A note on 'Christian'

Cor Gutter September 2010

Rev March 2013

CONTENTS

1. The Roman Republic: from BC500 to BC27 2. The Roman Empire: from BC27 to AD395 3. Greek ideas enter Rome 3.1. Something is, and gets many names - first in Greece... 3.1.1. ... next in Rome 3.2. Next to 'gods', other ideas get imported by Romans 3.3. Confession of incompetence

4. 'Christianity' within the Roman Empire from 0 till AD395 4.1. The Paulinian message 4.2. The Paulinian message spreads in the eastern parts of the Roman Empire and in Rome ... 4.3. ... and becomes a state religion 5. 'Christians' get 'organized' 6. 'Christians' in sorts 6.1. F-Christians and S-Christians AD316 The Donatus controversy 6.2. B-Christians and FH-Christians AD325 The Arius controversy 7. FH-Christians get 'monopoly' in the Roman Empire in AD392 8. The Roman Empire(s) from AD395 8.1. Germanization of parts of 'the West Roman Empire' 8.2. Theocratization of 'the East Roman Empire' 9. 'Christians' in sorts (2) 9.1. B-Christians and FH-Christians (continued) AD401 The Origen controversy 9.2. FHA-Christians and FHP-Christians AD411 The Pelagius controversy 9.3. FHAC-Christians and FHAN-Christians AD428 The Nestorius controversy 9.4. FHACD-Christians and FHACM-Christians AD451 The physis controversy 10. Theocratization of 'the East Roman Empire' (continued) 10.1. Justinian I c.s. try to rebuild the Roman Empire as an FHACD-Christian Empire (AD527) 10.1.1. Standardization of 'rules': the “Corpus Iuris Civilis” 10.1.2. Homogenization of the population of the East Roman Empire,... 10.1.2.1. ... to wit, of its ecclesiastical part ... 10.1.2.2. ... and of its non-ecclesiastical part 10.2. Teaching 'law' 10.2.1. Lokin's riddle 10.2.2. Lawyers as cleansers 10.3. Reconquest of western parts of the Empire 11. The spread of 'Islām' from AD632 11.1. Jansen, an endarkener 12. 'Christians' in sorts (3) 12.1 FHACDO-Christians and FHACDR-Christians AD1054 The Filioque controversy 12.2. FHACDRN-Christians and FHACDRP-Christians AD1521 Luther 'excommunicated'

Citations refer to Bibliography 1. The Roman Republic: from BC500 to BC27

Starting from the ‘city’ Rome in Italy in the BC7th century, the territories people active in the

government of the Roman Republic – as it was called after the republican form of government,

adopted around BC500, – claimed to control gradually expanded, first to Central and South Italy,

then – after the wars against Carthage, the Phoenician empire in North Africa, and against

Macedonia and Syria between 264 and BC146, – to those surrounding the Mediterranean, from east

to west.

Between BC133 and BC27, violence and other turbulences ravaged the city of 'Rome' and other

parts of Italy, ultimately resulting in the republican form of government being replaced by an

imperial one in BC27, the first year of the so-called Roman Empire.

These troubles started in BC133 with the attempts of Tiberius Gracchus (BC160-133) and, later, his

brother Gaius Gracchus (± BC158-121) to improve, by land reform and other measures, the plight of

unemployed and poor ‘non-slave’ inhabitants of Rome and Middle and south Italy outside Rome

(‘populares’), with the help of some of the wealthier ones – businessmen and some landowners,

jointly called ‘knights’ (‘equites’) –, and at the expense of those wealthier ones (‘optimates’) who

controlled the Roman Senate, where traditionally important decisions involving the Roman Republic

were taken. During the following 100 years, the lot of the first-named gradually improved.

The activities of the Gracchus brothers were followed, among others, by

– massacres in or near Rome in BC121 and BC100, initiated by some of the wealthier inhabitants of

Rome controlling the Senate;

– Roman legions being defeated by Celts and Germans in Noricum (present-day Austria) and Gaul

(present-day France) between BC113 and BC105;

– the restructuring, around BC108, of the Roman army, until then consisting of conscripted (sons of

the) wealthier Romans, by Marius (± BC157-86), who opened the army up for volunteers, thus

making army careers available to (sons of) the ‘non-slave’ less wealthy;

– revolts in Italy between BC91 and BC82 against wealthier inhabitants of Rome controlling the

Senate, involving massacres in Rome in BC87;

– Mithradates VI (± BC115-63), king of Pontus (Anatolia), attacking territories claimed by Romans to

be theirs in Asia Minor and Greece between BC88 and BC85;

– the dictatorship and reign of terror in Rome of general Sulla (BC138-78) and others between BC82

and BC79, during which the wealthier as well as the less wealthy in or outside the Senate found the

ways reduced in which they were allowed to control their lot;

– a revolt in Spain, crushed in BC79 by general Pompeius (BC107-48) c.s.;

– another war with Mithradates VI from BC74 till 66, won by the same Pompeius, who next brought

large parts of Asia Minor under Roman rule or ‘protection’;

– a revolt of slaves in south Italy between BC73 and 71, led by Spartacus (d. BC71) and other

gladiators, and ending with the crucifixion of some 6000 of them;

– attacks of ‘pirates’ on ships and harbours in the Mediterranean, vanquished by Pompeius c.s. in BC67;

– the ‘conspiracy’ of Catilina (± BC108-62) and others to overthrow the government in Rome,

defeated in BC63 at the instance of Cicero (BC106-43);

– unrest in Rome, starting in BC58, caused by violent gangs of Clodius (± BC93-52), to which

Pompeius c.s. put an end in BC52;

– the ‘civil war’ (BC49- BC45) between the legions of the same Pompeius and those of general Julius

Caesar (± BC102-44), that started when the latter, having subjected large parts of Gaul (France) to

Roman rule, ‘marched on Rome’, and ended with the defeat of the former and with the latter,

enjoying the support of less wealthy ‘non-slave’ inhabitants of Rome, getting himself lifelong

dictatorial competencies attributed in February BC44;

– the killing of Julius Caesar in March BC44 by Brutus and Cassius, intent on ‘saving the Republic’

from Caesar’s ‘dictatorship’;

– the ‘march on Rome’, in July BC43, of general Octavian (BC63 – AD14) at the head of seven legions,

who, together with the generals Marcus Anthonius (BC82 – BC30) and Lepidus (b. ?, d. BC12), in

revenge of Caesar’s death, initiated a reign of terror directed at those who tried to ‘save the

Republic’, that lasted until BC39, and

– conflicts between these three generals that started in BC38, and ended with the victory of

Octavian and his armies at Actium over the armies of Marcus Anthonius in BC31 and the 'break-

down' of the Roman Republic (Palanque 1956a p. 927-975).

2. The Roman Empire: from BC27 to AD395 Octavian's victory brought the start of what was later called the Roman Empire. He got the Senate

in Rome to allow him broad competencies and, in BC27, the title ‘Imperator Caesar Augustus’.

Subsequently simply called ‘Augustus’, and combining the position ‘commander-in-chief’ of the

considerable armies of the Empire with the position ‘high priest’ (pontifex maximus) of the

traditional Roman religion(s), Octavian, referred to with terms like ‘our lord, our god’ (‘dominus

noster, deus noster’) or ‘Jovius’ (after the Roman super-god 'Jupiter'), is considered to have been

the first ‘emperor’ of the Roman Empire, and his reign to have been the start of the era of the

'Principate', which lasted until the end of the AD3rd century.

Wary of defenders of the republican tradition, Augustus – and a number of the ‘successors’ to the

positions he occupied – maintained a semblance of republicanism, a screen behind which the

government in Rome was, to a large degree, made dependent on a single man for the duration of

his life, something which Senators, government officials and others controlling the government of

the Republic – which had been based on collegiality of decision-making and limitation of terms of

office –, had for ages sought to avoid.

.

During his reign (from BC27 till AD14) and those of some of his ‘successors’, the Roman Empire

continued to be expanded to include, in AD117, the year of its largest extent, most of the territories

around the Mediterranean and large parts of Western Europe, from Mesopotamia in the east to

Spain in the west, in the north from Britain and the part of ‘the Netherlands’ below the Rhine to

Spain in the south, and in North Africa from Mauritania in the west to Egypt in the east. At the

most, it comprised some 80 million people (Palanque 1956b p. 1042).

In BC125, the number of those allowed by the government in Rome to successfully claim to be

‘Roman citizen’ (‘civis Romanus’) had, from about 325.000, been increased to 400.000. Many of the

‘newly admitted’ lived in Middle and south Italy outside Rome. In BC70, the number had risen to

910.000. In AD14, it rose to five million, in AD47 to six million (Palanque 1956a p. 938, p. 950;

Palanque 1956b p. 1006).

3. Greek ideas enter Rome

3.1. Something is, and gets many names – first in Greece ... (BC334)

Since BC334, ideas of people from Greece had spread over large parts of Asia Minor and the Middle

East, in the wake of the campaigns of Alexander of Macedonia a.k.a. Alexander the Great (b. BC356

in Pella (ruins of which are found in modern Greece), d. 323), a one-time pupil of Aristotle’s (BC384-

322).

After he and his helpers had subjugated many of the poleis in Greece, which had been weakened

by mutual strife, these campaigns had brought Alexander and soldiers he pretended to command,

between BC334 and BC323 the conquest of places in Syria, Phoenicia, Egypt and other parts of the

Persian Empire, and in regions now called Afghanistan and India.

The founding of ‘cities’ in a large number of these regions – several of them named after him,

such as Alexandria in Egypt (BC332), – and their (often forced) peopling with ‘Greeks’ had resulted

in spreading the use of the Greek language (koine) over large parts of Asia Minor, the Middle East

and (other parts of) Asia. At the same time, the introduction of a coinage based on the Athenian

silver standard had advanced trade relations between people in Greece and in these regions.

Together with the language, ‘Greek’ ideas were exported. In the process, these lost much of the

‘parochialism’ of the poleis of their origin. Conversely, propositions expressing ideas from the

occupied regions were – and continued to be – ‘translated’ into Greek, and thus became accessible

to wherever Greek was known.

Thus, for instance, between BC250 and BC100, in Alexandria (Egypt), the ‘Torah’ and the other

‘holy’ books of ‘Jews’ (which some people later called ‘the Old Testament’) were translated from

Hebrew into Greek. (Later, this translation came to be called "Septuagint".)

In this way, information about religious cults of these regions became widely available. Some of

their adherents tried to make the opinions proclaimed in these cults palatable to others by

underpinning them with ‘Greek’ ideas about e.g. the ‘kósmos’ and objects referred to with the

Greek word for ‘gods’.

These activities resulted in an amalgamation of ideas associated with different words that were

supposed by some to refer to unobservable entities of the god-kind. Thus, among the entities

people in Greece called ‘theoí‘ (‘gods’), there had, of old, been one they called ‘Apoll’, a name

possibly imported into Greece in the BC14th century by priests of the monotheistic cult established in

Egypt by Akhenaton et al.. This entity had already for ages been worshipped by some in Greece

(including southern Italy) as ‘sun god’ and ‘father of all things’. This did not hinder its being called

‘son of Zeus’, to be mentioned next (Graves 1960 p. 55-57, p. 114). In the course of time, the

properties hitherto ascribed to this entity got mixed up with some of those attributed in Persia to

‘Mithra’, in Canaan to ‘Baal’, and in Alexandria (Egypt) to ‘Serapis’.

Another entity of the same kind, called ‘Zeus’, had traditionally been worshipped as the main

Greek ‘god’. After it had become known in Greece that adherents of religious cults outside Greece

also had names for entities they considered to be their main ‘god’, the amalgamation process had

led some to strip the entity they called ‘Zeus’ of its narrow association with ‘Greece’, and to suggest

that it was the same object those others called by other names. Thus ‘Zeus’ was hailed by

Cleanthes (± BC331 – ± 230) – active in a ‘school’ in Athens called ‘the Stoa’ – as ‘the father’,

‘known by many names’, who ‘governs all things by means of law’ (Ueberweg-Praechter 1920 p.

446).

3.1.1. ... next in Rome (BC230)

During the expansion, since the BC4th century, of the Roman Republic over other parts of Italy,

people in Rome had long continued to keep to the creedless cults of the ‘gods’ of their ancestors,

unpersonified ‘powers’ which they tried to placate in case of disaster by means of various rituals,

usually without requiring everyone in Rome or within the territories they occupied elsewhere to

renounce their own religions. These others were not thought to be in need of ‘redemption’ by what

Romans called ‘Jupiter’ or ‘Jovius’ – worshipped by some as the main ‘god’ of the Roman Republic –

or by one of the Romans’ other ‘gods’.

As long as they showed them respect – which for most of them, ‘polytheistic’ as they usually were

themselves, was not a big problem –, paid their taxes and refrained from killing one another, their

religious activities were pretty much allowed to proceed as usual. ‘Jews’, possibly thanks to Julius

Caesar, seem to have had a somewhat privileged position, and to be free to continue to practise

their ‘monotheistic’ religion, or to try to ‘renew’ it, in Galilea, Judea and Samaria and other

provinces of the Roman Empire, as shown by Paul’s experiences in the AD1st century (Luke 90b Ch.

18, Ch. 21-26; Runciman 1951 p. 6; Malitz 1996).

Already before BC400, people in Rome had come into contact with ‘Greeks’, particularly in southern

Italy (called ‘Greater Greece’). Acquaintance with ‘Greeks’ had led some in Rome to ‘identify’ what

they called ‘Jupiter’ or ‘Jovius’ with what people in Greece called ‘Zeus’. Other than ‘Zeus’, which

among ‘Greeks’ had been thought to be a ‘person’, linked – through stories – with a lot of other

god-like objects, ‘Jupiter’ had, for at least some in Rome, long continued to be an impersonal

‘power’.

3.2. Next to ‘gods’, other ideas get imported by Romans (BC 80 – AD50) In time, other ‘Greek’ ideas were imported as well, particularly after a large part of Greece

became a province of the Roman Republic in BC146.

Upheavals during the BC1st century – the tumultuous last century of the Roman Republic

mentioned above – undermined, for part of the literate people in Rome, the naïve assumptions

about the world they had been brought up with. Government officials – confronted with the

pretences of those who controlled the Senate in Rome and were anxious to preserve the Republic,

and of other would-be ‘leaders’, several times resulting in ‘civil wars’, – found themselves in need of

ideas and arguments they could use in discussions about choices to be made in running the affairs

of the Republic.

Some of them turned to books of writers from Athens who had, for several centuries already,

enjoyed renown with some people for their wisdom or rhetorical acumen, to wit, Plato (± BC427 – ±

347), Aristotle and Demosthenes (BC384-322), and others who had elaborated their ideas.

Main among those translating these works into Latin or adapting ideas they found in them to what

they felt some ‘Romans’ needed were Varro (BC116 – ± BC27), Cicero (BC106 – BC43) and Vergil (BC70

– BC21). They thereby introduced literate people in the Roman Republic (and subsequently, from BC27, the Roman Empire) to ideas about, among other things, a ‘universe’ encompassing ‘all men’,

and a ‘One’ or ‘Good’ as ‘the cause of everything’, 'the Father' who 'governs all things by means of

law', as Cleanthes had posited.

Their work caused some to 'clarify' the relation of this super-entity they called 'Zeus' or 'Jupiter' to

'Apollo', which used to be called 'father of all things'. There could not be two 'fathers of all things'.

Stripping 'Apollo' of the epithet 'father of all things' while preserving the relation 'son of

Zeus/Jupiter' for it solved the problem.

When the traditional organization of Rome and the regions people there claimed to control as a

‘republic’ came to an end in BC27 with the reign of Octavian a.k.a. Augustus, the latter got himself,

as mentioned above, referred to with ' pontifex maximus ', that is, ‘high priest’ of the traditional

Roman religion(s), and with terms like ‘dominus noster, deus noster’ (‘our lord, our god’) or

‘Jovius’, suggesting that he now was the ‘power’ that until then, as an unobservable entity, had

been protecting Rome. ‘Apollo’, meanwhile, got a preferential cult from him: he was said to think he

owed his victory at Actium (BC31) to this entity's intervention.

('Apollo' continued to be a favourite cult object – sometimes referred to with ‘numen’, ‘divinitas’ or

‘summus deus’ (‘supreme god’) – of men who after Octavian got the position ‘imperator’. It was

promoted 'supreme deity' for the whole of the Roman Empire by general Aurelian (AD212-275),

emperor between 270 and 275, and was called ‘dominus et deus’ (‘lord and god’).

This 'Apollo'-cult lasted down to Constantine I (± AD274-337). Nearly 300 years after the battle at

Actium, this general, successfully fighting Maxentius in AD312 at the Milvian Bridge (near Rome), is

said to have thought he owed his victory to summus deus which, however, he called ‘Christus’ ('the

son of deusJ), not 'Apollo' ('the son of Zeus/Jupiter')(Aken 1966; Palanque 1956b p. 1061, p.

1078).)

Vergil, writing his poem ‘Aeneid’ around BC30 in Rome, provided Romans with a story that linked

their past to that of ‘Greeks’ as rendered in Homer’s poems, and provided them with a ‘mission

statement’: others might be expert in sculpture, rhetoric or astronomy, it was the Romans’ charge

“to rule peoples by their command”, and their art “to lay down the law of peace, to be merciful to

the conquered and to beat the haughty down” (Vergil BC30 VI: 847-853). He thus vindicated for

Romans the superiority – and the propriety of their ruling – over other peoples that Aristotle, some

300 years previously, had claimed for his pupil Alexander the Great and other 'Greeks' (Aristotle BC330c p. 1252b)

Around this time, Philo Judaeus a.k.a. Philo of Alexandria (± BC15 – ± AD50) was trying to

‘reconcile’ 'Septuagint' (the translation into Greek of the Hebrew 'Bible') and Hebrew monotheism

with the ideas of ‘the god’ and ‘the cosmos’ as developed by Plato and other writers from Greece.

He taught in Alexandria, a centre of 'Greek' science and philosophy in Egypt, since AD30 said by

some to be a Roman province, and one of the many places where ‘Jews’ had settled since the

‘Babylonian exile’ (BC586 – BC538). In the BC1st century it had been, outside Palestine, the city with

the largest number of ‘Jews’, who numbered 40% of its population.

According to Philo, humans, by dint of their reason (lógos), could know that, not what, JHWH (ho

theós) is. ‘His’ power is everywhere, ‘he himself’ nowhere. Being immaterial, he could not himself

make the material world; he did and does this by means of ideas (capacities), his servants, which

are subordinate to – and are in – Lógos, his first-begotten son (Ueberweg-Praechter 1920 p. 600-

604; Palanque 1956b p. 1015).

Philo taught at a time when in Rome some were worried by, and measures were taken against,

the influx of cults from Egypt and Asia Minor, many of which promised the initiated a blissful

‘eternal life in the hereafter’, and were preferred by some to the ‘cold’ traditional religions. The

Egyptian Isis cults were 'forbidden' in Rome in BC21. ‘Christians’, adherents of another cult, seem

first to have been the target of such measures in AD49. Because of its importance for later

happenings, this cult deserves a somewhat ampler digression.

3.3. Confession of incompetence

Prüfe gelegentlich deine Adjektiva nach. Christian Morgenstern, “Stufen.” (1918) p. 392.

The term ‘Christian’ has been used to refer to many different concepts. The content of these

concepts, referred to down to the present day, has for a large part been established at gatherings

of FH-Christian bishops and emperors of the Roman Empire during the AD4th and 5th centuries. Some

of them will be recalled here.

As there has been (and is) much disagreement among those pretending to be Christians over who

were or are 'true Christians', hereafter, the word 'Christians' is frequently put between quotation-

marks, as the present writer does not pretend to be competent to decide who were or are right. The

term will be used to refer to people who, at some time, have pretended or pretend to be 'Christians'

without, as far as can be ascertained, subsequently reneging on that pretence.

He thus confesses to an ignorance that marks him out as a non-historian, as most historians and

other experts appear to think they have convincing arguments – which they usually find it

superfluous to explicate – for counting those as 'non-Christians' who, during the many conflicts

between people professing to be Christians over points of the Christian faith, found themselves –

usually in the face of (superior) force of arms – defeated by their opponents, and even for calling

the former by the deprecatory names they were given by the latter, ‘heretics’ being the most

common one among these.

This term was and is used by those opponents to refer to those holding a ‘heresy’, i.e. an opinion

at variance with what the former consider to be ‘the interior unity of faith and doctrine of the

Church’, i.e. 'the tenets truly communicated by Christ'. These are sometimes distinguished from

‘schismatics’, i.e. those holding opinions that only concern ‘the outward unity of the Church’, as

they effect its constitution and discipline (Aquinas 1267 II-II Q. 11, 1; Alzog 1879a p. 299).

Thus, Ullman, professor of Medieval History at Cambridge University, called 'Arianism' an

"erroneous and heretical doctrine(.)" (Ullman 1972 p. 42). Runciman referred to Monophysites and

Nestorians as "heretic sects", then again, confounding his readers, "Christians" (Runciman 1951 p.

20, p. 27). In “The Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles, Third Edition” (1977) a

Monophysite is said to be “A heretic who believes that there is only one nature in the person of

Jesus Christ”. Similarly, Russell, in his “History of Western Philosophy”, differentiates between

‘Christians’ and ‘others’, among the latter being e.g. people he calls ‘Arians’, ‘Nestorians’ or

‘Monophysites’, without telling his readers why he considers these others, contrary to their own

claims, not to be Christians (Russell 1961 p. 366-367, 370).

The present writer will refer to persons referred to in the preceding sentence as persons

(sometimes) pretending to be ‘B-Christians’, ‘FHAN-Christians’ and ‘FHACM-Christians’ respectively.

Due to a similar incompetence in view of the different criteria used to distinguish Jews from non-

Jews, he will often use ‘Jews’ to refer to those claiming, at some time or another, to be Jew,

without, as far as he knows, subsequently reneging on that claim. An example of such a criterion,

used by some and rejected by others, has been formulated by Paul (Paul 56b Ch. 2:28-29).

Equally incompetent to distinguish Muslims from those who, while pretending to be Muslim, are

deemed by some to be non-Muslims, he will occasionally use 'Muslim' to refer to people who have

at some time claimed to be Muslim without, so far as he knows, having later denied to be one.

4. ‘Christianity’ within the Roman Empire from 0 till AD395

4.1. The Paulinian message

From about AD30 a monotheistic cult developed around the person and teachings of Joshua (a.k.a.

yesu’a or Jesus of Nazareth or Christ or Christòs) (± BC3? – ± AD30?), who possibly – after having

preached for a few years in two provinces of the Roman Empire, viz. Galilea and Judea, to people

who had been told they were Jews and descendents of Abraham (who may have lived around BC1500) – at the age of ± 33 years suffered a cruel death in Jerusalem in the latter province, at the

hands of Roman soldiers, acting under the orders of the Roman prefect Pontius Pilate.

Some traced his descent via Joseph, the husband of his mother Miriam (a.k.a. Maria or Mary), to

the ‘Jewish’ king David (BC1012 - 972?). Some others among his first, and many of his later

followers may have believed or believe that he had been born out of the intercourse of the Jewish

god JHWH (hereafter to be called 'deusJ') and the virgin Miriam; that 3 days after his death he had

been resurrected and, 40 days later, ascended to heaven. The former and the latter agreed or

agree in saying that he was the Messiah long promised to ‘the Jewish people’ by deusJ.

Assuming that the world as it was would soon come to an end, contemporaries of his expected

him to return and re-establish the blissful state of affairs for ‘Jews’ which they had learned to

associate with the legendary reign of king David (Matthew AD90 Ch. 1: 1-17; Luke AD90a Ch.1: 32;

Luke AD90b Ch. 1:6, Ch. 3:21, Ch. 13:23, Ch. 15:16; Paul AD56b 1:3).

Their efforts to convince other ‘Jews’ of the correctness of their beliefs met with success with

some, with bitter resistance with others. This made them shift their missionary activities to other

places. Soon, called ‘Christians’, they started to try to convince ‘non-Jews’ as well as ‘Jews’. This

necessitated a change in their message, as they now wanted to address ‘all men’, and ‘non-Jews’

could not care less about a certain ‘king David’.

This change was brought about mainly by Paul (b. ± BC10 in Tarsus (now in southern Turkey), d. ± AD60). Professing to think, as a Pharisee, and unlike Sadducees, that angels and spirits exist and the

dead will be resurrected, he appears at first to have taken part in the persecution of ‘Christians’ in

Jerusalem. Later, he became convinced that Jesus was the son of deusJ.

Using the translation into Greek of the Hebrew ‘Bible' ('Septuagint'), and helped by Peter, one of

Jesus’ disciples, and others, he started to teach that heaven and earth, including Adam, the first

human, had been created by deusJ around BC3760. This human, a male, was without sin and

enjoyed eternal life. Death had been brought to him and the rest of mankind as a punishment for

sin, and sin had come into the world through this Adam, who sinned by being disobedient to deusJ.

As a consequence, all people, being descendants of Adam, from the moment of their birth were

ruled by sin (a.k.a. devil, diabόlos or satán), and hence got death as their punishment.

DeusJ , the god of all men, ‘Jew’ and ‘non-Jew’, being just, in ± BC3 sent his son Jesus – the first

man without sin since Adam – to the centre of the universe, to wit, the Earth, demanding from him

that he die as an atonement for the sins of all other men. Jesus obeyed, and by his death, which

was effected by ‘Jews’, got acquittal vis-à-vis deusJ for everybody (Paul 56b Ch. 5). Resurrected

from the dead, Jesus lives eternally, sitting at the right hand of deusJ.

All humans who ‘believe and are baptized in him’ become innocent, partake of Jesus’ eternal life,

and are obedient to his commands as his spirit rules them. Together, they are ‘one body in Christ’.

Their corruptible bodies will die. Jesus will someday (soon?) return in person and, having been

appointed by deusJ as judge over the living and the dead, will try everyone (in a procedure, by the

way, that would not seem to meet the requirements laid down in the (European) ‘Convention for

the protection of human rights and fundamental freedoms’ of 1950). Those who are 'in Christ',

‘members of his body’, when they die, will then receive a spiritual body and live forever

incorruptibly and blissfully, provided deusJ has chosen them. After Jesus has won victory over all his

enemies and subjected everything to himself, he will subject himself to deusJ in order that the latter

will rule over all and everything.

Paul’s message, as elaborated by others, implied an important change in the assumed relation

between deusJ and men. In the Old Testament, deusJ was said to have promised the people of

Israel, his ‘chosen people’, which he had delivered from slavery in Egypt, a part of the earth, to wit,

Canaan, as ‘their country’ to live in, in exchange for their obedience to his commands, and in

keeping with the covenant he was said to have made with Abraham, their ancestor.

According to some texts in the New Testament, with the coming of Jesus, deusJ had made a new

covenant, this time with 'the Christians', his newly 'chosen people', who by Jesus’ death had been

liberated from the dominion of the evil one, and were promised, instead of life on (a part of the)

earth, eternal life in heaven, after their death.

This new ‘covenant’ implied, among others, the presuppositions (1) the one god – deusJ –

invisible, everlasting and omnipotent and the supreme good, has created everything, including the

first man, as good; (2) the first man got a free will enabling him to obey or disobey deusJ, in the

latter case obeying another object – say: 'S' –, invisible and evil, and (3) humans since the first

man consist of a (visible and transitory) body and an invisible and everlasting ‘soul’, the latter being

an entity as posited by, among others, Plato (probably not as a ‘sense of self’ as possibly meant by

Socrates (Popper 1966a p. 301-302)) (Genesis BC515 Ch. 12:7; Exodus BC515 Ch. 20:12;

Anonymous 90 Ch. 2:9-10; Augustine, as cited by Gratian (Gratian 1140 II 11, 3, 32); Luke 90b

Ch. 2:36; Ch. 10:34-48, Ch. 13:46-48, Ch. 17:22-31, Ch. 23:6-8; Paul 55 Ch. 15; Paul 56a Ch.

6:16; Paul 56b Ch. 3, Ch. 5 to 9, Ch. 12, Ch. 14:10-12).

4.2. The Paulinian message spreads in the eastern parts of the Roman

Empire and in Rome ... Paul’s ‘universalistic’ (i.e. ‘concerning all humans’) version of Christianity – is hereafter referred to

with ‘the Paulinian message’, most of which is found in his letters, all of them in Greek, or 'the

Paulinian-Augustinian message'.

Up to a point, it linked up with the 'Greek' ideas mentioned above, differed from these, however,

among other things, in that it was supposed to be based on a book, written by deusJ, the creator of

heaven and earth, which stated that the world had a beginning, would have an end and would not

start all over again, – which ran counter to Aristotelian and Stoic opinions (Ueberweg-Praechter

1920 p. 445), – and described everyone, ‘emperors’ included, as subject to the writer (i.e. deusJ)

and his wrath on account of Adam’s disobedience, and in need of redemption by the blood of Jesus,

the salvation of every human being actively pursued by the writer by interacting with the people he

had chosen as ‘his people’.

Obeying the command they believed Jesus had given them, to instruct and convert all peoples and

to teach them to behave in conformity with Jesus’ instructions to his disciples (Matthew 90 Ch.

28:19), Paul and others first spread this message in a number of provinces of the Roman Empire in

Asia Minor and in Greece. They found a growing number of people accepting it, thanks, in part, to

the work of the above-mentioned Philo Judaeus, who, teaching in Alexandria, had earned respect

for, or at least interest in, the Jewish religion among literates.

Intent on securing the support of people within the government of the Roman Empire, especially

of those disposing of the means of physical force, Paul, in his letter to ‘Christians’ in Rome, written

about AD56, emphasized that the government of the Empire had been instituted by deusJ, to whom

it was subordinate. Resisting it meant resisting a divine institution.

In his zeal to win the hearts and minds of ‘the powers that were’, he went so far as to point out

that “he who does what is good has nothing to fear from the authorities, only he who does what is

bad” (Paul 56 Ch. 13:1-7). Readers who wondered how this squared with the treatment Jesus –

claimed to be ‘without sin’ – had obtained, about two decades previously, by the hands of Pilate and

his soldiers, must have ignored the part of the Paulinian message consisting of the thesis that Jews,

not Romans, had killed Jesus. He appears to have shared that thesis with Peter. Later, Augustine,

to be mentioned below, was to share it with him. More recently still, in 'the Netherlands', Pieter

Steinz (b. 1963) followed suit. (Luke 90b Ch. 2:36; Ch. 3:15; Ch. 4:10; Ch. 7:52; Augustine 413e

p. 10; Augustine 413f p. 48, p. 442-444; Steinz 2012)

When, on his last journey, Paul tried to bring his message home to people in Rome, his efforts not

to antagonize the emperor and those around him proved unsuccessful. His visit coincided with the

first serious persecution of ‘Christians’ in that city, during which some of them, including possibly

Paul himself and Jesus’ disciple Peter, were killed in Rome in AD64

After the destruction of the ‘Jewish’ temple in Jerusalem by Roman soldiers in AD70, ‘Christians’

probably withdrew from Judea and Galilea, while continuing their missionary activities in Italy and

the Roman-occupied territories.

In the AD2nd century, Greek ‘universalistic’ ideas, together with other factors, led some to

aggrandize the men occupying the position ‘emperor’, while some extended Roman citizenship to

increasingly more people until, in AD212, it comprised nearly all ‘free’ inhabitants of the Empire,

including the applicability of Roman law to civil law conflicts between them (Justinian 533a I, 5, 17).

Those living in cities outside Rome combined ‘Roman citizenship’ with citizenship of the city of

their residence. These people were said to have two ‘homesteads’ (‘patriae’), one of which was

Rome, ‘our common homestead’ (‘communis nostra patria’), as it was called by the lawyer

Modestinus in the AD3rd century, echoing what Cicero had written some 300 years earlier (Justinian

533a L, 1, 33; Gierke 1881 p. 71).

The ‘universalization’ of Roman citizenship, coupled with the ‘deification’ of the position ‘emperor’,

clashed with the Paulinian proclamation of 'the Kingdom of deusJ' and provoked resistance on the

part of those considering themselves to be citizens of this Kingdom, including worship of deusJ

rather than of the emperor.

Hence, in the AD2nd century, persecutions increased, initiated partly by those in government, as

e.g. by Marcus Aurelius, emperor from AD161 till 180, and partly by others, who bore down on the

government to take action against 'Christians', whom they accused of being atheists, cannibals etc.

Hence, 'Christians' suffered persecutions in e.g. Smyrna (present-day Izmir (Turkey)) in 155, in

Lyon (France) in 177, and in Scilla (Numidia, North Africa) in 180 (Palanque 1956b p. 1013-1020;

p. 1045-1054).

4.3. ... and becomes a state religion (AD313) In the AD3rd century, the ‘orientalization’ of the Roman Empire intensified. People’s aesthetic and

other intellectual interests were increasingly captured by what came from Greece and other

provinces in the eastern part of the Empire.

This may have been caused partly by the disasters that hit them, as ‘war and pestilence

diminished the population of the empire by about a third’, and people like Plotinus (AD204-270), on

the basis of some of Plato's propositions, dreamt up a fault-free ‘ideal intellectual world’ (Russell

1961 p. 289, 306). Some men whose writings were part of the stuff professors starting in the Law

faculty of the Nederlandsche Economische Hoogeschool in AD1963 had, as students, studied –

Papinian (active between AD205 and 212), Ulpian (active between AD223 and 228) and others,

originating from Syria, – lived in this ‘period of disaster’.

From Persia, Manichees, followers of Mani (AD215-274), entered the Empire. Probably in reaction

to the restoration of the old Zoroastrian religion by the new Sassanide kings of Persia, which he

thought to have been rendered out of date, Mani started a Gnostic religious movement around AD240, in which he posited himself as the last in a line of prophets that included Adam, Buddha,

Zoroaster and Jesus. His message, meant for all mankind and designed to replace all other

religions, which supposedly had brought only parts of the truth, were preached by zealous

missionaries all over Persia and the Roman Empire. (Mani probably found a cruel death in a Persian

prison; his message, however, continued to be spread, down to India and China.) (Alzog 1879a p.

233-237)

‘Christians’ profited too. Despite – or, as some say, because of – intermittent persecutions, such

as those of AD202, 211, 249-260 and 296-311, their numbers grew, as did the sophistication of

part of the converted. Their missionary activities, initially mainly in the eastern parts of the Roman

Empire, benefited from the writings of apologists, polemicists and others. Most of these had

command of Greek and thus could read the translation into Greek of the Hebrew 'Bible'

('Septuagint') as well as the 'New Testament', written in Greek, while some were well versed in

Greek (neo-)Platonic philosophy.

Until about AD200, almost all writings explaining or defending the Paulinian message were in Greek

(Runciman 1951 p. 40). They were part of the gradual concentration of intellectual activities in the

eastern parts of the Empire in the course of the AD3rd century.

Thus, Origen (± AD182-251), famous among ‘Christian’ theologians until today, and born in

Alexandria (Egypt), from 203 till 231 taught at the theological school founded there around AD190.

Continuing, in a sense, the work of Philo Judaeus, he meant to ‘harmonize’ the Paulinian message

with opinions of Plato or his (neo-)Platonic followers. From 231 on, he continued to do so in

Caesarea (in the province Syria-Palaestina of the Roman Empire) until he died as a result of one of

the persecutions.

Translations into Latin of the translation into Greek of the Hebrew Bible ('Septuagint') had started

to circulate within the territories of the Empire since about AD150. One of these was Carthage, a city

in what is now called Tunisia. Its capture by ‘Romans’ in BC146 had been the start of a gradual

spreading of the Roman Empire over North Africa. Already in AD42 all of this part of the African

continent– from Mauritania in the west to Egypt in the east – had become ‘provinces of the Empire’.

In the AD2nd century, Carthage had become an important cultural and educational centre of the

Roman Empire. In this city, Tertullian (± AD155 – after 220) was born and to it, after a study in

Rome, he returned. There, around 200, he became ‘Christian’ and, devoting much of the rest of his

life to studying, explaining and propagating the Paulinian message, was one of the first to divulge

that message to people without command of Greek.

The last vestiges of the republican governmental infrastructure of the Roman Empire, preserved

by Augustus and some of his successors, were swept away during the reign, between AD284 and

305, of general Diocletian (AD245-313) c.s., considered to be the start of undiluted ‘autocracy’.

In AD286, during his reign, the ‘administration’ of the Empire was split between that of the western

part (including Italy) and that of the eastern part. Rome lost its status as ‘residence of the Emperor’

to Nicomedia (now İzmit (Turkey), near Istanbul). A ‘bureaucracy’ with strong ‘hierarchical’ traits

was introduced.

In AD312, Constantine I, as emperor of the western part of the Roman Empire, after his victory

over Maxentius mentioned above (3.2.) professed himself to be a ‘Christian’ and, in 313, granted

‘Christians’– around this time, according to N.H. Baynes’ estimate, numbering about 10% of the

population of the Empire –, besides the existing Roman religions, the status ‘state religion’, state

subsidies included (Toynbee 1948 p. 489).

5. ‘Christians’ get 'organized'

While the Paulinian message had been spread over the territories claimed by the Roman Empire

during the previous two centuries, in many places, usually within the borders of a ‘city’, people

considering themselves followers of Jesus had started meeting on a more or less regular basis.

Their meetings were called ‘èkklesíai’ (in Latin: ‘ecclesiae’), the name usual in Greece for regular

gatherings. Later, that word came to be applied to the localities in which their meetings took place.

After some time, they would buy or build a place in the city for their meetings, which they called by

the same name. Initially, many of these were simple, “unadorned oblong buildings, with a separate

place for the men, and another for the women” (Alzog 1879a p. 312-313).

Followers of Jesus in a particular city, say: city A, got to be called, collectively, ‘the èkklesía of A’,

or ‘the èkklesía in A’, in English: ‘the church of (or: in) A’ (Paul 55 Ch. 1:2; Paul 59 Ch. 4:16).

According to Origen and some others, the life of a ‘Christian’ was ‘one continual feast’, a

statement that 'reflected' the enthusiasm of the early – and maybe the mood of newly converted –

‘Christians’ (Alzog 1879a p. 306; Luke 90b Ch. 2:46-47). Meanwhile, as people, for quite some time

now, had died without witnessing the end of the world and the second coming of Christ, the need

had been felt by some for arrangements for a rather more permanent life ‘in the world’ of those

who continued to hope to see Jesus, if not before, then at least after their death.

In several cities, some men were appointed ‘elders’ (‘presbyters’, ‘priests’). Paul seems to have

been diligent in doing so, and is reported as having called such elders ‘épiskópoi’ (‘bishops’, from

the Greek ‘épiskopos’, meaning ‘overseer’ or ‘administrator’), telling them that the Holy Ghost had

appointed them ‘shepherds of the flock’ which, he predicted, was going to be invaded by wolves

(Luke 90b Ch. 14:23; Ch. 20:29).

In other places, people would gather without a ‘priest’, mindful of the statement ascribed to Jesus:

“where two or three come together in my name, there am I with them” (Matthew 90 Ch. 18:20),

echoed early in the 2nd century by Tertullian: “where there are three, even if laymen, there is

church, as each lives ‘by his own faith’ and ‘God does not show favouritism’” (“ubi tres, ecclesia est,

licet laici, unusquisque enim ‘de sua fide’ vivit nec est 'personarum acceptio apud DeumJ’”) (Alzog

1879a p. 271). Down to the 5th century in the west, and even later in the East Roman Empire, in

some churches, women got ‘ordained’ as ‘priests’ (Alzog 1879a p. 271).

While those considering themselves as belonging to, say: ‘the church of A’ in Asia Minor, and

those regarding themselves as belonging to ‘the church of B’ in North Africa, which might be

hundreds of kilometres away from each other, all thought of themselves as followers of Jesus, this

of course did not preclude many differences between them in the way in which they tried to adapt

their lives to what they thought or were told was required of them if they wanted to live as people

believing the Paulinian message. Even among those of the same church, already in the AD1st

century, many such differences had existed, as shown in ‘Acts of the Apostles’ and letters of Paul.

Such differences might concern the propositions they thought to be part of, or to be entailed by,

that message, or the way in which they arranged their interactions with others of the same church,

with those of other churches, or with those ‘outside’ a church.

As the number of ‘Christians’ in a city grew, one among the ‘elders’ tended to become full-time

administrator, and was called ‘bishop’ to the exclusion of the other ‘elders’, who might still be called

‘presbyters’ (‘priests’). As bishop and priests of, say: the church of A, they got, as time went on,

the company of other people to help in the administration of that church, people who got titles such

as ‘deacons’, ‘lectors’, ‘exorcists’ and ‘janitors’, with jobs associated with those titles. Collectively,

they were called ‘clerus’ (‘clergy’). Around AD250, in the church of Rome, the personnel already

comprised 152 persons, occupying 8 different positions (Alzog 1879a p. 273).

When men who had received the education usually reserved in the Roman Empire to those from

well-to-do families and occupied positions within the governmental apparatus of that Empire,

started to be converted to the Paulinian message and to address themselves to the arrangements

within or between the churches, they found much they did not like. Churches where everyone

thought himself or herself as ‘priest’, or where women were ordained 'priest', confusion about the

interpretation of the Paulinian message, – it all ran counter to the way they had learned ‘civilized’

people ought to interact with each other.

In contrast to Greece, where some of the ‘póleis’ had exhibited at least a semblance of

‘democracy’ in that all those considering themselves as belonging to one of them pretended – or

were supposed by some – to think that partaking in its administration was required of them, people

educated in Roman traditions had never seen a ‘democratic’ way of government. Its administration

was traditionally based on the distinction between those who were governed (‘plebs’), and the

Senators and government officials.

The latter “verfügen als Inhaber der Staatsgewalt auch dem Bürger gegenüber über alle

erforderlichen Zwangsmittel bis zum Recht über Leben und Tod des Bürgers, und der amtlose

Bürger ist gehalten, ihnen in jeder Hinsicht die Ehrerbietung zu erweisen, die ihnen als

Verkörperung der Maiestas populi Romani, der Überlegenheit des Volksganzen über den Einzelnen

zukommt” (Meyer 1947 p. 47).

By the time Constantine I accorded 'Christians' the status 'state religion', some of the latter had –

in partial imitation of the territorial division of the administration of the Roman Empire introduced

around AD300 – divided each of the Empire’s provinces into parts, called ‘dioceses’, in each of which

a single ‘bishop’ took care of the ‘spiritual well-being’ of those inhabitants he supposed to be

'Christians'. Eventually a diocese would be subdivided into parishes, where a priest would do the

same, overseen by the bishop of the diocese concerned.

6. 'Christians' in sorts

6.1. F-Christians and S-Christians AD 316 The Donatus controversy

After Constantine I had, in 313, provided 'Christians' with the status 'state religion', he started to

behave himself as the high priest (pontifex maximus) of this religion, just as he and his

predecessors since Augustus used – and he continued – to do in respect of the other state cults:

those of Jupiter, Hercules and in particular Apollo, 'the son of Zeus'.

In line with his new 'priesthood' he and associates of his introduced legislation meant to improve

the lot of 'slaves' and 'prisoners'. Divorce, prostitution, gladiatorial shows and crucifixion as a

method of killing people were ‘forbidden’, and Sunday designated as the weekly day of rest (Alzog

1879a p. 324-326; Palanque 1956b p. 1061, p. 1078-1079).

True to the same tradition, he actively intervened in quarrels between ‘Christians’. Thus, in 316,

he interfered in a conflict that had arisen in Carthage.

‘Christians’ had grown there in numbers more rapidly than in many of the Roman provinces in

Western Europe, and had produced writers such as Tertullian, mentioned above, and Cyprian (± AD200-258), famous among ‘Christian theologians’ in Western Europe down to the present day. In

256, some 80 'bishops' had attended the 'Church council of Carthage'.

In AD311, Felix, the bishop of a neighbouring North African diocese, had ordained a man named

Caecilian 'bishop of Carthage'. A certain Donatus and others deemed Felix unfit to do so, as he had

shown himself ‘weak’ during the persecutions of the years 296-311 and hence unworthy of

‘conferring sacraments’ (i.e. ‘celebrating mysteries of the Church’). On appeal, ‘the bishop of Rome’

and other bishops supported the ordainment by Felix, after which ‘Donatists’ appealed to

Constantine.

In 316, he, too, decided in favour of Caecilian – who consequently was going to receive state

subsidy – and until 321 persecuted Caecilian’s opponents. This made the latter adverse to ‘state

interference’ with religion. As proponents of a ‘hard line’ against those ‘Christians’ who had given in

during persecution, they followed the example of Novatian (± AD200 – ± 258), who, as 'bishop of

Rome', around 250 had maintained that only persons who, as ‘priests’, in times of persecution or

otherwise, behaved themselves worthy that position, could validly confer sacraments.

For a century, the Donatists – who may be called ‘S-Christians’ for their strict criteria, in contrast

to ‘F-Christians’, after Felix, – considering themselves ‘the true Christians’, and popular among

Berbers, were to continue their struggle in North Africa, long remaining an ‘independent Christian

church’ or – after internal conflicts – ‘churches’. In 405, the West Roman emperor, upon the

request of Augustine, to be mentioned below, and other FH-Christian bishops, gathered at

Carthage, ‘outlawed’ them (Alzog 1879a p. 299-300, p. 357-360; McCracken 1966 p. XXVII-XXIX,

XXXVI-XLI; Palanque 1956b p.1079-1080; Warmington 2005).

6.2. B-Christians and FH-Christians AD 325 The Arius controversy

Simple as it might seem at first sight, the gospel Paul and his collaborators brought mankind,

when one came to think of it, appeared to harbour quite some difficulties. Assuming that there is a

god, and no more than one, that that One is deusJ, and that the Bible is His word: what is one to

think about e.g. the Three: the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit?

In the eastern part of the Roman Empire, around AD320, 'Christians' quarrelled over the

composition of what they called ‘Trinity’, after the Greek ‘Τrías’, a word probably coined by

Theophilus, 'Christian' bishop of Antioch (at the time a city in Syria, now called Antakya, in Turkey)

around AD180, and later made one of the ‘key-stones’ of ‘Christian theology’ by Tertullian.

According to the latter, Trinity consists of deusJ the father, Jesus the son, and the Holy Spirit

a.k.a. the Holy Ghost. His writings and those of other apologists had been part of heated

discussions devoted to the problem of reconciling monotheism with the ‘existence’ of those three,

and of establishing the relations between them.

In the times of persecution, when communications had been difficult, such discussions had often

been restricted to certain parts of the Roman Empire and their outcomes were often unknown to

‘Christians’ elsewhere. Variously worded ‘sacramental formulae’ and ‘articles of faith’ had found

acceptance in different dioceses throughout the territories of the Empire. Several would-be

'Christians' had been ‘excommunicated’ by various bishops for utterances the latter deemed to be

contrary to the Truth, without other bishops having been consulted. However, during the

persecutions by a common enemy, it had often been thought wise not to let discussions end in open

conflict between 'bishops'.

After ‘Christians’ had been awarded the status 'state religion', some felt the need to get clarity

about what ‘all Christians’ were supposed to believe, partly in order to prevent ‘mistakes’ in the

selection of new bishops and other priests and the allotment of churches and state subsidies.

The mystery of the Trinity was among the first to lead to open conflict. Arius (± AD250-336), a

'Christian' priest in Alexandria (Egypt) – possibly taking his cue from the writings of Origen,

mentioned above (4.3.), – held that deusJ, the father, had, around BC3, begotten Jesus, the son. As

deusJ was immutable, Jesus, however, changeable, as shown by his life story, the latter could not

be deusJ.

His opinions were popular in Egypt and other eastern parts of the Empire, and were opposed by a

number of 'Christian' bishops. These accused Arius of denying the divinity of Jesus and in AD321

decided to ‘excommunicate’ him and some of his followers, which meant that they did no longer

consider them to be ‘members of the body of Christ’ a.k.a. ‘the one and universal Christian church’.

Constantine I, informed of the controversy, at first meant that it involved no more than a conflict

over the meaning of words, and ridiculed it as being “childish and unworthy the dignity of priests”

(Alzog 1879a p. 365).

Having become ‘sole emperor’ of the Roman Empire after defeating the armies of Licinius, his ‘co-

emperor’ of its eastern part, in 324, and talked round by Arius’ opponents, he convened a council of

'Christian' bishops in Nicaea (now İznik, in Turkey) in 325.

Asked about their opinion on the proposition “Jesus, the son, is homoöusios (i.e. consubstantial)

with deusJ, the father”, an overwhelming majority voted for said proposition, and a formula – the

so-called Symbolum Nicaenum – was agreed on that, when enunciated, would identify the speaker

as one believing in one deusJ, the Father, and in Jesus, his son, consubstantial with the Father, and

thus to be an 'H-Christian' (after ‘homoöusios’), in contrast to ‘B-Christians’, who with Arius hold

that Jesus was ‘born’. As the former, for the most part, appear to have acceded to the decision of

Constantine I of 316, mentioned above (6.1.), upholding the Felix's ordainment of Caecilian as

bishop of Carthage and condemning S-Christians, they will hereafter be referred to as ‘FH-

Christians’.

Arius was exiled. Next, having been talked round once again, this time by Arius’ followers,

Constantine rehabilitated him in 330 and deposed and exiled FH-Christian bishops.

From 351, his son, emperor Constantius II (317-361), and some of his collaborators actively

opposed FH-Christians, and in 359 imposed a doctrine based on Arius’ B-Christian opinions on all

‘Christians’ in the Empire. Freedom of religion was restored during the reign (361- 363) of emperor

Julian (± 331-363), the freedom of ‘non-Christians’, however, restricted after his death.

Gratian (359-383), emperor from 375 till 383, after having turned FH-Christian, in 379 was the

first to renounce occupying the position ‘pontifex maximus’ (high priest of the state cults). In the

same year, Theodosius I (347-395), a general, born in Spain, and a fervent FH-Christian, became

his co-emperor for the eastern parts of the Empire and did the same. Jointly they ordered ‘all

heresies, forbidden by divine and imperial laws, to be silent forever,’ and warned all judges – and

all others required by law to take care of such matters – not to be lenient towards them (Justinian

534b I, 5, 2).

In 380, Theodosius I – jointly with Gratian – promulgated a ‘law’ imposing the FH-Christian

religion on all people within the Empire’s territories, and the following year robbed B-Christians of

their churches (Justinian 534b I, 1, 1; I, 1, 2).

Next, he took steps to get rid of another of B-Christians’ qualms about Trinity. Is the Holy Spirit

part of it? In 325, the council of bishops in Nicaea had given this question a rather perfunctory

treatment, just concluding their profession of faith with the words “and in the Holy Spirit”. B-

Christians flatly denied that the Holy Spirit was deusJ.

In 381, at a council of bishops in Constantinople, convoked by Theodosius I, the FH-Christian

majority decided to amend the Nicaean profession of faith with a description of the Holy Spirit,

adding, after ‘Spirit’, among other things, the words “who proceeds from the Father.”

In 384, all B-Christians were banished from all territories of the East Roman Empire. Gradually,

the use of physical force – initially in the form of exile, as practised by Constantine I in 314, – to

cleanse the territory of the Empire of those who, while pretending to be ‘Christians’, were

considered by some others not to be so, got accepted, and eventually welcomed, by those left

untouched.

Killing them, though, at first was thought by some to be too harsh. When, in 386, for the first

time, one of them, to wit Priscillian, bishop of Avila (Spain), was killed by the emperor Maximus et

al., it drew protests from Ambrose, bishop of Milan, to be mentioned below, who ‘excommunicated’

Maximus (Alzog 1879a p. 204, 257, 362-368, 380-387; Augustine 413b XI, 24; Denzinger 1973 p.

52-53, 65-67; Demougeot 1956 p. 1240; Palanque 1956b p.1080-1081, 1090-1091).

7. FH-Christians get ‘monopoly’ in the Roman Empire in AD392 In the western parts of the Empire, Ambrose, the FH-Christian bishop of Milan (Italy) (339-397),

emulated emperor Theodosius I in efforts to get rid of B-Christians. Controversies between

‘emperor’ and ‘bishop’ did not fail to emerge.

In 390, in a conflict with Ambrose – who proposed: “the place of the emperor is in the church, not

above it” (“imperator intra ecclesiam, non supra ecclesiam”) –, Theodosius I, having become ‘sole

emperor’ of the Roman Empire in the same year, backed down. Having ordered the killing of some

7000 ‘innocent citizens’ in Thessaloniki (Greece) after the governor there had been killed during a

riot, he was treated by Ambrose as ‘a sinner’ and denied entrance to the church in Milan until he

would have done penance in public. The emperor complied with this demand.

Subsequently, in 392, the emperor c.s. 'forbade' all non-FH-Christian religions in the whole Roman

Empire, thus intending to change the ideology of its government from a polytheistic into a

monotheistic one. This led to a grim battle near Venice (Italy) in 394, where his armies, helped by

Visigoth troops, triumphed over those of adherents of traditional Roman religions (Palanque 1956b

p.1088-1094).

(The FH-Christian tenets – subsequently enhanced with new ‘precisions’ to be mentioned below, –

were to remain the ones preferred by most bishops of Rome until now. Joseph Ratzinger (b. 1927),

bishop of Rome since 2005, on inspection will be found to be an FH-Christian, as will be Adrianus J.

Simonis (b. 1931), bishop of Utrecht (the Netherlands) since 1983. The same preference was

exhibited by FHACDRP-Christians, such as Martin Luther (1483-1546) and John Calvin (1509-1564)

and, later on, by Jan Sperna Weiland (b. 1925), the famous philosopher-theologian, rector of the

Erasmus University Rotterdam from 1979 till 1983, and George Walker Bush (b. 1946, said to be

President of the United States from 2001 till 2009))

8. The Roman Empire(s) from AD395

8.1. Germanization of parts of the 'West Roman Empire’

In AD395, the ‘splitting of the administration’ of the Empire deepened, some people in the eastern

and the western Empire each trying to have their own ‘emperor’. These efforts were more

successful in the east than in the west, where they ended in 480.

The old city of Byzantium – which, in AD330, had been renamed ‘Constantinople’ (after Constantine

I, since 312 emperor of the western part, and from 324 of the whole of the Roman Empire), and

from1930 has been called ‘Istanbul’ – became the capital of the East Roman Empire, also known as

‘the Byzantine Empire’. This encompassed – next to territories in Asia Minor – Greece and large

parts of the Balkans in the west to (present-day) Georgia in the east, and down to Egypt in the

south.

The West Roman Empire had Milan, and later Ravenna, as its main administrative centre. It

comprised Italy and the rest of the Empire’s territories in the middle and west Mediterranean. The

government of the provinces in North Africa was divided, Egypt and the other provinces to the east

of Al ‘Ugaylah (in present-day Libya) being allotted to the Byzantine Empire, those to the west of

that city, down to and including Mauritania, to the West Roman Empire (Guilland 1956 p. 1125).

(Palanque 1956a p. 985; Palanque 1956b p. 1052, p. 1061, p. 1065-1067, p. 1091)

The year AD395 may be said to be the start of the period of ‘Germanization’ of areas outside Italy

that were allotted to this western part of the Empire, as they gradually came to be controlled by

German tribes.

Coming from northern Europe, such tribes had been attacking the northern borders of the Roman

Empire intermittently since about BC200. From around AD250, some had managed to settle in parts

of its territory, as e.g. Franks in the west and Goths in the east.

By AD300 Goths had established an ‘empire’ of their own to the north and west of the Black Sea, in

what is now called Ukraine and Rumania. Invasions of Huns, since 373 coming from Mongolia,

drove part of them, the Ostrogoths, into Central Europe, the others, the Visigoths, into the Balkans,

both within territories claimed to be part of the Roman Empire. Probably, by then, some of them

already had been converted to the B-Christian religion (the Arius variety of the ‘Christian’ religion)

popular in eastern parts of the Roman Empire; more were, when B-Christians, banished from the

territory of the Roman Empire by Theodosius I in 384, found refuge with them.

Around AD382 both Goth tribes had become ‘federates’ of the Empire, bound vis-à-vis its

government to deliver recruits for its armies and to defend their part of its territory. Similar

arrangements had been made with Vandals and other German tribes, resulting in a ‘Germanization’

of the Empire’s armies that showed itself in the origin of their officers and in the weapons and

methods of combat used. Thus, Stilicho (365-408), ‘commander in chief’ of the Empire's armies

from 393 till 408, was a Vandal.

In 395, Visigoths – led by Alaric (370-410), who claimed to be a B-Christian –, possibly feeling

themselves deceived by the Empire’s government, moved into Greece, where they sacked a number

of cities. From 401, they invaded Italy several times, and in 410 besieged and sacked Rome,

sparing people while causing damage to buildings and, according to some, taking treasures with

them without the consent of those who pretended to own them.

Next, they went west, reaching Spain in 415 and ultimately settling in the southwest of what at

the time was called ‘Gaul’. (Gaul included most of what was later called ‘France’, the name that will

be used in what follows.) They were to remain ‘federates’ of the Roman Empire until, in 475, they

started a ‘kingdom’ of their own, eventually comprising the west of France from the Loire

downwards and nearly all of Spain.

In 406 Vandals, on the run for Huns, invaded France and next, in 409, settled in Spain. By 428

they had moved on to North Africa. In 439 they captured Carthage and established a kingdom of

their own in parts of what are now called ‘Tunisia’ and ‘Algeria’, as well as in Corsica, Sardinia and

Sicily.

In 455, they invaded Italy and for a few weeks occupied and plundered Rome, after which they

left Italy. Many of them being B-Christians, for a time some of them persecuted FH-Christians in the

territories they occupied. In 533 an army from the East Roman ("Byzantine") Empire destroyed

their kingdom.

8.2. Theocratization of the 'East Roman Empire’ (AD392) The East Roman Empire at first had its share of efforts of German and other tribes to control its

territories. From Alaric’s invasion in AD395, mentioned above, until 497, it was alternately

threatened by Visigoths, Huns and Ostrogoths, either as part of the Empire’s armies or as they

came from outside.

Furthermore, its government found itself in complicated relations with people in Persia. By AD200,

the Roman Empire had been extended as far as Nineveh, on the river Tigris. Since 226, Persia came

to be dominated by ‘kings’ of the Sassanide dynasty. From the start, these had set out to repel the

Roman Empire from Mesopotamia as well as from Armenia. In 249 the Persian king Ardachir had

managed to do so.

In AD389, Roman efforts to regain control over the lost territories had resulted in the partition of

control of Armenia between the Roman Empire and Persia. In 422 this was followed by a treaty that

brought an uneasy peace and in 488 made joint action possible in the Caucasus against invading

Huns (Goossens 1956 p. 452-457; Guilland 1956 p. 1123-1128; Palanque 1956b p. 1056-1060).

Apart from these problems, the East Roman Empire was subject to efforts on the part of FH-

Christians to extend their control over the lives of its inhabitants. Having acquired the monopoly of

‘religious practice’ from Theodosius I in 392, and having already an ecclesiastical organization in

place in Constantinople, Alexandria (Egypt), and many other places, they saw themselves still

surrounded by adherents of ‘pagan’ religions, and, worse still, by people, such as B-Christians, who

according to them wrongly pretended to be ‘Christians’, and whom they branded as ‘heretics’. In

the opinion of the emperors Gratian and Theodosius I, expressed in a ‘law’ of 379, the latter term

covered ‘all those who were found to deviate from the way of the catholic religion’ (Justinian 534b I,

5, 2).

Setting about to cleanse the FH-Christian church and the territory of the East Roman Empire of

them, if necessary by force of imperial arms, emperors and bishops were confronted with the

problem how to decide who were to be the cleaners and who the cleaned. This required an answer

to many more of the questions the Paulinian message had left than only those about the

composition of Trinity, first handled in Nicaea in AD325.

In 351, bishops gathered at Sirmium had formulated 27 statements that, if professed by someone

pretending to be ‘Christian’, marked his or her pretence to be false and him or her as a heretic. In

382 and 400, similar gatherings in Rome and Toledo had resulted in 42 more statements of the

same kind (Denzinger 1973 p. 59, p. 68, p. 76). (In 428, Augustine was to publish ‘Book on

heresies’, in which he listed 88 opinions that marked a heretic (McCracken 1966 p. L).)

9. ‘Christians’ in sorts (2)

9.1. B-Christians and FH-Christians (continued) AD401 The Origen controversy

The problem of the composition of Trinity kept exercising some people. Tracing the origins of

Arius’ opinions, condemned in Nicaea in 325, some FH-Christians had found them in writings of

Origen (d. AD251). In 400, Anastasius, the FH-Christian bishop of Rome, on their request, declared

Origen a ‘heretic’, and the emperor of the West Roman Empire ‘forbade his writings to be read’

(Alzog 1879a p. 389).

Thereupon, in the East Roman Empire, Theophilus, the FH-Christian bishop of Alexandria, in 401,

‘excommunicated’ some monks who continued to read Origen’s writings and possibly considered

themselves to be ‘B-Christians’. The monks were granted asylum by his colleague, John Chrysostom

(347-407), the FH-Christian bishop of Constantinople who, by the way, was popular among poor

people and hated by some of the rich and, other than e.g. Augustine, advocated the abolishment of

slavery (Alzog 1879a p. 521).

The emperor of the East Roman Empire – brother of his western counterpart – summoned

Theophilus to an ecclesiastical court in Constantinople, presided over by Chrysostom, to answer

accusations brought against him by the monks he had ‘excommunicated’.

Theophilus retaliated by accusing Chrysostom of being a B-Christian himself, and the latter was

summoned to appear before an ecclesiastical court at Chalcedon (present-day Kadiköy (Turkey)),

chaired by Theophilus. Here, in 403, Chrysostom was 'found guilty’ and exiled by the East Roman

emperor to Bithynia (the north-western district of present-day Anatolia (Turkey)).

The uproar his banishment brought among some ‘Christians’ in Constantinople caused the

emperor to allow him to return. In 404 banished again, Chrysostom died in exile in 407. In 438, he

was ‘rehabilitated’ (Alzog 1879a p. 387-392).

9.2. FHA-Christians and FHP-Christians AD411 The Pelagius controversy

The sin of Adam, the first man, and its consequences for the relations between his descendents

and deusJ were the next problem that popped up. They were the subjects of a conflict involving FH-

Christians in both parts of the Roman Empire.

Pelagius (± AD354 – ± 418), probably coming from Britain, and a certain Celestius, after having

practiced law in Rome since about 380, had switched to the study of theology. When the Visigoths

invaded Rome in 410, they withdrew to Carthage, where Celestius applied for an ordainment as

priest.

In 411, Pelagius went on to Syria-Palaestina, where he was welcomed by the FH-Christian bishop

of Jerusalem and expounded his opinions, probably shared by Celestius.

According to Pelagius, Adam’s sin injured only him, and was not the cause of death coming to

mankind. The death of the body, according to him, belongs to the natural order of things. Adam’s

descendents are born free from sin and virtue, with an unobscured reason and a free will, just as

Adam was. Adam gave his descendents a bad example by his disobedience towards deusJ, and men

sin when they imitate him. DeusJ has endowed them with the grace of a natural capacity for moral

excellence and a free will: together, these enable them to avoid sin. Jesus has given them a good

example, which they should follow. Baptism works the forgiveness of sins in adults; in infants, it

strengthens the power of free will; for both, it is – as Jesus had said (John 95 Ch. 3:5) – a condition

for admission into the Kingdom of Heaven. Unbaptized children will after death enjoy eternal life,

though not the Kingdom of Heaven. So will adult non-Christians who lead blameless lives; others

will suffer (Alzog 1879a p. 401-403).

These opinions were thought by some to be not at all in agreement with what they thought to be

an important part of the Paulinian message. From 411 until 431, this caused a rush of accusations,

retorts, bishops’ conferences, condemnations, depositions, acquittals and renewed condemnations

that implicated Arles (France), Bethlehem, Carthage, Constantinople, Ephesus, Jerusalem,

Mopsuestia (present-day Misis (Turkey)), Rome and other places in both parts of the Empire.

A main actor in the conflict was Augustine (b. AD354 in Tagaste (present-day Souk Ahras, in

Algeria), d. 430), who, in 397, had been ordained 'FH-Christian bishop' of the diocese of Hippo

Regius (now Annaba in Algeria), near the diocese of Carthage, both at the time still part of the

territories under control of the government of the West Roman Empire.

A passionate FH-Christian, as soon as he had heard of the opinions of Celestinus and Pelagius, and

while still combating S-Christians mentioned above (6.1.), Augustine had set about to clarify man’s

utter need of the grace of deusJ in order to do any good, elaborating the Paulinian message (Paul

56b Chapters 5-9).

According to Augustine, when Adam, the first man, sinned, all his descendents sinned with him,

and death was the punishment for all, babies included. By the sanctifying grace of deusJ man may

be set free from sin and sanctified. Next, in order to avoid sin or to do any good, man needs the

actual grace of deusJ. DeusJ, in his mercy, has chosen some men on whom He bestows His grace.

These, His children, will certainly die in grace, as deusJ has predestined them to eternal life. Others

will certainly be lost. (These propositions of Augustine’s on ‘predestination’ were considered to be

too harsh by some, and those professing them were condemned by FHA-Christian bishops at a

council in Arles (France) in 473 and in Orange (France) in 529.)

Around 418, Celestius and Pelagius, because of their utterances, were banished from the whole

Roman Empire by the West Roman emperor. Information on Pelagius’ whereabouts since then is

missing. Maybe he returned to Britain.

In 418, at a council of bishops of northern Africa held in Carthage, the majority supported most of

Augustine’s opinions, and those who agreed with the opinions of Pelagius and Celestius were

‘anathematised’ (i.e. ‘cursed’). After 425, Celestius was lost sight of.

The opinions of Pelagius and Celestius had been adopted by a number of bishops and others, all of

whom considered themselves to be FH-Christians. They may be called FHP-Christians (after

Pelagius). In 429, they were banished from Constantinople by the East Roman emperor Theodosius

II (401-450).

In 431, this emperor convened a council of bishops in Ephesus. Referring to a (possibly spurious)

condemnation of the utterances of Celestius and Pelagius by the FH-Christian bishop of Rome in

428, the majority of them somewhat casually decided to rob priests who appeared to harbour

Celestius’ opinions of any ‘authority’ in the church of the East Roman Empire, thus granting

Augustine a new, posthumous, success. Those approving of the decisions of that council may be

termed ‘FH-nonP-Christians’ or, for short, ‘FHA-Christians’ (after Augustine). (Alzog 1879a p. 404-

412; Denzinger 1973 p. 82-84, 88-97, 117, 137; McCracken 1966 p. XLI-XLVI).)

9.3. FHAC-Christians and FHAN-Christians AD428 The Nestorius controversy The efforts to effectuate the FH-Christians’ monopoly of ‘religious’ utterances and other activities

were supported, or even passionately led, by the East Roman emperors and their collaborators in

Constantinople and elsewhere, as appears from their behaviour in the Origen and Pelagius

controversies mentioned above.

The relation of the position ‘emperor’ to, first, the position ‘lord of heaven and earth’ that some

used in their ordering of objects, and was now said to be occupied by deusJ, and, second, to ‘the

church’ a.k.a. ‘the body of Christ’, ‘the head’ of which was said to be Jesus, however, was a matter

in dispute.

Since the reign of Octavian a.k.a. Augustus, the ‘emperor’ had, as said above (2.), been surnamed

‘Jovius’, after the god Jupiter, by whose mandate he was said by some to rule. Later, some of those

occupying the position ‘emperor’ were proclaimed to occupy another one too: a position (called his

numen or genius) that was the object of a religious cult, or close to one supposedly occupied by a

‘recognized’ deity, said to be his perpetual companion.

Coins, sometimes used propagandistically, show a remarkable development in this respect. Julius

Caesar – whose assumption, in Rome in BC44, of permanent dictatorship was important in the chain

of events that had led to the end of the Roman Republic in BC27 – was the first there to have coins

minted with an image of his head on them, an unprecedented show of personality pitted against the

traditional profession of respect for the res publica.

On some of these coins, next to that image, a half-moon or star was pictured, meant to link him

to (faceless) ‘gods’ supposedly moving those celestial bodies. Three centuries on, when the age of

the soldier-emperors had started, coins were issued showing, next to a picture of the emperor’s

head, a picture of a head that was supposed to be that of one of the gods, often depicted to look

like the emperor's. On coins from the reign of Constantine I (306-337), the face of 'Sol Invictus' –

a.k.a. Apollo, the sun god, 'son of Zeus' –, was shown as Constantine’s companion, and the two of

them were made to look like twins (Kantorowicz 1957 p. 503; Koch 1960 p. 106; Porzig 1956 p.

321; Volkmann 1957 p. 300).

From the time Gratian had waived the position pontifex maximus (high priest of the state

religion(s)) in 379, all those acquiring the position ‘emperor’ had followed his example. Attitudes

linked to the two positions 'emperor' and 'pontifex maximus', as expressed in rhetoric, rituals and

otherwise, had changed hardly, if at all, especially with those in the surroundings of ‘emperors’.

People continued to be disposed to consider the ones occupying the position 'emperor' as being the

elect of the one occupying the position ‘lord of heaven and earth’.

Difficulties resulted from the change from a ‘polytheistic’ regime to one in which the ‘monotheistic’

FH-Christian religion, since 392, had got the monopoly of ‘religious practice’.

As the territory claimed by the ‘emperors’ to be theirs to govern coincided with the dioceses that

FH-Christian bishops pretended to be theirs to rule by order of deusJ, clashes between the former

and the latter could hardly be avoided.

In the West Roman Empire, in 390, when a conflict a between ‘bishop’ and ‘emperor’ had arisen, it

had, as said above (7.), been resolved to the advantage of Ambrose, the FH-Christian bishop of

Milan, and at the expense of emperor Theodosius I, who accepted the position Ambrose assigned to

him as ‘being in the church, not above it’.

In the East Roman Empire, initially, both ‘emperors’ and ‘bishops’ were wary of forcing the issue,

the latter because of in-fighting, especially between the FH-Christian bishops of Alexandria (Egypt)

and the ones of Constantinople: each wanted the backing of the imperial court for their claim to

‘supremacy’. Those of Alexandria bolstered their claim by maintaining a close relationship with the

FH-Christian bishops of Rome (Guilland 1956 p. 1131).

Also, many FH-Christian bishops and others found they needed the means of physical coercion

that the ‘emperor’, as ‘commander-in-chief of the army’, was supposed to dispose of, to get rid of

B- and other non-FH-Christians.

In their turn, those aspiring to the position ‘emperor’ or trying to keep it, had traditionally relied

on the army and the Senate for their ‘nomination’. Now, in times of turmoil, they came to rely more

and more on bishops and the obedience these commanded from the other clergy, the monks and

the ‘lay members of the church’ for support, firstly, when claiming that position, and, secondly, in

their struggles against the invasions or insurrections of German and other tribes – some of them

consisting of B-Christians –, as well as in their conflicts with Persia.

As a result, in the AD5th century East Roman Empire, as Guilland put it, “les institutions civiles et

religieuses se mêlèrent si intimement qu’il devient impossible de les séparer autrement que par un

artifice d’exposition; l’Église et l’État se prêtèrent une mutuelle assistance pour exercer leur tutelle

sur les hommes; l‘empereur, représentant de Dieu, fut le protecteur de l’Église, qui le soutint dans

la mesure où il demeurait un chrétien fidèle. Cet accord (…) fut souvent rompu dans les faits,

l’Église entendant poursuivre sa mission en toute liberté et l’empereur se jugeant responsable

devant Dieu de l’attitude du clergé. Les conflits furent nombreux, les compromis non moins

fréquents et constamment remis en cause.” (Guilland 1956 p. 1130)

The mutual dependence probably felt by bishops and emperors was neatly expressed by Nestorius

(b. ?, d. 451) who, on his inauguration as FHA-Christian bishop of Constantinople in 428, addressed

the FHA-Christian emperor Theodosius II with the words: “O Emperor, drive heretics from thy

empire, and I will grant thee the kingdom of heaven; strengthen my hands in putting down the

enemies of the Church, and I will aid thee in conquering the Persians” (Alzog 1879a p. 415).

The same Nestorius was to fall victim to the drive he so enthusiastically endorsed, to cleanse the

Empire’s territory of ‘the enemies of the Church’, as well as to in-fighting between bishops. The

problem of Incarnation brought his downfall.

Incarnation was part of the problem of Trinity. According to John, one of the Evangelists, Jesus

was Lógos become flesh (John 95 Ch. 1:14). How did that happen? Many theologians in Alexandria

thought this to be a mystery better left unsolved.

Theologians from Antioch, on the other hand, felt the need to understand, and to explain to those

in their churches, how it had happened. Accepting that Jesus, the son, had – as established in

Nicaea in AD325 – always been consubstantial with deusJ, the father, not born around BC3 as the

child of Mary, what was one to think of Mary’s son? Could Jesus, who was Lógos a.k.a. deusJ, be the

same as Jesus, Mary’s child? Could deusJ have been born from a human creature?

This problem bothered some ‘Christians’ and ‘non-Christians’ alike, such as e.g. Volusanius, an

‘non-Christian’ Roman government official in North Africa, with whom Augustine had started to

correspond. In 412, in a letter addressed to the latter, he asked: how could the ruler of the

universe enter into the womb of the Virgin and limit himself by accepting the form of man?

(McCracken 1966 p. LX)

Antioch theologians thought he could not. Nestorius, who had been trained by them before being

ordained 'FHA-Christian bishop of Constantinople', agreed, saying he could not recognize as God a

baby two or three months old.

According to him, at some time after the birth of the human Jesus, Lógos had come to dwell in

him, as in a temple. From that moment, there were two distinct natures or persons in Jesus: the

divine and the human, Lógos a.k.a. Jesus the son of – and consubstantial with deusJ –, and Jesus

the son of Mary. Hence, in 428, the year he became bishop of Constantinople, he told the ‘faithful’

that they should stop calling Mary ‘Mother of deusJ’; instead, they should call her ‘Mother of Christ’.

His utterances caused uproar in his audience and elsewhere, particularly among monks in

Constantinople and in Alexandria and elsewhere in Egypt, and a conflict of years between him and

Cyril (± 375-444), the bishop of Alexandria and an FHA-Christian like himself, probably fuelled in

part by fears that the bishop of Constantinople would dominate the other dioceses in the East

Roman Empire.

Forced by the protest of the monks, Cyril went into the problem and came to the following

conclusion: “Mary, although she did not, in any sense, give birth to the Divinity, by which Lógos is

equal to the Father, is nevertheless truly and really the Mother of Lógos, because the flesh of Lógos

was formed in her womb, and she brought into the world the Person of Eternal Lógos, who was

clothed with our nature” (Alzog 1879a p. 416-417. ‘Word’, in Alzog’s translation, has here been

replaced by ‘Lógos’; on the many concepts this Greek word referred to, and the possible relation of

its use in John 95 Ch. 1:1 to the Aramaic mēmrā, see Kerferd 1967 p. 84.). So Jesus, when born of

Mary, was truly deusJ, and she was rightly called ‘Mother of deusJ’.

In 430, supported by the FHA-Christian bishops of Rome and of the Egyptian dioceses, Cyril sent

12 conditional curses to Nestorius, to be called down upon him in case he did not subscribe to

Cyril’s version. Nestorius, supported by FHA-Christian bishops from Antioch and other dioceses in

what was at the time called Syria, retaliated with 12 curses against those professing Cyril’s version.

In 431, at the council of FHA-Christian bishops in Ephesus – convened, as mentioned above (9.2.),

by the East Roman emperor Theodosius II, – the majority decided that Mary was justly called

‘Mother of deusJ ' and, condemning his utterances, ‘excommunicated’ and ‘deposed’ Nestorius as

‘bishop of Constantinople’. The emperor ratified his deposition, and he was relegated to his old

monastery.

In 433, Cyril and some ‘Syrian’ bishops’ who had supported Nestorius agreed on a formula

describing Jesus as “perfect deusJ and perfect man composed of a reasonable soul (ψυχή λογική)

and a body, as to his divinity begotten of the Father before all ages and consubstantial with him, as

to his humanity for our salvation recently begotten of the Virgin Mary and consubstantial with us.

His two natures (φύσεις) have become a unity.” Because of this unity, Mary is mother of deusJ, “as

deusJ Lógos was made flesh and man and, from the very act of conception on, united to himself the

temple he took from her”.

In 435, Nestorius was exiled to the Oasis of Khārijah, in the Libyan desert, and next to Panopolis

(Upper Egypt), where he died ± 451. The East Roman emperor Theodosius II forbade those

persisting to prefer his utterances – hence to be called FHAN-Christians – to call themselves

‘Christians’ and ordered their books to be seized and burnt. Subsequently, they were exiled and

“threatened with the extreme rigour of the law” (Justinian 534b I, 1, 3; I, 1, 5; I, 5, 6). (They

found refuge in Nisibis (then in Persia, now called Nusaybin, in south-east Turkey), in the diocese of

Edessa (then part of the East Roman Empire, and now called Urfa, in south-east Turkey) and, after

the East Roman emperor Zeno closed their Edessa school in 489, in Jundīshāpūr (then in Persia,

now called Shāhbād (Iran)), and continued to spread, under several names, down to India and

China. At present, there appear to be about 170.000 of them, mostly in Syria, Iraq and Iran.)

The formula Cyril and other bishops had agreed upon in 433 became the basis for descriptions of

Jesus established at a council of bishops, convened by the East Roman emperor, at Chalcedon in

451, to be mentioned hereafter, and again at a council of bishops in Constantinople in 680,

convened, it also, by the East Roman emperor. It expressly stated that Jesus’ two natures had been

united (in Mary’s womb) in one person. Those subscribing to these descriptions will hereafter be

called FHAC-Christians, after Cyril (Alzog 1879a p. 413-423; Arnaldez et. al. 1957 p. 444-445;

Denzinger 1973 p. 98-99, p. 108, p. 186; Guilland 1956 p. 1175; Théodoridès 1957 p. 492).

9.4. FHACD-Christians and FHACM-Christians AD451 The physis controversy

Soon another blow was directed at the mystery of Incarnation, once more threatening, some

thought, utterly to destroy the work of their redemption (Alzog 1879a p. 414).

Eutyches (± AD375-454), an FHAC-Christian abbot of a monastery in Constantinople, tried to

answer the question, what had happened after the divine and the human natures had become

united in Jesus, as had been established by Cyril et al. in 433.

According to Eutyches, at that moment, Jesus’ human nature (phúsis), being infinitely less than

the divine, had been absorbed by the latter, just as a drop of water is absorbed by – and disappears

in – the ocean in which it falls. There resulted only one nature, and Jesus’ body, united with the

divine nature, was not a human body: it only appeared to be so to the senses. Those consenting to

this ‘monophysite’ view may be called 'FHACM-Christians'.

The consternation that ensued again brought the bishops of Constantinople and Alexandria in

conflict with each other. In 448, at a meeting of bishops in the former city, Eutyches’ utterances

were condemned and he himself deposed as abbot. In 449, the FHAC-Christian bishop of Rome, in a

letter to the bishop of Constantinople, supported these decisions, confirming that there were two

different natures in Jesus’ person. This ‘duophysite’ statement marks FHACD-Christians.

Dioscorus, the FHAC-Christian bishop of Alexandria, managed to convince the emperors of both

parts of the Roman Empire to convoke a council of bishops at Ephesus in 449. There, the majority

found Eutyches innocent of wrong utterances, and ‘excommunicated’ the bishop of Constantinople

and other bishops who had sided with him. Theodose II, the East Roman emperor, ratified these

decisions.

The FHACD-Christian bishop of Rome, in his turn, in the same year convened a number a bishops

in Rome, where they declared the decisions, taken in Ephesus, invalid, and ‘excommunicated’ the

bishop of Alexandria.

In 450, emperor Theodose II died. His successor, Marcian (396-457), at the request of the

FHACD-Christian bishop of Rome, convoked a council of bishops, held at Chalcedon in 451. There,

those present upheld the finding of the bishop of Rome that there were two different natures in

Jesus’ person. They deposed Dioscuros as bishop of Alexandria and rehabilitated bishops

'excommunicated' in Ephesus in 449.

The bishop of Rome approved of those decisions, and the East Roman emperor, in 452 and 455,

‘issued edicts, enjoining, under severe penalties, the strict observance of the (FHACD-Christian)

dogmatic canons (i.e. church laws) of the council’ (Alzog 1879a p. 428; Guilland 1956 p. 1133;

Justinian 534b I, 1, 4; I, 5, 8; I, 7, 6).

Thus, the mutual understanding between the bishops of the diocese of Alexandria and those of

Rome ended, and a bond was secured between the East Roman emperor and the FHACD-Christian

bishops of Rome and of Constantinople.

That bond proved useful when emperor Marcian died in 457, and Leo I (± 400-474), an army

general from the Balkans, set to succeed him, faced resistance from the army of his (East Roman)

Empire, mostly consisting of men from Ostrogoth (German) tribes.

Until then, the accession to the imperial throne had been performed by a ritual – since

Constantine I involving the placement of a crown on the incumbent’s head – in which the army

played a major role. Now, for the first time, the FHACD-Christian bishop of Constantinople did the

crowning. This became ‘the decisive ritual’ for such occasions during the next 1000 years. Since the

coronation of Anastasius I in 491, it was preceded by a public profession of the FHACD-Christian

faith by the would-be emperor (Guilland 1956 p. 1129-1137).

Seeking further support against the army, Leo I engaged a militia from the mountains of Anatolia,

whose leader, Zeno (b. ?, d. 491), succeeded him as emperor in 474. In 475, the latter was chased

away by the army. In 476, he regained ‘his seat’ with the help of the Anatolian militia.

Fighting between the army and the militia continued until 488, when Zeno appointed Theodoric, a

B-Christian (454-526), one of the army’s Ostrogoth generals, ‘king of Italy’ and gave him leave to

‘liberate’ Italy from another German tribe. The Ostrogoths left the East Roman Empire’s territory

and in 489 occupied Italy.

The outcome of the physis controversy, enforced by Marcian and those supporting him, had

brought severe unrest in Egypt, Palestine and elsewhere in the Asia Minor. FHACM-Christians

dislodged the bishops of Jerusalem and Alexandria, killing the latter and other FHACD-Christians.

Several East Roman emperors intervened, promulgating laws annulling the decisions taken in

Chalcedon in 451 or otherwise trying to placate the FHACM-Christians. Counter-attacking, the

FHACD-Christian bishop of Rome excommunicated the FHACM-Christian bishop of Alexandria in 484.

As a result, communications between the FHACD-Christian bishops of Rome and churches in the

East Roman Empire came to a halt, a schism that was deepened during the reign of the FHACM-

Christian East Roman emperor Anastasius I (± 430-518).

In 519, they were restored, when the FHACD-Christian bishop of Rome and Justin I, the East

Roman emperor, came to an agreement, mediated by Justinian, to be mentioned below, and the

emperor promulgated a law commanding all bishops of the East Roman Empire to accept the

decisions of the Chalcedon council of 451.

Except in Egypt, in many places FHACM-Christians were persecuted, their convents closed and

monks imprisoned or killed. (Some, who found refuge in Mesopotamia, translated works of Greek

writers into Syriac. This is how books by Aristotle and other Greeks – together with translations into

Persian by FHAN-Christians who had fled to Persia after 435 – got to Bagdad (Iraq) where, in the 8th

century, they were part of the base of the emerging ‘Islamic philosophy’. In the 12th and 13th

centuries, translations into Arabic of those works, as well as of the Greek originals, reached people

in 'France' via centres of Islamic culture in Spain and Sicily. After being translated into Latin, they

were at the base of FHACD-Christian theology as developed in the 13th century by Aquinas and

others in Western Europe. In the East Roman Empire, where the ‘pagan’ Academy at Athens had

been closed by Justinian I in 529, nothing of the kind was produced (Brunet 1957 p. 310; Daumas

1957 p. 26).)

The same persecutions hit B-Christians. In 523, a law was enacted in Constantinople that excluded

B-Christians from all government positions in the East Roman Empire, except some ‘low rank’

positions in parts of the army. (Alzog 1879a p. 413-414, 423-430; Demougeot 1956 p. 1303;

Denzinger 1973 p. 102-109; Guilland 1956 p. 1128-1133, 1145-1148).

10. Theocratization of the 'East Roman Empire’ (continued)

10.1. Justinian I c.s. try to rebuild the Roman Empire as an FHACD-Christian Empire (AD527)

. In 527, Justinian I (b. 483 near Skopje (in present-day Macedonia), d. 565), who had mediated

the agreement of 519 between the FHACD-Christian bishop of Rome and Justin I, the East Roman

emperor, became emperor of the East Roman Empire himself.

Considered by himself and some others to be the deputy of deusJ a.k.a. Jesus who, he said, “had

entrusted him with the government of his subjects”, ecclesiastical and non-ecclesiastical alike

(Justinian Nov. 85), he and some of his collaborators set out to ‘restore’ the Roman Empire "in all

its ancient glory" (Ullman 1972 p. 41), now as an FHACD-Christian Empire, in other words: a

theocracy. Apart from defending the frontiers of the Empire, this was found by them to require:

– 1. standardization of ‘the administration of justice’, which would give ‘judges’ all over the

territory of the Empire a homogeneous set of ‘rules’,

– 2. homogenization of the personnel occupying positions in the government of the

ecclesiastical and non-ecclesiastical parts of – to start with – the East Roman Empire, thus

providing these with government officials ready to obey the commands given them by the

mandatory of deusJ a.k.a. Jesus Christ, to wit, the emperor,

– 3. building a strong, highly ‘hierarchical’ state organization,

- 4. homogenization, as far as feasible, of the remainder of the humans residing in (that part of)

the Empire,

– 5. curbing the power of the large landowners who controlled much of the territory of the East

Roman Empire, and

– 6. reconquest of the territories formerly part of the West Roman Empire, now occupied by

different German tribes.

10.1.1. Standardization of ‘rules’: the ‘Corpus Iuris Civilis’

‘Law’ was among the main instruments Justinian I c.s. intended to use to achieve the first four

goals. The available ‘legal texts’, however, produced during the preceding 600 years, were thought

by them to be a mess. They consisted mainly of two kinds:

– first, those containing ‘constitutions’ and other ‘laws’ and decisions, promulgated or taken by

‘emperors’ of the Roman Empire(s) from circa AD130, concerning the organization of the Empire(s)

or meant to be taken into account by ‘judges’, and

– second, those containing opinions ‘lawyers’ in the Roman Republic and, later, the Roman Empire,

from the BC1st century until approximately the AD290, had written. They had done so as advisers to

a government official, the so-called praetor, in case of conflicts between ‘private persons’ over

promises, exchanges or other behaviours allegedly given, performed or required by one or more of

them.

These lawyers – some of them government officials themselves – had written their opinions on

the cases as these had appeared to them from the statements given by the parties, without going

into the question whether these were correct. Building on the work of predecessors, as well as on

‘laws’ and other decisions regarding conflicts between ‘private persons’ that had increasingly been

produced, since the start of the Roman Empire, by those pretending to be authorized to legislate,

they thus had gradually developed an elaborate number of opinions regarding particular 'cases',

stating which decision should be given if such a case, as e.g. a claim referring to ‘sale of goods’, to

‘lease’, to ‘mortgage’ or ‘inheritance’, arose.

On the basis of the lawyer’s opinion and the ‘laws’ and other decisions he deemed relevant, the

praetor used to write a formula stating the decision that should be given if one or more of the

statements proffered by the persons in conflict with each other were found to be correct. This

formula he would hand to a ‘private person’ both parties had agreed upon, who then, as ‘iudex’

(‘judge’), was directed by him to inquire into the correctness of these statements and, depending

on the outcome of this inquiry – during which the parties might be assisted by someone trained in

rhetoric –, decide in accordance with the formula he had been given by the praetor, who disposed

of the means to enforce that decision. In this way, the use of physical force as a means of

resolving conflicts between ‘private persons’ was made dependent on the opinions (decisions) of at

least three others (Kunst 1969 p. 14-23).

Since the AD4th century, ‘judges’ had no longer been ‘private persons’. Government officials had

taken the position they used to occupy. Lawyers’ opinions from previous centuries had been

preserved in a great number of books, and continued to be used in law schools and by ‘state

judges’. The availability to – and acceptance by – law teachers and ‘judges’ of these books varied

across the territories claimed by some to be part of the Roman Empire. Furthermore, for many of

the opinions preserved in them, conditions in which they had been given had changed.

Since lawyers had started to formulate their opinions, the territory the government of the Empire

pretended to control had been enlarged by several annexations, such as those during the reign

(AD161-180) of Marcus Aurelius and the one (193-211) of Septimius Severus. Also, parts of it had

been lost e.g. to people from Persia or German tribes, then partly reconquered.

‘Laws’ or other decisions concerning the organization of the Empire or meant to be taken into

account by ‘judges’ had been rendered out of date by later ones or partially overlapped. The

‘administration’ of the Empire had several times been divided between east and west. Monotheism

had supplanted polytheism as the ideology of those pretending to govern the Empire: ‘Zeus’ a.k.a.

‘Jupiter’ had been replaced by (the Greek word) ‘theós’ or (the Latin) ‘deusJ '(words usually

preferred to ‘JHWH’), and ‘Jesus the son of deusJ’ had taken the place of ‘Apollo, the son of Zeus’,

both eclipsing ‘Hera’, ‘Dionysus’, ‘Hercules’, and what-did-one-have.

German tribes and other peoples had settled within ‘the borders’ of the Empire, using their own

customs in deciding e.g. if someone was ‘married to’ or ‘child of’ someone else, or what to do with

estates of those who died. As a result, many were confused about which texts were relevant to

cases that arose.

Furthermore, what ‘authority’ was one to ascribe to ‘laws’ promulgated during the reigns of

emperors, such as Marcus Aurelius, Septimius Severus or Diocletian, who had persecuted

‘Christians’, or to lawyers’ opinions referring to them? In many places law teachers worked with

different texts. Complaints about judicial arbitrariness arose.

Around AD527, in Constantinople, a commission of 10 men, mostly government officials,

handpicked by Justinian I c.s., and by his order, set about compiling, from texts of the first kind, a

set of ‘laws’ that was ‘up to date’, naming them after the original legislators, from the reign of

Hadrian (AD117-138) up till and including the one of Justinian I himself, and changing their wording

at will to cleanse them of ‘all unnecessary resemblance and harmful discord’ and reduce them to

‘one harmonious whole’ (Justinian 530; Justinian 533c). This work was accomplished in 529.

Next, a commission of 17 men, chaired by Tribonian (± 475-545), again by order of Justinian I,

took on the harder task of making a ‘harmonious whole’ of texts of the second kind, now called ‘old

law’ (‘vetus ius’) (Justinian 530).

This implied excerpting some 2000 books and selecting those lawyers’ opinions that were deemed

useful, ordering them according to the kind of ‘cases’ they referred to, and rephrasing them as was

found necessary to make them consonant with each other. This resulted in a volume containing 50

‘books’ (the last two but one of them on ‘criminal law’), published in 533 under the name “Domini

nostri Sacratissimi Principis Iustiniani Iuris enucleati ex omni vetere iure collecti Digesta seu

Pandectae” (“The Law Digest of our Most Holy Princeps Justinian”, for short) (Justinian 533a).

The compilation of the first kind of texts was then revised to adapt it to this later volume. In 534,

the revised text was promulgated as “In nomine Domini nostri Ihesu Christi Codex Domini nostri

Iustiniani Sacratissimi Principis” (“In the name of our Lord Jesus Christ the Code of our Lord

Justinian Most Holy Princeps”), abbreviated ‘Codex Constitutionum’ (Justinian 534b).

Finally, Tribonian and two law professors composed a primer for law students, published in 533 as

“Domini nostri Justiniani perpetuo Augusti Institutiones sive Elementa” (“Institutions of our Lord

Justinian forever August”) (Justinian 533d).

Justinian I c.s. gave all three books the dual purpose of being used:

1) As ‘the law’ in courts and elsewhere in the Empire’s state organization which – so the readers

were told – encompassed ‘all peoples’. No other texts except those in these three volumes, which

alone bore the mark of ‘our authority’, were allowed by Justinian I to be cited in courts or on other

occasions where a decision in a conflict depended on ‘law’, no commentaries on these volumes were

to be written; those who would dare to do so were threatened with persecution and destruction of

their books, those who would dare utter a sentence not contained in them would be guilty of the

crime of falsification and punished accordingly, as would the judge who lent them a willing ear.

No interpretations of the texts – which ‘in the past had all but made a chaos of the law’ – were to

be uttered. If a question of interpretation arose, judges would have to refer it to the Emperor, to

whom alone it was given to interpret laws. He, too, was the only one competent to make new laws

– to be called ‘Novellae’ – if emerging cases were not covered by texts regarding earlier ones, as all

‘right’ (‘ius’) and ‘power’ (‘potestas’) of the ‘people of Rome’ (‘populus Romanus’) had, long ago

already, been transferred to the imperial ‘power’ (‘potestas’).

Provision was made for the distribution of cheap copies of the law books to 'everyman', which

would put them at the disposal of poor people as well as of the rich (Justinian 530 6-7; Justinian

533b 7; Justinian 533c 10; 12; 17-21).

2) As textbooks in the only three law schools where henceforth law teaching was allowed (those in

Constantinople, Beirut and Rome). A curriculum of 5 years and, for each of them, the subjects to be

taught were prescribed by the emperor, the first four being devoted to ‘civil law’.

10.1.2. Homogenization of the population of the East Roman Empire,... When Justinian I became ‘emperor’ of the East Roman Empire in AD527, little was left of the

circumspection that, initially, had at times characterized the relations between ‘emperors’ and

FHACD-bishops in that Empire in the preceding century.

Having, on the one hand, restored the good relations – suspended by the ‘schism’ of 484-519 –

with the FHACD-bishop of Rome that his predecessor Marcian had secured by enforcing the FHACD-

Christian tenets reissued at Chalcedon in 451, and, on the other, secured the support that the

FHACD-bishop of Constantinople, by crowning him, seemed bound to give him, he started to

behave as the one who, as mandatory of deusJ a.k.a. Jesus, had to turn the population of the

Empire into an all FHACD-Christian one.

10.1.2.1. ... to wit, of its ecclesiastical part ...

As said above (6.2.), the emperors Gratian and Theodosius I had, in 379, been the first to

renounce pretending to occupy the position 'pontifex maximus' (high priest of the state cults). Their

example had been followed by their 'successors'.

After FH-Christians had, in 392, got their 'monopoly' in the Roman Empire, several FH-Christian

bishops had claimed that position for the new state religion. This had led to quite some 'in-fighting'.

Driven by tradition, emperors, in their turn, had often behaved as if ruling the FH (.)-Christian

church was part of their remit.

Justinian I, 'emperor of the East Roman Empire' from 527, did not pretend to be a priest, let alone

'the high priest' of the FHACD-Christian church. He left that honour to the bishop of Rome, whom

he called "caput omnium sanctissimorum deiJ sacerdotum" ("the head of all most holy priests of

deusJ", and whose sanctity he termed "caput ... omnium sanctarum ecclesiarum" ("the head of all

holy churches") (Justinian 534b I, 1, 7; I, 1, 8; Ullman 1972 p. 40-41).

Instead, as mentioned above (10.1.), he pretended to be entrusted by deusJ with the government

of 'his subjects', ecclesiastical and non-ecclesiastical alike. Hence, he, too, behaved in many ways

as if he was the (visible) 'head of that church', partly on the basis of 'laws' promulgated by those

predecessors, and partly by issuing new regulations. Already in 528, he produced 'laws' concerning,

among other things, the selection of 'bishops', the conservation of assets of FHACD-Christian

churches, and the freedom of movement of FHACD-Christian priests (Justinian 534b I, 3, 41; I, 3,

42).

In 530, possibly persuaded by his wife Theodora (± 487-548), a former actress and a sympathizer

with FHACM-Christians, Justinian temporarily interrupted the persecution of FHACM-Christians that

had started in 519 (v.s., 9.4.), and tried to get to a common understanding with all FHAC-Christian

bishops of the East Roman Empire on the basis of the FHAC-Christian tenets.

Participants in a conference, held to that end in his palace in Constantinople in 533, failed to

achieve consensus. He then promulgated a law containing the FHACD-Christian creed, including the

description of Mary as "Mother of deusJ".

This law got a place in the first Title of the first Book of ‘Codex Justinianus’, mentioned above

(Justinian 534b I, 1, 6). (This and other efforts of his to 'outlaw' FHACM-Christians were obstructed

by Theodora. In 535, she succeeded in getting an FHACM-Christian ordained 'bishop of

Constantinople'. At the instance of the FHACD-Christian bishop of Rome, the man was deposed and

exiled by Justinian. Theodora retaliated by getting the next FHACD-Christian bishop of Rome exiled

to the island of Palmara, near Naples, where he died in 538.)

In 533, Justinian c.s. resumed their efforts to regulate the organization of the FHACD-Christian

churches and monasteries in the East Roman Empire, their assets, and their relations with non-

ecclesiastical persons and organizations. In several ways, their 'laws' tended to turn those

occupying positions in ‘the Church’ into agents working for the good of what in AD534 – in a decree

addressed to Epiphanius, bishop of Constantinople, – was called ‘nostra res publica’ (‘our

commonwealth’).

In this decree concerning the behaviour of those belonging to the ‘ordained clergy’, Justinian c.s.

wrote: “If they lead a serious and blameless life and make the rest of the people pay attention to

their norm (…), obviously, everyone’s soul will be bettered and the convenient benevolence of the

great deusJ and our saviour Jesus Christ will be ours.”

Having received information that some of them took part in, or were spectators at, games of dice,

or visited chariot races or theatres, the emperor forbade such persons to do so, and ordered the

bishop and the priests subordinate to him to inquire into any cases that were reported to them,

omitting nothing to get to the truth (‘nihil ad eruendam veritatem praetermittant’).

If the accusation proved to be correct, the accused had to be relieved from his holy duties and

given a definite term in which to show himself penitent, failing which he had to be excluded from

the number of the clerics, as apparently his soul was possessed by satan, and assigned a

compulsory municipal job (Justinian 534b I, 4, 34).

In 543 Justinian promulgated an edict holding 6 curses, directed against those holding some of

Origen’s opinions, still thought to be the source of B-Christian or other non-FHACD-Christian

opinions. Next, in 544, hoping to placate some of the more moderate FHACM-Christians, he issued

an edict condemning writings – the so-called Three Chapters – of three theologians of the preceding

century whom he suspected of Manichean or other non-FHAC-Christian opinions, and required the

FHACD-Christian bishop of Constantinople and the other bishops of the East and West Roman

Empire, under threat of exile, to countersign it.

The bishops of the East Roman Empire complied. Those of the West Roman Empire did not, with

the exception of the FHACD-Christian bishop of Rome who, after being force-transported to

Constantinople, endorsed Justinian’s edict in 548. When west Roman bishops remonstrated, he

retracted his endorsement. In 551, Justinian countered with a new edict, once more condemning

the writings in question and threatening to call a curse upon (‘anathematise’) those defending

them.

The bishop of Rome, still in Constantinople, reacted by ‘excommunicating’ all bishops who had

subscribed to Justinian’s edict of 544. When Justinian tried to jail him, he fled to Chalcedon and

suspended the bishop of Constantinople and other bishops in the East Roman Empire. Some of

them then retracted their endorsement of the edict.

In 553, a council of bishops, convoked by Justinian, was held in Constantinople. There, the

writings Justinian had taken issue with were condemned and the writers concerned, together with

Origen and others, posthumously ‘anathematised’ (cursed). In the same year, the bishop of Rome,

who was absent at the council, approved the council's decisions.

In Egypt, FHACM-Christians refused to be placated and continued to organize a separate church,

called the Coptic church, which later was joined by ‘Christians’ in Ethiopia (Alzog 1879a p. 434-443;

Denzinger 1973 p. 140-153; Guilland 1956 p. 1147-1148).

10.1.2.2. ... and of its non-ecclesiastical part

As to the non-ecclesiastical part of the Empire, this required, first of all, peopling the organization

of the Empire with persons who could be depended upon to support his opinions on what was good

for it.

In 527, partly by reissuing ‘laws’ promulgated earlier by some predecessors, Justinian ordered

everyone not ‘devoted to the catholic church and our orthodox and holy religion’ (‘addictus

catholicae ecclesiae et orthoxae sanctaeque fidei nostrae’), including ‘Iudaei’ (‘Jews’), to be

excluded from all professions and public positions, those labelled ‘causidicus’ (‘solicitor’) included, in

order ‘to cleanse these (professions and positions) of the company of such people and keep them

pure forever, the world over’ (‘Pura enim ea (…) a talium communione reddere nunc et in perpetuo

volumus (…) in omni terra.’). Those who, by some wheeze, managed to get admitted to the bar

(‘advocationis officium’) without being ‘imbued with the mysteries of the holy catholic religion’ were

threatened with lifelong exile.

An exception was made for those serving in ‘subordinate positions’ within the military cohorts,

which they were forbidden to desert (Justinian 534b I, 4, 15; Justinian 534b I, 4, 20; Justinian

534b I, 5, 8, 6: Justinian 534b I, 5, 12; Justinian 534b I, 9, 18).

In 529, Justinian shut down the ‘Academy’ in Athens (Greece), centre of 'pagan', non-FHACD-

Christian learning. (Some of those teaching there found asylum in Jundīshāpūr (Persia, present-day

Iran) where already, in 489, some FHAN-Christians had found refuge (v.s., 9.3.).)

He initiated the mass conversion of non-FHACD-Christians, which entailed the persecution of,

among others, ‘Jews’ and ‘Manicheans’ (Guilland 1956 p. 1146). Marriages between ‘Jews’ – whose

ancestors, as mentioned above (4.2.), according to the Paulinian-Augustinian message were

supposed to have killed Jesus – and FHACD-Christians were ‘forbidden’. ‘Jews’ and other non-

FHACD-Christians were not allowed to have FHACD-Christian slaves; judges were required to bar

them from giving testimony in civil law cases in which one or more of the parties were FHACD-

Christians (Justinian 534b I, 3, 54; I, 5, 21; I, 9, 6; I, 10).

True to the Roman traditions, ‘law’ was found by Justinian I c.s. important as a means for

securing, in the long run, the control of the behaviour of people. For ages, those advising on or

administering ‘law’ had used the concept referred to with ‘civis Romanus’ (‘Roman citizen’) to

differentiate between ‘laws’ applicable in civil law conflicts, dependent on whether it was deemed by

them to be applicable to one or more of the parties.

The same concept had been used in decision-making about the use of physical force against

people, such as killing them. Those directly involved in the decision-making about such actions were

required by some to handle those to whom the concept was considered to be applicable with more

care than those to whom it was not. In BC122, a ‘law’ had been enacted meant to guarantee the

former a ‘proper procedure’ before persons planning to kill them were allowed to proceed (Justinian

533a I, 2, 2, 16; Palanque 1956a p. 931). In Rome, the above-mentioned Cicero had in BC58 been

exiled for having, in BC63, as a consul, had five ‘Roman citizens’ killed without the process due to

persons thus predicated (Palanque 1956a p. 954-957). Paul, around AD60, escaped being tortured in

Jerusalem by successfully claiming to have been born a ‘Roman citizen’ (Luke 90b Ch. 22:25-29).

Had the same claim, some 30 years earlier, been made by Jesus, or by others on his behalf, and

accepted by Pilate, some history books would be different to what they are.

In AD212, ‘Roman citizenship’ had been extended to most ‘free men’ within the territory claimed by

the government of the Empire to be part of it, as mentioned above (4.2.). Since 531, even ‘former

slaves’ might successfully pretend to be ‘Roman citizens’, thanks to a ‘law’ promulgated by Justinian

I (Justinian 533d II, 7, 4; Justinian 534b VII, 6).

By 533, for Justinian I c.s., the concept had lost much of its usefulness as a criterion for decisions

in 'civil law' cases and about the use of physical force against persons, as someone suspected of

being a ‘Manichean’, a ‘Jew’, an 'S-Christian' or a ‘B-Christian’, or of belonging to some other non-

FHACD-Christian religion, and thus being someone for whom, in principle, according to them there

was to be no place within the Empire’s territory, might claim to be a ‘Roman citizen’, and thus

pretend to be entitled to special carefulness when confronted with governmental violence.

Furthermore, FHACD-Christian ‘slaves’, who, as FHACD-Christians, according to the new

governmental ideology, deserved a place within the Empire, could not successfully claim to be

‘Roman citizens’.

To prevent the extermination a.k.a. elimination of people from the territory claimed by the

government of the Empire to be part of it, being hampered by pretensions to ‘Roman citizenship’,

the predicate ‘is a Christian catholic’ was introduced by Justinian I c.s. as a criterion for decisions

about the use of physical force against persons. (‘Extermination’ and ‘elimination’ both derive from

the Latin word ‘ex’, meaning ‘outside’, and Latin words for ‘boundary’, to wit, ‘terminus’ and ‘limes’.

They thus may be used for actions against persons who reside within the boundaries of an interval

of the space-time-continuum, resulting in their not being there.)

The first book of the Codex of 534 began with a number of ‘laws’ entitled “On the highest trinity

and the catholic faith and let no one oppose it in public”, and linked the term ‘Christian catholic’ to

the concept the content of which had been decided upon by the F(…)-Christian bishops in Nicaea in AD325 and later councils, and thus consisted in professing the FHACD-Christian tenets mentioned

above.

Everyone was required to have this concept be applicable to him or her. Those to whom it was not

found to be so were threatened with divine and imperial chastisement. Furthermore, the use of the

term in question to refer to any other concept was 'forbidden' (Justinian 534b I, 1, 1-2; Justinian

534b I, 1, 5-8).

(Some 100 years earlier, Augustine had divided mankind into, on the one hand, those who

belonged to the Civitas DeiJ (City of DeusJ) a.k.a. civitas regeneratorum (the city of the reborn)

and, on the other, those who didn’t, and thus belonged to ‘the city of this world’ a.k.a. civitas

terragenarum (the city of the earthborn), which according to him, at least since the end of the

Assyrian empire, coincided with the Roman Empire (Augustine 413d p. 536; Augustine 513e p. 366,

p. 439).

Justinian and collaborators of his might be said to have exchanged the concept referred to with

‘Roman citizen’ for one referred to with ‘citizen of the City of deusJ ’. Hadn’t, after all, Augustine,

shortly after 410, expressed his admiration for the government of the East Roman Empire in

Constantinople, the “grand city, for it was made so by a Christian emperor, (that has) lost its false

gods; and yet (…) has increased, and still increases, and remains. And remain it will, as God

pleases”? (McCracken 1966 p. LXXIV; Augustine 413b p. 264)

That they did not do so explicitly may have been caused by their realization that it would have

exposed them to the criticism that Augustine, less activist than they, had not excluded the East

Roman Empire from his general thesis that ‘the city of deusJ’ from Adam to the end of this world

pilgrims in this mortal life (Augustine 413f p. 195), and was not averse to citing Plato and other

‘pagan’ writers in support of the Paulinian message.)

10.2. Teaching 'law'

Many of the lawyers from BC100 until about AD290 whose opinions, between 527 and 533, were

compiled in “The Law Digest of our Most Holy Princeps Justinian” (Justinian 533a), apart from being

advisers to praetores, had been ‘law teachers’ as well, practising a discipline meant for men

aspiring to work in the ‘civil law system’ of the Roman Republic and, later, the Roman Empire.

During the Republic, some of them had also occupied the position ‘pontifex maximus’ (‘high-

priest’): ‘leader’ of a college, eventually numbering 16 priests, that took care of maintaining good

relations with the gods of the old tribal Roman religion. In the BC1st century, one of them, Q. M.

Scaevola (d. BC82), teacher of, among others, Cicero, had held that position. From BC64 until his

death in BC44, Julius Caesar and – after BC27, when the Republic had turned into the Roman Empire,

– from BC12, Octavian a.k.a. Augustus and subsequent ‘emperors’ took it over.

As these emperors started more and more to ‘legislate’ or otherwise produce decisions that,

according to them, had to be taken into account in deciding civil law cases, some law teachers

worked as advisers to them, often as government officials participating in the drafting of those

‘laws’ (‘constitutions’) and other decisions, while others continued to work as ‘private persons’, as

e.g. Gaius (AD117-180) (Oltmans 1941 p. 289-294)

In the theocracy envisaged by Justinian I, the law teachers – apart from him, the principal among

them, – in the only three schools where he allowed law to be taught, were officials in the Emperor’s

state organization, selected on the basis of their pretending to be FHACD-Christians, together with

other criteria.

They were required by the emperor to possess – and to impart to their students – the skill of

telling, given any string of words, whether it was (part of) a set of sentences produced by ‘the

emperor’ and labelled by him, as ‘the legislator’, acting in the name of (on the authority of) Jesus,

as ‘law’. (This skill was found to be of great importance, as uttering a sentence in court that wasn’t

part of that set exposed the speaker or writer to prosecution for falsification (of ‘the law’) (Justinian

533c 19).) Thus, students learned what ‘the legislator’ had ordained about the organization of the

government of the Empire and the way civil law disputes were to be ended.

The students – as freshers, by order of the emperor, henceforth to be called ‘new Justinians’

(‘Justiniani novi’) – were made to understand that completion of their law studies gave them access

to positions in the government of what the emperor and their other teachers called ‘our

commonwealth’ (‘nostra res publica’) if, and only if, they, too, were FHACD-Christians. Those who

might think that, by some machination, they could e.g. get admitted to the bar (‘advocationis

officium’) without being ‘imbued with the mysteries of the holy catholic religion’, were warned that

they would risk lifelong exile (Justinian 533b 2; Justinian 533d Prœmium; Justinian 534b I, 4, 15;

Kunst 1969 p. 39).

In Justinian 533d, the primer for freshers, of the 99 chapters, no more than one (the last one)

concerned ‘public legal procedures’ (‘publica iudicia’). These could be initiated by anyone – and

hence were called ‘public’, in contrast to the ‘private’ civil law procedures, normally reserved to

those claiming to have personally suffered a 'wrong', – and were said to be either capital – as e.g.

in the case of those who plotted against the emperor or the republic or committed nefanda libido

(unmentionable debauchery) with men, – or non-capital. In capital public legal procedures,

punishment consisted of being killed, doing forced labor in the mines, banishment or deportation; in

non-capital procedures, of confiscation of (part of) one’s belongings.

These procedures, the students were informed, had nothing whatever in common with the civil law

procedures dealt with in the preceding chapters and with the subjects taught for the rest of the first

4 years – treated in the first 36 books of Justinian 533a – which, so Emperor told them, were all

they had to know about in order to be fit for all law jobs.

Some of the students would, in due time, probably want to be law teachers themselves, and thus

choose, according to Justinian I, the scientifically most interesting career, as “among all things,

nothing is more worth studying than the authority of the laws, which regulates things divine and

human correctly and expels all iniquity” (“nihil tam studiosum in omnibus rebus invenitur quam

legum auctoritas, quae et divinas et humanas res bene disponit et omnem iniquitatem expellit”)

(Justinian 530 1; Justinian 534b I, 17, 1).

They would not stop after having studied Institutiones (Justinian 533d) and the first 36 Books of

the Digesta (Justinian 533a) during the first four years. Their ambition would bring them to

continue their study for another year, and acquaint themselves with the rest of the Digesta and with

Codex Domini nostri Justiniani (Justinian 534b); in this way, all secrets of the laws would be

revealed to them (Justinian 533b 6).

Apart from ‘public legal procedures’ or, in present-day usage, ‘criminal law’, they would have to

study appeal procedures, the tasks of population registrars, taxation and other subjects,

presumably considered to be of interest only to those aspiring to government jobs outside the

common civil law courts (Justinian 533b Prœmium and 5; Justinian 533c 19; Justinian 533d IV 18).

10.2.1. Lokin's riddle

Law teachers from before the time of Constantine I had not been required to teach their students

to differentiate between people on the basis of their convictions about Jupiter. What they did use

was the concept referred to with ‘civis Romanus’ (‘Roman citizen’), which they deemed applicable to

themselves and by means of which they taught their students to differentiate between ‘laws’

applicable in civil law conflicts, dependent on whether one or more of the parties were ‘Roman

citizens’, as pointed out in 4.2.

For those teaching law as colleagues of Justinian I or his ‘successors’, referring to him and

themselves as ‘we’, requirements were different. First of all, they had to make it clear to their

students that, whether or not they considered themselves to be ‘Roman citizens’, they would have

no chance of getting a job in the Empire’s government or of being admitted to the bar unless they

were, like the emperor, FHACD-Christians. If, as a government official, they were to admit a non-

FHACD-Christian to the bar, they would risk confiscation of half their property and being exiled for

five years (Justinian 534b I, 4, 15; Justinian 534b I, 5, 12).

In all civil law procedures, as a judge, they would have to establish whether the claimant was a

pagan, Borborian, Manichean, Montanist, Ophite, Samarian or Tascodrogitan. If so, his or her claim

was to be rejected, as all such persons were barred from all civil law actions (Justinian 534b I, 5,

21). Other non-FHACD-Christian claimants were to be allowed to bring action against FHACD-

Christians as well as against non-FHACD-Christians.

Except in some cases, if one or more of the parties in a civil law conflict were FHACD-Christians,

the testimony of 'Jews' and other non-FHACD-Christian witnesses was to be declared inadmissible.

If all the parties to the conflict were non-FHACD-Christians, the testimony of non-FHACD-Christian

witnesses was to be allowed, with the exception of pagans and the others who, as mentioned just

now, were barred from all civil law actions (Justinian 534b I, 5, 21).

If, as a judge, they were to decide on claims made on an estate by children of the deceased, they

would have to establish whether the latter had been FHACD-Christian(s); if they found them not to

be so, they had to reject the claim of any child they found to be a non-FHACD-Christian (Justinian

534b I, 5, 19).

In view of these provisions, one wonders how students would be able to answer one of the

questions recently put to them by Lokin, professor of Roman law at the University of Groningen (the

Netherlands). In ‘Ars Aequi’, a journal for law students in The Netherlands, he presented them with

a ‘case’ about the ‘theft’ of some valuables from the house of a certain Titius. (The question whose

‘property’ these were was left unanswered by the professor. Possibly, he deemed the students to be

equipped with ‘legal instinct’, by dint of which they would be able to decide whether they were ‘the

property of’ Titius and had not e.g. been ‘embezzled’ by him).

After an account – involving, among others, some ‘slaves’ – of what happened to the valuables

after they had been ‘stolen’, the question was put to the students which ‘civil law actions’ against

which persons Titius might successfully initiate ‘according to Justinian law’.

About the parties involved, the professor told the students that, apart from the ‘slaves’, ‘all of

them are Roman citizens’. This rather poor information must have left the more knowledgeable

students nonplussed, as he refrained from telling them whether Titius is a pagan, or perhaps a

Manichean, or what Titius would answer if asked by the judge whether Jesus’ human nature had

been absorbed by his divine nature, as stated by Eutyches. Seven students sent in an answer to the

questions (Lokin 2006 p. 680; Lokin 2007 p. 103-10).

10.2.2. Lawyers as cleansers Some of the above-mentioned Justinian ‘laws’ bear a remarkable resemblance to some of the

‘Nuremberg laws’ promulgated in Germany in 1935 as, for instance, the "Gesetz zum Schutze des

deutschen Blutes und der deutschen Ehre vom 15. September 1935", §1 of which ‘forbade’

marriages between "Staatsangehörigen deutschen oder artverwandten Blutes" (‘Aryans’) and ‘Jews’

(Kisch 1973 p. 273), while §3 stated: “Juden dürfen weibliche Staatsangehörige deutschen oder

artverwandten Blutes unter 45 Jahren nicht in ihrem Haushalt beschäftigen”.

§4, 1 of the "Verordnung zum Reichsbürgergesetz vom 14. November 1935" offers a similar

resemblance, as it stated: “Ein Jude kann nicht Reichsbürger sein. Ihm steht ein Stimmrecht in

politischen Angelegenheiten nicht zu; er kann ein öffentliches Amt nicht bekleiden”, thus barring

‘Jews’ from citizenship in the ‘Reich’ and from ‘public office’.

The lawyers in Germany who wrote or commented upon these so-called Nuremberg laws, such as

Globke, as well as the many other lawyers who helped organize or otherwise occupied positions in

the ‘Third Reich’ were, all of them, products of the German ‘Rechtswissenschaft’ (‘legal science’)

that, since the 19th century, excelled in the study of ‘Roman law’ as laid down in Justinian’s ‘law

books’.

(An amusing testimony to law teachers’ highly selective interest in – nay, near total disregard of –

what has happened before to-day, resulting in an alarming naïvety regarding the content of the

concepts they use in their interactions with students, was given on television in the Netherlands, on

May 21, 2006, by mrs. Dorien Pessers, 'professor of theory of law’.

Interviewed by Paul Witteman, according to some one of the best of T.V.-presenters in the

Netherlands, – who, as usual eager to hear what he already knew, this time wanted an answer to

the question whether rules are rules, – she told him that ‘legal positivism’ started in Germany with

the Nuremberg laws.

Apparently, the charming and learned lady would be at a loss for an answer if a student asked her

if she had ever heard of "the law of Medes and Persians", according to which "no decree or edict

that the king issues can be changed". Presumably, she would ask the student to elucidate his/her

question. Then, upon hearing that the questioner referred to a book (Daniel BC150 Ch. 6: 15) more

than 2000 years old, and part of "the Bible", she would possibly retort by pointing out that "we live

in a secular society, for which reason we, as theorists of law, don't bother with so-called 'Holy

Books'.")

10.3. Reconquest of western parts of the Empire

Pursuing his goals with little regard for the effects on the population of the East Roman Empire,

Justinian I was bound to meet resistance. In 532, anger at extortions by corrupt government

officials and other grievances resulted in a temporary coalition of the two chariot race fan clubs in

Constantinople, the Greens and the Blues, the latter of which had, until then, been wooed by

Justinian.

Jointly, these fan clubs proclaimed another man emperor. Besieged in his palace, Justinian was on

the point of fleeing, when his wife Theodora rallied support for him, and general Belisarius and his

mercenaries rounded his opponents up in the Hippodrome in Constantinople and killed some 30.000

of them.

After these troubles, Justinian c.s. took steps to consolidate ‘the state organization’ and to combat

corruption among government officials (Justinian 535). To meet other grievances, they started big

‘public’ projects, such as the building of the Hagia Sophia in Constantinople, completed in AD537, at

the time the biggest church in the world, one of the most expensive structures ever built, and until

now ‘surviving’ many earthquakes (Hughes 2006).

Backing up his grandiose plans for the restoration of the Roman Empire with force of arms, in 533,

armies from the East Roman Empire destroyed the ‘kingdom’ that Vandals, in 439, after capturing

Carthage, had established in some of the North African provinces of the West Roman Empire, in

parts of what are now called ‘Tunisia’ and ‘Algeria’, as well as in Corsica, Sardinia and Sicily.

Italy was next. This part of the West Roman Empire had in 489, as mentioned above (9.4), with

the permission of the government of the East Roman Empire been occupied by Theodoric and other

Ostrogoths, after the last West Roman emperor had been killed in 480.

Largely retaining the administrative apparatus of the old Empire, Theodoric and his collaborators –

many of them, as e.g. Boethius (± 475-525), recruited from the existing population – had

established and for some time, with Ravenna as its capital, successfully maintained a ‘kingdom’,

tolerant towards the bishops of Rome and other FHACD-Christians, as well as towards other

religions.

The relations between Theodoric's 'kingdom' and the government of the East Roman Empire had

got tense when in 523 the anti-B-Christian law, mentioned above (9.4.), was promulgated in

Constantinople.

Efforts of Boethius and others to mitigate the policy of the government in Constantinople towards

B-Christians failed. Theodoric, claiming to be a B-Christian, got distrustful and aggressive, and in

524 had the FHACD-Christian bishop of Rome imprisoned and Boethius tried and killed. He himself

died 2 years later. (Alzog 1879a p. 413-414, 423-430; Demougeot 1956 p. 1303; Guilland 1956 p.

1128-1133, 1145-1148; Ullman 1972 p. 42; Denzinger 1973 p. 102-109).

In 535, after conquering the Vandals in North Africa in 533, the Byzantine armies invaded Italy

and started a long drawn-out and devastating war with the Ostrogoths, much to the chagrin of

many of Italy’s inhabitants. In 552, the Ostrogoths were finally defeated (Alzog 1879b p. 26-27;

Demougeot 1956 p. 1303-1315; Guilland 1956 p. 1159-1160; Ullman 1972 p. 48).

For some 16 years the government of the East Roman Empire was more or less in control of Italy.

Its theocratic tendencies were echoed in a law promulgated by Justinian in 554 that put civilian

officials in Italy under the control of FHACD-Christian bishops.

That control didn't extend to most parts of the former West Roman Empire to the north of Italy.

From about 450, Saxons and other German tribes, as well as others, coming from the Continent,

had invaded Britain, the inhabitants of which, left to their own resources, by 577 were pretty well

annihilated.

Huns, led by Attila (b. ?, d. 453), had invaded France in 451, and in 452 occupied the north of

Italy. Attila’s death had ended the Hun reign in Europe.

Since about 460, Salian 'Franks', a group of German tribes that had settled in the northern-most

continental part of the Roman Empire since 360, had started to extend the territory they tried to

control.

Their efforts had met with success. In 507, led by Clovis I (466-511), they had defeated the

Visigoths near Poitiers, who subsequently had lost most of their territory in 'France'. Helped by

Clovis’ having been baptized as an FHACD-Christian in 496 – together with 3000 of his soldiers –,

which secured him the assistance of FHACD-Christian bishops and other priests in France, by 511

Franks had gained control of most of France and parts of Germany (as it is now called).

In 568, bands of another German tribe, the Lombards, coming from what is now called Hungary,

some of them B-Christians, invaded and occupied large parts of Northern Italy and started to

expand the territory they intended to control southwards, causing havoc and persecuting FHACD-

Christians, while leaving Ravenna and Rome and regions around these, and furthermore Sicily and

southern Italy and Dalmatia, to the East Roman Empire.

In 590, encountering weak resistance from the Byzantine armies, Lombards besieged Rome, the

largest city of Italy. Gregory, an FHACD-Christian (± 540-604), who had been the main civilian

administrator (‘praefectus urbis’) of Rome from 572 till 574 and was appointed ‘bishop of Rome’ in

590, succeeded in negotiating their withdrawal in exchange for an annual tribute to be paid by the

East Roman government. Gregory’s life marks the increasing degree to which FHACD-Christian

bishops of Rome as well as those of Ravenna got control of civil as well as ecclesiastical government

in the parts of war-ravaged Italy not occupied by Lombards.

The latter, for some time, were divided among themselves, Lombard ‘dukes’ establishing more or

less 'autonomous duchies’ for themselves, relying on local civilian and ecclesiastical officials for the

administration of the cities. From 605, some of them succeeded in establishing a somewhat stable

‘kingdom’ in Northern Italy.

Meanwhile, descendents of Clovis I continued to be ‘kings’ of the Frank controlled territories in

'France' and 'Germany', sometimes dividing these among themselves. Gradually, real control came

to be exercised by the mayors of their palaces.

In 751, one of these, Pepin the Short (± 714-768), deposed the last of Clovis’ descendents and,

with the support of the bishop of Rome and other FHACD-Christians, got himself chosen as ‘king of

Franks', thus starting the so-called 'Carolingian dynasty'.

In 772, a member of this 'dynasty', the warlord Charlemagne (742-814), Frank 'king' since 768,

was asked by the FHACD-Christian bishop of Rome for help against Lombards, who were about to

occupy Rome. In 774, Charlemagne c.s. destroyed the Lombard kingdom, which left its name to

one of the northern regions of present-day Italy while its territory became part of the Frank

'kingdom'.

The Frank 'Carolingian dynasty', with some interruptions, was to last until 987 (Alzog 1879a p.

385; Demougeot 1956 p. 1233, 1241, 1315-1320, 1351-1356; Palanque 1956b p. 1087-1088;

Wickham 2005).

11. The spread of 'Islām' from AD632 Meanwhile, about 300 years after the council of Nicaea (v.s., 6.2.) and some 2000 kilometres

south-east of Constantinople, a new monotheistic religion had, between AD610 and 632, in Jazīrat

al-'Arab been invented and promulgated by Muhammad (± 570-632, said by some to be the son of

a 'Jewish' mother (Alzog 1879b p. 140)). It was partly based on the Hebrew 'Torah', partly on the

Paulinian message (including 'life' of a kind that doesn't depend on the life of one's body, and a

judgement at the end of time) – texts people in the region concerned, in part refugees or

descendents of FHAN-Christians or other refugees from the East Roman ('Byzantine') Empire, were

apparently familiar with –, and partly on propositions supposedly communicated to him by an entity

he called Allāh (which might be referred to with 'deusA'). The 'Qur'ān', the book in which the

propositions concerned had been written down by some of his followers, had become the basis of

the new religion, called 'Islām'.

Starting in 633, people from Arabia had attacked regions within the borders of the parts of the

Earth claimed by some to belong to the East Roman Empire, which stretched from Armenia in the

east to the south of Spain in the west, and from Egypt in the south to parts of Italy in the north.

They had occupied Syria in 640 and Egypt in 646, and by 750 taken control of large parts of the

Middle East, of North Africa and of nearly all of Spain.

. In several places, the victors had been welcomed by people pretending to be B-Christians,

FHACM-Christians or Jews, or to profess some other non-FHACD-Christian religion, who used to be

persecuted or otherwise discriminated against by personnel of the FH(.)-Christian theocracy in

Constantinople (Runciman 1951 p. 20-21; Kramers et al. 1970 p. 186-187).

In the wake of the victorious Arab armies, Islām, considerably less encumbered by riddles than

the Paulinian message had since AD325 become as a result of the speculations on 'Trinity',

'Incarnation' and other subjects, won many converts (Runciman 1951 p. 23).

11.1. Jansen, an endarkener

There are some who try to 'enlighten' 'modern people' and other 'non-Muslims' in West Europe on

how much Islām differs from what these would-be teachers call 'Christianity'.

In the Netherlands, one of them, professor Hans Jansen, teaching at Utrecht University, presents

those claiming to be 'Christians' as never having had any 'authoritative' texts besides 'the Bible'

(which none of them, he assumes his readers to know, have ever considered to be 'the Word of

deusJ' ('Verbum DeiJ'), as they knew and know that its texts have been written by humans (Jansen

2008 p. 74)).

All Christians, he tells his readers, have always adhered to the principle 'sola scriptura' ('only the

Bible matters'). Hence, none of them has ever considered, for instance, Augustine's 'Civitas deiJ'

(Augustine 413a) or another book of what some call 'patres' to be 'authoritative'. The same goes for

"Decretum Gratiani" (Gratian 1140), Lombard's "Libri quattuor sententiarum" (± 1151) and

Aquinas' "Summa Theologica" (Aquinas 1267), for "Loci communes rerum theologicarum"

(“Theological Commonplaces”), written in 1521 by Philipp Melanchthon (AD1497-1560), or "Institutio

religionis christianae" ("Institutes of the Christian religion"), published by John Calvin (1509-1564)

in 1536.

What a difference between them and 'Muslims'! These people have, besides the Quran, which they

regard as 'the word of deusA', 'authoritative' texts of no less than four different kinds, such as the

'tafsīr' (Jansen 2008 p. 13-44, p. 74, p. 97).

According to Jansen, the people pretending to be 'Christians' in the Middle East whom Muhammad

and other founders of or adherents to Islām were aware of were persons recognizing the 'Golden

Rule' and the principle of equality before the law as the basis for the interactions between humans,

witness, among other things, texts in the 'New Testament'.

None of these principles, Jansen contends, may be found in the Quran. "For the islamic law,

people are not equal" (Jansen 2008 p. 180-182). In the Quran, slavery, for instance, is taken for

granted, just as it is, he tells his readers, in the Bible (Jansen 2008 p. 197). The theory of the

Islamic view on 'het recht' differs from "the western one" in that not "the human" ("de mens") but

deusA decides on the content of het recht (Jansen 2008 p. 26).

Some of his readers might point out that, when Muhammad and contemporaries of his in Jazīrat

al-'Arab came face to face with 'Christians' or 'Jews', many of these were probably refugees – or

descendents of refugees – from the East Roman Empire, since AD392 subject to efforts to turn it into

a totalitarian FH(.)-Christian theocracy, efforts that since 527 had culminated in the reign of

Justinian I c.s., their 'successors' and their lawyers (v.s., 8.2 – 10.1.2.).

For 'het recht' as laid down in the 'law books' of the Empire of 533-534, mentioned above

(10.1.1), people were far from 'equal', as 'S-Christians', 'B-Christians', 'FHACM-Christians', 'Jews'

and others who professed some other non-FHACD-Christian religion knew from experience or had

learned from their parents while in exile.

These same books, those readers might go on to note, have been part of the subject-matter of

teaching at the Law faculties of universities in continental West Europe since the AD12th century,

including the ones at which his colleagues at the Law faculty of Utrecht University and the Law

professors who in 1963 started teaching at the Law faculty of the 'Nederlandsche Economische

Hoogeschool' in Rotterdam had got their degrees.

To these and other remarks, similarly critical of the statements testifying to the dumbness he

attributes to his readers and the mutually contradictory propositions in which he embedded a

number of interesting notes on the Quran, Jansen would possibly respond that they mark the critics

as friends of Islām and thus hardly fit to participate in the scientific discussion he pursues (Jansen

2008 p. 10, p. 30). Besides, why would he have to assume among his audience a higher degree of

sophistication regarding what has happened in the world than shown by, for instance, professor

Dorien Pessers, mentioned above (10.2.2.)? And, last but not least, can the 1.454.493 adults who

voted for one of his admirers in the parliamentary elections of June 2010 in the Netherlands all be

wrong?

12. 'Christians' in sorts (3)

12.1. FHACDR-Christians and FHACDO-Christians AD1054 The Filioque controversy

In AD589, some FHACD-Christian bishops, gathered in Toledo (Spain) in what used to be the West

Roman Empire, in an attempt to distance themselves more clearly from B-Christians, had decided

to emphasize the Son’s divinity.

The ‘creed’ ('profession of faith') agreed upon by some in Nicaea in AD325 and Constantinople in AD381 appeared to detract from that divinity in that it described the Holy Spirit as proceeding “from

the Father”, without mention of the Son, thus giving B-Christians food for arguments. The bishops

in Toledo therefore had changed the description of the Holy Spirit in that creed. After the words

“who proceeds from the Father” they had added “and from the Son” (in Latin: “Filioque”).

This addition, made without the consent of FHACD-Christian bishops in the East Roman

('Byzantine') Empire, had become traditional in church ceremonies in German-controlled parts of

West Europe.

In AD1014, the FHACD-Christian German king Henry II and collaborators of his, on the occasion of

his coronation in Rome as ‘emperor’, got the FHACD-Christian bishop of Rome, intent on

‘standardizing’ the practices in all FHACD-Christian’ churches, to include "Filoque" in the official text

of the profession of faith to be used in the FHACD-Christian ‘Mass’ in all those churches.

This acerbated the already strained relations between FHACD-Christians in West Europe and in the

East Roman Empire. Bishops in the latter called this an ‘illegal’ change of the ‘creed’, and resented

the increasing tendency of bishops of Rome to pretend to be the leaders of all FHACD-Christians.

Their criticisms extended to cover what they considered to be abuses among FHACD-Christians in

West Europe, such as the persecution of married FHACD-Christian priests.

Partly to ward off these criticisms, in AD1053-1054 collaborators of Bruno von Egisheim und

Dagsburg a.k.a. Leo IX (AD1002-1054), FHACD-Christian bishop of Rome from 1049 till 1054,

produced a new sort of ‘Christian’ by means of ‘excommunicating' Michael Cerularius (b. ?, d. AD1058), the FHACD-Christian bishop of Constantinople, and his collaborators, who were declared to

be ‘outside the Church’ (‘extra Ecclesiam’) for, among other things, their refusal to accept the

insertion of "Filioque" in the creed (Alzog 1879b p. 325-334; Runciman 1951 p. 94-97).

The resulting ‘split’ (‘schism’) of ‘the FHACD-Christian Church’ into the (eastern) ‘Orthodox Church’

and the (western) Roman ‘Catholic Church’ – until then considered by some to be parts of ‘the one

universal church’ – lasts until the present day.

Those supposed by some to belong to the last-named church may be dubbed ‘FHACDR-

Christians’, in contrast to those said by some to belong to the former, whom we may call ‘FHACD-

non-R-Christians’ or, for short, FHACDO-Christians (Alzog 1879b p. 325-334; Runciman 1951 p.

93-97; Remmers 1952 p. 1512-1522; Lekkerkerker 1959; Denzinger 1973 p. 224-226).

In AD1965, the mutual 'hostilities' were ‘deplored’ in simultaneous declarations by FHACDR-and

FHACDO-Christian bishops in Rome and in Constantinople respectively, without, however, the latter

acknowledging the ‘primacy’ of the bishop of Rome.

12.2. FHACDRN-Christians and FHACDRP-Christians AD1521 Luther 'excommunicated' . In 1521, Giovanni de’ Medici (AD1475-1521) a.k.a. Leo X, ‘bishop of Rome’ from 1513 till 1521,

and collaborators of his ‘excommunicated’ Martin Luther (1483-1546).

Those who shared Luther's 'excommunication' continued to adhere to the creed as amended in AD1014, and thus may be termed ‘FHACDR-Christians’. To distinguish them, often called

‘Protestants’, from those not ‘excommunicated’ at that time, they may be called ‘FHACDRP-

Christians’, and the ‘not excommunicated’ ones ‘FHACDR-notP-Christians’ or, for short,

‘FHACDRN-Christians’ (Denzinger 1973 p. 357).