{"id":3112,"date":"2017-11-03T23:33:21","date_gmt":"2017-11-03T20:33:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/aeneas.byzantinewalls.org\/?p=209"},"modified":"2017-11-03T23:33:21","modified_gmt":"2017-11-03T20:33:21","slug":"the-gates-of-the-church-of-milan-or-the-limitations-of-political-power","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ellopos.com\/blog\/3112\/the-gates-of-the-church-of-milan-or-the-limitations-of-political-power\/","title":{"rendered":"The Gates of the Church of Milan, or The Limitations of Political Power"},"content":{"rendered":"

“Nor did I think your orders were so strong that you, a mortal man, could over-run the gods\u2019 unwritten and unfailing laws. Not now, nor yesterday\u2019s, they always live, and no one knows their origin in time. So not through fear of any man\u2019s proud spirit would I be likely to neglect these laws.”
\nAntigone<\/em><\/p>\n

With these words did Antigone make her apology for disobeying the king’s order not to bury her brother Creon with the proper rites. This passage, perhaps more than any other, reflects a concept that was at the core of Ancient thought: that all human affairs, even those of the king himself, were subject to the higher, divine laws of the gods. By refusing to obey the king’s order, Antigone was not committing a crime since she was actually abiding by the divine decrees, which are superior to the king’s. To the Greeks, he who broke these laws was called tyrant<\/em>, as Plato explains in the Republic<\/em>: “And when an individual ruler governs neither by law nor by custom, but following in the steps of the true man of science pretends that he can only act for the best by violating the laws, while in reality appetite and ignorance are the motives of the imitation, may not such an one be called a tyrant?” (301 b-c)<\/p>\n

The recognition (which we see already in Homer) that a limitation was put upon human affairs is one of the greatest and most fundamental discoveries of Greek political thought and was to have a glorious posterity in Western political history in general. Republican Rome was no different, and, upon Octavian’s accession to the imperium, things did not change fundamentally. Even the emperors admitted that there was a limit to Roman expansion–the Hadrian wall is a telling example. <\/p>\n

We are, however, faced with a problem after the crisis of the 3rd century and the rise of Diocletian. This era is often called by modern historians the Dominate, after Diocletian’s self-bestowed title of Dominus, “master.” Many have seen in the emperor taking on the title of dominus a new conception of state authority, a conception that was essentially more authoritarian in form, and where those who were up until then citizens became subjects. The dominus was, in Roman Republican tradition, the equivalent of the Greek tyrannos<\/em>, tyrant, and meant master or owner (of a slave for example). That the emperor took on this title, and was called therewith, is a significant step away from the Republican tradition, and, at first, from a certain conception of freedom, yet we should not exaggerate the implications of this. Late Antiquity was certainly an era of violence: torture was in common use, but this should not be blamed upon Diocletian or any single person. It was rather the expression of something deeper that was running through society, the visible face of a more profound social crisis that ran through all levels of society. The title of dominus was in many ways an adaptation and a solution to these tensions. <\/p>\n

This is the situation that Constantine inherited upon ascending the throne. The emperor had, by the 4th century, more power than they ever had before, and that any republican or democratic state in Rome or Greece could ever have. Yet, the ancient recognition that even the mightiest of men was not outside the bounds of certain limits remained, and was even, I would argue, augmented. The major difference was that the guardianship of this unwritten, invisible law was now vested in the hands of a concrete and visible institution: the Church. <\/p>\n

The relationship betweenthe Church and the State in the Christian Roman empire (the so-called “Byzantine” empire), is well known, and has been hottly debated through the centuries. It has also often been viewed with a certain bias, with a certain suspicion if not a downright hostility. Yet it suffices to mention the opposition to various state-sponsored (so they were viewed) heresies to show that we are far from a Church subjected to an all-powerful State. We remember all too well the Monothelite controversy, in which St. Maximus the Confessor eventually gave his life, or again the countless victims of Iconoclasm (mostly monks but also lay people) put to death by the Emperor for refusing to submit to the decree. We have in these examples a certain limitation already put upon the Emperors: they should not interfere with ecclesiastical matters, no matter how powerful they were. <\/p>\n

But there was another domain in which the Church made its authority felt, and which would perhaps have deeper and more long-lasting consequences: the moral domain. This is primodrial because it addresses not just ecclesiastical matters, but social<\/em> matters, that is, to the whole society, including (we could even say, beginning with) the emperor. We will recall St. John Chrysostom’s critics of Emperess Eudoxia’s extravagant behavior (for which he was twice exiled and died the second time). But the best and most powerful illustration of the Church’s guardianship of the new unwritten moral laws is perhaps the story of St. Ambrose, bishop of Milan, humiliating the Emperor. Let us briefly recall here that Theodosius, the emperor, had put to death 7,000 of the citizens of Thessalonica, Greece, in retaliation for the murder of the Roman governor there. On his return to Milan, the bishop barred him access to the church, holding this discourse reported by Theodoret:<\/p>\n

“You do not reflect, it seems, O Emperor, on the guilt you have incurred by that great massacre; but now that your fury is appeased, do you not perceive the enormity of your crime? You must not be dazzled by the splendor of the purple you wear, and be led to forget the weakness of the body which it clothes. Your subjects, O Emperor, are of the same nature as yourself, and not only so, but are likewise your fellow servants; for there is one Lord and Ruler of all, and He is the maker of all creatures, whether princes or people. How would you look upon the temple of the one Lord of all? How could you lift up in prayer hands steeped in the blood of so unjust a massacre? Depart then, and do not by a second crime add to the guilt of the first.” –from Theodoret, Ecclesiastical History<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

The priest shutting the gates of the holy temple to the prince himself for a deed he could do on account of his power. This was never seen before in human history. We have here an institution that not only explicitely claimed that all power is not arbitrary but subject to the higher divine law; but it also acted out upon this claim with authority. In this sense, the legalization of Christianity by the Edict of Milan in 313 brought the ancient recognition already expressed by Antigone back to the core of political power, and pushed it further. It is clear that the vast power that the emperors had acquired under the Dominate could not remain unaffected by this new authority. But what is perhaps more surprising and significant is that huaman laws, too, were transformed to agree with this divine authority. Ambrose forced the emperor to sign a law that forbade him to enact the death penalty before a 30 day-period had elapsed and the judgment had been brought again for reconsideration, “for your [the emperor] resentment will then be calmed and you can justly decide the issue.”<\/p>\n

All legal judgments, including the death penalty, were not to be made arbitrarily, but after sound consideration. Where Antigone only checked the king’s decisions, Ambrose could go a step further and transfer the divine law onto law codes. Human laws were, too, to reflect the immutable divine decrees. In this sense, Christianity went further than the ancient concept. Modern notions of democracy and human rights are the direct (but in several ways ungrateful) bearers of this active tradition. Here, too, we see why and how the modern and post-modern wish (like Nazism before) for a world without limits, of an all-powerful scientism and unlimited economic power can only lead us into the opposite of the idea of civilization and humanity: namely tyranny and despotism. Unless we prefer to be ruled by arbitrary conditions, be they economic or other, it is necessary for us to return to this concept that nothing in human affairs can possibly be unlimited. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“Nor did I think your orders were so strong that you, a mortal man, could over-run the gods\u2019 unwritten and unfailing laws. Not now, nor yesterday\u2019s, they always live, and no one knows their origin in time. So not through fear of any man\u2019s proud spirit would I be likely to neglect these laws.” Antigone […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_disable_autopaging":false},"categories":[6595,6591,6,6601],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3112","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-christianity-general","category-history","category-politics","category-western-christianity"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ellopos.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3112","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ellopos.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ellopos.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ellopos.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ellopos.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3112"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.ellopos.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3112\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ellopos.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3112"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ellopos.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3112"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ellopos.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3112"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}