There Is No Crime for Those Who Have Christ: Religious Violence in the Christian Roman Empire (Transformation of the Classical Heritage)

by Michael Gaddis

"There is no crime for those who have Christ," claimed a fifth-century zealot, neatly expressing the belief of religious extremists that righteous zeal for God trumps worldly law. This book provides an in-depth and penetrating look at religious violence and the attitudes that drove it in the Christian Roman Empire of the fourth and fifth centuries, a unique period shaped by the marriage of Christian ideology and Roman imperial power. Drawing together materials spanning a wide chronological and geographical range, Gaddis asks what religious conflict meant to those involved, both perpetrators and victims, and how violence was experienced, represented, justified, or contested. His innovative analysis reveals how various groups employed the language of religious violence to construct their own identities, to undermine the legitimacy of their rivals, and to advance themselves in the competitive and high-stakes process of Christianizing the Roman Empire.

Gaddis pursues case studies and themes including martyrdom and persecution, the Donatist controversy and other sectarian conflicts, zealous monks' assaults on pagan temples, the tyrannical behavior of powerful bishops, and the intrigues of church councils. In addition to illuminating a core issue of late antiquity, this book also sheds light on thematic and comparative dimensions of religious violence in other times, including our own.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Religion, Christianity

415 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2005

Reviews

[Beejai Richardson]

The core premise of this book is as follows:

The persecution against the church by Rome created a cult of martyrdom as Christians romanticized and glorified those who gave their life for the faith. After Constantine when the church gained the upper hand, this cult morphed into a romanticization and glorification of those who violently attacked pagans, Jews, and Persian Zoroastrians. As Christianity moved from not just a majority but the sole dominant worldview in the Roman world, this persecution of "pagans" morphed into violence against opposing forms of Christianity.

Faulty premise aside, the sad truth is that there was some violence against nonChristians in the 4th and 5th centuries as well as violence against opposing groups. However, Gaddis both overstates his case and selectively uses his sources. I left my tablet in the US so I cannot give early details from the notes I took but at one point Gaddis cuts and pastes various snippets from Augustine in an attempt to portray him condoning violence against pagans when in reality the opposite is true. He also on one page acknowledges that such 4th-century violence was a fringe minority and opposed by most leaders. Then a few pages later he is trying to imply that such violence was being done by nearly all Christians everywhere.

Gaddis' notes and portrayal on the "bandit" counsel of Ephesus and the later council of Chalcedon which overturned, point by point, nearly everything that was done in that earlier council is excellent. However, his biting cynical commentary here, as everywhere throughout, leaves it very clear that he is approaching the topic with extreme prejudice.

Don't be fooled. If you are looking for a more balanced, more scholarly, and more historically accurate examination of this same dark time in Church history, I would recommend Philip Jenkins' Jesus Wars. If you are a Muslim apologist or a Sam Harris and Christopher Hitchins fan who is just looking for ammo to confirm your bias... have at it.

[Pishowi]

عنوان الكتاب مقتبس من قول لأنبا شنودة رئيس المتوحدين لما بعت له الوالي الروماني في مصر انه يخفف شوية من اللي بيعملوا مع الغير المسيحيين.
الجدير بالذكر بقى :D ان شنودة رئيس المتوحدين كان سفّاح بكل معنى الكلمة، الراجل كان ينزل كل اسبوع مع شوية رهبان من اللي معاه وهاتك يا تهجير وهدم لبيوت الكفرة اليهود والوثنيين.
الكتاب بيحكي عن حاجات كتير عملها "الآباء القديسين" بإسم الجهاد المقدس ومخالفة العقيدة.
الكتاب عرضه ممتاز وعجبني جداً

[Roy]

A very good book about how desire for purity and unity can lead to violence. The Late Pagan Roman Empire in its Third Century Crisis sought to restore unity by compelling pagan sacrifice, this lead to the persecution of Christians and from it the Christians learned the power of martyrdom. After Constantine’s conversion the newly Christian Roman Empire knew by being Christian this power and sought to avoid turning the power of martyrdom against itself, but it also had to rule. When Christian groups such as the Donatists contested its authority it felt forced to respond creating new Christian martyrs against itself. This tension and the desire of some zealous Christians for the glory of martyrdom in a now evermore Christian world lead some of these to provoke martyrdom by attacking pagans, Jews, and eventually other Christians, this damaged civil order and the Roman state. Successive Roman Emperors, aware of the power of martyrdom sought to prevent this using state violence but were restrained by their knowledge of the power of martyrdom. This lead both to ineffective reactions to Christian violence and more desperate attempts at securing martyrdom from Christians opposed to their perception of the corruption of Christianity in the newly Christian Roman state. To them the hypocrisy of the Christian Empire was unbearable and they sought to destroy both by violence and the martyrdom of Imperial retaliation. The pattern of violence quickly lead to the use of violence in the Christological disputes of the 4th and 5th centuries. Both by dissident Christians and the Christian Roman State againdt each other. This culminated in the Councils of Ephesus and Chalcedon and the splintering of Eastern Christianity.

While ostensibly about Christian violence, the author is also fully aware of the inherent violence in both Authoritarian and Totalitarian systems and the tendency to violence of all zealots, both secular snd religious. Much reference is made to modern studies such as those of Hannah Arendt and Judith Shklar. This is the real theme of the book.

This book is not the indictment or attack on Christianity that so many reviewers seem to read it as being. As a practicing Catholic, I read it as an explanation of the reason why secular bishops were placed over monks and why the independent early monks and hermits of late antiquity were forced into regulated religious communities under the authority of bishops, and how the expected behavior of bishops evolved. I have to say it improved my opinion of St Augustine and the wisdom of the Council of Chalcedon.

[Denise Sudbeck]

Re-read for doctrinal research, this survey of the history of violence in the early Christian church, in particular the fourth and fifth centuries, is both dismaying and yet illustrates at least one understanding of how both the Western and the Eastern streams of the church have arrived at the current status quo. It reads like an indictment for that is precisely what it is - an historical indictment.

[Dmac]

Fascinating history of early Christianity.

[Jordan Dallas]

Scholarly, detailed, clear writing, helpful about 3rd-5th century Christian rhetoric. Very sad that church leaders seldom reflected the values and practices of the one they claimed to worship.