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Leslie, Joel (2013) Kingdom Without End: the Sacralisation of Roman Imperium from Eusebius of Caesarea to Avitus of Vienne

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Leslie, Joel (2013) Kingdom Without End: the Sacralisation of Roman Imperium from Eusebius of Caesarea to Avitus of Vienne Leslie, Joel (2013) Kingdom without end: the sacralisation of Roman Imperium from Eusebius of Caesarea to Avitus of Vienne. MRes thesis. http://theses.gla.ac.uk/5299/ Copyright and moral rights for this thesis are retained by the author A copy can be downloaded for personal non-commercial research or study, without prior permission or charge This thesis cannot be reproduced or quoted extensively from without first obtaining permission in writing from the Author The content must not be changed in any way or sold commercially in any format or medium without the formal permission of the Author When referring to this work, full bibliographic details including the author, title, awarding institution and date of the thesis must be given Glasgow Theses Service http://theses.gla.ac.uk/ [email protected] KINGDOM WITHOUT END The Sacralisation of Roman Imperium from Eusebius of Caesarea to Avitus of Vienne Joel Leslie Master of Research Degree Thesis Matriculation Number: 0806382 Department of Classics (30th September 2013) College of Arts University of Glasgow Contents Abbreviations ii Note on Texts and Translations iii Introduction 1 Eternality 6 Universality 27 Monarchy & Christian Leadership 47 Conclusion 65 Bibliography 67 i Abbreviations Aen. Vergil’s Aeneid Ambr. Ambrose of Milan - Ep. Epistulae (‘Letters’) Amm. Marc. Ammianus Marcellinus Aug. Augustine of Hippo - DCD De Civitate Dei (‘City of God’) Avit. Avitus of Vienne - Ep. Epistulae (‘Letters’) - Hom. Homiliae (‘Homilies’) Eus. Eusebius of Caesarea - HE Historia Ecclesiastica (‘Church History’) - LC Laudes Constantini (‘Panegyric to Constantine’) - VC Vita Constantini (‘Life of Constantine’) Greg. Tur. Gregory of Tours - HF Historia Francorum (‘Historia Francorum’) Jer. Jerome - Chron. Chronicon (‘Chronicle’) - Ep. Epistulae (‘Letters’) Rur. Ruricius of Limoges’ Epistulae (‘Letters’) Sid. Sidonius Apollinaris - Carm. Carmina (‘Poems’) - Ep. Epistulae (‘Letters’) Socr. Socrates Scholasticus - HE Historia Ecclesiastica (‘Church History’) Suet. Suetonius - Jul. Vita Divi Juli (‘Life of Julius Caesar’) Theod. Theoderet - HE Historia Ecclesiastica (‘Church History’) Tib. Tibullus - Eleg. Elegies ii Note on Texts and Translations The translations which I have used in this thesis can be found in the Bibliography. I have decided to use predominantly English translations when quoting from primary texts, but have added the original Latin or Greek in those instances where I felt that it was particularly relevant. Occasionally I have performed some minor adjustments to a translation, when I believed that it was not literal enough or was not sufficiently clear. These changes have been noted appropriately. All Bible translations are taken from the English Standard Version, with the exception of some which have been taken from the New International Version. Those taken from the New International Version have ‘NIV’ marked beside them in accordance with the publisher’s regulation for quoting from the text. iii Kingdom Without End: The Sacralisation of Roman Imperium from Eusebius of Caesarea to Avitus of Vienne Introduction When the Augustan poet Vergil wrote the words ‘His ego nec metas rerum nec tempora pono: imperium sine fine dedi’,1 he set the Roman idea of imperium on a trajectory that moved it away from its original meaning of ‘command’ or ‘power’, towards a concept of a unitary territorial empire; one that embraced universality and eternality as a kind of post factum justification of might.2 Fundamental to this is the idea of the sole ruler who exercised a form of absolutism within a constitutional framework. The demise of the Roman Republic had shown quite clearly that a large empire could not prosper under a form of government which bred internecine competition for office, putting the integrity of the Empire itself at risk. Despite the protestations, therefore, that his administration was a continuation, or a restoration, of Republican government, Augustus himself was the prototype and the legitimator of the personal rule of the emperor. Those who followed in his footsteps owed both their legitimacy, in the first instance, and the honorific epithet of ‘Augustus’ to him.3 By the fourth century, however, contrived republicanism had been replaced by the kind of unqualified monarchy that Augustus had so ostentatiously affected to lay aside.4 The ruler, once, through political expediency, grounded in the res publica, now had an unmistakable whiff of divinity about him. Any idea that the nexus between the emperor and the divine would be broken with the advent of the first Christian ruler of the Roman Empire in 306 was not realised, notwithstanding Constantine’s repudiation of the imperial cult.5 This is hardly surprising in view of the importance which the Bible attached to the office of ‘king’. Kings in the Bible, pre-eminently the Old Testament King David, were seen as God’s anointed, and so the status of a Christian emperor, in religious terms, was not substantially different from that of his pagan counterpart. If anything, the scriptural basis of a Christian ruler’s authority gave him a warrant that his pagan counterpart lacked,6 as the development of Christian kingship through the Middle Ages was to show. Nor did the emergence of Christian kingship compromise the political ethos of the Roman Empire. The ideas of eternality and universality which had characterised Roman political thinking from at least the time of Augustus were as familiar to those Christians who scrutinised their sacred scriptures as they were to those who imbibed classical literature. This is nowhere 1 Aen. 1.278-9 2 Cf. Richardson’s article (1991); see Horace’s Carmen Saeculare for another synthesis of these elements of imperium. 3 ‘Augustus’ was the imperial title par excellence. Diocletian was the first to make effective political use of such a title; see Jones (1964), 322-23. 4 See Oakley (2010), 15 5 Jones (1964), 93-4 6 Psalms 22:28 1 Kingdom Without End: The Sacralisation of Roman Imperium from Eusebius of Caesarea to Avitus of Vienne more clearly adumbrated than in the prophetic writings of Isaiah. Referring to the promised Saviour, he writes: ‘Of the increase of his government and of peace There will be no end, On the throne of David and over his kingdom, To establish it and to uphold it With justice and with righteousness From this time forth and forever more.’ Isaiah 9:7 This has a clear political as well as a religious significance and its themes of peace and justice, setting aside universality and eternality, were not unfamiliar imperial topoi. For both Roman imperialists and Christians, therefore, the idea of a ‘kingdom without end’, governed by a quasi- divine monarch, was an established convention. I will show, however, that what was an implicitly understood conceit under the pagan emperors became, with increasing Christianisation, a more clearly defined synthesis of political and religious policy, driven by the Christian idea/vision of mission. The impetus that this had gathered from the reign of Constantine was somewhat checked by the Gothic sack of Rome in 410, but this did not arrest the imperial programme so much as redefine it, because the attack on the imperial capital had demonstrated beyond doubt that any pretensions Rome had to everlasting universal imperium were misplaced. Henceforth, it would be the Christians rather than the Romans who would aspire to universal hegemony without limit of time or space, and to a new kind of sacralised imperium that would emerge as a consequence. I propose to look at how Christianity in the Western Roman Empire not only survived the trauma of Rome’s breakdown but began a journey that would see it eventually inherit Rome’s imperial crown. I believe that, in order to do this, it will be more profitable to examine the concept of imperium as a product of the three constituent elements that I have already mentioned, rather than as a gestalt; for, although eternality, universality, and monarchy are interconnected, what they connote as a whole is more empyrean than temporal, and I must necessarily examine imperium from a temporal perspective. For example, Christianity’s world-view is teleological in outlook, working towards a preordained destiny such as that prophesied in the book of Isaiah where the kingdom of God will rule without limit of space or time. But there is no hint in the Bible that anyone from the House of David, or anyone else, will rule universally or eternally on 2 Kingdom Without End: The Sacralisation of Roman Imperium from Eusebius of Caesarea to Avitus of Vienne earth before the end times; there is no mandate for the followers of God to fashion an earthly empire. I will show, however, that, from the time of the first Christian emperor, there was a sense among some Christians that the kingdom of heaven had begun to take shape on earth, and that heavenly authority was about to translate into earthly power. Accepting the Roman Empire initially as a champion of the faith and then as a model for the Church, Christianity self- consciously positioned itself to assume a worldwide role and exercise universal authority. By the time that Avitus of Vienne signs off his last extant epistle, the seeds of empire that had been sown two hundred years earlier in the age of Eusebius are bearing fruit. The sources that I have chosen reflect what I consider to be the pivotal periods in the development of the ‘Christian Empire’. Eusebius is an obvious starting point because he is contemporaneous with Constantine and, in some ways, sets the tone for what comes after. He reflects in his writing the sense of a man who wills what he is writing to be true, mindful perhaps of the state-sponsored persecution which Christians had experienced before Constantine,7 and which they were only one hostile emperor away from experiencing again. He does not write in a spirit of prophecy, but in a spirit of (self-)fulfilment, hoping to convince his audience of the superiority and the permanence of Christian kingship and Christian government, realised in the providence of God and irrevocable.
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