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It's interesting reading many modern American historians reinterpreting, for example, the experience of the Greeks in Afghanistan in the light of American experience.
The Victorians weren't the first to do this. We owe much of our view of the Roman army to Gibbon, who had the English belief in an army of honest yeomen (The legions of the Roman Republic and the English archers at Agincourt) with and Englishman's contempt for armies of mercenary hirelings (every other army in Europe but ours) and a strong dose of enlightenment anti-clericalism which saw the decline of Rome as at least partially caused by the shift from the enlightened view of the ancients and a drift to the  domination of a priest ridden and pacifist church

Jim

Quote from: Jim Webster on February 18, 2015, 01:30:26 PM
... the decline of Rome as at least partially caused by the shift from the enlightened view of the ancients and a drift to the  domination of a priest ridden and pacifist church

Jim

And, of course, any Roman Catholic would be quick to point out that this priest-ridden and pacifist <hem hem> church had the greatest empire of them all covering all continents. Evolution of what is considered to be 'empire'. After all, the British empire will not die so long as English is the lingua franca and English codes of dress, manner, military institutions, commercial law, parliamentary convention and collective unconscious remains so widespread. I don't think the Roman 'empire' ever went away, it just evolved. The Byzantine empire may have lasted longer but its legacy has been considerably less outside of Russia and Greece and the once mighty land empire of the Mongols left virtually nothing. The secret to the success of an empire appears to be the longevity of the ideas and culture that become common within it, not how long it lasts, nor how much land it encompasses. Here endeth today's lesson.

Quote from: Rob Miles on February 18, 2015, 02:14:40 PM
Here endeth today's lesson.

but some good points there :-)

Quote from: Jim Webster on February 18, 2015, 01:30:26 PM
It's interesting reading many modern American historians reinterpreting, for example, the experience of the Greeks in Afghanistan in the light of American experience.
The Victorians weren't the first to do this. We owe much of our view of the Roman army to Gibbon, who had the English belief in an army of honest yeomen (The legions of the Roman Republic and the English archers at Agincourt) with and Englishman's contempt for armies of mercenary hirelings (every other army in Europe but ours) and a strong dose of enlightenment anti-clericalism which saw the decline of Rome as at least partially caused by the shift from the enlightened view of the ancients and a drift to the  domination of a priest ridden and pacifist church

Jim

I wonder to what extent people still take Gibbon seriously. He was of course writing during the Enlightenment, when the philosophers of Reason were busy clearing away the dross of the Mediaeval era and preparing society for a Brave New World.

If a pacifist Church brought down the Western Empire one kind of wonders how the Eastern Empire survived another ten centuries. And what was Maurice's Theban legion all about? And St Sebastian....officer in the Praetorian Guard?

Quote from: Justin Swanton on February 18, 2015, 06:14:17 PM

If a pacifist Church brought down the Western Empire one kind of wonders how the Eastern Empire survived another ten centuries.

We might observe that most of it did not: Syria, Egypt and North Africa were lost in the 7th century - not least because Syria and Egypt contained majority populations of Nestorians and Jacobites who were at odds with the prevailing theology in Constantinople (the church was anything but pacifist when it came to matters of doctrine).  The residue of the empire based on Asia Minor, the Balkans and Italy was gradually whittled away with occasional limited revivals (Nikephorus Phocas, John Zimiskes, Basil Bulgaroktonos) until by 1452 only Constantinople, the Morea and Trebizond were left.

Quote from: Patrick Waterson on February 18, 2015, 09:12:36 PM

Quote from: Justin Swanton on February 18, 2015, 06:14:17 PM

If a pacifist Church brought down the Western Empire one kind of wonders how the Eastern Empire survived another ten centuries.

We might observe that most of it did not: Syria, Egypt and North Africa were lost in the 7th century - not least because Syria and Egypt contained majority populations of Nestorians and Jacobites who were at odds with the prevailing theology in Constantinople (the church was anything but pacifist when it came to matters of doctrine).  The residue of the empire based on Asia Minor, the Balkans and Italy was gradually whittled away with occasional limited revivals (Nikephorus Phocas, John Zimiskes, Basil Bulgaroktonos) until by 1452 only Constantinople, the Morea and Trebizond were left.

Militant Islam proved a tough adversary for pretty much anyone, Christian or not. The Byzantines did a lot better than the Sassanians, who were completely overrun in the course of a few years. If you compare the Byzantine Empire to any other state in history it comes off  remarkably well, surviving ultimate conquest for a thousand years. No pagan empire managed anything like it.

All the major religions IMHO cater for the army to some extent, i.e. they incorporate in their belief system a reason for soldiers to fight. Christianity is no exception to this, as the efficiency and professionalism of the Byzantine army demonstrates. If an empire loses land or is completely overrrun it is due, again IMHO, to unforeseen circumstances: a new military system in the case of the Achaemenid Persians, a division at the highest levels of government for the Western Romans, or just a bad day for the army like Manzikert or Myriocephalum for the Byzantines.

Of course you have to ask just how pacifist the church was in reality. Whilst we have the teachings of the church, we also have Bishops like Synesius of Cyrene asking the Emperor for more Huns and personally organising the defence of the province.

Even earlier, with the Diocletianic Persecution, this seems to have been kicked off because the master haruspex claimed he couldn't read the omens because of Christians making the sign of the cross. These Christians were senior officers in the Emperor's household and one of Diocletian's first acts was then to eject Christians from the army. Which seems to indicate that they had joined

Jim

It is interesting to note that these 'active bishops' (Synesius of Cyrene and Sidonius Apollinaris) tend to be out-and-out Hellenists without a discernible shred of Christian belief.  Also that they are stepping into the gulf left by the division of responsibility into 'civil' and 'military' that has scrambled the efforts of many a western civilisation since.

There is certainly evidence that Christians were in the Roman army in Diocletian's time, although how many of these were serving soldiers who had converted as opposed to Christians from birth who had enlisted is not clear.  And tombstone inscriptions tend to skirt around this sort of thing.  Once we are well into the Byzantine Empire, yes, the soldiery are Christian, but that brings its own set of problems, of which an inability to fight well at Easter because God is (temporarily) dead is perhaps the least of the concerns.

Quote from: Justin Swanton on February 19, 2015, 12:37:55 AM
Militant Islam proved a tough adversary for pretty much anyone, Christian or not. The Byzantines did a lot better than the Sassanians, who were completely overrun in the course of a few years.

The Byzantines were actually pretty much on the ropes by the late 7th century AD, with Constantinople twice under siege; conventional wisdom has it that they owed their deliverance to the timely invention and application of Greek Fire.  Thereafter, sad to say, the Empire probably owed its continued survival as much to Muslim internal division as to the capabilities of its armies and generals and its somewhat overdeveloped sense of diplomacy.

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If you compare the Byzantine Empire to any other state in history it comes off  remarkably well, surviving ultimate conquest for a thousand years. No pagan empire managed anything like it.

One could make the same comment about the Holy Roman Empire.  Yet both seem to have a yawning gap in achievement and a grovelling lack of dignity compared to, say, the shorter but brighter stars of Egypt and Macedon: longevity seems to have been purchased at the price of senescence.

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All the major religions IMHO cater for the army to some extent, i.e. they incorporate in their belief system a reason for soldiers to fight.

Not too sure this applies to Buddhism; if anything, there seems to have been a tradition that fighting and religion are kept strictly apart.  As for the Byzantine Empire, Gibbon notes (chapter 53) that Nicephorus Phocas, one of the more successful emperors, sought to "bestow the honours of martyrdom on the Christians who lost their lives in a holy war against the infidels."  He cites Zonaras and Cedrenus as mentioning that "the patriarch, the bishops and the principal senators ... strenuously urged the canons of St Basil, that all who were polluted by the bloody trade of soldier should be separated, during three years, from the communion of the faithful." (See his footnote 83 to the 53rd chapter.)  Something of a let-down for the soldiery of the Empire, methinks, returning home as ex officio excommunicants.

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Christianity is no exception to this, as the efficiency and professionalism of the Byzantine army demonstrates.

Might I suggest this may be confusing the influence of religion with that of military doctrine and practice?  The Taktikon and Strategikon were not exactly Christian documents.  Gibbon (chapter 53) himself concludes:

"... the Greek superstition relaxed the mind by prayer, and emaciated the body by fasting; and the multitude of convents and festivals diverted many hands and many days from the temporal service of mankind."

Apart from the provision of the occasional sacred standard, this seems to have been the sum of its contribution to the Imperial war effort.

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If an empire loses land or is completely overrrun it is due, again IMHO, to unforeseen circumstances: a new military system in the case of the Achaemenid Persians, a division at the highest levels of government for the Western Romans, or just a bad day for the army like Manzikert or Myriocephalum for the Byzantines.

Or a stronger opponent or poor leadership - or exceptional leadership on the other side.  True, most empires do not foresee their own collapse (the Roman may have been an exception, thinking of the Sibylline Books), but let us not underrate the value of a straight fight for determining who does what unto whom.  The Byzantines became famous for 1) their avoidance of straight fights and 2) their use of gold and other aspects of diplomacy to try and keep opponents busy and/or quiescent.  Byzantine conquests or reconquests tended to be short-lived affairs, not least because of domestic problems, many of which were religious in nature (iconoclasm, monothelitism or just application of the canons of St Basil) and some of which were admittedly just the usual selection of bad characters whose ambition also exceeded their ability.

I think if there is felt to be any mileage in this particular discussion we should continue it in a new thread devoted to the purpose.

Quote from: Patrick Waterson on February 19, 2015, 01:29:11 PM
It is interesting to note that these 'active bishops' (Synesius of Cyrene and Sidonius Apollinaris) tend to be out-and-out Hellenists without a discernible shred of Christian belief.  Also that they are stepping into the gulf left by the division of responsibility into 'civil' and 'military' that has scrambled the efforts of many a western civilisation since.

There is certainly evidence that Christians were in the Roman army in Diocletian's time, although how many of these were serving soldiers who had converted as opposed to Christians from birth who had enlisted is not clear.  And tombstone inscriptions tend to skirt around this sort of thing.  Once we are well into the Byzantine Empire, yes, the soldiery are Christian, but that brings its own set of problems, of which an inability to fight well at Easter because God is (temporarily) dead is perhaps the least of the concerns.

I'm not sure where the inability to fight well at Easter comes from,  Battle of Callinicum took place on Easter Saturday, 19 April 531 AD
It pretty well destroyed both Byzantine and Sassanid armies  8)

I'd also question the comment that Synesius of Cyrene and Sidonius Apollinaris  were without discernable Christian belief

Take Sidonius's letter to the Lord Bishop Patiens*
A.D. 474

ONE man deems happiness to consist in one thing, a second in another; my own belief is that he lives most to his own advantage who lives for others, and does heaven's work on earth by pitying the poverty and misfortune of the faithful. You may wonder at what I aim in these remarks. At yourself, most blessed father, for my sentiments refer especially to you,  who are not content to succour only the distress which lies within your cognizance, but push your inquiries to the very frontiers of Gaul, and without respect of persons, consider each case of want upon its merits.  Does poverty or infirmity prevent a man from making his way to you in person? He loses nothing; your free hand anticipates the needs of those whose feet are unable to bring them to you. Your watchful eye ranges over other provinces than your own; the spreading tide of your benevolence bears consolation to the straitened, however far away. And so it happens that you often wipe tears from eyes which you have never seen, because the reserve of the absent touches you no less than the plaints of those near at hand. I say nothing of your daily labour to relieve the need of your impoverished fellow countrymen, of your unceasing vigils, your prayers, your charity. I pass over the tact with which you combine the hospitable and the ascetic virtues, so that the king is never tired of praising your breakfasts and the queen your fasts. I omit your embellishment of the church committed to your care until the spectator hardly knows which to admire most, the new fabric which you erect, or the old which you restore. I do not mention the churches that rise in so many districts under your auspices, or the rich additions to their ornaments. I dismiss the fact that under your administration the faithful are increased and multiplied, while heretics alone diminish. I shall not tell how your apostolic chase for souls involves the wild Photinians in the spiritual mesh of homily; or how barbarians once converted by your eloquence pursue your track until, like a thrice-fortunate fisher of men, you  draw them up at last out of the profound gulfs of error.

A beautiful mixture of Christian sentiment and Greek literary affectation  :)

With Synesius his letter Letter 67: Paul of Erythrum and Other Matters
To Theophilus
Where he discusses the problem over who actually should be appointed bishop over certain communities he tackles it in a matter little different from what you see in the west

As for whether the soldiers were men who had joined having been Christians from birth or had been converted it doesn't really matter. Generally I suspect that the Christian faith of most people of the period was no more likely to make them pacifists than it was in 1914.

Remember it was Augustine of Hippo (354 - 430 AD) who seems to have made the first written argument for the 'Just War' that has survived to us, and it's unlikely that his arguments were entirely original or unique to himself
Indeed he bases his arguments theologically on Romans 13:4 

4 For the one in authority is God's servant for your good. But if you do wrong, be afraid, for rulers do not bear the sword for no reason. They are God's servants, agents of wrath to bring punishment on the wrongdoer.

Jim

Quote from: Patrick Waterson on February 19, 2015, 01:29:11 PMNot too sure this applies to Buddhism;

Nor Jainism.

PS: Head spins, as to how we ended up here :)

Quote from: Dangun on February 19, 2015, 04:49:34 PM

Quote from: Patrick Waterson on February 19, 2015, 01:29:11 PMNot too sure this applies to Buddhism;

Nor Jainism.

PS: Head spins, as to how we ended up here :)

Actually a lot of Samurai were Zen Buddhists  ;D

Jim

The claim that any of the monotheisms are pacifist seems prima facie, pretty silly...
...even before we get to the problem of finding evidence that might relate religiosity to military effectiveness.

I suspect that the indirect effects of religion can have a greater effect than the direct. We get examples of religions tying up wealth and manpower and denying them to the state.

But equally there are plenty of occasions where the State confiscated the assets of religious institutions to fund its own policies. Without even stopping to check, the names that come to mind are Henry VIII, Constantine, Antiochus III, Pompey the Great, and of course the Phocians.
So religious institutions could perhaps be regarded as a long term safe deposit scheme, which states can dip into only when things get desperate enough to mean they're willing to pay the price of bad PR etc.

Tying up manpower is perhaps a bigger issue, but is one you have to weigh against the use of this manpower in agriculture and in 'ground breaking' for new land, so it might be that what the state lost in one place it gained in another

Jim

The storybooks are full of examples of armies fighting or not fighting because of the omens from God/gods or by meteorological or other events from the beginning of the Bible onwards. Sailor superstition survived into the 20th century and cannons are still found with exhortations to God to 'be with us'. Joan of Arc inspired the French, of all people, to reverse the 'flow of play' in the Hundred Years War. Druids led the ancient British against the Romans (and got slaughtered, but then so it goes). When a state gains a single 'unifying' religion (or else) it creates a much deeper divide and matter of grievance against those who follow false gods, no gods, the same gods but in a significantly different way. Even today, the Islamic world is tearing itself to pieces because of what some ancient ancestors said to one another in same spot hundreds of years ago. Religion is very good for generating hatred of foes- it provides a better impetus for the common soldier than simply giving your lord a slightly bigger back pocket.

There is, of course, a difference between functional religion, superstition, church on the one hand and the philosophical or collective consciousness of values and belief on the other. The moment a priesthood is established, the clock starts ticking down to the abandonment of all that ethereal nonsense about loving each other to be replaced with fulfilling the needs of the establishment that built up around it. Eventually, the cavernous cathedrals built by the flame of passionate belief become edifices of authority and control. The early Christians won converts by refusing to answer violence for violence. Later, they won converts by going into other peoples' lands and forcibly converting 'for the good of the soul'. Once any religion gets it into its head that the best way to serve God is to beat the living crap out of any who do not recognise him in the way they think he wants to be, you may as well fix handles and wheels onto the pews the better to ship the whole lot down to Hell.

Rules once made for the protection of members of the same racial group (Greeks, for example) were made for those of the same religion (or certain 'related' ones). Otherwise...

Quote from: Jim Webster on February 19, 2015, 02:10:06 PM

I'm not sure where the inability to fight well at Easter comes from,  Battle of Callinicum took place on Easter Saturday, 19 April 531 AD
It pretty well destroyed both Byzantine and Sassanid armies  8)

And I understand that one of the excuses for the lacklustre Byzantine performance was that 'God, being dead, could not help us' - though I am unsure whether this is from Procopius or Robert Graves.

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I'd also question the comment that Synesius of Cyrene and Sidonius Apollinaris  were without discernable Christian belief

Sidonius was, from his writings, a happy Hellenist - writing to a bishop naturally necessitated a certain degree of Christian politeness, but when writing to friends his allusions and allegories are all Hellenistic and one searches in vain for a single Christian statement.

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With Synesius his letter Letter 67: Paul of Erythrum and Other Matters
To Theophilus
Where he discusses the problem over who actually should be appointed bishop over certain communities he tackles it in a matter little different from what you see in the west

But look at his letter 104 (http://www.livius.org/su-sz/synesius/synesius_letter_104.html) and letter 113 (http://www.livius.org/su-sz/synesius/synesius_letter_113.html).  Chatting with bishops is not a true reading of a man's sentiments.  We may also remember that this is a man who specifically insisted that he be exempted from Christian doctrine as a condition of taking up the post; in the words of the Wikipedia article (http://uk.ask.com/wiki/Synesius): "as regarded orthodoxy he expressly stipulated for personal freedom to dissent on the questions of the soul's creation, a literal resurrection, and the final destruction of the world".  His sentiments expressed in Letter 105, that "If anybody asks me what my idea of a bishop is, I have no hesitation in saying explicitly that he ought to be spotless, more than spotless, and in all things, he to whom is allotted the purification of others." would, in Orthodox Christian terms, mark this neo-Platonist and follower of Hypatia as a Donatist heretic.

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As for whether the soldiers were men who had joined having been Christians from birth or had been converted it doesn't really matter.

It might, because men who were converted while in a military career would remain in it, while a 'born Christian' would actively have to seek recruitment, and this is a threshold that many might have been unwilling or unable to cross before Theodosius started to make it the norm.

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Generally I suspect that the Christian faith of most people of the period was no more likely to make them pacifists than it was in 1914.

Again, not too sure about this: granted that among some Christianity was only skin-deep, but in the canons of St Basil (http://www.holytrinitymission.org/books/english/canons_fathers_rudder.htm#_Toc78634056) (specifically canon no.8 ) we get:

"An entirely involuntary act again, and one that admits of no doubt at all, is one such as that of robbers, and that of military assaults. For these men slay others for the sake of money, though they escape detection. Those engaged in wars are bent on slaying and murderous deeds; they can neither be scared nor be sobered, but, on the contrary, are openly bent on killing the adversaries as a matter of choice."

The specific three-year excommunication is stipulated in canon 13:

"Our Fathers did not consider murders committed in the course of wars to be classifiable as murders at all, on the score, it seems to me, of allowing a pardon to men fighting in defense of sobriety and piety. Perhaps, though, it might be advisable to refuse them communion for three years, on the ground that they are not clean-handed."

Curiously enough, Basil also stipulates (canon no.55):

"As for those who resist robbers, if they themselves are outside of the Church, they are to be excluded from communion with the good boon; but if they are Clerics, they are to be deprived of their rank."

You just can't win ... :(

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Remember it was Augustine of Hippo (354 - 430 AD) who seems to have made the first written argument for the 'Just War' that has survived to us, and it's unlikely that his arguments were entirely original or unique to himself ...

True, and this seems to be implicit in Basil's reference to "Our Fathers" who "did not consider murders committed in the course of wars to be classifiable as murders at all, on the score, it seems to me, of allowing a pardon to men fighting in defense of sobriety and piety."  This does suggest that there was a degree of sentiment that did paint the soldier a murderer, but which was argued aside on the basis of expediency.  Note that it seemed to be a question of allowing a pardon rather than encouraging a man to take up arms - the poor chap gets to feel guilty however one looks at it.

Quote from: Dangun on February 19, 2015, 06:51:00 PM
The claim that any of the monotheisms are pacifist seems prima facie, pretty silly...
...even before we get to the problem of finding evidence that might relate religiosity to military effectiveness.

It was Winston Churchill who noted:

"But the Mahommedan religion increases, instead of lessening, the fury of intolerance. It was originally propagated by the sword, and ever since, its votaries have been subject, above the people of all other creeds, to this form of madness. In a moment the fruits of patient toil, the prospects of material prosperity, the fear of death itself, are flung aside. The more emotional Pathans are powerless to resist. All rational considerations are forgotten. Seizing their weapons, they become Ghazis—as dangerous and as sensible as mad dogs: fit only to be treated as such. While the more generous spirits among the tribesmen become convulsed in an ecstasy of religious bloodthirstiness, poorer and more material souls derive additional impulses from the influence of others, the hopes of plunder and the joy of fighting. Thus whole nations are roused to arms. Thus the Turks repel their enemies, the Arabs of the Soudan break the British squares, and the rising on the Indian frontier spreads far and wide. In each case civilisation is confronted with militant Mahommedanism. The forces of progress clash with those of reaction. The religion of blood and war is face to face with that of peace. Luckily the religion of peace is usually the better armed."

To save space, one can find his further observations on the subject (among other things) here (http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Winston_Churchill).

I trust we are all enjoying ourselves ... :)

The fact that there are laws banning things mean people are doing it.

I would suggest that the ban on men fighting was every bit as effective as the Papal ban on the use of the crossbow.
Or perhaps the Roman Catholic church's restrictions on contraception

With the others, remember that fellow bishops were social equals and often friends. Many where from the same background.


Jim

There are people eating humans in Britain?  Having relations with corpses?

Just because its banned doesn't mean people are doing it,
It just means that someone thinks they might do it if they thought it was allowed.

Late Antique and Early Medieval laws are generallly the product of the legal process. Cases would be brought and judgements given. Where a judgement was novel or involved a particular twist of logic it might make it into an issued update of the law code. Where a situation occurred where the law was in doubt then that might getupdated or clarified and that could give the state an oppirtunity to push things further. So there are laws about the relationship of the buccelarius with his lord because this was a new relationship and someone had likely found an old law did not give them what they wanted and appealed and got case law which then became generally promoted.
There is a law in the Lombard laws about someone who shoots  an arrow into a compound and kills or wounds someone else. Presumably this is based on an actual case and revolved around the difficulty of equating a death so caused with an accident. What happens if twenty people shoot at once?
A law might mean that a lot of an activity was going on, like the buccelarius relationship or extremely rare like shooting in a compound, or theoretical and the result of gold plating by some clerk.
An interesting case is Wamba's army law in The Spanish Visigothic post  Roman kingdom. Is Wamba  legislating for a society with an army comprised of slaves or is this a specific response to a recent rebellion, where landowners have sat on the sidelines when a rebel made a bid fir the throne and the king, rebellion defeated, wants to impose very clear obligations on a group of landowners that they must turn up and the armed slaves referred to are not the main army which is a tax based force in garrisons. The law Wamba passed looks very like a loophole being closed, but is it a loophole which had permitted landowners to stand aside from supporting the king or is it about setting out how the army would recruited now there are not enough free men to staff it?
Roy

Making a sweeping generalisation (which seems to be the way of this thread :) ) , the Western Christian church in the Middle Ages lost absolute pacifism pretty early as it began to expand into a major religion.  It instead started to concentrate more on regulating war, deciding on when it was legitimate to hold a war (against whom, on what days), the role of the military caste in society and the obligations that brought to protect the weak and the clerical establishment, a bit of arms control and so on.  One might seek to judge the effectiveness of some of this, and marvel at the Church's bottomless capacity for hypocricy in delivering it, but it did have an effect on how wars were thought about and, indeed, fought.

Quote from: Mark G on February 20, 2015, 02:21:15 AM
There are people eating humans in Britain?  Having relations with corpses?

Just because its banned doesn't mean people are doing it,
It just means that someone thinks they might do it if they thought it was allowed.

It's a standard Historians comment when discussing, for example, the repetition of laws under Roman Emperors. If seven or eight consecutive emperors feel the need to instruct Roman soldiers not to rob or mistreat unarmed civilians, then soldiers robbing and mistreating unarmed civilians must be a problem.
So if various theologians and similar are constantly having to remind people that you're not supposed to fight in the army, then Christians must be fighting in the army.

Where laws are generally obeyed (as in your example of cannibalism or necrophilia) they are rarely if ever repeated. In fact cannibalism is so little a problem in the UK that it isn't in itself illegal, (it might be because you could be charged with incorrect disposal of a body or under food hygiene regulations) but killing someone to eat them is

On the other hand, road safety is an issue and is repeatedly legislated over because many people are largely ignoring the rules.

Jim

Quote from: Jim Webster on February 20, 2015, 08:27:15 AM

So if various theologians and similar are constantly having to remind people that you're not supposed to fight in the army, then Christians must be fighting in the army.

A valid comment, in my view.  However - and this is an important however - on the topic of the effect that such theologians are having on the Empire's ability to defend itself, a constant succession of injunctions from presumably respected religious leaders to a presumably significant part of one's soldiery that they are not supposed to fight would hardly be helping the combat capability and morale of the army.  Being classed in the same bracket as thieves is also hardly conducive to soldierly morale.

Couple this with Basil's apparently respected and enforced admonition that if you kill an enemy of the Empire you get three years' suspension from communion and the surprise is that sufficient soldiers were being found who were willing to do their duty.

Or were there?

Following the death of Basil (of Caesarea and the eponymous canons) c.AD 379, the Roman world ended up with Theodosius as emperor via Gratian.  Whilst up to Gratian Roman soldiery seem to have still been substantially Mithraic, Theodosius appears to have taken steps to eliminate Mithraism and make the army wholly Christian.  However, when Arbogast put Eugenius in charge of the west, Theodosius seems to have needed to call upon his Gothic 'allies' in order to acquire sufficient force to deal with Eugenius - and even then it was a close-run thing.  In the absence of hard evidence (or awareness of hard evidence) one is reduced to speculation: was Theodosius running short of Empire-born Roman soldiers?  Was his elimination of Mithraism the factor that tipped recruitment into debit, forcing increasing reliance on barbarian allies and indeed recruits to make up numbers and fighting power?

Quote from: Erpingham on February 20, 2015, 08:11:37 AM
Making a sweeping generalisation (which seems to be the way of this thread :) ) , the Western Christian church in the Middle Ages lost absolute pacifism pretty early as it began to expand into a major religion.  It instead started to concentrate more on regulating war, deciding on when it was legitimate to hold a war (against whom, on what days), the role of the military caste in society and the obligations that brought to protect the weak and the clerical establishment, a bit of arms control and so on ...

The western church actually evolved outside the Roman Empire.  It began to diverge from the eastern c.AD 595 with the adoption of the Latin liturgy (the Orthodox church based in Constantinople was by then using Greek) and following some mutual spats about authority the split became real when the Latin church, the antecedent of today's Roman Catholics, adopted the filio que.  A word of explanation may be in order.

Greek Orthodox liturgy held that the Holy Spirit proceeded from the Father (only).  The Latin church developed the opinion that as the Father and Son were equal and the same being, the Spirit must therefore also proceed from the Son.  In Latin, 'and from the Son' is 'filio que', hence the name of this particular controversy.

It was this church, the Latin or Catholic church, which sought to regulate rather than make a blanket condemnation of warfare.  One reason was because in the west the Papacy was angling for temporal influence, and even rulership, over the western European nations, so it saw itself in the role of semi-pragmatic legislator (the nations involved had a different idea, hence when the western church forbade the use of crossbows against Christians everyone pretty much ignored it).  The eastern or Orthodox church, although in theory very much subordinate to the state, continued to drag its feet and condemn warfare as murder (although in a later century it would tacitly underwrite the practice, if not the theory, of holy war against the Crusaders of 1204 who attacked Constantinople).

Quote from: Rob Miles on February 19, 2015, 08:07:49 PM
When a state gains a single 'unifying' religion (or else) it creates a much deeper divide and matter of grievance against those who follow false gods, no gods, the same gods but in a significantly different way.

To illustrate...

https://www2.bc.edu/marian-simion/th406/readings/0314simion.pdf  has an interesting take on the Orthodox attitude to war.
Notable is the debate as to whether Gregory's canon was ever enforced.

One of the big differences between east and west was actually the role of the Emperor. The west didn't have one and the Pope tried to step into the gap (hence a partial explanation of the conflict between popes and the German Emperors.)

So in Eastern thinking, the Emperor was placed by God in charge of the state was was above the church. The church merely advised, they didn't order the Emperor

Jim

Quote from: Patrick Waterson on February 19, 2015, 01:29:11 PM
It is interesting to note that these 'active bishops' (Synesius of Cyrene and Sidonius Apollinaris) tend to be out-and-out Hellenists without a discernible shred of Christian belief.  Also that they are stepping into the gulf left by the division of responsibility into 'civil' and 'military' that has scrambled the efforts of many a western civilisation since.

Sidonius is remarkable for the total absence of Christian sentiment in his writings until he became bishop. He took the loss of Clermont and his Roman citizenship very badly - which a true dyed-in-the-wool Christian would have taken with far more philosophical (or religious) resignation. Compare him to Augustine, especially Civitas Dei. Sidonius was not a typical example of a bishop - he wasn't sainted - so one can hardly use him as an example of the mentality of the Catholic hierarchy at that time.

Quote from: Patrick Waterson on February 19, 2015, 01:29:11 PMThere is certainly evidence that Christians were in the Roman army in Diocletian's time, although how many of these were serving soldiers who had converted as opposed to Christians from birth who had enlisted is not clear.

The point is they were in the army and sufficiently clear in their principles to accept martyrdom for their faith, i.e. they were committed Christians who saw no contradition between being a Christian and being a soldier. Christianity is not pacifist nor does it have to be.

Quote from: Patrick Waterson on February 19, 2015, 01:29:11 PMAnd tombstone inscriptions tend to skirt around this sort of thing.  Once we are well into the Byzantine Empire, yes, the soldiery are Christian, but that brings its own set of problems, of which an inability to fight well at Easter because God is (temporarily) dead is perhaps the least of the concerns.

Easter is actually about a God made man who overcomes death and pays for the sins of men in the bargain. The Church may have sought to have its soldier members not fight during Holy Week as this was a time to take a distance from worldly occupations and focus on important aspects of their faith, but if fighting was necessary then of course they had the Church's blessing to get on with it.

Quote from: Patrick Waterson on February 19, 2015, 01:29:11 PM

Quote from: Justin Swanton on February 19, 2015, 12:37:55 AM
Militant Islam proved a tough adversary for pretty much anyone, Christian or not. The Byzantines did a lot better than the Sassanians, who were completely overrun in the course of a few years.

The Byzantines were actually pretty much on the ropes by the late 7th century AD, with Constantinople twice under siege; conventional wisdom has it that they owed their deliverance to the timely invention and application of Greek Fire.  Thereafter, sad to say, the Empire probably owed its continued survival as much to Muslim internal division as to the capabilities of its armies and generals and its somewhat overdeveloped sense of diplomacy.

The Empire got off the ropes in the 10th century, beginning a campaign of reconquest that regained the Balkans and eventually got them into Antioch. The fact that Byzantium survived Islam's first phase as a unified empire whilst everyone else went down like ninepins sufficiently attests to its military prowess on land and sea.

Quote from: Patrick Waterson on February 19, 2015, 01:29:11 PM

Quote from: Justin Swanton on February 19, 2015, 12:37:55 AM
If you compare the Byzantine Empire to any other state in history it comes off  remarkably well, surviving ultimate conquest for a thousand years. No pagan empire managed anything like it.

One could make the same comment about the Holy Roman Empire.  Yet both seem to have a yawning gap in achievement and a grovelling lack of dignity compared to, say, the shorter but brighter stars of Egypt and Macedon: longevity seems to have been purchased at the price of senescence.

This transposes onto the subject of whether a civilisation is 'worthwhile' or not, independent of its military capabilities. I would say that from the point of view of culture, ancient Egypt's veins were a good deal harder that Byzantium's. That stereotyped two-dimensional art that never changed with the exception of one pharaoh's reign.

Macedonia spread Greek culture into the east, but that culture - especially the intellectual culture - did not develop in Macedonia itself. About the only thing you can strictly credit the Macedonian and Successor empires for is a superior military system.

Quote from: Patrick Waterson on February 19, 2015, 01:29:11 PM

Quote from: Justin Swanton on February 19, 2015, 12:37:55 AM
All the major religions IMHO cater for the army to some extent, i.e. they incorporate in their belief system a reason for soldiers to fight.

Not too sure this applies to Buddhism; if anything, there seems to have been a tradition that fighting and religion are kept strictly apart.  As for the Byzantine Empire, Gibbon notes (chapter 53) that Nicephorus Phocas, one of the more successful emperors, sought to "bestow the honours of martyrdom on the Christians who lost their lives in a holy war against the infidels."  He cites Zonaras and Cedrenus as mentioning that "the patriarch, the bishops and the principal senators ... strenuously urged the canons of St Basil, that all who were polluted by the bloody trade of soldier should be separated, during three years, from the communion of the faithful." (See his footnote 83 to the 53rd chapter.)  Something of a let-down for the soldiery of the Empire, methinks, returning home as ex officio excommunicants.

Bearing in mind this is a single case of an emperor going too far - soldiers who die in combat are not martyrs - and the hierarchy reacting against him, possibly going too far in the other direction. It doesn't really represent the settled attitude of Byzantine society towards its soldiery, and attitude that would have affected the soldiers themselves and their subsequent performance.

Quote from: Patrick Waterson on February 19, 2015, 01:29:11 PM

Quote from: Justin Swanton on February 19, 2015, 12:37:55 AM
Christianity is no exception to this, as the efficiency and professionalism of the Byzantine army demonstrates.

Might I suggest this may be confusing the influence of religion with that of military doctrine and practice?  The Taktikon and Strategikon were not exactly Christian documents.

No, but the soldiers were, and their state of mind would determine how effectively they lived and fought by those manuals.

Quote from: Patrick Waterson on February 19, 2015, 01:29:11 PMGibbon (chapter 53) himself concludes:

"... the Greek superstition relaxed the mind by prayer, and emaciated the body by fasting; and the multitude of convents and festivals diverted many hands and many days from the temporal service of mankind."

Apart from the provision of the occasional sacred standard, this seems to have been the sum of its contribution to the Imperial war effort.

That's Gibbon's point of view. Can he substantiate it?

Quote from: Patrick Waterson on February 19, 2015, 01:29:11 PM

Quote from: Justin Swanton on February 19, 2015, 12:37:55 AM
If an empire loses land or is completely overrrun it is due, again IMHO, to unforeseen circumstances: a new military system in the case of the Achaemenid Persians, a division at the highest levels of government for the Western Romans, or just a bad day for the army like Manzikert or Myriocephalum for the Byzantines.

Or a stronger opponent or poor leadership - or exceptional leadership on the other side.  True, most empires do not foresee their own collapse (the Roman may have been an exception, thinking of the Sibylline Books), but let us not underrate the value of a straight fight for determining who does what unto whom.  The Byzantines became famous for 1) their avoidance of straight fights and 2) their use of gold and other aspects of diplomacy to try and keep opponents busy and/or quiescent.  Byzantine conquests or reconquests tended to be short-lived affairs, not least because of domestic problems, many of which were religious in nature (iconoclasm, monothelitism or just application of the canons of St Basil) and some of which were admittedly just the usual selection of bad characters whose ambition also exceeded their ability.

The reconquests of Basil in the Balkans were pretty permanent, and the point about Byzantine avoidance of straight battles is that it is sound military doctrine. However the army was always prepared for a straight battle if one was necessary - and it fought quite a few (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Battles_involving_the_Byzantine_Empire)!

Quote from: Justin Swanton on February 20, 2015, 04:05:27 PM
Sidonius was not a typical example of a bishop - he wasn't sainted - so one can hardly use him as an example of the mentality of the Catholic hierarchy at that time.

Indeed, like Synesius he was au fond a Hellenist.  However, like Synesius, he was used as an example of a 'military' bishop apparently exemplifying a robust Christian approach to warfare, and yours truly was simply pointing out the correlations between such bishops and a Hellenistic weltanschaung.

Quote

Quote from: Patrick Waterson on February 19, 2015, 01:29:11 PMThere is certainly evidence that Christians were in the Roman army in Diocletian's time, although how many of these were serving soldiers who had converted as opposed to Christians from birth who had enlisted is not clear.

The point is they were in the army and sufficiently clear in their principles to accept martyrdom for their faith, i.e. they were committed Christians who saw no contradition between being a Christian and being a soldier. Christianity is not pacifist nor does it have to be.

Orthodox Christianity under the Empire was selectively pacifist.  On the one hand we have soldiers being discouraged from fighting and excommunicated if they do so successfully: on the other we have the uninhibited spirit of unbridled fanaticism whenever a question of doctrine arises, with no mercy shown to the loser.

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Easter is actually about a God made man who overcomes death and pays for the sins of men in the bargain. The Church may have sought to have its soldier members not fight during Holy Week as this was a time to take a distance from worldly occupations and focus on important aspects of their faith, but if fighting was necessary then of course they had the Church's blessing to get on with it.

This does not seem to be how the Byzantine soldiery at Callinicum saw the matter.  As far as they could see, God (in the form of Jesus) was dead and buried on Friday and back up on Sunday*, albeit not such an early riser as the Persians, hence the defeat.

*(or late on Monday if he actually spent three days in the tomb)

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The Empire got off the ropes in the 10th century, beginning a campaign of reconquest that regained the Balkans and eventually got them into Antioch. The fact that Byzantium survived Islam's first phase as a unified empire whilst everyone else went down like ninepins sufficiently attests to its military prowess on land and sea.

Yes and no - and not everyone else went down like ninepins.  The Visigoths did (having a civil war at the time did not help); the Franks did not.  Subsequent history in the Iberian peninsula is termed the Reconquista for a good reason - and unlike the Byzantine gains, the Portuguese Leonese, Aragonese and Castilian gains were eventually parlayed into complete conquest of the Iberian territories.

Quote

Quote from: Patrick Waterson on February 19, 2015, 01:29:11 PM

Quote from: Justin Swanton on February 19, 2015, 12:37:55 AM
If you compare the Byzantine Empire to any other state in history it comes off  remarkably well, surviving ultimate conquest for a thousand years. No pagan empire managed anything like it.

One could make the same comment about the Holy Roman Empire.  Yet both seem to have a yawning gap in achievement and a grovelling lack of dignity compared to, say, the shorter but brighter stars of Egypt and Macedon: longevity seems to have been purchased at the price of senescence.

This transposes onto the subject of whether a civilisation is 'worthwhile' or not, independent of its military capabilities. I would say that from the point of view of culture, ancient Egypt's veins were a good deal harder that Byzantium's. That stereotyped two-dimensional art that never changed with the exception of one pharaoh's reign.

Were I of a mean disposition, I might put: "Ah, like icons." ;)

Quote
Macedonia spread Greek culture into the east, but that culture - especially the intellectual culture - did not develop in Macedonia itself. About the only thing you can strictly credit the Macedonian and Successor empires for is a superior military system.

And the spread of a modified Hellenic culture that became known as Hellenistic - and which, when interleaved with Roman law and attitudes, served as the basis of what we know as western civilisation.

Quote

Quote from: Patrick Waterson on February 19, 2015, 01:29:11 PM
... Gibbon notes (chapter 53) that Nicephorus Phocas, one of the more successful emperors, sought to "bestow the honours of martyrdom on the Christians who lost their lives in a holy war against the infidels."  He cites Zonaras and Cedrenus as mentioning that "the patriarch, the bishops and the principal senators ... strenuously urged the canons of St Basil, that all who were polluted by the bloody trade of soldier should be separated, during three years, from the communion of the faithful." (See his footnote 83 to the 53rd chapter.)  Something of a let-down for the soldiery of the Empire, methinks, returning home as ex officio excommunicants.

Bearing in mind this is a single case of an emperor going too far - soldiers who die in combat are not martyrs - and the hierarchy reacting against him, possibly going too far in the other direction. It doesn't really represent the settled attitude of Byzantine society towards its soldiery, and attitude that would have affected the soldiers themselves and their subsequent performance.

The problem was that the Empire's opponents who died in combat were martyrs, and Nikephorus, unlike his closed-minded clerics, saw that unless the playing-field was levelled then the Muslims would always have a morale advantage, whereas the Empire would not always have capable soldier-emperors.

Quote

Quote from: Patrick Waterson on February 19, 2015, 01:29:11 PMGibbon (chapter 53) himself concludes:

"... the Greek superstition relaxed the mind by prayer, and emaciated the body by fasting; and the multitude of convents and festivals diverted many hands and many days from the temporal service of mankind."

That's Gibbon's point of view. Can he substantiate it?

Yes, in chapters 47, 49 and 53.

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The reconquests of Basil in the Balkans were pretty permanent, ...

Granted they lasted for about 170 years, although it only took Isaac Angelus a few months to lose them permanently.

Quote
... and the point about Byzantine avoidance of straight battles is that it is sound military doctrine. However the army was always prepared for a straight battle if one was necessary - and it fought quite a few (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Battles_involving_the_Byzantine_Empire)!

Indeed, although to Norman-dominated Europe and even the Muslim-dominated Near East this behaviour, which if anything compares favourably with the standards and methods of today, smacked of deviousness and cowardice together and seems to have encouraged attack as often as it parried or avoided it.  The real problem was not so much keeping the frontiers defended (the Byzantines were usually pretty good at that when it came to the crunch) but what went on within those frontiers.  This as much as anything else is what made Byzantine recoveries rather hesitant and short-lived affairs.

I confess to having always enjoyed the irony that now Christianity is blamed, often simultaneously, for having been pacifist and led to the fall of the Roman Empire, and also to have led to the deaths of countless millions through crusades and persecutions etc

Jim

QuoteIndeed, like Synesius he was au fond a Hellenist.  However, like Synesius, he was used as an example of a 'military' bishop apparently exemplifying a robust Christian approach to warfare, and yours truly was simply pointing out the correlations between such bishops and a Hellenistic weltanschaung.

Or one could point out that the default stance of bishops who had been left with the administrative responsibility for their towns was not pacifist when it came to dealing with barbarian attacks. Sidonius acted as a bishop with no particular reference to hellenism.

QuoteOrthodox Christianity under the Empire was selectively pacifist.  On the one hand we have soldiers being discouraged from fighting and excommunicated if they do so successfully: on the other we have the uninhibited spirit of unbridled fanaticism whenever a question of doctrine arises, with no mercy shown to the loser.

Unlike the West, the Church in the East became a department of state, which means its doctrines and moral praxis became intimately bound up with the fabric of Byzantine society. If the Eastern Church really had opposed soldiery, there would quite simply have been no Byzantine army. One needs to examine the extent to which this excommunication actually had meaning or effect.

QuoteThis does not seem to be how the Byzantine soldiery at Callinicum saw the matter.  As far as they could see, God (in the form of Jesus) was dead and buried on Friday and back up on Sunday*, albeit not such an early riser as the Persians, hence the defeat.

I haven't looked at Callinicum in detail, but the point remains that the Byzantine army was in general ready to fight with the Emperor's and hence the Church's blessing.

QuoteYes and no - and not everyone else went down like ninepins.  The Visigoths did (having a civil war at the time did not help); the Franks did not.  Subsequent history in the Iberian peninsula is termed the Reconquista for a good reason - and unlike the Byzantine gains, the Portuguese Leonese, Aragonese and Castilian gains were eventually parlayed into complete conquest of the Iberian territories.

The Umayyad Caliphate was beginning to unravel at the time of the invasion of Gaul, and one can argue that Charles Martel had a good deal of luck (or Providence?) on his side, catching the Moors by surprise and obliging them to fight a battle with the terrain in his favour. He could, in different circumstances, quite easily have lost the battle.

The difference between Gaul and the Byzantine empire is that the Moors did not repeatedly attempt to conquer the Frankish kingdom, whereas they did launch repeated attacks against Byzantium which beat them all off.

QuoteWere I of a mean disposition, I might put: "Ah, like icons." ;)

OK, that makes two old men with hardened arteries. ;D

BTW I don't particularly think Byzantine civilisation compares very well with the West once the West had got back on its feet following the chaos of the 9th and 10 centuries.

QuoteThe problem was that the Empire's opponents who died in combat were martyrs, and Nikephorus, unlike his closed-minded clerics, saw that unless the playing-field was levelled then the Muslims would always have a morale advantage, whereas the Empire would not always have capable soldier-emperors.

Islam saw the jihad - making war against and conquering the lands of non-believers - as a sacred duty, which Christianity has never done. It's this outlook that makes Islam the only religion today to produce religiously-motivated suicide bombers.

QuoteYes, in chapters 47, 49 and 53.

I'll look them up.  :)

QuoteIndeed, although to Norman-dominated Europe and even the Muslim-dominated Near East this behaviour, which if anything compares favourably with the standards and methods of today, smacked of deviousness and cowardice together and seems to have encouraged attack as often as it parried or avoided it.  The real problem was not so much keeping the frontiers defended (the Byzantines were usually pretty good at that when it came to the crunch) but what went on within those frontiers.  This as much as anything else is what made Byzantine recoveries rather hesitant and short-lived affairs.

The bottom line though is that the army did its fundamental job: defend the empire for centuries.

The weakness of the Byzantines is that they were subjected to unrestricted immigration and lacked a policy that acculturated the newcomers.  In the West they might have reconquered the territories, but the Balkans had more the aspect of a multi state federation than of a homogenous state. Hence, when the Byzantines lost a couple of battles the territory reverted to being Serbiaor Bulgaria. Similarly in Anatolia, once the Turks had flooded in and reduced the territory to Nomad pastureland dotted with agreek citiesthe basis of the army tied to Byzantine land had gone.nByzantium had another life as a commercial empure and this carried on and was able to hire mercenaries, but as a territorial state the Greeks were doomed. Their religion played a part in this in two ways. Firstly they sought to acculturate the Balkan immigrants , Slavs and steppe dwellers, by converting them, but this only went so far as the translation of Christianity into national Orthodox churches did not turn these territories back into provinces, but simply co religionist states. Secondly Greek Orthodox Christianity always had a strong pacifist thread and it did not provide an impetus to conquest. Hence the Empire mainly lost territory and defended rather than seeking to acquire territory. At best it attempted to get back minor list areas such as Sicily and Southern Italy or Crete and Cyprus. Given the effectiveness of the Basilian army the amount of territory reconquered from the Moslems was pathetic. At a time when. they were strong and their enemies divided the Byzantines could not reconquer Syria and Egypt. To an extent this is because they had not kept the Balkans as a homogenous part of the empure, Greek speaking, colonised by imperial peasants, raising imperial armies. To an extent it also due to their defensive minded ness and the lack if a theology of aggression.
Roy

Good observations, Roy.  It is particularly noticeable in the case of the Bulgars that the Byzantines pretty much converted them and left it at that, i.e. put no real effort into assimilating and civilising them.  One gets the impression that Byzantine victories were thrown away because of this tendency to think that converting barbarians and/or cleansing altars used by the Azymites was all one really needed to do to re-establish the Empire.

When the Byzantine army did fight, it was not always successful.  If one looks at the Wikipedia list of Byzantine battles (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Battles_involving_the_Byzantine_Empire), it is depressing (especially to a Byzantine army admirer like myself) how many they managed to lose!

Quote from: Justin Swanton on February 21, 2015, 06:27:59 AM

Or one could point out that the default stance of bishops who had been left with the administrative responsibility for their towns was not pacifist when it came to dealing with barbarian attacks.

A complete list of such bishops might be helpful to allow us to draw conclusions.

Quote
If the Eastern Church really had opposed soldiery, there would quite simply have been no Byzantine army. One needs to examine the extent to which this excommunication actually had meaning or effect.

Hmmm ... as the emperor was supreme, it was he and not the church who determined whether there would be an army (Constantine Ducas, for example, seemed to consider one largely unnecessary).  The excommunication would however seem to have had meaning and effect if Nikephorus Phocas wanted to change the rules.

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The Umayyad Caliphate was beginning to unravel at the time of the invasion of Gaul, and one can argue that Charles Martel had a good deal of luck (or Providence?) on his side, catching the Moors by surprise and obliging them to fight a battle with the terrain in his favour. He could, in different circumstances, quite easily have lost the battle.

Surprising Moors was apparently more a matter of routine than of luck.  Duke Odo (Eudes) of Aquitaine did the same with more effect, in the Battle of Toulouse (http://uk.ask.com/wiki/Battle_of_Toulouse_%28721%29?qsrc=3044) in AD 721.

Tours was by no means a once-for-all success.  Charles Martel continued to pull off successes at Narbonne and the River Berre in AD 737, and Pepin the Short made the expulsion of the Muslims permanent by capturing Narbonne itself in AD 759 after a long siege.  Ummayad rule had remained more or less intact until AD 750, which may be why Carloman and Pepin the Short had not pushed further earlier, but the essence of the matter is that the Franks were warlike where the Byzantines were not, and their version of Christianity seemed to be more flexible or at least reticent about such things as smiting opponents, whether unbelievers or no.

Quote

Quote
The real problem was not so much keeping the frontiers defended (the Byzantines were usually pretty good at that when it came to the crunch) but what went on within those frontiers.  This as much as anything else is what made Byzantine recoveries rather hesitant and short-lived affairs.

The bottom line though is that the army did its fundamental job: defend the empire for centuries.

Up to a point.  What is however very noticeable is that it did not regain lost imperial territories with any great vigour or consistency, and ended up being largely a collection of foreign mercenaries (Varangians, Latinikon, Vardariots and Skythikon) rather than native troops, and this at a time when Orthodox insistence on the need to stand against Azymite heretics was at its most clamorous.

Quote from: Jim Webster on February 20, 2015, 09:20:09 PM
I confess to having always enjoyed the irony that now Christianity is blamed, often simultaneously, for having been pacifist and led to the fall of the Roman Empire, and also to have led to the deaths of countless millions through crusades and persecutions etc

Would that be a paradox rather than an irony?  In any event, 'Christianity' in its multiform variations managed both (although in crusades it takes two to tango, and the basic purpose of crusades was to liberate conquered Christian lands) and even during the Spanish conquest of the New World one had the 'nice priests' who wanted to turn the natives into a happy thriving Christian community and the 'nasty priests' who thought that as they had been born in sin and worshipped false gods, conquest, robbery and burning at the stake was too good for them. ;)

Quote from: Patrick Waterson on February 21, 2015, 01:01:49 PM
What is however very noticeable is that it did not regain lost imperial territories with any great vigour or consistency, and ended up being largely a collection of foreign mercenaries (Varangians, Latinikon, Vardariots and Skythikon) rather than native troops,

It is, of course, an interesting question both why this was and how important it was.  Did religion make it hard to recruit native troops, or a loss of tradition recruiting grounds?  Also, why is a mercenary army such a bad idea?  Though the latter might be another thread entirely.

Actually in many cases these 'mercenaries' turned into native troops.
"The late Byzantine army 1204-1453" by Mark C Bartusis the example is given of one George Pissas who came before the Patriarch Germanos II (1223-40) who avoided service as a Vardariotes by becoming a monk but having eluded his pursuers he now wanted the right to marry. While the Vardariotai may have been Hungarian settlers in the 10th century, it looks as if they had been fully integrated into the Greek population and were merely soldiers as opposed to nomad horse archers. As there is no record of them holding Pronoiai it is probable that they were not heavy cavalry.

Jim

A mercenary army might be very  goodat fighting , but it is also very fragile. The Romans are a very good example.  When they ground down the Carthaginians they were raising army after army,with simultaneously one in Spain and two in Italy despite the huge defeats Hannibal had inflicted.  In the Vth century the resources of Italy sufficed for one army only and that rebelled and seized the state. F course Roman armies recruited from the Italian peasantry were not averse to makingba bid for power.  When mercenary armies are crushed there is no pool of trained manpower in the population to raise up another force, the citizenry are unprotected and not capable of protecting themselves.
Roy

Quote from: Patrick Waterson on February 21, 2015, 01:01:49 PMWhat is however very noticeable is that it did not regain lost imperial territories with any great vigour or consistency, and ended up being largely a collection of foreign mercenaries (Varangians, Latinikon, Vardariots and Skythikon) rather than native troops, and this at a time when Orthodox insistence on the need to stand against Azymite heretics was at its most clamorous.

There is no evidence here for causality, we are simply observing coincident trends.

Perhaps consider that geographic expansion might cause economic weakness. Many Roman provinces were not economically productive enough to pay for their own protection.

It depends on the state. In the case of Carthage it is probable that citizens served on the fleet. There may have been a shortage of men to serve as marines, as we hear of troops being embarked.

Carthage is an interesting example, it fielded decent sized (if inept) armies without mercenaries after the second punic war, and the men fighting to defend the city seem to have been brave and competent enough. Whether the officers were is another matter
Jim

Mercenary forces were always a part of every major army from Cretan archers all the way up to Milanese crossbowmen. The Roman Auxillia is a case in point- soldiers from non "Roman" tribes paid to fight and then rewarded with citizenship status.

When mercenary ARMIES are employed.... Well, let's look at the pre-match locker-room pep-talk. First of all, the citizen army:

"Men, you fight today for your families, for your land, for your emperor and your god. Defeat these foreign infidels who bring fire and rape to our cities. Kill their leaders who would have you made slaves and chattels for their whores and whelps. Remember how your fathers fought to defend this land against that threat. Hope that your sons will live to do the same. Forward for honour and the safety of the state. Forward to give your children a land to call their own. Forward against the sworn enemy of everything you hold dear! To arms! And Charge!"

(assembled soldiers cheer and thunder out of the tunnel to spank the French)

Now let us take the same scenario with mercenary armies:

"Men, today we are fighting for <looks at clip board> some rich dude who runs this foreign empire. When you die, they'll stop your pay. Think of your families sitting at home so far away nice and safe. Maybe young Theobad will win the 'Goat of the Year' this time. We were going to fight them in the borders, but since that would take us too far from the capital with all its wine and women, we thought we'd fight them here. All that burning, raping and pillaging they've been doing in the meantime will have sapped their strength. Okay, we ready? No? Ok, maybe tomorrow then...."

So it goes.

Quote from: Jim Webster on February 21, 2015, 05:21:35 PMCarthage is an interesting example, it fielded decent sized (if inept) armies without mercenaries after the second punic war, and the men fighting to defend the city seem to have been brave and competent enough. Whether the officers were is another matter. Jim

I think you may risk over-personalizing it. It wouldn't have mattered what officers Carthage came up with.

Quote from: Jim Webster on February 21, 2015, 05:21:35 PMIt depends on the state.

This I think is the crux of it.
Carthage picked on a larger, better organized, and more productive economy.
Rome's strength was being able to recruit, train and equip citizen army after citizen army no matter how many Cannaes occurred. (Maybe a slight exaggeration, 3+ Cannaes would have been a problem)
Mercenary armies do not persist.

Quote from: Dangun on February 21, 2015, 05:19:15 PM

Perhaps consider that geographic expansion might cause economic weakness. Many Roman provinces were not economically productive enough to pay for their own protection.

I think the problem was more geographic contraction: the loss of provinces does not seem to have helped the situation.

If we base the decline of Rome on a purely or even predominantly economic argument, the loss of expensive-to-defend provinces which seem not to have entirely paid their way, such as Britannia and Gallia, or for that matter Illyria, Moesia and Pannonia, would have left the Empire with provinces which were on average richer and more populous, combined with shorter frontiers - hence economically and strategically much more advantageous.  Yet these lost provinces, even if in some cases only intermittently lost, were also the best recruiting areas of the Empire.

The loss of Gallia and Hispania left Italia and Africa as the mainstay of the Western Empire - in short, it was reduced to its richest, most populous and most defensible provinces with short and rugged frontiers (the Alps and the straits of Gibraltar) and defence - had economics been the predominant consideration - should have been both easy and well within the surviving provinces' means.  Instead, Africa fell easily to the Vandals and Italy ... well, Italy had a chequered existence, being combed by Alaric in the early 5th century and Attila in the mid-5th century but then springing forth under Majorian to reconquer - albeit temporarily - parts of Gallia and Hispania (it might have been less temporary had Ricimer not had Majorian murdered) before succumbing to its own barbarian mercenaries in the late 5th century.

So the 'uneconomic' provinces seem to have been a source of strength rather than weakness, in that they provided manpower for the armies and tended to absorb the worst of a barbarian incursion before it could reach the richest and most populous provinces, the ones which really paid for the armies.  They had their role.

Quote from: Erpingham on February 21, 2015, 02:04:09 PM

Quote from: Patrick Waterson on February 21, 2015, 01:01:49 PM
What is however very noticeable is that it did not regain lost imperial territories with any great vigour or consistency, and ended up being largely a collection of foreign mercenaries (Varangians, Latinikon, Vardariots and Skythikon) rather than native troops,

It is, of course, an interesting question both why this was and how important it was.  Did religion make it hard to recruit native troops, or a loss of traditional recruiting grounds?  Also, why is a mercenary army such a bad idea?  Though the latter might be another thread entirely.

Following Manzikert (AD 1071), the Byzantine Empire lost much of Anatolia, which was a traditional recruiting ground, but it had lost 'themes' (military districts) rather than its entire recruitment base, and tried to make up the difference with 'pronoia', or a sort of contract recruitment in  which nobles raised troops.  The Fourth Crusade in AD 1204 did seize a significant slice of what was left of the Empire, including Greece itself (apart from Epirus, which became 'independent' under its own Despot) and the successes of John Vataces relied on a spearhead of Latin mercenaries (knightly cavalry) - of the very same troop type, religion and background as the men who had seized much of the Empire.  These were the Latinikon, extensively used but never wholly trusted.  While there seem to have been sufficient men to flesh out late Byzantine armies, it would seem that the rulers preferred to keep Greeks at work as taxpayers and to hire foreigners to fight and get killed.  This is all very logical, but tended to become self-propagating, as Greek military manpower grew less and less until in 1453 less than 5,000 could be found to bear arms in the final siege of Constantinople.

A mercenary army need not be an inherently bad idea, but historical experience does tend to favour good national armies, if only because they do not negotiate cash settlements with the enemy.  Such was rarely a problem for the Byzantines, as their wealthy opponents tended to be Turkish and Byzantine armies tended not to desert to Turks, although the Hungarian artillery engineer Urban happily switched allegiance when offered more money by the Turks than the Byzantines could afford.  The quintessential mercenary experience must be Italy of the condottiere era, especially after 1360 and the arrival of the Free Companies, which put much more life into campaigning and left the northern Italian cities in a deadly and endless auction to buy the services of the best mercenaries - who would stay bought only until the next city came up with a better offer.

Quote from: Dangun on February 21, 2015, 05:36:04 PM

Quote from: Jim Webster on February 21, 2015, 05:21:35 PMCarthage is an interesting example, it fielded decent sized (if inept) armies without mercenaries after the second punic war, and the men fighting to defend the city seem to have been brave and competent enough. Whether the officers were is another matter. Jim

I think you may risk over-personalizing it. It wouldn't have mattered what officers Carthage came up with.

It did for the first couple of years, after which the decisive element was the officers the Romans came up with.

QuoteCarthage picked on a larger, better organized, and more productive economy.

Did it?

QuoteRome's strength was being able to recruit, train and equip citizen army after citizen army no matter how many Cannaes occurred.

Hard to argue with that.  I would suggest that in addition to using national rather than mercenary manpower Rome's real strength was that its economy was smaller, less organised and less productive, perhaps illustrated by the absence of double-entry bookkeeping, and hence less affected by the rigours of warfare.  Trade tends to take a nosedive if a war eventuates, whereas agriculture does not (unless some inconsiderate fellow leads an army across the Alps and begins ravaging your fields).

Quote from: Patrick Waterson on February 21, 2015, 08:25:57 PM

A mercenary army need not be an inherently bad idea, but historical experience does tend to favour good national armies, if only because they do not negotiate cash settlements with the enemy.  Such was rarely a problem for the Byzantines, as their wealthy opponents tended to be Turkish and Byzantine armies tended not to desert to Turks,

Actually the frontier in Asia minor seems to have drifted west, valley by valley, as the local inhabitants and the 'militia' who guarded them discovered that life was better (or at least more reasonably taxed) under the Turks

Jim

It drifted west, certainly, but my impression is that this was because some clever chap on the throne (Andronicus Palaeologus, if I remember aright) decided to stop funding the klesourioi (locals who garrisoned the border passes to stop Turkish raids) and keep the money, while making vague promises that Imperial troops would do the defending.  These remained, for the most part, just promises, especially as the Empire had just entered into a frantic round of civil wars which would smoulder on for generations.

There were of course Turks and Turks.  The Seljuks, following Manzikert, had wiped out the bulk of the farming population and laid the cities under tribute.  During the First Crusade, time and again Byzantine guides assigned to Crusader contingents led them into what had been fertile and prosperous valleys and found only empty scrubland.  The Ottomans adopted a less vicious mode of conquest, and cities which had been pillaged by Ottomans and 'liberated' (pillaged again) by the Catalans of Roger de Flor, who had been hired to remove the Ottoman problem, found the Ottomans marginally less cruel and extortionate.

On a point perhaps more germane to the thread topic, we might consider the deleterious effects of heresy, schism and similar differences of opinion between Greek and Roman ecclesiastical gentlemen on the doings and fortunes of the Empire.  Rather than churn through the whole dreary list, we can just take a slice from the history of the Iconoclasts and Paulicians.

Theodora, as empress regent AD 842-855, decided to crack down on the Paulicians, who were essentially a back-to-basics Christianity movement with Gnostic overtones.  Her sweeping persecution drove them (and some surviving Iconoclasts who were swept up in their wake) into a last stronghold at Tephrice under their general Carbeas, who, in collusion with the Muslims, spent the rest of his life making destructive inroads as far as Ephesus with fire and sword - this during the reign of Basil I.

This was but one religious controversy, albeit the most devastatingly effective.  The Roman Empire, once it turned Christian (and before and after it became Byzantine) had a serious religious controversy on average about once every century.  If one attempts to assess the expended manpower, military activity and general resources used to quash these controversies, which usually began in persecutions and ended in revolts, it would seem that these side-effects of Christianity destructively absorbed a significant fraction of the Empire's military potential.

[Edit: had the wrong Basil - corrected.  Sorry about that being Fawlty. ;)]

Quote from: Patrick Waterson on February 22, 2015, 12:01:34 PM

This was but one religious controversy, albeit the most devastatingly effective.  The Roman Empire, once it turned Christian (and before and after it became Byzantine) had a serious religious controversy on average about once every century.  If one attempts to assess the expended manpower, military activity and general resources used to quash these controversies, which usually began in persecutions and ended in revolts, it would seem that these side-effects of Christianity destructively absorbed a significant fraction of the Empire's military potential.

I'm not sure you could claim that religious conflicts took up a larger fraction of the Empire's military potential than the conflicts of the 3rd century

In some cases the 'religious' conflicts were effectively long term nationalistic ones resurfacing under a new name. For example Egypt had rebelled against Greek and Roman occupiers for centuries, and choosing their own brand of Christianity to provide a respectability to their next revolt owes more to nationalism than theology

Jim

Jim

Quote from: Jim Webster on February 22, 2015, 01:08:30 PM

I'm not sure you could claim that religious conflicts took up a larger fraction of the Empire's military potential than the conflicts of the 3rd century

Agreed probably not over the same space of time, but the Empire recovered rather better from the 3rd century than it did from the effects of religious conflicts.  The point of the religious disturbances and actions resulting therefrom is that the Empire, once Christian, always had a canker of one form or another eating away at its heart and sapping its strength: granted, not as spectacularly as the secession of Gaul under Postumus, but more insidiously, and recovery to a harmonious condition was never really possible.

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In some cases the 'religious' conflicts were effectively long term nationalistic ones resurfacing under a new name. For example Egypt had rebelled against Greek and Roman occupiers for centuries, and choosing their own brand of Christianity to provide a respectability to their next revolt owes more to nationalism than theology

An interesting suggestion, but Egypt had been essentially quiescent since the 1st century AD, and the minimal and often understrength garrison there was more to keep Blemmyes out and taxes moving than from any fear of would-be successors to the pharaohs (in any event, most Roman emperors had themselves entered as pharaoh just to remind everyone who was boss).  Syria likewise was by the 2nd century AD a contented part of the Empire provided they could get on with sport, horizontal gymnastics and commerce - generally in that order of importance.  Similarly, Africa, home of the Donatists, had long ago laid aside any thoughts of being Punic, independent etc.

On the general thread topic, a point that might bear examination is the positive influence of Christianity on the Roman army.  This seems necessarily a rather brief subject, but we should at least mention the 'sacred' standards: the Labarum and Our Lady of Blachernae, these being the more successful.  A standard which promised victory for the army which bore it would have contributed something of a plus to morale, at least up to the point where it was captured in battle.  The loss of a sacred standard seems to have depressed Byzantine military performance for a couple of decades after it happened - at least that is my impression - but bringing one to the battlefield presumably helped to secure the occasional victory.

Actually I suggest you check your history with regards Egypt
There was the Jewish Diaspora revolt in 116-117 which impacted on Egypt
In 139 there was a revolt over oppressive taxation which took some years fighting to put down
Another revolt broke out in 193AD
According to wiki there was a series of revolts in the 3rd century (plus Zenobia)

The argument could be made that under Christianity Egypt was actually less prone to revolt

With regards Africa, the revolts of  Firmus and others have been described as part of a long struggle between pastoral and agricultural peoples, but certainly it wasn't a religious struggle.

Indeed if you agree that the Empire recovered well from the chaos of the 3rd century, then the argument could be made that Constantine, the architect of the recovery, was right, and picking Christianity as the state religion gave the state and the dynasty the stability it needed. Certainly it is an argument every bit as coherent as pointing to evidence of Christian pacifism. Indeed it is difficult to find a Christian Emperor who warrants the term pacifist. Honorius and Arcadius were incompetent but their father was every bit as Christian as them and his pacifism is hardly obvious

Jim

Quote from: Jim Webster on February 22, 2015, 11:06:16 PM
Actually I suggest you check your history with regards Egypt
There was the Jewish Diaspora revolt in 116-117 which impacted on Egypt
In 139 there was a revolt over oppressive taxation which took some years fighting to put down
Another revolt broke out in 193AD
According to wiki there was a series of revolts in the 3rd century (plus Zenobia)

None of this seems to have been nationalistic, which was the original point at issue if I remember aright.

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The argument could be made that under Christianity Egypt was actually less prone to revolt

An argument that looks a bit thin if we look at 4th century Egypt and the religious (essentially Christian faction) riots there.  Granted, these were not revolts per se, but were disturbances that had serious effects on the province and its people.

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With regards Africa, the revolts of  Firmus and others have been described as part of a long struggle between pastoral and agricultural peoples, but certainly it wasn't a religious struggle.

So the Donatist heresy had nothing to do with it? ;)

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Indeed if you agree that the Empire recovered well from the chaos of the 3rd century, then the argument could be made that Constantine, the architect of the recovery ...

For Constantine, read Aurelian.

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Constantine ... was right, and picking Christianity as the state religion gave the state and the dynasty the stability it needed.

But it did not: the Christian world awoke to find itself Arian, and the Athanasians spent the rest of the century fomenting trouble.  The 'stability of the dynasty' manifested in the crushing of Constantine II by his brothers, the murder of Constans by Magnentius and - following a drastic reduction in the number of available family members by Constantius II - the reversion to traditional Hellenism under Julian.

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Certainly it is an argument every bit as coherent as pointing to evidence of Christian pacifism. Indeed it is difficult to find a Christian Emperor who warrants the term pacifist. Honorius and Arcadius were incompetent but their father was every bit as Christian as them and his pacifism is hardly obvious

Christians and Christian emperors (several of whom were not technically Christian until they converted on their deathbed) are two different things.  The Christians of the 4th century seem to have shrunk from opposing barbarians but joyfully bashed in each other's skulls over theological disputes (we can list some of these if desired).  'Christian' emperors such as Constantine and Valentinian campaigned aggressively and for the most part successfully.  One does however notice that the offspring of Christian emperors tended to be more attached to the palace than the army - Constantine's progeny and Theodosius' were noted for their military incompetence on the rare occasions they could be bothered to demean themselves with military matters.  (To be fair, Constantius II handled the Sarmatians successfully, despite being useless against the Persians.)

The point at issue as I see it is that the progress of Christianity undermined, and the adoption of Christianity vitiated, the recruitment for and performance of the Roman armies, which became increasingly barbarised as recruitment became more difficult to attain.  The pacifistic pronouncements of Christianity (notably "Thou shalt not kill") and concomitant canonical constraints have every appearance of providing excuses to avoid military service (consider the military age manpower locked up on monasteries and the increasingly prevalent priesthood) and of providing disincentives to soldiers no longer encouraged to emulate the military virtues of Mars and Mithras.

Point 1)
Given that Nationalism might not have existed before the 17th century AD nothing was nationalistic. But this was certainly not Roman politics as usual, most was Egyptians trying to drive out the current lot of tax collectors

Point 2)
Given that various riots were orchestrated by members of the local governing body, a lot of it can be regarded as politics by other means, using 'tribal', 'religious' or 'cultural' differences to their own advantage. Much like Roman politics under the late republic for example

Point 3)

No, the Donatist heresy had started in 313 (ish) and they weren't actually regarded as Heretical until 409
So when Firmus revolted some of his supporters were doubtless Donatists, some were orthodox/Catholic, and some were doubtless pagans.
He was also supported by the Circumcellions  who existed before the Donatists, being Berbers who had grievances, social and political. (tied up with pastoral and agricultural peoples etc) However they did link up with the donatist and eventually became donatists

Point 4
No, I'd prefer to read Constantine. After all Aurelian failed, it was Diocletian who provided the first bit of stability, it was Constantine who created a dynasty, and after him Dynasties had a legitimacy which lasted, with a few hiccups, to the fifteenth century
Compared to the previous century, the reign of Constantine and his dynasty was an era of peace. There were very few battles fought between Roman soldiers.

To blame Christianity for the ineptitude of second or third generations of a dynasty is nonsense. Nero, Caligula and Caracalla prove that lack of a Christian upbringing is irrelevent.
The reversion to Paganism was hardly a success either

Frankly to think that the 'pacifistic' pronouncements of religion are likely to have much effect on a society are not supported by any evidence.
'Thou shalt not kill' is actually a Jewish pacifistic religious pronouncement, and we've all seen how these tranquil peaceful people spent the centuries.
The same pacifistic pronouncements produced the English armies that fought at Agincourt

To assume that for some reason late Roman society was, for a century, uniquely sold on pacifism, something that Christian societies (for example the Egyptians who you say Christianity made more turbulent and violent)
By Justinians reign even the Isaurians were Christians, pacifists to a man

Jim

 

Quote from: Jim Webster on February 23, 2015, 03:30:51 PM

Point 3)
No, the Donatist heresy had started in 313 (ish) and they weren't actually regarded as Heretical until 409

But they were the subject of an edict from Constantine in AD 317 which "threatened the death penalty to anyone who disturbed the peace of the empire" - and then another which essentially confiscated their property.  Cue armed suppression of the Donatists in Carthage.  Constantine tried the stick and carrot; Valentinian the stick.  Augustine asked for them to be persecuted, which they were beginning in AD 409 - whereupon Augustine protested at how they were being treated.  Then along came the Vandals and it was the Athanasians' turn to sing small - not that the Vandals favoured Donatists, but being Arian, they despised Athanasians.

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So when Firmus revolted some of his supporters were doubtless Donatists, some were orthodox/Catholic, and some were doubtless pagans.
He was also supported by the Circumcellions  who existed before the Donatists, being Berbers who had grievances, social and political. (tied up with pastoral and agricultural peoples etc) However they did link up with the donatist and eventually became donatists

Indeed; the picture was somewhat messy and complicated, though Christian faction made it yet messier to the detriment of the Empire.

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Point 4
No, I'd prefer to read Constantine. After all Aurelian failed, it was Diocletian who provided the first bit of stability

Aurelian did not fail; he reunited the Empire; Probus consolidated and expanded his work; Diocletian tried to sort out the administration (which admittedly was in need of a good sort-out, and not necessarily the one he gave it).

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... it was Constantine who created a dynasty, and after him Dynasties had a legitimacy which lasted, with a few hiccups, to the fifteenth century

Albeit somewhat like Egypt's Thirteenth Dynasty, which was for the most part a 'dynasty of usurpers'.

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Compared to the previous century, the reign of Constantine and his dynasty was an era of peace. There were very few battles fought between Roman soldiers.

But one of them was Mursa, which was by all accounts more destructive to the Roman army than the others put together.

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To blame Christianity for the ineptitude of second or third generations of a dynasty is nonsense. Nero, Caligula and Caracalla prove that lack of a Christian upbringing is irrelevent.

One could add Commodus, Elagabalus and even Gallienus.  The problem is that the Empire recovered from all of these but not from Honorius and Arcadius.  Granted that dynastic succession in the Roman Empire did not go well, at any time, the Christian creation of legitimacy for a dynasty seems a bit like an own goal.

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Frankly to think that the 'pacifistic' pronouncements of religion are likely to have much effect on a society are not supported by any evidence.

Actually we have the evidence of a long tradition of Christian concealment and martyrdom rather than revolt while Christianity was not the state religion.

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'Thou shalt not kill' is actually a Jewish pacifistic religious pronouncement, and we've all seen how these tranquil peaceful people spent the centuries.

But one which was imported into Christianity, along with Jesus' injunctions to go the extra mile and turn the other cheek.

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The same pacifistic pronouncements produced the English armies that fought at Agincourt

No, a good tactical system and proud military tradition produced that army.  Christianity simply made them pray and kiss the soil before the battle began.  They were of course under Western Christianity, a rather more militant beast than its Orthodox counterpart.

---

It looks to me as if this discussion is becoming increasingly stale and more importantly sidetracked from the principal topic, namely the effect of religion on an army and on the Late Roman and Byzantine armies in particular.

We can perhaps broaden the spectrum somewhat, perhaps to consider how far an army was usually bound up with the religion of its nation or culture.

Our earliest reliable information on this seems to come from Biblical times, and here we see certain of the major cultures, notably Egyptians, Assyrians and Babylonians, with divine standard accompanying the army - which, given the assumption that a representation of the deity connected with the deity itself, effectively equated to taking a portable deity to war.  Sumerians may have done the same, although the Ur Standard appears on balance perhaps not to be a standard.

Taking a deity, or at least a tutelary deity, to war seems to have been quite popular.  The Romans of the early Empire assigned one to each legion - nothing quite like having your own god along to keep everyone up to scratch.  However the Greeks and Macedonians seem to have restricted standards to battlefield purposes and connected with the deities by looking at a bit of liver beforehand - and taking note of battlefield omens.  The Republican Romans followed a similar procedure.

The other side of the religious coin is soldier superstition.  Most soldiers seem to have been superstitious (and some still are).  Normally this just results in a bit of quirky behaviour before battle, but where something very symbolic occurs which is evident to much of the army, battlefield performance and morale generally can nosedive.  The eclipse of a crescent moon had dire effects on the morale of an Ottoman army even in the 17th century, and legionary eagles which refused to let themselves be pulled up from the ground made alarm bells ring in the mind of every Roman soldier.

Crassus' 53 BC campaign against the Parthians seems to have been particularly well sprinkled with adverse omens.  The official omens at the start of the campaign are inauspicious.  Arriving at the Euphrates, lightning strikes the crossing-point.  Crassus' horse drags its groom into the river and both drown.  Crassus' army crosses a river on a temporary bridge, and he then tells the army he will have the bridge demolished "... so that none of you will return."  Distributing rations, lentils and salt - traditionally offerings to the dead - are served out first.  Then on the day of the battle Crassus emerges from his tent wearing a black cloak instead of a red one and the standards part company with the ground most reluctantly.

The ultimate question is: just how far did this catalogue of ill omen affect the performance of the Roman army at Carrhae?  They seem to have fought well enough on the day, but perhaps the effect is to be found on the following night, in which "... it was a grievous night for the Romans. They took no steps to bury their dead nor to care for their wounded and dying, but every man was lamenting his own fate." - Plutarch, Life of Crassus 27.3

In essence, it seems that adverse religious morale effects had their main impact off the battlefield. Would this be a fair assessment?

1) The donatists didn't start off as a heresy. They just rejected any clergy who had handed over religious texts to be burned rather than face martyrdom.
So they couldn't accept anybody ordained by such a person.
Theologically they were mainstream in their belief in baptism being the only washing away of sin, Constantine himself was baptised on his deathbed. (Mainstream in what the public seem to have believed as opposed to what various church fathers taught)

The argument was therefore between two factions who wouldn't accept each other's clergy and fought over who owned what buildings. In 315 Constantine actually agreed with the donatists.

2) Doubtless pagan, tribal and political factions made it messier to the detriment of the Empire as well, but I struggle to see the relevence

3) Aurelian failed. He was murdered, died without heir and the dance continued. Diocletian tried a new tack and that didn't work either.

4) Still a dynasty, with loyalty to the Dynasty and usurpers were from within the Dynasty

5) I notice how you've ignored the Egyptian evidence. If in Egypt you feel that Christianity brought violence and more riot and fighting than Egypt had seen before, how come the same Religion was responsible for an outbreak of pacifism in the rest of the Empire?

Agincourt shows that what we have is a situation where Christians have fought pretty well as many wars as anybody else, with just as much enthusiasm as anybody else, but here, uniquely, in the case of the later roman empire, which had so many other things going wrong (bloated bureaucracy for a start), Christianity induced Pacifism.

Jim

The point about Donatists is that they were one more Christian sect or belief variant that added to the turmoil within the Empire - a turmoil that existed in various forms, but was accentuated by the adoption of Christianity as the state religion as it added another layer of disturbances where disturbances existed and a new layer where they did not.

Aurelian did not fail: he reunited the Empire.  To end up murdered is not necessarily a lack of achievement.

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4) Still a dynasty, with loyalty to the Dynasty and usurpers were from within the Dynasty

I am puzzed: is Sir trying to maintain that there was a single dynasty extending from the first to the last Constantine, or something of similar nature?  If so, I suggest taking a look at late Roman and Byzantine emperors (http://uk.ask.com/wiki/List_of_Byzantine_emperors) and the number of 'fresh starts' in the succession.  If not, a bit of clarity about exactly what is meant would help.

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5) I notice how you've ignored the Egyptian evidence. If in Egypt you feel that Christianity brought violence and more riot and fighting than Egypt had seen before, how come the same Religion was responsible for an outbreak of pacifism in the rest of the Empire?

Because the 'pacifism' was selective, preaching an aversion to warfare but happily engaging in domestic factional strife.  This was not unique to Egypt.

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Agincourt shows that what we have is a situation where Christians have fought pretty well as many wars as anybody else, with just as much enthusiasm as anybody else, but here, uniquely, in the case of the later roman empire, which had so many other things going wrong (bloated bureaucracy for a start), Christianity induced Pacifism.

This is a non-argument.  As previously mentioned, Latin Christianity, prevalent in the west after the 7th century AD, was a different beast to Orthodox Christianity, which flourished under, and to the detriment of, the Roman and Byzantine Empire.

To go back to the subject title: the effect of religion on the army has been and continues to be:

1) A morale boost
2) A generator of compassion, hatred or other mindset particular to the faith, circumstance and comparative religion or values of the enemy
3) Personal reconciliation to the prospect of death, horror and killing other human beings
4) A reason for fighting in the first place

Much of the discussion so far has been on pacifism. Western Christianity started very well with its non-violent philosophy, but once it got established and found sworn enemies in Islam and other non-believers it began to get a little lairy. Nevertheless, it has given us Westerners a long-held view that war should be 'just', even if it is 'just' that one big fat king should have that bit of land instead of that other big fat king. Prisoners should not be routinely slaughtered unless they are non-believers and civilians who manage to hide for three days can emerge safely when their city is attacked. We all know of countless abuses, but these WERE seen as abuses. The moral contradiction of Christianity in the act of slaughter does cause introspection that no Viking raider or Mongol, pagan Roman or Greek would ever consider.

'If God is with us, who can be against us?' is a common theme with soldiers. The Spartan phalanx (the big one with all the Spartiates on the right wing) would always sacrifice ON THE BATTLEFIELD before moving against the enemy to make sure the gods were on their side. I do not know of any occasion when the omens were not favourable, but if you were a Spartan priest you knew which side your bread was salted. If you knew the gods or god favoured your cause, you went into battle a happy bunny. So the Oracle at Delphi would be consulted, the unfathomable knot sliced open, the sacrifices would be made, the pilgrimages would be undertaken all to prove to the soldiers (if not the leader) that divine favour was with them.

Quote from: Rob Miles on February 25, 2015, 12:43:28 PMThe Spartan phalanx (the big one with all the Spartiates on the right wing) would always sacrifice ON THE BATTLEFIELD before moving against the enemy to make sure the gods were on their side. I do not know of any occasion when the omens were not favourable

More than once at Plataia, apparently:

Quote from: Herodotos IX.61-62They could get no favorable omen from their sacrifices, and in the meanwhile many of them were killed and by far more wounded (for the Persians set up their shields for a fence, and shot showers of arrows). Since the Spartans were being hard-pressed and their sacrifices were of no avail, Pausanias lifted up his eyes to the temple of Hera at Plataea and called on the goddess, praying that they might not be disappointed in their hope. While he was still in the act of praying, the men of Tegea leapt out before the rest and charged the barbarians, and immediately after Pausanias' prayer the sacrifices of the Lacedaemonians became favorable.

"If at first you don't succeed,
Try, try again.
Till the Gods get it right."

Of course you could go ahead with unfavourable omens:

Quote from: Cicero, De Natura Deorum 3.7
Shall we be unmoved by the story of the recklessness of Publius Claudius in the first Punic War? Claudius merely in jest mocked at the gods: when the chickens on being released from their cage refused to feed, he ordered them to be thrown into the water, so that as they would not eat they might drink; but the joke cost the jester himself many tears and the Roman people a great disaster, for the fleet was severely defeated.

How religion affects an army is actually a hugely complicated question, or collection of questions. Here are a few that come to mind:

1. Is the religion in question pacifist? This leads to a couple of sub-questions:

a) To what extent does the religion permit or uphold defensive warfare?
b) To what extent does it permit or uphold offensive warfare?

2. Is the religion's stance on warfare a part its fundamental teachings, or is it something more peripheral?

3. Do the religion's injunctions on warfare emanate from its highest authority and are they permanent, or are they more circumstantial, emanating from local religious authorities and varying in time and place?

4. To what extent to the adherents of a religion - especially the military adherents - take seriously the religion's stance on warfare? Does this vary from age to age? This applies to adherents who take their religion seriously but manage to rearrange its teachings on warfare to suit themselves. Ask a member of the IRA how this works.

5. And a bit different to 4, to what extent do the adherents of a religion take their own religion seriously? (i.e. they may know that such an injunction for/against warfare is important, but their religion is not really central to their lives)

Food for thought!

Quote from: Duncan Head on February 25, 2015, 01:13:29 PM

Quote from: Rob Miles on February 25, 2015, 12:43:28 PMThe Spartan phalanx (the big one with all the Spartiates on the right wing) would always sacrifice ON THE BATTLEFIELD before moving against the enemy to make sure the gods were on their side. I do not know of any occasion when the omens were not favourable

More than once at Plataia, apparently:

Yes.  And curiously enough, the change to favourable omens seems to have coincided with the Persian cavalry riding off over the horizon looking for Greeks who were not huddled behind shields in an all-round defensive formation.  With the Persian cavalry gone, the omens became favourable, the Spartans went on to the attack and all was rosy in the temple garden.

One wonders whether the diviners occasionally had something of a tactical eye.

Quote from: Justin Swanton on February 25, 2015, 03:46:18 PM
How religion affects an army is actually a hugely complicated question, or collection of questions. Here are a few that come to mind:

1. Is the religion in question pacifist? This leads to a couple of sub-questions:

a) To what extent does the religion permit or uphold defensive warfare?
b) To what extent does it permit or uphold offensive warfare?

And perhaps: does it differentiate between the two?  As far as the Assyrians (for example) were concerned, defensive warfare seems merely to have been the opponent getting his army mobilised first rather than a different ethical precept (but see below on gods and treaties).

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2. Is the religion's stance on warfare a part its fundamental teachings, or is it something more peripheral?

For Jainism, avoiding warfare would be pretty fundamental.  For Islam, it was pretty central, especially with regard to getting into paradise.

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3. Do the religion's injunctions on warfare emanate from its highest authority and are they permanent, or are they more circumstantial, emanating from local religious authorities and varying in time and place?

And does it in fact have any injunctions, or does it accept warfare as a fact of life?  For the Romans, it seems to have been more a matter of which ceremony to use (OK, chaps, whose turn is it to oil the hinges of the doors to the Temple of Janus?) rather than any question of fighting being a questionable activity - until (dare I say it) Christianity became the official religion.

What might be worth pointing out, particularly in connection with the Romans, is that it was sometimes held that the gods frowned upon going to war for the wrong reasons.  Both sides were usually very keen to convince the gods, or at least their contemporaries, that the other side had violated a solemn treaty or similarly blotted its copybook - and particularly in the Biblical period, we see elaborate curses written into a treaty to affect anyone who breaks it.  The wrath of heaven was anticipated, or at least hoped for, if anyone went to war without 'due cause'.

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4. To what extent to the adherents of a religion - especially the military adherents - take seriously the religion's stance on warfare? Does this vary from age to age? This applies to adherents who take their religion seriously but manage to rearrange its teachings on warfare to suit themselves. Ask a member of the IRA how this works.

5. And a bit different to 4, to what extent do the adherents of a religion take their own religion seriously? (i.e. they may know that such an injunction for/against warfare is important, but their religion is not really central to their lives)

The simple answer seems to be that some do and some do not.  Herodotus of Halicarnassus saw the fingers of the gods in every major event.  Dionysius of Halicarnassus felt that Pyrrhus' loss at Beneventum was amply explained by the fact that the Epirot monarch had previously helped himself to sacred treasure, or at least to treasure from a temple.  To Thucydides, gods were an irrelevance not worthy of mention, or perhaps belief.  I suspect this may be more of a constant through the ages than we may think.

Quote from: Patrick Waterson on February 21, 2015, 08:25:57 PM
I think the problem was more geographic contraction: the loss of provinces does not seem to have helped the situation.

I'd have to disagree, everything east of Syria being an example of provinces that were too expensive for Rome to keep.
Similarly, in the third century, losing your safest and wealthiest provinces every decade to a new usurper e.g. Postumus et. al. had a devastating impact on the economy and then the army as one fought to reintegrate.

Quote from: Patrick Waterson on February 21, 2015, 08:25:57 PM
If we base the decline of Rome on a purely or even predominantly economic argument, the loss of expensive-to-defend provinces which seem not to have entirely paid their way, such as Britannia and Gallia, or for that matter Illyria, Moesia and Pannonia, would have left the Empire with provinces which were on average richer and more populous, combined with shorter frontiers - hence economically and strategically much more advantageous.

Yes.

Quote from: Patrick Waterson on February 21, 2015, 08:25:57 PM
Yet these lost provinces, even if in some cases only intermittently lost, were also the best recruiting areas of the Empire.

This actually touches on a novel and advantageous characteristic of the Roman Empire. They had a mechanism for admitting non-citizens to the citizenry. (For example, by contrast, Carthage did not - hence mercenaries?) It definitely wasn't perfect. But the fact they had one at all, of that scale, was a competitive advantage.

Quote from: Patrick Waterson on February 21, 2015, 08:25:57 PM
So the 'uneconomic' provinces seem to have been a source of strength rather than weakness, in that they provided manpower for the armies and tended to absorb the worst of a barbarian incursion before it could reach the richest and most populous provinces, the ones which really paid for the armies.

A bit circular - provinces are good because you can recruit from them the troops required to hang on to said province. mmm?

Again, given the sheer amount of warfare, and the - until recently - near universal identification with one belief system or another, it seems very difficult to argue that in all but the tiniest minority of cases, that religion inhibited any state's ability to conduct war. (And there are so many better alternative limiting factors - headcount, money, technology, location etc. why look there for an explanation of differential efficacy?)

Would it help to generalize about the impact of religion?
Monotheisms are, by their nature, divisive because they are intolerant of other religions and create in-group, out-group situations, irregardless of what their adherents claim to believe or how they behave. The presence of monotheism might then weaken a pluralist state, until of course the large majority of the state and its citizenry adopt that monotheism. This process would arguably map onto the trajectory of the Roman Empire.

Quote from: Dangun on February 28, 2015, 02:10:18 PM

Quote from: Patrick Waterson on February 21, 2015, 08:25:57 PM
I think the problem was more geographic contraction: the loss of provinces does not seem to have helped the situation.

I'd have to disagree, everything east of Syria being an example of provinces that were too expensive for Rome to keep.

The basic problem was that by yielding Mesopotamia, the Empire gave the Persians access to the provinces of Osrohene and Syria - Syria being a critical part of the Imperial economy, or at least revenue.  Armenia was supported as an independent buffer state because it acted exactly as such: the Parthians spent a lot of their effort trying to subdue Armenia, effort which would otherwise have been directed against the Empire.

There is more to the question of Imperial defence than economy, although obviously one will not get much of a defence if one has no economy from which to draw a revenue.  Specifically, the Empire needed - and fielded - a system of defence in depth (at least when not plunged into the depths of civil war) which absorbed small raids and acted as a 'tripwire' to warn of and delay larger incursions so that a suitable army could be concentrated to deal with them.

One part of the equation was population, and the security of same.  If one's farmers are repeatedly raided, their yield (and numbers) will drop, which puts an additional, and perhaps excessive, burden on the remaining inhabitants of the province: note that revenue does not necessarily drop: the survivors are just squeezed harder until something gives.  Gaul under Constantius II was a case in point: having invited barbarians in to distract Magnentius, Constantius was unable to get them out again (he eventually sent Julian to Gaul where, much to everyone's surprise, Julian cleared the provinces of barbarians).  However this did not reduce the amount of money being raised from the province; Constantius' administration simply upped the taxes to keep the revenue flowing.

We might note that this revenue did not necessarily reach the troops it was theoretically intended to support.  Ammianus, on Julian's fourth year in Gaul:

"For through all their career of laudable achievements, and the critical moments of hazard, the soldiers, though worn out by their labours in Gaul, had received neither donative nor pay from the very day that Julian was sent there, for the reason that he himself had no funds available anywhere from which to give, nor did Constantius allow any to be expended in the usual manner." - Rerum Gestarum XVII.9.6

It would also seem that the Imperial administration was horribly inefficient and wasteful, with much slack which could be pruned by a careful and attentive ruler.  Ammianus again:

"Last of all, not to speak of the victories in which he routed the savages, who often fell with spirits unbroken, what good he did to Gaul, labouring as it was in utmost destitution, appears most clearly from this fact: when he first entered those parts, he found that twenty-five pieces of gold were demanded by way of tribute from every one as a poll- and land-tax; but when he left, seven only for full satisfaction of all duties." - Rerum Gestarum XVI.5.14

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A bit circular - provinces are good because you can recruit from them the troops required to hang on to said province. mmm?

In isolation, it does look rather peri-orbital, but if hanging onto the said province has a net cost of X and keeps the barbarians from raiding provinces whose revenue amounts to 2X, it is a good investment.  It is an even better investment if you can get good troops from said province which would be impossible to raise if the province were lost/yielded/ceded, rendering you unable to defend your provinces worth 2X.

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Again, given the sheer amount of warfare, and the - until recently - near universal identification with one belief system or another, it seems very difficult to argue that in all but the tiniest minority of cases, that religion inhibited any state's ability to conduct war. (And there are so many better alternative limiting factors - headcount, money, technology, location etc. why look there for an explanation of differential efficacy?)

Some of the 'tiniest minority' were quite significant, at least for the nations concerned.

"When Rehoboam arrived in Jerusalem, he mustered all Judah and the tribe of Benjamin—a hundred and eighty thousand able young men—to go to war against Israel and to regain the kingdom for Rehoboam son of Solomon.

But this word of God came to Shemaiah the man of God: "Say to Rehoboam son of Solomon king of Judah, to all Judah and Benjamin, and to the rest of the people, 'This is what the Lord says: Do not go up to fight against your brothers, the Israelites. Go home, every one of you, for this is my doing.'" So they obeyed the word of the Lord and went home again, as the Lord had ordered." - 1 Kings 12:21-24

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Would it help to generalize about the impact of religion?
Monotheisms are, by their nature, divisive because they are intolerant of other religions and create in-group, out-group situations, regardless of what their adherents claim to believe or how they behave. The presence of monotheism might then weaken a pluralist state, until of course the large majority of the state and its citizenry adopt that monotheism. This process would arguably map onto the trajectory of the Roman Empire.

Generalisation can help up to a point, although understanding a specific situation will require specific analysis - and with that tautology out of the way, some monotheisms had very different effects over time.  Persian Zoroastrianism was traditionally tolerant of other religions, and even gave authority to local priesthoods over and above what they had held when their nations were independent.  One can see this in Babylonian temple records and - after a bad start under Cambyses - in the raising of Egyptian priest-theocrats to a pseudo-kingly status - as Persian puppets, of course.  Jews, as fellow monotheists, were also ruled by - or through - their priesthood, and usually had favoured status (at least when the likes of Haman the Agagite were not intriguing against them).

Judaism - as opposed to the original Hebrew religion - was markedly less tolerant of other religions, at least in theory.  Nehemiah's diatribe (in the Book of Nehemiah) about half-breed Jews who could not even speak proper Hebrew marked the end of an on again-off again inclusionist approach to other peoples and religions and a conscious separation of the 'true believers' from everyone else.  This was not necessarily divisive, and indeed both Persians and Macedonians found the Jews to be agreeable subjects until Antiochus IV rather spoilt things by attempting forcible conversion to Hellenism - a measure which probably preserved Judaism over the long term, because up to that point Jews had been tending to adopt Hellenism voluntarily.  The Hasmoneans again complicated the issue by forcing Judaism upon the Edomites and ultimately the Khazars, unwilling to become either Christian or Muslim but wanting a 'proper' religion, adopted Judaism to keep both at bay, becoming what Arthur Koestler calls the Thirteeth Tribe.

And then there were the Falashas ...

Getting back to the Roman Empire, one of its problems following the adoption of Christianity is that it was quite hard for everyone to agree on exactly what Christianity was.  Here is a partial list of 'heresies', i.e. bright ideas that never quite made it into orthodoxy, at least for any great length of time.

Adoptionism
Antinomianism
Apollinarism
Arianism
Audianism
Docetism
Donatism
Ebionites*
Euchitism
Iconoclasm
Luciferianism
Marcionism
Melchisedechiansm
Monarchianism
Monophysitism
Monothelitism
Montanism
Patripassianism
Pelagianism
Pneumatomachianism
Psilanthropism
Sabellianism
Semipelagianism

*Condemned not so much for the beliefs they had as for those they did not have.

Anyone interested in any of these can look them up here (http://uk.ask.com/wiki/List_of_Christian_heresies?lang=en).

For much of its history after adopting Christianity, the Empire had one or more of the above religious controversies going (although the Ebionites, the traditional followers of Jesus, had been expelled before this point, and Docetism discarded).  The major controversies, especially Arianism, Monophysitism, Iconoclasm and Monothelitism, rent the Empire with civil (or rather uncivil) disturbances and the suppression of the Paulicians assumed the aspects of a war.  This forms the basis of my view that the adoption of Christianity fundamentally weakened the Empire; the difficulties of recruitment suggest if they do not necessarily demonstrate that Christianity was also having a serious effect on the defence of the Empire, the lack of recruitment having to be made up with barbarian troops of increasingly dubious reliability (and mainly Arian heretics into the bargain).

Quote from: Patrick Waterson on February 28, 2015, 06:14:46 PMOne part of the equation was population, and the security of same.  If one's farmers are repeatedly raided, their yield (and numbers) will drop, which puts an additional, and perhaps excessive, burden on the remaining inhabitants of the province: note that revenue does not necessarily drop: the survivors are just squeezed harder until something gives. 

Absolutely.
In an agrarian economy, the size of the economy is intimately linked with population.