Page:Bury J B The Cambridge Medieval History Vol 2 1913.djvu/72

44 were called, were persecuted by the enforcement of these general rules; Justinian endeavoured, above all things, to deprive them of education, and he had the University of Athens closed in 529; at the same time ordering wholesale conversions.

Missions were frequently sent to the Monophysites of Asia by John, bishop of Ephesus, who called himself "the destroyer of idols and the hammer of the heathen" (542). Those sanctuaries which were not yet closed, that of Isis at Philae and that of Ammon in the oasis of Augila, were shut by force, and nothing remained of paganism but an amusement for a few men of leisure, or a form of political opposition in the shape of secret societies. The Jews fared no better, and the Samaritan revolt in 529 made their position still worse. Other sects which refused to conform, Manichaeans, Montanists, Arians, and Donatists, were persecuted in the same way. Religious intolerance accompanied the imperial restoration in the West. In Africa, as in Italy, Arians were spoiled for the benefit of Catholics, their churches were destroyed or ruined, and their lands confiscated. The Monophysites alone profited by comparative toleration, because they engrossed more of Justinian's attention, since they were stronger and more numerous than the others.

Justinian had been thrown into the arms of Rome at the beginning of his reign, partly by the orthodox restoration effected by Justin, and partly by his own desire to maintain friendly relations with the Papacy; a desire due to political interests as well as to religious zeal. Resounding confessions of faith testified to the purity of his belief and his profound respect for Rome, while his measures against heretics proved the sincerity of his zeal. Justinian spared nothing in his efforts to conciliate the Roman Church, and we find inserted with evident satisfaction in Justinian's Code pontifical letters, which praise his efforts to maintain "the peace of the Church and the unity of religion," and assert that "nothing is finer than faith in the bosom of a prince."

However, if concord with Rome was a necessary condition of the establishment and maintenance of the imperial domination in the West, the Monophysites had to be reckoned with in the East. In spite of the persecutions of Justin's reign, they were still strong and numerous within the Empire. They were masters of Egypt, where the monks formed a fanatical and devoted army at the disposal of their patriarch. In Palestine, Syria, Mesopotamia, Osrhoene, and Armenia they held important posts, and found protectors even in the capital itself; and their furious opposition to the Council of Chalcedon and the Roman doctrines was the more dangerous since under the guise of religion they displayed those separatist tendencies, which had long been hostile towards Constantinople in both Egypt and Syria. Justinian had to choose between the horns of a dilemma, between the restoration of political and moral unity in the East by the sacrifice of peace with