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1 the Great Persecution, the Emperor Julian and Christian Reactions 1The GreatPersecution, the Emperor Julian and Christian Reactions In the first twochapters, Ishallinvestigate thoseforms of book-burning and cen- sorship that weresanctioned or tolerated by the Roman authorities. In the first chapter,Ishall concentrate on two keyevents, initiatedbypagan emperors of Late Antiquity,the Great Persecution and Julian’sschool reforms, as well as on the respective reactions by Christian authors. Ishall also arguethat,while there have always been times when the Roman state did prohibit certain subver- sive ways to expressone’sopinion,such as magic and divination,aggravated forms of censorship, such as book-burning,first occurred during the period of Late Antiquity.Thischapter will thereforeask for the reasons whythis period was aspecial one in regardtocensorship. Within this consideration of Late An- tiquity,itwill also explain the censorship legislation in the ageofConstantine as areaction to the preceding Great Persecution. Iwill arguethat contemporary Christian authorsdeveloped anumber of strategies to ridicule and denigrate competingdiscourses and to blame the persecutions of the recent past on the influenceofpagan philosophy. By contrast, they labelled Christianity as the true philosophyopposed,entirely or partly, to manyofthe philosophical schools of the past.Ishall discuss the pertinent passages of Christian authors such as Lactantius,Eusebius, John Chrysostom and Gregory of Nazianzus. This under- standing of censorship will alsolay the groundwork for alater discussion of cen- sorship legislation after Christianitybecame the state religion. 1.1 Laws against Astrologersand Magicians beforethe Fourth Century Magic wascommon and widelypractised in the ancientworld, as attested in papyri and other material evidence such as amuletsand tablets,containing magic spells, lovecharms or invocation formulae. Magic wasbound up in the rituals and cultures surroundingthe gods, religious pantheon, and religious practices of the Roman Empire. It was thereforeattached to acts of miracle-heal- ing,divination, astrology,and prediction. But scholars like the natural historian Plinythe Elderregarded magic as treachery to be separated from medicine, re- DOI 10.1515/9783110486070-003, © 2020 Dirk Rohmann, published by De Gruyter. This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 4.0 License. 1.1 Laws against Astrologers and Magicians before the Fourth Century 25 ligion and research in the stars as earlyasthe first century.¹ Magic worked be- cause it was suitable to summon demons. The burning of magical booksalso had powerful political,social and reli- gious connotations that informed the cultural milieu in which these acts oc- curred. Within these contexts, the act itself took on the performativeaspectsof aritual. Itsdevelopment in this sense claimed the power of that which it was trying to replace.According to the Christian apologistHipollytus of Rome (earlythird century), pagan magicians could burn magical notes to communicate with “demons.”² The Christian appropriation of the act thereforeinverted this, taking the spiritual natureofthe act of burning itself but using it to avert demon- ical power. The association of the written wordwith something magical was long stand- ing in the Roman world. Forexample the term carmen (“poem, song,writing”) originated as an archaic invocation within the context of pagan cultsorpagan philosophical schools.³ The term alsocame to be used with regard to harmful magic.⁴ The Lawofthe Twelve Tables, the earliest codification of lawin Rome, alreadyruled the death penalty against incantationsofcarmina as harm- ful magic, aligningthis charge with slander.⁵ Slanderous carmina continued to be punished in the imperial period.⁶ In Late Antiquity harmful carmina came to be associated with illegitimate pagan cult practice.⁷ Laws prohibiting and limiting its usagepredateChristian times. Some em- perors,such as Vespasianand Domitian, even expelled oppositional philoso- phers from the city of Rome in the context of bans of magic and astrology.How- ever,asIhave argued elsewhere, it seems probable that blanket bans were rarely enforced and thatall edicts and subsequent expulsions weretemporary and re- gionallylimited. Ihavealso argued elsewherethatwhile some books were burnt as aconsequenceoftreason trials in the first century AD,there is no clear evi- dence that books weredestroyed in accordance with laws against magicians, as- Plin. nat. .. Hipp. haer. .. Liv. ..; ..;Cic. Tusc. ..: nam cum carminibus soliti illi [sc.Pythagorei] esse dicantur et praecepta quaedam occultius tradereetmentes suas acogitationum intentione cantu fidibusque ad tranquillitatem traducere. Plin. nat. .; .. Leg.XII tab. Crawford: qui malum carmen incantassit … <quive>occentassit carmen<ve> cond<issit>. Cic. rep. .. Paul. sent. ..; ... Aug. civ. .: non incantationibus et carminibus nefariae curiositatis arte compositis, quam vel magian veldetestabiliore nomine goetian velhonorabilioretheurgian vocant. 26 1The Great Persecution, the Emperor Julian and Christian Reactions trologers and philosophers before the Christian period.⁸ Astrologers weregrant- ed pardon apparentlywithout requiringthem to burn their books.⁹ Thus the evi- dence is against Speyer’sconclusion thatmagic books were regularlypersecuted as earlyasduring the Republic.¹⁰ His conclusion is based on the assumption that the Sententiae,legal opinionsmisattributed to jurist Iulius Paulus,werewritten alreadyinthe High Empire and reflect the practice of book-burning duringthe Republicanperiod. Yetwhile there is no evidence for precedents from the Repub- lican period, modernresearch shows that these legal opinionswererevised and publishedperhaps in the ageofDiocletian(284–305). They wereaffirmed by Constantine and again by the LawofCitations from 426.¹¹ It is worth quoting the relevant passage:¹² No one is permitted to have books on the magic art in his possession. And anyone whois found in possession of such books,will lose his property,the books will be publiclyburnt, and he will be deported to an island. Less privileged people will be executed. Not onlythe practice but also the knowledge of this art is prohibited. The final sentencemarks achangeinthe legal attitudes towards suspicious writ- ingsand maybethe addition of alater,possiblyChristian, copyist.¹³ It is certain- ly true that punishments of astrologers became harsherinthe late-imperial pe- riod: thosewho had knowledge of this art weretobethrown to the beasts or crucifiedwhile magicians (magi)weretobeburnt alive.¹⁴ We do not know with anycertainty when these laws wereinitiallyenforced, but Diocletian is the first emperor in Late Antiquityknown to have ordered the destruction of books: booksowned by the Manichaeans,Egyptian alchemistsand Christians. Alaw issued by the emperors Diocletian and Maximian ruled ageneral, em- pire-wide ban on astrology: “To learn and practise the art of geometry is to the publicinterest.But the damnable art of astrology is illegal.”¹⁵ At this time, Augustus’ burningofuncanonicalSibylline Books was adifferent case: See Tac. ann. .. See Rohmann ()for book-burninginthe period between BC – AD . Suet. Tib. ;Dio Cass. ..–. Speyer (), . Cod.Theod. ..; ...Onthe history of the sententiae,Liebs (). Paul. sent. ..: libros magicae artis apud se neminem haberelicet: et penes quoscumque reperti sint, bonis ademptis,ambustis his publice, in insulam deportantur,humiliores capite pu- niuntur.non tantum huius artis professio,sed etiam scientia prohibita est. See Bavieraand Ferrini (), ,note. Paul. sent. ... Cod.Iust. ..: artem geometriae discereatque exerceri publice intersit. arsautem mathe- matica damnabilis interdicta est. 1.2 The Great Persecution 27 the term arsmathematica seems to have been limited to astrology because it was explicitlyseparated from the related field of geometry.Nosuch separation was made in corresponding laws under the Christian emperors. Diocletian’saim was to rebuild the Roman Empire after it had suffered a long period of crisis. In doing so, he introduced agreater amount of state-control on apolitical and spiritual level. This lead him, among other things, to attempt to control books. As we willsee in the next section, he also held Christians respon- sible for the instability of the recent past. 1.2 The GreatPersecution There is no firm evidence that the Roman state burnt Christian religious books before Christianitybecame amajor religion in the earlyfourth century.Epipha- nius, bishop of Salamis in the late fourth century,mentions books from the Ju- daeo-Christian tradition found in wine jars at several occasions afterthe early persecutions.¹⁶ Christians could have hiddenthemtoavoid being identified as such. In fact,the Gnostic gospels of Nag el Hammadi have been discovered in wine jars in Egypt.¹⁷ However,this does not mean that they werehidden in re- sponse to the Roman authorities attemptingtodestroy Christian books. Initiated by Diocletian and his junior partner Galerius, the Great Persecution (303–311) is the first and onlycase whereRomanauthorities attempted to de- stroy visible monuments of Christianity such as assemblyplaces and Bibles, be- cause previous persecutions had created an increasingnumberofmartyrs and thereforestrengthened the appeal of Christianity. As Christian textsare the onlysources thatrefer to the burningofScripture and theiraccounts are likely exaggerated the question is: how was book-burning during the Great Persecution recorded by near contemporary Christian sources, exactlywhat books were
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