The Mega Churches of Post-Constantinian Rome

If you are repulsed by, or if you have a hard time understanding the phenomenon of TV preachers or mega-churches that seem to be built in the honor of a founder, keep in mind that nothing is new under the sun, and all of this happened at Rome a very long time ago.

Several weeks ago I had been writing about the time period following Constantine, The Murderer Pope Damasus, and the time when Roman Bishops became functionaries of the Roman (government) bureaucracy. Of course, this also became, one might say, a time of “building” for the church at Rome, as successive popes sought to aggrandize themselves by building monuments, er, cathedrals in their own honor. As Eamon Duffy notes:

They [bishops of Rome] set about [creating a Christian Rome] by building churches, converting the modest tituli (community church centres) into something grander, and creating new and more public foundations, though to begin with nothing that rivaled the great basilicas at the Lateran and St. Peter’s. Over the next hundred years their churches advanced into the city – Pope Mark’s (336) San Marco within a stone’s throw of the Capitol, Pope Liberius’ massive basilica on the Esquiline (now Santa Maria Maggiore), Pope Damasus’ Santa Anastasia at the foot of the Palatine, Pope Julius’ foundation on the site of the present Santa Maria in Trastevere, Santa Pudenziana near the Baths of Diocletian under Pope Anastasius (399-401), Santa Sabina among the patrician villas on the Aventine under Pope Celestine (422-32).

These churches were a mark of the upbeat confidence of post-Constantinian Christianity in Rome. The popes were potentates, and began to behave like it. Damasus perfectly embodied this growing grandeur. An urbane career cleric like his predecessor Liberius, at home in the wealthy salons of the city, he was also a ruthless power-broker, and he did not he did not hesitate to mobilize both the city police and [a hired mob of gravediggers with pickaxes] to back up his rule… (Duffy, 37:38).

Roman Catholics today like to tell us that “Christ is the head of the church,” but Pope Siricius (384-399), who was the successor of Damasus, “self-consciously … began to model their actions and style as Christian leaders on the procedures of the Roman state. … [Siricius responded to an inquiry from a neighboring bishop in Spain] in the form of a decretal, modeled directly on an imperial rescript, and like the rescripts, providing authoritative rulings which were designed to establish legal precedents on the issues concerned. Siricius commended the [inquiring] Bishop for consulting Rome ‘as to the head of your body’, and instructed to him to pass on ‘the salutary ordinances we have made’ to the bishops of all the surrounding provinces, for ‘no priest of the Lord is free to be ignorant of the statutes of the Apostolic See’” (Duffy 40).

Shotwell and Loomis go into somewhat greater detail:

We see that Siricius, in taking up, as he says, the responsibilities of Damasus, assumes the right to make ordinances for the metropolitans and clergy of the West and classes the statutes of the Apostolic See and the venerable canons of the councils together as laws of which no priest of the Lord may be ignorant. He is writing, one must note, for western churches only, as far as his explicit directions go, but his West includes Spaniards and Gauls and Carthaginians in provinces far beyond Italy.

The decretal itself is more than the instructions of a senior bishop to his junior colleagues on ways to remedy evils in congregations under their authority. In several of its provisions it goes behind the local bishop and metropolitan altogether and establishes relations by its own authority directly with the lesser clergy, monks and laity of these distant regions. The local bishop is for the moment merely the organ of communication between the chief shepherd and the sheep. All priests are to keep the rules or be “plucked from the solid, apostolic rock upon which Christ built the universal Church.” Offenders are “Deposed by authority of the Apostolic See from every ecclesiastical position which they have abused.” (Shotwell and Loomis, “The See of Peter,” New York: Columbia University Press, ©1927, 1955, 1991, pgs 699-700).

This is perhaps the earliest of these epistolae decretales on record. It was contemprary with the time that all that the Eastern bishops, at the council of Constantinople (381), had decreed that “appeals in the cases of bishops should be heard within the bishop’s own province,” as Duffy had said, “a direct rebuttal of Rome’s claim to be the final court of appeal in all such cases (34). The Eastern bishops had no concept at all that the Roman bishop had the right to interfere with or make laws in their regions.

Duffy notes that “the apostolic stability of Rome, its testimony to ancient truth, would now be imagined not simply as the handing on of the ancient paradosis, the tradition, but specifically in the form of lawgiving. Law became a major preoccupation of the Roman church, and the Pope was seen as the Church’s supreme lawgiver. As Pope Innocent I (401-417) wrote to the bishops of Africa, ‘it has been decreed by a divine, not a human authority, that whatever action is taken in any of the provinces, however distant or remote, it should not be brought to a conclusion before it comes to the knowledge of this see, so that every decision may be affirmed by our authority’” (Duffy 40). And of course, nepotism reigned.

Round the papal household there developed a whole clerical culture, staffed by men drawn often from the Roman aristocracy, intensely self-conscious and intensely proud of their own tradition – Jerome dubbed them ‘the senate’. Damasus himself was a product of this world, the son of a senior Roman priest who had himself founded a titulus church. Pope Boniface was the son of a Roman priest, Innocent I was the son of his predecessor as pope, Anastasius I (399-401), and had served his father as a deacon.

But probably the pinnacle of admixture between Roman imperial law and arrogance and usurpation of the nepotism system came in the person of “Pope Leo the Great," whom I hope to talk about in a future post.

Rome has always set itself and its own aggrandization above the cause of Christ

I’m following on from my last installment on the history of the early [i.e., late fourth century] papacy.

Remember this citation as evidence that the early papacy [and for the papacy, note that “early” here is in the sixth century] had some sort of “divine institution.”

Testimony from the Early Fathers:
In 517 the Eastern bishops assented to and signed the formula of Pope Hormisdas, which states in part: ‘The first condition of salvation is to keep the norm of the true faith and in no way deviate from the established doctrine of the Fathers. For it is impossible that the words of our Lord Jesus Christ who said, “Thou art Peter and upon this rock I will build My Church” [Matt. 16:18], should not be verified. And their truth has been proved by the course of history, for in the Apostolic See [i.e. Rome] the Catholic religion has always been kept unsullied.’ (qtd in This Rock, October 1998).

In the comments from that last thread, the discussion turned to Pope Damasus (366-384 AD). At question was my appellation “the murderer Pope Damasus,” but as I said there, I’ll stand by that appellation. J.N.D. Kelly (“Oxford Dictionary of the Popes”) notes that Damasus hired the mob [and note both the nomenclature and the location], which “savagely attacked the Ursinians”, [followers of Ursinus, a rival of Damasus’s] and killing 137 people in the process.

“Pope St. Damasus,” of course, is officially a Saint of the Roman Catholic Church. He personifies the legacy, which we see today, that any amount of lying or criminal activity can be excused if it is done in the name of Mother Rome.

Since the mid third century there had been a growing assimilation of Christian and secular culture. It is already in evidence long before Constantine with the art of the Christian burial sites round the city, the catacombs. With the imperial adoption of Christianity, this process accelerated. In Damasus’ Rome, wealthy Christians gave each other gifts in which Christian symbols went alongside images of Venus, nereids and sea-monsters, and representations of pagan-style wedding-processions.

This Romanisation of the Church was not all a matter of worldiness, however. The bishops of the imperial capital had to confront the Roman character of their city and their see. They set about finding a religious dimension to that Romanitias which would have profound implications for the nature of the papacy. Pope Damasus in particular took this task to heart. He set himself to interpret Rome’s past in the light not of paganism, but of Christianity. He would Latinise the Church, and Christianise Latin. He appointed as his secretary the greatest Latin scholar of the day, the Dalmatian presbyter Jerome, and commissioned him to turn the crude dog-Latin of the Bible versions [currently] used in the church into something more urbane and polished. Jerome’s work was never completed, but the Vulgate Bible, as it came to be called, rendered the scriptures of ancient Israel and the early Church into an idiom which Romans could recognize as their own. The covenant legislation of the ancient tribes was now cast in the language of the Roman law-courts [emphasis added], and Jerome’s version of the promises to Peter used familiar Roman legal words for binding and loosing -- ligare and solver -- which underlined the legal character of the Pope’s unique claims. (Eamon Duffy, “Saints and Sinners, A History of the Popes, New Haven and London, Yale Nota Bene, Yale University Press ©1997 and 2001, pgs 38-39)

It should be noted that this “Latinization” was one of the things that the Reformation worked to undo. It was the focus of the motto, ”ad fontes” [“To the sources.”] As Alister McGrath has noted in his “Introduction to Christian Theology,” “the Vulgate translation of several major New Testament texts could not be justified.” Nevertheless, he said, “a number of medieval church practices and beliefs were based upon these texts.” So in addition to some of the forgeries and works of fiction upon which the papacy aggrandized itself, Roman doctrines themselves were founded upon or expanded with translation errors. These included:

Ephesians 5:31-32: “For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh.” This is a profound mystery—but I am talking about Christ and the church. The Vulgate translation inserted the word “sacramentum” here, where the Greek word is mysterion. Erasmus pointed out that this Greek word simply meant “mystery.” The Ephesians passage had no reference whatsoever to marriage being a “sacrament.” Nevertheless, medieval theologians justified the inclusion of marriage on the list of sacraments, in good part, because of this mistranslation.

Matthew 4:17: From that time on Jesus began to preach, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near.” The Vulgate mistranslated the word “repent” as “do penance.” As McGrath noted, “this translation suggested that the coming of the kingdom of heaven had a direct connection with the sacrament of penance. Erasmus, following Valla, pointed out” the correct translation. “In other words, where the Vulgate seemed to refer to an outward practice (the sacrament of penance), Erasmus insisted that the reference was to an inward attitude, that of “being repentant.”

Luke 1:28: The angel went to her and said, “Greetings, you who are highly favored! The Lord is with you.” The Vulgate translated the Greek for “highly favored” as “full of grace,” implying that Mary was somehow a reservoir of grace to be dispensed. Erasmus pointed this out as well. “Mary was one who had found God’s favor,” as McGrath notes. Not that she was one who could bestow grace upon others.

Six centuries later, after the east/west split, at which time anyone who was likely to protest was out of the picture, Pope Gregory VII asserted, “That the Roman church has never erred; nor will it err to all eternity, the Scripture bearing witness.” But it erred in the mistranslation of those very Scriptures. It sullied “the catholic religion” with its own efforts to glorify Rome.

Roman Catholics ask us all the time, “when did the Roman church fall?” It was not necessarily a “fall,” but more like an erosion. Constant erosion, at greater and lesser rates of erosion. But it was an erosion of the Gospel message, at the expense of the constant aggrandization of the bishops of Rome, and the constant aggrandization of Rome itself.

Scott Windsor (3): Defense of the Papacy from the Early Church

In the process of trying to find some merit in the document known as “The Donation of Constantine,” Scott Windsor also posted something of a popular defense of the early papacy. He posted a “Scriptural defense” of which he said “This one verse alone is enough for one who has The Faith” (and I provided an exegetical commentary on that verse in my previous responses to Scott here and here.)

I’d like to look now at some of his “testimony from the early fathers,” and in particular, the history behind this, his first citation:

Testimony from the Early Fathers:
In 517 the Eastern bishops assented to and signed the formula of Pope Hormisdas, which states in part: ‘The first condition of salvation is to keep the norm of the true faith and in no way deviate from the established doctrine of the Fathers. For it is impossible that the words of our Lord Jesus Christ who said, “Thou art Peter and upon this rock I will build My Church” [Matt. 16:18], should not be verified. And their truth has been proved by the course of history, for in the Apostolic See the Catholic religion has always been kept unsullied.’ (qtd in This Rock, October 1998).

I wonder if the Roman Catholics who parrot these things actually look at the history of them. Probably not; in the firmly convinced Roman Catholic mind, for someone who has “The Faith,” if something says “Peter,” that means “full-blown papacy.” But nothing could be further from the truth.

This incident here should not be something that Roman Catholics are proud to say is a part of the “divine foundation” of the papacy. In fact, while this is a “foundational event” in the creation of a papacy that had jurisdiction throughout the empire, it is not the “great moment in papal history” that it is sold as.

Until this time, it should be noted, that Eastern churches, represented by the other patriarchates, almost universally rejected any notion that Rome had any “jurisdiction” over them whatsoever.

Describing the period from approximately 400-900ad, a period during which the Church was “unified under the papacy,” Klaus Schatz, in his “Papal Primacy: From Its Origins to the Present” (Collegeville, MN: The Liturgical Press, ©1996 by the Order of St. Benedict, Inc.), Schatz points out that “for five hundred years the role of Rome in the imperial Church was determined essentially by the relationships among three entities: the ecumenical councils, the patriarchates, and the imperial establishment.”

Keep in mind that the Roman church had always been marked by a lust for power and expansion.

150 ad: the church at Rome is ruled by a plurality of presbyters who quarrel about status and honor. (Shepherd of Hermas). “They had a certain jealousy of one another over questions of preeminence and about some kind of distinction. But they are all fools to be jealous of one another regarding preeminence.”

235: Hippolytus and Pontianus are exiled from Rome by the emperor “because of street fighting between their followers” (Collins citing Cerrato, Oxford 2002).

258: Cyprian (Carthage/west) and Firmilian (Caesarea/east) both become incensed when Stephen tries to exercise authority outside of Rome. [Stephen is the first pope on record to cite Matt 16:18 in support of his own authority.]

306: Rival “popes” exiled because of “violent clashes” (Collins)

308: Rival “popes” exiled because of “violent clashes” (Collins again).

What genuinely gave bishops of Rome the impetus to expand further was the conversion of Constantine. Eamon Duffy noted that this event “propelled the bishops of Rome into the heart of the Roman establishment. Already powerful and influential men, they now became grandees on a par with the wealthiest senators in the city. Bishops all over the Roman world would now be expected to take on the role of judges, governors, great servants of state (“Saints and Sinners,” New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1997, 2001, pg 37). Duffy had previously recounted the story of the young Ambrose (b. 340-397), “fascinated as the women of the family clustered around Liberius (352-366), kissing his hand, and the boy had amused and infuriated his relatives by imitating his stately walk and offering his own hand to be kissed by the womenfolk” (36).

In 324, though, Constantine moved the capital to the East. According to Duffy, he:

“washed his hands of Rome,” and “departed to create a Christian capital in the East. It would fall to the popes to create a Christian Rome. They set about it by building churches, converting the modest tituli (community church centres) into something grander, and creating new and more public foundations, … Over the next hundred years their churches advanced into the city – Pope Mark’s (336) San Marco within a stone’s throw of the Capitol, Pope Liberius’ massive basilica on the Esquiline (now Santa Maria Maggiore), Pope Damasus’ Santa Anastasia at the foot of the Palatine, Pope Julius’ foundation of the site of the present Santa Maria in Trastevere, Santa Pudenziana near the Baths of Diocletian under Pope Anastasius (399-401), Santa Sabina among the patrician villas on the Aventine under Pope Celestine (422-32).

These churches were a mark of the upbeat confidence of post-Constantinian Christianity in Rome. The popes were potentates, and began to behave like it. Damasus (366-382) perfectly embodied this growing grandeur. An urbane career cleric like his predecessor Liberius, at home in the wealthy salons of the city, he was also a ruthless power-broker, and he did not hesitate to mobilize both the city police and the Christian mob to back up his rule His election had been contested, and he had prevailed by sheer force of numbers – as the Liber Pontificalis puts it, ‘they confirmed Damasus because he was the stronger and had the greater number of supporters; that was how Damasus was confirmed’. Damasus’ grass-roots supporters included squads of the notoriously hard-boiled Roman fossores, [actually a minor order in the church, made up of catacomb diggers generally armed with picks], and they massacred 137 followers of the rival Pope Ursinus in street-fighting that ended in a bloody siege of what is now the church of Santa Maria Maggiore” (37-38).

I’ve heard Roman Catholics say that, “well, it was the highest office in the church, it’s no wonder people would fight about it. First, that’s no excuse, for Christians (1 Tim 3), and second, that’s not the real reason people fought about it. Here, Duffy cites the secular historian Ammianus Marcellinus:

I do not deny that men who covet this office in order to fulfill their ambitions may well struggle for it with every resource at their disposal. For once they have obtained it they are ever after secure, enriched with offerings from the ladies, riding abroad seated in their carriages, splendidly arrayed, giving banquets so lavish that they supass the tables of royalty… (38).

It was noted above that Liberius pranced around prompting women to kiss his hand, and Damasus himself was known as “the ladies’ ear-tickler”.

As a side note, in the discussions of the compulsion of clerical celibacy, Duffy notes that on account of such like Damasus, “an imperial decree in 370 forbade clerics from visiting the houses of rich widows or heiresses” (38).

J.N.D. Kelly, in his “Oxford Dictionary of the Popes,” points out that Basil the Great (d. 379) had a “less than happy” relationship with Damasus and that “like the west generally, [Damasus] failed to understand the new developments and, when Antioch was split between rival bishops, [Damasus] persisted in backing Paulinus, the unrepresentative leader of a reactionary group, instead of Meletius, on whom eastern hopes for unity were centred; …In despair Basil described him as impossibly arrogant.”

Kelly also notes that while “he took no part in the ecumenical council (the second) held at Constantinople in 381, and made no contribution to the constructive détente between east and west which was now under way,” nevertheless ”Damasus was indefatigable in promoting the Roman primacy, frequently referring to Rome as ‘the apostolic see’ and ruling that the test of a creed’s orthodoxy was its endorsement by the pope.” (Kelly 33)

So even by the time of Damasus, while the eastern churches were embroiled in some of the most intensive deliberations over Nicene orthodoxy and the Nicene creed, “pope” Damasus was busy tickling ladies’ ears, promoting his own importance, and fomenting division among the Eastern churches. Damasus is a saint of the Roman Catholic Church.