The Darkening Age Read online

  Contents

  * * *

  Title Page

  Contents

  Copyright

  Dedication

  List of Illustrations

  Map

  Prologue: A Beginning

  Introduction: An Ending

  The Invisible Army

  The Battleground of Demons

  Wisdom Is Foolishness

  “On the Small Number of Martyrs”

  Photo I

  These Deranged Men

  The Most Magnificent Building in the World

  To Despise the Temples

  How to Destroy a Demon

  The Reckless Ones

  To Drink from the Cup of Devils

  To Cleanse the Error of Demons

  Carpe Diem

  They That Forsake the Way of God

  Photo II

  To Obliterate the Tyranny of Joy

  “Merciful Savagery”

  “A Time of Tyranny and Crisis”

  Acknowledgments

  Notes

  Bibliography

  Index

  About the Author

  Connect with HMH

  Footnotes

  First U.S. edition

  Copyright © 2017 by Catherine Nixey

  First published 2017 by Macmillan, an imprint of Pan Macmillan

  www.panmacmillan.com

  All rights reserved

  For information about permission to reproduce selections from this book, write to [email protected] or to Permissions, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company, 3 Park Avenue, 19th Floor, New York, New York 10016.

  hmhco.com

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Names: Nixey, Catherine, author. Title: The darkening age : the Christian destruction of the classical world / Catherine Nixey. Description: First U.S. edition. | Boston : Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2018.| Includes bibliographical references and index.

  Identifiers: LCCN 2017056985 (print) | LCCN 2017045347 (ebook) | ISBN 9780544800939 (ebook) | ISBN 9780544800885 (hardcover) Subjects: LCSH: Church history—Primitive and early church, ca. 30-600. | Rome—Civilization—Christian influences. | Greece—Civilization—Christian influences. Classification: LCC BR162.3 (print) | LCC BR162.3.N59 2018 (ebook) | DDC 270.2—dc23

  LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017056985

  Map by ML Design

  Cover design by Brian Moore

  Cover images © Petek Arici / Getty Images (relief); Shutterstock (stone background)

  Author photograph © Olivia Beasley

  v1.0318

  To T.,

  for deciphering my handwriting

  List of Illustrations

  * * *

  FOLLOWING PAGE 60

  Triumphal arch, ancient Palmyra, 1st–2nd century AD

  De Agostini Picture Library / C. Sappa / Bridgeman Images

  Statue of Athena (“Athena-Allat,” as she was known in Palmyra), 2nd century AD

  akg-images / Gerard Degeorge

  Fresco, The Triumph of Christianity by Tommaso Laureti, in the Room of Constantine, Raphael Rooms, c. 1585

  Vatican Museums and Galleries, Vatican City / Photo © Stefano Baldini / Bridgeman Images

  Temptation of St. Anthony (c. 1512–16), from the Isenheim altarpiece by Matthias Grünewald

  © Musée Unterlinden, Colmar, France / Bridgeman Images

  Belial and the demons, from the Proces de Belial de J. de Therano by Antonius Ruttel de Parmenchingen, 1450, on vellum

  © Bibliothèque de l’École des Beaux-Arts, Paris / Bridgeman Images

  Funerary stele of Licinia Amias, Rome, early 3rd century AD

  © Marie-Lan Nguyen, Wikimedia Commons

  Allegory of the Deadly Sins by Vincent de Beauvais, historical mirror, Paris, 1463

  © Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, Department of Manuscripts, French, 50, fol. 25

  Bust of Epicurus, 341–270 BC

  © Musei Capitolini, Rome / Bridgeman Images

  Bust of Lucretius, 96?–55 BC, the Roman philosophical poet

  © Granger

  Emperor Constantine and the Council of Nicea, with the burning of Arian books illustrated below, Italian manuscript, 9th century AD

  Getty Images / ullstein bild

  Fresco of the raising of Lazarus, catacombs of Via Latina, Rome, 4th century AD

  Catacomb of Via Latina, Rome / Bridgeman Images

  Triumph of Faith—Christian Martyrs in the Time of Nero, 65 AD by Eugène Romain Thirion

  Private collection / Photo © Bonhams, London / Bridgeman Images

  Colossal head of Emperor Constantine I (“the Great”), AD 270–337

  Pinacoteca Capitolina, Palazzo Conservatori, Rome / Bridgeman Images

  Emperor Theodosius I at the Council of Constantinople, Latin manuscript, Turkey, 9th century

  © De Agostini Picture Library / A. Dagli Orti / Bridgeman Images

  Temple of Diana at Ephesus, engraving, English School, 19th century

  Private collection / © Look and Learn / Bridgeman Images

  FOLLOWING PAGE 220

  Green basanite bust of Germanicus Caesar, Roman, Egypt

  © The Trustees of the British Museum. All rights reserved.

  Saint Apollonia Destroys a Pagan Idol by Giovanni d’Alemagna, c. 1442–45

  © Daderot

  Cult statue of the deified Augustus, in the Ephesus museum in Selçuk, Turkey

  Alamy / Odyssey-Images

  Theophilus standing on the Serapeion, Goleniscev papyrus, 5th century AD

  Alamy / ART Collection

  Byzantine chapel in Roman amphitheatre, Duresi, Albania

  Julian Chichester / Bridgeman Images

  Hypatia by Charles William Mitchell, 1885, Laing Art Gallery, Newcastle-upon-Tyne, UK

  © Tyne & Wear Archives & Museums / Bridgeman Images

  Archimedes palimpsest, c. 10th–13th century

  Private collection / Photo © Christie’s Images / Bridgeman Images

  Theological debate between Catholic and Nestorian Christians at Acre, 1290

  Pictures from History / Bridgeman Images

  Fresco of satyr and maenad at Pompeii, 1st century BC

  Private collection / Bridgeman Images

  Fresco of Priapus, from the Casa dei Vettii c. 50–79, Pompeii

  Bridgeman Images

  Hell, Portuguese School, 16th century

  Museu Nacional de Arte Antiga, Lisbon / Bridgeman Images

  St. John Chrysostom, Panagia Ties Asinou church, Nikitart, Cyprus

  De Agostini Picture Library / A. Dagli Orti / Bridgeman Images

  Roman women playing sports, in one of the so-called Bikini Mosaics at Villa Romana del Casale, 4th century

  Pictures from History / Bridgeman Images

  St. Simeon Stylites sitting on his column, 5th–6th century

  Werner Forman Archive / Bridgeman Images

  St. Shenoute, secco painting, c. 7th century, north lobe of sanctuary, Red Monastery Church, near Sohag, Egypt

  Photo by E. Bolman, © American Research Center in Egypt (ARCE)

  Mosaic of Emperor Justinian I, Byzantine School, c.547

  San Vitale, Ravenna, Italy / Bridgeman Images

  Prologue: A Beginning

  * * *

  Palmyra, c. AD 385

  There is no crime for those who have Christ.

  —St. Shenoute

  THE DESTROYERS CAME FROM out of the desert. Palmyra must have been expecting them: for years, marauding bands of bearded, black-robed zealots, armed with little more than stones, iron bars and an iron sense of righteousness, had been terrorizing the east of the Roman Empire.

  Their attacks were primitive, thu
ggish and very effective. These men moved in packs—later in swarms of as many as five hundred—and when they descended utter destruction followed. Their targets were the temples and the attacks could be astonishingly swift. Great stone columns that had stood for centuries collapsed in an afternoon; statues that had stood for half a millennium had their faces mutilated in a moment; temples that had seen the rise of the Roman Empire fell in a single day.

  This was violent work, but it was by no means solemn. The zealots roared with laughter as they smashed the “evil,” “idolatrous” statues; the faithful jeered as they tore down temples, stripped roofs and defaced tombs. Chants appeared, immortalizing these glorious moments. “Those shameful things,” sang pilgrims, proudly; the “demons and idols . . . our good Saviour trampled down all together.”1 Zealotry rarely makes for good poetry.

  In this atmosphere, Palmyra’s temple of Athena* was an obvious target. The handsome building was an unapologetic celebration of all the believers loathed: a monumental rebuke to monotheism. Go through its great doors and it would have taken your eyes a moment, after the brightness of a Syrian sun, to adjust to the cool gloom within. As they did, you might have noticed that the air was heavy with the smoky tang of incense, or perhaps that what little light there was came from a scatter of lamps left by the faithful. Look up and, in their flickering glow, you would have seen the great figure of Athena herself.

  The handsome, haughty profile of this statue might be far from Athena’s native Athens, but it was instantly recognizable, with its straight Grecian nose, its translucent marble skin and the plump, slightly sulky mouth. The statue’s size—it was far taller than any man—might also have impressed. Though perhaps even more admirable than the physical scale was the scale of the imperial infrastructure and ambition that had brought this object here. The statue echoed others that stood on the Athenian Acropolis, well over a thousand miles away; this particular version had been made in a workshop hundreds of miles from Palmyra, then transported here at considerable difficulty and expense to create a little island of Greco-Roman culture by the sands of the Syrian desert.

  Did they notice this, the destroyers, as they entered? Were they, even fleetingly, impressed by the sophistication of an empire that could quarry, sculpt then transport marble over such vast distances? Did they, even for a moment, admire the skill that could make a kissably soft-looking mouth out of hard marble? Did they, even for a second, wonder at its beauty?

  It seems not. Because when the men entered the temple they took a weapon and smashed the back of Athena’s head with a single blow so hard that it decapitated the goddess. The head fell to the floor, slicing off that nose, crushing the once-smooth cheeks. Athena’s eyes, untouched, looked out over a now-disfigured face.

  Mere decapitation wasn’t enough. More blows fell, scalping Athena, striking the helmet from the goddess’s head, smashing it into pieces. Further blows followed. The statue fell from its pedestal, then the arms and shoulders were chopped off. The body was left on its front in the dirt; the nearby altar was sliced off just above its base.

  Only then does it seem that these men—these Christians—felt satisfied that their work was done. They melted out once again into the desert. Behind them the temple fell silent. The votive lamps, no longer tended, went out. On the floor, the head of Athena slowly started to be covered by the sands of the Syrian desert.

  The “triumph” of Christianity had begun.

  Introduction: An Ending

  * * *

  Athens, AD 532

  We see the same stars, the sky is shared by all, the same world surrounds us. What does it matter what wisdom a person uses to seek for the truth?

  —the “pagan” author Symmachus

  That all superstition of pagans and heathens should be annihilated is what God wants, God commands, God proclaims!

  —St. Augustine

  THEY MUST HAVE BEEN a melancholy party. In AD 532, a band of seven men set out from Athens, taking with them little but works of philosophy. All were members of what had once been the most famous of Greece’s philosophical schools, the Academy. The Academy’s philosophers proudly traced their history back in an unbroken line—“a golden chain”1 as they called it—to Plato himself, almost a thousand years before. Now, that chain was about to be broken in the most dramatic way possible: these men were abandoning not just their school but the Roman Empire itself. Athens, the city that had seen the birth of Western philosophy, was now no longer a place for philosophers.

  Their leader, Damascius, must have been some comfort to them as they set out on this trip into the unknown. By the standards of the time, he was old, elderly even—almost seventy when their journey began—but he was formidable. Damascius was a brilliant, densely subtle thinker who peppered his writings with mathematical similes—and he did not suffer fools gladly. An acerbic “who’s who” he wrote on his fellow philosophers is full of crushing comments on anyone whose intelligence or courage he considered wanting. In life, he could be as immoderate as in his writings: he had once almost drowned in a river when, too impatient for a boatman to take him across, he had decided to swim instead and nearly been swept away.

  Many of Damascius’s greatest risks were run in the service of his beloved philosophy. He had already sheltered a wanted philosopher in his own home, embarked on perilous thousand-mile journeys into the unknown, and braved the risk of torture and arrest himself. No man, he felt, should do any less. “Men tend to bestow the name of virtue on a life of inactivity,” he once wrote, with scorn. “But I do not agree . . . the learned, who sit in their corner and philosophise at length in a grand manner about justice and moderation, utterly disgrace themselves if they are compelled to take some action.”2

  This was no time for a philosopher to be philosophical. “The tyrant,”3 as the philosophers put it, was in charge and had many alarming habits. In Damascius’s own time, houses were entered and searched for books and objects deemed unacceptable. If any were found they would be removed and burned in triumphant bonfires in town squares. Discussion of religious matters in public had been branded a “damnable audacity” and forbidden by law.4 Anyone who made sacrifices to the old gods could, the law said, be executed. Across the empire, ancient and beautiful temples had been attacked, their roofs stripped, their treasures melted down, their statues smashed. To ensure that their rules were kept, the government started to employ spies, officials and informers to report back on what went on in the streets and marketplaces of cities and behind closed doors in private homes. As one influential Christian speaker put it, his congregation should hunt down sinners and drive them into the way of salvation as relentlessly as a hunter pursues his prey into nets.5

  The consequences of deviation from the rules could be severe and philosophy had become a dangerous pursuit. Damascius’s own brother had been arrested and tortured to make him reveal the names of other philosophers, but had, as Damascius recorded with pride, “received in silence and with fortitude the many blows of the rod that landed on his back.”6 Others in Damascius’s circle of philosophers had been tortured, hung up by the wrists until they gave away the names of their fellow scholars. A fellow philosopher had, some years before, been flayed alive. Another had been beaten before a judge until the blood flowed down his back.

  The savage “tyrant” was Christianity. From almost the very first years that a Christian emperor had ruled in Rome in AD 312, liberties had begun to be eroded. And then, in AD 529, a final blow had fallen. It was decreed that all those who labored “under the insanity of paganism”—in other words Damascius and his fellow philosophers—would no longer be allowed to teach. There was worse. It was also announced that anyone who had not yet been baptized was to come forward and make themselves known at the “holy churches” immediately, or face exile. And if anyone allowed themselves to be baptized, then slipped back into their old pagan ways, they would be executed.

  For Damascius and his fellow philosophers, this was the end. They could not worship their
old gods. They could not earn any money. Above all, they could not now teach philosophy. For a while, they remained in Athens and tried to eke out a living. In AD 532, they finally realized they could not. They had heard that in the East there was a king who was himself a great philosopher. They decided that they would go there, despite the risks of such a journey. The Academy, the greatest and most famous school in the ancient world—perhaps ever—a school that could trace its history back almost a millennium, closed.

  It is impossible to imagine how painful the journey through Athens would have been. As they went, they would have walked through the same streets and squares where their heroes—Socrates, Plato, Aristotle—had once walked and worked and argued. They would have seen in them a thousand reminders that those celebrated times were gone. The temples of Athens were closed and crumbling and many of the brilliant statues that had once stood in them had been defaced or removed. Even the Acropolis had not escaped: its great statue of Athena had been torn down.

  Much of Damascius’s writing has been lost, but occasional phrases remain; certainly enough to discern his feelings. His entire way of life, he wrote, was being “swept away by the torrent.”7 The writings of another Greek author from some years earlier show similar despair. We are, he wrote, “men reduced to ashes . . . for today everything is turned upside down.” In another bleak epigram this same anguished poet asked: “Is it not true that we are dead and only seem to live, we Greeks . . . Or are we alive and is life dead?”8