Subtitle: Constantine bans sacrifice – paganism dead in a century
A bull is led to sacrifice, Ara Pacis, Rome 1st c. AD
Constantine banned public, pagan sacrifice. The traditional sacrificial rites of the cities of the Roman Empire were banned from his reign until a brief pagan revival under Julian in the early 360s before being suppressed again. There is some counterevidence to this, provided by Libanius in the later 300s, but the laws of Constantine’s sons state as much. And they should know.
Anyway, Constantine banned sacrifice. He also built churches and gave benefits to Christian clerics. These are very public acts.
The elimination of public sacrifice from Roman religion, from “paganism”, ripped out its heart. It would only be a matter of time before it would die without sacrifice. The last generation of pagans, the last pagans of Rome, would have no sacrifices, few if any memories of them. For them, paganism would be literary — Virgil, Varro, philosophy. They had nothing else left. And, as Augustine and the Cappadocians show us, that literary heritage was available to Christians as well.
We should never underestimate the power of ritual, the cultic, and its public performance in the spiritual and religious lives of people.
Roman religion was very much about the legal arrangements of the sacred, about performing one’s duties to the gods. Once that’s removed, things will start to fall apart. If all that remains is a love of Virgil and Neoplatonism — well, again. That’s Augustine. That’s Lactantius. If you’re Greek and Homer’s your thing, that’s Gregory of Nazianzus.
Plus, you can see this conquest of your gods by the Galilean, can’t you? Santa Maria Maggiore on the Esquiline. Santa Sabina on the Aventine. San Pietro on the Vatican. The entire city of Constantinople. Temples plundered for their works of art, useful metals, bits of masonry.
Maybe, like in the city of Aphrodisias in modern Turkey, you have lovingly and carefully buried the cult statues of your gods.
But you’ve still buried them.
Meanwhile, they’re building the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem and a monastery on Mount Sinai.
The rituals of paganism were killed, and the rituals of Christianity promoted.
Of course people converted.
How and when and even where we worship shape us, define us in ways we are not always conscious of. Catechesis is important, but our subconscious ideas of God are shaped very much by cultus. Bow down and worship. Sit comfortably. Stand in a crowd outside a temple and watch the spray of blood as the priest slits the bull’s throat. Feast on that bull’s meat later on. Fast.
In my current course, “Constantine the Conversion of the Roman Empire,” I just gave a lecture about imperial ceremony, including, amongst other interesting points, the act of proskynesis or, in Latin, adoratio. Often rendered into English as worship. It looks like this.
If you’ve read the history of Alexander the Great — whether by a modern or by Arrian or Curtius Rufus — you will know that when Alexander started even thinking about requiring what one translator calls “obeisance” (proskynesis), the Greeks and Macedonians would have none of it. This was a Persian custom, but one suited to a god, not a human who, however lofty his position, was, after all, simply an ontological equal.
It’s precisely the sort of thing Augustus would have rejected.
Getting on your knees, and then your hands, and then pressing your forehead into the ground in front of someone. Un-Roman. The Emperor, after all, was the princeps, the chief man, the leading man. But a man. Just … the head of the Senate, the revered (Augustus) leader of the Roman people. The Imperator of the army. But a man. Just like you.
Well, let’s fast forward to the period I teach. The act of proskynesis was added to imperial ceremony by Diocletian (much to the distaste of his contemporaries, in fact — see Eutropius 9.26 and Aurelius Victor, Caesars 39.4), and it passed on from his period (the system called the Tetrarchy) to that of Constantine and the Christian emperors. There was, in fact, a specific instance of proskynesis, the adoratio purpurae. A person of sufficient rank who had waited the right length of time was allowed into the presence of the Sacred Person of the Emperor. He performed adoratio/proskynesis, and then he got to kiss the purple hem of the emperor’s robe.
This helped set the Imperator apart, a transcendent figure like one of the … gods …
Oh, dear.
Constantius in the Chronograph of 354
In Lactantius (Christian tutor to Constantine’s son), On the Deaths of the Persecutors we read:
The older Maximian had a son, Maxentius, who was in fact son-in-law to the younger Maximian; he was a man of dangerous and evil outlook, so proud and stubborn that he used not to do homage [solitus sit adorare] either to his father or to his father-in-law – and for this reason he was disliked by both of them.
Lactantius, De Mortibus Persecutorum, 18.9, trans. J. L. Creed
In his commentary, Creed notes that this is somewhat surprising, particularly since Lactantius says this elsewhere:
Let no one trust in riches, no one in badges of authority, no one even in royal power: these things do not make a man immortal. For whosoever shall cast away the conduct becoming a man, and, following present things, shall prostrate himself upon the ground, will be punished as a deserter from his Lord, his commander, and his Father. Let us therefore apply ourselves to righteousness, which will alone, as an inseparable companion, lead us to God; and “while a spirit rules these limbs,” (Virgil, Aen. 4.336) let us serve God with unwearied service, let us keep our posts and watches, let us boldly engage with the enemy whom we know, that victorious and triumphant over our conquered adversary, we may obtain from the Lord that reward of valour which He Himself has promised.
If you read Ammianus, it is clear that Christian emperors continued this practice.
As you are no doubt aware, the act of proskynesis is part of the liturgical fabric of our brothers and sisters in the Eastern churches. During Great Lent, for example, the Eastern Orthodox perform proskynesis as part of this prayer attributed to St Ephrem the Syrian:
O Lord and Master of my life, take from me the spirit of sloth, despair, lust of power, and idle talk.
But give rather the spirit of chastity, humility, patience, and love to Thy servant.
Yea, O Lord and King, grant me to see my own transgressions, and not to judge my brother, for blessed art Thou, unto ages of ages. Amen.
What I want to know is when did Christians incorporate literal, technical adoratio/proskynesis/obeisance into worship — or was it always there?
And, on a related note, I sometimes think there is interesting cross-fertilization between imperial ceremonial and Christian liturgy. As the emperor becomes like a transcendent icon, as his sacer status is more and more highlighted, I don’t doubt this affects how you treat the truly transcendent God who is the most truly sacer Person in the universe.
Speaking of icons, I think this is also related in a long, historical trajectory of ritual actions and images and treatment of persons.
I am pleased to finally get around to announcing here that I am teaching “Constantine and the Conversion of the Roman Empire” for Davenant Hall this January. You can sign up here — auditors are always welcome and don’t even have to tune in live! (Although you’ll get more out of discussion time by actually … discussing…)
This course is very timely — people on the Internet and in books and now even in movies are discussing something called “Christian Nationalism”, and whatever that is, it involves Christians holding some form of political power and framing laws relative to Christian morality. However one feels about that term or those who use it or what on earth it actually means, the question of Christians and political power is one that will never go away.
Alternatively, for those of us in the UK and the Commonwealth Realms, on 6 May we had the opportunity to witness the coronation of a new king — the first coronation in 70 years! There we also saw a vision of temporal, earthly power and its relationship to God and Christianity, as the King was presented with a Bible at one point and promised to uphold the Protestant Reformed Church of England, and then anointed with oil and crowned by the Archbishop of Canterbury. He was also handed an orb surmounted by the cross, itself a symbol that the true ruler and power over the world is Jesus of Nazareth.
In countless ways, we can consider how the politics and culture of Europe and her outposts (North America, Australia, etc) have been deeply transformed by Christianity over the centuries. In the great chain of events as we go back in time, so much of this can be traced to Constantine, who ruled the Roman Empire (or parts of it) 306-337.
From at least 312, if not 310, Constantine was pursuing policies that would not only favour Christianity but set the stage for the Christianisation of the Roman Empire. From 312, he himself was publicly a Christian. He had Christian advisors, chose a Christian tutor for his son, gave all sorts of favours to the administration of the Christian Church, banned public sacrifice at pagan temples.
In my course, we are going to spend seven weeks exploring the life and policies of Constantine with a topical lecture from me and discussion of the primary sources — Eusebius’ Life of Constantine, Lactantius’ On the Deaths of the Persecutors, panegyrics praising the emperor, letters from the emperor, laws by the emperor, a speech of his called The Oration to the Saints, as well as some dissent from the other side plus a bit of art and coinage (you know an ancient historian loves a good coin!).
What did his legacy look like? How did the rest of the fourth century play out? The final weeks of the course will look at his sons, especially Constantius II, and then the Emperor Julian (the last pagan emperor), finally closing with Theodosius I. We’ll look at these emperors and their religious policy through their laws, through the writings of Julian and the pagan orator Libanius, more panegyric, and the works of Athanasius against Constantius and then Ambrose of Milan on two counts — the dispute over the Altar of Victory in the Senate and then his speech On the Death of Theodosius.
All of this is interesting in and of itself, but it’s also important. If we want to know how to help advise or even rule wisely, how to pray for our leaders in government, we need to figure out sound political theology. Here in these sources are the foundational moments of Christian history for such an endeavour. The need is real. The time is now. Come, study with me — registration ends Friday!
Because any reference to the Christian rulers of Rome requires Constantine’s big, giant head
“The story of Christianity is not merely the story of a religion indigenous to Western civilization; in a very real sense, it is the story of that civilization itself. One cannot really understand the values that inform those cultures that were originally conceived in the womb of Christendom without understanding the faith that created them. Even in nations where an explicit devotion to Christian faith is on the wane, the Christian understanding of what it is to be human continues to shape imaginations and desires at the profoundest levels, and to determine much of what we hold most dear and many of the moral expectations we have of ourselves and others. For this reason alone, the story of Christianity is one we should all wish to know better.” -David Bentley Hart, The Story of Christianity
If you’re going to dislike Zosimus, find a reason beyond, ‘He was Pope, dude!’
Back in 2010, my now PhD supervisor remarked that as confessional entrenchment/denominational attachment has decreased, so has interest in ecclesiastical history (is this one reason we rebranded ourselves here as History of Christianity?). I’m not sure if this is true or if it was simply a feeling she had, but if it is true, I’m not so sure it makes a lot of sense.
I think that church history as a field of study can truly blossom with lessened denominational hostilities. This thought came to me today while reading about this guy Apiarius of Sicca Veneria in North Africa. Briefly, he was a presbyter who was removed from holy orders by his local bishop and decided to appeal to Rome. Pope Zosimus got involved and — well, ecclesiastical history. An important moment in western canon law, despite how little attention it tends to receive.
The book I was reading, Merdinger’s Rome and the African Church in the Time of Augustine (complaint: Why always Augustine?), observed that this issue has been misread and obscured by a lot of scholarship because of the confessional commitments of the scholars discussing it. A crude caricature of the scholarship in this case is pretty much the same as it always is whenever the popes get involved:
Catholics: Well done Popes exercising your apostolic authority against those rebellious Africans.
Protestants: Well done Africans in resisting the arrogant self-aggrandisement of the Popes.
This is also not far from every time the Bishop of Rome butts heads with orthodox Eastern Bishops, Gallic bishops, Sicilian bishops, Spanish bishops, Welsh and Irish bishops, and so forth. The pope and/or his representatives or those who at least side with him are pictured by Catholics as representing good order and good government, putting right the wrongs of the world, and by Protestants as representing the arrogation of worldly power and the stamping out of true Gospel spirit in the provinces.
Sometimes one side has more of the truth than the other, but it’s not really what’s usually going on.
With weakened, once-ingrained confessional prejudices clouding our vision less, we are in a time when scholarship about ecclesiastical history can really flourish. No longer need Catholics be embarrassed by badly behaved popes to sweep under the rug. No longer need Protestants hunt for some sort of proto-Protestant resistance. No longer need Protestants ignore the entire history of the church from the death of Augustine to 31 October, 1517 — nor need they ignore the awkward Catholicky (emphasis on ‘icky’) bits from before the 430 cut-off date, where church fathers whose Christology and triadology, and even beliefs about salvation, they praise also do awkward things like, well, exercise monarchical episcopal authority in their hometown. Or send people relics. Or talk about Eucharist in terms of sacrifice. Or have anything to do with canon law. Or burn incense.*
Also, we can lay off the anti-papal polemic. Gregory the Great sent missionaries to England because he thought London would become a rival patriarchate? Really?
And we can turn our eyes to the world beyond Europe and the Mediterranean basin. Since we no longer feel compelled to obsess over our own Roman Catholic, Methodist, Anglican, Presbyterian, Lutheran history, we can look at the history of the church in Mesopotamia or Ethiopia. We can ponder Franciscans in the Caliphate. We can take into consideration the Church of the East (‘Nestorian’) in China during the Middle Ages.
We have 2000 years of ecclesiastical history to play with. Just because something didn’t happen within one’s own confessional sphere of influence doesn’t mean it isn’t interesting and doesn’t mean it doesn’t hold wisdom for the church today.
*Fun fact: St John Chrysostom whose exegesis is much beloved by low-church evangelicals of late did all these things.
St Bernard, c. 1450, in Musée de Cluny, Paris. My photo
Part of learning what I call ‘Classic Christianity’ as a means towards rejuvenating your spiritual life is discovering not only the theology and worship and devotional practices of the past but also learning the story of Christian history. A few months ago, I was struck by how much of it there is, and why, therefore, this is an important field of study and reflection for the thoughtful Christian.
It all started with Prosper of Aquitaine’s Chronicle. At one point he stops to take count of the time since various events, such as from Creation, Abraham, Jesus, that sort of thing. And the time from Abraham to the Incarnation of the Lord is about 2000 years.
Most of the Old Testament, except for the very beginning of Genesis, takes place in those 2000 years. And all of it was written in those 2000 years. The Old Testament is the telling of the faithfulness of God towards his chosen people and the revealing of his character through his interaction with human history, whether through prophets, poets, priests, or kings.
We are now 2000 years the other side of Jesus Christ. We and Abraham, who is the beginning of the Covenant, are the same distance from the Saviour temporally. This is worth thinking about if you believe that the God of Christianity who is present here today is the same God as the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.
We have 2000 years of the history of God with his people up to the coming of Christ. He has not abandoned that people. And if he is the same sort of God, who made himself known from Abraham to the Apostles, he will probably be acting in the same sort of ways (unless you’re a specific type of Dispensationalist, I guess).
This means that Christian history is not simply the record of A-Z, how we got from Jesus to Pope Francis and Billy Graham. While the writing of it is not Scripture and therefore not revelatory in the same way, it is still the story of God’s faithfulness to his people.
A careful, reasonable, yet prayerful reading of Christian history is a way of accessing the story of God and His people. Learning the stories of the saints and theologians and councils and heretics and attempts at reform and monastic foundations and so on and so forth is a way of learning how God has acted and still acts today.
I hope, therefore, that you will take an interest in the stories of the Church, from the martyrs like Sts Ignatius of Antioch and Polycarp of Smyrna to the mystics like Sts Hildegard von Bingen and Gregory Palamas, to the reformers like Martin Luther and Thomas Cranmer, to missionaries like St Patrick and Bruchko (Bruce Olsen). Their stories will show us the living God who is still here, who has always been here, who will stay with us forever.
Last night, it popped into my head to provide a list of the major Church Fathers by geography. One of the interesting things this list highlights is that East-West is not always a Greek-Latin division; Rome in particular was producing Greek-speaking theologians through the third century. I provide ‘major’ Fathers from the Ante-Nicene and Nicene & Post-Nicene Fathers series region by region from West to East. They are provided in chronological order in each region. This choice does, alas, leave out Spain entirely despite Isidore of Seville, as well as many of the great ascetic writers of Egypt-Palestine-Syria. Nonetheless, it is a good sampling, and I have other things to attend to! Enjoy!
West
Gaul
Irenaeus of Lyons (from Asia Minor; Greek)
Hilary of Poitiers (Latin)
Rufinus of Aquileia (Latin)
Sulpicius Severus (Aquitaine; Latin)
Vincent of Lérins (Latin)
John Cassian (fr. East, lived in Egypt before Gaul; Latin)
Italy
Clement of Rome (Greek)
Justin Martyr (from Palestine, fl. also in Asia Minor; Greek)
Hermas (Rome; Greek)
Hippolytus (Rome; Greek)
Gaius (Rome; Greek)
Novatian (Rome; Latin)
Dionysius (Rome; Greek)
Ambrose of Milan (Latin)
Leo the Great (Rome; Latin)
Gregory the Great (Rome; Latin)
North Africa
Tertullian (Carthage; Latin)
Minucius Felix (Latin)
Commodian (Latin)
Cyprian of Carthage (Latin)
Arnobius (Latin)
Lactantius (fl. in court of Constantine; Latin)
Augustine of Hippo (Latin)
East
Greece & the Balkans (incl. Thrace/Constantinople)
Athenagoras of Athens (Greek)
Methodius of Olympus (Greek)
Jerome (fr. Latin Dalmatia, spent time in Rome before settling in Bethlehem; Latin)
This is the final post in a series on the messy reality of church history after Constantine wherein I have tackled both those who decry ‘Constantinianism’ for ‘polluting’ a ‘pure’ church and those who believe the conversion of Constantine was the greatest thing ever to happen. The other posts are listed at the bottom of this one.
And what, after all this, do I think about church life after Constantine?
I think that relations between the Church/Christianity and the secular government have always, before Constantine and after, a mixture of pleasures and pains.
The Post-Constantinian Pleasures
Painted Cast of Prima Porta Augustus, Ashmolean Museum
Legal existence and imperial favour are not always bad things! Christians could now meet freely and evangelise freely. They could expand the houses-turned-churches. They could publically build more purpose-built houses of worship (meeting in houses isn’t some sort of pristine vision for Christianity but a necessity for the persecuted).
Christians could now more easily pursue careers in the public service. Sure, this sometimes meant compromise. But it also sometimes meant finally giving Roman government a conscience when it came to things like disaster relief and aid for the poor (beyond Rome’s pomerium).
Indeed, giving government something of a conscience is probably one of the greatest benefits of the cozy relationship Christians now had with Rome and, later, her successor states and other non-Roman Christian polities throughout history. Christians with access to persons of power, who sometimes were persons of power, and access to wealth could provide their nations with hospitals and houses for the poor and lepers.
Because the monastic movement in all Christian societies had some level of official sanction by the Early Middle Ages (if not earlier), monasteries/lavrae/hermitages/priories/anchorholds became alternative ways of living beyond the secular world of warrior masculinity and domestic feminity, of survival for the poor beyond subsistence farming, of, indeed, places for the otherwise voiceless to be heard — think of the monastic women such as St Hildegard von Bingen who had the ear of powerful men or male monastics of humble origin such as St Bonaventure. The monastic movement was also a legitimised counterculture for young men otherwise destined for earthly power and glory, such as St Francis of Assisi.
Notre-dame de Paris
Another source of great fecundity in the relationship between the imperia and the church was artistic culture. I cannot stand in Notre-Dame de Paris or St-Denis or Milan’s Duomo or Sant’Ambrogio in Milan or St Paul’s in London or Glasgow Cathedral and say, ‘What a shame the Church teamed up with the secular powers in the Middle Ages and Renaissance.’ This legimation of Christianity in secular eyes has meant the preservation of our faith’s art. I am, as I write, listening to St Hildegard’s music; could this beauty have survived so intact if produced by a hounded, persecuted minority?
My research literally delves into the world of the mediaeval book. Canon law tomes are not, it is to be admitted, the most beautiful. But I wouldn’t want to live in a world where the Kingdom of Northumbria did not foster monasticism to allow the Lindisfarne Gospels, or the Kingdom of the Picts likewise with Iona and the Book of Kells, or the Carolingians likewise and the over 7000 manuscripts that exist from their century and a half, two centuries, alone — most of them driven by the desire of the Carolingian monarchs to reform their society and church around the Christian Gospel.
A Flemish Gothic altarpiece (Musée nationale du Moyen-Age, Paris)
Think: Michelangelo. El Greco. Hieronymous Bosch. Da Vinci. Fra Angelico. Pre-Raphaelites. Raphael. Bernini. Or: Late mediaeval Flemish altarpieces. Stained glass. San Vitale’s mosaics.
A lot of Christian writings would not have survived, if they’d even been written. What would we do without the City of God? Dante’s Divine Comedy? What if Pseudo-Dionysius’ works had all perished? Life without John Donne? Would someone like Gregory Palamas, so dense and hard to comprehend, have made the cut? Would Bernard of Clairvaux have gone into religious life with no monasteries for third sons? No Bede?
Without Constantine (or someone like him) — none of this culture.
That would be a lesser world, wouldn’t it?
There have been pleasures and benefits for Christianity and the imperium, real, substantive benefits. We cannot deny this.
The Pains
Charlemagne, not that he had a beard in real life (Paris, Parvis de Notre-Dame)
But befriending the Emperor is kind of like befriending Two Face, isn’t it? For example, I’m in favour of St Boniface’s evangelising zeal. The early Carolingians supported his mission to bring Gospel and order to what is now Germany. But Charlemagne’s version of mission involved the forced conversion of Saxons whose options were baptism or death.
In Notker’s Life of Charlemagne we read of how Charlemagne induced Danish Vikings to get baptised by giving them gifts. One year, so many came they didn’t have enough white baptismal robes, and one Viking complained that his robe was shabbier than the one he’d got the year before! He protested the Charlemagne was getting stingy.
What does baptism even mean to that Viking or to the Saxons bathing before the Frankish sword?
Charlemagne is not the only ruler to evangelise by the sword. Both King Olaf Tryggvason (d. 1000) and King St Olaf Haraldsson (d. 1030) used this method to evangelise Norway. And, if Njal’s Saga has anything to say, the Olaf-sponsored missionary Thangbrand was not afraid of using violence to promote Christianity in Iceland.
It is said that in Latvia when the king converted he had everyone get baptised. They all went down to the river the next day to wash off their baptism.
The Christianisation of Europe, which brought with it a connection between the cultures of the North (from Iceland and Ireland to Estonia and Latvia to Russia) and the cultures of the classical Mediterranean, certainly tamed some aspects of life, although sometimes I wonder of some of the toning down of harsh aspects of law had more to do with Rome than with Jesus.
Mind you, sometimes Roman punishments and practices of law continued that Christians should have left behind, such as when Maximus the Confessor had his tongue cut out for espousing theology contrary to the imperial vision.
The Christianisation of Europe got a lot of people baptised. And many were sincere. But that was faith a mile wide and an inch deep. If these men were truly, deeply Christian, why did the Pope need to keep making up reasons to keep French nobility from killing each other? Why do Icelandic men keep the cycle of revenge, feud, honour killings, and the like after the conversion of the island in 1000? Why do people complain over and over and over again about the unholy, sinful behaviour of those on pilgrimage?
Finally, another problem arises when Europe starts meeting new people. The first priest in Canada is said to have uttered, ‘First these savages must be civilized, then they will be ready to receive the Gospel.’ An attitude that was hard to shake — for if everyone in Europe is a ‘Christian’, where does European end and Christian begin?
God never will never forsake us
In conclusion, however, I would like to state that God gigantic. He is bigger than Constantine, bigger than Quakers, bigger than Anglicanism, bigger than Charlemagne, bigger than bad missionaries, bigger than Gregory Palamas, bigger than the Great Schism, bigger than the Reformation, bigger than Icelandic sagas, bigger than everything good or bad the Church has done throughout history.
No matter how corrupt the institutions of the Church have become, and it has happened at different times and different places, God has remained faithful. And there have always been faithful Christians who are part of that Church, quietly going about holy lives or vivaciously calling for reform, whether Caesarius in 520, Boniface in 720, Francis in 1220, or Luther in 1520.
Whilst in Paris, I visited three churches for Sunday morning services. While Notre-Dame’s Messe Gregorienne would be most in keeping with the overall theme and tenor of this blog, the one that has got me thinking most was, of all things, Hillsong Paris.
Hillsong Paris is a plant of the famous Hillsong Church in Australia. It meets in a theatre thrice on a Sunday, and at least fills the 12:15 service. As one would expect the music is upbeat and loud, with a seemingly ‘professional’ quality to it. The musicians jumped around on the stage and ran and sang loudly. The songs were all in French save one, but the original English was projected at the bottom of the screen.
The Sunday I visited Hillsong Paris, Brian Houston, le pasteur principal of Hillsong was visiting from Australia. He gave the message with a very, very good interpreter who immediately fired off rapid-fire French after each of his sentences and even sought to mimic his gestures.
Say what you will about anything at Hillsong, Brian Houston is a man of passion. He has zeal for God and for seeing people come to a living, vibrant faith in the risen Jesus. As he preached about us seeking to find that glorious obsession which God has implanted into us, this passion, this zeal for God came through.
To be zealous you don’t have to be high-energy, of course. To have a passion for Christ and His mission you don’t have to be an electrifying speaker. But if you are high-energy, whatever it is that is your glorious obsession will be apparent to everyone around.
Opening of Bede’s Ecclesiastical History
Whilst in Paris, I read from several books. I read most of Bede’s Ecclesiastical History of the English People during my Parisian month, and finished it a few days ago. If we wish to discuss zeal for the Lord and His mission, we need look no further than the tales of these early British bishops.
In Bede’s most famous work, the reader meets many of the big names from the Christianisation of early mediaeval Britain — Columba, Aidan, Wilfrid, Willibrord, Paulinus, Edwin, Oswald, Augustine, Germanus of Auxerre, Hild, Caedmon, Cuthbert, Benedict Biscop.
Most of these names are bishops. Augustine and other early bishops in southern England came over from the continent to bring the light of the Gospel to the ends of the world. They, and then their local successors such as Wilfrid and Cuthbert, laboured to see the English people receive the truth of Jesus and transform their world for the better. Joining these continental and English missionaries were the Irish, such as Columba and Aidan, approaching the island from the North and West.
Sometimes, due to the ire of a king, the missions would not go as planned. Thus Wilfrid found himself in exile for many years. Rather than sitting about moaning, he engaged in mission where he was, whether in England or Frisia. Sometimes, the kings helped the bishops, such as Edwin and Oswald. These men and women had a zeal for seeing the people of Britain — Anglo-Saxon and Pict — come to saving faith in Jesus.
But I? Where is my zeal for the Lord? Sure, I blog big. And I enjoy Christian literature such as Bede or Miroslav Volf or saints’ lives or Leo. But I go days and days without reading the Scriptures, without really praying. Church, regardless of denomination or preaching or ‘style of worship’ I find tiresome. Where is my zeal? And where can I get some?
I just returned from Cyprus, and one of the saints who figures largely in the church dedications of the island is St. Spyridon, one of the Fathers who made the journey to Nicaea in 325.
You can always tell St. Spyridon when you see him on a church wall (as on the exterior of St. Sozomen’s Church in Galata, Cyprus [my photo to the left]) because of his beehive hat. Spyridon was a literal shepherd before he became a spiritual shepherd (in Latin, that would be pastor). As a sign of his humble origins, he is always shown wearing this traditional Cypriot headgear.
The image to the left is from a large fresco of the Council of Nicaea (the whole thing is viewable here). It’s hard to tell because I didn’t have a good angle to take the photo (I took it from a good distance below the image), but Spyridon is pictured performing a miracle that tradition relates concerning his actions at Nicaea.
He is clutching in his fist a tile. Out of the top of the tile comes a flame, from the bottom drips water, and soil remains in his hand. This threefold nature of the tile was a refutation of Arius, showing how three things could share a single essence, an object lesson in the Holy Trinity.
Because what we have from the histories is brief, allow me to quote Socrates Scholasticus in full (from CCEL):
With respect to Spyridon, so great was his sanctity while a shepherd, that he was thought worthy of being made a Pastor of men: and having been assigned the bishopric of one of the cities in Cyprus named Trimithus, on account of his extreme humility he continued to feed his sheep during his incumbency of the bishopric. Many extraordinary things are related of him: I shall however record but one or two, lest I should seem to wander from my subject. Once about midnight, thieves having clandestinely entered his sheepfold attempted to carry off some of the sheep. But God who protected the shepherd preserved his sheep also; for the thieves were by an invisible power bound to the folds. At daybreak, when he came to the sheep and found the men with their hands tied behind them, he understood what was done: and after having prayed he liberated the thieves, earnestly admonishing and exhorting them to support themselves by honest labor, and not to take anything unjustly. He then gave them a ram, and sent them away, humorously adding, ‘that ye may not appear to have watched all night in vain.’ This is one of the miracles in connection with Spyridon. Another was of this kind. He had a virgin daughter named Irene, who was a partaker of her father’s piety. An acquaintance entrusted to her keeping an ornament of considerable value: she, to guard it more securely, hid what had been deposited with her in the ground, and not long afterwards died. Subsequently the owner of the property came to claim it; and not finding the virgin, he began an excited conversation with the father, at times accusing him of an attempt to defraud him, and then again beseeching him to restore the deposit. The old man, regarding this person’s loss as his own misfortune, went to the tomb of his daughter, and called upon God to show him before its proper season the promised resurrection. Nor was he disappointed in his hope: for the virgin again reviving appeared to her father, and having pointed out to him the spot where she had hidden the ornament, she once more departed. Such characters as these adorned the churches in the time of the emperor Constantine. These details I obtained from many inhabitants of Cyprus. I have also found a treatise composed in Latin by the presbyter Rufinus, from which I have collected these and some other things which will be hereafter adduced.
What I like about the story of St. Spyridon is the fact that he was made a presbyter for all the right reasons — it wasn’t because he had a clear singing voice for the liturgy, or because he was the only literate man in the village, or because he had the right educational credentials but because of holiness of life. He was so holy and had such spiritual authority that, although a simple shepherd, the people knew that he was the right man for the job.
This is a stark contrast with the lawyers and aristocrats who fill the clergy elsewhere in fourth century! It is a stark contrast to today where we are more concerned with one having the right training than we are with whether one is actually a spiritual leader. Perhaps seminaries and bishops should take the life of St. Spyridon to heart when they are seeking out and evaluating postulants for ordination. Imagine if we had a whole generation of clergy chosen for the holiness of their lives! We might even see spiritual fruit as a result!
Remember as well: God chooses the simple. Few of us are Origens — and he was branded a heretic post-mortem — but by the grace of Christ, many can be Spyridons.
Classically Christian 