Dr. David Gwynn
speaker
906 appearances
4 recordings
1 series
first heard Nov 2024
last heard 21 Dec
Dr. David Gwynn’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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Appearances
So Christians as a movement, the Christian movement grows when there's times of conflict. But what you then get from Constantine onwards is money, legal privileges pouring into the church. Whether that's good for the Christian religion is something that, for example, the Reformation is going to take serious issue with. I don't think we'll discuss it here.
But what you do see with Constantine, there had never been huge churches. Constantine built the original Vatican, so the original Church of St. Peter's out on the Vatican Hill. He built the original St. John's Lateran. He builds the original Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem. Constantinople, of course, has multiple churches from the beginning. So just physically,
the prominence of Christianity's greatly increased. But money is pouring into the church. Constine wrote a famous letter to one bishop, just saying, here is a large sum of money. If it's not enough, I've told my treasurer to give you what you ask for. So money is going to the church. Bishops now matter. so a bishop can contact the emperor directly.
Bishops can therefore influence imperial policy, famously true of Ambrose of Milan, the great bishop in the late 4th century, who has a love-hate relationship with Theodosius I, two very strong-willed men, both of whom are devout believers, but with different priorities. So bishops matter. Is this strengthening or weakening the overall empire? It's doing both. You read my next question. Yes.
There's no question this support for charity in a world that doesn't have much welfare support matters. So Christian community matters. Bishops are very important to Roman government, not least because the Roman Empire is split into these small provinces and there's a governor in charge of each. But a governor is not usually in office for more than one, perhaps two years.
A bishop is for life once they're appointed. So the bishop of Alexandria, for example, the great city in Egypt, can be a much more influential figure than the annual governor. Because a bishop like Athanasius of Alexandria, who's a bishop for 45 years, has a degree of support structures that the government system can't necessarily manage.
So it can be a major asset, but only, of course, if church and empire are working together. And the problem there is that Christianity, in this post-process of enormous growth, also had to re-decide what it was. This is the great age of Christian definition. All the questions that Christians had been debating before Constantine suddenly became much more important.
What books should be in the New Testament still had to be finally decided. What do Christians believe is orthodoxy, right belief? What's going to happen to heretics, wrong believers, now that the Roman emperor is a Christian and therefore has a divine injunction to enforce the correct form of Christianity?
So there's going to be divisions within the Christian church, but those divisions are going to impact on wider history.
It's always very difficult comparing armies from multiple periods because in some levels, say the sheer strength of its infantry, Yes, the 4th century army is weaker than, say, its 1st century AD counterpart. It's not as uniformly recruited or equipped, although they still have imperial factories, so the equipment's been altered. It doesn't have the sheer density of the legions.
On the other hand, during the 3rd century crisis, the Romans did learn a number of military lessons. That included, firstly, cavalry now matters much more than it did before. So the 3rd century and then the 4th century army has a much stronger cavalry arm than the earlier empire did. Big block legions, 5,500 men, work fine under certain conditions.
But when you're trying to protect a very wide frontier, more smaller groups work more easily. So one feature that seems to emerge with Diocletian and Constantine is you get an increase in the number of legions, which used to be argued to mean, oh, look, the army's getting much bigger.
But what the archaeology of the army camp suggests is that the legion size dropped from around 5,500 to more like 1,000. Wow. That's like four-fifths of the strength gone. So in reality, you've still got the strength because the number of legions is dramatically multiplying. But you've got smaller blocks because that way you can spread out across the frontiers.
Not least because the earlier empire of the first, second century wasn't so focused on frontier defense. It was more about when do you advance beyond the frontiers? Whereas in the third century crisis, they were reacting. They had to react.
How far the Romans were actually ever clear-cut dominant is one of those interesting questions. The Romans lose a remarkable number of major battles in their history. Famously, the Roman Republic has a remarkable ability to lose battles. The Pyrrhic War, they lost two, won one. Fighting Hannibal, lose three, win one. The pattern's consistent.
You lose, but you win the last one and come out still standing. You keep coming back. Exactly. The Romans always had that strength. And in many ways, that's their greatest military advantage. It's not utter brilliance on the battlefield. It's not a clear-cut technological advantage.
But it is consistent technology, reserves, the ability to re-recruit armies, retrain them, bring them back into the field. The third century crisis, they had to make it up as they were going along. The Romans had never come under this level of pressure before. The Persians, for example, used heavily armored cavalrymen, cataphracts. They don't move that fast, but they are very heavy cavalry.
There are tanks on there. Exactly. And the Romans don't have an obvious response to that. So how do you adjust? The Germanic tribes, which largely, of course, have the advantage of energy, enthusiasm, but aren't good at having reserves. Julian the Apostate, as described in detail by Ammianus Marcellinus, wins us basically a set piece battle.
Battle of Strasbourg in the early 350s is actually a good demonstration of what the Then the Romans send in the reserves and the Germans hadn't thought of that. And it's basically, this is how the Romans have been managing the frontier. But when you get towards the late fourth century, where you get much larger groups moving, and crucially, the addition of the Huns,
who clearly do not fight according to the same pattern that the Romans are used to. And the Romans do not have an answer to the nomadic horse archers with their much better bow, their much more fluid tactics. The Roman army is going to be at a serious disadvantage.
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