# The Greek and Eastern Churches/Part 1/Division 1/Chapter 1

PART I
THE CHURCH AND THE EMPIRE
DIVISION I
THE AGE OF THE FATHERS
CHAPTER I
CHRISTIANITY IN THE EAST UNDER THE PAGAN EMPERORS
When we begin to inquire into the extension of Christianity, we are confronted by the questions: What geographical area was brought under evangelising influences?—By what time was each region reached?—To what extent was it actually Christianised? This last question is by far the most important of the three, and it is the most difficult to answer. We can obtain a fairly safe rough idea of the area over which some knowledge of the gospel had been carried and in which some Churches had been planted during the first three centuries of the Christian era. Italy, Spain, and Gaul in the West, Britain in the North, the Roman province of Africa in the South, had all received Christianity to some extent; but though ​Rome was the headquarters of Western Christendom, until long after this period the majority of its population, the Senate, and "Society," remained pagan. And beyond some parts of Italy and the African province, Christianity in Western Europe could not be regarded for most of this time as more than a ray penetrating the darkness. It is doubtful if this light had at all pierced the paganism of the German forest villages. It is to the East that we must look for the chief triumphs of early missionary activity and the most vigorous life of the primitive Churches.
Religious movements are found to go forward in waves or tides rather than with a continuous, even flow. There are times of revival alternating with flat, dull, comparatively fruitless intervals. Three such times of revival may be seen in the Christian history of the first three centuries.
The first was the Apostolic Age. In that period, "beginning at Jerusalem," the gospel was first deliberately spread in the surrounding area. Next, Samaria was systematically evangelised. But soon it was seen that the fire kindled at Pentecost was not to be confined to officially organised missions. The pilgrims who had heard St. Peter at that feast carried the astonishing news home with them and spread it among their own people, and it is not unlikely that Rome first heard of the gospel in this way. Then the scattering of the Jerusalem Church, owing to persecution by the Sanhedrin and afterwards by Herod Agrippa, sent its members abroad to carry the seed of the kingdom of heaven wherever they went, for in these early days of enthusiasm every Christian was called to be a missionary. An important step forward was taken when a Gentile Church originating in the irresponsible efforts of certain entirely unofficial Greek Christians was established at Antioch; for this Church became the centre of Hellenic Christianity, while Jerusalem remained only the headquarters of Jewish Christianity. It proved to be the most live Church of the Apostolic Age. Its charities outflowed in gifts for the Christians at Jerusalem when they were suffering from a famine; and its missionary zeal was ​proved by its equipping the only definitely organised preaching expeditions to the heathen world in these early days of which we have any account. Thus in very ancient times this great Church came to the front, a position it maintained for centuries as the metropolis of Christianity in Syria. Chiefly owing to the work of St. Paul, who had been sent out by the Church at Antioch as a companion to Barnabas, at that time a more prominent person, the gospel soon reached Cyprus, the south and west of Asia Minor, Macedonia and Achaia, and even extended as far as Illyricum. After Jerusalem and Antioch—the two metropolitan centres—the chief Christian cities in the Apostolic Age were Ephesus, the capital of Asia; Thessalonica, the capital of South Macedonia; and Corinth, the capital of Achaia; to which must be added the one great outpost of the Apostolic Church in the West, Rome itself, the seat of the empire. It is possible that a Church arose in this early period at Alexandria, the metropolis of Egypt, although but little weight can be attached to the legend that this Church was founded by St. Mark, since it does not appear in any extant writing of Clement or Origen, and is first met with in Eusebius, who only records it as a tradition.
Nothing is more significant of the courage and confidence of the early Christian evangelists than the fact that from the first they seized on metropolitan centres for their missions. In St. Paul these characteristics led to a magnificent prolepsis. With an enthusiasm which would have been pretentious if it had not sprung from faith and afterwards found justification in fact, the apostle spoke largely of Roman provinces—"Asia," "Macedonia," "Achaia"—as though they were already won, when he had done little more than plant his standard in their chief towns. For generations Christianity was a town religion. The intelligence, quickness, and energy of urban populations responded more readily to the new appeal of the gospel than the slower and more conservative nature of the ​country folk. Still there was a radiation from the town centres that affected the surrounding regions in various degrees. Thus in writing to the Corinthians St. Paul is able to include "all the saints which are in the whole of Achaia. No reliance can be placed on unauthenticated traditions of the labours of other apostles in various parts of the world, especially as the rivalry among the Churches led to an eager desire to claim apostolic origin—and consequent authority—wherever any pretence of the kind could be put forward. During the later decades of the first century the history of the Church is plunged into obscurity only partially illumined here and there by transient gleams. The Johannine writings throw some light on the district of Ephesus, and indicate that in their early days Hellenistic thought was already affecting the Churches of that part of Asia. The Epistle of Clement (a.d. 95) shows us the Church at Corinth, factious as in the days of St. Paul, rebuked by her sister Church at Rome for unchristian envy and for lack of the grace of love in dismissing her elders. If the Didaché may be assigned to so early a period, we have in this little Church Manual a vivid picture of the life of a small community of Gentile Christians, probably in Syria, severely antagonistic to the Jews, and kept in touch with other Churches by the visits of travelling Christians known as "apostles" and "prophets."
The destruction of Jerusalem by Titus (a.d. 70) and the consequent ruin of the Jewish State and power had a mixed effect on the condition of the Christians. On the one hand, it freed them from the persecution of their worst enemies; on the other hand, it revealed to the world the distinction between Christianity and Judaism. ​The Christians had taken no part in the revolt; on the eve of the siege they had withdrawn to Pella. In early times they had been treated favourably by the officials of the imperial Government. St. Luke takes great pains to make this clear, and his testimony is supported by St. Paul, who always writes respectfully of the law and authority of Rome. Nero's savage massacre of Christians at Rome does not indicate any widespread persecution, although the new attitude of bitter antagonism to the imperial Government taken by the Apocalypse—so completely the reverse of that maintained by earlier New Testament books—may be traced to the shock produced by that frightful outrage among the Churches of the East. Professor Ramsay considers that the attitude of Rome towards the Christians was changed by the Emperor Vespasian. But if so it is very remarkable that no tradition to that effect has been preserved by the ecclesiastical writers. In point of fact, Christianity was always illegal, until it was adopted by Constantine, although it enjoyed periods of comparative immunity from persecution and was favoured by one or two direct acts of indulgence. During all this time it was not a "licensed religion" as was the case with Judaism, and it was never lawful to propagate a religion without special licence. Judaism being licensed—at all events for Jews—Christianity was not molested so long as it was regarded as only a phase of the recognised religion of the Jews; but after a.d. 70, when the two faiths stood apart in the full light of day, this confusion with its consequent protection of the Church was no longer possible.
It is true that Rome showed a large-minded, practical tolerance in leaving to its conquered provinces the enjoyment of their own religions. As far as any religious faith remained with the officials, they would think it as well not to offend the indigenous divinities, and the Roman genius for government avoided needless irritation. But this did ​not allow of the propagation of foreign religions in different parts of the empire. No doubt such religions were spread in wild confusion; but for the most part they were content to exist side by side, without molesting one another, like the various species of birds that live together in a wood. They even went farther than this: they adopted one another's rites and legends, welded together, united in a syncretic amalgam. Such a process could be encouraged as helping towards the unification of the empire. But Christianity was of a very different temper. Enthusiastically missionary, pushing, and aggressive, it was intolerant of any other faith, since it claimed to be the one absolute faith of the one true God, and regarded all other religions as false and wicked and their divinities as demons to be denounced and cast out. For this reason the Christians were very unpopular. Some of them did not hesitate to pour scorn and contempt on the superstition of their neighbours to an extent that was not only insulting, but, as sincere pagans believed, even dangerous; and earthquakes and pestilences were attributed to the anger of the gods at the "atheism" of the Christians. Consequently, it was common for a great natural calamity to be followed by an outbreak against the Christians who were supposed to have provoked it. Thus they frequently suffered from the persecution of panics. Then their refusal to share in the public games while they declaimed against the lewdness of the theatre and the bloodthirsty cruelty of the amphitheatre, their reluctance to join in popular holidays or to accept municipal offices which involved pagan sacrificial rites, and their reiterated prediction of the coming judgment and approaching end of the world by fire, resulted in their being regarded as "enemies of the human race." We can well understand how a Government that was nervously anxious to prevent disorder in its vast and incongruous dominions would be averse to the spread of a sect whose presence provoked antagonism and introduced a disintegrating element into society. ​Above all, the new, monstrous cult of the emperor, which was supposed to carry with it the worship of the incarnate genius of Rome, was peculiarly obnoxious to the Christians, whose outspoken repudiation of it laid them open to a charge of treason, to the terrible accusation of læsæ majestatis. For these reasons they were always liable to persecution.
The attack assumed various forms. Sometimes it was a mere rising of a fanatical mob, though, as in the Turkish dominions to-day, there might be good reason for supposing that this was winked at or even instigated by the authorities; sometimes it was a case of prosecution by a private individual, before a magistrate who may have been reluctant to put the law in force and anxious to find an excuse for acquitting his prisoner; sometimes it was directly ordered by the emperor, It was only in the latter—a much more rare—case that a serious, widespread persecution took place. There is no evidence that any such persecution, as a deliberate act of State policy, was experienced under Vespasian or Titus, or that those emperors had any idea whatever of eradicating the then obscure sect of the Christians. Domitian (a.d. 81–96) does appear to have cast his suspicious eye on these dangerous innovators, and probably his execution of persons of high position for "atheism" and for turning aside to "customs of the Jews" was an attack upon Christians. But the known instances are few. Irenreus's statement that St. John was banished to Patmos in the reign of Domitian is an indication that there was then some persecution in the East; but, as we have seen, sporadic persecution was always possible, and probably it never entirely ceased during these times. There is no sign of an extensive general persecution under Domitian.
When we come to the second century, the history of the Early Church begins to emerge out of obscurity in two quarters of great interest, during the reign of Trajan (a.d. 98–117). First we have Pliny's correspondence with the ​emperor, from which we learn that in Bithynia the temples were almost forsaken, that there was no sale for sacrificial victims, and that the Christians were in a majority of the population. Pliny as proconsul had prosecuted inquiries into this serious condition of his province, putting two deaconesses to the torture, to extract from them the secrets of the sect; but ho could ascertain nothing against them. Still, he regarded Christianity as a " depraved and immoderate superstition," and he had condemned many of its adherents to death. Being a humane man and not selfreliant, Pliny was perplexed at the problem that faced him. He shrank from the drastic measures that would be involved in the attempt to stem the popular movement; yet this movement was illegal. In fact, it was now doubly obnoxious to the law, because Trajan had recently issued a rescript forbidding the existence of secret societies, and the churches appeared to be such societies. Ultimately this difficulty was got over by the enrolment of them as burial societies, since an exception was made in favour of those serviceable clubs. Trajan's brief, decisive answer to Pliny's inquiry as to how he should treat the Christians is highly significant. There is to be no police hunt for these people, and informers are not to be encouraged. But when Christians are actually prosecuted they must be punished. We can have no question as to what that means; the penalty is death. Dr. Lightfoot regarded this as a merciful rescript; and no doubt it was merciful in intention. Nevertheless, now for the first time—as far as we are aware—Christianity as such is declared to be a capital crime. Previously it was this constructively; henceforth it is to be so explicitly, on the authority of the emperor.
The second case in which we have a gleam of light thrown on the state of the Church in the reign of Trajan is that of the seven Ignatian letters now widely accepted in their shorter Greek form. Ignatius, the bishop of ​Antioch, is taken to Rome during this reign to be killed by wild beasts in the Coliseum.
Hadrian (a.d. 117–138), the "grand monarch" who made it his pride to beautify the cities of his empire with magnificent buildings while he lived in splendour and luxury, had none of the rigour of the stern soldier Trajan, and he does not appear to have taken any part himself in the persecution of Christians. Yet there were instances of martyrdom even under his easy rule; and the insurrection of the Jews stirred up by Bar Cochbar (a.d. 131) led to great slaughter of Christians wherever their old enemies got the upper hand of the Roman Government. This demolished the last remnant of confusion between Christianity and Judaism in the official mind.
Formerly it was customary to regard the reign of the just, conscientious emperor Antoninus Pius (a.d. 138–161) as free from the stain of persecution; but that agreeable delusion had to be abandoned a few years ago, when the date of the martyrdom of Polycarp, the aged bishop of Smyrna and teacher of Ignatius, was ascertained to fall within this reign (a.d. 155 or 156). Still, it was a local affair, largely instigated by Jewish animosity, with which the emperor was not directly concerned. His successor, the gentle Marcus Aurelius, saint and philosopher (a.d. 161–180), must be held responsible for the savage persecution of the Christians at Lyons and Vienne—so graphically described in the letter from those Churches to their brethren in Asia Minor—since he had been consulted by the local authorities. His own reference to the Christians shows that he regarded them as obstinate, self-advertising fanatics whose folly was a menace to public order. Marcus Aurelius went beyond Trajan both in directly instigating persecution and in reviving the odious practice of employing informers. According to Melito of Sardis, the persecution spread to Asia Minor, and from Athenagoras we should conclude that it extended over a wide area. This is the period of the early apologists, ​Quadratus and Aristides writing in the reign of Hadrian, Justin Martyr and Athenagoras in the days of the Antonines. The calm, courageous dignity of the defence of Christianity now offered to the Government by men who put it forth at the risk of torture and death, is as striking as its intellectual vigour and rare moral enthusiasm. It never descends to cringing excuses, cowardly subterfuges, or angry retorts, although it is always prepared to drive the war of argument into the enemy's territory. Calm, open, frank, respectful, it reveals its authors as men who are certain that they can justify their position and confident of the future triumph of their cause, while they are quite ready to shed their own blood in the athletics of martyrdom.
Nowhere is the irony of history more manifest than in the fact that when the two best of the Roman emperors, Antoninus Pius and Marcus Aurelius, were followed by one of the most worthless in the person of Commodus (a.d. 180–192), persecution was arrested and a season of prosperity hitherto unparalleled set in for the Christians. This idle, dissolute young man had not sufficient seriousness of purpose to persecute, and he seems to have taken a stupid pleasure in reversing his father's policy. At the same time, Marcia, his favourite mistress, was distinctly friendly to the Christians, among whom she appears to have been brought up in her humbler days; in particular she exerted herself to have the exiles recalled from Sicily. Now for the first time Christians were to be seen and recognised as such in the imperial court.
At this point the second period of activity and growth in the Church begins. With the exception of one short interval of persecution a long summer of prosperity had now set in. Commodus was succeeded by Septimius Severus (a.d. 193–211), a good emperor reigning well, and therefore a persecutor of the Christians. But his antagonism to the growing Church appears to have been provoked by the extravagances of those Puritans of the second century, the Montanists. There are two sides to ​this matter. The Montanists perceived that with growth in numbers, wealth, and general prosperity, the Church was losing its early purity and the fine, heroic enthusiasm of simpler times. They not only practised a new rigour of discipline within the Church; they also showed themselves eager to grasp the martyr's crown by provoking the antagonism of the authorities. Now, Septimius Severus while on progress in the East had come under the influence of the priests of Isis and Serapis, among the most bitter of the antagonists of the Christians. It is not surprising, therefore, that under these circumstances he issued a decree forbidding the propagation of new doctrines or any change of religions (a.d. 203), a rather inconsistent thing to do considering that he himself had just been initiated into the Egyptian mysteries. But the decree was simply aimed at the Christians, who were the chief, if not the sole, sufferers from it. The consequent persecution extended along North Africa and was felt severely in Egypt, where Leonidas, the father of Origen, was the first to seal his faith with his blood. Here too was the scene of the romance of Potameia, the beautiful, gifted girl who won over her military custodian Basilides to follow her in martyrdom. After this we come to forty years of peace, not indeed without occasional local outbreaks of persecution—for Christianity was illegal all this time—but with no serious attempt to suppress the growing Church, which is now seen standing out in broad daylight and challenging the world's attention. One emperor, Alexander Severus, has a statue of Christ set up in his palace by the side of statues of Abraham and Orpheus; another, Philip the Arabian, is even rumoured to have been a Christian, though his celebration of the secular games contradicts that notion.
Thus all seemed favourable, and the Church, growing strong and rich, might consider that since she had weathered the storms of her early days she could now look forward to a course of unimpeded progress, till the ​whole empire was won for the dominion of Christ, when there fell upon her a violent persecution, in comparison with which all previous attacks were slight and local. This was the great Decian persecution (a.d. 250). The emperor Decius, coming to the throne of what appeared to be a decaying empire, determined to make a supreme effort to restore the old Roman virtue and vigour. In particular he regarded the Christians as the most dangerous innovators of the ancient customs. Accordingly he entered on the huge task of putting an end to Christianity. The persecution which followed was a life-and-death struggle. It mainly differed from previous persecutions in being carried on by a strong, determined man in pursuance of a deliberate policy to root out what its author believed to be the most serious menace to the State, an imperium in imperio, the growth of which threatened to choke the civil power. Thus instigated by Decius himself, this tremendous onslaught on the Church—incomparably more searching and uncompromising than anything that preceded it—was the first really general persecution, the first attempt of Rome to use all its might for the utter extirpation of Christianity. And it failed. The Church proved too strong for the State. When Decius perished miserably in a morass during a war with the Goths, the persecution flickered out and faded away. Gallus revived it faintly and Valerian more seriously, until his capture by the Persians was promptly followed by his son Gallienus's issue of the first edict of toleration (a.d. 260). There had been hosts of martyrs; but multitudes of weaker men and women had been terrified into apostasy, and the Church was now face to face with the grave problem of "the lapsed," a problem that led to a serious division. Still, the fiery ordeal had been a great purgation, and now again the Christians enjoyed a long spell of liberty, with ample opportunities for pushing their conquests forward in this third season of vigorous life and missionary energy.
It would seem that this time the victory was secure. ​But once again the forces of the enemy were marshalled for a last decisive conflict. After more than forty years of peace and prosperity the most severe of all the persecutions was commenced. Christianity was now a popularly recognised religion; in the cities large and imposing churches were among the chief public buildings; many Christians were to be found in high places at court; and the emperor Diocletian was favourably disposed to them. Although the persecution bears his name, and although as senior Augustus he was actually responsible for it and was even induced to sign the earlier edicts, its real author was his colleague Galerius, whom Lactantius calls the "Wild Beast"; and the final edict commanding all Christians to sacrifice or die was issued by another colleague, Maximian, when the old emperor was laid aside in broken health and in a state of melancholy bordering on insanity. Eusebius gives us a vivid account of the martyrs of Palestine under this last desperate attempt to stamp out Christianity. But if the Decian persecution with all the resources of the State to support it had failed half a century before, the idea of destroying Christianity now that it had grown so much stronger was preposterous. All this bloodshed was so much waste as far as the aims of the persecutors were concerned. In the agonies of his deathbed, its author Galerius issued an edict putting a stop to it and even commanding the Christians to pray for him (a.d. 311). After this it is not so very wonderful that two years later Constantine went over to the winning side and openly adopted Christianity; for he was an astute ruler who had seen the outbreak of the persecution from Diocletian's court and observed its utter futility.
It is not easy to estimate the position attained by the victorious Church in the East after these centuries of chequered history, but a rough idea may be formed from the data afforded us by history. Professor Harnack points to Asia Minor as "the Christian country κατ' ἐξοχήν ​during the pre-Constantine era." Half Nicomedia was now Christian; Bithynia and Western Pisidia were widely Christianised; in Asia and Caria the Christians were very numerous; the southern provinces of Syria, Pamphilia, and Isauria sent twenty-five bishops to the Nicene Council and Cilicia sent nine. Thrace, Macedonia, Dardania, Epirus, and Greece were all provinces of the Church with their own metropolitans, though little is known of their history. North and west there were young churches planted as far away as the banks of the Danube, and missionary work was already begun among the Goths to the north-west of the Black Sea.
In Palestine there was quite a number of churches—Professor Harnack gives the names of about thirty—with Jerusalem as their capital. There were three churches in Phoenicia and a good number in Cœle-Syria, with the important bishopric of Antioch at their head. Less than a century after this time Chrysosotom reckons the number of members of the chief church—perhaps, as Gibbon considered, meaning the total Christian population of this city—to be 100,000. Then there were churches in Arabia, and as early as the time of Origen numerous bishoprics in towns south of the Hauran. In Egypt the Christians were very numerous, those in Alexandria far outnumbering the Jews; churches were flourishing in the Nile towns as far up as Philæ and on the two oases. Lastly, Edessa was now an important Christian centre, and there were several churches in Mesopotamia, and some even beyond the confines of the empire in Parthia and Persia.
* ↑ φασίν, etc., Hist. Eccl. ii. 16.
* ↑ 2 Cor. i. 1.
* ↑ Matthew in Ethiopia; Andrew in Asia Minor, Thrace, Macedonia, and Greece; Philip in the same wide region, with the addition of Scythia and even Gaul; Matthias in Ethiopia; Simon the Zealot in Egypt, Lybia, and Mauritania; Thaddæus preaching the gospel in the African language; Thomas in Parthia and India. There is much confusion and contradiction among the legends.
* ↑ Especially if "the number of the beast" represents Nero.
* ↑ The Church in the Roman Empire, pp. 256 ff.
* ↑ By Gallienus, and again by Galerius.
* ↑ The rule to be observed was, Cujus regio, ejus religio.
* ↑ Adv. Hær. v. 30.
* ↑ Pliny, Epis. x. 96.
* ↑ Pliny, Epis. x. 97.
* ↑ Their genuineness is vindicated by Zahn and Lightfoot and admitted by Harnack, Kruger, etc.
* ↑ Eusebius, Hist. Eccl. v. 1.
* ↑ Ibid. iv. 13.
* ↑ Apol. i. 2.
* ↑ Ensebius, Hist. Eccl. vi. 34.
* ↑ De Martyribus Palæstinæ—following book viii. of Hist. Eccl.
* ↑ Expansion of Christianity, Eng. Trans., vol. ii. p. 326.