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

Michael Gaddis' work touches on some of the same territory covered by Ramsay MacMullen in his recent work, Voting About God. These works compliment each other well. MacMullen focuses on the actual church councils but touches upon the violence, while Gaddis looks more closely at the violence itself, its origins, its role in the imperial system, and its appropriation by the Christian movement.

The author's writing style, while not as engaging as that of MacMullen, is still very good and easy to follow. His prose is not turgid or difficult and it is not bogged down by foreign turns of phrase, or, as often happens in scholarly works, chunks of untranslated Latin, Greek, or German text.

I do think the author makes certain basic assumptions that are by no means proven. Necessarily, given the scope of his work, he cannot go far back into the imperial past and offer a in-depth treatment of repression and toleration and it needs to be understood that the Roman system was by no means unusually intolerant for the period. On the other hand, he does not fall into the trap of Richard Horsley, who seems to include Rome as a foremost member of the "Axis of Evil." Too, he treats the "persecutions" as though they happened exactly as Christian mythology claims, which is by no means proven. A good case can be made that none of the first nine persecutions claimed by apologists took place. The last, that of Diocletian, is more problematic, but even here we do not know enough about what Diocletian did, or why, since we have only the account of his opponents to go on. As MacMullen has elsewhere noted, the weight and bias of Christian sources distorts our view of this era.

These faults aside, Gaddis pulls no punches when it comes to examining the violent nature of late imperial rule, something MacMullen has also touched on in several of his works. It was a dark, brutal period, and Gaddis sees the origins of violence in the need for consensus. This, he thinks, motivated Diocletian, and he believes it motivated Constantine and the Christian rulers who followed him to the throne.

But it is not only the secular leadership of the empire but the rank and file who embraced violence. Gaddis does well to point out that just because a group sees itself as persecuted does not mean that it is, and that in the case of these early Christians, even the existence of polytheism was seen as persecution of a sort. Christians stopped at nothing to show their displeasure, from acts of violence guaranteed to see them beaten, imprisoned, or killed (both by pagan or Christian authorities) to open persecution of polytheists, so-called heretics, and Jews. Like MacMullen, Gaddis makes clear that Christian hatred was as great or greater for other Christians than for pagans.

What sets this book apart is its focus on religious violence. It is by no means the first book to examine monotheistic violence but it's focus on the early Christian empire makes it especially interesting as it is this period which set the tone for all that happened in the centuries following. It is a book every Christian should read. It will disabuse them of the notion that the "conversion" was some sort of peaceful process, or the myth that pagans rushed to worship the Christian god as soon as it became the state religion. As MacMullen has said, Christianity was imposed from above through violent measures, measures that had no limit, and Gaddis does not disagree.

I hadn't known that in the Christian antique world, there was a championing, at least among some, of the idea of "sacred violence." Primarily, this manifested itself in gangs of monks attacking pagan temples and synagogues, and in the Empire coercively pursuing unity among the various factions.

Gaddis covers the "late antiquity" period in Christian history, from Diocletian's persecution to the Council of Chalcedon in 451. The roots of the violence that would occur from Constantine's time onward has its roots in the experience of the early Christian community, whose worldview was shaped by martyrdom and persecution. To my surprise, I learned that the early martyrs never saw themselves as passive victims of violence for worshiping as they pleased. Rather, they saw martyrdom as a spiritual combat against the demons of the persecutors. When Diocletian's edict was posted, one Christian angrily ripped it down, meaning that at least some wanted to actively seek out martyrdom. Records indicate that those who were killed in retaliation for smashing idols were not to be honored as martyrs, indicating that the practice was fairly common. The concept of martyrdom, which literally means witness, expanded to include avenging dangers to the faith. Gaddis covers lots of material in his excellent book, and here are some more important points:

* The early monastic movement does not come off well. Zealots who wandered the country side smashing temples were almost all monks. Further, there was virtually no check on their behavior, and they saw themselves as inflicting God's anger on His enemies. The pagan orator Libanus angrily denounced "black-robed tribes" who wandered the countryside in Syria, terrorizing peasants, begging for food and money, and generally committing banditry. The Egyptian monk Shenoute, after ransacking a prominent Pagan's house in search of idols, was charged with crimes. His reply was "there is no crime for those who have Christ."
* Some famous saints had a dark side. For instance, John Chrysostom once preached that his congregants were to admonish blasphemers, and if that didn't work, to hit them. "Sanctify thy hand by the blow." A local synod accused Chrysostom of hitting a man and forcing him to take communion while his mouth was bleeding. Ambrose, who is perhaps best remembered for rebuking Theodosius after massacring civilians in a battle, also urged him not to prosecute monks who had ransacked several Pagan temples.
* The State, like the zealots, felt it had to use violence, but to bring about unity, not purity. Augustine was particularly important in this regard.
* The State was also afraid to take strong action against the monks and mobs, out of fear that they would be seen as "persecutors." Persecution was a core concept in that time.
* In fact, many zealots saw the continued presence of idolatry and heresy as a form of persecution, and believed that the Empire was "persecuting" Christians for its continued tolerance of Paganism.

Gaddis' study gives the reader on how violence was understood within the worldview of early Christian history. Essentially, violence was used to maintain boundaries between different religious communities, or to unite them. As the author notes at the end, Shenoute's claim, that there is no crime for those who have Christ, did not go uncontested.

I would love to own this book or even borrow it from the library but it's not available. If the price was $25 I would buy it today. One problem for me is that I'm not interested in all the articles. Still I can't afford even $35 used. For readers interested in the topic of persecution of the pagans I recommend Christianizing the Roman Empire (A.D. 100-400) by Ramsay MacMullen. It can be bought for a few dollars used.

Does the book deserve one star because it's too expensive? Of course not. But it angers me that some books are kept out of reach because they are over priced. There are publishers of out-of-print books that sell books through Amazon.com for about $25, and these are books that are photocopied. So I don't get that the new price for Gaddis' book is $60. What it has to say is important and that should be the main motivation for making this type of book available to as many readers as possible.

When Gaddis' book becomes affordable used I'll buy it. Thank god for on-line sellers of used books.