Christianity and the Decline of Rome by Arnaldo Momigliano

 

.  .  . It is the modest purpose of this paper to reassert the view that there is a direct relation between the triumph of Christianity and the decline of the Roman Empire. But, of course, it will not be a simple return to Gibbon. What Gibbon saw as merely a destructive power must be understood on its own terms of Civitas dei – a new commonwealth of men for men. Christianity produced a new style of life, created new loyalties, gave people new ambitions and new satisfactions. So far nobody has written a realistic evaluation of the impact of Christianity on the structure of pagan society. I will not attempt such a task here. I shall confine myself to a few elementary remarks on the impact of Christianity on political life between the fourth and the sixth centuries A. D.

                                                     II

 

In the third century the Roman Empire had faced disintegration. It survived thanks to the strenuous efforts at reconstruction which are connected with the names of Claudius Gothicus, Diocletian, and Constantine. The result was an organization founded on compulsion. For reasons which have not yet been entirely explained, money economy collapsed in the third century; there were moments in which barter and taxation in kind seemed destined to replace money transactions in the empire. This crisis was overcome. Constantine introduced gold coins, the solidi, which remained the standard for about 800 years and served as an ultimate basis both for the fiscal system and private transactions. But there was a debased currency for everyday use, and the fluctuations in the rates of exchange between  gold and debased currency were a source of uncertainty and an excuse for extortion. The middle class emerged from the crisis demoralized and impoverished. Civil servants and soldiers were paid less in the fourth century than in the third. They came to rely on fees and bribery to supplement their salaries. Whatever the explanation may be, there developed also a shortage of manpower, while ordinary activities were made more burdensome by excessive taxation and the general unpleasantness of life. Barbarian invasions and civil wars must have destroyed a great deal of wealth. People tended to drift away from their work; and the government answered by binding the peasant to the land, making compulsory and heredity certain activities and transforming the city councils into compulsory and heredity corporations responsible for the collection of taxes.

The army needed men. About 500,000 men seem to have been required by the army, and there were not enough volunteers to make up this number. Recruitment was no easy matter. Landed proprietors had to supply recruits from among their serfs or at least had to compound by paying money. The son of a soldier was bound, at least under certain circumstances, to follow his father’s profession. But the best soldiers were recruited among the barbarians, mainly Germans and Sarmatians, who were settled within the empire either individually or in communities. The army was therefore organized on uneconomic lines. It was made even more uneconomic by the division between frontier and central army. The frontier were guarded by soldiers who were less well paid and less respected than their colleagues of the mobile force in the center.

To pay such an army a prosperous empire was needed. The empire was not prosperous, and there are reasons to believe that insecurity and inflation curtailed traffic. We have not enough evidence about the volume of trade circulating in the Roman empire at any given moment. We are therefore in no position to state in figures that there was less trade in the fourth century than , for instance, in the second century. But we can infer from the decline of the bourgeoisie in the fourth century and from the exclusive importance of the great landowners that prosperous traders were few. One has the impression that long-distance trade was increasingly in the hands of small minorities of Syrian and Jews.

Two capitals have replaced one, there were more unproductive expenses than before. Constantinople, the new Rome, grew up a marvel to see. But, as in the older Rome, the citizens of Constantinople enjoyed the privilege of a free supply of bread – the corn being provided by Egypt.

Preachers in their sermons painted in violence colors the contrast between wealth and poverty, and invariably intimated that wealth was the root of oppression. St. Ambrose in the West and St. John Chrysostom in the East attacked the rich who bought house after house and field after field, throwing out the former owners. What they say seems to be confirmed by the few data we have about individual estates in the fourth and fifth centuries. Some families had princely possessions spread over several provinces of the empire. They lived more and more, though not yet exclusively, in the country, and their estates were self-sufficient units. The wealthiest landowners were members of the senatorial class. Here again, the change from the third century is evident and important. In the third century the class of senators was definitely declining. The senators were deprived of the command of the armies and to a certain extent of the provincial government. The conditions of the fourth century did not allow the senators to recover control of the army: professional soldiers, most frequently of German origin, took over. But the senatorial class absorbed their former rivals, the knights, and developed into a powerful clique of great landowners who, especially in the West, monopolized what was left of of civilized life outside the church and played an increasing part in the church itself. Senators and great landowners became almost synonymous terms. These people knew the comforts and amenities of life; they cultivated rhetoric and poetry. In Rome, under the guidance of Symmachus, they provided the last bastion of paganism. Elsewhere they turned to the Church.


                                                    III

The fact that the aristocracy played a role of increasing importance in the affairs of the Church is only one aspect of what is perhaps the central feature of the fourth century: the emergence of the Church as an organization competing with the State itself and become attractive to educated and influential persons. The Sate, though trying to regiment everything, was most able to prevent or suppress the competition of the Church. A man could in fact escape from the authority of the State if he embraced the Church. If he like power he would soon discover that there was more power to be found in the Church than in the State. The Church attracted the most creative minds – St. Ambrose, Sty Jerome, Hilarius of Poitiers, St Augustine in the West; Athanasius, John Chrysostom, Gregory of Nazianzus, and Basil of Caesarea in the East: almost all born rulers, rulers of a type which, with the exception of the scholarly emperor Julian, it has hard to find on the imperial throne. They combined Christian theology with pagan philosophy, worldly political abilities with a secure faith in immortal values. They could tell both the learned and the unlearned how they should be behave, and consequently transformed both the external features and the inner meaning of the daily existence of an increasing number of people.

Gibbon was simplifying a very complicated issue when he insinuated that Christianity was responsible for the fall of the empire. But he perceived that the Church attracted many men who in the past would have become excellent generals, governors of provinces, adviser to the emperors. Moreover, the Church made ordinary people proud, not of their old political institutions, but of their new churches, monasteries, ecclesiastical charities. Money which would have gone to the building of a theater or of an aqueduct now went to the buildings of churches and monasteries. The social equilibrium changed – to the advantage of the spiritual and physical conditions of monks and priests, but to the disadvantage of the ancient institutions of the empire.

The expanding and consolidating hierarchical organization of the Church offered scope for initiative, leadership, ambition. With Theodosius’ law of A. D. 392 pagan cults became illegal. Other laws were directed against heretics. Catholic priests obtained all sorts of privileges, including that of being judged by their own bishops in the case of criminal offences. This was the outcome of a century of struggles. St. Ambrose, having thrown the whole weight of his powerful and fearless personality into the struggle, compelled the aging Theodosius to yield to the demands of the Church. St. Ambrose’s victory can be considered final in so far as paganism is concerned. When Alaric captured Rome in 410 many people asked themselves whether the ruin of Rome was not the sign that Christianity was bad for the empire. The Christian answer to these doubts prevailed. It opened a new epoch in the philosophy of history. The political disaster was real enough, but more real was the faith which inwardly transformed the lives of the multitudes and which was now given its intellectual justification in his City of God.

If paganism was dying, this did not mean that the unity of the Church, willed by St. Ambrose and St Augustine and accepted by Theodosius, was entirely safe.  The great episcopal churches of Rome, Constantinople, Antioch, and Alexandria were maneuvering against each other. Nobody seriously challenged the hegemony of Rome in the West (perhaps because the claims of the Roman bishops were still vague), but even in Rome we meet rival bishops fighting each other with the support of excited crowds. And there were heresies. If Arianism was a lost cause inside the Empire, it prospered among the barbarians pressing on it borders. Other heresies, such as Priscillianism in Spain and Donatism in Africa, kept their appeal for a long time.

Much can be said about the internal conflicts, the worldly ambitions, the intolerance of the Church. Yet the conclusion remains that while the political organization of the empire became increasingly rigid, unimaginative, and unsuccessful, the Church was mobile and resilient and provided space for those whom the State was unable to absorb. The bishops were the centers of large voluntary organizations. They founded and controlled charitable institutions. They defended their flocks against state officials. When the military situation grew worse, they often organized armed resistance against the barbarians. It seems to me impossible to deny that the prosperity of the Church was both a consequence and a cause of the decline of the state. People escaped from the state into the Church and weakened the state by giving their best to the Church. This is a situation which in its turn requires analysis and explanation. But its primary importance cannot be overlooked. The best men were working for the Church, not for the state.

Monasticism provides the most telling test of the capacity of the Church in the fourth century. The first hermits of the third century were Christians who in order to live a perfect Christian life abandoned both the pagan world and Christian communities and retired to the desert. This was no simple revolt against society. It was born out of a deep experience of struggle against the temptations of the flesh. Where there is a hermit, there is the devil. The devil was a powerful reality in late antiquity, and the hermit was both obsessed by the devil and determined to fight him. The devil pursued the hermit, but the hermit believed he had the right weapons to counter-attack. St. Anthony was the model hermit, and his biography written by St. Athanasius became the model for all lives of saints, one of the most influential books of any time. But the hermits were a clear menace to orderly Christian society. Each of them organized his life on his own lines, defying the authority of the bishops and claiming to be the embodiment of the perfect Christian. While official Christianity was now bent on organizing the world and on achieving a working compromise with worldly ambitions, the hermits expressed contempt for the world. On the other hand, as Athanasius himself recognized when he chose to write the life of St. Anthony, the hermits were the true representatives of Christian asceticism. They could not be eliminated. A solution of the dilemma was found in creating monastic orders were collective life according to strict ascetic rules replaced the hermit’s individual escape from the this world. First Pachomius, then Basil laid down the rules for the monasteries they founded and controlled.  St. Basil’s Rule inspires Eastern monastic rules even today.

Monasticism was introduced to the West in the second part of the fourth century. St. Jerome was the popularizer of the Eastern monastic ideals and found disciples among the most aristocratic lades of Rome. Later St. Augustine dictated rules for people inclining to monastic life both in his Regula ad servos dei (the authenticity of which is disputed) and in his ascetic treatises, such as De opere Monachorum and De saneta Virginitate. So his contemporary John Casssian in France. All these rules provided approved patterns of life and introduced manual work as a normal part of a monk’s day. They also established direct or indirect control by the ecclesiastical authorities over the monasteries. This is not to say that the sting was taken entirely out of monastic life. The monks, especially in the East, proved often to be unruly, rebellious, disturbingly fanatical, and ignorant. Much social discontent contributed to their psychology. But monasticism as a whole ceased to be a danger and became a source of power and inspiration for the Church. Ultimately, monasticism became a constructive force in society: it united men in a new form of communal life and gave them a considerable amount of economic independence and political self-government. When Cassiodorus added specific cultural activities to the ordinary life of his monks, a new chapter opened in the intellectual history of Europe. The monks were not helping the Empire to survive. Judged from the traditional point of view of the pagan society they were a subversive force. But they provided an alternative to pagan city life.

 

                                                     IV

 

Monasticism is the most obvious example of the way in which Christianity built something of its own which undermined the military and political structure of the Roman empire. Yet this is only part of the story.

As soon as the barbarians were let into the empire, the conflict between pagan society and Christian society changed its aspect. A new factor was introduced. It remained to be seen whether pagans or Christians would succeed better in dealing with the barbarians. From the end of the fourth century A.D. the Christian Church was asked not only to exorcise the devils, but to tame the barbarism. Next to Satan, the barbarians were the problem of the day. Like the devils, the barbarians could be found everywhere, but unlike the devils no simple  formula could chase them away. Here the Church had to cooperate with subtlety in a variety of situations: it had to prove itself superior to the pagans.

It was soon evident that the East was safer than the West. The main German pressure was on the Rhine and Danube. Asia was fairly secure. The military reservoir of Asia Minor provided enough solders for the emperors of Constantinople to counterbalance the influence of German mercenaries and to help to keep them in their place. Constantinople proved to be an impregnable fortress. But the military aspects of the situation cannot be separated from the social ones. The East was after not only because it was stronger, but also because it was less dissatisfied with the Roman administration. The concentration of wealth in a few hands did not go quite as far as in the West. City life survived better in the East, and consequently the peasants there were less hard pressed. If we except Egypt, the Easy had no parallel to the endemic revolts of the Bagaude and the circumcelliones* of Gaul, Spain, and Africa. In the West there were people wondering whether their lot would not be better under the barbarians. The French priest Salvianus, the author of the De gubernations dei, written in 450, was deeply impressed by the quality of the Germans; and there was the famous story of a Roman who lived among the Huns and explained why he was better off with them.

This evidence does not of course mean that the barbarians were greeted as liberators in any part of the empire. The slaves and serfs were not freed by the barbarians. They simply changed masters and had to bear the consequences of all the destructions and revolutions. It is true that the curiales** were progressively relieved of their burdens and that the corporate system of the late Roman empire fell into desuetude. But the curiales disappeared only because city life disappeared. The picture of the barbarians arriving as a liberation army is a fantastic travesty of the facts. What must be taken to account, however, is that in the West the psychological resistance to the barbarians was less strong than in the East. Not only military weakness, but defeatism paved the way for the German invasion of Italy and the western provinces.

We badly need systematic research on the regional differences in the attitude of the Church towards the Roman state. Generalizations are premature. But some facts are apparent. The Greek Fathers never produced searching criticisms of the Roman state comparable with those of St. Augustine and Salvian. On the contrary, St. John Chrysostom supported the anti-German party in Constantinople, and Synesius became a convert and a bishop after having outlined the programme of that party. It would seem that in the West, after having contributed to the weakening of the empire, the Church inclined to accept collaboration with the barbarians and even replacement of the Roman authorities by barbarian leaders. In the East (with the partial exception of Alexandria) the Church appreciated the military strength of the Roman state and the loyalties it commanded. No doubt the Eastern churches, too, did not hesitate to deprive Roman administration of the best men and of the best revenue whenever they could, but, at least from the second part of the fourth century, they threw in their weight with the new Rome.

Looking at both sides of the empire, one conclusion seems inescapable. The Church managed to have it both ways. It could help the ordinary man either in his fight against the barbarian or in his compromise with them. It succeeded where pagan society had little to offer either way. The educated pagan was by definition afraid of barbarians. There was no bridge between the aristocratic ideals of a pagan and the primitive violence of the German invader. In theory the barbarians could be idealized. Primitivism has always had its devotees. Alternatively, a few select barbarians could be redeemed by proper education and philosophical training. There was no objection to barbarians on racial grounds. But the ordinary barbarian as such was nothing more than a nightmare to the educated pagan.

The Christians had a different attitude and other possibilities. They could convert the barbarians and make them members of the Church. They had discovered a bridge between barbarians and civilization. Alternatively, the Church gave its moral support to the struggle against the barbarians: the defense of the empire could be presented as the defense of the Church. It is obvious tat if we had to analyze the process in detail we should have to take account the complications caused by the existence of doctrinal differences within the Church. It was commonly felt that an heretic was worse than a pagan. Thus the fight against German Arians was even more meritorious than the fight against German pagans. What really matters to us is that in the West the Church gradually replaced the dying State in dealing with the barbarians. In the East, on the other hand, the Church realized that the Roman state was much more vital and supported it in its fight against the barbarians. In the West, after having weakened the Roman state, the Church accepted its demise and acted independently in taming them. In the East, the Church almost identified itself with the Roman State of Constantinople.

In both cases, ordinary people needed protection and guidance. The wealthy classes were capable of looking after themselves either under the Roman emperor or under barbarian kings. But ordinary people wanted leaders. They found them in their bishops.

Above all, something had to be done in order to establish a communal life which both Romans and barbarians could share. A glance at the life of St. Severinus*** by Eugippius is enough to give the impression of what a courageous and imaginative Christian leader could do in difficult circumstances. In the fourth and fifth centuries the bishops did not make much of an effort to convert the barbarians who were living outside the borders of the Roman empire. But the were deeply concerned with the religion of the barbarians who settled in the empire. In other words, the conversion to Christianity  was part of the process whereby Germans  were, at least to some extent, romanized and made capable of living together with the citizens of the Roman empire. The process of romanizing the barbarians by christianizing them is an essential feature of the Roman empire between Constantine and Justinian. If it did not save the empire, at least in the West, it saved many features of Roman civilization.

The superiority of Christianity over paganism in dynamism and efficiency was already evident in the fourth century. The Christians could adapt themselves better to the new political and social situation and deal more efficiently wit the barbarians. A closer analysis of the relations between the pagans and Christians in the fourth century is therefore the necessary presupposition for any further study of the decline of the Roman Empire. Such analysis may show that in these field as well as in other fields the solitary Jacob Burckhardt was nearer the truth than any other historian of the 19th century. His book on Constantine was inspired by Gibbon and merciless in  its judgement of the emperor who christianized the empire, but was very careful to avoid confusion between Constantine and the cause he embraced. Burckhardt tried to understand what the Church had given to a declining empire and under what conditions it was prepared to do so. We are still wrestling with the same problem.


* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bagaudae
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circumcellions

**  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curiales

***  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Severinus_of_Noricum