“Diplomacy” and its cognates are words that are seldom found in the same sentence with the two figures who are at the center of this study. Despite all his other talents, Constantius II lacked the people skills that allowed his father, Constantine the Great, to finesse the power he exercised over Christian bishops, and the most famous sermon that John Chyrsostom delivered, as bishop of Constantinople, compared the empress Eudoxia to Herodias, the Gospel queen who sought the head of John the Baptist. But Walter Stevenson argues that both men were prescient in their grasp of the role their religion would play in the newly Christianized empire of the fourth century: Constantius in his use of Christian envoys, Chrysostom in looking to expand into non-Roman territory. Both methods would blossom in later centuries of the Byzantine empire.
In an introductory chapter, Stevenson distinguishes between diplomacy under the high empire and the type that would come to prevail in a Christianized empire. Where emperors like Augustus could rely on military superiority to exact tribute from foreign states, their successors in the late empire had to engage in more of a give-and-take with neighbors such as the Goths. Stevenson also uses this chapter to alert the reader to the problem of applying our modern ideas of “religion,” “secular,” and “church and state” to study of the ancient world.
Stevenson frames the next six chapters as case studies, three for each of his subjects. Two of the Constantius chapters (2, 4) focus primarily on steps this emperor took to promote Christianity in the ancient states of Himyar (Yemen) and Aksum (Ethiopia) in the southern reaches of the Red Sea (here and elsewhere a map would be helpful). Constantius's innovations range from using Christian clergy as emissaries to engaging in the “first imperially sponsored Christian mission” (20), with the aim of securing trade zones, curtailing the influence of Athanasius of Alexandria, and preparing for a campaign against Persia. Between these chapters, Stevenson turns to Constantius's efforts to control the episcopate, resulting in his “remarkable pacification of that novel, resourceful, and powerful institution” (41). In what Stevenson labels a “bishop management program,” Constantius innovated in two ways. First, he stopped the practice of exiling bishops to friendly pastures and instead made sure they were sent to territories where a hostile bishop would supervise their activity; second, he started the practice of making bishops sign credal statements even if they had not attended the councils that produced them. The program, he argues, was far more successful than realized, and only cut short by Constantius's death.
The three Chrysostom chapters are devoted to the bishop's interest in the spread of Christianity to peoples who were not Greek or Latin speakers. Stevenson argues that the bishop worked to create a church structure that would be subordinate to Constantinople in both the Goth-controlled lands to the north and the Persian empire in the east. Although the effort died with him, it amounts to the “first manifest efforts of the church to mix evangelism with international diplomacy” (124).
To emphasize Constantius and Chrysostom's innovations, Stevenson must minimize precedents set by others. Thus, he dismisses (in a note) the evangelizing letter to the Persian Shah included by Eusebius in his Life of Constantine (VC 4.9–13) on the grounds that Constantine's interest in Christians abroad “appears marginal at most” (156, n. 50), and he ignores signs that Constantine was himself preparing for war against Persia at the time of his death (VC 4.56). Similarly, Stevenson gives scant attention to Ulfilas (he prefers the Gothic spelling “Wulfila”), who was sent to evangelize the Goths around 340 and is usually credited with creating the alphabet for a Gothic bible—presumably because this would detract from Chrysostom's posited innovations.
Stevenson has read widely, and each chapter comes with a substantial bibliography (in lieu of a general bibliography at the end). But he builds his argument out of scattered pieces of evidence, some more convincing than others. Readers would do well to stay alert for strings of rhetorical questions that take the place of proof (for example, 131), and the way inferences that begin as speculations blossom into settled facts—for example, Chrysostom's alliance with two adversaries who in all likelihood hated his guts (112, 120). In any case, as Stevenson admits, his perceived initiatives were stillborn, and later emperors who (re)introduced such practices were unlikely even to have known of them. Accordingly, these parts of the book are best read as thought experiments.
Stevenson is at his best when he is not defending his thesis. Long sections are devoted to a wide range of topics, including an analysis of the logistics involved in shipping a gift of two hundred horses down the Red Sea (chap. 2), Sasanid religious policy (chap. 6), the role of religion in identity formation (chap. 7), criteria for studying Christian diplomacy (chap. 8), and the flowering of such diplomacy from Justinian to the creation of a Slavic “third Rome” after the fall of Constantinople in 1453 (chap. 9). This broad net insures that his book will have something for just about everybody.
