped
to Sardica,
returned to Constantinople, and then suppressed
the
Isaurian brigand Indacus.
Leo made Aspar's son Patricius Caesar,
announcing that
Patricius was renouncing Arianism for the Catholic
faith.
Poet Sidonius lauded Emperor Anthemius, hailed
Constantinople
in verse, and was appointed Prefect of Rome;
but his friend Arvandus,
Praetorian Prefect of Gaul,
was prosecuted by the Council of the
Seven Provinces
before the Roman Senate for malversation and treason,
and he was condemned.
Euric had followed his brother Theodoric
II's example
by murdering him to become king of the Visigoths
in 466.
Euric defeated the Breton king Riothamus on the Indre
and took Bourges and northern Aquitanica Prima;
but he was kept
south of the Loire by Count Paulus and,
after Paulus died in 470,
by Syagrius, son of Aegidius,
and King Childeric's Franks.
Euric's
Visigoths besieged Arles and defeated an imperial
army led by
Anthemiolus, the son of Athemius,
and three other generals, who
were all slain.
Then the Visigoths marched through the Rhone valley
burning crops and taking towns.
Euric then took command of the
Gothic war
against the Suevians in Spain and conquered
most of
the peninsula except
for the Suevians' home in the northwest.
This Gothic aggression gave Anthemius so many problems
that
the West was practically divided between the Emperor
at Rome and
Patrician Ricimer at Mediolanum (Milan).
Ticinum bishop Epiphanius
tried to reconcile them.
Gaiseric urged his son-in-law Olybrius
to aspire to the
imperial throne, and Olybrius visited Constantinople.
In 472 Leo sent Olybrius to Rome ostensibly to reconcile
Anthemius
and Ricimer but with a messenger
telling Anthemius to put Olybrius
to death.
However, Ricimer intercepted the letter, made Olybrius
emperor, and besieged Rome with his army.
Anthemius was found
hiding in a church and was beheaded.
Ricimer himself died six
weeks later and was replaced
as Master of Soldiers by the Burgundian
Gundobad.
In the East when Ardaburius planned a rebellion in 471,
he
and his father Aspar were killed in the palace
by eunuchs; Caesar
Patricius was wounded but recovered.
Emperor Leo was named the
Butcher;
but after the troops of Count Ostrys entered the palace
and were defeated by the Isaurian guards,
the Isaurians had quelled
the attempted
take-over by the German faction.
Because of Isaurian
brigands, many rich people
had hired guards and armed their slaves;
but Emperor Leo outlawed the practice.
Leo maintained the orthodoxy
of the Chalcedon council.
He died in 474, leaving his six-year-old
grandson Leo as his successor.
The Isaurian Zeno served as Leo
II's regent
and replaced him nine months later when the boy died.
Olybrius ruled the West for a year and a half
but was not recognized
by the East, nor was Glycerius,
who reigned for three months in
473 after being
proclaimed at Ravenna by Gundobad's soldiers.
Glycerius did manage to keep the Ostrogoths out of Italy;
so Widemir
led them into Gaul.
Eastern Emperor Leo chose Julius Nepos
as
his Western counterpart.
Nepos arrived in Italy with Eastern troops.
Gundobad retired to Burgundy, soon to become their king,
while
the deposed Glycerius was ordained
bishop of Salona in Dalmatia.
In 475 Nepos made a peace with Euric recognizing the
Gothic conquests
made in Spain and Gaul.
Sidonius had become bishop of Clermont
and resented
the surrender of Auvergne to the Goths;
but he was
imprisoned in a fort at Livia.
Sidonius complained in a letter
to the bishop of Marseilles,
"Our slavery is the price paid
for the security of others."6
The next year Euric broke the
treaty by invading Provence,
seizing Arles and Marseilles, and
Emperor Zeno
conceded southern Provence to the Goths.
Euric's
legal code of 475 made the segregation
of Germans and Romans state
policy.
Zeno was hated in Constantinople as an Isaurian.
When he fled
to Isauria in 475, the ministers and Senate
proclaimed Basiliscus
emperor; but his greed and favoring
Monophysitism, issuing a decree
against the
Council of Chalcedon, made him very unpopular.
Basiliscus
sent an expedition against Zeno;
but encouraged by the angry ministers,
the general Illus
changed sides and joined forces with Zeno.
Basiliscus
tried to recall his ecclesiastical edicts,
but it was too late.
His Master of Soldiers Armatus avoided Zeno's forces,
who entered
Constantinople without resistance in 476.
Basiliscus and his family
were beheaded.
The Pannonian Orestes had been Attila's secretary;
but he did
not follow Attila's sons north to Scythia,
and he refused to accept
the Ostrogoth's usurpation of Pannonia.
Orestes was appointed
patrician and master general
of the army by Western Emperor Nepos.
When his troops rebelled against Nepos,
Orestes had his son Augustus
Romulus (Augustulus)
proclaimed emperor in 475.
Nepos was driven
out of Rome but lived in Salona
for five years still recognized
in the East and in Gaul.
Orestes ruled Italy for one year in the
name of his son;
but his eastern German Herul, Rugian, and Scirian
troops
demanded settlement in Italy with one-third of the land.
Orestes rejected their demand; so one of his chief officers,
the
Scirian Odovacar, had Orestes killed at Ticinum
and deposed his
son Augustulus,
granting him a pension in Campania.
In 476 Odovacar
was proclaimed king of Italy
by the soldiers.
He had Augustulus
formally abdicate his authority
to the Eastern emperor Zeno, and
Roman senators
were sent to Constantinople to declare that a
Western
emperor was no longer needed.
Zeno recognized Odovacar and made
him a patrician.
Orosius was born probably in the 380s
at Bracara in western
Spain.
He was apparently well educated and became a presbyter,
writing about current Priscillianist and Origenist controversies.
Because of the invasions by the Alans and Vandals,
Orosius departed
from Bracara in 414.
Providentially his ship was driven by a storm
to the African
coast near Hippo, where he spent several years
under the influence of Augustine.
The Hippo bishop was impressed
by the young Orosius,
and the following spring he sent him to
Bethlehem to consult
with Jerome on the Pelagian controversy.
Orosius presented the views of Augustine and Jerome on
Pelagianism
to a council of bishops at Jerusalem,
arguing against the presiding
bishop John,
and he wrote a book defending their position against
Pelagian.
Early in 416 Orosius brought a letter
and a treatise
from Jerome back to Augustine.
At this time Augustine had written
the first eleven books of his
City of God, and he asked
Orosius to discover from histories
and annals how pagan cultures
had suffered calamities from war,
disease, famine, earthquakes,
floods, fires, storms, and crimes
in order to answer critics that
Christianity was responsible
for the deterioration of the Roman
empire.
By 418 Orosius had completed his
Seven Books of History
Against the Pagans,
and no more is known about him after that.
Orosius dedicated his work to Augustine and his request.
At
the beginning he stated his basic belief.
In the first place, we hold that if the world and man are
directed by a Divine Providence that is as good as it is just,
and if man is both weak and stubborn on account of the
changeableness of his nature and his freedom of choice,
then it is necessary for man to be guided in the spirit of
filial affection when he has need of help;
but when he abuses his freedom, he must be reproved
in a spirit of strict justice.
Everyone who sees mankind reflected through himself
and in himself perceives that this world has been
disciplined since the creation of man
by alternating periods of good and bad times.7
He noted that even his opponents have described history
as
"nothing but wars and calamities."
Orosius took the
Christian view that sin and its punishment
began with the first
man.
After describing the geography of his known world which
extended
only to India in the east, Orosius jumped from the
punishment
of the Biblical flood
to Assyrian king Ninus about 2000 BC.
He
only mentioned Egypt in connection with the story of Joseph
in Genesis and of Moses
in Exodus, emphasizing again
God's punishment of the Egyptians.
However, Orosius did not go into the history of Israel much
at
all after that but turned instead to the legends of early
Greek
history and especially their wars.
He mentioned the Assyrian Sardanapalus
and the brief empire
of the Medes that was overthrown by the Persians.
He contrasted the ancient
tyrants' torturing of the innocent
to the later Christian Roman
emperors, who did not punish
tyrants whose overthrow benefited
the republic.
Orosius believed that all power and government
come from God
and that it is better
for one kingdom to be supreme.
Probably
because of Daniel's prophecy of four great beasts,
Orosius summarized
his history as four main kingdoms from
the cardinal points as
the Babylonian in the east,
the Carthaginian in the south, the
Macedonian in the north,
and the Roman in the west.
Even though
he had hardly mentioned the Babylonians,
he included with them the Assyrians,
Medes, and Persians.
Because
Orosius based most of history on epitomes
(especially 4th-century
Eutropius) of earlier histories,
his facts are often not too accurate.
From the founding of Rome in 754 BC Orosius mostly
described Roman
history and some Greek history
involving
their wars with Persia,
the Peloponnesian War,
and
the Macedonian wars.
He wrote that Alexander
was punished for his
"wicked appetite" by being poisoned
after oppressing
the world for twelve years.
Then his generals
tore the world apart
for another fourteen years.
In his preface to the fourth book Orosius observed that
present miseries always seem worse than what is past or future
possibilities,
because they cause so much more trouble.
In describing the Punic
wars he judged that because of their
basic discord the Carthaginians
never enjoyed prosperity
or peace, and he argued that their human
sacrifices
did more to cause pestilence than prevent it.
Orosius
took a larger perspective on Roman victories;
by taking the whole
world into consideration he noted that
when Romans might be happy,
the conquered world was unhappy.
For two centuries (3rd and 2nd
BC) Spanish fields were
drenched with their own blood.
Orosius
believed the Numantines exemplified the virtues of
justice, faith,
courage, and mercy more than the Romans.
In his view in the past
Rome extorted from people by the
sword for luxuries, but now she
contributes
to maintaining government.
Orosius did not mind having
to leave Spain, because
he argued that he could take refuge anywhere
and still find the same law and his religion.
There was a large
area he could visit as a Roman and a
Christian and still find
Romans and Christians.
Orosius contrasted the present wars in
which Italy was being
attacked by foreigners to the past wars
begun by herself
and directed against herself in cruel civil strife.
Orosius believed it was providential that Augustus
had
established the imperial Pax Romana
as a preparation for the
birth of Jesus.
The Christian religion, he wrote, could not be
stamped out
in spite of generations of "fury from nations,
kings, laws,
slaughter, crucifixion, and death."8
Orosius
found that Christian times were an improvement
on the past, and
he challenged the reader to find any time
in history more fortunate
than the present era.
Orosius contended that countless wars had
been stilled,
usurpers destroyed, and savage tribes checked, confined,
incorporated, or annihilated with little loss.
(Apparently he
meant little loss among Romans,
since most of the imperial soldiers
in this era were Germans.)
Thus he presented his Christian philosophy
of history,
and the work of Orosius became the most influential
history book of the medieval period.
At least some knowledge of
history was being passed on,
although the earlier original histories
would have offered
much more complete and detailed accounts.
Also
his emphasis on the calamities and wars in order to
prove his
thesis gave the middle ages
a rather negative view of pagan culture.
Salvian was born in Gaul about 400, and he probably
witnessed the destruction of Trier by the Germans in 406.
When the young
Salvian married Palladia,
her parents were pagans.
They had a
daughter; but after a long discussion he entered
the monastery
of Lerins, and she went into a convent.
Salvian taught rhetoric
and became well known
as a teacher and preacher.
He must have
had a long life,
because he was still alive late in the 5th century.
His extant works consist of nine letters, eight books
On the
Present Judgment later retitled
The Governance of God,
and four books
To the Church also called Against Avarice.
On the Present Judgment was written between 440 and
450,
and it has often been compared to Augustine's City of
God.
Salvian turned a more critical eye to the Roman Christians
in this century of crisis and strongly suggested that Christians
should be practicing the higher ethics
Jesus taught in his sermon
on the mount.
He criticized the rich for impoverishing the state,
whereas
the ancient magistrates were poor and made the state rich.
He observed that ascetics may weaken their bodies,
but this sharpens
mental vigor when
desires no longer unbalance the mind.
Salvian
as a Christian believed along with Pythagoreans,
Platonists, and Stoics
that God created and regulates
the universe, and that this is
a model for human governance
to regulate its lesser parts and
members.
Salvian aimed to prove that God is present, governs,
and judges, and he used the three methods of reason,
examples,
and authority,
often referring to Judeo-Christian scriptures.
Jeremiah as the closest parallel to his times
was quoted more
than any other.
In trying to get at the root of hostility,
he
noted that anger is the mother of hatred.
He observed that Christians
are so far from following the
precepts of Jesus and Paul that
instead of acting for others
they first consider their own affairs
regardless of whether that disturbs others.
Salvian asked Christians to examine their consciences
in relation to the many crimes he described.
He saw men of business engaging
in fraud and perjury,
land-owners being unjust, officials slandering,
and the army plundering.
How can one be called a Christian if
one
does not perform the work of a Christian?
Salvian made his
accusations in the first person.
We wish to sin, but not to be punished.
Herein we have the same attitude as our slaves....
We are most harsh to others,
most lenient with ourselves.
We punish others, but forgive ourselves
for the same crime—an act of intolerable
arrogance and presumption.
We are unwilling to acknowledge guilt in ourselves,
but we dare to arrogate to ourselves
the right to judge others.
What can be more unjust and what more perverse?
The very crime we think justifiable in us
we condemn most severely in others.9
The tyranny of the rich oppressed not only the poor
but most
of humanity.
Political position was used for plundering,
and poor
states were pillaged by those in power.
He observed that the Roman
state was drawing its last breath,
strangled by taxation imposed
by the rich on the poor.
Salvian admitted that the barbarians
were also unjust,
avaricious, unfaithful, greedy, lewd, and vicious;
but so were the Romans, who should know better.
The Huns might
be lewd, the Franks perfidious,
the Alamanni drunkards, the Alans
rapacious,
Huns or Gepids cheats, and Franks liars;
but Romans
were no better.
Because the Christians have been taught spiritual
laws,
Salvian argued that their behavior is morally worse.
They
do not practice what they preach.
We are like the sick who get
worse because of our vices
but blame the doctor for being incompetent.
Salvian observed that barbarians of the same tribe
love one
another, while most Romans persecute each other.
Where are there
widows and orphans not devoured
by the leading men of the cities?
Many of the poor found more Roman dignity with the
barbarians,
because they could not bear
the barbarous indignity of the Romans.
Many migrated to the Goths or joined the Bagaudae,
who were peasants
organized after being
victimized by tax-gatherers.
They found
the enemy more lenient to them than the
tax collectors, who extorted
tribute from the poor for the rich,
making the weaker carry the
burden for the stronger.
Many people were loaded with debt, while the rich,
who made
them debtors, were themselves free of debt.
When taxes were mitigated,
the poor were the last
to be relieved, because the rich held the
political power.
Salvian was not surprised that the Goths conquered
much
of the population since many Romans
preferred to live among
them.
Many in the middle class were driven to give themselves
to the upper classes as captives of the rich.
When they lost their
land because of taxes,
they became dependents as tenant farmers (coloni) or serfs.
They not only lost their property and
goods
but their rights of citizenship as well.
So many had been
oppressed and captured in this way
that it was no wonder that
barbarians captured people too.
Salvian lamented that not being
merciful
to exiles and wanderers, they were
becoming wanderers
to be cheated too.
Salvian condemned the crimes and vices found at the games,
and he excoriated their cruelty.
By gladly watching them the spectators
were approving and sharing in the crimes.
Yet the misery and poverty
had become so great that
they could no longer lavish expenses
on unprofitable games.
He believed that cities like Trier and
Mainz had been
destroyed because of their avarice and drunkenness.
He described the gruesome disasters that befell the
conquered
cities after their ruin.
Yet a few nobles who survived asked the
emperors for circuses.
For Salvian the city of Aquitane was like
a brothel of sordid
vices as husbands violated their marriages
with household maids.
Yet fornication was not lawful among the
Goths,
and Salvian believed that the chaste Vandals subjugated
the Spaniards because of their impurity.
In the last war the Romans
put their hope in the Huns
against the Goths; but the Goths turned
to God.
The Visigothic force led by Romans Boniface and Castinus
were defeated by the Vandals, because the Roman leaders
out of
pride could not cooperate.
Events showed the judgment of God.
The Goths and Vandals were increasing,
while the Romans decreased.
Salvian noted that every nation had bad habits.
The Goths lied
but were chaste.
The Alans lied less but were unchaste.
The Franks
lied but were generous.
The Saxons were cruel but chaste.
The
Roman Africans he criticized mainly for lust,
and yet the orphans,
widows, and the poor suffered too.
The Romans had many vices and
much hypocrisy,
because they outlawed theft yet robbed or embezzled.
He who punished rapine plundered;
he who punished an assassin
was a swordsman;
he who punished a breaker of doors destroyed
towns;
he who punished burglars of houses ravaged provinces.
When
the Vandals took over Africa, they removed
prostitution by marrying
the prostitutes,
and they made ordinances against unchastity.
Salvian asked the Romans to be ashamed of their lives,
because
it was the vices of their bad lives
that alone conquered them.
No one was more cruel to them than themselves.
They were being
punished by God;
but it was because they went against the
will
of God that they were tortured.
In his four books To the Church Salvian warned about
the problem of avarice and urged Christians to give
charity not
only to expiate sin but as a virtue.
The covetous bring their
own suffering upon themselves.
Good works are necessary for both
saints and sinners.
Christ exemplified universal poverty.
One
can benefit oneself most in gaining eternal life
by giving all
one's possessions to the saints,
the maimed, the blind, and the
weak.
If your wealth nourishes the wretched,
you will be filled
with all you need.
Make Christ your heir and follow God.
Anyone
who has begun to be good cannot help but
love the law of God,
because the essence of that
law is what holy people have in their
ethics.
About three years after the Ephesus council Vincent,
a monk
of Lerins, wrote A Commonitory for the Antiquity
and Universality
of the Catholic Faith Against the Profane
Novelties of All Heresies
to argue for orthodox Christianity
and against any changes in
doctrine.
Vincent argued for the principle that the church should
accept and hold to the faith that has been believed
everywhere,
always, and by all.
Thus he felt Christians should follow the
divine law of the
scriptures and Catholic tradition.
The opinions
of the whole church should take precedent over
a dissenting part;
antiquity should prevail over new views;
and a council's pronouncements
were to be accepted
over the ideas of a few individuals.
These
three criteria he called universality, antiquity, and consent.
He argued that if these principles were applied,
Donatism and
Arianism never would have spread,
and the views of Nestorius,
Photinus,
and Apollinaris would be dismissed.
Vincent held that
heretical views of eminent teachers,
such as Tertullian
and Origen, were
allowed by God
in order to test the faithful.
For Vincent the
genuine Catholic loves the truth of God,
the church, the body
of Christ, and the Catholic faith
above every authority, genius,
eloquence,
and philosophy of every person.
Leo served as archdeacon under Rome's bishops
Celestine (423-432)
and Sixtus III (432-440).
Leo was visiting Gaul when he was
elected
bishop of Rome in 440.
Leo claimed primacy as the legacy of Peter,
and this assertion
of authority after several centuries would
result in only the
bishop of Rome being called the Pope.
In 443
he banished Manichaeans and Pelagians from Italy,
threatening
bishops with his wrath if they did not purge
the heretics from
their churches.
Leo also refuted the heresies of the Spanish
Priscillianists
with eighteen anathemas.
Eutyches was charged with heresy for believing that the
human nature of Christ was absorbed into the
divine nature after the
incarnation.
He was condemned by a local synod in 448 presided
over by Constantinople patriarch Flavian.
Eutyches appealed to
Rome's bishop Leo.
Theodosius II called a council at Ephesus
in
449 to settle the issue.
Preoccupied with the threat of Attila,
Leo sent three
representatives with his dogmatic letter to Flavian
or Tome
pronouncing his view that Eutyches was heretical.
Leo affirmed as orthodox doctrine that Jesus
Christ has
both a divine and a human nature united in one person
as the word of God incarnate.
Leo noted that Eutyches denied the
human reality of Jesus'
redemptive passion and implied
that the
divine nature endured these.
Alexandria's Bishop Dioscorus presided
over the council,
and favoring Eutyches,
he did not allow Leo's
letter to be read.
Dioscorus wanted Flavian and others deposed;
Flavian was imprisoned and died,
and the others were deposed.
Leo called a synod at Rome to annul the decisions
of what he
called the "robber council."
Leo refused to acknowledge
Anatolius, the successor
of Flavian, and sent four legates to
Constantinople.
Theodosius died, and his sister Pulcheria and
Marcian
supported Leo and confined Eutyches to his monastery.
In 451 the fourth ecumenical council met at Chalcedon
and deposed
Dioscorus.
Although only six of the 350 participants were
from
the West, Leo's influence was felt.
A commission affirmed the
creeds of Nicaea
and Constantinople the 431 council at Ephesus,
the synodal letter of Cyril, and the Tome of Leo.
Leo in
Rome accepted all the decisions of the council except
Canon 28,
which gave the See of Constantinople precedence
over the Apostolic
Sees of Antioch and Alexandria.
Leo argued that its imperial status
was not as important
as the latters' apostolic authority.
In Egypt
and Syria many Monophysites continued
to believe that Christ has
only one nature.
Leo was given credit for persuading Attila not to attack
Rome in 452 after he had destroyed Aquileia,
and in 455 he boldly met
Vandal king Gaiseric at the gate
of Rome and managed to keep them
from burning the city
and killing people, although the imperial
capital
was pillaged for fourteen days.
Egyptian bishops refused
to accept the Tome of Leo,
and with Dioscorus in exile
his friend Proterius
was designated his successor in Alexandria.
In 457 anti-Chalcedonians ordained Timothy Aelurus as bishop.
He was arrested, but dissenters murdered Bishop Proterius
during
a liturgy and made Timothy Aelurus bishop.
Emperor Marcian punished
the assassins
but accepted Timothy as bishop.
Riots also occurred
in Palestine led by a monk named
Theodosius, who criticized Jerusalem
patriarch Juvenal for
betraying Cyril's theology, and some bishops
were murdered.
In 460 Timothy Aelurus was replaced in Alexandri
by a lawfully elected successor, Timothy Salophacialus.
Leo wrote letters to influential religious and political leaders
throughout the Roman empire, and of these
143 remain along with
96 sermons.
He wrote that deacons and high clergy
should not cohabit
with their wives.
He organized ecclesiastical government hierarchically
under his
authority and held that only large cities should have
bishops.
Any controversial questions should be submitted to Rome.
He believed that penance involves confessing to priests,
and those
under penitential discipline must avoid the
temptations of business,
legal issues, and military service.
Leo claimed that obedience
is imperative,
even for the popular Hilary in Gaul.
Leo asked
Emperor Valentinian III to take away
the political rights of Manichaeans.
In his sermons Leo also asserted his Petrine authority,
and he
urged his congregation to pray and give charity.
He said that
prayer propitiates,
fasting purifies, and charity redeems.
All
must involve the serious purpose of amendment.
Leo held that usury
is incompatible with charity.
Leo died in 461.
Patrick was born about 385 in Britain; his father was a
decurion
official and wealthy enough to have servants.
Patrick's grandfather
had been a priest in the era
when they still married.
Roman Britain
was often invaded
by pirates in the late 4th century.
At the turn
of the century larger attacks were led by the
high king Niall
of the Nine Hostages.
They devastated the country and carried
off slaves.
In the last of these raids in 401 young Patrick
was
captured and sold into slavery in Ireland.
While tending flocks
in the mountains and swine in the woods,
Patrick began to pray
more and more;
he also learned the Gaelic language.
After six
years as a slave Patrick was guided to run away
to the shore,
where a ship would take him to his fatherland.
At first refused,
after praying, Patrick was taken aboard.
They went to Gaul and
spent 28 days marching through
country that had been ravaged by
Vandals and Alans.
Then Patrick was able to return to his family
home in Britain.
To prepare himself to be a missionary to the Irish,
Patrick
traveled to monasteries in Gaul.
He spent perhaps about three
years at Lerins under the
guidance of abbot Honoratus before staying
for fifteen years
at the Auxerre monastery founded
and supervised
by Germanus.
During the mission of Germanus to Britain in 429
a conference was held to discuss evangelizing the Irish,
because
many Christian Britons were enslaved there.
Patrick was present
at a meeting with a similar purpose
held the next year at Auxerre.
During a discussion of whether to make Patrick a bishop,
his friend
revealed a grave sin that Patrick had committed
when he was fifteen
and had confessed.
Instead Palladius was made a bishop by Rome's
Celestine
and was sent to Ireland in 431.
Patrick was ordained
a priest and sent by Germanus
with an elderly priest Segitius
to assist Palladius;
but a report that Palladius died caused them
to turn back.
Germanus then made Patrick a bishop,
and in 432
he sailed to Ireland.
On the east coast of Ireland Patrick converted a local king
named Dichu, who contributed some land
and a barn for his first
church.
Patrick made many conversions in eastern Ireland, and
in 439
bishops Secundinus, Auxilius, and Iserninus
arrived to
assist him.
Soon after Leo was ordained bishop of Rome,
he formally
approved of Patrick's mission.
Patrick's main bishopric Armagh
was founded in 444.
He visited many of Ireland's kings.
The high
king Laoghaire (r. 428-463) gave Patrick
permission to preach
and convert.
When Laoghaire appointed a commission of nine men
to study, revise, and write down Ireland's laws
(that by an oral
tradition went back to the high king
Ollamh Fodhla in the 8th
century BC),
the three Christians selected included Patrick.
The
commission's work took three years.
The 7th-century biography
of Patrick by Muirchu Moccu
Machteni of Armagh claimed that Patrick
converted
Laoghaire, but in the same century biographer
Tirechan
wrote that he did not.
Patrick had to contend with Druids and
their powerful
oral tradition of occult practices.
In the Brehon
laws Patrick tried to have
their magical rituals prohibited.
Like
the Druids, Patrick might fast to urge others toward justice.
Near the end of his life Patrick resigned as bishop of Armagh
and was succeeded by his disciple Benignus.
Patrick died on March
17, 461.
Two writings of Patrick remain—his Confession and
a
Letter to the Soldiers of Coroticus.
He confessed that
his captivity was deserved because he had
turned away from God
and did not keep the commandments.
While a slave he might say
as many as a hundred prayers
in one day and nearly as many at
night.
His long training in the monasteries of Gaul
enabled him
to quote the scriptures easily.
In addition to the Irish he also
took pleasure in converting
the sons and daughters of the Scots
to become monks and virgins of Christ.
Patrick believed, "The
flesh, our enemy, is always dragging us
unto death, that is, to
the allurements which end in evil."10
Patrick worked to watch
over himself and his
Christian brothers and the virgins in Christ.
When devout women gave him little gifts,
he would return them.
He baptized many thousands
and received no money for doing so.
He occasionally gave presents to kings, and sometimes
he was seized
because they wanted to kill him.
He was once bound in irons for
two weeks;
but his time had not yet come.
He daily expected to
be murdered, robbed, or enslaved;
but he did not fear them because
of his faith in God.
His only motive was to spread the good message
in the nation from which he had escaped.
In the Letter to the Soldiers of Coroticus Patrick admitted
that he was not learned, though he had been established as a
bishop
in Ireland among the heathens for the love of God.
He wrote not
to his fellow citizens and the holy Romans
but to the fellows
of demons, allies of the Scots and the Picts,
who shed the innocent
blood of Christians.
These marauders slaughter with swords
for
booty and to take captives.
He protested against the tyranny of
Coroticus
and their guilty murdering.
Patrick admitted he sold
his nobility for the profit of others,
and he became of slave
of Christ to a foreign nation.
He saw his flock torn apart and
accused those who betrayed
Christians into the hands of the Scots
and Picts.
They live by plunder and fill their houses with the
spoil
of dead Christians and then entertain their friends.
Freemen
are put for sale, and Christians
are made slaves to the apostate
Picts.
Patrick beseeched them to repent of these murders
and to
liberate the baptized women captives.
Early in the 6th century the abbot Eugippius of Lucullanum
wrote a biography of the saintly Severin.
It is not known when
or where Severin was born;
but some time after Attila died in
453, he was called
from the east to Noricum in the eastern Alps.
He founded monasteries at Favianis
and other places in Noricum.
Severin died in 482.
According to Eugippius he was blessed with
extraordinary psychic and healing abilities.
Severin helped the
town of Comagenis stave off the
barbarians by urging them to fast
and pray, and Eugippius
credited his prayers with relieving Favianis
of famine.
Severin warned Rugi king Flaccitheus of an ambush,
and he prophesied that young Odovacar would be king.
Eugippius
described many miraculous healings performed
by Severin, and he
even occasionally brought the dead
back to life, though one said
he wanted to return to his heavenly rest.
Severin was often able
to warn people
because of his vision into the future.
Those who
disregarded his advice often suffered.
He felt the cold of the
poor
and made sure they had ample clothes.
Severin persuaded Alamanni king Gibuld to restore captives.
His letters urged Noricum to strengthen themselves by fasting
and giving charity so that enemy raids would not harm them.
When
King Feva of the Rugi arrived
with an army at Lauriacum, Severin
persuaded him to protect
the people by moving them further down
the Danube River.
A monk who asked for better eyesight
was given
an inner gift instead.
Severin wore only one cloak and did not
eat
until sunset except on feast days.
During Lent he ate only
one meal per week.
Severin encouraged tithing for charitable purposes.
The Palestinian Talmud was written down
in the late
4th century.
The longer Babylonian Talmud was compiled
by
Rabbana Ashi (352-427) during the reign (400-420)
of Sassanian
king Yazdgard I.
Ashi was head of the academy at Mata Machasia
for nearly sixty years.
Yazdgard invited Ashi, Mar Zutra of Pumbedita,
and Amemar of Nehardea to his court,
and he honored the exilarch
Rav Huna bar Nathan.
In the Roman empire hatred of Jews had been increased
by such
influential Christians as Ambrose,
John Chrysostom,
Jerome, and Augustine.
In 415 Alexandria bishop Cyril handed over
Jewish property to
a Christian mob.
Edicts by Theodosius II prohibited Jews from
building
synagogues, from serving as judges in cases involving
Christians, and from owning Christian slaves.
Under this emperor
the physician Gamaliel VI
was the last of the Jewish patriarchs.
Theodosius II revoked his powers in 415, leaving him
with only
his title until his death in 426.
In 429 the primates were ordered
to hand over
Jewish taxes directly to the imperial treasury.
In that year Persia regained control of Armenia,
and under Yazdgard II (r. 438-459) Jews were
forbidden to celebrate the
Sabbath in 456.
Yazdgard II persecuted Christians, Manichaeans,
and Jews.
Persian king Peroz (r. 459-484) had
half the Jewish
population of Ispahan put to death
and ordered the Jewish children
to be raised in the Persian religion.
The Jewish exilarch and
two teachers were martyred in 470.
A few years later increasing
persecution by the magi
eventually destroyed the Jewish intellectual
centers
at Sura, Pumbedita, and Nehardea.
The Babylonian Talmud
was completed
the year of Rabina's death in 499.
The Halakhah laws often implied a deeper ethics.
If
those authorities passing judgment did not act
with temperance
and mercy, their behavior
could bring about destruction.
Another
name for the Avot tractate called the
"Ethics of the
Fathers" is the mishnat hassidim,
meaning inside the
law.
Examples were often given to show that a person
who could
afford a loss should go
beyond the law to fulfill a higher duty.
Even though a person may be exempt by human law,
one may take
moral responsibility because of divine law.
For example, if a
person went back on an oral promise,
a court may not be able to
enforce it;
yet the teaching would consider such a person cursed.
Here is a sampling of wisdom from the Talmud,
also called
the Gemara.
All Israelites are responsible for each other.
It is worse to cheat a Gentile than a Jew, because in addition
to violating moral law it brings the religion into contempt.
Kindness
is the highest wisdom.
Charity is independent of race and creed.
Rabbi Hanina found that he learned much from his teachers,
more
from his colleagues, and most from his students.
Judah ben Ilai
said that a man who does not teach
his son a trade, teaches robbery.
Raba suggested that an assistant should be appointed
if there
are more than 25 elementary students,
and fifty children in a
class require two instructors.
The right of a worker takes precedence
over the employer.
More people die from over-eating than from
malnutrition.
As fish die out of water,
so people perish without law and
order.
The community should first be consulted
before a ruler
is appointed.
An absent person cannot be declared guilty.
Judgment
delayed is judgment denied.
An evil impulse may be sweet in the
beginning,
but it is bitter in the end.
Johanan ben Torta said
that the first Temple
was destroyed because of idolatry, lewdness,
and murder;
but the second Temple was destroyed
because the people
hated each other.
This shows that hatred of fellow humans is as
serious
as idolatry, lewdness, and murder.
Many rabbis disapproved
of self-imposed asceticism.
Isaac asked if the things prohibited
in the law were not enough.
The penalty for liars is that when
they tell the truth,
no one believes them.
1. Augustine, Confessions 1:14 tr. R. S. Pine-Coffin,
p. 35.
2. Ibid., 2:6, p. 50.
3. Augustine, To Consentius: Against Lying 1
tr. H. Browne
in Moral Treatises in Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers
of the Christian Church, volume 3, p. 481.
4. Claudius Claudianus, The Rape of Proserpine III
tr.
Harold Isbell in The Last Poets of Imperial Rome, p. 95.
5. Priscus quoted in Bury, J. B, History of the Later Roman
Empire, p. 284.
6. Sidonius, Epistles 7:7.
7. Orosius, Seven Books of History Against the Pagans 1:1
tr. Irving Woodworth Raymond, p. 33.
8. Ibid., 6:1, p. 266.
9. Salvian, The Governance of God tr. Jeremiah F. O'Sullivan,
p. 94.
10. Confession of St. Patrick tr. Martin P. Harney in The
Legacy of Saint Patrick, p. 113.
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