A Threat to Public Piety: Christians, Platonists, and the Great Persecution

237 Pages·3.621 MB·English

by  Elizabeth DePalma Digeser

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A ThreAT To
Public PieTy

A ThreAT To
n
Public PieTy
Christians, Platonists,
and the Great Persecution
Elizabeth DePalma Digeser
cornell universiTy Press
Ithaca and London
copyright © 2012 by cornell university
All rights reserved. except for brief quotations in a review,
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First published 2012 by cornell university Press
Printed in the united states of America
library of congress cataloging-in-Publication Data
Digeser, elizabeth DePalma, 1959–
A threat to public piety : christians, Platonists, and the
great persecution / elizabeth DePalma Digeser.
p. cm.
includes bibliographical references and index.
isbn 978-0-8014-4181-3 (cloth : alk. paper)
1. Persecution—history—early church, ca. 30–600.
2. church history—Primitive and early church, ca. 30–600.
3. christianity—Philosophy—history. 4. Platonists.
5. violence—Philosophy. 6. Philosophy and religion.
7. violence—religious aspects. i. Title.
br1604.23.D54 2012
272'.1—dc23 2011037723
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For Paige

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Contents
Preface ix
List of Abbreviations xiii
introduction: From Permeable
circles to hardened boundaries 1
1. Ammonius saccas and the Philosophy
without conflicts 23
2. origen as a student of Ammonius 49
3. Plotinus, Porphyry, and Philosophy
in the Public realm 72
4. schism in the Ammonian community:
Porphyry v. iamblichus 98
5. schism in the Ammonian community:
Porphyry v. Methodius of olympus 128
conclusion: The Ammonian community
and the Great Persecution 164
Bibliography 193
Index 215

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Preface
What is the relationship between philosophical
or religious thought and violence? in attempting to understand religious vio-
lence, sociologists and other social scientists often assume that material con-
ditions and economic interests are the real motivations for violence directed
against particular religious groups. if ideas make a difference at all, we see
them as rationalizations, justifications, or explanations for violence, not as
motive forces in themselves.1 This book turns the conventional wisdom on
its head, for it argues that ideas about correct ritual and metaphysical doc-
trine inspired people to bring about rome’s last and longest effort forcibly
to repress christianity. And it involves philosophers and theologians as the
primary source of these ideas, even though they themselves never called for
forcible repression of their doctrinal opponents—as far as the surviving evi-
dence indicates.
This project arose out of my earlier exploration of the involvement of the
ancient christian scholar and theologian lactantius in defending christian-
ity against the criticisms that had undergirded Diocletian’s “Great Persecu-
tion.” in The Making of a Christian Empire: Lactantius and Rome, i was primarily
interested in excavating the evidence for an exchange of ideas between the
African theologian and defender of religious toleration and the first chris-
tian emperor, constantine, who drew upon those ideas in fashioning his reli-
gious policy after the persecution ended. in the process of telling that story,
however, i began increasingly to wonder who were the people—beyond the
imperial court—advancing the arguments to which lactantius responded in
a number of sophisticated works across the last years of his life. The search
to discover those voices and make clear their motivations has occupied me
across the past decade and more.
1. see, for example, bernard lewis, The Crisis of Islam: Holy War and Unholy Terror (new york:
random house, 2004); Mark Juergensmeyer, Terror and the Mind of God: The Global Rise of Religious
Violence (berkeley: university of california Press, 2003); and John McGarry and brendan o’leary,
A Time for Peace: Explaining Northern Ireland (oxford: blackwell, 1995).
ix