Worshippers of the Gods Worshippers of the Gods tells how the Latin writers who witnessed the political and social rise of Christianity rethought the role of traditional religion in the empire and city of Rome. In parallel with the empire’s legal Christianisation, it traces changing attitudes toward paganism from the last empire-wide persecution of Christians under the Tetrarchy to the removal of state funds from the Roman cults in the early 380s. Influential recent scholarship has seen Christian polemical literature—a crucial body of evidence for late antique polytheism—as an exercise in Christian identity-making. In response, Worshippers of the Gods argues that Lactantius, Firmicus Maternus, Ambrosiaster, and Ambrose offered substantive critiques of traditional religion shaped to their political circumstances and to the preoccupations of contemporary polytheists. By bringing together this polemical literature with imperial laws, pagan inscriptions, and the letters and papers of the senator Symmachus, Worshippers of the Gods reveals the changing horizons of Roman thought on traditional religion in the fourth century. Through its five interlocking case studies, it shows how key episodes in the Empire’s religious history—the Tetrarchic persecution, Constantine’s adoption of Christianity, the altar of Victory affair, and the ‘disestablishment’ of the Roman cults—shaped contemporary conceptions of polytheism. It also argues that the idea of a unified ‘paganism’, often seen as a capricious invention by Christian polemicists, actually arose as a Christian response to the eclectic, philosophical polytheism in vogue at Rome.
Cyril’s letter to Constantius ii on the Jerusalem cross-apparition of 351 has usually been read as a declaration of Cyril’s loyalty during Constantius’ war with Magnentius. However, the letter also includes a discussion that links the cross to the eschatological “sign of the Son of Man” (Matthew 24:30). Modern interpreters have either ignored this eschatological section or assumed that it is aimed at a non-imperial audience. This paper advances a unified reading of the letter that shows how Cyril uses explicit verbal cues and his description of the cross’s appearance and position over the sacred landscape of Jerusalem to prepare his imperial reader for the switch from politics to eschatology. Cyril thus reinforces his portrayal of Constantius as a devout Christian emperor and assures Constantius not just of military success but of the truth of the Christian faith, while still maintaining his own episcopal authority.
Cyprian, bishop of Carthage (d. ), was the most influential churchman in mid third-century North Africa, a martyr of Valerian's persecution, and a major influence on Augustine and other Latin Christian writers. In this monograph Benjamin Safranski embarks on a twofold historical and theological project: to explain what Cyprian thought about bishops, and how he and his fellow bishops dealt in practice with fractious clerics and with doctrinal deviancy; and to reexamine the reception of Cyprian's ecclesiology by the twentieth-century Russian Orthodox émigré and theologian, Nicolas Afanasiev. Safranski's analysis of Cyprian's episcopacy occupies four of five chapters. Chapter i focuses on bishops themselves, describing Cyprian's view of the episcopate, the nature and basis of episcopal unity and the practical means by which that unity was maintained. Chapter ii treats the episcopal college: Cyprian's conviction of 'the fundamental equality of bishops' (p. ), the role of a de facto provincial hierarchy and of Rome and (in greater depth than in chapter i) how Cyprian described the unity of bishops in sacraments, doctrine and what Cyprian called the uinculum unitatis. The next two chapters offer a two-part examination of what Safranski terms 'exercises of collegial authority'. Chapter iii analyses several incidents (above all, the Novatian and Felicissimian schisms, the deposition of the Spanish bishops Basilides and Martialis and the controversy over Marcianus of Arles) that saw Cyprian and his fellow bishops disciplining other bishops. Here, Safranski's concern is historical: to explain how the unity and independent Petrine authority of bishops worked out in practice, especially in those few cases that saw Cyprian intervening in other bishops' sees. In chapter iv, the argument takes a more theoretical turn. Safranski seeks to explain why Cyprian could sanction the deposition of Marcianus for his support of Novatian, and yet did not take so strict a line against those who disagreed with him over the rebaptism of heretics. Safranski suggests that Cyprian saw the consensus of bishopsexpressed in synod and 'strengthened' by Novatian's excommunicationas what defined 'the boundaries of acceptable Christian practice' (p. ). Consensus was lacking on the rebaptism issue, which limited Cyprian's response to Stephen of Rome. The lengthy chapter v shifts to Nicolas Afanasiev, whose 'eucharistic ecclesiology' led him to blame Cyprian for inaugurating a 'universal ecclesiology' that divided the Church into many local organisations headed by bishops and ruled by law rather than love. Recapitulating Afanasiev's thought with many helpful quotations, Safranski summarises its reception in Orthodox and Roman Catholic theology, before critiquing it on the basis of his own historical reconstruction. In fact, Safranski argues, Afanasiev misunderstood Cyprian, who also exalted the local church and grounded the unity of the churches in lovebut a love tempered by a zeal for unity and for 'uniformity in certain areas' (p. ). The con...
The controversy over the altar of Victory shows how pagans and Christians expressed competing ideas on the public role of religion in an increasingly Christian empire. In 382, Gratian revoked funding from the Roman state priesthoods and removed the altar from the Senate house. Following Gratian’s death in 383, the Senate appealed to his brother, Valentinian II, through the urban prefect, Symmachus, whose communiqué was successfully countered by Ambrose of Milan. Recent scholarship has favoured Symmachus’ account, which it sees as an appeal for religious tolerance, and argued that the affair was decided by the power politics of a child emperor’s unstable court. In response, this chapter argues that Symmachus was actually trying to exclude the emperor’s Christianity from public decision-making. All religions may, for Symmachus, lead to God, but the old cults are Rome’s divinely appointed defence, as well as the bond between Senate and emperors. Ambrose put Valentinian’s duty to God at the heart of his appeal. Ambrose’s Senate contained many Christians, and Ambrose was bound to resist an emperor who endorsed pagan sacrifices (the closest either work comes to explicit political gamesmanship). Together, their works show how malleable Rome’s public religion still was, more than seventy years after Constantine embraced Christianity.
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