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Christians and Christianity in Ammianus Marcellinus

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 February 2009

E. D. Hunt
E. D. Hunt
Affiliation:
University of Durham
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Extract

Ammianus Marcellinus, by common consent the last great historian of Rome, rounds off his obituary notice of the emperor Constantius II (d. 361) with the following observation:

The plain simplicity of Christianity he obscured by an old woman's superstition; by intricate investigation instead of seriously trying to reconcile, he stirred up very many disputes, and as these spread widely he nourished them with arguments about words; with the result that crowds of bishops rushed hither and thither by means of public mounts on their way to synods (as they call them), and while he tried to make all their worship conform to his own will, he cut the sinews of the public transport service.

This is a perceptive judgement of the ecclesiastical politics of the reign of Constantius, remarkable in a pagan writer, and of exceptional significance in that it lies outside those very ‘arguments about words’ which contaminate all the Christian assessments of this emperor. Although Ammianus is unsympathetic to Constantius, he manages succinctly to grasp the basic drift of imperial policy, inherited from Constantine himself, of trying to enforce the emperor's view of doctrinal and ecclesiastical unity by the summoning of repeated episcopal councils and browbeating the bishops into agreement — thus paying lip-service to the independence of the church's judgements. To the observant outsider, this process was notable above all for the burden it placed on the cursus publicus, as the bishops went about their business around the empire now provided with official evectiones; and Ammianus' comment finds confirmation in the letter issued by eastern bishops attending one of the many councils of Constantius' reign, that at Sardica in 343, who complained of the ‘attrition’ of the transport service caused by the imperial summons.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Classical Quarterly , Volume 35 , Issue 1 , May 1985 , pp. 186 - 200
Copyright
Copyright © The Classical Association 1985

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References

* This paper first saw the light of day at a meeting of the Oxford Philological Society in October 1981; I am grateful for the comments made on that occasion, and more recently for the observations of Dr Jill Harries.

1 21.16.18 (References in these notes where no author is specified are to Ammianus Marcellinus).

2 Even modern discussions of Constantius' church policy tend to set too much store by the ‘opposition’ (Athanasian) version, and do not give the emperor the credit for following the precedents in these matters set by his father: e.g. Baus, Karl et al. The Imperial Church from Constantine to the Early Middle Ages (Engl. transl. London, 1980), ch. 3Google Scholar.

3 See appendix to the works of Hilary of Poitiers, Corp. Script. Eccl. Lat. 65, p. 64. On bishops and the imperial post at another council of Constantius', Rimini in 359, see Sulp. Sev. Chron. 2.41.

4 On Jovian, see 25.10.15, and below.

5 Barnes, T. D., The Sources of the Historia Augusta (Brussels, 1978), 117 ffGoogle Scholar.

6 See the comments of Photius, , Bibliotheca, cod. 77 (Henry, 158–9)Google Scholar, with Blockley, R. C., The Fragmentary Classicising Historians of the Later Roman Empire (Liverpool, 1981), 18 ffGoogle Scholar.

7 On ‘religio’ and ‘superstitio’ in Ammianus, see below, p. 199.1 cannot follow Camus, P. M., Ammien Marcellin (Paris, 1967), 249Google Scholar, in supposing that Ammianus is referring specifically to Constantius' Arianism.

8 First, in 1627, by Chifflet: see Thompson, E. A., The Historical Work of Ammianus Marcellinus (Cambridge, 1947), 114Google Scholar. Claudian has been blessed with the same misconception: Cameron, A., Claudian (Oxford, 1970), 214 ffGoogle Scholar.

9 Ensslin, W., Zur Geschichtsschreibung und Weltanschauung des Ammianus Marcellinus (Klio Beiheft 16, 1923), 96 ffGoogle Scholar. Cf. Pighi, G. B., RAC 1 (1950), 386–94Google Scholar; Demandt, A., Zeitkritik und Geschichtsbild im Werk Ammians (Bonn, 1965), 79 ff.Google Scholar; P. M. Camus, op. cit. 261 ff.; Geffcken, J., The Last Days of Greco-Roman Paganism (transl. MacCormack, S., Amsterdam, 1978), 187–8Google Scholar.

10 ‘The Demise of Paganism’, Traditio 35 (1979), 45–88, esp. 55 ffGoogle Scholar.

10 E. A. Thompson, op. cit. 111 ff.

12 The main thesis of D'Elia, S., ‘Ammiano Marcellino e il Cristianesimo’, Stud. Romani 10 (1962), 372–90Google Scholar; cf. Selem, A., ‘Considerazione circa Ammiano ed il Cristianesimo’, Riv. di cult. class. e med. 6 (1964), 224–61Google Scholar, and de la Beaumelle, L. Angliviel, ‘Remarques sur l'attitude d'Ammien Marcellin à l'égard du christianisme’, Mélanges offerts à W. Seston (Paris, 1974), 15–23Google Scholar. For criticism of this approach see Blockley, R. C., Ammianus Marcellinus, a study of his historiography and political thought (Brussels, 1975), ch. viiGoogle Scholar.

13 For the Harvard dissertation (1971) of Elliott, T. G., The Pagan Bias of Ammianus Marcellinus xiv–xxvGoogle Scholar, I am dependent on the synopsis in HSCP 79 (1975), 358Google Scholar. For a blast against the notion that literature was a significant part of pagan revival, see Cameron, A., ‘Paganism and literature in late fourth century Rome’, Fondation Hardt Entretiens, 23 (1977), 1–30Google Scholar.

14 Momigliano, A., ‘Pagan and Christian historiography in the fourth century a.d.’, in The Conflict between Paganism and Christianity in the Fourth Century (Oxford, 1963), 79–99Google Scholar, repr. in Essays in Ancient and Modern Historiography (Oxford, 1977), 107–26Google Scholar; , A. & Cameron, A., ‘Christianity and tradition in the historiography of the late Empire’, CQ n.s. 14 (1964), 316–28CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Cf. also Tränkle, H., ‘Ammianus Marcellinus als römischer Geschichtsschreiber’, Antike und Abendland, 11 (1962), 21–33CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

15 Cf. Tacitus, ' celebrated ‘quos…vulgus Christianos appellabat’, Ann. 15.44Google Scholar.

16 15.5.31 (Silvanus), 26.3.3 (Hilarinus); diplomacy — 20.7.7 (Bezabde), 29.5.15 (north Africa), 31.12.8–9, 15.6 (Adrianople).

17 27.10.2 (Mainz), 28.6.27 (Palladius).

18 21.2.5. Ammianus here secures a place in the history of Christian liturgy, with the first certain evidence for the celebration of Epiphany in the West: Pax, E., RAC 5 (1962), 902Google Scholar.

19 18.10.4. Anunianus is obviously aware of the reputation of Sapor II as a persecutor of the Christians: Labourt, J., Le Christianisme dans l'Empire Perse sous la Dynastie Sassanide (224–632) (Paris, 1904), ch. iiiGoogle Scholar; cf. Christensen, A., L'Iran sous les Sassanides 2 (Copenhagen, 1944), 267–8Google Scholar.

20 Cf. Paschoud, F., Roma Aeterna (Rome, 1967), 59–60Google Scholar.

21 15.7.6 ff. For general background see modern church histories, e.g. Frend, W. H. C., The Early Church (London, 1965), ch. 13Google Scholar; Chadwick, H., The Early Church (Harmondsworth, 1967), 136–45Google Scholar; K. Baus et al., loc. cit. (n. 2). Athanasius' own version of these events is at Hist Arian. 35–41.

22 For Ammianus and the ‘documents préfectoraux’ see Sabbah, G., La méthode d'Ammien Marcellin (Paris, 1978), 183–4Google Scholar. That Leontius was having trouble with the Christians is perhaps signalled by his arrest of the ringleader Petrus Valuomeres (15.7.4).

23 See the revealing papyrus documents discussed by Bell, H. I., Jews and Christians in Egypt (London, 1924), 45 ff., and esp. 53 ffGoogle Scholar.

24 Sozom. Hist. Eccl. 4.9.10.

25 15.3.7 ff. On the suspicious nature of Constantius see, among many passages, 16.8.2, 19.12.5, 21.16.8 ff.; with Funke, H., ‘Majestäts- und Magieprozesse bei Ammianus Marcellinus’, Jahrb. für Ant. und Christ. 10 (1967), at pp. 151 ffGoogle Scholar.

26 So A. & A. Cameron, op. cit., 323: ‘Ammianus refers to papal authority in terms which gladden the heart of the Catholic historian’, cf. Pietri, ch., Roma Christiana (Rome, 1976), 246Google Scholar.

27 Cf. Paschoud, loc. cit. (n. 20); Tränkle, op. cit. For Ammianus, Rome was the only fit burial-place for his hero Julian: 25.10.5.

28 16.10.13.

29 As reported by the pamphlet preserved in the Collectio Avellana, CSEL 35, 2; Theodoret, , Hist. Eccl. 2.17Google Scholar, has the agitation coming from senators' wives.

30 27.3.11 ff. On this episode, and other accounts (principally the partisan pamphlet in the Coll. Avell.), see Ch. Pietri, op. cit. 408 ff., with Lippold, A., Historia, 14 (1965), 119 ffGoogle Scholar. For the ‘basilica Sicinini’, cf. Jer. Chron. an. 366 (p. 244 Helm) — Jerome may himself have been a young eye-witness of the incident. Lippold disputes the traditional identification of the basilica with the church which was later to become S. Maria Maggiore.

31 Cf. his lament at 14.6.2 that the record was ‘nothing but riots, inns, and other such base activities’.

32 Especially his Ep. 22: Kelly, J. N. D., Jerome, his life, writings, and controversies (London, 1975), 108–9Google Scholar. Note also the famous remark allegedly addressed to Damasus by Praetextatus, Viventius' successor as urban prefect: ‘make me bishop of Rome, and I will be a Christian tomorrow’ (Jer. C. Ioh. Hier. 8 = PL 23,361).

33 For the ‘honestus advena’, see 14.6.12.

34 ‘Numen’ is Ammianus' favourite word for ‘divinity’: see, e.g., Ensslin, op. cit. 48 ff.; Camus, op. cit. 134 ff. I fail to see why Blockley, op. cit. 126, should say ‘it would more naturally be taken to indicate the Christian God and Christians alone’.

35 22.11.3 ff.

36 Hist. Aceph. 8, best read in Turner, C. H., Eccl. Occ. Monum. Iur. Ant. 1.2,666Google Scholar.

37 Ammianus must be wrong in stating that the murder of George followed the execution of the former dux Aegypti Artemius: the latter appears still to have been alive after George's death. See PLRE 1, 112.

38 Cf. 22.5.3; with Hist. Aceph. 10, and Julian, Ep. 110 Bidez.

39 I.e. Julian, Ep. 60 Bidez, quoted by Socr. Hist. Eccl. 3.3; cf. also Sozom. Hist. Eccl. 5.7. In the letter as preserved by Socrates Julian contents himself with merely offering ‘advice’ (380c, παραίνεσιν κα⋯ λόγους) to the Alexandrians, whereas Ammianus' summary (22.11.11) has him ‘threatening’ them (‘ minatus extrema’).

40 Ep. 60. 379c.

41 ibid. 378c; cf. Ep. 111 Bidez, 433a: ‘I am ashamed if anyone at all among the Alexandrians admits to being a Galilean’.

42 22.11.10, Hist. Aceph. 8.

43 According to Socr, and Sozom. (loc. citt.) George tried to build a church to replace, not a contemporary pagan shrine, but a deserted temple of Mithras: Christians mocked the human remains discovered. Note that in the case of George's two fellow-victims, Ammianus, 22.11.9, is clear that it was excessive Christian zeal which was to blame.

44 For the ‘patulae aures’ of Constantius, cf. among other passages 15.3.5, 18.3.6, 4.4.

45 22.11.5.

46 Cf. the victims of Valentinian venerated by the Christians in Milan, and the quaestor Eupraxius' advice to the emperor not to provide them with more martyrs: 27.7.5–6. At 22.11.9 Ammianus appears to allude, disapprovingly, to another Christian practice, the tonsure: Diodorus was unpopular because he ‘liberally cut off the young men's locks, thinking that even this mattered to the worship of gods’ (I can find no reference to this passage in the standard treatment of the Christian tonsure by Gobillot, P., RHE 21 [1925], 399–451Google Scholar).

47 22.12.8; cf. Thuc. 3.104. For Julian, and Daphne, , Downey, G., A History of Antioch in Syria from Seleucus to the Arab Conquest (Princeton, 1961), 387–8Google Scholar.

48 Cf. Julian himself, Misop. 361 b, and Libanius, Or. 60.5, who contemptuously do not identify the body (merely the ‘corpse’). Christian accounts, Joh. Chrys. In S. Babylam, 15 (PG 50, 555), Sozom. 5.19.17, refer to ‘bodies’ close to the oracle, but single out Babylas.

49 22.13.2.

50 Joh. Chrys. op. cit. (PG 50, 559): the martyr's prayers called down the fire. Cf. Sozom. 5.20.5.

51 For Asclepiades visiting Julian, see his Against the Cynic Heracleius, 224 d.

52 23.1.2–3, with Rufin. Hist. Eccl. 10.38–40. For the whole episode, in relation to Julian's attitude to the Jews, see Avi-Yonah, M., The Jews of Palestine (Engl. transl. Oxford, 1976), ch. viiiGoogle Scholar. Recent evidence on the date of the building project, in May 363 (on which see Bowersock, G. W., Julian the Apostate [London, 1978]Google Scholar, appendix i), suggests that Ammianus has misplaced the episode to the time before Julian's departure for Persia, which took place on 5 March 363.

53 In the words of Avi-Yonah, op. cit. ‘to return Jerusalem to the Jews’; cf. my Holy Land Pilgrimage in the Later Roman Empire AD 312–460 (Oxford, 1982), 156–7Google Scholar (the authenticity of Julian's letter to the Jews, Ep. 51 Loeb, is a matter of dispute). On Ammianus' treatment of this episode, cf. Tränkle, op. cit. (n. 14), 32.

54 On Julian's ‘ostentation’ and desire for ‘empty renown’, cf. 22.7.3, 14.3.

55 22.5.4.

56 14.10.2. On the fate of Hermogenes, killed by partisans of bishop Paul of Constantinople, see Jerome, , Chron. an. 342Google Scholar (p. 235 Helm), Socr. Hist. Eccl. 2.13, Sozom. Hist. Eccl. 3.7.6; the riot is also mentioned in Libanius' autobiographical oration, ch. 44, but again without reference to its Christian context.

57 18.7.7, cf. 19.3.1. Cameron, A. (Claudian, 224 ff.)Google Scholar drew attention to Claudian's similar ridicule of the magister equitum Jacob.

58 Cf. Julian, , Misop. 344Google Scholar a, C. Galil. 335 ff. (p. 414 Loeb ‘you have filled the whole world with tombs and sepulchres, and yet in your scriptures it is nowhere said that you must grovel among tombs and pay them honour’), Eunap. Vit. Sophist. 472; Ammianus' phrase ‘sepulchris haerentem' is very close to the polemicists’ ‘προασκαλινδεῖσθαι’.

59 It. Eg. 17 ff., with Segal, J. B., Edessa, ‘The Blessed City’ (Oxford, 1970), 172 ffGoogle Scholar.

60 18.7.7 ‘ominoso sane et incepto et loco, cum haec et huiusmodi factu dictuque tristia futuros praenuntiantia motus vitare optimum quemque debere’; cf. 19.12.14 (association of tombs and magic), and on Athanasius, see above.

61 See E. A. Thompson, op. cit. (n. 8), 50 ff.

62 For the attempts, see above, nn. 12–13.

63 The main point of L. Angliviel de la Beaumelle, op. cit.

64 20.7.7–9.

65 J. Labourt, op. cit. (n. 19), 78–9, with Sozom. Hist. Eccl. 2.13.7.

66 See Matthews, J. F., RAC 10 (1978), 673 ffGoogle Scholar.

67 25.3.6.

68 Liban. Or. 24.6 ff.; cf. Greg. Naz. Or. 5.13 (PG 35, 680), with Hahn, I., ‘Der ideologische Kampf urn den Tod Julians des Abtrünnigen’, Klio, 38 (1960), 225–32CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and (for Christian elaboration of the story), Baynes, N. H., ‘Death of Julian the Apostate in a Christian legend’, JRS 27 (1937), 22–9Google Scholar (= Byzantine Studies and Other Essays [London, 1955], 271–81Google Scholar). According to Bowersock, , Julian the Apostate, 117Google Scholar, the testimony of Philostorgius establishes that Julian was in fact killed from the Persian side.

69 25.6.6 (‘rumore iactato incerto Iulianum telo cecidisse Romano’) makes clear that Ammianus knew the rumour; the usual reading of 25.3.6 (‘incertum unde’) alludes to it, but Fontaine's recent Budé text (1977) removes any hint of the doubts — cf. Sabbah, op. cit. (n. 22), 413–14. Conduché, D., ‘Ammien Marcellin et la mort de Julien’, Latomus, 24 (1965), 359–80Google Scholar, well reveals how Ammianus' whole account of Julian's last campaign smacks more of pagan opposition to him than of any Christian plots.

70 Criticism of Probus: 27.11, 30.5.4 ff.; and of Anicii generally, 16.8.13. Praise of Praetextatus, 22.7.6 (‘praeclarae indolis gravitatisque priscae senator’), 27.9.8; of Symmachus, 27.3.3 (‘inter praecipua notninandus exempla doctrinarum atque modestiae’).

71 15.13.2, cf. 16.9.2 ‘venalis et flecti a veritate pecunia facilis’; for Musonianus, see PLRE 1, 611–12.

72 25.9.7 ‘iuveni…quem nullis ante actae vitae insignibus in huiusmodi negotiis cognitum’.

73 25.6.1.

74 25.10.15, ‘Christianae legis itidem studiosus et nonnumquam honorificus’.

75 E. A. Thompson, op. cit. ch. v, was the first really to see just how much criticism of Julian there was; for a new view of Ammianus' disillusionment with Julian and its importance to his historical writing see Matthews, J. F., in Luce, T. J. (ed.), Ancient Writers: Greece and Rome, 2 (New York, 1982), 1125 ffGoogle Scholar.

76 15.8.22.

77 21.2.5. Julian, himself, Ep. 111Google Scholar Bidez, 435 a, traces his pagan conversion back to 351.

78 As emphasised by Drinkwater, J. F., in Deroux, Carl (ed.) Studies in Latin Literature and Roman History, 3 (= Collection Latomus, vol. 180, 1983), 354 ffGoogle Scholar. Nevertheless Julian was openly encouraging pagan philosophers to visit him in Gaul: Liban. Or. 12.55, 18.74.

79 Cf. Thompson, op. cit. 84 ff., who notes that Zosimus has even less to say of Julian's pagan revival: according to F. Paschoud, in his Budé edition of Zosimus, 2 (1979), 100, pagan propagandists were embarrassed by the disaster of Julian's death.

80 22.5.2. Note the contrast with Libanius, Or. 18.121 ff., who reverses the order, giving priority to the religious reforms.

81 Julian the Apostate, 61–2, citing Julian, Ep. 26Google Scholar Bidez, 415c, as evidence of his sacrificing openly before the death of Constantius. Julian also mentioned in his Ep. ad. Athen. 286d that he had offered sacrifices on his departure from Gaul, but perhaps these had taken place in secret.

82 22.12.6 (sacrificing); 22.10.7, 25.4.20 (education edict). On the latter, cf. CTh 13.3.5 (17 June 362) and Julian, Ep. 61 Bidez; the best indication of the significance of this legislation is the strong Christian reaction, e.g. Greg. Naz. Or. 4.101 ff., accusing Julian of claiming for pagans a monopoly of education and culture — see Downey, G., ‘Julian and the Schools’, The Classical Journal 53 (1957–1958), 97–103Google Scholar.

83 25.4.17; cf. Eutrop. Breviarium, 10.16.3 ‘religionis Christianae nimius insectator’.

84 Ammianus found in the barbaric Huns (‘who were completely ignorant of right and wrong’) neither religion nor superstition, a more extreme state of disapproval: 31.2.11. On Ammianus and ‘legitimacy’, see now Matthews, op. cit. (n. 75), 1135 ff.

85 22.12.6.

86 Op. cit. (n. 14), 95 (= Essays, 120).

87 30.9.5; cf. Valentinian's own words to the senate in CTh 9.16.9. For a Christian acknowledgement of Valentinian's refusal to intervene, see Ambrose, Ep. 21.5.

88 As E. A. Thompson, op. cit. 115–16.

89 22.10.2; nevertheless, Ammianus claims, Julian's sense of justice was not impaired by ‘religio’, nor by anything else.

90 Dwelt upon, of course, by the church historians: Socr. Hist. Eccl. 4.1, Sozom. Hist. Eccl. 6.6.10.