For a millennium and a half Chromatius of Aquileia was barely a memory, only a name among many in a seemingly endless list of men who filled the bishop's seat in the formerly great city of Aquileia.Footnote 1 Mentioned every few years in the list of names repeated when a new man ascended to the episcopal office, Chromatius was merely a historical footnote, a contemporary of luminaries but not deemed important enough to be remembered in his own right. He had mentored Rufinus, Jerome, and several other future bishops in a unique community in Aquileia, and later corresponded with Ambrose, John Chrysostom, and Pope Innocent I, but our knowledge of him was limited to statements made about him by these figures. It was not until the middle of the twentieth century, 1550 years after his death, that two French priests recovered his writing, thereby enabling his reintegration into the late Roman historical narrative. The bishop who influenced so many others, including Rufinus, Jerome, and Ambrose, can now speak for himself.
The sermons of Chromatius of Aquileia offer a wealth of material that sheds light on the changing religious and cultural landscape of the Italian city in late antiquity. His words reveal a cosmopolitan port city that caused Chromatius to say, “[W]here earthly advantage is not neglected, one must strive even more after a heavenly profit.”Footnote 2 In the sermons which survive, Chromatius emphasized that a major issue the city faced was the peril of heresy and resulting schism from his church. His choice of subject matter might be unsurprising given a letter of Jerome praising Chromatius for his battles with heretics, his record of participation in the council of Aquileia in 381, and his close affiliation with the Nicene warrior Ambrose. Yet while the proposition that Chromatius faced heretics daily seems convincing, all of these assumptions can also be deceiving. The council, the letter, and Ambrose's writings all hint at the absence of any formal “Arian” church structures in the Latin west paralleling those in the Greek east.Footnote 3 By the time Chromatius was bishop and composed his sermons and commentary in the 390s, “Arianism” was likely all but dead and gone in the region around Aquileia. Why, then, did Chromatius continue to press his case against groups he perceived as heretics? Upon further examination, Chromatius's words about heresy suggest he maintained the histories of other Christianities in order to reinforce his own powerful position in Aquileia. By “remembering” and “forgetting” aspects of the history of heresy, Chromatius created a history for orthodoxy.
This article employs evidence from Chromatius's underutilized sermons along with other scholars’ work on the region of northern Italy to explore one aspect of the bishop's preaching in the city: the maintenance of a history of “heresy.” When Chromatius's sermons are placed into their original local context, a disconnect emerges. A closer examination of northern Italy during the time of Chromatius (388–407) reveals that the variety we might expect among Christian adherents is lacking in the sources (Judaism and lingering Roman practices labeled as pagan did exist though). To put it simply, Nicene Christianity was unchallenged in the west, outside of Milan where imperial support maintained the group associated with Ambrose's struggles. After the death of the emperor Constantius II in 361, Arians were left without a champion in the west. Never as widespread at the popular level as in the east, this particular brand of Christianity relied on the support of elites and the control of important bishoprics. Once that support began to wane the expiration of the group became practically inevitable. On this point, modern scholarship is in widely held agreement that after the council of Aquileia in 381 and the invasion of the usurper Magnus Maximus in 388 Arianism ceased to have any real presence in the western churches until the advent of a Gothic church structure at the beginning of the next century.Footnote 4 While not apparent to contemporaries, Arianism would never rebound in the west from its loss of imperial patronage. In Aquileia, Chromatius would have been unchallenged by other churches. So what did Chromatius's continued tirades against non-existent “heretical” groups achieve? Chriomatius's sermons that include discussions of heresy reflect a pattern of asserting power to label and dominate, a pattern which used history to claim power in the broader religious realm. The maintenance of this history of heresy was not done sentimentally, but to advance episcopal power into new arenas, namely for Chromatius, control over the entire urban religious space including that of Judaism.
Chromatius was bishop of Aquileia from 388 to 407 and his sermons date from that period. Born around 335, Chromatius witnessed one of the greatest cultural paradigm shifts in history. He entered a world in which the first Christian emperor recently had died, disputes about the number of gods raged, and pagan temples still dominated the physical, if not mental, landscape. By the time of his death in 407, church leaders could legitimately assert that the empire had been Christianized. The claims of the Bishop of Rome were expanding, and the emerging religious landscape pointed to an ascendance of Christianity. Temples were closed, sacrifices ended, orthodoxy enforced. In short, Chromatius watched the world change, and his sermons reveal a new vision for Christians in a new century. Preaching during a unique period between the edicts of Theodosius in favor of the Nicene Christians, but before the incursion of various “barbarian” groups in the early fifth century, Chromatius presented success for Christians as nothing short of utter dominance. Anyone who would mark off his or her own space for religion apart from the corporate Nicene Christian body threatened the whole. Just as heretics had been overcome and subsumed into the corporate body, so Jews and any others who worshipped in their own separate gatherings ought to be countered. Chromatius was interested in nothing less than the community being whole and homogenous in respect to its religion.
Other than Chromatius himself, the most important element of this story is the city of Aquileia. The seventh city of the empire with a population of perhaps 100,000 around the year 400, Aquileia was a bustling port city on the north end of the Adriatic Sea and a major center of trade between east and west.Footnote 5 Located on the river Natiso and protected from the Adriatic by navigable lagoons, Aquileia offered a safe harbor and entry point into northern Italy. It also had access to the passes of the Julian Alps, which offered the primary route into the Balkans to the south and the Danube to the north. A cosmopolitan city, Aquileia accommodated soldiers and barbarians, Greeks and Syrians, as well as merchants and farmers, serving as a meeting place for diverse cultures and beliefs. It was also home to a substantial Jewish population—an aspect of the city's identity that arises in Chromatius's sermons.Footnote 6 Moreover, the city faced the reality of civil war on multiple occasions. Battles that ultimately determined the course of the empire were waged at the city gates three times in Chromatius's life (in 361, 388, and 394). Yet more than anything else, the sea and the trade that arrived via the water were the lifeblood of the city. Aquileia's position as a crossroads enabled Chromatius to maintain correspondence with friends and contacts throughout the empire including such late antique Christian luminaries as Jerome, Rufinus, Chrysostom, and Ambrose, among others.
The discovery of Chromatius's sermons provide a new avenue into the changing religious dynamics of the late antique city and empire. Joseph Lemarié and Roger Étaix rediscovered the sermons about fifty years ago. Forty-three sermons (thirty-one of which are complete) survive that they have attributed to Chromatius of Aquileia.Footnote 7 The sermons, although not a large corpus, provide an enlightening window into a unique local situation at the end of the fourth century. During late antiquity, the sermon drew on the long history of oral performance in Roman culture and functioned as the primary means of communication between power brokers (bishops) and a wider society. The Christian sermon, drawn from Roman and Jewish precursors, acted as the primary vehicle for defining the limits of acceptable Christian practice to the non-elite populace. Any Christianization that occurred during the period was directed at least in part by the sermons of Christian leaders. Yet the sermons contain information about much more than Christian doctrine and practice. Reflective of social and cultural concerns, the sermons are perhaps one of the best, largely untapped, gateways into the social reality of late antiquity. Chromatius sought to develop virtues in his listeners through his sermons by providing moral examples to follow aside from the expected doctrinal, liturgical, and practical guidance. As this article will examine, he also explained his version of Christian history, not in a systemic manner like Eusebius or Rufinus, but more ad hoc. Although he dealt with many of the same topics, his words functioned differently than historians’ words. The nature of the sermon, when viewed as an act of oral performance and not merely written text, allowed for the creation of a defining narrative about heresy.Footnote 8 The group's cohesion that could be produced around such a narrative gave Chromatius, in his role as bishop, the authority to act in a new way for what was perceived to be the dawn of a new age.
I. A History of Pre-Gothic Western Arianism
An understanding of Chromatius's sermons hinges on the presence of any “Arian” groups in Aquileia during Chromatius's episcopate. Although the specific history of Aquileia in regards to Arian groups is uncertain, the history of such factions in the region is clearer. The dispute over the deity of Jesus began and was always strongest in the Eastern, Greek part of the Empire. The language divide between Greek and Latin seems to have prevented the clash over doctrinal statements from reaching the western Mediterranean world until 340, some fifteen years after the council of Nicaea. In that year the exiled Athanasius was accepted into communion at Rome. But even this fact and its fallout suggest that the dynamics of the conflict in the west were very distinct from those in the east. While the Greek church focused on doctrinal statements and the relationship of the person of Christ to the godhead, the western churches led by the bishop of Rome and Hilary of Poitiers were more overtly concerned with imperial and ecclesiastical power dynamics. The demands that the western churches sent to the Greek and Egyptian churches centered on the exile of bishops and rights of judgment and precedence, not the signing of doctrinal statements. While the eastern conflict certainly involved a battle over rights and authority, the western approach to the Arian clash had no doctrinal robe to cover the naked power struggle that occurred in the fourth century. Hilary of Poitiers admitted as much when he stated that he had never heard of the creed of the council of Nicaea prior to his exile in 355.Footnote 9 While perhaps an exaggeration, it does confirm that the doctrinal debate was largely lost on the west in favor of more practical concerns over power.Footnote 10
The importation of the controversy to the west seems to have come as part of an imperial attempt to unify the empire under one form of Christianity. Noting how western churches were often refuges for exiled bishops, Constantius, upon his acquisition of the western half of the empire following the death of his brother in 350, called two councils in Arles and Milan in 353 and 355, respectively. These councils forced western bishops to accept an Arian creed from the Council of Sirmium (351) and to condemn eastern Nicene bishops, most notably Athanasius.Footnote 11 Most western bishops acquiesced though a few refused and were condemned, including Libanius of Rome and Hilary of Poitiers. Hilary's apology seems to confirm that his major objection was not the creed (though he does expound on that issue at length), but rather the imperial interference in ecclesiastical matters.Footnote 12 Nonetheless, these councils led to the installation of “Arian” bishops in western sees, most notably in the person of Auxentius of Milan, bishop from 355 to 374. Fortunatianus, bishop of Aquileia in the middle of the fourth century, may also have held Arian sympathies and promoted the theology, though the record is unclear and based mainly on one remark by Jerome.Footnote 13 Whatever the case, the spread of Arianism seems to have been a top down affair and limited in scope.
We come now to the lifetime of Chromatius. Chromatius first came to prominence as the head of a proto-ascetic community which gathered from 369 to 372.Footnote 14 Jerome claimed in 374 that this group ended Arianism in Aquileia when he wrote to Chromatius, “It was through you that the poison of the Arian heresy was formerly banished from your city.”Footnote 15 Although no independent evidence suggests that Arianism was flourishing at the time and it is not impossible (or unlikely) that Jerome could have been exaggerating the circumstances, his comment, however, does suggest that Arians were active in the city at some point around the middle of the century. Chromatius's role suggests a familiarity with ecclesiastical affairs from at least the 360s onward.
While Chromatius's life as a priest is lost to us (with the exception of baptizing Rufinus in 369), he first speaks in the historical record at the Council of Aquileia. The council, held in September of 381, was called by the western emperor Gratian at the behest of Ambrose. Occurring some two months after the Council of Constantinople, the councils have been presented by some as twin pillars in the triumph of the Nicene camp over Arianism, and indeed many major studies of the Arian controversy abruptly end their narratives in 381 with the councils.Footnote 16 Yet this interpretation of the councils does not reflect the issues on the ground on two counts. First, “Arians”—be they Arian, Eunomian, Photian, or other variation of non-Nicene Christians—did not cease to exist or advocate for their position. In the east, these communities continued to live, move, and act for many years as evidenced by the ecclesiastical history of Philostorgius. In the west, the council of Aquileia was called not to put an end to a heretical group, but to condemn particular bishops whom Ambrose had singled out. The witness of Jerome seven years earlier to the extinction of the group in Aquileia is proof enough of the contrived nature of the council. Indeed, it might even be misleading to call Aquileia a council as the number of attendees was less than three dozen.Footnote 17 The council functioned basically as a trap set by Ambrose of Milan for Bishop Palladius of Ratiaria, a leading proponent of late fourth-century Arianism. Ambrose presided over the council, which consisted almost entirely of Nicene bishops. The outcome was less a defeat of Arianism than an admission that the group was already dying in the west.Footnote 18 Ambrose led the council and in a single day had Palladius declared anathema. Chromatius's words are found twice in the record of the council, both times accusing Palladius of denying “everything which the Catholic faith professes.”Footnote 19 Chromatius's presence and speaking role as a presbyter demonstrates his involvement with theological controversies of his day and suggests he was already being groomed for the bishopric he would inherit seven years later.Footnote 20
Aside from the political conflicts of Ambrose with Justina, the empress in Milan in 386, after this point Arians do not appear in western sources other than in their generic association with barbarians. Even in the final gasp of Arianism in the west in 386, when the Empress demanded the usage of a church for Arians, the association with Ulfila the Goth and the role of Gothic soldiers gave the sect an ethnic quality in the surviving sources. In the west, writers presented Arianism as an outsiders’ sect. Eastern Greek speakers and Gothic soldiers were the primary targets of rhetorical attacks during the confrontation.Footnote 21 The developing conflation of Arianism with “barbarian” ethnic identity in the literature coincided with the loss of imperial support, though this might be a chicken/egg situation. In 388, the empress Justina was forced to seek the favor of Theodosius, and in so doing ended her support of Arians in Milan. Several different motives are attributed to Theodosius and Justina, but the outcome was that Arianism ceased to enjoy any imperial patronage.Footnote 22 With a loss of political support, the sect, in terms of its ability to defend itself and continue on an institutional level, sputtered out practically overnight.Footnote 23 Never as widespread at the popular level in the west as in the eastern half of the empire, the loss of patronage was fatal for the movement.Footnote 24 After the events of 388, Christian authors, who had major motivation for moving to marginalize it, treated Arianism as an ethnic religion, unique to soldiers and their families.
From this brief overview, it seems reasonable to conclude that the presence of Arian Christians in Aquileia at the end of the fourth century was limited if not non-existent. Much of this argument about the rhetorical convention of heresy is predicated on the belief that rival groups did not actually inhabit the same urban space. Chromatius might have dealt with competing Christianities earlier in his life as a priest in Aquileia, but by the time of his episcopate, any formal divergence within the city from his form of Nicene Christianity was minimal.Footnote 25 Of course, this explanation has left some scholars understandably dissatisfied. How could a Christian group cease to exist practically overnight? If Chromatius was faced with rival claimants for his congregants or churches, his rhetoric could be interpreted very differently. And in fact, this question has affected the work of several scholars. While Joseph Lemarié and Roger Étaix accepted a decline, if not erasure, of Arians in the region of Aquileia, Yves-Marie Duval and Françoise Thelamon, among others, have suggested that Arians were still present and active in the region and city, even if lacking an earlier vitality.Footnote 26 Their point follows from a growing trend to reinterpret statements that have traditionally been understood as anti-Jewish rhetoric as intra-Christian rhetoric.Footnote 27 Might Chromatius's repeated focus on the unbelief of the Jews in the divinity of Christ be implicitly attacking Arians in Aquileia and not Jews? This approach would result in a very different way of interpreting Chromatius's sermons. Instead of being focused on other religions in the city, he might be purely battling other Christian groups. While I sympathize with this reading of anti-Jewish texts and think it can be a fruitful avenue to pursue in other places, based on the textual and archeological evidence of Aquileia, it seems that the Jewish community in the city was not insignificant at the time, but rather had a long history and a standing synagogue.Footnote 28 If the Jewish rhetoric cannot be interpreted as aimed at heretics, the annihilation of any Arian group in Aquileia becomes more likely. Chromatius actively attacked Jews with his anti-Jewish rhetoric, without using them as a rhetorical stand-in for alternate Christianities. In fact his rhetoric did the opposite, using the history of heresies past as an argument against the Jews in his city.
A point of warning is useful here. It can become all too tempting to fall into a teleological approach with Chromatius's sermons. It is possible that he did fear the return to Aquileia of the most widespread alternative church of the fourth century. From the position of the twenty-first century, the Trinitarian controversies can seem natural and conclusive, but from Chromatius's position, the Nicene question was only as settled as the belief of the current emperor. While he was condemning a defunct group, Chromatius might have viewed his words as reinforcing a wall of separation which kept abstract evils at bay. The rhetoric of the sermons could act as an inoculation against other Christianities while also growing the powerful standing of the bishop in Aquileia.
II. References to Heresy in the Sermons of Chromatius
While there are numerous references to “heretics” vaguely construed, specific citations of other groups are rare and usually associated with a particular point of doctrine that Chromatius emphasized. For instance, he used Photinus as a placeholder to designate a person who fails to confess both natures of Christ:
Otherwise we cannot be saved, unless we believe in both natures of Christ. Consequently, not a few heretics who confess only the humanity of Christ, denying his divinity, such as Photinus, hold his feet but do not possess his head, because they have lost the head of their faith. But we hold rightly to both things in Christ, because we confess both sides.Footnote 29
Here, heresy functioned as a rhetorical tool for the listening audience. By associating a name, and a name within memory for Chromatius, with the doctrine denoted as false, he gave the doctrine extra resonance. He also preserved the name of the defeated opponent of the church, though stripped of its original stance and doctrine. The sermon also emphasized the will of the church to fight for the “right” belief. He presented a similar aside in a sermon dedicating relics of St. Thomas in a newly built church: “Yet while Thomas proved by the sight of his eyes and the touch of his hands that Christ had been resurrected in the body, neither Marcion nor the Manicheans wanted to believe the Lord was raised in his body. But what did Thomas say after he felt the hand of the Lord? ‘My Lord and My God.’”Footnote 30 Here again, heretics were presented in essentialized form as a passing aside, making two very distinct thinkers into two opponents of the church that sound similar. The defeat of perceived attacks of heretics served to confirm the truth of the church. For this reason, the institutional church had to preserve the history of heretics as a justification for its present claims and future goals.
The only direct mention of Arius comes in a sermon on the apostle John. Chromatius said, “Arius filled himself with bitterness by not believing that the Son proceeded from the Father.”Footnote 31 As we will see, the trope of a heretic corrupting his own person was very common in Chromatius's sermons. What is interesting in this particular context is that the previous sentence makes a similar complaint about Photinus: “Photinus, who denied that Christ is God, was full of bitterness.”Footnote 32 Throughout his sermons Chromatius consistently presented heretics as static, with unchanging essences, much as other patristic writers had approached Judaism.Footnote 33 While this tactic may have functioned as a rhetorical device to deny intellectual legitimacy to other Christianities, the approach also served to connect groups that disagreed vehemently under a single label of heresy. While Chromatius did encounter “heretics” earlier in his life, he minimized the doctrinal development of these alternative Christianities. He put little space between Arius and Photinus, for example, focusing simply on their denial of Christ's divinity. As mentioned previously, he did the same thing with Marcion and Mani, two very divergent writers. By eliminating any discussion of the actual beliefs of other Christianities, Chromatius controlled the discourse about them.
One place where Chromatius's critique of Arians, the group with which he seems to have had the most personal experience, appears in the sermons is in his references to the trinity. Of course, not every mention of the trinity or the divinity of Christ should be read as a critique of Arianism. On certain occasions, however, the language surrounding the doctrine was clearly set in opposition to alternative perspectives without naming them. For instance, twice while explaining baptism Chromatius explicitly noted the necessity of belief in the trinity. “No true baptism, nor remission of sins, is present where the truth of the trinity is not. Nor can the remission of sins be given if one does not believe in the perfection of the trinity.”Footnote 34 Groups that differed from Chromatius's church on the issue of the trinity and the divinity of Christ were presented as lacking salvific power. The doctrine of the trinity bestowed an authority on Chromatius, an authority that empowered him to forgive sins. Again in another sermon: “We are unable to be cleansed or purified from sin except by the mystery of the trinity.”Footnote 35 While not explicitly mentioning Arius or Arians in these sermons, the sermons seem to reference the debates of the previous decades. Baptism performed by a group other than the church holding authority in Aquileia, namely Chromatius's, was invalid and useless.
Related to this point, Chromatius mentioned Arian groups indirectly once more in relation to the trinity. He said: “This cord of three undoubtedly represents the trinity, which cannot be broken because faith in the trinity is incorruptible. This is the faith that heretics frequently tried to corrupt; but they corrupted only themselves. True faith in the trinity must necessarily remain uncorrupted. As Solomon rightly said, ‘A triple cord cannot be corrupted.’”Footnote 36 Chromatius took liberty with the passage from Ecclesiastes, replacing the Vulgate's rumpere (to break) with corrumpere (to corrupt). His choice reveals a common presentation of heretics by Chromatius: their assault on the supposedly pure and uniform nature of the true church. Heretics were presented as those who tried to tear people away from the true church and sought to corrupt the unity of faith that reigned prior to their attacks. This “history” of heresy was based on a dialectical narrative of uniformity and corruption. While Chromatius certainly affirmed that heresy corrupts the individual, he most often presented the motive of heretics as an attempt to corrupt the wider church. In the previous quotation, while Chromatius remembered heretics as those that tried to corrupt what was once pure, namely the church as a body, they only managed to destroy their own selves. The rhetoric implied that heresy pits the individual against the corporate body. The sermons always presented the church as a community, whereas heretics were individuals attempting to pry people away.
Among other descriptions, Chromatius managed to call heretics “bitter,” “corrupt,” and “poisoned.” All of these character traits fit the paradigm Chromatius was advancing, namely that heresy functioned as an attempt to destroy the true faith. Speaking of the apostle John, Chromatius noted:
[T]hose who receive the words of John in a wicked sense rouse the bitterness of heresy for they turn the sweetness of faith into the bitterness of treachery. That is why these are shown to be in the mouth and those in the intestines. In the mouth are the Catholics, whom God blesses; in the stomach are heretics from which they are expelled.Footnote 37
Apart from the descriptive language of heretics being separated from the body in a scatological fashion, Chromatius was careful to frame the actions of heretics as a response to the church, not as equal movements. He constructed heresies as new movements departing from the established faith. Heretics were presented as innovators, departing from that which was believed already by everyone.Footnote 38 Of course, this particular section was likely a veiled reference to Arius. The Latin historian Rufinus, who wrote his Ecclesiastical History in Aquileia in 402 at the behest (and probably by the patronage) of Chromatius, recorded the story of Arius's death. He wrote:
Arius, hemmed in by a crowd of bishops and laity, was making his way to the church when he turned aside as a call of nature to a public facility. And when he sat down, his intestines and all his innards slipped down into the privy drain, and thus it was in such a place that he met a death worthy of his foul and blasphemous mind.Footnote 39
Chromatius's passing attack on Arius served to reinforce the notion that heretics were corrupt and rotting from the inside, destined to die in ignoble fashion. One can imagine that Chromatius's sermon might have provoked laughter at the passing reference to Arius's ironic death.Footnote 40 But the legend and popularization of the tale reinforced the central narrative about heresy: heretics, corrupt in their actual bodies, introduced discord and disease into the formerly healthy body of the Christian church.
III. Memory, Heresy, and Forgetting: Heresiological Discourses
Before returning to the sermons of Chromatius and his approach to heresy, it is useful to consider the ways that rhetoric about heresy functioned in this period. Numerous scholars have pointed out that the label of heresy is constructed and applied by the dominant power structure and, indeed, cannot even exist without such a power structure.Footnote 41 As Talal Asad wrote in a piece on medieval religion, “‘[h]eresy’ is first and foremost the product of a power process.”Footnote 42 Certainly no one thinks of him or herself as a heretic; the label is only applied pejoratively. This is not to say that valid doctrinal differences do not exist. Rather, the discourse about right and wrong belief under the label of heretical reveals the power structure and its goals. Ecclesial leaders construct the authority and “truth” of their church by proving the ability to define those outside and punish them.Footnote 43 And so the study of heresy has become a study of the discourse that branded certain groups as heresies.
Averil Cameron goes further in her most recent works on the subject. She suggests that attempts to employ the term “heresy” must also reflect intent to construct orthodoxy and render it normative.Footnote 44 That is, presenting difference and division as deviant not only implies a unity but also renders uniformity as normative. The continuation of these labels, long after they lose any relevance, serves to reinforce the supposed historical narrative. This approach to the relationship of heresy and orthodoxy follows from the work of Michel Foucault who quite eloquently challenged the traditional notions of power in the following terms: “We must cease once and for all to describe the effects of power in negative terms: it ‘excludes,’ it ‘represses,’ it ‘censors,’ it ‘abstracts,’ it ‘masks,’ it ‘conceals.’ In fact, power produces; it produces reality; it produces domains of objects and rituals of truth.”Footnote 45 By deploying ecclesiastical power to demonize opponents, even just the memory of these opponents, bishops and preachers created a dichotomy that framed one side, “orthodoxy,” as tradition, and the other, “heresy,” as innovation.
Chromatius and others of his period constructed orthodoxy not simply by drawing a line in the sand, but by moving the goalposts. Difference of opinion was framed as an innovation, unity being preexistent. The definition of orthodoxy as “that which has always been believed” was a backward projection based explicitly on the label of heresy. A history of heresy suggested an ideal unified past that “orthodoxy” could then claim. Without a history of heresy, there could be no history for orthodoxy. Thus, the existence of different groups within the Christian tradition was presented as a step away from the norm, a norm Chromatius projected as far back as the New Testament. The orthodox Christian constructed a narrative of uniformity as a foil for the heretic. In addition, toleration of other groups would have no history either, rendering toleration as an innovation. The suggestion that heresy was a corruption of an earlier established unity is inherent in this rhetoric.
For instance, Chromatius remembered heretics as part of a genealogy of heresy. Like Eusebius and other earlier writers, Chromatius tended to present all heresies as connected and similar, if not in doctrine, then in intent.Footnote 46 In doing so, he intentionally forgot the past in order to frame the present. By remembering heretics and presenting their history in a certain manner, he chose to forget other aspects of their context, character, and past. This act of remembrance was then transmitted to his congregation and settled into a socialized collective memory. Of course, these choices need not happen consciously to create the same result.Footnote 47 The placement of particular groups into a larger schema of history forgets the notable similarities and differences between them, essentializing both sides of the debate. Thus, Chromatius's sermons, although doing a similar job to Eusebius, Rufinus, and other historical writers of the period, could create social memories quicker in a large group. As aptly captured in a modern critique, “social memory, then, is articulate[d] memory.”Footnote 48 The remembrance of all heretics as sharing certain characteristics forgets the passions that gave rise to the debates. Finally, the remembrance of a unity in the original church forgets the vast differences and divisions that were normal in the history of Christians and Christian communities since their beginning.Footnote 49 For this reason, much like the cult of the saints or martyrs, the maintenance and construction of memories and histories of “heresy” is important for the ecclesiastical institution. Chromatius's acts of social memory, both those he constructed and those he drew from popular anecdotes, resulted in the placement of the local church in Aquileia into the long spectrum of Christian “orthodoxy.”
Chromatius explicitly invoked the names of Arius and Photinus in one sermon, while elsewhere he mentioned Manicheans and Marcion.Footnote 50 Contemporary groups and those long past were treated in the same manner, all cited in the past tense thereby conveying a sense of finality to their objections. This approach, which treated conflict as a problem somewhere else, seems to confirm that the ecclesiastical situation in Aquileia was without significant division during Chromatius's tenure. Yet a lack of disagreement did not stop Chromatius from condemning heretics. The continued propagation of anti-heretical discourse reinforced the authority of Chromatius as bishop to arbitrate religious matters in Aquileia. The history invoked suggested that orthodoxy was normative. Division, dissent, and deviation from the normative, orthodox church were rebellions against the proper authorities. Chromatius presented his church to the citizens of Aquileia as a home of stability and a sanctuary from innovation and revolution. Only by instituting this unity could stability reign in the city. From his argument about heretics past, Chromatius could advance an argument about other religions present in the city.
IV. Chromatius's History of Heresy
Of course, this approach to heresy is not unique to Chromatius. It can be found even in the book of Acts, which Chromatius used precisely to that end. The idea of uniformity, without dissension, as a norm in earlier history is quite present. More than once in his sermons Chromatius quoted the passage from Acts 4:32 affirming that “all the believers were one in heart and mind.”Footnote 51 He suggested that there was a “natural” state of the church that had been lost or corrupted. He admitted that his church failed to live up to this standard, but that Christians should be “strangers to envy, to discord, to dissension.”Footnote 52 Unity is presented as the hallmark of the true church in stark contrast to those who dissent or sow discord. With heretics consistently presented as a corruption, the contrast between the “heretics” who rebelled against the settled “orthodox” will quickly be apparent. By preserving memories of heretics, and remembering them as rebels who failed, Chromatius remembered a unified church in an original pristine state. Heresy was remembered as both morally deviant and a deviance from the norm.
Chromatius reinforced a false memory of those who seduced believers from the church in an extended metaphor from a sermon on Matthew 6. “Bad are the eyes of those whose mind is on wicked things and whose faith is perverse; who walk not in light, but in darkness . . . if the teacher is perverse and has been a heretic, he is clearly a teacher of this kind, his life an example of his infidelity.”Footnote 53 Here Chromatius began his sermon with an attack on heretics, which reinforced their corrupted nature. Yet, as the sermon continued, he associated those who walk in darkness with the devil, and the devil with an unusual interpretation of Jeremiah 17:11 that he might have borrowed from Ambrose or Origen:
For it is written: “The Partridge will cry and gather together those little ones who were not her own; but in the last days, they will abandon it and in the end she will be a fool.” But we ought to know why the devil is called a partridge. The partridge, namely the earthly bird, attracts the chicks of another with its seductive voice and boasts of these young birds that belong to another, as if they were her own young. But as soon as these same seduced little ones recognize the voice of their true parent, at once they leave the false father and follow the true parent.Footnote 54
While Chromatius did not explicitly call “heretics” partridges, earlier in the sermon he did equate both with the devil and with those who walk in darkness. For a listener, the connection would have been obvious. Heretics, led by the master of heretics, seduce children away from their true home. The true home had to pre-exist the false nest in this analogy. Not only was orthodoxy superior to heresy, but it existed prior to the heresy and was presented as the original. Describing heresy as a copy implied that there must be a true, pure original from which to steal.
Another example of this narrative is found in Chromatius's most well-known sermon, On the Eight Beatitudes: “[P]eacemakers are those who . . . corrected the rebellious ways of the heretics, and who made unity and peace out of the discord within the Church.”Footnote 55 Here, heretics were designated rebels. Rising up against the proper authority, heretics were presented as a threat to the true faith of the church. Those who rebel lack legitimacy, while the established powers have the authority to put down rebellions. Opposed to these rebels were those who created unity and peace in the face of discord. Again, Chromatius constructed orthodoxy around the central narrative of unity and pre-existence, by “remembering” that heretics introduced discord into a previously unified body.
The emphasis on heretics introducing division was fleshed out in a sermon on the word “Alleluia.” There, Chromatius suggested that the word “Alleluia” means “Lord, bless us all together” in the Hebrew.Footnote 56 Based on this reading he emphasized that heretics, being essentially divisive, could not properly claim or use the word. Going further, Chromatius linked those who departed or divided the church with the author of division, the devil:
The response of Alleluia does not belong to heretics, or schismatics, or all the opponents of the unity of the church . . . It is the property of Christ to gather into unity; the devil scatters to diverse places. Therefore, whoever loves the unity of the Church follows Christ. Whoever delights in division follows the devil because the author of division is the devil . . . . For that reason we ought to shun and avoid discord, of which we know the devil is the author. Instead we should follow the peace and unity of the church so that we are able to respond rightly, and with merit, “Alleluia,” which means “Lord, bless us all together.”Footnote 57
Once again, he suggested that division was only a reaction to unity. The narrative he presented was one of breakdown rather than upward movement, that is unity being created out of variety. Even though Christ gathered into unity, the emphasized action was the scattering and dividing executed by the devil. Also here, the vague category of heretic and schismatic (which notably does not otherwise appear in Chromatius's sermons) was equated with “all the opponents of the church.” We should note also the beginning of a shift to expand the argument about ecclesiastical authority beyond intra-Christian disputes. The usage of the satanic persona to denote anyone who infringes on the unity of the church, the supposedly natural state established by Christ himself, developed the authority of the bishop. As the protector of his flock, Chromatius could claim authority over any religious group that threatened the unity of the church, be they other Christians or not.
Here the context of Aquileia—particularly the absence of any Arian or other Christian group in active opposition to Chromatius's church—is important. The excessive rhetoric on the nature of heretics as corrupted, poisonous, and divisive seems out of touch with an environment that was experiencing no present problems of this type. A connection between the rhetoric and the reality must exist. Religious rhetoric, as any symbolic language, must be able to convey meaning to its receivers and thus be rooted in a phenomenological reality. The fact that Arians were not present in Aquileia may provide a clue to the rhetoric. As noted earlier, rhetoric against Jews in late antiquity seems to have been intended very often for other Christian groups. In this instance, the opposite situation might have been taking place. The rhetoric about heretics and the victory of the church in restoring unity may be intended for those beyond the Christian community. At a moment when a single empire-wide form of Christianity had emerged as dominant and was supported by imperial power, Chromatius might represent a shift from trying to dominate Christian circles to wielding authority in a wider realm. The newly constructed narrative which advocated unity under the umbrella of the church based on the victories over heresies could be deployed as a credibility statement on the truth of the “orthodox” church. Based on this victory, Chromatius could reasonably have claimed to control all religious activity in Aquileia in order to assert “normative” unity not only among Christians, but within the entire religious space of Aquileia. Having established his credentials as the most powerful man in the religious arena, Chromatius could draw the rewards of power, which are wealth and authority, into his church. The argument of unity under the control of the bishop would be crucial to carrying forward a project of Christianization.
One clear connection that appears in the sermons is between heretics and Jews.Footnote 58 Because Arians and Jews shared a denial of the divinity of Christ, Chromatius had no trouble linking the two communities together in his rhetoric. For instance, in a sermon on the expulsion of traders from the Temple in John 2, Chromatius adopted an interpretation from Origen for the whip Jesus made, saying:
In that whip of cords is signified, according to what Solomon tells us, “A cord of three is not easily broken.” This cord of three undoubtedly represents the Trinity, which cannot be broken because faith in the Trinity is incorruptible. This is the faith that the heretics frequently tried to corrupt; but they corrupted only themselves.Footnote 59
Chromatius easily suggested that the physical whip Jesus made of three cords acted as the purifying force of the trinity. Chromatius framed the very thing that the heretics denied as their punishment; however, he tied the anti-heretical language into an older tradition: anti-Jewish polemic. The very next passage reveals the focus of the whip of three: the synagogue.
So with such a whip of cords all those . . . who conduct themselves in a manner prohibited are condemned by none other than the ruling trinity . . . The chairs of the Synagogue have been destroyed so that the chairs of the Church can be sanctified in Christ. The priestly honor has been removed from the Synagogue and given to the Church. For the Synagogue no longer merits to possess the priestly duty because it did not receive the Lord Christ, namely the chief priest.Footnote 60
Chromatius linked the Jewish rejection of Christ with the attempt of heretics to corrupt belief in the trinity. While the suggestion that Christianity superseded Judaism was normal in Christian writings of the time, the link between the actions of Jews and heretics on this doctrinal point suggests a connection in the rhetorical discourse as well. The labeling of heresy demonstrated the authority of the bishop in Aquileia. Chromatius, by virtue of his position, had the authority to condemn other Christian groups. By linking Jews with other Christian factions, he mixed what typically is thought of as different categories, heresies or sects and religions. A connection or break down of the categories would bring Jews into a Christian realm, making them much like other Christian groups. By thinking of Jews within the category of “heretics,” even if not equating the two, Chromatius could begin to extend the power of orthodoxy.
The connection between Jews and heretics is demonstrated in another passage, this time from a sermon on Psalm 14:1: “The fool has said in his heart there is no God.” Chromatius, in an audacious but unsurprising interpretation, interpreted the Jews and heretics as the subjects of this passage. Both groups rejected the Nicene position on the trinity. In the second paragraph, Chromatius said:
In short, as it is said in the tenth psalm of the persona of the people of the church, “In the Lord,” he says, “I put my trust; how can you say to my soul: flee to the mountain like a bird,” in the sparrow is signified a transgressor or apostate, who left the house of God, which is the church . . . The Jewish people had done so a while ago, who left the temple of God, which was at Jerusalem, to offer sacrifices in the mountains, as the prophetic scriptures reveal.Footnote 61
Although the term heretic does not appear in this particular passage, the Jews were connected with apostates who leave the church. Again, Chromatius expanded the category of problematic Christians to include Jews. The unity of the church, which was paramount for the sustained power of orthodoxy, could be threatened by those who leave or opt out. Chromatius's authority over Jews was not the same as over those who identified as Christians. But if the categories could be merged, or more correctly, if Judaism could be subsumed under the category of heresy, then Chromatius's authority to direct religious life, won through battles over no longer extant Christian groups, would apply.
The direct connection can be seen again in the end of the passage about Arius and his infamous passing. Immediately following his point about the expulsion of heretics from the intestines, Chromatius continued:
Arius filled himself with bitterness by not believing that the Son proceeded from the Father . . . . All heretics, who attack or destroy the faith of his preaching, are filled with bitterness according to John. Saint John intends the sweetness of his preaching for Catholics but the bitterness for heretics. He intends the sweetness for the faith of the church, bitterness for the treachery of the synagogue, which did not want to receive the preaching of John.Footnote 62
Chromatius connected the bitterness of Arius, which resulted in his ironic but fitting death, with the synagogue. Both groups suffered from the same disease. Their rejection of the “true” preaching by “orthodox” Christians signified by John and contained in Chromatius's church resulted in their bitterness. The synagogue, described as treacherous, was presented as possessing similar characteristics to those of the heretics: rebellious, corrupting, and poisonous. Chromatius managed to neatly create a category of treacherous, corrupting, embittered groups that threaten the unity of the church with division, discord and deviance. Never minding that Arius and the groups identified with him had vanished from Aquileia, Chromatius continued to maintain the history of heresy in such a way that validated his own church's authority in religious realms even beyond other Christian groups. A history of Arians (and Jews) as rebelling against or departing from the true church of God promoted the notion that orthodoxy and the unity it commanded was the normative position, not one constructed by power dynamics of the fourth century.
V. Conclusion: The Author(ity) of Orthodoxy
Chromatius's continuous application of labels of heresy reflected a essentializing of other Christianities by his version of orthodoxy. But even more than dominating these groups and suggesting the boundaries of permissible belief, practice, and adherence, Chromatius was narrating a history that created orthodoxy and heresy. Most clearly it was done by “remembering” the bitter rebellions of heretics from the original church. This history of heresy implied a pre-existent body that orthodoxy claimed as its own.Footnote 63 In one sermon, Chromatius claimed that:
At first, after the ascension of the Lord, the church was few in number. But afterwards, it developed until it filled the entire world, not just the cities but the many nations. It is believed among the Persians, it is believed in India, it is believed in the entire world. It is neither the fear of the sword, nor the fear of the emperor that has brought all these nations to adore Christ; rather faith in Christ has rendered them peaceful.Footnote 64
Chromatius emphasized the universal quality of the church along with the subjection of the world into a peaceful unity. As a description of orthodoxy, this passage stresses the agreement on matters of faith and practice, not by imperial fiat but by common consent. This approach stands in sharp contrast to what might be expected. Considering that Theodosius issued more than one injunction against pagans and heretics from Aquileia, including the famous law that resulted in the closing of the Serapeum in 391, it would not be surprising if Chromatius took a Eusebian approach and claimed victory based on the support of the emperor.Footnote 65 Yet, Chromatius's narrative took pains to connect the currently held beliefs with those of the original members of the church following the ascension, openly rebuking those who looked to the emperor for victory. The emphasis on unity, founded prior to any noted dissent, empowered the “orthodox” church as authoritative whatever the political situation might be.
Chromatius's sermons constructed orthodoxy as a preexistent state. Labels of “heresy” were not applied in a vacuum. They carried memory and history, reflecting institutional power. Chromatius of Aquileia drew from his own personal battles with Arians as memories of heresy. These memories presented “orthodoxy,” represented by Chromatius's church, as normative and possessing a longer history than any contrived “heresy.” The doctrinal debate, while allowing for a pedagogical moment in the sermon, was not as important as the ability to point to an “orthodoxy” which was preexistent. In Aquileia, Chromatius was attempting to confront pagans and Jews with the reality that his church had become the dominant religion. By presenting heretics as defeated rebels, he could claim that unity, not a divided city, was the norm. He suggested that any threat to that unity, be it heretical or non-Christian, was a danger, and in so doing began to collapse the categories of “heretic” and “non-Christian.” The city ought to reflect its church and also seek increasing unity under a single religious umbrella, not tolerance of diverse practices. Chromatius's sermons reflected the growing size and power of an institutional church in his attempts to dominate the urban religious space. His rhetoric is indicative of a shift from a private, pluralistic religious arena to the monolithic, highly public medieval one. Chromatius created a power structure with the bishop at the head, battling perceived threats by drawing on his interpretation of Christian history, not unlike an Eusebius of Rufinus. The memory of fourth century intra-Christian battles as presented in his sermons constructed a “return” to orthodoxy. In short, the history of Arians in Aquileia made orthodoxy authoritative.
