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EPISODE 5 - The Rich man and Melania
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Council of Constantinople AD381 when the words 'one, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic' church were added to the Nicaean creed
As many heresies as bishops
The word heretic had originally come from the Greek for making a choice and had, since at least the first century, come to mean simply belonging to some particular school of philosophy or a religious group. Nothing wrong with that. But after AD381 being a heretic meant you were an outcast.
Mark Edwards, Professor of Early Christian Studies at Christ Church, Oxford, concedes that after the Council of Nicaea ‘there were as many heresies as bishops.’ In a formula added to the Nicaean creed at Constantinople in AD381, the church had now even become ‘one, holy, Catholic and apostolic.’ There would be no difference of opinion.
The church now split into followers of Arius – Arians - and their opponents the anti-Arians, but also Apellesians, Apollinarists, Bardesainites, Cataphrygians, Donatists, Jovinianists, Manicheans, Marcionites, Meletians, Messalians, Monophysites, Novatians, Origenists, Paulinians, Pelagians, Photinians, Pneumatomachi, Priscillianists, Sabellians and goodness only knows What-Else-ians. And retribution was swift and brutal.
#117 The Rich man and Melania - Ep 5 The Real-Life Magisterium: the secret history of the Roman Catholic Church
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Constantine was against persecution. Christians were not killed by lions but by other Christians
Christian-on-Christian violence
Constantine had created a monster. He concluded that the bishops were nothing but ‘senseless men’ who ‘do nothing but that which encourages discord.’ Julian – an emperor in the early AD360s who was not sympathetic to Christians – famously wrote that the leaders of the church ‘leave no stone unturned… to incite the population to disorder and revolt.’ And he added, damningly, ‘even wild beasts are less savage to men than Christians are to each other.’
By the end of the fourth century there were marauding gangs of monks, or other church employees: ‘stretcher bearers’ or ‘pall bearers’ or ‘gravediggers’, who were beating people up and killing them. In AD390 the Emperor Theodosius was the first of many emperors to ban monks from cities because they had become so violent. Over 3000 Christians were massacred on one day in the Alexandrian church of Acacius.
Around AD400 the bishop of Antioch began digging up Christian graves so that he could put what he believed were the true martyrs in a different place from those he now regarded as mere heretics. Bishops attending a council recalled being forced to sign its decisions or get beaten up – or worse - by the soldiers lining the chamber. One bishop ended a sermon with the words ‘destruction to heretics and every enemy of the spotless catholic and apostolic church.’
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Just as the well-to-do codded up genealogies to prove the status of their family, the church made up lists of patron saints of basilicas in fourth century Rome. We tell the story of two of them, Anastasia and Chrysogonos
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