Chapter 7 The Roman World
Section
6
The
crisis of the 200s shattered the Roman world in all its aspects. Drastic
reforms had to be implemented if the empire were to survive. This was
the goal of the Emperor Diocletian, who assumed the purple mantle of
imperial authority in 284. Diocletian succeeded in giving the empire
another two centuries of life, but in the process he completely
transformed it, particularly the western provinces. Neither the
political system, nor even the intellectual world of what we call the
Late Roman Empire can be compared with the Roman imperial civilization
of the first three centuries A.D.
The
Diocletian Reforms
In an effort to stem the
floodtide that was steadily undermining the empire’s foundations, in
the late 200s and early 300s the Emperor Diocletian transformed the
principate into an absolute and autocratic monarchy. The emperor was no
longer simply the princeps, or first citizen, but rather the dominus, or
master. Drawing on eastern traditions of monarchy, the emperor
surrounded himself with elaborate ceremony and pomp. No longer
continuing the idea of being a first among equals, he now placed himself
far above his subjects, and ruled over them with no accountability to
anyone. Soon, he became Dominus et Deus, Master and God, ruling
the empire from a state of divine grandeur and isolated splendor.
A
new social order. Diocletian’s reforms
transformed Roman imperial society into a bureaucratic and rigid
order that might best be compared to a prison camp. Every aspect of life
was regulated by the central imperial administration. Individual freedom
was a privilege of the past—under Diocletian’s decrees sons must
follow the trades and social positions of their fathers. Thus soldier's sons must become soldiers, while baker’s sons must become
bakers. Peasants were permanently tied to the land they farmed as coloni.
Even the provincial organization was reviewed and revised. Diocletian
made provinces smaller for better administrative control, and grouped
them together into four large divisions called prefectures. Local
aristocrats were subjected to the scrutiny of imperial civil servants
and lost all their independence and political power. The army was
increased to 500,000 men in all, as it became increasingly important and
received the full attention of the emperor himself.
A
new economic order. The economy also came under full state direction
and control. Prices of goods and services were rigidly controlled. A new
tax system raised more money than ever for the new administration and
for the army. Under the increasing pressures of maintaining security,
all aspects of the economy were regulated. Factories producing weapons
in the eastern cities of the empire, for example, were given quotas and
forbidden to shut down, even when they were losing money. Everywhere,
commercial and manufacturing activities were subordinated to the needs
of imperial defense.
Initially, these drastic reforms were successful. Diocletian did
save the empire from falling into anarchy or even disappearing. But the
price was enormous, particularly in the loss of individual freedom and
intellectual originality. Rome was no longer a civilization expanding
but a civilization on the defensive. The individualism of the
Hellenistic world and the early empire gave way to growing conformity.
People ceased to be citizens so much as subjects, anonymous parts of a
state-engineered society.
Political
reforms.
As part of his efforts to improve the efficiency of imperial
administration, Diocletian divided the empire in two. Ruling the eastern
half himself, he appointed a co-emperor to rule the western provinces.
In addition, both emperors named assistants, called Caesars, who were
supposed to help administer the empire and eventually succeed peacefully
to the imperial purple in their turn. So long as Diocletian remained
emperor, these arrangements worked reasonably well, and in 305 he
retired to “grow cabbages.” His co-emperor also retired so that the
two Caesars could assume the purple at the same time.
Soon, however, the two new emperors quarreled and the empire
plunged once more into civil war. Not until 312 did Constantine, the son
of one of the original Caesars, emerge victorious and restore peace
throughout the empire. Although at first he maintained the system of
divided rule, governing the western provinces himself, in 337
Constantine did away with the system and restored the unity of the
empire. In other respects, however, Constantine continued Diocletian’s
policies of rigid state control over society.
As emperor, Constantine made two personal decisions that would
profoundly affect the direction of the future empire. First, he made
Christianity legal and encouraged its development throughout the Empire
under the auspices of the state. Second, he established a second
imperial capital, named Constantinople, on the site of the tiny
village of Byzantium on the European shore of the Bosphorus, which
separated Asia Minor from Europe. While Constantine hoped to use
Christianity to revitalize the unity of the empire, like Diocletian, he
recognized that the balance of wealth and power in the empire had
shifted from the west to the east—it was for this reason that he
tacitly admitted a continuing division of the empire by creating
Constantinople as a second imperial capital.
Constantine’s
conversion to Christianity. According to tradition,
Constantine’s conversion to Christianity was triggered by a personal
experience that occurred just before the the last battle of the civil
wars that brought him uncontested power in 312. Before the battle the
emperor apparently saw a vision of the cross in the sky, and heard the
words, “In hoc signo vince,” “In this sign, conquer.” When he
did indeed conquer, Constantine decided to become a devotee of the
Christian faith. In 313, he issued the Edict of Milan, making
Christianity legal. Although Constantine did not go so far as to make
Christianity the state religion, he certainly favored it and under his
patronage the new religion began to flourish throughout the empire.
The
Triumph of Christianity
From a tiny religious
minority, Christians soon grew to constitute a majority of the
population. Constantine’s successors were raised in the doctrines of
the faith and further favored it. Finally, in 380, the Emperor
Theodosius the Great outlawed all religious worship in the empire except
that of Christianity. Paganism, which had once held sway throughout the
Greco-Roman world, soon all but disappeared from the territories of the
Roman world.
Development
of the church. Early Christian congregations were not only
spiritual organizations, but also acted as closely knit families. They
provided all kinds of support for their members, such as nursing and
burial services, and provision of food and shelter for the poor. As
crisis rocked the foundations of the Roman world, Christianity provided
emotional and physical support and reassurance for its growing
membership.
Under imperial
patronage, however, Christianity itself began to change. Part of its
early success had been due to the development of special ceremonies and
rituals designed to inspire people’s faith and make them feel closer
to Christ. Those who organized and performed these ceremonies gradually
became a special class within Christianity. They derived their authority
from the apostles, or disciples of Jesus, who had passed on the
authority given them by Christ himself to their own followers and
helpers through a “laying on of hands.” Called priests, those who
were part of this apostolic
succession were soon distinguished from the laity, or general
congregation of the church.
Over time, distinctions also appeared even within the priesthood.
Christianity was primarily a urban religion. As the church expanded, and
particularly as it became the beneficiary of legacies left by its
members in gifts of property or money with which to carry on its
charitable and missionary activities, it also began to develop an
administrative structure. Soon, a single member of the clergy emerged in
most cities who had authority over all other members of the clergy
within the region. These officials were called bishops.
The adoption of Christianity as the state religion not only
reinforced such a hierarchical development but accelerated it. Bishops
in the large cities of the empire, for example, began to call themselves
metropolitans, and to claim jurisdiction over the clergy in entire
provinces. By the 300s, the heads of the oldest and largest Christian congregations in Rome, Jerusalem, Antioch, Alexandria, and
Constantinople, were being called patriarchs,
and claimed authority even over the metropolitans. Primarily
administrators, these bishops, metropolitans and patriarchs were also
the leaders in the development of Christian doctrine.
At first, questions concerning correct doctrine and church
organization were handled by general councils, with representatives from
all the major churches in attendance. Councils continued to be an
important part of the church government, but increasingly the position
of the bishops of Rome and of Constantinople, as the leading churchmen
in the imperial capitals, also became particularly influential and
authoritative. The Roman bishops in particular claimed primacy in the Christian
world, by arguing that the church in Rome had been founded by
Saints Peter and Paul, both of whom were martyred there.
Saint Peter was generally accepted by the Christian community as
having founded the Roman church and acted as its first bishop. Consequently, later bishops of Rome were seen as Peter’s
spiritual heirs. Reinforcing their claim to primacy, the bishops of Rome
interpreted a verse from the Gospel of Matthew, in which Christ
apparently gave Peter “the keys of the kingdom of heaven,” to mean
that all subsequent Roman bishops would also inherit the keys—a
doctrine known as the Petrine
Succession. Although other metropolitans and patriarchs, as well as
many ordinary bishops, disputed the Petrine Succession for centuries, in
445 the Emperor Valentinian III decreed that all western bishops should
acknowledge the authority of the bishop of Rome, or pope
as he was now being called, after the Latin word for father.
Increasingly, the church organized itself along the same lines as the
imperial administration.
In fact, such developments were probably in keeping with Constantine’s original decision to foster the church as a potential source of unity for binding the empire back together. Ironically, however, the more closely organized the church became, the greater became the dangers it faced from internal disputes over doctrine.
The
problem of heresy. Heresy, or beliefs that did not conform to the
accepted teachings of the main body of the church, seriously threatened
to destroy the unity of Christianity in its early years of imperial
patronage. During the first major crisis over doctrine, the so-called Arian
heresy, after the views of a priest named Arius, became the subject
of a church council summoned by Constantine to settle the doctrinal
controversy once and for all and to establish a uniform doctrine for all
of the Christian community.
Arius argued that Christ, being God’s son, could not be the
same as God himself and must therefore have been created by God the
Father. This entirely rational view was opposed by the followers of
Saint Athenasius, who argued that it was a matter of correct faith to
accept that the Father and the Son, and the Holy Spirit, all mentioned
in the Gospels, were co-eternal, co-equal, and made of the same
substance. Eventually, this view of the Christian Trinity prevailed and
Arianism was branded a heresy and swept out of the church.
Other heresies were dealt with in the same manner, usually
debated in a church council and then eventually declared beyond the
bounds of true Christianity. Although to the modern observer such
doctrinal questions might seem trivial, for Christians of the times they
were of absolute importance—since only the correct doctrine could
assure people of the chance for salvation and eternal life. Anyone who
threatened such certainty of salvation was simply asking for trouble.
Monasticism.
As the church became increasingly involved in the daily affairs of
people’s lives after its recognition as the state religion, many
within its fold became concerned that it was losing sight of the
original message of Christ. In an effort to recapture the ascetic and
contemplative spirit they believed Jesus had wanted, such pious
individuals often turned toward monasticism, becoming monks and living
alone to practice a life of asceticism and self-denial in order to
prepare for the life to come. During the 300s, monasticism spread like
wildfire throughout the church, especially in the east, where the
monastic movement first emerged.
As the clergy became more and more involved in the affairs of
administration and the life of the flesh, more and more lay people
abandoned the world around them in favor of isolation in the deserts and
woods and mountains. Some went to extreme lengths to practice their
devotion to God by denying the needs of the flesh. St. Simeon Stylites,
for example, lived on a platform atop a tall pole for 37 years. Others
had themselves cemented into tiny cubby holes, with only small openings
through which they could be passed food and water. In such perfect
isolation they felt closer to God and better able to devote themselves
entirely to preparing for the next life rather than becoming caught in
the struggle for survival in the present life.
As monasticism reached new heights of self-torture, however,
eventually some in the church decided that a communal approach to
asceticism would be more productive. Perhaps the most influential of
these advocates of communal monasticism was Saint Basil. In a series of
writings, Basil developed plans and rules for monastic communities that
would replace the individual asceticism of the early monks. Instead of
self-denial, Basil suggested that hard work would better serve the needs
of both the individual ascetic and the Lord. Even with work to fill
their time, however, under Basil’s rule monks spent most of their time
in prayer and meditation, and monastic communities along this new model
preferred to establish themselves as far away from the “outer” world
as possible.
Barbarian Migrations and the Fall of Rome
The history of the western
Roman empire after the death of Constantine in 337 was almost entirely
conditioned by the constant struggle to keep its borders safe from
Germanic invaders. Military considerations became the main preoccupation
of the emperors and all the resources of the empire were aimed at trying
to protect the integrity of its borders. The empire was besieged and
constantly threatened on its frontiers along the Rhine, the Danube, and
the Euphrates. Neither the economy nor the manpower of the empire could
withstand invasions on so many fronts. Consequently, at the end of the
300s, the Romans had to concede territory to the invaders and allow them
to settle inside the empire as autonomous groups. In exchange, they
hoped the tribes would act as frontier guards against the tribes still
pressing in behind them. At the same time, Diocletian’s division of
the empire into eastern and western parts was revived, with Rome as the
capital of the west and Constantinople as capital of the east. By the
time of the Emperor Theodosius’s death in 395, this division had
become permanent.
The Goths. The first major group of barbarian peoples to enter the empire were the Goths, a Germanic people fleeing from the advancing hordes of central Asian steppe nomads, the Huns.
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Progressively Germanized, the western empire survived until 476
A.D. when Odoacer, a German chieftain, deposed Romulus Augustulus, the
last western Roman emperor. The eastern empire resisted the invaders on
its borders, but it too was forced progressively to withdraw into
itself. Although Constantinople remained the capital of “Rome in the
East” for another thousand years, at the end of that time the only
thing left to the emperors was the city itself and its immediate
surroundings.
Meanwhile, in the western provinces, Germanic tribes began to
roam at will, attacking cities and establishing kingdoms of their own in
the ruins of the Roman provinces. As the imperial communications network
began to break down, cities could no longer obtain enough food from the
countryside to sustain many people. Gradually, most cities were
abandoned as people drifted back into the countryside to find food and
some kind of security.
Civilization did not cease, but it retreated increasingly to the
local level as a new culture began to emerge from the amalgamation of
Germanic, Roman, and Christian elements. Only the memory of a united
empire under a single emperor remained alive, fanned by an ever present church hierarchy that survived the transition and began to pick up the
pieces after the fall of Rome itself. Both the ideal of a universal
empire and a universal church to sustain it would remain embedded in the
imagination of Europeans for centuries to come.