Penser la tolérance durant l'Antiquité tardive by Peter Van Nuffelen (review)

Abstract

Reviewed by: Penser la tolérance durant l'Antiquité tardive by Peter Van Nuffelen Harold A. Drake Penser la tolérance durant l'Antiquité tardive. By Peter Van Nuffelen. [Les conférences de l'École Pratique des Hautes Études, 10.] (Paris: Éditions du Cerf. 2018. Pp. 181. €16,00. ISBN: 9782204126489.) The most important point of the many important points in Peter Van Nuffelen's study of toleration in Late Antiquity is that scholars (including, alas, the author of this review) err when we carelessly transfer modern concepts onto ancient texts, especially those that use the same words (such as "religious liberty") to mean very different things. We usually remember that there was no separation of Church and State in antiquity, but too often we forget that the ancient state could never be a neutral party in the same way that modern states can, because its purpose (at least theoretically) was to create virtuous citizens. Also unlike the modern state, the ancient one did not lay claim to a monopoly on the legitimate use of coercive force. Accordingly, the modern binary of toleration/repression does not accurately reflect ancient conditions. Each of the four ensuing chapters enlarges on these introductory observations. Chapter One expands on the difference between ancient and modern ideas of toleration. Looking at texts from Tertullian in the second century to Themistius in the fourth, Van Nuffelen argues that orators put forth toleration not as a principle but as a rhetorical strategy built on long-standing views of the role of the state and the importance of divine support that both Christians and pagans shared. Especially because of the latter, emperors could not stand by when divinity (Christian or pagan) did not receive its due. Chapter Two takes on the assertion that Christianity stifled debate in Late Antiquity. To the contrary, a variety of texts from the second to the eighth century show the importance not only of debate but of the premium placed on providing rational argument. Christians like John Chrysostom even argued that authority without reason was not sufficient to justify faith (p. 82). A key question is the subject of Chapter Three. If rational argument was the sine qua non, why did authorities turn to coercion when argument did not work? [End Page 394] For an answer, Van Nuffelen distinguishes between two groups. Philosophers and their followers had already made pursuit of virtue their highest goal, and therefore did not need further incentive. But the same was not the case for ordinary citizens. For them, the state was obligated to intervene, if only to remove obstacles to a more virtuous life. Failure to distinguish between these two groups leads to a false equivalence when comparing Christian and pagan ideas about coercion. Christian treatment of the laity may seem intolerant when compared with philosophers and other elites, but they are completely normal when compared with the state's obligation to remove obstacles to the moral improvement of ordinary citizens (in an epilogue, Van Nuffelen cites modern "sin taxes" on tobacco and alcohol as an example). With the air cleared, Chapter Four turns specifically to the topic of religious violence. Here, Van Nuffelen takes on the argument that Christianizing the empire was fundamentally a violent process—an argument supported by focus on spectacular events like the murder of the philosopher Hypatia in 415, the closing of Plato's Academy in 529, and the destruction of pagan temples. Arguing that using the term "violence" for all such actions effectively homogenizes their causes, Van Nuffelen chooses to focus on two incidents as case studies: the destruction of the Serapeum in Alexandria in 391 and the conversion of the Jews on Minorca in 418. The destruction of the great temple quickly became a symbol of triumphant Christianity, but as Van Nuffelen points out the story told by Rufinus on which all other accounts rely, is contradictory and vague, and seems to have been written to reassure his readers that God would not abandon them in times of distress. His account cannot be accepted uncritically. As for Minorca, Van Nuffelen suggests that the letter written by Bishop Severus a year after the event, read carefully, does not celebrate the violent...