With blood on their hands and tears in their eyes
In the 4th century, the Church of Rome gained power and lost its innocence. The unity of the church became the focus, and heresy a sin. After Augustinus’ struggle, the church got a killer instinct.
The church growing like a weed
How Paulos' Christianity managed to grow so quickly in the Roman Empire is still a miracle. How could this orphaned group of supporters of an executed Jewish prophet from a remote corner of the empire grow so fast? With a religion that was in every way the opposite of the ancient Greco-Roman cult of gods?
Certainly, the persecutions by the Romans will have brought the Christians publicity and sympathy. And there was active recruiting, and the prayer healings and exorcisms must have been quite spectacular. Famous missionaries made a whole show of it.
According to the sources, Saint Gregorius the Miracle Worker (ca. 210-270) converted almost an entire city. Gregorius had a fixed approach: he organised a kind of festival that attracted masses of people. He preached with abandon, expelled spirits and healed the sick. On top of that, Gregorius was also known for his miracles. Where a church was to be built, he ordered a hill to move a little to the side. After a night of prayer, he let a lake dry out. There is good evidence that such a charismatic approach was particularly effective in converting pagan rural dwellers. According to the Church of Rome, one can still only be canonised if one has performed miracles.
But the most attractive thing about the early Christian communities must have been that they were so different. Not polytheistic; there was only one God. Not born of tradition but with a real person as the founder. Not martial or licentious, but quite the opposite: peace-loving and ascetic. The most popular Roman cults had vague desires for a better life. The church, on the other hand, had clear and precise standards of conduct for a Christian, and the prospect of eternal life in bliss.
The communities were close-knit. They cared for the sick and for the poor, even outside their own community. Christians condemned all forms of greed and dishonesty in business, deceit and lies. A Christian had to be a pure person who did not cling to his possessions, was not selfish, and was truthful and courageous. A Christian learned not to rely on his own strength, but on the power of God's grace and the power of love: "look how they love each other!"
The Roman Empire becomes Christian
The conversion of emperor Constantinus around 312 marked a revolution. The church was now officially favoured. The church thus increased in adherence and power. Christians were now given access to the highest offices. The Greco-Roman cult of gods was actively discouraged. The church became richer, the bishops more powerful. Caring for the sick and the poor, always a core activity of Christians, was now pretty much outsourced to the church by the state. With the inevitable ups and downs, the church gradually became the state church of the Roman Empire.
This upgrade came at a price. The early church had begun as a cheerful mess. Each city had its own favourite apostles, a slightly different theological approach. There were three capitals of the church: Alexandria, Antioch, and Rome, each headed by a chief bishop. Regular correspondence and meetings were held in order to reach a broad consensus. But cities and communities that didn't care could do little to get in the way.
Until the emperor pulled the strings. There came one official collection of books that would make up the New Testament. Doctrinally, dissent was less and less tolerated. There was a ban on lewd excesses. The church started to organise itself hierarchically with the construction of the Roman Empire as an example. The Diocese of Rome also became a money machine. Many a languishing diocese from the periphery received financial support from Rome.
Dissidents
But not all Christian faith communities went along. An early controversy was about the divine nature of Jesus. In Alexandria there was an influential nuisance, Arius, who had a dissenting opinion. With division looming, the emperor ordered a conference in Nicaea. Arius was wrong, the conference observed. But the Arianists did not allow themselves to be put away that easily. Waspishly, the Arianists and the Nicaeans stood face to face for decades. Under pressure from the emperor, a compromise formula was finally agreed in a new conference (the council of Constantinople in 381). Unity had been restored.
Constantinus usually preferred the path of consultation; his successors were less scrupulous.
One of the first Christians to be accused of heresy was the Spanish bishop of Ávila. This Priscillianus was especially headstrong. For example, he recommended that his parishioners fast on Sundays. That’s like begging for it. He was also associated with Manichaeism, an eclectic, Gnostic movement that had been declared illegal by the Emperor of Rome. His parishioners put him on a pedestal, but his colleagues were less enthusiastic. He was beheaded in 385 on charges of sexual immorality and witchcraft, with the emperor's cooperation. The church had left him out in the cold, and only protested against the execution afterwards, mainly because the government had interfered in church affairs.
Heresy
Action against heresy gradually crept in. Paulos was ambiguous about punishment within the church. On the one hand, there was Jesus' clear instruction not to judge your fellow man: leave the judgement to God.
This is easy to say for an itinerant sage, but Paulos had other concerns on his mind: a church denomination had to be set up. And then you inevitably have to deal with troublemakers. On the one hand, he affirmed Jesus' instruction not to judge our brothers and sisters. On the other hand, he had to deal with serious sins within the church. The worst sinner had to be expelled from the church, he was clear about that. But those who didn't make it so furious (one guy had presumably accused Paulos of financial malpractice) should also be punished, he wrote. What that punishment consisted of, was left aside. Later, the slanderer was restored to the good graces of the community.
There is a letter from Paulos to Titus included in the New Testament, but it is believed to be a forgery. The letter was written after Paulos' death. That letter also introduces sowing division as grounds for excommunication:
Warn troublemakers once or twice. Then don't have anything else to do with them. You know their minds are twisted, and their own sins show how guilty they are.
— Epistle to Titus (1st century CE)
Authentic letters from Paulos also show that he warned his congregations against division and misconception.
Early Christian theologians such as Irenaeus Lugdunensis and Eusebius Caesareae were concerned with the description of heresy as sin, but did not speak out about punishment. People are allowed to believe what they want. Whether there is still room for them within the church is another matter.
Officially, the church didn’t go beyond excommunication. State power arranged the punishment, albeit in close consultation with the church. Formally, there was a separation between church and state, although the lines of communication were short. The emperor criminalised heresy. What heresy was, and who was a heretic, was to be determined by the church. The complicated relationship between church and state in Christianity will be the subject of a separate newsletter later.
Augustinus gets a hopeless case
Augustinus Hipponensis (354-430) was also initially a supporter of Manichaeism, but he had come to his senses. Later, he would actively contribute to the smear campaign against the Manichaeans, with accusations of dark rituals and immoral acts.
Augustinus is considered the most influential thinker in the early Catholic Church and for centuries the moral compass for many theologians after him. The church father wrote The Civitate Dei, still a standard theological work in the church of Rome. In 395 he was appointed bishop of Hippo Regius, the capital of the ecclesiastical province of Numidia, where he also originated from. Numidia was the northern part of what we now know as Algeria, located on the Mediterranean coast. Hippo Regius is now called Annaba, the fourth largest city in Algeria.
Augustinus did not bother about heresy: it was a terrible thing, and perfectly legitimate if the emperor took harsh action against it. In his judgement he had been harsh on the Manichaeans: they were heretics. Violence was certainly permissible. Later, he would devote himself to an extensive description of dozens of heretical movements, and how bad it all was. A definition of heresy had to be introduced so that the emperor knew what he could act against with the blessing of the church.
The perfect Donatists
When Augustinus was appointed bishop, his diocese was dominated by the Donatists, a Christian community that did not recognise the authority of the Church of Rome. A century earlier, the Donatists had been the followers of a bishop, Majorinus, and his successor Donatus. Those bishops had fallen out with another bishop, Caecilianus. In short, that Caecilianus was good buddies with the Roman emperor. He got money from Rome, but the Donatists did not. The Donatists considered Caecilianus too fishy.
The Donatists, on the other hand, found themselves pure. For example, they felt that sins forgiven by a sinful priest are not truly forgiven. Furthermore, the Donatists had a few different customs. For example, they felt that apostates who wanted to return should be baptised again. The church of Rome did not think so. The church of Rome recognised that even servants of the church were not free from sin; the Donatists could not accept that.
Augustinus was tasked with getting the Donatists back in line. With angelic patience, he carried out his task: to try, through persuasion and theological dialogue, to get them back on track. Without success. It must have made him distraught.
Pressure from the emperor
Numidia was part of the Western Roman Empire, which was led by Christian emperors. The emperor had also had enough of the rebellious Donatists; he stepped up the pressure. It fit a pattern: the emperors didn't want religious division, the church wanted orthodoxy.
The Donatists were schismatics, Augustinus was clear about that. But were they heretics? If Augustinus came to that conclusion, it would soon be over: then the emperor had a legitimacy to intervene.
The emperor wanted to restore order with a heavy hand. Augustinus tried to mediate, but was eventually put on the spot: could the emperor bring the Donatists into line by force?
In his letters you can see him struggling with it. When he was appointed, the Donatists had been in contention for eighty years. As a Christian and as a scholar, he believed in the power of arguments. Because he was convinced that his church was right, and the Donatists were on the wrong track, the only legitimate way was that of reasoning and argument. And he could do that like no one else. Even today he is widely recognised as an eminent thinker. But even though the Catholic Church deployed the best man they had, and despite eighty years of reasoning, those wretched Donatists stuck to their rebellious opinions. After twelve years of wrangling, Augustinus gave up. If the Donatists wouldn't listen, they had to feel the consequences. Was violence the solution?
In search of Jesus' rules of engagement
Jesus' forgiving words did not sit well with Augustinus. That Jesus would have wanted to use coercion in religious matters is hard to imagine. Jesus also preached among Gentiles, but if they weren't interested, too bad. His disciples had been keen to punish the disinterested Samaritans with a portion of fire from heaven, but Jesus spoke angrily to them: absolutely not, we just move on. (Luke 9:51-56)
Augustinus thought otherwise. Oddly enough, he did not rely so much on Jesus' instruction to "compel" everyone to come. Perhaps he saw that Jesus could not possibly have meant that coercion in faith is acceptable. However, the argument would be invoked by numerous later persecutors of heresy.
Augustinus had other arguments. For instance, he invoked Old Testament punishments. And for those heretics who considered the Old Testament obsolete, he referred to the punishment God had inflicted on Paulos prior to his conversion: he had struck him with blindness. Well, that had done the trick, hadn’t it? You have to punish people like a father beats his child, he also wrote. Violence, if used proportionally by the "good guys" against the "bad guys," was justified because it brought something good to the bad.
If you have good sense, instruction will help you to have even better sense.
— Proverbs 9:9
The death penalty is an act of love for the executed.
A Christian should punish sinners, Augustinus thought. But only if the punishment is carried out without hate, but out of love. This even applies to the death penalty, which can also be an act of love. The punished can then no longer sin and his soul can be saved.
But great and holy men, although they at the time knew excellently well that that death which separates the soul from the body is not to be dreaded, yet, in accordance with the sentiment of those who might fear it, punished some sins with death, both because the living were struck with a salutary fear, and because it was not death itself that would injure those who were being punished with death, but sin, which might be increased if they continued to live.
— Augustinus Hipponensis, De sermone Domini in monte secundum Matthaeum (393)
Augustinus also referred in the same passage to Paulos, who wanted to hand a sinner over to Satan. Paulos' intention was to disown the man so that he would stew in his own juice. But Augustinus put a different spin on it: he must be delivered to Satan "for the destruction of the flesh, that the spirit may be saved."
Why Augustinus was more careful with the Donatists than with the Manichaeans is not entirely clear. Perhaps he had become more lenient. Or he couldn't quite prove that the Donatists were heretics. They may have disobeyed, but theologically they didn't really go overboard.
We do not want them to escape their deserved punishment or to be given the death penalty that they deserve.
— Augustinus Hipponensis, Epistola ad Donatum (409)
In his letter to the Donatist bishop Vincentius, Augustinus explained how he had come to support state violence against the Donatists.
Originally my opinion was, that no one should be coerced into the unity of Christ, that we must act only by words, fight only by arguments, and prevail by force of reason, lest we should have those whom we knew as avowed heretics feigning themselves to be Catholics.
But this opinion of mine was overcome not by the words of those who controverted it, but by the conclusive instances to which they could point. For, in the first place, there was set over against my opinion my own town, which, although it was once wholly on the side of Donatus, was brought over to the Catholic unity by fear of the imperial edicts, but which we now see filled with such detestation of your ruinous perversity, that it would scarcely be believed that it had ever been involved in your error. (…)
We see not a few men here and there, but many cities, once Donatist, now Catholic, vehemently detesting the diabolical schism, and ardently loving the unity of the Church; and these became Catholic under the influence of that fear which is to you so offensive.
— Augustinus Hipponensis, Epistola ad Vincentium (408)
Don't compromise with God
The fact that a compromise could be reached was apparently not an option for Augustinus at all. He had chosen the path of consultation, but with only one possible outcome: the Donatists had to conform to the official doctrine and submit to the central authority. No wonder the Donatists were ultimately sensitive to only one argument: that of the sword.
The emperor had heard enough, and in 409 the Romans carried out a violent punitive expedition against the Donatists. Augustinus protested, because he did not consider the violence proportionate, but without consequence. The rebellion of the Donatists was over.
Augustinus's struggle would profoundly influence the church's attitude towards heretics for a millennium and a half. "Compel them to come" became the norm. Despite the peace-loving message of Jesus and, in a sense, of Paulos, Augustinus had given the church the arguments for a ruthless punishment of dissident Christians.
It wasn't until the year 2000 that the pope officially asked for forgiveness, but the wording was sparse, considering the thousands, maybe even millions, of deaths in the name of the church, and the smell of the pyre.
We cannot fail to recognise the infidelities to the Gospel committed by some of our brethren, especially during the second millennium. Let us ask pardon:
for the divisions which have occurred among Christians,
for the violence some have used in the service of the truth
and for the distrustful and hostile attitudes sometimes taken towards the followers of other religions.
— Pope Ioannes Paulus II, Homily 'Day of Pardon', 2000
Grim newsletters are coming in this series, you've been warned. The church's attitude toward Gentiles, Jews, Muslims, infidels, and slavery cannot go unaddressed in a series on Christianity and toleration.
Want to read more?
De sermone Domini in monte secundum Matthaeum (393), translated into English
Epistola ad Vincentium (408), also translated into English.
Epistola ad Donatum (409), translated into English.
— Thomas Bokkenbotter, A concise history of the Catholic Church (1977/2005)
— Henry Chadwick, The church in ancient society from Galilee to Gregory the Great (2001)
— Perez Zagorin, How the idea of religious toleration came to the West (2003)
— Albert Geljon, Riemer Roukema (eds.), Violence in ancient Christianity: victims and perpetrators (2014)
— Paul van Geest, Augustine’s approach to heresies as an aid to understanding his ideas on interaction between Christian traditions, in: Martha Frederiks, Dorottya Nagy (ed.), World Christianity: methodological considerations (2021)
— Jona Lendering, De Synode van Arles, in: Jona Lendering, Vincent Hunink, The Vision of Constantine (2019)
— Saint Gregory, Wonderworker of Neocaesarea, Orthodox Church in America (n.d.)
This was the fifth newsletter in the series on Toleration and Christianity. The episodes so far are:
Before Christ
Jesus of Nazareth had some exceptionally tolerant ideas. In order to understand them, we need to know more about Jesus's Jewish background: the history of the Jewish people, their god and their law.Where Jesus' tolerant ideas came from
In some ways, Jesus was a tolerant thinker. But he didn't have all his views of his own. About Jesus' simple origins, the halakhic tradition and Hellenic influences.How this contrarian apostle accidentally founded a world religion
About the tragic life and the miraculous survival of Paulos of Tarsos, the orphaned Jesus community in Jerusalem, the mission in the pagan West and the irrelevance of the Jewish Law.No Jewish law for Christians, but what then?
Why Christian law is not in the Bible. About Paulos's selective application of Jesus' instructions, and his remarkable views on sex, women, and men with long hair.With blood on their hands and tears in their eyes
In the 4th century, the Church of Rome gained power and lost its innocence. The unity of the church became the main thing, and heresy a sin. After Augustinus’ struggle, the church got a killer instinct.Christianity, slavery and the conversion of pagans
On conversion of pagans without compulsion. And Christian approval of slavery. About sex slaves, the conversion of a tourist paradise, and exploitation by the village priest.The clean hands of the Church, the dirty hands of the State
How the popes let the Christian monarchs do the dirty work. But separation of church and state later came to mean something else: a secular government.The just war against Islam
A clash between Christianity and Islam was inevitable. Not only because they got into each other's way, but also because they used different justifications for warfare.