“To the commissioners of sacrifices of the village of Thosbis, from Aurelius Amois styled as the son of his mother Taamois from the village of Thosbis. Always have I continued to sacrifice and pour libations to the gods, and since now too in your presence in accordance with the orders I sacrificed and poured a libation and tasted the sacrificial meats together with my mother Taamois and my sister Taharpaesis, I request that (you) subscribe to this fact for me. Year 1 of Imperator Caesar Gaius Messius Quintus Traianus Decius.”
(P.Oxy 58.3929, trans. Luijendijk, pp.165-66)
The papyrus in the image above is one of many libelli (certificates) which have been preserved in the Egyptian desert. These libelli confirmed that residents of the Roman Empire had complied with imperial orders to make sacrifices to the gods. During this first year of Decius (named in this papyrus) he ordered sacrifices to the gods to bring stability and peace back to an empire which had been plagued by civil wars and natural disasters. In response to this edict people across the empire, like Aurelius Amois and his family, went to the temples in their towns, made the sacrifices, and received a certificate proving they had done so. Not everyone did.
In this project I consider how third century Roman Christians responded to these mandated requirements within the framework of moral agency under constraint. The moral agents under investigation are the Christian martyrs, confessors, and lapsi (fallen). My focus is on the way the constraint of Roman cultural values of piety and religious duty was in direct conflict with the Christian constraint of exclusive monotheism. Much like the mythic Strait of Messina, these Roman Christian agents had to make a choice. If they acted within the constraints of their Christian faith and refused to sacrifice they faced punishment ranging from monetary fines to physical torture or death. From the perspective of Roman culture these agents had failed in their moral duty to act on behalf of the good of society. If they made the sacrifices, they were removed from the Christian community, called lapsi (the fallen) for their failure to remain faithful to their baptismal oaths and disobedience of a divine command. Scylla on one side, Charybdis on the other.
Roman Constraints
Philosophy and Virtue
The cultural atmosphere of Imperial Rome was shaped by an intermingling of philosophical schools of thought. A key question considered by philosophers in the early Roman imperial era (beginning ca. 27 BCE) was how the human person could live a good life. The Roman philosopher Seneca (ca. 4BCE-65CE) writes in one of his letters that virtue is what distinguishes human nature from that of animals. In a letter Seneca writes, “Virtue is nothing other than the mind disposed a certain way” (Seneca Letters 113.2). It is the pursuit of good things and living a good life. Virtue, a proper disposition for the human person, is a mind turned toward obtaining a good and happy life. To do this the human agent needed to train the soul to be unaffected by passions which would take control and transform the soul for the worse. In his treatise On Anger Seneca writes:
“For the mind is not a member apart […] but it is itself transformed into the passion and is, therefore, unable to recover its former useful and saving power when this has been betrayed and weakened. For, as I said before, these two do not dwell separate and distinct, but passion and reason are only the transformation of the mind toward the better or the worse” (On Anger 1.8.2-3).
Human persons transformed for the better were transformed toward a good life. This transformation was not confined to an internal change. The person being transformed acted in a certain way within the world and in relationship with others.
Cicero, a Roman statesman writing several decades before Seneca, describes good men as those “who are free from all passion, caprice, and insolence, and have great strength of character” because “in as far as that is possible for man, they follow Nature, who is the best guide to good living” (Cicero, On Friendship 19). A good person lived in harmony with the world around them. This harmony precluded instability and thus preserved peace within one’s nation and with one’s gods.
Piety and Religion
Pietas is a Latin word often defined as dutiful conduct, loyalty, or patriotism. It was the sense that if anyone had an obligation to another, that obligation must be fulfilled. The obligations worked upward in the Roman hierarchy: you were obliged to your parents, benefactors, city, country, and above all the gods. Cicero identified pietas as a central part of Roman identity saying, “but it is in and by means of piety (pietas) and religion (religio), and this especial wisdom of perceiving that all things are governed and managed by the divine power of the immortal gods, that we have been and are superior to all other countries and nations” (Cicero, On the Response of the Haruspices 19). Pietas and religio were intertwined, as religio referred particularly to pietas directed toward the gods.
The constraint of the Roman moral agent was to fulfill their obligation to their country and their gods by obeying the Decian mandate to sacrifice. The act was one of moral agency because by fulfilling their pious obligations the Roman person lived a life pursuing harmony with the world around them, seeking to live a good and virtuous life.
Definition of Roman Moral Agency
Image: Bust of Cicero by José Luiz Bernardes Ribeiro is licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0
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By 249 CE these concepts of living a good life and fulfilling one’s obligations had become ingrained in Roman culture. When Emperor Decius handed down his edict mandating sacrifices from the Roman people the virtuous and pious choice, the “correct” choice, for a Roman was clear. The constraint of the Roman moral agent was to fulfill their obligation to their country and their gods by obeying the mandate, like Aurelius Amois did. The act was one of moral agency because by fulfilling their pious obligations the Roman person lived a life pursuing harmony with the world around them, seeking to live a good and virtuous life.
Christian Constraints
Exclusive Monotheism
By the time of Decius’ requirement for all Romans to sacrifice to the gods Christianity was two and a half centuries old. Despite this, there was no legal status afforded to the Christian religion, meaning there were no exceptions made for Christians to abstain from the required sacrifices. Christianity, in contrast to the religions of Rome, was exclusively monotheistic. This meant that Christianity did not merely require the worship of a single god, but that Christians must worship only this god. Christianity inherited this monotheism from Judaism, citing Exodus 20:3-5, “you shall have no other gods before me. You shall not make for yourself an idol, whether in the form of anything that is in heaven above, or that is on the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth. You shall not bow down to them or worship them” (NRSV) as authoritative for Christians. This tradition was reified in the reception of the Christian gospels where Jesus condemns Satan’s request that he worship him (Matthew 4:8-10).
In the years preceding the Decian edict Christian apologists (defenders) responded to accusations that they had rejected the gods outright. This accusation was leveled at them because Christians no longer took part in festivals or made sacrifices at the temples. To non-Christian Romans this was a rejection of the gods of Rome and suggested to them that the Christians were atheists. In response to these accusations the Christian apologists affirmed their rejection of the Roman gods and reiterated their allegiance and worship of a single god. Justin Martyr, in the second century, called the Roman deities “supposed gods” who were mixed with evil while the god Christians worshiped was “most true and the Father of justice and temperance and the other virtues” (Justin Martyr First Apology 6.1). Not long after Justin, Theophilus of Antioch followed this same trajectory in denying the divinity of the Roman gods. He goes a step further and, citing narratives from literature such as Homer’s Iliad, says they were so-called gods who had once been morally degenerate men (Theophilus of Antioch, Ad Autolycum 1.9).
Image: Mosaic of St. Justin Martyr, Mount of the Beatitudes by Deror Avi is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0 DEED
Baptismal Oaths and the Lapsed
During the enforcement of the Decian edict Cyprian was the bishop in Carthage, a major city of Roman North Africa. During the persecutions against Christians who would not sacrifice to the gods, Cyprian fled the city and did not return until the edict was lifted. His treatise De Lapsi (On the Fallen) deals with the aftermath of the Decian edict and persecution. In his discussion of the lapsi, the Christians who had made sacrifices and received libelli proving they had done so, Cyprian speaks of them in two ways. When considering the effect of losing these Christians from the community he speaks of them as “vital organs wrenched from us by the devastation wrought by his [the enemy’s] own outrage” (Cyprian of Carthage, De Lapsis 4). However, his tone changes further into the treatise.
Though Cyprian considers the lapsi to have been torn away from the body of Christ by a demonic adversary, he does not absolve all culpability. In fact, he speaks of them departing of their own agency:
“Immediately at the first words of our menacing enemy a great number of brothers betrayed their faith. These were not overwhelmed by the attack of the persecution, but they overwhelmed themselves by falling of their own free choice. I ask you, what act before unheard, what new event had occurred, that they should go so hurriedly head over heels to break their oath as Christ’s soldiers, as if the circumstances that they were facing had been unknown and unexpected?” (Cyprian, De Lapsis 7)
Image: Basilique Saint-Cyprien à Carthage, Tunisia
The constraint of the Christian moral agent was to fulfill their obligation to God and uphold the oaths they had taken at baptism. In so doing they lived a life of obedience to commandments from God despite the fact that this placed them in opposition to their constraints as Roman moral agents.
Definition of Christian Moral Agency
Cyprian continues after this point to cite a multitude of passages from Scripture that indicate Christians would face opposition but ought to hold fast to their faith. He frames their choice to make sacrifices to the Roman gods as a failure to uphold their oaths to Christ. These oaths were those taken at baptism, when Christians confessed their belief in one God and were initiated into the community through the sacraments. That is to say, those Christians who did not make sacrifices and refused, receiving potentially fatal punishment, made the choice to adhere to the Christian constraints of morality. The constraint of the Christian moral agent was to fulfill their obligation to God and uphold the oaths they had taken at baptism. In so doing they lived a life of obedience to commandments from God despite the fact that this placed them in opposition to their constraints as Roman moral agents.
Choosing a Moral Constraint as Moral Agency
In this project I approached the question of what it means to be a moral agent under constraint from an internal perspective. As both Roman and as Christians, the choice martyrs, confessor, and lapsi made to act as a certain kind of moral agent became the constraint. These agents had to decide which moral choice to make before they were able to act as moral agents. The next constraint was that by choosing one definition of morality meant a rejection of the other choice, which meant that from an outside perspective they had made an amoral choice.
This is an intentional muddying of the waters of what it means to be a moral agent under constraint. Before an agent can act within the external constraints which limit their range of choices, they have to first reconcile with internal conflicts of how they will understand their choice to be a moral choice. The martyrs and confessors steered away from the Roman constraint of Scylla, only to be drawn into the depths by the whirlpool of the Christian constraints. The lapsi avoided the perils of Charybdis’ whirlpool, only to be plucked by Scylla’s ravenous heads from the Church, the ark of salvation.
Image: Bell-Crater depicting Scylla, Department of Greek, Etruscan and Roman antiquities in the Louvre