The Imperial Church

The position of Christianity changed dramatically as influential people in the ruling classes began to convert. The once-scorned religion grew in prestige and political power until it reached the imperial throne. Countless schoolchildren have been taught a propagandistic legend attributing Constantine's conversion to a dream before battle, in which he saw the cross and the words: In This Sign Conquer. This was not his first attempt to drape himself in divine predestination; a few years before, he had reported a similar vision of Apollo. [Chuvin, 25] In spite of Constantine’s ambivalence, it was this emperor who turned the tide against the pagans, though he only gradually showed his hand.

     It was still the pagan sun god who was sculptured on the great arch commemorating Constantine's triumph, which displays no Christian symbols. His coins too are dedicated to Sol Invictus, the “unconquerable sun,” whose day (Sunday) he decreed a holy day of rest. This change simultaneously endorsed a drive by Christian clergy (Justin Martyr, Ignatius, Eusebius) to move the Christian “sabbath” away from the Jewish Shabbat. At the Council of Nicaea, the bishops were at pains to distance the Feast of the Resurrection away from its historic connection to Jewish Pesach. (Yeshua’s crucifixion occurred when he came to Jerusalem to celebrate Passover.) The Christian priesthood hated having to depend on the rabbis to find out what date in their lunar calendar corresponded to the anniversary of the Christian resurrection. So the Nicene patriarchs decreed that Easter should be celebrated on the first Sunday after the full moon around the Spring Equinox.

     Constantine was the son of Constantius, an Illyrian legionary who rose to become one of the Tetrarch Augusti, and his concubine, an innkeeper’s daughter named Helena. He dropped her in order to marry up, to Theodora, the daughter of emperor Maximian. Their son Constantine had a successful military career and came into favor with Diocletian. The western emperor Maximian betrothed Constantine to his daughter Fausta, a convenient step on his ladder to power, though the marriage did not take place for years. When he finally married Fausta, in 307, Constantine dismissed his longtime concubine Minervina, a former captive, now a freedwoman, who had borne him a son.

Constantine’s troops proclaimed him emperor of the west, co-Augustus with his brother-in-law Licinius. They issued the Edict of Milan, proclaiming religious toleration for all and forswearing the “unfortunate” persecutions of Diocletian. The edict went out in the year 311 in the eastern empire, and 313 in the west. But its promise of spiritual freedom would prove to be short-lived, as persecutions of heterodox Christians began only a few years afterwards.

Constantine was determined to secure sole rulership by any means necessary. Having used his sister Constantia as a sexual pawn by promising her to Licinius when he needed him as an ally, he now convinced her to negotiate her husband’s surrender to him, promising his safety. But he imprisoned Licinius, and after an interval, had him strangled to death. [Zosimus, online] (Licinius was no good guy, himself having murdered all the relatives of previous emperors; as for Constantia, her brother once again married her off in a political alliance, this time to his nephew Gallus.)

After eliminating all possible challengers to his power, Constantine issued coins proclaiming himself “Ruler of the Whole World.” He claimed that god had conferred upon him “the government of all earthly things.” [Kirsch, 175] Bishop Eusebius backed up his conflation of heavenly and earthly power, declaring that there was one god and one emperor. [Kirsh, 170] The doctrine of Constantinianism, that insists on the unity of church and state, originated here.

The first Christian emperor continued and expanded the totalitarian legacy of earlier emperors. He installed a hated corps of secret police, the agentus in rebus (“doers of things”), as spies and death-dealers. Like his predecessors, Constantine perceived divination and magic as threats to his rule and severely repressed them, with extreme measures. In 319 he instituted the death penalty for diviners (aruspices) who visited private homes, even as friends. The state used an army of paid informers to hunt down the diviners and their clients. People who invited soothsayers into their homes were deported and their goods confiscated. [Lea, 397]

This law was the first step in the repression of pagans. But it stated that the customary rites at public altars were still allowed, “for we do not prohibit the ceremonies of a bygone perversion to be conducted openly.” [Theodosian Code IX, 16, 2] At least, not yet. But pagan divination was fine if it was in service to the emperor’s power; Constantine allowed the College of Haruspices (omen-readers based on the Etrusca Disciplina) to continue for this reason. [Zosimus, online]

     Before long, Constantine set in motion a tide of desecration of pagan holy places. He looted statues from the temples and used them as props in his personal cult, or to decorate his new city. He removed the Pythias' tripod and the Serpent Column from the Delphic sanctuary. Eusbeius tells us that he seized gold images from the pagan temples, and ordered the bronze, gold, and silver to be stripped off their roofs and doors. The wealth went to construct a new capital named after emperor Constantine, who had already emptied the treasury for his project. [Holland-Smith, 64; Kirsch, 184-85]

Constantine looted statues from temples around the Mediterranean, especially in the east. He seized a wooden statue of Cybele (“Rhea, Mother of the Gods” in the words of Zosimus) from her mountain temple near Cyzicus, Asia Minor. He chopped off the flanking lions, on which the goddess rested her hands, and had new arms and hands added, “into a supplicating posture.” He installed the statue in a temple overlooking Constantinople, and in a nearby temple, he placed a statue of Fortuna. [Zosimus, online] So the emperor’s vaunted Christianity came behind his desire for a magnificent capital, and probably also for hedging his bets. His desecrations emboldened fanatics to begin attacking temples in Spain, Italy, Egypt, and Anatolia.

Christian Schisms

For the first time, an emperor was on the side of Christians, who were still a small minority in the Roman empire. But that community had become incredibly divided, with some accusing others of being heretics. Factions of Christians were engaged in bitter theological disputes. The biggest split turned on the spelling of a word describing Jesus. Some held that Jesus was of the “same” substance (homoousion) as the Christian god, while the followers of the Libyan bishop Arius said it was a “similar” essence (homoiousion). The presence or absence of a single letter, literally one iota, changed the meaning, with very different theological implications. Was the son of god of the same substance as the father god, and therefore co-eternal, or similar and created by the father?

    The latter position was advocated by the Libyan priest Arius, an Amazigh (Berber) in Alexandria. Dubbed Arianism, it was widely held among Christians in many places. The position of “same essence” was militantly pressed by Athanasius, an ambitious young secretary to bishop Alexander of Alexandria. The two of them drafted a dogma “for salvation” which became the Nicene Creed, “of one being with the Father.” [Pagels 2012: 138-39]

In 325 the emperor summoned bishops from all over the empire to a council at his private villa at Nicaea in Asia Minor. He intended for the bishops to pound out a single ruling doctrine, his own desired result, which favored became known as the Nicene Creed. The emperor ordered the Council to allow Arius to attend, but he was not allowed to speak since he did not hold the rank of bishop. Of the roughly 300 bishops in attendance at the Council of Nicaea, only two bishops, both Libyans, did not sign the Nicene Creed. Arius and his two Libyan bishop supporters were excommunicated and exiled. Arius seems to have died soon after, an event that was mythologized by both sides. Nicene partisans claim that it was a miracle of god to punish his heresy. But Socrates Scolasticus said that the enemies of Arius poisoned him in Constaninople, and that he died of a violent intestinal hemorrhage. [See this discussion: https://christianity.stackexchange.com/questions/94691/arius-death-was-it-miraculous-or-was-he-poisoned ]

Constantine was not done; he ordered the death penalty for anyone who refused to surrender the Arian writings for destruction: “In addition, if any writing composed by Arius should be found, it should be handed over to the flames, so that not only will the wickedness of his teaching be obliterated, but nothing will be left even to remind anyone of him. And I hereby make a public order, that if someone should be discovered to have hidden a writing composed by Arius, and not to have immediately brought it forward and destroyed it by fire, his penalty shall be death. As soon as he is discovered in this offence, he shall be submitted for capital punishment.” [Emperor Constantine's Edict against the Arians. fourthcentury.com. Jan 23, 2010]

Unsurprisingly, hardly any of the writings of Arius survived, mostly fragments from diatribes against him. Nevertheless, many powerful bishops in the eastern empire supported the Arian theology, and some even publicly expressed their regret at signing on to the Nicene doctrine. [Pagels 2012: 139-41] The matter was by no means settled. The controversy remained unresolved for decades to come, since Arian views still predominated in some regions, especially those ruled by the Germanic Goths and Vandals.

Arianism made a comeback after Constantine’s death, and was even supported by his son Constantius II (emperor in 337-361) and again by emperor Valens (364-378), for much of the mid-4^th century. Its arch-enemy, Athanasius, became bishop of Alexandria, but was forced into exile five times over his 46-year reign, mostly because of his ruthless anti-Arianism. He called them “Ariomaniacs,” heretics who fought against Christ, harbingers of the Antichrist, and the whore of Babylon. [Pagels 2012: 142-44] Jane Schaberg illustrates the intensely misogynist elements in his rhetoric:

Athanasius describes the Arian movement as the daughter of the devil, identifying ‘Woman Heresy’ with the serpent who ‘forces her way back into the church’s paradise.’ He introduces ‘the penetrable harlot Eve’ as the archetype of the deceived fool and counterpart to the ‘impenetrable virgin Mary’. Medieval society made the connection between women’s preaching and demonic possession. [Schaberg, 77-78. Actually earlier church patriarchs had gone there first.]

Let’s back up to Constantine, shortly after he convoked the Nicene Council. “Now that the whole empire had fallen into the hands of Constantine, he no longer concealed his evil disposition and vicious inclinations, but acted as he pleased, without control.” [Zosimus 2. 29. 1] He elevated Crispus, his son by his spurned concubine Minervina, to the rank of Caesar. The youth proved able, and so popular that Constantine felt threatened and turned on him. He promulgated a set of scandalous rumors claiming that Crispus had become lovers with Fausta, or that he had raped her. Or that she had falsely accused Crispus to further her own son’s interests. Others said that Constantine’s mother Helena made up these stories, or had demanded the death of Crispus. But Zosimus insisted that Helena was heartbroken when her son executed her grandson.

All this looks like cover stories for the bald truth: Constantine put his own son on trial, personally sitting in judgment over him, and ignobly executed the 21-year-old youth. Two months later, he had his wife Fausta murdered, locking her into a bath “heated to an extraordinary degree.” [Zosimus, online]

These murders happened the year after the pious conclave at Nicaea. The bishops knew what side their bread was buttered on. Quick to condemn “heretics,” they kept a prudent silence about Constantine’s murders of his no-longer-convenient wife Fausta and son Crispus. [Fletcher, 24; Carroll, 202-3] In fact, some collaborated with him in covering them up. As Constantine had all references to his son and wife expunged from public record, bishop Eusebius obligingly removed them from his own church history. His “oily panegyric” to Constantine leaves out his evil deeds; these “accomodating tendencies” of the bishops, deferring to the emperors, begins very early on. [Fletcher, 24] For those horrific details, we depend on the last surviving pagan writer, Zosimus.

Through all of this, the emperor continued to officiate in pagan rites as pontifex maximus until 326. He did not undergo baptism until he was on his deathbed. [Lane Fox 620-21; 666] In 328, Constantine clutched a statuette of Fortuna at the inauguration of his new eastern capital at Byzantium, now renamed Constantinople. He raised a statue of himself made out of a bronze Apollo cadged from Troy, adding the rays of Sol Invictus around his head and holding the goddess of victory in one hand. [Kirsch, 191] Constantine retained the full panoply of emperor-worship, including titles calling him a “god,” “divine,” and “deified.” Even after his death, his image was paraded around the arena in a sun chariot and propitiated with sacrifices, incense, and lights. [MacMullen, 34-5; 178 n. 2]

Nevertheless, Constantine made far-reaching changes. In 334 Constantine issued a proclamation making Christianity the state-favored religion in Rome and its dominions. He endowed the church with extensive lands, even the imperial Lateran place, and exempted it from taxes. [Fletcher, 19] The emperor gave state stipends to the clergy, and raised bishops to the highest imperial rank of illustres. What’s more, he bestowed unprecedented civil powers on the bishops, going so far as to authorizing them to set aside judicial decisions by Roman courts. His decree of 333 ordered state courts to enforce the bishops' rulings.

Elaine Pagels describes how Constantine “openly preferred Christians when making official appointments and began to treat bishops virtually as his agents, putting tax money at their disposal, giving them the right to free slaves and judge legal cases, and even handing over to the bishop of Alexandria control of much of the city’s grain supply.” But he did outlaw crucifixion and gladiator shows, so there’s that. [Pagels 2012: 135-36]

SIDEBAR: Pagels’ repeated statements that this first Christian emperor “ended persecution” of Christians are surprising. [2012: 135; 139; 168] She writes this even while acknowledging that soon after his decree of toleration he banned “heretics” from holding religious meetings. In 324 he “legislated an end to all heretical sects,” confiscated their meeting places and gave the buildings to the bishops. [Pagels 2012: 136; 169] This claim that Constantine “ended persecution” in 311 has been a staple of Christian history for a long time. What is done to “heretics” hasn’t mattered any more than the persecution of pagans or Jews.

The elite status of bishops solidified with this sudden imperial backing. Crowned with white mitres and clutching crook-staves, wearing episcopal robes and gold rings, the bishops had become princes of the church, enthroned as “God's mouth.” [Torjesen, 157] They hobnobbed with the powerful and exerted tremendous influence on legislation and on the emperors themselves. Their congregations were made up of wealthy slaveholders. [MacMullen, 10; 167 n. 26] The territories they ruled were named after and modeled on the regional domains of imperial Roman government, and adopted much of its terminology such as “diocese” and “vicar.”

In the mid-300s, the bishop of Rome asserted his primacy, more in the tradition of the emperors than of his claimed lineage to fisherman Simon Petrus. In 384 he took the title of pope (papa, “father”). The Jewish movement that Rome had suppressed with crucifixion was now entirely expropriated by its oppressor. Legend relocated Simon Petrus to Rome, claiming he had founded a church there, established the apostolic line of the popes at the center of the empire. But the earliest source to place Peter in Rome dates no earlier than 157 CE (in a letter by the Christian deacon Gaius). [www.biblicalarchaeology.org/daily/ancient-cultures/ancient-rome/the-apostle-peter-in-rome/ ]

    Bishops were the policy-makers and regional governors of the church. They held councils and synods to strategize and make pronouncements on church doctrine, hammering out the beginnings of canon law. (Canon means “measuring rod.”) The Council of Nicaea took away Christians’ right to choose their own leaders, as their predecessors had, by the community laying on hands. Instead they created a rule that only bishops could appoint new bishops. The Church hierarchy insisted on obeisance to the bishops' will. In the words of Ignatius of Antioch, lay people must obey the bishop “as if he were God.” [Pagels 1979: 35] Here's what they did.

ATTACKS ON WOMEN

       The most powerful churchmen insisted that the Christian priesthood should be exclusively male. They condemned Christian communities led by women as heretical.    In 352 the council of Laodicea decreed that women must be excluded from leading ritual and performing sacraments. (They also extended this ban to eunuchs, thus making the possession of testicles a requirement for church leadership.) The canon states that “so-called presbyterides or [female] presiders shall not be appointed in the church.” [Karras, 336]

The learned fathers stated that baptism performed by women was “dangerous and godless.” [Henning, 273] They forbade females even to “draw near the altar” or to “touch things which have been classed as the duty of men.” (Who classified ceremonial acts as men’s privilege, but men?) Women and girls were not allowed to sing in church, either, as the Syrian Didascalis (318) and the synod of Antioch (379) agreed. [Drinker, 170; 179] Prelates at Toledo (400) prohibited nuns from chanting the service or celebrating vespers unless a priest was present. [Canon 9, Hefèle, 123]

In 419, the first council of Carthage forbade women to baptize, and declared that “A woman, however learned and holy she may be, must not be allowed to teach in assembly.” [Canons 110, 99, in Hefèle II.1, 120] (This pronouncement came four years after fanatical monks assassinated the Neo-Platonist philosopher Hypatia in Alexandria, who taught students from many countries.) A Gaulish council at Orange (441) forbade the ordination of deaconesses, and demoted those already consecrated to lay status. [Canon 26, Hefèle II.1, 446]

     The council of Laodicea also stripped Gnostic scriptures from the official church canon, thus excluding some of the oldest Christian literature. Their compilation of the Christian Bible minimized women's ministry among the earliest Christians and censored records of their accomplishments. Some bishops banned female groups from gathering at martyr's graves. [MacMullen, 164, n. 17] "Holy" men went to extremes to avoid women; some monks even refused to see their own sisters. [Schulenberg, 288-9]

     There remained exceptions, like the penniless wandering Messalian monks of Syria and Anatolia, “notoriously indifferent to the presence of women within their ranks.” [Brown 1987: 298] They had female teachers, not just males, but nothing seems to be recorded about them. Messalian means “those who pray” in Syriac, or Euchite in Greek. They sought visions of the Divine, and regarded Nature as its manifestation. They respected the natural world, meditated in it and upon it, and sometimes are described as protected by it, by animals or clouds. “By contemplating the surrounding nature, they invoke for the entire world the mysterious presence of the living God.” They implored that the cosmos be restored from its polluted condition. They valued humility and humor. Abba Benjamin counseled, “Be joyful at all times.” [Fischen, 350-51

     Many Christian women cut their hair and put on male clothing to pursue the life of a spiritual ascetic in the manner of Thecla. The Eustathians recommended this custom to show that sexual distinctions were no longer valid for those devoted to religion. Women who joined the Eustathians cut off their hair and left their husbands. The council of Gangra (Asia Minor, mid 4^th century) did its best to make them outcasts: “If any woman leaves her husband and separates herself, from an abhorrence of the married state, let her be anathema.” And: “If a woman from pretended asceticism cuts off her hair given her by God to remind her of her subjection, thus renouncing the command of subjection, let her be anathema.” [Canons 14 and 17, in Hefèle II, 332-3] On the civic side, the Theodosian Code banned women who cut their hair from the churches in 438. [Schulenberg, 162]

      In spite of these anathemata, the restraints on Christian women were burdensome enough that some female seekers, such as St Mary / Marinos and St Matrona of Perge, chose to disguise themselves as monks. [www.cloaks.org/talbch1.pdf] Both of them were taken to be eunuchs. Their strategy was a necessity for female solitaries to be able to meditate unmolested. Anastasia, the founder of a monastery near Alexandria, resisted being returned to court life by disguising herself as a eunuch, and lived as a hermit for 28 years. In France, Papula took on male dress to live as a monk and lived undetected for years. [McNamara, 68; 91] The Vita of St Eugenia tells us that she adopted a male name and dress, entered a monastery, and was eventually elected abbot. [Schulenberg, 159]

     The sexual double standard in canon law reached into every area of private life and personal rights. Bishops at the council of Elvira, for example, were obsessed with controlling female sexual behavior. They focused on female adultery, female premarital sex, women who got pregnant outside wedlock or who married non-Christians. [Canons 14, 16, 17, 65] They set harsh penalties for women, but were lax with men, the frequent and habitual offenders. [Lane Fox, 665] Male adultery is mentioned only once, in prohibiting married Christian men's adultery with pagans or Jews. [Canon 78, Hefèle, I.1, 262] (Were Christian maidens then fair game?) Otherwise, the only limit set on male “carnal sins” was to forbid Christian men from marrying a widow who had had an affair with another man. Such a woman would be refused communion even at death. [Canon 71, Hefèle I.1, 259] These attitudes were no flash in the pan: the first council of Toledo allowed unmarried men who kept concubines to receive communion; but not priests’ widows who had remarried. Clerics were instructed to confine wives who committed “a fault,” and to impose fasts on them. [Canons 17, 18, 7, in Hefèle II.1, 124]

    The bishops at Elvira allowed men privileges forbidden to women, such as the right to remarry, or to marry Jews or heretics. They did allow women to marry pagans, as long as the husbands weren't pagan priests (Canons 16, 17). But they were fixated on female chastity and fidelity. They refused communion to Christian women who aborted after committing fornication, even on their deathbeds (Canon 63). The Canon “On women's letters” declared that marriage swallowed up women's identities: “Women should not presume to write letters to laymen in their own names and not in the names of their husbands...” Nor were they allowed to receive letters addressed to themselves (Canon 81). [Hefèle I.1, 264.] The patriarch Jerome, too, forbade women to write in their own names; presumably they were to name their father or husband instead. [McNamara, 149]

The bishops at Elvira placed sanctions on women who left their husbands (Canons 8-11). They considered it “adultery” if a maiden had premarital sex with one man and then married another (Canon 14). They were especially harsh toward “virgins consecrated to God”; if they had sex, or even got married, they were to be eternally excommunicated. Only if they did penance for the rest of their life, would they would be allowed communion on their deathbed. (Canon 12). [Hefèle I.1, 229] The divine husband was as jealous and implacable as the mortal one.

    The old Roman ideal of the univira (one-man woman) dominated in the new Christian order, with frequent resort to the Book of Timothy. Numerous church councils insisted that priests’ wives must be held to the univira standard. (Priestly marriage was normal practice in this period, and remained so until the Gregorian “Reform” of the 11^th century.) A Roman council of 386 prohibited the lower clergy from marrying widows, and refused ordination to men who had done so. [Canons 4 and 5, Hefèle II.1, 70] The first Council of Carthage forbade bishops to ordain men married to widows, divorcees or women who had married before. [Canon 69, Hefèle II.1, 118]

At Neocaesarea, the bishops put the onus on husbands to control their wives, barring husbands of adulterous women from church, and defrocking priests who refused to abandon wives who strayed. [Canon 8, Hefèle I.1, 331] Patriarchal Roman ideals were adopted as standards for priests’ wives as far away as Ireland, where a 6th century synod ordered them to veil themselves in public. [Bitel, 177]

     These church laws reflected an anti-female backlash. Roman women had gained much ground before the Church rose to imperial power. Diocletian had emancipated them from male guardianship in 294, but the 4^th century Christian emperors treated them as minors subject to parental consent. The one saving grace, by contrast with Germanic women, was that Roman women could still inherit an equal share with their brothers. [Wemple, 19] Having access to money, housing, land mattered very much. Another major change came in 331, when “Constantine imposed penalties that made [divorce] all but impossible for women and extremely difficult for men.[https://historum.com/t/were-constantines-divorce-law-reforms-a-racket.95886/ This article argues that bishops, having been granted legal authority, could grant divorces for a fee.]

     All the sainted doctors of the Church—Paul, John Chrysostom, Jerome, Augustine—agreed that Eve had led Adam into sin, therefore all women should be put under obedience to their husbands and the authority of priests. The Church fathers spoke of sex and the human body with horror and dread. They saw women as temptresses, seducers into sin, corrupt, possessed of weak and evil natures. In the words of Tertullian:

By every garb of penitence woman might the more fully expiate that which she derives from Eve – the ignominy, I mean, of the first sin, and the odium of human perdition…Do you not know that you are each an Eve?… You are the devil’s gateway; you are the unsealer of that forbidden tree; you are the first deserter of the divine law; you destroyed so easily God’s image, man. On account of your desert— that is, death—even the son of God had to die. [Tertullian, De cultu feminarum, I, 1]

Clement of Alexandria projected his own misogyny onto women: “the very consciousness of their own nature must evoke feelings of shame.” [Pædagogus II, 33, 2, in Ranke-Heinemann, 127] For Jerome, a truly holy woman “will cease to be a woman, and will be called man.” [Schulenberg, 213. This pronouncement echoed both Gnostic and Buddhist prejudices against women.] Jerome’s ideal woman was a virgin who stayed home, fearing the shame of losing her virginity, and living a life of fasting and sefl-abnegation. He praised Asella for subsisting on bread and water in a small cell, and urged Blaesilla on to extremes of asceticism that left her barely able to walk or even to lift her head. She died of starvation. At her funeral, an outraged crowd blamed Jerome for Blaesilla’s death: “How long must we refrain from driving these detestable monks from Rome? Why do we not stone them or hurl them into the Tiber? They have misled this unhappy lady.” [Schulenberg, 380; McNamara 50]
    Jerome gave similar counsel to Blaesilla’s mother, Paula, then blamed her for following it: “Her self-restraint was so great as to be almost immoderate; and her fasts and labours were so severe as almost to weaken her constitution.” She died an early death from the austerities he urged on her, which he defended with a long encomium to her holiness. [Kraemer 2004: 190 175-203] Some of his contemporaries were not fooled. Palladius “believed that Paula was hindered by Jerome: "For though she was able to surpass all, having great abilities, he hindered her by his jealousy, having induced her to serve his own plan." [http://mariannedorman.homestead.com/JeromeandPaula.html ] Paula financed all Jerome's undertakings, including the translation of the Vulgate and the foundation of a monastery in Bethlehem.

      The control of women, especially independent widows, became a central preoccupation of the Syrian clergy. The 3^nd century Didascalia reflects a de facto ministerial role for widows, whose prayers were regarded as especially powerful and who visited people, prayed and fasted for them, and laid hands on the sick. [Penn 2002] The authors of this church lawbook claimed that it was “presumptuous” for widows to minister except by the bishop’s order. They also forbade widows to teach, baptize, or answer theological questions, which would “bring blasphemy against the Word.” Nor were they to convert pagans or discipline penitents with fasting and prayer, as was customary. [Torjesen, 147-8]

     The Didascalia reproves “rebellious widows” who are “bold and have no shame.” They should not go around town but “constantly sit at home,” and should not accept alms except through the bishops. [Didascalia 146.9-11, in Penn 2002] The author claims that widows who do not receive enough alms “send out a curse like the pagans.” [Didascalia 154.1-2, in Penn 2002] This charge is very much like those laid against old women in early modern Europe, who were believed to curse those who refused them alms or food. The Didascalia shows bishops attempting to control the distribution of alms, and through this to control the widows who were dependent on the community. The author even counsels widows that it would be better for them to starve than to accept alms from an impure donor.

    Social controls were moving into place that trapped women in widowhood, defining remarriage as “an act of damage,” and a third marriage as “harlotry.” [Didascalia 142.11-13, in Penn 2002] The only role for such women is to be humble, chaste, modest, quiet, and obedient to the bishop and priests. [Didascalia 149.18-20, in Penn 2002] As Michael Penn explains, “widows are key figures in [the] power struggle” of male clergy to suppress female authority figures, and “the clergy consolidated its power at the expense of widows.” [Penn 2002: 32-33]

     The power of independent widows is tackled again in the Apostolic Constitutions a century later (circa 380). The priesthood tells these women to stay home and not go to others’ houses for anything. (So much for Christian fellowship!) The authors of the Constitutions emphasize the ban on female teaching with the Genesis decree that man should rule over woman and assorted Pauline citations. They reiterate the ban on women performing the office of a priest, “which would “go against nature.” Then, with no sense of contradiction, they point to pagan priestesses and goddesses, as proof of the wrongness of female religious leadership. “For to take priestesses from among the women is an error of pagan godlessness.” [Ranke-Heinemann, 131-2; Penn, online]

Gone are the widows’ blessings, fasting, and laying on of hands. Bishops have succeeded in replacing them with deaconesses, women that they selected and controlled, whose role was to ride herd on the female half of the congregation during services. The bishops themselves were installed as absolute rulers, lords and masters of their congregations, who in true authoritarian form, equated opposition or disobedience to themselves with rejection of god. All ritual acts were now restricted to the all-male clergy. [Penn 2002: 45-46]

     However, such pronouncements did not deter some congregations from following female pastors. The most dramatic examples come from Magna Graecia (southern Italy and Sicily) where the ancient Greek custom of priestesses in Goddess temples persisted. Their presence seems to have influenced Christian women to continue what their eastern counterparts no longer dared to attempt. As late as 454, an inscription at Tropea, Calabria, refers to a Leta Presbytera.” [Karras 2007] Around the same time, a monument in Sicily was inscribed to “the presbiter Kale.” [Connelly, 268]

But in 494, pope Gelasius ordered the bishops of southern Italy to stop ordaining female priests: “Nevertheless we have heard to our annoyance that divine affairs have come to such a low state that women are encouraged to officiate at the sacred altars and to take part in all matters imputed to the offices of the male sex to which they do not belong.” [Connelly, 268] A century later, bishops in northern Gaul reprimanded Breton priests who traveled around to house churches (once again) hosted by female conhospitae:

You do not stop carrying portable altars around the dwellings in the territories of different cities, and you presume to celebrate masses there with women, whom you call conhospitae [“joint hostesses”] and whom you admit to the divine sacrifice to such an extent that while you distribute the eucharist they hold the chalices in your presence and presume to administer the Blood of Christ to the people. [John Wijngaards, “Celtic Women in Liturgical Ministry,” www.womenpriests.org/traditio/kelts.asp]

The bishops relate that the women raised the chalice of wine “in the manner of the Pepudian sect.” [Alexandre, 437] They refer to the Phygian priestesses of Pepuza who were still very much on the minds of orthodox clergy as examplars of pagan error. They objected to women performing any ritual act, such as elevating the chalice.

With this exception, western churches did not have deaconesses as in the eastern empire, but the bishops nevertheless took the trouble to forbid them. In 394, the Council of Nimes forbade ordination of women into “levitical ministry”; and again bishops at the Council of Orange in 441; the Council of Epaon in eastern France in 517, and the Synod of Orleans in 533. [Connelly, 267]

           Back in the eastern Mediterranean, the Apostolic Constitutions ordered women to veil in church, or be denied communion. John Chrysostom went further, calling for women to veil all the time. Clement of Alexandria had said the same a century earlier; by covering their faces women would avoid luring men into temptation. [Ranke-Heinemann, 128] This rationale for veiling predates Islam by several centuries. In fact, veiling and segregation of upper class women had been customary for centuries in Greco-Roman societies. Now the custom was fortified by a powerful new religious justification, which remained particularly potent in the eastern empire.

Tertullian was pleased that most Greek churches, and some north African ones, “keep their virgins covered.” He disparaged Christian women who protested “the discipline of the veil.” [On the Veiling of Virgins, XVII, 1] (Here are the origins of the nun's garb.) Tertullian was obsessed with controlling women’s behavior, in his essays (De Cultu Feminarum, De Exhortationed Castitatis, De Viriginibus Velandis). He blamed women for male sexual attraction, urging on a stringent female chastity that required far more than actual abstinence. Tertullian demanded that women restrict themselves at all times, striving to avoid even the appearance of impropriety. Torjesen sums up his attitude: “A Christian woman was not chaste unless she had no impact on male sexuality.” [Torjesen, 178-79]

           As early as the second century, segregation of women in church had become customary in some places. By the late 300s, Algerian churches sequestered virgins behind a white marble balustrade. In Syria, women sat at the back of the church. The clergy forbade them to speak of their faith to strangers, limiting them to only repeating the creed in response to any question. Deacons watched at the church door and questioned women visitors on their marital status and religious beliefs. [Lane Fox, 554] Still, as late as the 5th century, Syrian widows appointed as deaconesses were seated within the altar enclosure, next to the bishop. [Alexandre, 436]

           In the clergy's view, women symbolized and embodied sexuality. They were sex, were for sex, or else they must utterly renounce the body. To contain the taint of sex, and to curb male sexual temptation, women must be kept under restraint. Male libertinage was rampant in the empire, but clergymen were most eager to denounce easier targets. They were “horribly malicious about the morals of widows and orphans.” [Veyne, 75]

The “Alexandrian rule” outlawed all forms of sexuality that were not procreative. This included clitoral stroking, so crucial for female sexual pleasure, and oral sex or anal sex. But the clergy went even beyond pagan patriarchy in stigmatizing same-sex lovemaking. John Chrysostom went so far as to say that “such people are worse than murderers... There is nothing, absolutely nothing more demented or noxious than this wickedness.” [Boswell, 140; 361]

           Prelates favored scriptures that dwelt on the sinfulness of sex, while they increasingly deemphasized verses that advocated for the poor or deplored the amassing of riches. Origen already found urban churches hard-hearted toward the poor and petitioners. Early churches often observed shaming and humiliation of penitents, who grovelled in sackcloth and ashes outside the churches, begging other Christians to pray for them. Crying and praying adulterers prostrated themselves, licking the dirt beneath other Christians' feet. [Lane Fox, 364; 521; 337]

Certain apocryphal scriptures even treat death as preferable to loss of virginity. In the 5^th-century Pseudo-Titus Epistle, a prayer that a girl receive “what is expedient for her soul” causes her to die on the spot. The Acts of Peter has the apostle causing his own daughter to become paralyzed in order to protect males from sexual temptation: “For this [daughter] will wound many souls if her body remains healthy.” [Schaberg, 157. These passages resemble later Chinese paeans to virgins who starve to death rather than surrender their chastity.]

           The Anatolian bishop Gregory of Nazianzus advocated the public shaming of sinners. In his twisted thinking, that included women who had been captured and raped by Gothic invaders. Ignoring the systematic rape in war, the bishop considered its victims blameworthy, insisting that many had a coquettish past. He cited a scripture stating that defilement comes from “what goes out” not “what goes in.” He claimed that the women had let inviting looks “go out,” thus tempting the Goths to “go in.” The bishop ordered Christian communities to search their ranks for flirtatious women and to eject them from their congregations, for “one ought not readily to share in one's prayers with such women.” [Fox, 540; Fletcher, 67]

But Gregory had twisted around the verse he was quoting, in which Jesus rebukes his disciples for slandering people for not keeping the dietary laws. “Remember that giving vent to slander is even a greater sin than breach of purity laws. Indeed, a person is defiled not so much by what goes into the mouth as by what comes out of the mouth.” [Mark, 7:14-20, in King, 195. A saying about what goes into the mouth also appears in Matthew 15:10, and in a non-canonical source, the Gnostic Gospel of Thomas (Saying 14)] In other words, eating non-kosher food is less harmful than defaming people who do not keep kosher. So in slandering the raped women, Gregory was doing exactly what Rav Yeshua had warned against, but in a more harmful way.

 A New World Order 

            Christianization of the empire did not bring about the liberation of slaves or oppressed colonies. Instead it provided a religious rationale for domination: that the social hierarchy was divinely ordained. Romans 13:2 sided with the powers-that-be over the oppressed, whose duty was to obey. Even though some early bishops had been slaves, the bishops now sat in state-sanctioned pomp and privilege. They upheld the class hierarchy of the Roman world, an imperialist slave society, and some were slaveholders themselves. [Lane Fox, 296]

           Paul’s injunction that servants obey their masters was repeated in Timothy 6:1: “Let as many slaves as are under the yoke count their own masters worthy of all honor, so that the name of God and his doctrine not be blasphemed.” (Here masters’ customary and pervasive rape of slaves is conveniently disregarded.) In Paul’s Letter to Philemon, he returns a fugitive slave back to his master, advising that he be treated leniently. Church councils of the 500s and 600s cited this letter to justify refusing asylum to escaped slaves. [Dockès, 146] (It later got a heavy workout in 19^th century America.) In the 370s, Basil of Caesarea had ordered monasteries to return runaway slaves. [Bradley, 147-8]

           The legal status of slaves remained much the same. Constantine banned the practice of face-branding, although he left the door open to mutilation and even murder. His law of 319 reassured the slaveholder who beat or whipped or chained up his human chattel that “he should not stand in fear of any criminal accusation if the slave dies”—as long as he had not used weapons to murder the person. [Phillips, 27] Contemporary sources show little change of heart among Christian slaveholders, least of all the high clergy. [Bradley, 147] The Council of Elvira penalized nuns who married far more severely than a woman who killed her slave. [Hefèle, I.1, 225, 229]

           Some early female saints repudiated the slaveholding system they were born into, practicing the earliest principles of their religion. Macrina included her freed slaves in her house convent, “making them her sisters and equals rather than her slaves and underlings.” Olympias of Constantinople did the same. [McNamara, 78] Others had difficulty detaching from the mentality of privilege that regarded humans as property. Around 400 the devout Roman heiress Melania and her husband Pinian resolved to follow Yeshua's instruction to “Sell all you have, and give to the poor.” However, the poorest of all, those who were regarded as property themselves, were not to be beneficiaries of this largesse. Most of them were slated for sale.

Melania's slaves rebelled when word spread of the plan. The probability of being sold away from their loved ones terrified them, and they tried to stay together by going to Pinian's brother. (For trying to aid them, he was accused of trying to enrich himself.) With help from the emperor's family, Melania and Pinian won a decree that the state would sell their chattel and give them the money. The slaves were duly sold to the highest bidders, so that the pious couple would have the more to distribute as alms. [Pagels, 87-8. Melania's priestly biographer claims that she freed 8,000 out of 24,000. Phillips (1985: 35) thinks this number exagerrated.]

Judgment Day: Christ enthroned amidst kings and lords, while cavalry cuts down suffering humanity below—“a sharp sword to strike down the nations” which “he will rule with a rod of iron.” Modern engraving based on the Book of Revelations. 

      Some church fathers blamed slaves for their misfortune. Augustine believed that slaves—who were originally captives—had brought their suffering on themselves: “such a condition of servitude could only have arisen as a result of sin, since whenever a just war is waged the opposing side must be in the wrong, and every victory, even when won by wicked men, is a divine judgment to humble the conquered and to reform or punish their sin.” Augustine made several facile assumptions: that Rome’s imperial wars were just, and that the captives they took were sinful, more sinful than the Romans who enslaved them. “It is clear, then, that sin is the primary cause of servitude... Nor does this befall a man, save by the decree of God, who is never unjust...” [City of God, XIX, 15 (2008: 223)] Isidore of Seville agreed, opining that the system of masters and slaves was divinely willed. Pope Gregory “the Great” wrote on similar lines, and himself bought captive Britons in the Roman slave market. [Dockès, 146]

    The accommodation of Christianity to Roman social hierarchy that began with Paul continued to deepen. By the 3rd century, hegemonic rank in the institutional church had outstripped the Nazarene’s teachings of love and humility. As Karen Torjesen explains, Tertullian treated the church as a political body, with bishops as its monarchs. He redefined ministry in legalistic terms, as a privilege linked to class, but even more to sex. Thus women lacked the rights of clergy: jus docendi (the right to teach); ius offrendi (the right to make ritual offerings); and ius delecta donandi (to restore sinners after penitence). Tertullian complained that local churches failed to uphold differences of rank and to observe the proper distance between social orders. He saw such Christians as heretics, “without gravity, without authority and without discipline.” [Torjesen, 160-4]

     Many Christians disagreed with the ecclasiatics’ claim that state power was divinely ordained, not forgetting that they themselves had been persecuted by that power. But the authoritarian wing managed to dominate the Christian movement through its privileged relationship with the state. The bishops used state power to reverse the policy of religious toleration for which their predecessors had given their lives, and persecuted other Christians as heretics.

     To rebel against the church and its patriarchal canons, said the priestly hierarchy, was to rebel against god. These claims represent the most extremist trend in the Christian movement. But it was this authoritarian model that prevailed, laying the foundations of the oppressive partnership of church and state that would rule the late empire, and then medieval Europe. 

Attacks on Jews

           Rather than cherishing warm feelings toward its parent religion, the church hierarchy hated Judaism. It stood as a living reproach to the validity of Christian doctrine, and a challenge to the authority of its priestly hierarchy, who regarded Jewish interpretation of their our scriptures as an existential threat to their own legitimacy. An obsessive jealousy was the ruling constant in Church policy toward the Jews. Its priesthood professed to honor the Hebrew Bible, but claimed that their own Greek texts had superseded what they called the “Old Testament.” None of the original Christian scriptures were in Aramaic, the language of Yeshua and his disciples (but the Judaic books of Daniel and Ezra are, and so are the Babylonian and Jerusalem Talmuds).

Judaism remained, even in the 4^th century, a serious rival for converts. The prestige of Judaism was tremendous. A sizeable number of Christians and pagans were converting to Judaism, while traffic in the other direction was light. [Lane Fox, 270-1; Geger, passim] Towards the end of the 4th century, it was common for Syrian Christians to attend the synagogue on Saturday and church on Sunday. [Lane Fox, 482] Bishop Commodian of Carthage bitterly condemned the “Jewish temptation” that attracted Christians and pagans to the synagogue. A bishop of Constantinople used the same expression. [Keller, 85]

           Anxious that Christianity would be overtaken by Judaism, the clergy issued numerous edicts forbidding Christians to associate with Jews. Bishops at the council of Córdoba (325) tried to stop them from intermarrying or even eating together. They thundered against Christians who invited rabbis to bless the harvest. Bishops at the council of Laodicea prohibited Christians from attending festivals of the Jews, heretics or pagans, and from accepting festal presents from them. [Canons 37, 38, 39, in Hefèle, 318]

           Canons of the council of Laodicea, in attempting to separate Christians and Jews, show the strength of the social and even religious ties in the 4^th century. Not only did Christians attend synagogue services (they were known as the “god-fearers”) but pagans and Jews could also be found at Mass. This climate of religious tolerance reflected an older pagan ethos, “the strong and prevailing social patterns of religious interaction that had shaped communal life in the Mediterranean city for nearly a millennium.” [Fredriksen and Irshai, 1006]

    Echoing priestly anti-Semitism, Constantine’s laws slammed the Jews as a “deadly sect” [Lane Fox, 671] who were “killers of the prophets, and the murderers of the Lord.” [Pagels 2012: 169] Church patriarchs used their clout to get the Roman government to outlaw Jews speaking in defense of their religion to Christians, or even to pagans. By 357, the law forbade Christians to convert to Judaism, on pain of state confiscation of their property. [Keller, 1966] It also prohibited Jews from having Christian slaves, lest they be converted to Judaism.

Jews had enjoyed a degree of legal protection under Roman law: Iudaeorum secta null lege prohibita (“no law prohibits the sect of the Jews”). After Constantine, their status was greatly weakened. Bishops and monks led destructions of synagogues in some places, especially in western Asia, and the building of new ones was prohibited. “Imperial legal rhetoric routinely grouped [Jews] together with pagans and … heretics” calling them “a savage and nefarious sect, a sacrilegious cult, and a polluting contagion.” [Fredriksen and Irshai, 1000] In 401, the Council of Carthage legally classed Jews as “infamous,” which stripped them of the right to seek legal remedy for harms done to them: “That slaves and freedmen and all infamous persons have no right to bring accusations against anyone.” [Canon 129, in Percival 1900] Heretics, apostates, pagans, and Jews were defined as infames, along with prostitutes and entertainers. They could not sue or testify in court, could not hold public office, and were subject to corporal punishment.

In 418, bishops gave orders for the forcible conversion of Jews in Menorca were forcibly converted on bishops orders. A Christian mob burned down the synagogue. Three of the female survivors had gentile names; one of them was called Artemisia, showing again the cultural syncretism that prevailed in the empire. [Kraemer 2004: 111-114]

In 418, the empire barred Jews from the military and placed limits on the civic offices they could hold. In 425 it barred them, along with pagans, from all imperial offices and the legal profession. However, the position of Jews was still better than that of pagans or heterodox Christians; they were marginalized, but “never outlawed.” In the 6^th century, emperor Justinian would enact more anti-Jewish decrees, and Christian writers produced a wave of anti-Jewish sermons and writings, including faked disputations between rabbis and priests. [Fredriksen and Irshai, 1001; 1005; 1024]

     The bishops at Nicaea decided to move Good Friday and the Feast of the Resurrection (later paganized as Easter) to a different date than its original celebration at Passover. The reason for abandoning the Jewish calendrical reckoning of Pesach, wrote bishop Eusebius, was that churchmen thought it “unworthy for us to follow for this feast the custom of the Jews who soiled their hands with the most monstrous crimes and remained spiritually blind.” [Ecclesiastical History of Eusebius, in Keller, 94] But most of the Asian churches continued to celebrate the Feast of the Resurrection during Passover. Western bishops denounced them as Judaizers, fanatically refusing to acknowledge that the Last Supper had been a Jewish Seder.

Syrian Christians were much closer to Judaism, regarding Jesus as a prophet and keeping Mosaic law. [Geger, 125ff. Many Ebionites had gravitated to Syria.] The pull of Judaism was strong in Antioch. Many Christian women there had converted to Judaism. [Fox, 482] The city's priesthood gave itself up to anti-Semitic frenzies. In 387 John Chrysostom preached eight sermons against the Jews, calling them “accursed,” “carnal,” and “lascivious.” [Ranke-Heinemann, 59] He slandered the synagogue as “brothel, home of vice, refuge of the devil, citadel of Satan, corrupter of souls, abyss of corruption and all mischief.” [Keller, 101]

Anti-Semitic invective permeates the writings of the Church Fathers—Tertullian, Origen, Athanasius, Jerome, Ambrose—all used “Jew” and “the Jews” as an epithet directed even against their non-Jewish opponents. [Fredriksen and Irshai, 984] Chrysostom claimed that “the Jews do not worship God but devils, so that all their feasts are unclean.” He promot­­ed the vicious slander that they sacrificed their children to these devils. (Already the iron breath of crusader slaughters can be felt in this early Antioch articulation of the ritual murder libel.) It was Chrysostom who introduced the epithet “christ-killers”; it would have a long and deadly history. [Trachtenberg, 21; Geger, 120]

    The bishop of Edessa ordered the arson of a Syrian synagogue along the Euphrates river. When Roman authorities arrested the arsonists, archbishop Ambrose of Milan urged the emperor to free them. He slandered the temple as “a place of irreligion and wickedness,” and therefore a rightful target. Anyway, he claimed, the temple was “a building of no importance” in a shabby town. Why all the fuss? Ambrose himself would have burned down the synagogues of Milan, if he had only gotten around to it. [Keller, 100; Geger, 120; Letter 40 to Theodosius, www.ccel.org/fathers2/NPNF2-10/Npnf2-10-52.htm]       

Ambrose's letter rants against “the scheming Jews” who, he insisted, desired to “see the necks of the faithful people bowed in captivity... beheaded, given over to the fire, delivered [into slavery] to the mines...” In a not-so-veiled threat, the archbishop warned the emperor not to be like his predecessor Maximus, himself “no better than a Jew,” whose decree to punish the burning of a Roman synagogue had met with divine disfavor, causing him numerous defeats by the barbarians. [Letter 40] Thus Ambrose became one of the first to fulfill Yeshua's prophecy to his Jewish followers (though he could not have imagined the religion that claimed him as founder that grew up after his death): “They will put you out of the synagogue; yes, the time is coming that whoever kills you will think that he offers God service.” [John 16:12] Ambrose's anti-Semitism was, unfortunately, all too typical of the clergy. They soon declared him a saint of the Church.

     Doctrines that justify oppression of one group by another are alike. The same priesthood that created religious excuses for male domination and class oppression ardently hated the Jews. Chrysostom is a clear example. Tertullian, another extreme misogynist, led a campaign against Jews in North Africa. Hatred of pagans and Jews also correlated; around the time of the synogogue arson in Syria, the prefect Cynegius led soldiers and monks in destroying pagan temples around Antioch. [Fletcher, 45] Cyril of Alexandria, who urged the destruction of Jewish homes and synagogues, also destroyed a temple of Isis and used charges of witchcraft to instigate the assassination of the philosopher Hypatia.

      At the end of the 4^th century, write Fredriksen and Irshai, “the bishops emerge as the impresarios of urban violence.” They led mob attacks on “[p]agan cult statues and temples, heretical assemblies, Jewish buildings and communities...” [Fredriksen and Irshai, 1004] The emperors closed pagan temples, prohibited the building of new synagogues, and allowed fanatical monks to destroy both. The imperial government went to great lengths to gratify the clergy's desire to repress non-Christians and heterodox Christians (aka “heretics”). The now-christianized Roman state often attacked these groups jointly, as did emperor Theodosius II in his decree “against the abominable heathens, Judeans and heretics.” [Codex Theod. 15. 5. 1; Keller, 103] 

 Attacks on Heretics

      By the year 300, Christianity had splintered into many sects, often shaped by regional and ethnic culture. Bishop Epiphanius of Salamis catalogued 159 “heresies.” Politics and national differences played a crucial part in the contests between bishops at church councils. Factions vied to determine which religious interpretations would prevail in church doctrine—and this often broke along ethnic/cultural/regional lines.

The most bitter doctrinal dispute was over whether god and Jesus were of “the same” essence (homoousios) or “similar” essence (homoiousios). The Libyan bishop Arius and his many followers believed Jesus was a holy man but not the same as “the father,” while others insisted on a three-in-one trinity. The bishops argued this out at the Council of Nicaea, and the winners demand that all Christians accept their doctrine, the Nicene Creed, was backed by emperor Constantine.

     People who disagreed with official dogma were charged with heresy, a Greek term meaning “choice, selection.” Hairesis used to refer to philosophical schools of thought but had come to connote “sect.” So it is accurate to say that a heretic is literally one who freely chooses her own beliefs, rather than submitting to a religious authority.

Countless historians have called Diocletian’s persecution of Christians in 303 CE the last. [Even Elaine Pagels credits Constantine with “ending persecution,” more than once. (Pagels 2012: 135, 168)] But now came persecutions of Christian by the Christian state. In 324, only a decade after the Edict of Milan declared religious toleration, Constantine outlawed “all heretical sects,” forbade them to meet in public or in private, and confiscated their property. [Pagels 2012: 136]

The new imperial church hierarchy began to persecute Christian “heretics” with the same enmity they had unleashed on the pagans and the Jews. They anathematized—cast out and cursed—Christians who believed in anything other than their own doctrine. Originally, anathema meant “dedication” to pagan gods, but it had taken on the meaning of an invocation of powers to curse a person. Anathemata in the Dead Sea scrolls and the early Church dedicated victims to Satan. [Fox, 324] Now they functioned as curses officially pronounced by the high clergy, whose targets everyone was ordered to shun, on pain of excommunication.

    The imperial church persecuted the prophetic Montanists of Asia Minor and the Donatists of Tunisia and Algeria. It pursued the followers of Arius, who held that Jesus was not equal in divinity to god the father. Repression of this last group was irregular, not least because it was predominant in the eastern empire, even among bishops, and some of Constantine’s own sons adhered to it. Arian Christianity had become the main attractor of Germanic converts, whose tribes had become major military players. Meanwhile, Gnostic Christians fled imperial persecution into the mountains and deserts. An Egyptian Gnostic text testifies:

we were hated and persecuted, not only by those who are ignorant, but also by those who think they are advancing the name of Christ... [Second Treatise of the Great Seth, in Pagels 1979: 102-3]

The patriarchs directed special ire against female “heretics,” with sexual slurs as Tertullian did: “the very women of these heretics, how wanton they are! For they are bold enough to teach, to dispute, to enact exorcisms come to undertake curious—it may be even to baptize.” [On the Proscriptions Against Heretics, in Kraemer 2004: 261]

In 367, Athanasius, the fanatical bishop of Alexandria, issued a directive ordering Egyptian Christians not to read or discuss “heretical” books. [Athanasius, Letter 39, online] It was he who formulated the canon which ultimately became the authoritative collection of scriptures, despite the fact that many of his contemporaries disagreed with his inclusion of Revelations as the final book of the Christian Bible. It was not included in any previous canon. Athanasius used this book as a weapon against heretics. [Pagels 2012: 135; 161]

Athanasius succeeded in imposing his doctrinal grid on the Egyptian monasteries. These contemplatives were strongly independent, even resistant to central authority, and far more eclectic in their scriptural study. They preserved the Apocrypha, Gnostic scriptures, and traditions of Isis, Thoth-Hermes, and Neoplatonism. Their evening readings could include texts which many bishops had come to consider “heretical,” even if they had once been mainstream. [Pagels 2012: 145-49] The works of Origen, the first Christian theologian, fell into this category.

Some unknown monks managed to evade the destruction ordered by Athanasius. They preserved their cherished apocryphal scriptures by wrapping them up in long jars and burying them in the Nubian desert at Nag Hammadi. [Pagels 2012: 160-61; 145-59] They became the largest collection of Gnostic scriptures to survive the persecutions.
 

The Donatists

      Only a few years after the Edict of Milan proclaimed religious toleration, the Donatist Christians of Numidia became the first target of Christian imperial repression. In 317 an edict of Constantine decreed execution for anyone who disturbed the peace of the empire. Another law called for confiscation of all property of the Donatist churches in what is now Algeria and Tunsia, which the local Christians stoutly resisted. Meanwhile the emperor poured wealth into the coffers of their enemies, who were hated as collaborators with Rome. [Eusebius X. 6, 1]

Numidia encompassed northern Algeria and parts of Libya and Tunisia

The history of the Donatists was written by their Catholic enemies, so there is much that we don’t know. The movement was named after one of its leaders, bishop Donatus. The schism in Tunisia started with differences over how clergy had behaved under the persecutions of Diocletian. Some had undergone torture and mutilation rather than denounce other Christians, and had refused to hand over their scriptures to imperial officials. The Donatists refused to accept men who had collaborated with Roman persecution as religious leaders. They called them traditores, Latin for “one who hands over” (and the source of the word “traitor” in many languages). The Donatists repudiated the ordination of such men as bishops, holding that priests in an unpurified state of sin were unfit to administer the sacraments.

Bishop Mensurius of Carthage was said to have handed over Christian scriptures to imperial persecutors. His archdeacon Caecilian was accused of setting guards outside prisons to whip away Christians bringing food to their starving relatives and friends—and giving their food to the dogs. [Kirsch, 153] When Mensurius died, Caecilian’s faction rushed to ordain him as bishop, excluding most of the Numidian bishops from participating in the selection. Many Numidians challenged this ordination and elected their own bishop. [Hefèle, I.1, 267-8]

     Lucilla, a Spanish noblewoman, was a key leader of the Donatist movement. She ran a house-church in Carthage, and her devotion to those martyred by the empire, played a formative role in shaping Donatist culture. Caecilian had harshly rebuked this “illustrious woman” in public for kissing relics of a martyr not recognized by Church authorities. (Christians who were martyred by Roman persecutions was a touchy political subject that most bishops were afraid to address.) It was Lucilla who convened a synod of African bishops to consider these issues, and her backing elevated the rebel bishop Marjorinus and his successor Donatus. [Torjesen, 90-1; 107 fn3] The Donatists appealed to Constantine several times, but each time he overruled them in favor of Caecilian.

    In 317 Rome outlawed the Donatists, stripping them of basic rights. They rose up in rebellion all over North Africa. The legions crushed the revolt with massacres, especially in Carthage, from 317 to 321. After that Constantine relented. The Donatist movement continued to grow, expanding into a North African resistance to the imperial class system. Its radicals were called Circumcellions (from circum cellas, “around shrines,” meaning people who made processions around shrines). They were Amazighen (aka “Berbers”), Indigenous Christians who danced in ecstatic ceremonies and circumambulated the graves of their martyrs. The Circumcellions were described as communal and ascetic. Many sought out martyrdom, singly or in crowds. [Frend, 172-5]

    The Circumcellions were also political. They rebelled against the big landlords, liberating enslaved people en masse, now here, now there. They forced creditors to release claims on debtors. They carried out dramatic reversals of class oppression: “Rich men driving comfortable vehicles would be pitched out and made to run behind their carriages, now occupied by their slaves.” [Frend, 172-3] Augustine complained that the rebels beat wealthy men, forced them to tear up deeds of purchase of slaves, or chained them to millstones and, using whips, forced them to turn the mill as their slaves had been forced to do. [Dockès, 89] These revolutionary acts outraged imperial Rome and scared its colonial vassals.

    The Donatist movement was broadly supported by the African majority, including many educated people, while the Roman Church won few converts. The bishops began another decade of persecutions in 364, which resumed with even graver severity in 399-411. “Saint” Augustine, in his Correction of the Donatists, advocated compelling them to submit to church doctrine through “fear and pain.” [Carroll, 211] His advice was taken. High imperial officials of the province attacked the Donatists with violence, torture, and property seizure. [Carroll, 187; 197; 211; 241-5, 263ff]

In 401, the Council of Carthage sent a threatening message cloaked in sweet-sounding words to the Donatists: “We, sent by the authority of our Catholic Council, have called you together, desiring to rejoice in your correction, bearing in mind the charity of the Lord who said: Blessed are the peacemakers… [many empty words, leading up to the main point:] But if you shall accept this proposition in a fraternal spirit, the truth will easily shine forth, but if you are not willing to do this, your distrust will be easily known.” [Canon 92, in Percival 1900]

They go on to denounce the “madness” and “wickedness” of “the vile gatherings of the Circumcellions,” and restate how they are to be punished, with the state’s help, by losing their ancestral lands: “the law depriving heretics of the power of being able to receive or bequeath by gift or by will.” While they were at it, they anathematized the Arians too. ‘Canons 93 and 109, in Percival 1900] Despite severe persecution, the Donatist movement was vigorous enough to survive into the 530s. [Clifton, 36-7]

    Resistance to the slave system also blazed up in Gaul. Rebels called the Bagaudae (“fighters” in Gaulish) staged sporadic uprisings, beginning in the 280s (and quickly put down) and continuing into the 500s. [Translation from Delamarre 2003: 63–64] The rebels included coloni (tenant farmers), shepherds, ex-slaves, former soldiers, brigands, and even local landowners, all trying to resist the crushing taxation, exploitation, and labor levies by the empire and its rapacious agents. There were sporadic revolts Gaul in the 300s, crushed by the Roman legions (and increasingly by Germanic auxiliaries in the pay of Rome).

In 409-417 the Bagaudae took up guerilla warfare and swelled their ranks by offering refuge to fugitive slaves. Their greatest success was in Armorica (Bretagne, northwest France) and in the Loire valley. There they confiscated land from estate owners, kicked out Roman officials, and established their own government, complete with judiciary and army. [Dockes, 87; 231] (These tactics bear more than a passing resemblance to those of the Donatists in Algeria a century before.)

In the 5^th century, Romans tried to suppress the movement by turning Germanic armies loose on their districts, as they also did to rebel Galicia and northern Spain. [Hydatius’ Chronicle, cited by Steve Muhlberger, “Conjuratione,” Medieval-L, Nov. 19, 1997] Some Hispanic bagaudae allied with incoming Germanic tribes, like the Suevi king Rechiar, against the Roman domination. Only mininal record of these events has survived, as is true for most of the heterodox Christian communities.
 

Book-burnings and Vitriol

The Christian emperors outlawed, confiscated, and burned books on a mass scale. Their persecutions of both pagans and heterodox Christians caused many educated people to purge their libraries of works that could endanger them and their families. After Constantine took the purple, orders went out to burn Porphyry's pagan critique of Christianity. This was done so efficiently that Jerome could not find a single copy, and only fragments of it quoted in Christian retorts survive today. Records of suppressed Christian perspectives were also obliterated, including records of controversial synods such as the Council of Antioch in 324. [MacMullen, 162 n.6]

These book burnings continued for centuries. Official burnings of heretical books are recorded at Constantinople in 435, and Rome and Beirut in the 490s and early 500s. [MacMullen, 162 n. 4] Ramsey MacMullen discusses how orthodox texts enjoyed the advantage of institutional funding and reproduction by hired and enslaved copyists. This gave them far better survival odds, since papyrus manuscripts were fragile and had to be periodically recopied. [MacMillen, 4ff; 162]

     Even Christians who had previously been considered orthodox now came under fire. Bishops accused each other during vituperative church councils that split hairs over whether Christos was single- or double-natured: “Anathema is he who recognizes two natures after the incarnation!” In 449, hateful shouts rang out at the council of Ephesus: “Drive out Eusebius, burn him! Burn him alive! Let him be cut to pieces! He has divided up the Savior, let him be divided himself!” [Hefèle, 2.1, 596, f/n]

    Early in the century, Constantine had decreed that heterodox Christians must pay fines. Under the later Christian emperors Valentinian and Valens, the Manichaeans were heavily fined and their meeting places confiscated. By 380, Theodosius I was labeling heterodox Christians “demented and insane,” and promising state “retribution” against them. [Cod. Theod. 15. 12. 1; 15. 5. 3; 17. 1. 2]

Persecution escalated to such a pitch that during the first century of the Christianized empire, “more Christians died for their faith at the hands of fellow Christians than had died before in all the persecutions,” as Ramsay MacMullen points out. [MacMullen, 14] He skewers the triumphalist historians who rejoiced at the “end” of persecution, when it actually worsened after Christianity was decreed the state religion.

Christians of many nationalities were declared heretics: the Donatists of Tunisia; the Montanists in Anatolia; the Donatists in Algeria; the Arians (followers of Arius) in the eastern empire and some Germanic tribes; and the Monophysites of Egypt and western Asia. Ethiopia and Armenia had their own independent churches beyond the reach of Roman rule. Another formidable rival to orthodox Christianity was the Manichaean branch of Gnosticism.

The Manicheans

      Mani was a 3rd-century Chaldean (from what is now Iraq) who fused Mandæan Christianity with Zoroastrian dualism and currents of Gnosticism and Neoplatonism. Mani taught that there was a good god and an evil one. The evil god had created or taken over the physical world, binding souls to matter through procreation. Manichaeans viewed childbearing as furthering the ends of this anti-deity. By shunning meat and reproductive sex, believers sought to return to the divine light of spirit and to ensure the eventual triumph of good over evil, spirit over “this abominable flesh.” [Lane Fox, 568]

      Manichaean belief in the evil god intensified Christian emphasis on the devil. The split between divine and demonic deepened as the church hierarchy anathematized heretics, Jews, and pagans. “The devil” proved to be a handy tool for dehumanizing these groups in the minds of orthodox Christians. It was this Christian anti-god who led them into “error” and “false teaching.” 

    The struggle against the Manichaeans left deep marks in church doctrine. While the dualists said that reproductive sex was wrong, the Church hierarchy took the reverse position, insisting that reproduction was the only purpose of sex, and that making love for any other purpose was sinful. As Clement of Alexandria put it, “to have sex for any purpose other than to produce children is to violate nature.” This notion became known as the “Alexandrian rule.” [Boswell, 147; 140]

    The Manichaean religion spread from southwest Asia into northern Africa. Bishop Augustine of Hippo, one of the “Doctors of the Church,” came from an Algerian community of Manichaeans. His conversion to Catholicism in 386 CE did not free him from the dualistic worldview. Augustine was obsessed with the devil, casting natural forces into his realm and toppling the pagan world of spirits from its ancient religious base. In his eyes natural powers were accursed, demonic, ruling over a sphere which god allotted to the devil to punish humans for their sins.

    Augustine simply reversed the Manichaean declaration that reproductive sex was bad. He insisted that only reproductive sex was good, and all other sex evil. He condemned any and all attempts at contraception. Augustine connected sexual intercourse with Original Sin, a concept of his own invention, and pleasure with perdition.

As Uta Ranke-Heinemann observed, Augustine “fused Christianity together with hatred of sex and pleasure into a systematic unity.” [Ranke-Heinemann, 75-8] He wrote that the scales fell from his eyes when he realized that the root of all evil lay in “evil lust, sexual desire and carnal longing.” The stain of sex—“original sin”—led to eternal death. Even babies who died without baptism were considered to be damned to eternal hell.

    The core of the Augustinian legacy was a deep-seated disdain of women. He taught that man represents spirit, and woman carnality. On her own “... she is not the image of god.” [Long, 154] She could only be that if paired with the male, but the male had no such limitations. [Ranke-Heinemann, 55; 78-81] Woman was not even a worthy companion, but a purely sexual creature necessary only for procreation. [Ranke-Heinemann, 88] Augustine believed that women were inferior beings, good only for bearing children and housework. They should obey their husbands, as Christian marriage contracts set out. Male authority was total: “a woman has no right to dispose of her own body without male permission.” [Long, 158-9]

Augustine praised his mother for serving his father “as her master.” Monica herself told friends whose husbands beat them “that they should remember their condition and not defy their masters.” [Confessions, IX, 195] (They declared her a saint, too.) Augustine approved of a man having several wives, reasoning that “a slave never has several masters, but a master does have several slaves.” [Ranke-Heinemann, 96-7]

He behaved accordingly. Due to family pressure, he repudiated his concubine of twelve years, sent her back to Africa, and kept her son with him in Milan. Imagine her pain at being discarded and separated from her child. This doctor of the church never spoke of the sexual exploitation of women, which he himself had practiced before his conversion. Adopting Christianity did not change his heart. 

    Augustine leveled the blood libel at Manichaeans, claiming that they ate their babies in order to free them from the flesh. He also accused them of sprinkling flour under a copulating pair, making a batter with their sexual fluids, and baking a eucharist wafer to be eaten by the elect. [Russell, 125; 319 n. 32] He claimed that the Manichaen elders seduced women. [Allegro, 129-30]

Other Christian writers charged that the Manichaeans drank menstrual blood to attain immortality. [Lane Fox, 591. Compare this with Epiphanius’ description of the “Barbelites” in the previous chapter] Some spread rumors that Gnostics aborted a fetus, pounded it with honey and pepper and herbs, and ate it. They capped this accusation with a slur against Jews: “Apparently they believe this to be the perfect Passover meal.” [Allegro, 123] This vicious charge joined with similar charges that caused Christians to shed Jewish blood over the course of 15 centuries.

These accusations were also directed against heterodox Christians, and they had a long shelf life. The 11^th century Byzantine monk Michael Psellos accused the Messalians of orgiastic practices, incest, and homosexuality. He claimed that they offered up to the devil children born from promiscuous rites—and ate them. A later monk Euthymios Zigabenos repeated these accusations. [en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euchites]
  

The Pelagians

Augustine also fought bitterly against the Pelagian Christians, which is not surprising as they opposed his idea of Original Sin. [Ranke-Heinemann, 75] Theirs was actually the majority position before this Augustinian innovation, in line with Origen, John Chrysostom, and other Eastern Christians, especially in Syria.

Pelagius was a Briton who had come to Rome in the 380s and became a Christian ascetic. He taught that humanity was not forever stained by the Fall of Adam and Eve, that sin was a choice, not an indelible part of human nature, and that people should strive to be perfected by divine grace. Julian of Eclanum insisted that “God made nothing evil,” for which Augustine attacked him. [Pagels, 132]

The Pelagians had a positive attitude toward (hetero) sexuality as a natural part of creation. but they condemned same-sex love. Pelagians argued that Paul was not stigmatizing heterosexual relations, only homosexual ones. [Boswell 161, n. 99] Augustine’s doctrine prevailed, so successfully that few Pelagian writings have survived, except in polemics against them. The pope excommunicated them in 418. [Ranke-Heinemann, 86-7] 
 

The Spanish Mystics

      In the year 380, church authorities in Hispania called a council at Saragossa to suppress a group they called the Priscillianists. (It’s not clear what they called themselves.) This Christian community flourished in Hispania and Aquitania (Spain and southwestern France). Their religious practice involved ecstatic dance and songs, and spiritual retreats at home or in the mountains. They were ascetics who went barefoot and practiced fasting, vegetarianism, and celibacy. They studied apocryphal scriptures, and their religious leadership included women. [Ranke-Heinemann, 132]

According to Sulpicius Severus they introduced the title ‘deaconess’ in the west.” [Alexandre, 437] The mixing of women and men during prayer was one of the Priscillianist customs outlawed by the Council of Saragossa. [McKenna, 53] Then The Council of Nîmes condemned the group in 396, including “the women who preached, taught men, and exercised Levitic ministry.” [Wemple, 137-38]

    Priscillian was a mystic seeking divine revelation, and an aristocrat who saw Christianity as liberatory. His community saw the soul as “part of the essence of the Deity,” according to Jerome. [Jerome, Letter 226, online] Like several other Christian groups, they sang an apocryphal hymn that Jesus was said to have taught his disciples on his last night, before going up to the Mount of Olives:

I wish to save, and I wish to be saved
I wish to loose, and I wish to be loosed
I wish to adorn, and I wish to adorn
I wish to bring forth, and I wish to be brought forth
I wish to sing, let all dance together
I wish to weep, all of you grieve
I am a Lamp for you who see me
I am a Door for you who knock...

[preserved in Augustine, Letter 237, to Ceretius]

Another version of this ecstatic hymn contains the line, “I will clap my hands; let all stamp.” [Backman, 15] These ceremonies have the savor of ethnic dances of older cultural vintage, the communal dancing, clapping and singing of Christians in North Africa, Palestine, and other places.

    Priscillian's enemies accused him of mixing pagan practices into Christianity, and of being pagan, idolatrous, and a demon-worshipper. To round it off they attacked him as a heretic, a Manichaean and a witch. [Ardanez, 207-11] All these charges are denied in the eleven Tracts written by Priscillian or, more probably, by his comrade Instantius. (A single copy escaped the book-burnings that destroyed pagan and “heretical” texts in this era—including by their owners terrified of being hauled off to torture if imperial agents discovered them in a house search.)

The author of the Tracts bent over backwards to dissociate his community from pagans and heretics, by declaring that adoring idols was perverse and detestable: “we reject all the throng of demons and their guises...” He even wished for Manichaeans to “be pursued with the sword” and sent to hell. And he anathematized anyone who practiced magic: “May he be pursued with the sword, because it is written, ‘Do not allow witches to live’.” [Ardanez, 212-14; McKenna]         

    Thus the Priscillianist writer called down on pagans, heretics and witches the same persecution that his own community was now facing. Of course, it did not help. This kind of Christianity with celebratory devotional dances not under the control of bishops would not be tolerated. The repression that followed changed the course of Christianity in Hispania and neighboring southern Gaul.

The orthodox clergy got the emperor to call a synod at Bordeaux, which promptly stripped the Priscillianist bishop Instantius of his office and exiled him to a northern island. Priscillian refused to be tried by the bishops and appealed for a secular trial. He was taken to the imperial capital of Trier along with other prisoners: the presbyters Felicimus and Armenius, the poet Latronianus, a widow called the "wise Eucrocia," and several others, including a woman named Procula. [la savante Euchrocia in Hefèle II.1, 67; Procula in McNamara, 65]

Bishop Martin of Tours, who opposed having a church case tried by the state, intervened, and convinced the emperor to promise that no blood would be shed. For his pains, the thoroughly orthodox Martin got called a Manichaean.

    Prisicillian and his friends were tried twice, first before the prefect Evodius and again before the emperor. The main charge against them was witchcraft, based on a prohibition of “magical conventicles” in the Theodosian Code [4. 16. 7-8] and the much older Roman law against sorcery (maleficium) and poisoning (veneficium). The penalty for both was death. Even the ecclesiastical historian Sulpicius Severus reported that Priscillian's enemies resorted to whatever lies and devices were necessary to destroy him.

He further explained that the emperor Maximus went along with the trial because he needed money badly, in order to pay the army that had helped him to depose Gratian. The Manichaean charge enabled Maximus to legally confiscate property from the Priscillianists. [Ardañez, 211, n.8; 214, n.17] As a newly-enthroned usurper, Maximus needed the Church's support. The pact of rulers with the lord bishops would become a defining pattern in medieval Europe.

   The court tortured Priscillian and his companions to obtain the desired “confessions.” [Sulpicius, Chronica 2. 51, in McKenna 55] They were convicted of maleficium (“harmful sorcery”), studying obscene doctrines, celebrating nocturnal gatherings with evil women, and praying naked. [Ardanez, 211; McKenna, 54] The emperor had these six people burned at Trier in 385, in the first official state execution of Christians for heresy.

The narrow definition “official execution” is key, since imperial troops had already killed many Donatist Christians in Tunisia. Technically, the Priscillianists were convicted on the grounds of sorcery—not heresy.) The state confiscated the property of the condemned, another precedent for witch hunt procedural. Others fled for their lives into Gaul. Fragmentary evidence exists of further persecutions. Shortly after the burnings at Trier, a Priscillianist woman named Urbica was stoned at Bordeaux. [McNamara, 65]

     The trial of the Spanish “heretics” marks an important shift, with far-reaching historical consequences. It used the mechanism of Roman laws against magic and secret conventicles to attack heterodox Christians. More than a few historians have noticed how the torture-trial of the Priscillianists, with its charges of night gatherings, obscene doctrines and nudity, resembles later witch trials. These same sexualized charges had been used over 500 years earlier, in the Roman repression of the Aventine Mysteries that culminated in the mass execution and exile of the “Bacchanals” in 186 bce. The pagan Senate stomped down ecstatic processions and dances led by women. [See “The First Mass Hunt,” in Secret History of the Witches, Vol 4: www.suppressedhistories.net/secrethistory/romanhunt.html ]

The use of sorcery laws to attack Christian dissidents would be repeated again under the early Inquistion, when the papal bull Ad Extirpanda called on rulers to put heretics to the ban “as if they were sorcerers.” [Lea 1957: 431] This is a direct parallel to the repression of the Priscillianists—and the reverse of the omnipresent modern claim that heresy was the model for witch persecutions. In fact, the sorcery charge (typically combined with sexual calumnies like those leveled against the Priscillianists) often served as the model for repression of heretics. It was also used against pagans, whose religions had been redefined as “demonic” and as “devil-worship.”

    A great outcry arose against these executions, and not only from the many in Hispania who belonged to this religious community. The most eloquent protest that has survived was delivered by the pagan orator Pacatus Drepanius. Unlike all later commentators, he focused on the torture of Eucrocia, deploring the spilling of a woman's blood when she was only guilty of “an excessive piety.” He noted that the persecutors included bishops who were in reality bandits, robbing their victims of their inheritance, as they calumniated their honor and deprived them of their very lives.

“Worse, after having heard the groans and tortures of these unfortunates... they approached the altars with their hands stained by contact with the death penalty and profaned with their bodies ceremonies they had already profaned with their souls.” These prelates gratified themselves, wrote Pacatus, with “the goods of the wealthy for their greed, the execution of innocents for their cruelty, the deprecation of religion for their impiety.” [Panegyrics 12. 29, in Ardanez, 214, n.17]

    Even pope Siricus and Ambrose of Milan denounced the shedding of blood for heresy (a precedent far more dire than they could have imagined at the time, as the Inquisition was 750 years in the future). An infuriated Martin of Tours prevailed on the emperor to rescind his orders that had dispatched military tribunes to Spain to stamp out the heresy. (By that time, some Priscillianists had already been exiled and their property expropriated.) Several ringleaders of the persecution were relieved of their bishoprics. But this revulsion within the Church hierarchy did not last. Fifty years later, pope Leo wrote of the case's handling with approval. The door had been opened for other persecutions.

   In Hispania, people reacted strongly against the executions of people who were widely regarded as saints and martyrs. The Priscillianist movement became more popular than ever and its numbers grew. It became especially deep-rooted in Portugal and Galicia, regions distant from Roman rule, and with a strong Celtic presence. Imperial authorities there spent the next two centuries attempting to suppress this religious movement. Even the Spanish bishops were divided; in the year 400 the orthodox faction forced six Priscillianists to abjure at Toledo, and they deposed four others for refusing to forswear their beliefs and community. An imperial edict of 407 ordered the Priscillianists to be stripped of civil rights, as had been done to the pagans before them. [McKenna, 67]

    In the early 400s the church-state repression of pagans and heretics was interrupted by Germanic invasions of Spain by the Vandals and Suevi. Church plans for all-out persecution did not get underway until 446-47, when pope Leo set up councils to wipe out the Priscillianists. The bishops issued anathemas against people who believed in non-canonical scriptures, in divination or astrology, or who said that Jesus did not exist before Mary, or believed that eating animal flesh was evil. [Hefèle, II.1, 484-7] These condemnations had little effect. The movement thrived for another century, only fading in the late 500s. By this late date, the name “Priscillianist” had become synonymous with “astrologer.” [Flint, 94]

[In addition to the sources already named, I drew on LeClerc's commentary in Hefèle, II.1, 66-7; 476-87, and Philip Hughes, A History of the Church, Vol II, Chapter 1, part V: www.netacc.net/~mafg/book/v2c1s5.htm; Butler's Lives of the Saints, and the Catholic Encyclopedia]

    Two Gnostic scriptures survive that appear to be related to these early Spanish mystics. The first is a 4^th century copy of the apocryphal Acts of Philip (discovered by François Bovon, paradoxically, in a monastery on the militantly all-male redoubt of Mt. Athos, where even female animals are forbidden). This book describes an egalitarian, vegetarian, and celibate community:

Church leadership was democratic rather than hierarchic, and men and women served equally as priests. In fact, the manuscript describes Philip and the apostle Bartholomew traveling from town to town with Philip’s sister, a woman named Mariamne. [Gewertz, online]

The old Christian tradition of Mariamne / Mariamma / Maria of Magdalene can be glimpsed behind this figure. The other text is the apocryphal Acts of John, in which Jesus dances with his disciples. It says that he told them to hold hands and dance around him while he sang a hymn very like the one in Augustine’s “heretical” excerpt. It contains some of the same lines as the Priscillianists’ chant in Spain: “I would loose, and I would be loosed. I would save, and I would be saved.” And more: 

I would be washed, and I would wash. Amen.
Grace danceth. I would pipe; dance ye all. Amen.
I would mourn: lament ye all. Amen.
The number Eight (lit. one ogdoad) singeth praise with us. Amen.
The number Twelve danceth on high. Amen.
The Whole on high hath part in our dancing. Amen.
Whoso danceth not, knoweth not what cometh to pass. Amen...
[Acts of John, online] 

This Acts of John shows influences from Egyptian mysticism. The Ogdoad was a hellenized name for the primeval ancestral Eight Beings in Kemetic tradition. Egyptian Gnostics often referred to “the Eighth” as a realm of bliss attained by mystic adepts. The Twelve may have astrological associations.
 

Diatribes Against Musical Instruments in Church

These inspirational Christian ceremonies, in which sacred dance played a strong part, did not survive the attacks of conservative bishops like Athanasius of Alexandria, who outlawed musical instruments and dance. (He was especially keen to eliminate the sistrum and drum, which had been used in Kemetic ceremonies for over 3000 years; but the Ethiopian Orthodox church did preserve them, up to this day.]

Many church patriarchs were hostile to congregations using musical instruments in their services, among them Basil of Caesarea, Gregory of Nyssa, Ambrose, John Chrysostom, Jerome and Augustine. They saw any ecstatic element as pagan; but they had a problem, since the Hebrew Bible frequently refers to lyre, trumpet, pipes, flute, harp, cymbals, and bells. The anti-music patriarchs tried to get around these sacral precedents by insisting that they were metaphorical. They disparaged the musicians as bestial and worthless, even criminal and destructive:

Leave the pipe to the shepherd, the flute to the men who are in fear of gods and intent on their idol worshipping. Such musical instruments must be excluded from our wingless feasts, for they arc more suited for beasts and for the class of men that is least capable of reason than for [real, upper class] men.
—Clement of Alexandria, 190 CE (The Instructor, p. 130) 

Of useless arts there is harp playing, dancing, flute playing, of which, when the operation ceases, the result disappears with it. And, indeed, according to the word of the apostle, the result of these is destruction. [Basil of Caesarea, Commentary on Isaiah 5 www.christianheritageedinburgh.org.uk/2016/08/20/the-church-fathers-on-musical-instruments/ The unnamed author on this site states, “The majority of Church Fathers between AD 100 and 500 did not accept the use of musical instruments in church and the Christians worshipped God with psalms, hymns and spiritual songs in a chanting fashion.”]

The 3rd century Carthaginian bishop Cyprian forbade Christians to plays musical instruments: These things [instruments], even if they were not dedicated to idols, ought not to be approached and gazed upon by faithful Christians; because, even if they were not criminal, they are characterized by a worthlessness which is extreme, and which is little suited to believers.
—Cyprian, De spectaculis. www.ewtn.com/library/PATRISTC/ANF5-22.TXT ]