The late fourth century has sometimes been described as an “identity crisis” for antique Roman civilization.[1] The edicts of Constantine and the emperors which followed him disrupted the very fabric of western society, creating both opportunities for upward mobility and social change, as well as an alternative to the pagan values which maintained peace both at home and abroad. As more and more aristocrats from provincial and military background ascended the ranks towards nobilitas, the girth of clarissimi and their respective culture began to conform more and more to Imperial prerogatives, so that, by the mid 390s, organic social networks combined with imperial incentives to persuade the senatorial aristocracy to take upon themselves the mantel of Christianity.[2] This process was so complete (and the Christianization of the aristocracy so profound) that Gratian and Theodosius I after him were able to openly (though, perhaps, not indiscriminately) advance anti-pagan policy, styling the Empire as a thoroughly “Christian” enterprise. However, as the aristocracy began to become more “Christianized,” Christian theologians likewise began to become more “aristocratic.” The result of this cross-cultural pollination was the Jovinian Controversy. In this article, I hope to briefly examine some of Michele Salzman’s research on the Christianization of the Roman Aristocracy, so that we might have a better appreciation for some of the events that happen in the Jovinian Controversy. First I will summarize Salzman’s research (or as much of it as is relevant for our purposes here). Then I will attempt to cross the divide, clarifying the implications her research has for any adequate understanding of Jovinian and his opponents.

The end of the fourth century, particularly beginning with the accession of Gratian in 374, can be considered something of a turning point for Christianity’s relations with the Roman Empire and its Senate. In her book The Making of a Christian Aristocracy: Social and Religious Change in the Western Roman Empire, Michele Salzman outlines a very gradual model of roman conversions.[3] Hardly the “top-down” approach that had been favored by most earlier scholars, Salzman advocates for an approach to Christianization which puts the senatorial aristocracy at the center of the equation.

These wealthy aristocrats, who were the primary agents for spreading Roman culture, were not so easily swayed by Imperial incentives for conversion as had at one time been supposed. Rather than immediately licking the heel of Constantine I and his Christian successors, these elites (especially in Rome) had to be persuaded that their desires for peer approval and honor (and even moreso, their prestigious amounts of wealth) were not going to be forcefully torn from their sides and counted as “loss” for the kingdom of heaven.[4] Furthermore, paganism was very entrenched into the senatorial aristocrat’s home-life, familial and political traditions, and overall psyche. Christianity was not seen as immediately superior to a fragile, mundane antiquated pagan ritualism: rather, Roman paganism was a meaningful way for these aristocrats to accrue honor, while likewise ensuring the stability of the Roman state.[5] Furthermore, the elite networks of friendships and patronages which were essential for aristocratic life depended on a common belief system: amicitia was guided by principles of “spiritual unity[,] harmony of interest, reciprocity and sharing.”[6]

These factors limited the overall influence of Christianity on the Roman aristocracy for most of apostolic times, as well as into the age of the apologists. However, as Constantine enlarged and diversified the aristocracy, social mobility for provincial elites began to depend more and more on imperial favor, meaning that there were more incentives for wealthy land owners from Romanized Gaul and Spain to convert to Christianity (that is, if they wanted to achieve senatorial status).[7] And so, thus began the slow process of the Christianization of the aristocracy, though not particularly the aristocracy based in Rome (provincials could at times remain clarissmi while choosing to dwell on their own property). However, the aristocrats centered in Rome and their counterparts in Roman Africa, with their ancient traditions and authority that did not depend explicitly on Imperial policy (the Emperor depended as much on their approval as they did on his),[8] could afford to remain pagan for much longer.[9] In reality, we see that they were much more influenced by those same social networks on which they depended to receive their honor: and so, it was not through Imperial insistence but through personal relationships that they slowly began to abandon their pagan pasts and embrace the message of Christ’s Church.[10] In other words, “Christianity soon became a part of their common culture.”[11]

This had profound effects on the circumstances and outcome of the Jovinian Controversy. First of all, as David Hunter has proposed in his Marriage, Celibacy, and Heresy in Ancient Christianity: The Jovinian Controversy, this common cultural Christianity was the milieu in which Jovinian’s anti-ascetic teachings first took hold.[12] That is, Jovinian was a spokesman for one version of the aristocratic-Christian synthesis: a version which attempted to baptize Roman social ethics and present them as unopposed to the Christian witness. His teachings became so popular in Rome, as Siricius suggests, that his disciples were allowed to openly ridicule the ascetic vision in Roman churches.[13] As Jovinian leveled the charge of Manicheanism against anyone who showed themselves as sympathetic with rigorous diet or sexual renunciation (including the bishops of Rome and Milan), he identified himself with the heresiological tradition and “orthodox” men such as Irenaeus of Lyons and Epiphanius of Salamis; as he quoted at length from pagan philosophers and statesmen, he identified himself with the respectable traditions of the institutional Roman Senate and Roman value. In both respects, he attempted to appeal to the Roman aristocracy on a basic level, in order to promote his alternative to what he considered to be the heretical and impractical promotion of ascetic piety.

A second way in which Salzman’s research affects how we view the Jovinian Controversy is that it requires us, when dealing with Jovinian’s subsequent condemnation, to explain how an Emperor tied to Aristocratic favor would ever transgress the clearly popular opinions typified by Jovinian’s aristocratic-Christian synthesis. Hunter accounts for this, as well, though perhaps not as thoroughly as one might like.[14] The answer to this problem resides within the pioneering work of St. Jerome of Stridon, St. Ambrose of Milan, Paulinus of Nola, St. Augustine, Pelagius, and St. Siricius of Rome, as they attempted to present alternative visions for the synthesis of Aristocratic and Christian cultures.

To engage in an individual analysis of these great men and their ascetic visions would be a task far beyond my ability and the needs of this article.[15] It must rather suffice it to say that the main commonality in their writings, despite their variances, is this: they baptized the autocratic need for hierarchy and honor.[16] Rather than pursuing a worldly system of accruing honor by means of political and social favors, aristocrats could gain an even greater honor, a spiritual honor, by means of religious patronage.[17]By translating the Christian vision into categories compatible with, above all, nobilitas, ascetic Christianity ensured it’s subsequent triumph over Jovinian and his theory of a common heavenly reward.[18] In the words of Peter Brown, “Hierarchy, and not community, had become the order of the day.”[19]

This will have to suffice for a brief treatment of Salzman’s research and its effect on our understanding of the Jovinian Controversy. I hope to finish the paper I’m currently writing on it sometime in the near future, so that I might be able to move on to other pre-pelagian material before this summer comes to an end. But, until then, I suppose this will have to do.

[1] David G. Hunter, Marriage, Celibacy, and Heresy in Ancient Christianity: The Jovinian Controversy (Oxford University Press: Oxford, 2007),

[2] See the discussion in Michele Salzman’s The Making of a Christian Aristocracy: Social and Religious Change in the Western Roman Empire, (Harvard University Press: Cambridge, 2002), pp. 178-200.

[3] Salzman, The Making of a Christian Aristocracy, 1-18, esp. p. 5. Salzman’s conclusions are both praised and used by Elizabeth A. Clark and David G. Hunter (Elizabeth A. Clark, The Origenist Controversy: The Cultural Construction of an Early Christian Debate, (Princeton University Press: Princeton, 1992), 227 and Hunter, Marriage, Celibacy, and Heresey in Ancient Christianity, pp. 51-83). For a good evaluation of Salzman’s research, see Harold Allen Drake’s article, "The making of a Christian aristocracy: social and religious change in the Western Roman Empire" in Church History 73, no. 4. (2004), p. 834-835.

[4] Salzman, The Making of a Christian Aristocracy, 43 ff.

[5] Ibid, pp. 61-66.

[6] Ibid, 212.

[7] Ibid, 125 and 135. The same goes for aristocrats who were leading military figures.

[8] Ibid, 178.

[9] Ibid, 73-82, 93-96, 97.

[10] Ibid, 128 and 136.

[11] Ibid, 128.

[12] Hunter, Marriage, Celibacy, and Heresy in Ancient Christianity, pp. 51-74.

[13] See Siricius to the Church of Milan, 3.

[14] Hunter, Marriage, Celibacy, and Heresy in Ancient Christianity, pp. 74-83.

[15] For a comprehensive guide to Christian asceticism in late antiquity, see Peter Brown’s The Body and Society: Men, Women, and Sexual Renunciation in Early Christianity (Columbia University Press: New York, 1988), esp. pp. 341-427.

[16] Salzman, The Making of a Christian Aristocracy, pp. 202-205.

[17] The textbook case of this approach to the aristocrat-Christian translation can be found in many of the writings of Paulinus of Nola. See Brown, The Body and Society, pp. 384-385, and Salzman, The Making of a Christian Aristocracy, pp. 203-204.

[18] Compare Salzman, The Making of a Christian Aristocracy, pp. 213-218, with Hunter, Marriage, Celibacy, and Heresy in Ancient Christianity, 83, and Brown, The Body and Society, pp. 360-361.

[19] Brown, The Body and Society, 361.