I have previously written an article about how I thought how Christian ethics and theology was influencing the daily lives of citizens across the Empire. With me being somewhat biased towards the Byzantines, I generally spent time talking about how outwardly religious Americans tend to be, but their actions behind the scenes speak otherwise. In comparison to America’s ornate yet shallow Christianity, I stated that I believe that the Byzantines or Eastern Romans were more interested in trying to build an earthly kingdom that could mimic Jesus’ teachings on mass scale than the later Americans after the Second World War. However, there was a discussion that I was listening to online that gave me a somewhat new perspective.
Robin Pierson’s podcast is among of the best Byzantine Empire audio content streams you will see on the internet. There are many great episodes that explain the history of the Byzantine Empire from multiple angles. Recently, he has been having interviews with Anthony Kaldellis who is the author of many important books on Byzantine History. In one episode, he talks about the application of Christian ethics on the moral state of the Eastern Roman Empire in the years before Heraclius and the Muslim conquests.
The issue of how Christianity had changed the morality of the Romans is a historical question that many historians have been trying to answer for many years. Procopius, who was present in the time of Justinian, wrote in his Secret History that the society that was under the reign of Justinian was a corrupt society and that Justinian was responsible for its inability to build a government that was virtuous.
Justinian was essentially trying to create a virtuous empire. In the podcast episode, Anthony Kalledis states that Justinian was admitting towards the latter stage of his reign that he was not having much success with reforming the roman people into more moral people. So according to his research and statements, Christianity was not truly having a huge effect on the moral nature of the Roman citizenry.
How can we measure Human morality?
I think that human morality would be toughest thing to be able to measure. Measuring how humans interact with one another is more of sociologist’s realm. How can one even tell what is going on in the countryside of these ancient empires. While one can go to Italy today and see many examples of Roman rule in the cities of Pompeii and Heracleum, you see that it is difficult to see the same evidence about the Eastern Roman Empire or even the reigns of Basil II and his successors.
The impression that Roman morality did not really change with Christianity may be more of a bias among researchers and scholars who tend to have urban backgrounds. The issue with judging entire empires on the actions of people in main cities is that it misses many important aspects of how Christianity was changing the lives of citizens across the Roman Empire.
The life of urban peoples vs rural peoples is always going to have issues with trying to see how a society will act according to its ethics. The Byzantine Empire in comparison with most pre-modern societies was a highly urban society. Even rural areas in the Empire were heavily influenced by the allure of places such as Constantinople, Antioch and Alexandria. Justinian and his relatives grew up in the Balkans section of the Empire and even their lowly status in the Empire did not make them believe that couldn’t get a better life in Constantinople. The empire was revolving around the cities not the countryside. These urban areas were heavily reliant on immigration due to issues with sanitation in those cities.
Byzantine Urbanity vs the Rural Nature of religion in the Empire
However, in spite of that, we can’t really tell whether the morality of the Empire was really being affected by Christianity if we want to focus on the urban areas. These areas of the Roman Empire were cosmopolitan areas and there is a tendency for such areas to be rather irreligious as they have everything within reach, while rural areas tend to have more emphasis on collective action rather the individualistic attitude that you see in cities. As such, we should be surprised about Procopius writings in the Secret History about how Justinian and his wife were corrupt in his view.
However, it is important to remember that the Byzantines or Eastern Romans were humans. The modern age has made citizens of all countries to think in ways that are more akin to morality in a melodrama that you see on television or in the movies than what you see in reality. There is this need for all morality that is based on monotheism to be applied to how people behave in everyday life. However, such views are largely creations of movie studios around the globe. Of course, even before movies, literature was already filling us with Utopian visions of a great age where our inventions will absolve us of any morality that we had before.
We have to cut the Byzantines some slack instead of attacking as not being up to our standards. Human life is complex and to expect people who are living day to day to being saints is just not realistic. There is a reason why saints are not common. If such people were common, then saints would not be saints but something else.
We cannot just let our biases in today’s age make us think that our ancestors have to be held to the same standard that we ourselves are not able to meet.
I think that Anthony Kaldellis is probably one of our best historians as he is not twisting history in order to serve some moral objective. Of course, St. Augustine would use the recent events of the Sack of Rome to criticize Roman morality, however, I believe that today’s historians, especially those who are honest, are best serving the interests of enhancing humanity’s understanding of its past by being objective and not putting modern politics into historical analysis. Of course, there is a need for some books where historians may be able to write their views, though even those should be tempered with a sense of humility for how people were interacting with each other in earlier ages.
We need to understand that our history requires us to think with nuances and understand how people have issues with being ethical in all ages. In many ways, these statements that people make about whether people are more ethical or not in one age or not are more a reflection of someone who is making the statement. That is why Anthony Kaldellis’ books are probably some of the best history books that I have ever read by the author.
When it comes to the question of how Christianity may or may not have been influencing the ethics of the elite and the average person in the Early Byzantine Empire, that question cannot be answered easily. Having a bias towards urban sources, it is not surprising that the salacious tales are ones that we have about this age. However, Christianity was not just a sprinkling on an otherwise pagan empire. It was a moral revolution that was changing how people thought about human beings. This does not mean human beings were all of sudden becoming saints, but Christianity was changing how Roman morality was seen among all sorts of individuals.
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