The Roman Empire

To Christians no trial could be more important than the trial of Jesus. Its theological significance makes it difficult to see its other aspects. What we know of Jesus’s trial, to name but one difficulty, comes from the Gospel writers who wanted to tell about the trial to demonstrate the fulfillment of prophecy and to introduce the passion story.¹ The earliest Gospel, Mark, was written at the time of the destruction of the Temple and of Jerusalem itself by Roman troops in 70 A.D.

While the judgment was unjust—Jesus was not a Zealot—to the Roman authorities and the theocratic judges of the Jewish Sanhedrin close was bad enough. Jesus presented a danger to their control over a volatile territory and that was what mattered. Roman rule over Judaea, Samaria, and Galilee was as tenuous then as any empire’s rule ever has been. Risings against Rome had taken place in 4 B.C. when Rome’s ruler of the Jews, Herod the Great, died and an imperial procurator moved in to establish direct rule. With the suppression of the rebellion 2,000 Jewish insurgents were crucified in reprisal.³ To continue the guerrilla resistance against the Romans and the Jewish priestly aristocracy, especially the Sadducees who collaborated with the Romans, the Zealots were founded by Judas of Galilee.⁴

From what Jesus said, from those with whom he chose to associate, and from his actions during Passover, the Romans might have had good reason to suspect that he was a Zealot.

Then, consider the events of his final days. If Judas Iscariot was a Zealot, his betrayal makes sense as his attempt to force Jesus’ hand by putting him in such a desperate position that Jesus would have to make use of his supernatural powers. Or, maybe the betrayal, together with Peter’s denials, was born of a disillusionment that Jesus was not living up to the Zealots’ expectations. Jesus’ arrest and interrogation took place at night, as they might in any authoritarian state then or now. Before the Sanhedrin, which met in extraordinary session at the home of the high priest, Jesus faced the community leaders. Among the charges, which were the product of conflicting false witnesses, was that Jesus had claimed he would destroy the Temple, which had been made with hands, and within three days build another “made without hands.”⁷ To this charge and others Jesus said nothing. But when he was asked if he was “the Christ, the Son of the Blessed,” Jesus replied “I am: and ye shall see the Son of Man sitting on the right hand of power, and coming in the clouds of heaven.”⁸ That did it. He was condemned: guilty of blasphemy.

The second phase of Jesus’ trial came in the morning when he was taken to the Roman governor, Pontius Pilate.

For several centuries after Jesus, Romans persecuted Christians. Then, when the religious tables were turned, Christians controlling Rome persecuted pagans. Throughout, Jews were persecuted by both. The issue in all such persecutions is representation. The persecution of Christians during the first three centuries after Christ, especially during the Great Persecution (303–311) of Emperor Diocletian, and the persecution of pagans and heretics, especially the Donatists, after 364 A.D. share this: The persecutions were carried out by those in power intent on maintaining the unity of the state against those determined to remain separate. That is the theme too of centuries of anti-Semitism.

Emperor Diocletian, facing military threats on the vast Roman frontiers as well as anarchy all around him at home, sought stability in restoration. Rome would be revived by returning to the traditional Roman values, in particular Roman majesty. He claimed that as emperor he not only ruled “by consent of the gods,” but he was the incarnation of Jupiter.¹¹ Christians, however, refused to participate in the ceremonies of this new emperor worship, out of concern for idolatry. They were charged in one edict with “the wickedness of attempting to undo past tradition.” This made it necessary “to punish the obstinacy of the perverted mentality of these most evil men.” The Diocletian persecution, W.H.C.

The payoff for Rome was short-lived. The Great Persecution, while torturing and martyring thousands of Christians, weakened the resolve of the persecutors while strengthening that of the Christians. Within a generation the Roman Empire moved from the terror of the Great Persecution of the Christians, to the general toleration granted to all religions in the Edict of Milan (313), to the official establishment of Christianity under Emperor Constantine, to the persecution of pagans, schismatic Donatists, and heretical Arians in the name of Christianity.

Not long after Emperor Constantine saw the political futility of persecuting the determined Christians, he realized the advantages of religious toleration. The Edict of Milan propounded that “we have been watchful not to deny freedom of worship…[and] to secure reverence for the Divinity…so that whatever there be of the divine and celestial might be favoring and propitious to us and to all those living under our rule.” The thinking behind the edict was familiar: toleration was necessary in order to gain favor and success from the gods. This was the same reasoning which motivated the persecutions. “In the ebb and flow of Christianity and paganism,” Ramsay MacMullen observes, “this was the point of slack tide.”¹³ Constantine worked out a compromise between Christianity and pagan religions. He is famous in history for what he did for Christianity: founding Constantinople, building basilicas throughout the empire, and presiding over the Council of Nicaea where orthodoxy was defined. Yet he continued as the head of the established state cults because it was an ancient custom of his office as emperor.

If the spirit of Constantine was toleration, it did not last. The thinking soon prevailed that to make the world safe for Christendom it had to be rendered immune to Christianity. The switch-about in religion meant that the trial of Jesus had to be reinterpreted. In the fourth century Pilate was seen as sympathetic to Jesus while Jews became the villains responsible for the trial and crucifixion. The most vicious attack on the Jews came from St. John Chrysostom (344–407) who railed against their “odious assassination of Christ” and claimed that there would be no end to God’s vengeance, “no expiation possible, no indulgence, no pardon.”¹⁴

The most famous contemporary of Chrysostom was the Bishop of Hippo, St. Augustine, who directed his energy toward putting down a number of heretical movements. The rebellious Donatists were his major challenge. Just as before Emperor Constantine Christians were persecuted because they lacked a religion which expressed civic loyalty, so after Constantine the Donatists were persecuted for the same reason. In Africa, where Augustine had his jurisdiction as bishop, the Donatists resembled the Zealots. They maintained a purist standard for the church and a militant one for politics. They argued that the validity of the sacraments depended on the morality of the priest. If the priest had compromised with the Roman emperor by surrendering the Scriptures to avoid the Diocletian persecution, he had cut himself off from Christianity, according to the Donatist ideology, and would need rebaptism by a legitimate, Donatist priest.¹⁵

Faced with the overt persecution carried out by the Donatists against Catholics, Augustine developed his own theory of persecution. It was based on the fact that Christ had not merely said “blessed are they who are persecuted” but added “for righteousness’ sake.”¹⁶ Not only were the Donatists who suffered false martyrs because they did not suffer for righteousness, but the church could, Augustine argued, actively persecute them in the name of righteousness.

In the empire’s persecution of nationalists and in Augustine’s persecution of Donatists we have prototypes for the justification of later persecutions, national and religious. Groups that desire to remain separate threaten the larger unity. Yet their identity demands that they remain apart. Those who compel them to come in act as deputies for the larger society on behalf of public goals. To these deputies the separate groups appear to act from selfish goals for their own private advantage. The unity of the Roman Empire or the unity of Christian society demanded that the disruptive Zealots or Donatists be brought back into the fold or suffer the consequences. At stake in such prosecutions, whether in the Roman Empire or in our own day, is the nature of representation. This becomes even clearer in the trials of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, which present further parallels for our times.