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Christianization in the Fourth Century: The Example of Roman Women

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 July 2009

Anne Yarbrough
Anne Yarbrough
Affiliation:
Assistant professor of history in Catawba College, Salisbury North Carolina.
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Extract

At the beginning of the fourth century the Roman aristocracy was, for the most part, pagan in its religious attitude. By the end of that century the aristocracy had undergone what Peter Brown has described as a “sea change”: its pagan values had become redefined within the context of Christianity. This “drift into respectable Christianity” was the result of the process of socialization in the households of the Roman senatorial class over several generations. Brown suggests that the fourth-century Christianization of the aristocracy was the achievement of those upper-class Roman women who, by continuing to practice their Christian religion in the households of their pagan husbands, established the syncretistic milieu which would influence the religious attitudes of the next generation. But the apparent calm of Brown's anonymous culture-bearers is disturbed by a small group of women whose religious extremism delineates them sharply from their peers. Rejecting wholly the society into which they were born, they fled the cloying Roman atmosphere for the harsh air of the desert. The “respectable Christianity” that Rome was adopting offered them no satisfaction.

Type
Research Article
Information
Church History , Volume 45 , Issue 2 , June 1976 , pp. 149 - 165
Copyright
Copyright © American Society of Church History 1976

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References

1. For Roman aristocratic paganism in the course of the fourth century see Jones, A.H.M., “The Social Background of the Struggle between Paganism and Christianity,” in The Conflict Between Paganism and Chrstianity in the Fourth Century, ed. Momigliano, A. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1963), pp. 17–37Google Scholar; H. Bloch, “The Pagan Revival in the West at the End of the Fourth Century,” ibid., pp. 193–217; McGeachy, J.A., “Quintus Aurelius Symmachus and the Senatorial Aristocracy of the West” (Ph. D. diss.: University of Chicago, 1942)Google Scholar; Paschoud, F., Roma Aeterna: Etudes sur le patriotisme Remain dans l'occident Latin a l'epoque des grands invasions (Rome: Institut Suisse de Rome, 1967).Google Scholar

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9. Hopkins, M. K., “Elite Mobility in the Roman Empire,” Past and Present 32 (1965): 12–26,CrossRefGoogle Scholar complements Jones' description of the senatorial order, but suggests that social mobility could be recognized before the reforms of the emperors. Aside from imperial machinations, he believes that a second reason for social mobility was the aristocratic ethos itself, which stressed achievement as well as hereditary status, and therefore required that the aristocracy remain open to men of skill. In his “Social Mobility in the Later Roman Empire: The Evidence of Ausonius,” Classical Quarterly 11 (1961): 246–247,Google Scholar he offers an example of his theory.

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12. Chastagnol, p. 246; Seeck, ed. of Symrnachus, p. 175; Vita S. Melania, ed. Rampolla, p. 148.

13. Chastagnol, p. 246.

14. Ibid., p. 47.

15. Ibid., pp. 244–245.

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18. Chastagnol, p. 247.

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20. Jones, , “The Social Background,” p. 29.Google Scholar

21. Chastagno, p. 251.

22. The Roman History of Ammianus Marcellinus, 14.6.

23. Jer. Ep. 22.

24. Hopkins, ., “Elite Mobility,” p. 25.Google Scholar

25. Jer. Ep. 2216; Eng. tr. in Select Letters, p. 85.

26. Mazzarino, p. 131.

27. For the relationship between Meania the Elder and Paulinus of Nola, see Murphy, , “Melania the Elder,” p. 62.Google Scholar

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29. Jer. Ep. 24.3; Eng. tr. in Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, 2d sor., 6:43.Google Scholar

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31. Jer. Ep. 39.7: Eng. tr. in ibid., 6:54.

32. Jer. Ep. 108.5; Eng. tr. in ibid., p. 312.

33. Paulinus of Nola Ep. 29.10 (CBEL, v. 29): “Multa jill et in ipsius hums militae mdimentis adversus dmaconem invidum fuere certamina … sed tota nobilium propinquorum potentia ad retinendum armata propositum inpedire et eunti obstare conatus est”:Eng. tr. in Murphy, , “Melania the Elder,” p. 65.Google Scholar

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36. Vita Melaniae junioris, ed. Rampolla, p. 21 and n. 17, pp. 176–180.

37. Gerontius, , Vie de sainte Melanie, pp. 130–157.Google Scholar

38. Hopkins, , “Elite Mobility,” p. 20.Google Scholar

39. Chastagnol, p. 251.

40. Jer. (CSEL, v. 55) Ep. 107.1: Lacta's father, a pagan, will be converted by the religion of his danghter's household: “Despuat licet et inrideat epistulam meam et me vel stulturn vel insanurn clamitet, hoc et gener eius faciebat, antequam crederet.”

41. Jer.Ep. 28, 24, 127.

42. Jer. Ep. 127.5; Eng. tr. In Seieot Letters, p. 449.

43. Ibid.

44. Brown, P.B.L., Augustine of Hippo: A Biography (London: Faber, 1967), p. 115.Google Scholar

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46. Paul. of Nola Ep. 29.12.

47. Jer. Ep. 108.15; Eng. tr. in Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, 6:202.Google Scholar

48. Jer. Ep. 22.21; Eng. tr. in Select Letters, p. 101. See also Ep. 22.22.

49. Jer. Ep. 22.

50. Jer. Ep. 108.26; Eng. tr. in Nieene and Post-Nicene Fathers, 6:209–210.Google Scholar

51. Jer. Ep. 127. See also n. 5, and see the Dictionnaire de Theologie Cathoiique v. onzieme, pt. 2 (1932), cola. 1563–1570Google Scholar for the condemnation of Origen at Rome.

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54. Paiiad, . Lausiac Mist. 46 (Butler, p. 135)Google Scholar; Eng. tr. in Murphy, , “Melanin the Elder,” p.68.Google Scholar

55. See, for example, Ambrose, De Virginstate 11. 24. 35–38.Google Scholar Ambrose's response, that the population was increasing in the East where asceticism flourished most, has been echoed by Jones, A.U.M., “The Social Background to the Struggle Between Paganism and Christianity,” p. 17.Google Scholar However, Hopkins, M. K., in “The Age of Roman Girls at Mar. nags,” Population Studes 18 (1965): 309–327,CrossRefGoogle Scholar has presented epigraphic Indications that Christian aristocratic women of the fourth century tended to marry later than their pagan peers. Such a practice would possibly have a bearing on the birth rates of Christians.

56. Mazzarhio, pp. 131–133. This is Mazzarino 's thesis in his segment on women in late Rome, in which he undertakes to refute Seeck 's theory that a declining birth rate could be blamed on arranged matches.

57. Hopkins, , “Elite Mobility,” p. 25.Google Scholar

58. Hopkins, , “The Age of Roman Girls at Marnage,” p. 320.Google Scholar

59. Balsdon, J.P.V.D., Roman Women: Their History and Habits (London: Bodley Head, 1962),Google Scholar which is a book generally irrelevant to our inquiry since it does not deal with the late period, mentions that the Jaw promulgated under Augustus in A.D. 9, lex Papia Poppaea, placed these limits on the period between marriages.

60. Ibid., p. 222.

61. Jer. Ep. 22.27; Eng. tr. in Select Letters, pp. 117 and 123.

62. Amb. De Virginibus 1.57, 59. But see ibid., 1. 57, 58, for his problems with overcoming parental opposition in Milan. For a general treatment of Ambrose in this connection see Dooley, W. J., Marriage According to Saint Ambrose (Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 1945)Google Scholar; Dudden, F. H., The Life and Time, of St. Ambrose (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1935), especially pp. 133–159.Google Scholar

63. Ambrose, , Exhortatio Virgnitatis 17Google Scholar; idem, . De Lapsu Virginia, 19–20.Google Scholar

64. Ibid. 28, 29.

65. Idem. De Virginitate 15; Ep. 5.6; Exhort. Virginatia; De Vtrginibus.

66. Davies, J. G., “Deacons, Deaeonesaes and the Minor Orders in the Patristic Period,” Journal of Ecclesiastical History 14 (1963): 1–15.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

67. Hopkins, M. K. diacusses this problem of a “balancing act” in his “Elite Mobility in the Roman Empire,” pp. 24–26.Google Scholar By the mid-fourth century, three children was considered the upper limit or the unattainable ideal for aristocratic families, due to the high rate of in. fant mortality. The survival of too many children, however, would be as disastrous to the family fortune as the survival of none.

68. Hopkins, ibid., p. 25, cites Olympiodorus, frag. 44 (Fragmenta historicorum Graccorum, vol. 4) on the expense of raising children into adulthood. See also McGeachy, pp. 101–110, for a description of the provision made by Symmachus for his son's games.

69. As is shown in Hopkins, M. K., “Contraception in the Roman Empire,” Comparative Studies in Society and History 8 (1965–1966): 124–151.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

70. See above p. 158.

71. Jer. Ep. 22.20.

72. Jer. Ep. 107:1 (1 Cor. 7:13); Eng. tr. in Select Letters, p. 339.

73. Ibid.; Eng. tr. in Select Letters, pp. 339–341.

74. Gerontius, , Vita S. Melania, ed. Rampolla, , pp. 53–55.Google Scholar

75. Jer. Ep. 107.4.

76. Ibid. 107.4.

77. Ibid. 107.4; Eng. tr. in Select Letters, p. 351.

78. Ibid. 107.5.

79. Ibid. 107.11.

80. Ibid. 107.8.

81. Ibid.

82. Ibid. 107.12; Eng. tr. in Select Letters, p. 365.

83. Ibid. 107.12.

84. Ibid. 107.13.

85. Jer. Ep. 128.

86. See Hill, Christopher, Society and Puritanism in Pre-Revolutionary England (New York: Schocken Books, 1964), PP. 443–481,Google Scholar “The Spiritualization of the Household.”

87. Thomas Cartwright, cited in ibid., p. 455.

88. Gerth, H. H. and Mills, C. Wright, eds., From Max Webs,: Essays in Sociology (New York: Oxford University Press, 1970), p. 825.Google Scholar

89. Ibid., p. 326.

90. See Brown, “Aspects of the Christianization.” But see also Meiggs, B., Roman Ostia (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1960), p. 401Google Scholar: “It is at least a tenable hypothesis that a large section of the upper classes (in Ostia) remained pagan for much of the fourth century and that Christianity flourished mainly among the poor.”

91. Chastagnol, pp. 247–248, argues for this identification.

92. Augustine, Epistolae 135, 136.Google Scholar

93. See Augustine, The City of God 1:35.Google Scholar

94. Gibbon, , Decline and Fall, chap. 31.Google Scholar

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