As with many recent books from the keyboards of younger scholars, this volume has its origins in a doctoral thesis, defended in 2007. In the introduction, F. explains his purpose and procedure. In essence, his goal is an examination of the oratorical techniques, in oral or written form, employed by three leading figures, Athanasius, Hilary and Lucifer, to propagate their particular versions of Christian orthodoxy and to denigrate the adherents of other views. F. is less interested in the doctrinal outcome per se of religious disputes than in the behaviour of disputants who could not foresee the eventual outcome, but reacted to circumstances as these arose and employed to a new purpose the rhetorical tools that were part of a paideia shared by the educated elite of all religious persuasions.
The first chapter, ‘Praise and Blame in the Roman World’, does exactly what its title indicates: F. outlines the respective natures and roles of both panegyric and invective in the Roman Imperial period, emphasising their mutual importance in the public discourse of the empire. The final pages of the chapter examine the use of panegyric and invective by Christian orators and writers who adopted these oratorical techniques to praise and to lay blame on emperors, but chose non-traditional criteria (essentially, emperors' attitude to and treatment of Christians) to distinguish between rulers worthy of praise and those who became the targets of invective. In his second chapter, ‘Constructing a Christian Tyrant’, F. examines the methods employed by Athanasius, Hilary and Lucifer to create an image of Constantius as a tyrant. He argues that his authors transferred the late-antique equation of tyrant with usurper from the political to the religious realm, where emperors with orthodox beliefs are legitimate, while rulers holding heretical views are usurpers/tyrants. By examining his authors' use of some normal topics of panegyric and invective, F. shows that Athanasius, Hilary and Lucifer tried to persuade their audiences to believe that Constantius was a religious tyrant. The argument depends on the suggestion that Constantius' heresy represented a rejection of the orthodoxy of his father: since Constantius was the heir to Constantine, and had not assumed the throne like a usurper, at a political (and military) level he was as legitimate as he could be. Thus arose a curious phenomenon: Athanasius was compelled by his own logic to grant Constantine in death an orthodoxy that he would almost certainly have been less willing to accord him in life. The bishop relied on Constantine's stated adherence to the Nicene creed, good evidence on the surface, perhaps, but dozens of bishops nominally adhered to Nicaea's prescription while defining its terms in a manner that was at variance with the views of Athanasius. Historical fact is, of course, irrelevant to propaganda; knowledgeable readers of these treatises were perfectly aware that their authors were engaging in propaganda and reacted accordingly, while the ignorant were naturally capable only of believing what they were told to believe. While the larger argument may seem a little flimsy, the important point is not whether a modern audience might accept the equation of heresy with tyranny, but the techniques employed against Constantius. Thus, as F. successfully shows, in the middle third of the fourth century several Christian authors attempted to characterise the emperor Constantius as a usurper.
The underlying reason becomes more evident in Chapter 3, ‘Writing Auto-hagiography’. As F. points out, his three authors represented themselves as martyrs, or, perhaps better, as the successors of the martyrs of the past who had become the victims of the persecutors. Those self-images could not be constructed without the participation of Constantius as the persecuting emperor – thus requiring his redefinition as a tyrant – and a host of heretical bishops as the equivalent of the imperial officials who regularly appear as the agents who imprison, judge and order the executions of martyrs. To make the equation with secular rhetoric, F. shows how invective had been used previously for self-definition, when orators advertised their own struggles under the subjects of their invective, almost inevitably in the safe space after the deaths of their oppressors. Perhaps the behaviour that best establishes the link to the martyrs of the past was the claim by Athanasius and the others that they had boldly exercised their parrhesia against even emperors, just like martyrs had done. Employing biblical examples of individuals who were willing to die for their beliefs but lived through their troubles, Athanasius also argued, necessarily, that death was not a requirement for martyrdom; living through difficult circumstances, either in the desert, like Antony, or in exile, as Athanasius, now satisfied the requirement. (Whether any of the bishops who survived their troubles had ever truly been willing to die is perhaps best left unaddressed.) The latter part of this chapter examines more closely the writings of Lucifer and particularly his use of sentences and phrases from earlier texts, those of Cyprian, for example, to establish that his boldness and persecution were equivalent to the persecutions in the previous century.
In the final chapter, ‘Living up to the Past’, F. treats the techniques employed by his writers to compare and contrast themselves and their religious enemies with figures of the past, primarily biblical, but also those of the apostolic period. Thus, to take an example (p. 189), Athanasius chose to suggest that Arians reject Christ in the same manner as did the high priest Caiaphas. The technique allows orthodoxy to possess a long biblical ancestry of God-fearing individuals in the Old Testament. Indeed, these orthodox bishops claimed (p. 202) ‘that the battle between Nicene theology and Arianism was already predicted’ in Scripture. It is no surprise to discover that biblical villains presage heretics, while biblical heroes presage the orthodox. While modern readers of these claims might regard them as questionable in theological, indeed, logical, terms, F.'s subject is not their validity, but their use in the doctrinal contests of the mid-fourth century. The bishops made the claims, and F. is right to study them in detail.
In the epilogue, F. sums up what has gone before and ends with the curious question of why this manner of invective was employed by so few bishops and only in the reign of Constantius. Was it frustration with Constantius that boiled over near the end of his reign or had the interlude of Julian restored a sense of perspective that induced bishops and other writers to pursue a middle course between extremes? F. does not, in fact cannot, answer the question adequately: lack of evidence and the need to avoid a monolithic interpretation counsel caution. Five appendices offer translations, with introductions and notes, of some letters and documents relevant to the volume's themes: Altercatio Heracliani cum Germinio; Epistula Liberii papae ad Eusebium, Dionysium et Luciferum in exsilio constitutos; Epistula Luciferi, Pancratii et Hilarii; Letters of Eusebius of Vercelli; and Hilary of Poitiers, Contra Auxentium. A bibliography and an index conclude the volume.
F. has written a fascinating volume about the rhetorical practices employed by some bishops against their enemies, including even an emperor. Moreover, it is worthy of note that he has successfully avoided any temptation to force less certain evidence into the pattern he has discovered. This is a fine book whose conclusions most readers will be able to accept.
