Defending Constantine: The Twilight of an Empire and the Dawn of Christendom (37 page)

St. Sebastian was one of many military martyrs of the early church, a victim, according to the thirteen-century Golden Legend, of Diocletian's purge.26
Soon after his Christian friends Marcellianus and Marcus were killed, "S. Sebastian was accused to the emperor that he was Christian." Diocletian was furious: "I have always loved thee well," he protested, "and have made thee master of my palace; how then hast thou been Christian privily against my health, and in despite of our gods?" Sebastian insisted that he worshiped Jesus "for thy health and for the state of Rome," but Diocletian was not mollified. He had Sebastian tied to a stake and ordered archers to shoot at him "till he was as full of arrows as an urchin is full of pricks." He was left for dead, but Irene found him and nursed him back to health. Ignoring friendly advice to flee, Sebastian stood in a place where he knew Diocletian would find him. When Diocletian recognized him, he took him to prison, where he was beat to death with stones and thrown "into a great privy." Much of this is legendary, but the core story-that Sebastian was a martyred soldier in Diocletian's army-is given in the fourth century by Ambrose.

Outside the empire, Christians were willing to use coercive violence. During the persecution of Daia, the Christians of Armenia mounted armed opposition and defeated the persecuting Roman emperor. When the "tyrant" tried to force them to sacrifice, the Armenians, being Christian and "zealous in their piety toward the Deity," turned from allies into enemies of Rome. Daia "was defeated in the war with the Armenians, and the rest of the inhabitants of the cities under him were terribly afflicted with famine and pestilence, so that one measure of wheat was sold for twenty-five hundred Attic drachms."27
The Syrians of Edessa, led by their Christian king Abgar IX, converted in the early third century, a full century prior to Constantine, and it is unlikely "that the ruler of a frontier province would have embraced the faith if by so doing he deprived himself of military resources
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POLICE FORCE?

Yoder acknowledges that Christians entered the Roman army in the second and third centuries but sees this as a sign of creeping pre-Constantine Constantinianism, the church's slide into accommodation and apostasy. Earlier Christian participation in the military is defensible because it did not involve war but only "police" responsibilities. Commenting on Paul's statement that the rulers "do not bear the sword in vain," he argues that the sword in view is "the symbol of judicial authority" rather than of capi
tal punishment or warfare. It was "but a long dagger," more a "symbol of authority" than a cop's pistol or a broadsword. He admits that Roman government was neither "mild" nor merely symbolic, but he insists that the police force represented by the sword is structurally different from military force: "In the police function, the violence or threat thereof is applied only to the offending party," and police action is subject to review by superiors. War is different: in battle, force is never truly discriminate, and there is no authority to review actions or enforce rules.29

Yoder's distinction does not hold. It is true, as Ramsay MacMullen once wittily put it, that many Roman soldiers spent a lifetime in the military without striking out in anger, except in the tavern. Yet this limit on opportunities for violence had little to do with a distinction between military and police. Rome had no "police" force distinct from the military,30
and, more important, this distinction does what Yoder wants it to do only if he is right in assuming that "police duties were peaceful" and "military duties were violent." In reality, "the opposite may have been more true," since "life within the empire could hold a candle to the violence on its borders." Frumentarii were "police" soldiers charged with collecting tariffs on grain imports, but they "arrested Christians, beat up the bakers of Antioch and extorted money during famine," in addition to being "detested political spies." Vigiles were the police and firemen of the city of Rome, "but in the year 270 they broke the siege of Autun and plundered the city."3'
No church father, at least, ever made the distinction between police work and warfare as a way of justifying Christian military service: "there is no recorded statement of any Christian theologian, or anyone else for that matter, permitting Christians to become policemen but not soldiers."32

Focusing exclusively on Christian participation in the Roman military, further, misses an important dimension of early Christian attitudes toward violence. Neither in the ancient world nor in the modern was vio
lence confined to the authorized violence of the police or military. Christians resorted to violence against one another, and against pagans, with surprising regularity. Athanasius was acquitted of the charge of murder, but he never quite denied charges of using lower-level forms of intimidation and roughing-up. Militant Donatists attacked Catholics in North Africa, and Catholics returned the favor. Bishops and other clergy often egged on the mobs. In the East, militant monks tore down pagan altars and put an end to sacrifice. "The monks commit many crimes," Theodosius lamented.33

To be sure, these incidents all occur after Constantine, and Yoder could perhaps cite them as more evidence of the evil effects of Constantinianism. But none of these acts of violence were encouraged by the empire, and none of them depended on the presence of a Christian emperor. My point is certainly not to endorse monastic vigilantism, which was often appalling. Nor is the point simply that ancient Christians-like medieval and modern ones-often failed to exhibit the peaceableness of Jesus. The point is this: without any help from Constantine or other emperors, Christians, including "pious" monks and bishops, acted violently and justified violence, and this suggests that the image of an early church universally and uncompromisingly committed to peace is an illusion.

REASONS FOR RENUNCIATION

Above I noted Yoder's effort to detach the question of Christian military service from the question of why. "No historians deny" that the primitive church "rejected Caesar's wars," he argues, though they differ in their account of the reasons for that rejection. But I have shown that the evidence is more ambiguous than Yoder claims, and I have also suggested that the why question cannot be detached from the factual question. If Christians renounced military service because of Jesus' command to love enemies, then presumably they, like Yoder, would have renounced military service no matter who the commander-in-chief happened to be. If, however, Christians renounced military service because it involved idolatry or because particular military actions were unjust, then they might reconsider if a Josiah were to come along to pull down the images and altars. As we might expect, the arguments against military service varied.

Some appealed directly to the example and teaching of Jesus. Tertullian tried to rebut Christian uses of the Old Testament in defense of war by pointing to the normative character of the Gospels. Yes, he admitted, "Moses carried a rod, and Aaron wore a buckle, and John [the Baptist] is girt with leather and Joshua the son of Nun leads a line of march; and the People warred." This, however, gives no support to Christian involvement in war: "How will a Christian man war nay, how will he serve even in peace, without a sword, which the Lord has taken away? For albeit soldiers had come unto John, and had received the formula of their rule; albeit, likewise, a centurion had believed; still the Lord afterward, in disarming Peter, ungirded the sword-belt of
34 every soldier. No dress is lawful among us, if assigned to any unlawful action."35
Cyprian similarly acknowledged that iron might be used to make implements of war, but the fact that it can be used for such purposes no more proves that this is its purpose than the existence of a voice and music proves that they should be used for lewd songs.36

Origen's arguments, however, were often linked with conceptions of pollution. He appealed to the pagan practice of exempting priests from military service, arguing that Christians are priests and thus fight in prayer and worship rather than with the sword. "Do not those who are priests at certain shrines, and those who attend on certain gods, as you account them," he asked Celsus, "keep their hands free from blood, that they may with hands unstained and free from human blood offer the appointed sacrifices to your gods; and even when war is upon you, you never enlist the priests in the army?" Given this, "how much more so, that while others are engaged in battle, these too should engage as the priests and ministers of God, keeping their hands pure." Christians wrestle "in prayers to God on behalf of those who are fighting in a righteous cause, and for the king who reigns righteously, that whatever is opposed to those who act righteously
may be destroyed!" But more important, "we by our prayers vanquish all demons who stir up war, and lead to the violation of oaths, and disturb the peace." Thus, Christians "are much more helpful to the kings than those who go into the field to fight for them.... None fight better for the king than we do. We do not indeed fight under him, although he require it; but we fight on his behalf, forming a special army-an army of piety-by offering our prayers to God."37

This passage damages Yoder's thesis in several ways. Origen, often cited as a key proponent of early Christian pacifism, here supports rather than "rejects" Caesar's wars. To be sure, he limits the assistance that Christians provide to prayer, and even then to prayers on behalf of "those who are fighting in a righteous cause." Yet this implies that some of Caesar's wars are "righteous" and that some "Caesars" might be classified among kings "who reign righteously." And this, further, implies the larger conviction that there is such a thing as a righteous cause for war. The force of the passage is pacifist, of course, and that should not be missed. But Origen's promise that Christians provide prayerful support for just wars ought not be missed either.

Tertullian's most vigorous and extensive arguments concerned idolatry. That was not a tangential issue for Roman soldiers. Religion was central to the military life:

The army was a religious world in its own right, but one integrated with the state cult of Rome.... The army religion was highly liturgical, and it was prescribed for all army installations of at least cohort strength; certainly every legion observed all the specified rites. Probably the creation of this religious system went all the way back to the religious policies of Augustus who took old military festivals and incorporated them into this new framework.... The worship of Mithra, Christ, and many various local deities did not interfere with the discipline of the army ... and as long as they were conducted outside the walls of the camp, military authorities paid little attention to them; probably most officers personally were involved in at least one of them.38

That tolerance began to weaken in the early second century, during the rule of Caracalla. As I discussed in chapter two, Caracalla promulgated
the "Antonine Constitution" (212), which granted citizenship to all the residents of the empire and had the effect of turning the empire into a single civic order, replacing the earlier crazy-quilt of local laws and customs. As we saw, that constitution was the basis for Decius's demand that all Roman citizens offer sacrifice to demonstrate their loyalty to the empire. That too is the context for the earliest empire-wide persecutions, the brutal imperial response to the Christian refusal to carry out the required sacrifice. Not only the empire but also the military was consolidated. Soldiers were still allowed to believe whatever they liked and even privately celebrate their personal cults, but they would continue in the army only if they were willing to offer sacrifice to the virtue of the emperor. Otherwise the empire itself would be endangered, as hungry and unhappy gods would take their unhappy vengeance on Rome.39

This is the setting for the military martyrdoms, and also the setting for Tertullian's treatises against military idolatry. His main argument against Christians in military service-not, to be sure, his only one-was that they would be required to participate in pagan rites. He argued that the military oath, the sacramentum, was incompatible with the Christian's commitment to Jesus, and he insisted that military standards, considered sacred by the Roman troops, were demonic instruments.40
His later treatise De corona militis is the sole surviving treatise on Christian participation in the military, and its focus was overwhelmingly on the idolatry involved in wearing the military crown, rather than on the issue of bloodshed.4'
His antithetical "You cannot serve God and the Emperor" occurs in a discussion of military service.42

For Tertullian, this danger was not confined to military service. He attacked Christian participation in art, literature, and nonviolent civil service and even argued that signing contracts involved idolatry.43
What other Christians were viewing as an opportunity-the domestication of the military and the expansion of citizenship-Tertullian recognized as a dangerous temptation to compromise, and he recommended a fairly wholesale
Christian withdrawal from a civilization infused with idolatry.44

This sort of argument is not absolute. What happens when civil magistracy no longer demands sacrifice to false gods, or contracts may be signed without commitment to idolatry, or artisans start sculpting scenes from the Gospels instead of from pagan mythology? What happens when the emperor expunges sacrifice from the army and changes the standard to a Christian cross? May Christians then rejoin the world, assume political responsibilities, even fight in just wars?

Many Christians said yes, and none illustrates this point so well as Lactantius. In the Divine Institutes he condemned all coercion, violence and bloodshed, more absolutely and thoroughly than any other early Christian writer.41
"With regard to this precept of God," he wrote, "there ought to be no exception at all; but that it is always unlawful to put to death a man, whom God willed to be a sacred animal." Lactantius condemned the indiscriminate killing of the arena: "I ask now whether they can be just and pious men, who, when they see men placed under the stroke of death, and entreating mercy, not only suffer them to be put to death, but also demand it, and give cruel and inhuman votes for their death, not being satiated with wounds nor contented with bloodshed." Once they are "wounded and prostrate," they are "attacked again" so that "no one may delude them by a pretended death." Crowds become "angry with the combatants, unless one of the two is quickly slain; and as though they thirsted for human blood, they hate delays." "It is not therefore befitting that those who strive to keep to the path of justice should be companions and sharers in this public homicide," since "when God forbids us to kill, He not only prohibits us from open violence, which is not even allowed by the public laws, but He warns us against the commission of those things which are esteemed lawful among men." He made a broader demand as well: "it will be neither lawful for a just man to engage in warfare, since his warfare is justice itself, nor to accuse any one of a capital charge, because it makes no difference whether you put a man to death by word, or rather by the sword, since it is the act
of putting to death itself which is prohibited."46
If there is a patristic poster boy of pacifism, Lactantius is it.