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On an Alleged Senatus Consultum Against the Christians 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. 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 3 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 <them> on the grounds that they were inventing strange myths. After all, it is, I presume, not pleasing to God – nay, not even to an understanding human being – that many people have been subjected to extreme punishments on his account.7 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. Vigiliae Christianae (2021) 1–8 | 10.1163/15700720-bja10033Downloaded from Brill.com09/28/2021 11:09:39PM via free access 4 Gassman 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.
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