Vigiliae Christianae (2021) 1–8 Vigiliae Christianae brill.com/vc
On an Alleged Senatus Consultum against the Christians
Mattias Gassman | ORCID: 0000-0001-6466-5907 Faculty of Classics, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK [email protected]
Abstract
A passage in Macarius Magnes’ Apocriticus (2,14 Volp) has recently been adduced to support the long-controverted hypothesis that a senatus consultum was issued against the Christians in the year 35. The note reviews the evidence and finds it wanting. Of the texts usually adduced, Tertullian, Apologeticum 5,1–3 does not describe a sen- atus consultum, Eusebius, Historia ecclesiastica 5,21,4 and the Greek and Armenian Acta Apollonii say nothing about Tiberius, and Jerome, Chronicon 35–36 post Christum appears to be an elaboration from Tertullian. The Macarian passage, in turn, refers to a “common judgment” and describes the condemnation of Christians by all respectable persons, especially the senatus populusque Romanus. It does not describe the promul- gation of a formal senatus consultum.
Keywords
Tiberius – persecution – Roman Senate – Macarius – Tertullian – Apollonius
More than fifty years ago, Timothy Barnes concluded, after a thorough review of the evidence, that there had been no general law against Christians and their worship prior to the decree of universal sacrifice issued by the emperor Decius in December 249.1 With the slightly earlier discussion of the motives of anti-Christian persecution by G.E.M. de Ste. Croix, his analysis has held the
1 Timothy D. Barnes, “Legislation against the Christians,” JRS 58 (1968): 32–50. This study derives from a British Academy Postdoctoral Fellowship.
© Mattias Gassman, 2021 | doi:10.1163/15700720-bja10033 This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the CC BY 4.0Downloaded license. from Brill.com09/28/2021 11:09:39PM via free access 2 Gassman field since the 1960s.2 Some scholars, however, have maintained all along that Christianity had, in fact, been banned almost at its inception, in a senatus con- sultum issued, against the will of the emperor Tiberius, in the year 35. Some years ago, a new piece of evidence was adduced by Ilaria Ramelli, in an article introduced by Marta Sordi, who had long been a stalwart of the hypothesis of a Tiberian senatus consultum.3 The argument has since been repeated in numerous publications, including one in this journal.4 As I will argue herein, it is most unlikely that the Senate banned the Christian cult in 35, and Ramelli’s new piece of evidence does not, even if one leaves aside all questions of his- torical transmission and reliability, suggest that it did. The passage is chapter 2,14 (2,25 Goulet) in the Apocriticus of Macarius Magnes (in the new edition by Ulrich Volp – see n. 7), in which Harnack identi- fied a fragment (64 in his reckoning) of Porphyry’s Contra Christianos.5 Whether Porphyry lies behind the Apocriticus is a vexed question, and the attribution must be held in doubt;6 but whether Porphyrian or not, the passage rests on some earlier anti-Christian writing, and that is what is really important for the argument. It runs thus:
2 G.E.M. de Ste. Croix, “Why Were the Early Christians Persecuted?” P&P 26 (1963): 6–38. For a learned retrospective, see Joseph Streeter, “Introduction: de Ste. Croix on Persecution,” in a volume of de Ste. Croix’s essays co-edited with Michael Whitby, Christian Persecution, Martyrdom, and Orthodoxy (Oxford, 2006), 3–34. 3 Marta Sordi and Ilaria Ramelli, “Il senatoconsulto del 35 contro i Cristiani in un frammento porfiriano,” Aevum 78 (2004): 59–67. Sordi’s publications are many; see esp. “I primi rap- porti fra lo stato romano e il cristianesimo e l’origine delle persecuzioni,” Rendiconti della Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei, serie ottava: Classe di Scienze morali, storiche e filologiche 12 (1957): 58–93; “Sui primi rapporti dell’autorità romana con il Cristianesimo (a proposito della cronologia degli Atti),” StudRom 8 (1960): 393–409; “L’apologia del martire romano Apollonio, come fonte dell’Apologeticum di Tertulliano e i rapporti fra Tertulliano e Minucio,” RSCI 18 (1964): 169–188, and The Christians and the Roman Empire, trans. Annabel Bedini (London, 1994), 17–20. 4 Ilaria Ramelli, “Constantine: The Legal Recognition of Christianity and its Antecedents,” AHIg 22 (2013): 65–82; “Constantine and the Legal Recognition of Christianity: What Changed, and Some Historical Forerunners,” VoxP 34 (2014): 55–72 at 63–67; “Ethos and Logos: A Second-Century Debate Between ‘Pagan’ and Christian Philosophers,” VChr 69 (2015): 123–156 at 133–135 (with notice of other scholars who have accepted the argument at 134 n. 19); “Porphyry and the Motif of Christianity as παράνομος,” in John F. Finamore and Tomáš Nejeschleba (eds.), Platonism and its Legacy: Selected Papers from the Fifteenth Annual Conference of the International Society for Neoplatonic Studies (Lydney, 2019), 173–198. 5 Adolf von Harnack (ed.), Porphyrius “Gegen die Christen”, 15 Bücher: Zeugnisse, Fragmente und Referate (Berlin, 1916), 85. 6 Matthias Becker, Porphyrios, “Contra Christianos”: Neue Sammlung der Fragmente, Testimonien und Dubia mit Einleitung, Übersetzung und Anmerkungen (Berlin, 2016), 100, 103–105.
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1. There is another line of reasoning, as well, which can refute this unsound opinion: consideration of his resurrection, about which people are chat- tering everywhere. On what account did Jesus, after he suffered, as you say, and rose again, not appear to Pilate, who had punished him and said that he had done nothing worthy of death, or to Herod, king of the Jews, or to the high priest of the Jewish brotherhood, or to the many people of the time who were also worthy of confidence, above all, the Senate and people of the Romans, so that they, having marveled at the things done concerning him, might not, by common judgment, have condemned to death, as irreverent, those who follow him…. 3. For if he had appeared to distinguished men, all would have believed through them, and none of the judges would have punished
The conclusion, 2,14,3, only confirms that Christians were punished by “judges,” that is, the provincial governors of the Roman Empire.8 The intervening 2,14,2, which I have omitted, dismisses as petty peasants the actual witnesses to Christ’s resurrection: Mary Magdalene and the “other Mary.” Neither the fact of persecution nor an anti-Christian snobbery tinged with the chauvinism of sex and status are novel. The key section is thus 2,14,1. Ramelli is undoubtedly right to see the anonymous critic asking, by way of a contrafactual, why Christ, if he really had risen, had not appeared to the leading men of his own day (hence, ἅμα). Is the critic, however, referring to a decree promulgated around the time of Jesus’ death?
7 1. Ἔστι καὶ ἕτερος λόγος δυνάμενος σαθρὰν ταύτην ἐλέγξαι τὴν δόξαν, ὁ περὶ τῆς ἀναστάσεως αὐτοῦ τῆς πανταχοῦ θρυλλουμένης· τίνος χάριν ὁ Ἰησοῦς, μετὰ τὸ παθεῖν αὐτόν, ὥς φατε, καὶ ἀναστῆ- ναι, οὐκ ἐμφανίζεται Πιλάτῳ τῷ κολάσαντι αὐτὸν καὶ λέγοντι μηδὲν ἄξιον πεπραχέναι θανάτου, ἢ Ἡρώδῃ τῷ τῶν Ἰουδαίων βασιλεῖ, ἢ τῷ ἀρχιερεῖ τῆς Ἰουδαϊκῆς φατρίας, ἢ πολλοῖς ἅμα καὶ ἀξιοπί- στοις καὶ μάλιστα Ῥωμαίων τῇ τε βουλῇ καὶ τῷ δήμῳ, ἵνα τὰ κατ’ αὐτὸν θαυμάσαντες μὴ δόγματι κοινῷ καταψηφίσωνται θάνατον ὡς ἀσεβῶν τῶν πειθόμενων αὐτῷ· … 3. Εἰ γὰρ ἦν ἐμφανίσας ἀνδρά- σιν ἐπισήμοις, δι’αὐτῶν πάντες ἂν ἐπίστευον καὶ οὐδεὶς ἂν τῶν δικαστῶν ὡς μύθους ἀλλοκότους <αὐτοὺς> ἀναπλάττοντας ἐκόλαζ⸢ε⸣ν· οὐδὲ γὰρ Θε⸢ῷ⸣δήπουθεν ἀρεστὸν ἀλλ’ οὐδὲ ἀνθρώπῳ συνετῷ πολλοὺς δι’ αὐτὸν ταῖς ἀνωτάτω τιμωρίαις ὑποβληθῆναι. The text is that of Ulrich Volp, Makarios Magnes. Apokritikos. Kritische Ausgabe mit deutscher Übersetzung (Berlin, 2013), 48. 8 Cf. Hugh J. Mason, Greek Terms for Roman Institutions: A Lexicon and Analysis (Toronto, 1974), s.v. δικαστής, 37–38.
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The evidence outside Macarius’ text is weak. Here, Barnes said most of what needs to be said, but his terse formulations call for elaboration and updating.9 Near the beginning of his Apologeticum, Tertullian says:
To consider, for a moment, the origin of laws of this sort: it was the ancient decree that no one be consecrated as a god by the emperor, unless he had been approved by the Senate…. Unless a god has pleased a man, he will not be a god; a man will have, therefore, to be propitious to a god. Tiberius, therefore, in whose time the Christian name entered the world, received word from Syria Palestine of the events that had there revealed the truth of the divinity itself, and reported the news to the Senate, with the commen- dation of his vote. The Senate, because it had not itself given the approval, rejected the claim; Caesar remained firm in his opinion, having threatened peril to the accusers of the Christians. Consult your commentaries. There you will find that Nero was the first to have raged with the sword of Caesar against this sect, right when it was on the rise at Rome.10
Earlier than Macarius, Tertullian was still writing more than a century and a half after the death of Tiberius, and his report rings legendary. Ramelli, how- ever, would take it seriously, so let us do so. By Ramelli’s reading, Tiberius wished to recognize Christianity as a religio licita, but a senatus consultum in fact banned the new cult.11 However, a religio licita (and its negative, what Ramelli calls a superstitio illicita) is a concept not of Roman law, but of mod- ern scholarship, formulated from a passing reference to the legality of Jewish practice later in the Apologeticum.12 Tiberius would not have spoken in those
9 See especially Barnes, “Legislation,” 32–33, 40, 46–48. 10 Apol 5,1–3: Vt de origine aliquid retractemus eiusmodi legum, uetus erat decretum, ne qui deus ab imperatore consecraretur, nisi a senatu probatus…. Nisi homini deus placuerit, deus non erit; homo iam deo propitius esse debebit. Tiberius ergo, cuius tempore nomen Christianum in saeculum introiuit, annuntiata sibi ex Syria Palaestina, quae illic ueritatem ipsius diuinitatis reuelauerant, detulit ad senatum cum praerogatiua suffragii sui. Senatus, quia non ipse probauerat, respuit; Caesar in sententia mansit, comminatus periculum accu- satoribus Christianorum. Consulite commentarios vestros; illic reperietis primum Neronem in hanc sectam cum maxime Romae orientem Caesariano gladio ferocisse. 11 Sordi and Ramelli, “Il senatoconsulto,” 63–65. 12 Apol. 21,1: Sed quoniam edidimus, antiquissimis Iudaeorum instrumentis sectam istam esse suffultam … fortasse an hoc nomine de statu eius retractetur, quasi sub umbraculo insignissimae religionis, certe licitae, aliquid propriae praesumptionis abscondat, with Görge K. Hasselhoff and Meret Strothmann, “Religio licita – Rom und die Juden,” in eid. (eds.), ‘Religio licita?’ Rom und die Juden (Berlin, 2017), 1–12 at 3–7, and Paula Fredriksen, “Mandatory Retirement: Ideas in the Study of Christian Origins Whose Time Has Come to Go,” SR 35 (2006): 231–246 at 238–241.
10.1163/15700720-bja10033 | VigiliaeDownloaded Christianae from Brill.com09/28/2021 (2021) 1–8 11:09:39PM via free access On an Alleged Senatus Consultum against the Christians 5 terms, and, though Tertullian is tracing the origin of laws against Christianity (eiusmodi legum), what he actually reports is an imperial motion for recogni- tion of Christ’s deity, something quite different from granting freedom of wor- ship to a new movement fiercely opposed to the worship of all other gods.13 Religious affairs lay within the purview of the Senate, albeit in negotiation with the emperor,14 and adoption of a new god is all that seems to be at stake here. Of official recognition or illegalization of the worshippers of Christ, Tertullian says nothing, claiming only that Tiberius opposed himself to the opponents of the Christians. A body of traditions associated with one martyr of the early 180s suggests that a senatus consultum was the legal basis for persecution of Christians. By Eusebius’ account, which preserves detail not found in the extant Greek and Armenian versions of the Acta Apollonii, the martyr Apollonius was executed “as if by decree of the Senate.”15 In both versions of the Acta, Perennis appeals, less ambiguously, to an existing senatus consultum (in Greek, τὸ δόγμα τῆς συγκλήτου) banning Christianity.16 The relationship between the two versions, Eusebius’ account, and the underlying, now-lost original Acta, is complex, and none provides an evidently reliable account of the proceedings.17 The Senate’s command in the extant Acta – Χριστιανοὺς μὴ εἶναι – is strikingly similar to Tertullian’s statement that pagans decreed (iure definitis dicendo), “You are not to exist” (Non licet esse uos), and it is possible, as Victor Saxer has suggested, that Tertullian is actually the source, since his Apologeticum was misinter- preted, in Greek translation, as an address to the Senate.18 Be that as it may, no account of Apollonius’ martyrdom dates the senatus consultum to the reign
13 As Sordi, “I primi rapporti,” 63, n. 22 appears to recognize; cf. Barnes, “Legislation,” 33. 14 For the politics, see Zsuzsanna Várhelyi, The Religion of Senators in the Roman Empire: Power and Beyond (Cambridge, 2010), 47–55. 15 HE 5,21,4: ὡς ἂν ἀπὸ δόγματος συγκλήτου. 16 Armenian Acta 13, 23; see F.C. Conybeare, The Apology and Acts of Apollonius and Other Monuments of Early Christianity (London, 1894), 40, 43; Greek Acta et martyrium Apollonii 13–14: Περέννιος ὁ ἀνθύπατος εἶπεν· Διὰ τὸ δόγμα τῆς συγκλήτου συμβουλεύω σοι μετανοῆ- σαι καὶ σέβειν καὶ προσκυνεῖν τοὺς θεοὺς … Ἀπολλὼς εἶπεν· Ἐγὼ μὲν τὸ δόγμα τῆς συγκλήτου γινώσκω, Περέννιε· … 23: Περέννιος ὁ ἀνθύπατος εἶπεν· Ἀπολλώ, τὸ δόγμα τῆς συγκλήτου ἐστὶν Χριστιανοὺς μὴ εἶναι. 17 Victor Saxer, “Martyrium Apollonii Romani: Analyse structurelle et problèmes d’authenticité,” Atti della Pontificia Accademia Romana di Archeologia, Serie III: Rendiconti 55–56 (1982–1984): 265–298 is essential; see also the more sanguine but inconclusive dis- cussion of Geert Roskam, “A Christian Intellectual at Trial: The Case of Apollonius of Rome,” JbAC 52 (2009): 22–43 at 40–42. 18 Apol 4,4, with Saxer, “Martyrium,” esp. 292–296, who points to Eusebius, HE 5,5,5.
Vigiliae Christianae (2021) 1–8 | 10.1163/15700720-bja10033Downloaded from Brill.com09/28/2021 11:09:39PM via free access 6 Gassman of Tiberius.19 The stories of Apollonius are evidence that there were traditions of an anti-Christian senatus consultum, at least by Eusebius’ day, and possibly that one was in force near the end of the second century. They are not evidence that anyone thought a senatus consultum had been promulgated in 35. For a Tiberian senatus consultum, we have to turn instead to a tertiary source: the notice for the years 35 and 36 after Christ in Jerome’s version of Eusebius’ Chronicon. Eusebius’ account of Tiberius’ actions in his Ecclesiastical History elaborates on Tertullian but recognizes, correctly, that it was Christ’s recognition as God that was at stake.20 As translated and expanded by Jerome, however, his Chronicon reported the passing of a decree against Christians: “But when, on the basis of a consultum of the Fathers [i.e., the patres con- scripti, the Senate], it had been decided to eliminate Christians from the city, Tiberius threatened death to the accusers of the Christians through an edict: Tertullian writes it in his Apologeticum.”21 The material appears under two entries in the Armenian translation, neither of which refers to a decree of the Senate.22 Presumably the work of Jerome, not Eusebius, who shows no aware- ness of any such decree in the Ecclesiastical History, this reference to a senatus consultum appears to be an elaboration either from the Tertullianic account or from whatever Eusebius wrote in Greek (to judge from another derivative, the Chronicon Paschale, likely without explicit reference to a consultum).23 To read such a senatus consultum back into Tertullian requires us not only to con- form the source text to one derivative from it, but also to construe Tertullian’s explicit statement that persecution began under Nero as a statement that its legal basis had in fact been laid decades before, only to be suppressed in the interim by Tiberius.24 If so, why should opponents of the Christians and their
19 This rules out the hypothesis of Sordi, “I primi rapporti,” 64, “L’Apologia,” that an account of Apollonius’ martyrdom was Tertullian’s source. 20 HE 2,2,1–4. 21 Chron. 35–36 post Christum: Pilato de
10.1163/15700720-bja10033 | VigiliaeDownloaded Christianae from Brill.com09/28/2021 (2021) 1–8 11:09:39PM via free access On an Alleged Senatus Consultum against the Christians 7 message have ignored an august legal precedent throughout the reigns of Gaius and Claudius? Except in an account of an isolated trial one hundred and fifty years later, no Roman official or private enemy of Christians is said ever to have appealed to a senatus consultum, before or after Nero. Whether one thinks him the originator of a targeted anti-Christian persecution or not,25 the hypothesis requires a sweeping measure to have been forgotten, only to surface in ambigu- ous references in much later texts. The Macarian passage makes no allusion to Tertullian or Apollonius, and the rhetorical situation is distinct from those of the Apologeticum, the Acta, and the Eusebian texts. It is a separate work, to be assessed separately. Does it, however, describe the promulgation of a senatus consultum under Tiberius? Macarius’ nameless opponent nowhere speaks of a “decree of the Senate.” As Ramelli notes, “δόγμα (τῆς συγκλήτου) was a technical term for the Latin sena- tus consultum,” as indeed it is in Eusebius and the Greek Acta Apollonii. This passage, however, refers to a δόγμα κοινόν, a common law or teaching or opin- ion. The term is generic. Some usages are broad: in Plato’s Laws, for example, the reckoning of good and bad, “becoming the common opinion of a city, is named law,”26 while Gregory of Nyssa can refer to the need to pursue all the vir- tues at once as “the common teaching of every way of life.”27 More to our point, Dionysius of Halicarnassus uses it to refer to the “general decision” of the whole assembly of the Volscians to make war on the Romans.28 Where it does refer to a senatus consultum, as in Paeanius’ translation of Eutropius, Breviarium 7,1, which renders a senatu hostis iudicatus est as πολέμιος ἀπεφάνθη δόγματι κοινῷ, the usage is thus only a special instance of a broader political meaning. In the Macarian passage, the ones to whom Christ ought to have revealed himself, so as to avoid judgment on his followers δόγματι κοινῷ, are not the Senate, but the entire senatus populusque Romanus. The passage thus presents a superficial parallel to a text that the antiquary John Lydus translates from the jurist Gaius, which refers to the δόγματι κοινῷ τῆς βουλῆς καὶ τοῦ δήμου; there, it must mean “common accord,” expressed by parallel legal enactments, since
25 Brent D. Shaw, “The Myth of the Neronian Persecution,” JRS 105 (2015): 73–100, for example, casts doubt on the scope of Nero’s actions; further debate may be found in Christopher P. Jones, “The Historicity of the Neronian Persecution: A Response to Brent Shaw, NTS 63 (2017): 146–152 and Brent D. Shaw, “Response to Christopher Jones: The Historicity of the Neronian Persecution,” NTS 64 (2018): 231–242. 26 Leg 1 644d: ἐπὶ δὲ πᾶσι τούτοις λογισμὸς ὅτι ποτ’ αὐτῶν ἄμεινον ἢ χεῖρον, ὃς γενόμενος δόγμα πόλεως κοινὸν νόμος ἐπωνόμασται. The passage was known to Eusebius; see P.E. 12.27.3. 27 Virg. 18.1: κοινὸν ἔστω δόγμα τοῦ βίου παντός. 28 Ant. Rom 8.11.1: συναχθείσης οὖν αὖθις ἐκκλησίας μετὰ τοῦτο κυροῦται δόγμα κοινὸν τοῦ ἔθνους προειπεῖν Ῥωμαίοις τὸν πόλεμον.
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Gaius is referring to a joint motion by both Senate and people, at a stage much earlier in Roman history.29 Ramelli does not appear to envision such a joint motion, but her reading would nonetheless require it, since she takes καταψη- φίσωνται to refer to “a decision of the people in assembly,” a legal proceeding fundamentally distinct from a senatorial decree.30 In fact, καταψηφίσωνται need only denote a metaphorical vote: here, by a string of first-century worthies, in which the senatus populusque Romanus are the crowning example. Macarius’ opponent is saying that Christians were from the beginning “condemned” by the “common judgment” of all reputable, right-thinking persons, especially but not exclusively the leadership and citizens of Rome. The passage is yet another testimony to pre-Constantinian pagan contempt for Christians. It adds noth- ing to the shaky case for an anti-Christian senatus consultum of the reign of Tiberius, in whose favour the most that can be said is that Jerome, a learned but not always a careful scholar, also inferred it from Tertullian’s report. 29 Mag 1.34: πολλῆς δὲ συγχύσεως τῶν νόμων … τοῖς πράγμασι γινομένης ἐκ τῆς τῶν ἀρχόντων καὶ τοῦ δήμου διαφορᾶς, δόγματι κοινῷ τῆς βουλῆς καὶ τοῦ δήμου πάντες μὲν οἱ ἄρχοντες ἐκινήθη- σαν, δέκα δὲ μόνοις ἀνδράσι τὴν φροντίδα τῆς πολιτείας παρέδοσαν. 30 Ramelli, “Porphyry,” 184. Note, for example, the division of Roman iura into leges, plebi- scita (among which, Ramelli’s popular vote?), senatus consulta, imperial constitutions, official edicts, and the responsa of the jurists at Gaius, Inst. Comm. 1.2–4. Plebiscita appear still to be attested in the reign of Claudius: thus a corrupt passage of Tacitus, Ann. 11,14, with Theodor Mommsen, Römisches Staatsrecht, 3rd edn, vol. 2.2 (Leipzig, 1887), 882–883 and S.J.V. Malloch, The Annals of Tacitus: Book 11, Edited with a Commentary (Cambridge, 2013), 229–230.
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