Chapter XVI: Early Christianity and the emperors
0) Preamble
Again this is a very long chapter, so I am posting on Sunday rather than Saturday - it is actually a little longer than Chapter XV. Read it here or here.
1) Good quotes
Slimmer pickings than usual. But here we are on Cyprian: The experience, however, of the life of Cyprian is sufficient to prove that our fancy has exaggerated the perilous situation of a Christian bishop; and that the dangers to which he was exposed were less imminent than those which temporal ambition is always prepared to encounter in the pursuit of honours. Four Roman emperors, with their families, their favourites, and their adherents, perished by the sword in the space of ten years, during which the bishop of Carthage guided by his authority and eloquence the councils of the African church.
Of course, Cyprian did lose his head in the end, so the perilous situation is not wholly fanciful. Unlike, however, the Christians of the western empire: Such was the happy condition of the Christian subjects of Maxentius, that, whenever they were desirous of procuring for their own use any bodies of martyrs, they were obliged to purchase them from the most distant provinces of the East.
There is an interesting discussion of Eusebius, but I will pursue that below and again next week. Instead, I close this section with this reflective comment from the final paragraph: We shall conclude this chapter by a melancholy truth which obtrudes itself on the reluctant mind; that, even admitting, without hesitation or inquiry, all that history has recorded, or devotion has feigned, on the subject of martyrdoms, it must still be acknowledged that the Christians, in the course of their intestine dissensions, have inflicted far greater severities on each other than they had experienced from the zeal of infidels.
He of course goes on to single out examples of Catholics being vicious to Protestants, rather than vice versa, but the initial point remains valid.
2) Summary
A run through the historical record, staring with Tacitus on Nero's blaming the Christians for the Great Fire, then Pliny on his administrative problems in Bithynia, then a long section on Cyprian (who I think gets more coverage than any other non-emperor); then a period of relaxation, which however is abruptly reversed by Diocletian (though that period of persecution seems to be more effective in the East). A rather more detailed but slightly less interesting chapter than the previous one, and I wonder if he might have been better to organise the material more chronologically across the two.
3) Points Arising
i) The historical record
Gibbon is more constructively critical of his sources here than we have seen him previously, I think, particularly on how seriously we should take Eusebius' account: I cannot determine what I ought to transcribe, till I am satisfied how much I ought to believe. The gravest of the ecclesiastical historians, Eusebius himself, indirectly confesses that he has related whatever might redound to the glory, and that he has suppressed all that could tend to the disgrace, of religion. Such an acknowledgment will naturally excite a suspicion that a writer who has so openly violated one of the fundamental laws of history has not paid a very strict regard to the observance of the other...
Tacitus is a different matter: The most sceptical criticism is obliged to respect the truth of this extraordinary fact, and the integrity of this celebrated passage of Tacitus. The former is confirmed by the diligent and accurate Suetonius, who mentions the punishment which Nero inflicted on the Christians, a sect of men who had embraced a new and criminal superstition. The latter may be proved by the consent of the most ancient manuscripts; by the inimitable character of the style of Tacitus; by his reputation, which guarded his text from the interpolations of pious fraud; and by the purport of his narration, which accused the first Christians of the most atrocious crimes, without insinuating that they possessed any miraculous or even magical powers above the rest of mankind.
Essentially Gibbon is demanding that Christians read their own martyrologies with appropriate scepticism.
ii) Gibbon's own beliefs
Gibbon's tone in Chapter XV seemed to me thoroughly sarcastic and sceptical about the claims of Christiantiy in general. But I sense no such irony at all in this passage: The Pagan multitude, reserving their gratitude for temporal benefits alone, rejected the inestimable present of life and immortality which was offered to mankind by Jesus of Nazareth. His mild constancy in the midst of cruel and voluntary sufferings, his universal benevolence, and the sublime simplicity of his actions and character, were insufficient in the opinion of those carnal men, to compensate for the want of fame, of empire, and of success; and whilst they refused to acknowledge his stupendous triumph over the powers of darkness and of the grave, they misrepresented, or they insulted, the equivocal birth, wandering life, and ignominious death, of the divine Author of Christianity.
Similarly, although he doubts the legendary fates of most of the apostles, he does not seem to be querying their witnessing of the miracles performed by Jesus (which is all the more striking given his scepticism about miracles in the previous chapter): If, indeed, we were disposed to adopt the traditions of a too credulous antiquity, we might relate the distant peregrinations, the wonderful achievements, and the various deaths of the twelve apostles: but a more accurate inquiry will induce us to doubt whether any of those persons who had been witnesses to the miracles of Christ were permitted, beyond the limits of Palestine, to seal with their blood the truth of their testimony.27 From the ordinary term of human life, it may very naturally be presumed that most of them were deceased before the discontent of the Jews broke out into that furious war which was terminated only by the ruin of Jerusalem.
27 In the time of Tertullian and Clemens of Alexandria the glory of martyrdom was confined to St. Peter, St. Paul, and St. James. It was gradually bestowed on the rest of the apostles by the more recent Greeks, who prudently selected for the theatre of their preaching and sufferings some remote country beyond the limits of the Roman empire.
Gibbon gives little information about his faith even in his own Memoirs (apart from his youthful flirtation with Catholicism); I guess we will have more of this in next week's reading.
4) Coming next
Well, we have finished the first of the six original volumes, and I propose something slightly different for the next few weeks. Next week (16-17 January) I suggest we consider Gibbon's Vindication of Some Passages in the Fifteenth and Sixteenth chapters of the History Of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, which I found online here and have put, for convenience, into a single HTML file (without footnotes) and a single Word 2007 file (with footnotes). The two weeks following will see me on my travels again, so I propose that as an opportunity for guest posts by anyone who wants to pick up any of the points so far. (I have one offer already; let me know by any of the usual means if you would like to contribute.) We will then return to the normal run with Chapter XVII, on Constantinople and Constantine, on 6-7 February.
Again this is a very long chapter, so I am posting on Sunday rather than Saturday - it is actually a little longer than Chapter XV. Read it here or here.
1) Good quotes
Slimmer pickings than usual. But here we are on Cyprian: The experience, however, of the life of Cyprian is sufficient to prove that our fancy has exaggerated the perilous situation of a Christian bishop; and that the dangers to which he was exposed were less imminent than those which temporal ambition is always prepared to encounter in the pursuit of honours. Four Roman emperors, with their families, their favourites, and their adherents, perished by the sword in the space of ten years, during which the bishop of Carthage guided by his authority and eloquence the councils of the African church.
Of course, Cyprian did lose his head in the end, so the perilous situation is not wholly fanciful. Unlike, however, the Christians of the western empire: Such was the happy condition of the Christian subjects of Maxentius, that, whenever they were desirous of procuring for their own use any bodies of martyrs, they were obliged to purchase them from the most distant provinces of the East.
There is an interesting discussion of Eusebius, but I will pursue that below and again next week. Instead, I close this section with this reflective comment from the final paragraph: We shall conclude this chapter by a melancholy truth which obtrudes itself on the reluctant mind; that, even admitting, without hesitation or inquiry, all that history has recorded, or devotion has feigned, on the subject of martyrdoms, it must still be acknowledged that the Christians, in the course of their intestine dissensions, have inflicted far greater severities on each other than they had experienced from the zeal of infidels.
He of course goes on to single out examples of Catholics being vicious to Protestants, rather than vice versa, but the initial point remains valid.
2) Summary
A run through the historical record, staring with Tacitus on Nero's blaming the Christians for the Great Fire, then Pliny on his administrative problems in Bithynia, then a long section on Cyprian (who I think gets more coverage than any other non-emperor); then a period of relaxation, which however is abruptly reversed by Diocletian (though that period of persecution seems to be more effective in the East). A rather more detailed but slightly less interesting chapter than the previous one, and I wonder if he might have been better to organise the material more chronologically across the two.
3) Points Arising
i) The historical record
Gibbon is more constructively critical of his sources here than we have seen him previously, I think, particularly on how seriously we should take Eusebius' account: I cannot determine what I ought to transcribe, till I am satisfied how much I ought to believe. The gravest of the ecclesiastical historians, Eusebius himself, indirectly confesses that he has related whatever might redound to the glory, and that he has suppressed all that could tend to the disgrace, of religion. Such an acknowledgment will naturally excite a suspicion that a writer who has so openly violated one of the fundamental laws of history has not paid a very strict regard to the observance of the other...
Tacitus is a different matter: The most sceptical criticism is obliged to respect the truth of this extraordinary fact, and the integrity of this celebrated passage of Tacitus. The former is confirmed by the diligent and accurate Suetonius, who mentions the punishment which Nero inflicted on the Christians, a sect of men who had embraced a new and criminal superstition. The latter may be proved by the consent of the most ancient manuscripts; by the inimitable character of the style of Tacitus; by his reputation, which guarded his text from the interpolations of pious fraud; and by the purport of his narration, which accused the first Christians of the most atrocious crimes, without insinuating that they possessed any miraculous or even magical powers above the rest of mankind.
Essentially Gibbon is demanding that Christians read their own martyrologies with appropriate scepticism.
ii) Gibbon's own beliefs
Gibbon's tone in Chapter XV seemed to me thoroughly sarcastic and sceptical about the claims of Christiantiy in general. But I sense no such irony at all in this passage: The Pagan multitude, reserving their gratitude for temporal benefits alone, rejected the inestimable present of life and immortality which was offered to mankind by Jesus of Nazareth. His mild constancy in the midst of cruel and voluntary sufferings, his universal benevolence, and the sublime simplicity of his actions and character, were insufficient in the opinion of those carnal men, to compensate for the want of fame, of empire, and of success; and whilst they refused to acknowledge his stupendous triumph over the powers of darkness and of the grave, they misrepresented, or they insulted, the equivocal birth, wandering life, and ignominious death, of the divine Author of Christianity.
Similarly, although he doubts the legendary fates of most of the apostles, he does not seem to be querying their witnessing of the miracles performed by Jesus (which is all the more striking given his scepticism about miracles in the previous chapter): If, indeed, we were disposed to adopt the traditions of a too credulous antiquity, we might relate the distant peregrinations, the wonderful achievements, and the various deaths of the twelve apostles: but a more accurate inquiry will induce us to doubt whether any of those persons who had been witnesses to the miracles of Christ were permitted, beyond the limits of Palestine, to seal with their blood the truth of their testimony.27 From the ordinary term of human life, it may very naturally be presumed that most of them were deceased before the discontent of the Jews broke out into that furious war which was terminated only by the ruin of Jerusalem.
27 In the time of Tertullian and Clemens of Alexandria the glory of martyrdom was confined to St. Peter, St. Paul, and St. James. It was gradually bestowed on the rest of the apostles by the more recent Greeks, who prudently selected for the theatre of their preaching and sufferings some remote country beyond the limits of the Roman empire.
Gibbon gives little information about his faith even in his own Memoirs (apart from his youthful flirtation with Catholicism); I guess we will have more of this in next week's reading.
4) Coming next
Well, we have finished the first of the six original volumes, and I propose something slightly different for the next few weeks. Next week (16-17 January) I suggest we consider Gibbon's Vindication of Some Passages in the Fifteenth and Sixteenth chapters of the History Of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, which I found online here and have put, for convenience, into a single HTML file (without footnotes) and a single Word 2007 file (with footnotes). The two weeks following will see me on my travels again, so I propose that as an opportunity for guest posts by anyone who wants to pick up any of the points so far. (I have one offer already; let me know by any of the usual means if you would like to contribute.) We will then return to the normal run with Chapter XVII, on Constantinople and Constantine, on 6-7 February.