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3 Accommodating the State: Ambrose of Milan and Martin of Tours Periods of civil war have often in Roman history been fruitful in the production of historical works; one thinks of the writings of Caesar and Sallust under the Republic, and those of Tacitus for the Principate. The contenders for the purple seconded their arms with the weaponry of propaganda, which was often reflected in panegyric and in contemporary and later historiography. Just as civil wars earlier in the fourth century had generated official justifications for the resort to war, so too did the civil wars of Theodosius I in 388 and 394, though now with a Christian coloration. In the late fourth century and early fifth, after decades of imperial favor and experience in working with the secular power, there is increasingly evident among some Christians the more or less clear lineaments of a “Christian” way of waging war, especially in the case of a prince of impeccable orthodoxy. This synthesis owes much in influence and origin to contemporary Theodosian propaganda. Some of the themes of this “Christian way” of war-making can also be seen in non-Christian sources, reflecting a more general late-antique mentality regarding war: there is much pouring of old wine into new bottles. Unlike with the cheerleading of a Eusebius, however, there persisted among many Christians of this period—even in the case of someone like Ambrose of Milan, often cited as an example of a Christian “accommodationist”—a certain sense of disgust with the idea of any public service, and especially that of the army. There is the same horror of blood pollution manifested most clearly in Tertullian and the ancient church orders, but also in Origen and Lactantius (of the Divine Institutes). 73 Theodosian War Propaganda The propaganda broadcast by the Emperor Theodosius I (379–395) and his supporters that pushed the justification for and a would-be authoritative interpretation of especially his wars against the Western “usurpers” of the late fourth century has left traces in the historiography of the period, though its influence can be traced in other genres as well, even in the realm of pictorial representation. Certain themes in this propaganda were to recur in accounts of war for centuries into the medieval period, and were also already present in Constantinian propaganda earlier in the fourth century, though Theodosian war propaganda seems more assured and widespread than its Constantinian counterpart.1 Undoubtedly this reflects the increased pace of Christianization in the late fourth-century empire, necessitating the creation of the lineaments of a “Christianized” way of waging war, or at least of its representation. The extent to which this aspect of Theodosian political culture fathered later medieval ideologies of war is open to debate, but clearly some connections can be shown. In any case, Theodosian propaganda and its themes are a prominent part of the thought-world that backgrounded Augustine’s views on war and military service, and thus deserve our close attention. One motif in Theodosian propaganda involved the use of prophecy to signal divine approbation and intervention. Writing a few years after Theodosius’s death in 395, the translator and continuator of Eusebius’s church history, Rufinus of Aquileia, wrote that by divine providence the monk John of Lycopolis had been filled with a prophetic spirit, so much so that Theodosius had consulted him as to the prospects of success before proceeding against the usurper Maximus and, later, Eugenius.2 According to the mid-fifth-century church historian Sozomen, before the last of those wars against Eugenius, Theodosius had dispatched the court eunuch Eutropius to get John’s response, an event apparently verified by the poet Claudian.3 In both cases Theodosius received assurance of victory from the prophetic monk.4 The conception that the new dispensation provided a surer alternative to the pagan oracles regarding the event of war had already been voiced by Eusebius, who had been anxious to 1. Barnes, Constantine, 2, 4, reflects on the role of Constantinian propaganda “in shaping the surviving evidence for his reign,” and on how the resulting image of Constantine has deceived many modern historians. Much the same could be said of Theodosius I and his regime’s propaganda. 2. HE XI.19 (1023–24). 3. Sozomen VII.22.7–8 (GCS 50: Sozomenus Kirchengeschichte, ed. J. Bidez [Berlin, 1960 (reprint)]), 336; Claudii Claudiani Carmina, ed. J. B. Hall (Leipzig: Teubner, 1985), In Eutropium, ll. 312–13 (155). 4. HE XI.32 (1036); Augustine, DCD 5...

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