Breaking the Mind

1. The Romano-Persian Frontier and the Context of the Book of Steps

9 Geoffrey Greatrex 1. THE ROMANO-PER SIAN FRONTIER AND THE CONTEXT OF THE BOOK OF STEPS As is well known, the Book of Steps is a notoriously hard work to pin down. The author quite deliberately provides few or no details, chronological or geographical, that would allow us to situate the work.1 Nevertheless, a consensus seems to have been reached according to which the work belongs to the fourth century C.E., even if some prefer an earlier date within the century and others tend toward a later one.2 Geographically the consensus favors the 1. Peter Nagel, “Die Märtyrer des Glaubens und die ‘Märtyrer der Liebe’ im syrischen Liber Graduum ,” in Religion und Wahrheit: Religionsgeschichtliche Studien; Festschrift für Gernot Wiessner zum 65. Geburtstag, edited by Gernot Wiessner and Bärbel Beinhauer-Köhler, 128 (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag, 1998); Matthias Westerhoff, Das Paulusverständnis im Liber Graduum (Berlin and New York: Walter de Gruyter, 2008), 5–23; Robert A. Kitchen and Martien F. G. Parmentier, trans., The Book of Steps: The Syriac Liber Graduum, Cistercian Studies 196 (Kalamazoo, Mich.: Cistercian Publications, 2004), xlix–li. I am grateful to Matthias Westerhoff, Josef Wiesehöfer, and Scott McDonough for their help in preparing this chapter, as well as to Jing Feng, doctoral student at the University of Ottawa, for preparing the map. 2. Details in Westerhoff, “Das Bild vom Staat im Liber Graduum,” in Christentum und Politik in der Alten Kirche, edited by J. Van Oort and Otmar Hesse (Leuven: Peeters, 2009); cf. Irénée Hausherr, who places the work in the early fifth century; Hausherr, “Quanam Aetate Prodierit ‘Liber Graduum?’” Orientala Christiana Periodica 1 (1935): 500–2; Klaus Fitschen, Messalianismus und Antimessalianismus : Ein Beispiel ostkirchlicher Ketzergeschichte (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht, 1998), 110–18; Daniel Caner, Wandering, Begging Monks: Spiritual Authority and the Promotion of Monasticism in Late Antiquity (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press,) 2002, 106–7; Kitchen and Parmentier , Book of Steps, xlix–li, for an earlier (mid-fourth-century) date. 10 G e o f f r e y G r e at r e x notion that the author was writing in Upper Mesopotamia, perhaps in Adiabene , a region undoubtedly more Christianized than many others. Several scholars suggest that the author originally may have lived on Roman soil, but chose to migrate during the Diocletianic persecution at the start of the fourth century.3 Our aim here is not to pick through the slender evidence once again in a vain attempt to offer greater precision; rather, it is to place the work in its more general context, the marchlands of the Roman and Persian Empires in the fourth century. Because of the enduring uncertainty as to the provenance of the work, it will be necessary to examine the situation on both sides of the frontier—itself in any case subject to marked variation in the period— although we shall concentrate on the Persian side. The chronological parameters within which we are working therefore are approximately C.E. 280 to 400. For most of this period the zone with which we are concerned, Upper Mesopotamia, was a battleground between the two most powerful states of the world at the time, the Roman empire and the Sasanian kingdom.4 Simply put, the cause of this strife was the treaty concluded in 299 (some scholars prefer 298)5, which assigned a large portion of Upper Mesopotamia , as far as the Tigris and in some cases even beyond it, to the Romans. 3. Fitschen, Messalianismus, 118; cf. Arthur Vööbus, History of Ascetism in the Syrian Orient: A Contribution to the History of Culture in the Near East, Corpus Scriptorum Christianorum Orientalium 500 (Louvain: Peeters, 1988), 3:17; Caner, Wandering, Begging Monks, 106–7. 4. Reasons of space dictate that we not go into detail about the nature of these two empires and their respective strengths. An excellent comparison of their structures and institutions is provided by J. D. Howard-Johnston, “The Great Powers in Late Antiquity: A Comparison,” in States, Resources and Armies: Papers of the Third Workshop on Late Antiquity and Early Islam, edited by Averil Cameron, 3:157–226, Byzantine and Early Islamic Near East, Studies in Late Antiquity and Early Islam (Princeton: Darwin Press, 1995); cf. Z. Rubin, “The Reforms of Khusro Anūshirwān,” in States, Resources and Armies, 3:227–97; see also Josef Wiesehöfer, Ancient Persia: From 550 BC to 650 AD (London: I. B...