The Demonization of the Other
In Early Medieval Europe religious control over territory can be largely attributed to the rulers who found the source of their power in the support of the religious elites. The lack of separation between church and state further fueled the fires of intolerance and religious persecution, with individuals (especially those of lower classes) having little to no control over the religion they practice, and those that stray from the religion in power endured penalties in the form of exclusion and a difference in legal rights. It was through the intentional separation of the differing religious communities and the demeaning treatment of those that differed in religious identities that emphasized the lack of religious toleration or freedom during Early Medieval Europe and instead introduced conditional toleration and alterity into society.
To begin with, governments in power actively enabled the separation of religious communities, with laws and policies based purely on one’s religious identity playing a major role in ensuring order was maintained. As Johnson and Koyoma say in Persecution & Toleration the Long Road to Religious Freedom[1], “they also imposed costs: treating individuals differently, and placing them into separate legal categories, on the basis of their identity, prevented individuals from reaping the benefits that come from trading and sharing ideas across religious boundaries and opened the way for religious persecution," (Johnson and Koyoma, 4). This separation kept individuals aligned to their own religions, but the treatment of those that chose a different religious identity than that of the ruling power was made to influence their conversion. Emperor Theodosius II’s law The Theodosian Code illustrates this emphasis on the government influencing and enforcing religious separation, “no Roman shall presume to have a barbarian wife of any nation whatsoever, nor shall any Roman woman be united in marriage with a barbarian. But if they do this, they shall know that they are subject to capital punishment,” (Rosenwein, 4). The threat of punishment was enough to deter anyone from meddling with someone that practices a religion not their own and the forbiddance of this alluded to a sinful nature to the act, discouraging for religious devouts.
This organization of the communities as separate entities and the dehumanization the other communities faced also introduced a new tolerance, “conditional tolerations worked by compartmentalizing religious communities into their own separate legal and often physical spheres. In what follows we highlight the costs - both in the lives and coin - of organizing society in this manner," (Johnson and Koyama, 2). The exclusion directly resulted in the negative representation of these religions in Christian imagery, and the difference in legal rights further pushed a narrative that the ‘others’ were not of the same skin and bone as Christians. "Resultant studies examined how Jews and Muslims were placed on the margins of law and society through formal policy and informal exclusion, how they constituted European Christians' useful 'others,' and how they were represented in Christian imagination and texts," (Ames, 338). This lack of separation between religion and law invalidates people with different religious identities and ability to have the same basic rights as people who practice the predominant religion.
Furthermore, this feeling of otherness was so profound that it was given a name, "alterity also entered the study of religion in another, doubled way, as a view of the medieval church as both dark and unfamiliar, and as creating its own 'others,' sparked studies of dissidence, minorities, persecution, and violence," (Ames, 339)[2]. As was the intention of Emperor Theodosius II’s law, the feeling of alterity that governments encouraged to flourish became one of the motivators of religious persecution and violence during the time. The Theodosian Code also indicates the desire for alterity by the use of the word barbarians, dehumanizing and degrading the people that were different, and painting them in a negative light. This perspective that the governments encouraged further allowed the dissent and dissociation between the communities. Augustine references another time an emperor attempted to dissuade the people from practicing a religion, and prevent any meddling between the religious communities in his autobiography Confessions. The preventative measures to ensure that the ‘barbarians’ were unable to practice their religion and pass down its teachings to their children is evident, “in the time of the Emperor Julian (r.361-363), when a law was passed forbidding Christians to teach literature and rhetoric,” (Rosenwein, 12)[3]. Again, one can easily depict the lengths in which the two emperors went to ensure that the religion that fueled their power was the predominant religion practiced in the area. The threat of wandering from the confines of their religion could affect not only one’s social and financial status, but their very livelihood.
Additionally, violence and war were used as a tool in gaining religious power, with those that found themselves in recently acquired territories facing intense pressure to convert. Augustine once more illustrates this in The City of God (413-426). “For God’s providence constantly uses war to correct and chasten the corrupt morals of mankind, as it also uses such afflictions to train men in a righteous and laudable way of life, removing to better state those whole life is approved, or else keeping them in this world for further service,” (Rosenwein, 18). This is another example of the perspective people were presented with, the actions committed in the name of religion were pardoned on the basis it was done to correct a wrong. This implies that the practice of other religions are wrong and therefore the people who practice it are wrong, further dehumanizing the ‘others’. The transitions of power affected the entire population but it was the aristocratic that held the most influence over what was practiced, "it is only with these elite groups that any element of agency in the process of religious change is vested; the rest of the population simply passively respond to the power-struggles of an aristocratic minority," (Petts, 29)[4]. Yet another correlation between the state and church, and how little religious freedom the lower classes had.
While one could say that religious conversion could be dependent on the connections and allies a monarch might need in order for their wealth and power to flourish, with some kings converting for a short-term political gain, it is of no doubt that historians have found that religious conversion was rarely done in consideration of the public or political favor. Archaeologist David Petts discusses this in In Pagan and Christian: Religious Change in Early Medieval Europe. It was the monarch who spearheaded the path of conversion, and in doing so expected and influenced the public to follow their lead in a trickle-down effect from the aristocrats to the missionaries, and last of all, the poorest and most marginalized of the subjects. An attempt to cement the religion in the history of the country can be seen in the lack of opposing records or voices in history. The lack of voices and opinions from women or ethnic minorities were no accident but instead purposely drowned out by the focus on the aristocratic practices. As Petts mentions, "this inherent focus on the religious experience of the politically powerful is to the detriment of the voices of the more socially marginalized members of society (who may, in terms of numbers, be the majority)." (Petts, 29). The records of the marginalized actions and voices of the monarchs can be found in the multitude through documents, laws, and paintings, but the illiterate lower classes had no chance to leave their resistance to conversion in the pages of history.
Ultimately this means that historians rely heavily on the voices they are able to find, and the narrative of the people of this time are dominated by the opinions and decisions of those within power. In doing this, one can see the lengths that monarchs went in ensuring religious conversion, with those that dared to defy the conversion given labels such as heretics and witches. "Likewise, witchcraft, also once viewed as an authentic expression of alternative religiosity, had been reinterpreted as an imaginative clerical construction reflecting profoundly intellectual and elite concerns," (Ames, 341)[5]. The labels placed on those that did not convert were put in place in order to dehumanize them and make them enemies to the public. Monetary rewards for those that named witches or heretics also encouraged the public to cooperate. In focusing on purging the barbarians from the land, and any trace that they existed, rulers ensured that the narrative told in history is overwhelmingly in their favor, and silencing the voices of the majority.
In conclusion, religious toleration and separation of church and state was nonexistent in Early Medieval Europe, as religious institutions directly fueled power of the nobility ruling the region. The texts mentioned in this essay further emphasized the lack of religious freedom the majority of the population had during this time, with the power and influence of what was practiced lying instead with the nobility and aristocrats. It was through the intentional intervention of the governments to separate and divide the different religious communities that led to the rise in religious intolerance and persecution, conditional toleration, and alterity. Those that risked embracing different religious identities were set to endure a difference in legal rights and treatment within the ruling religion’s society. Those that were able to escape the conversion and continue to practice their chosen religions were unable to be seen in history due to the overwhelming amount of evidence documented that emphasized the predominant religion practiced was the only religion that could be considered. This dehumanization and degradation were intentionally done to encourage conversion (in doing so, one would be no closer to gaining trust) and to emphasize the power of the nobility through the power of religion.
Sources Used:
Primary Sources:
Rosenwein, Barbara H. Reading the Middle Ages: Sources from Europe, Byzantium, and the Islamic World. University of Toronto Press, 2018.
● 1.2 Law: The Theodosian Code (438)
● 1.6 Conversion: Augustine, Confessions (397-401)
● 1.7 Relating this world to the next: Augustine, The City of God (413-426).
Secondary Sources:
Ames, Christine Caldwell. “Medieval Religious, Religions, Religion.” Medieval Heresies: Christianity, Judaism, and Islam, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2015.
Johnson, Noel D., and Koyama, Mark. Persecution & Toleration: The Long Road to Religious Freedom. Cambridge University Press, 2019.
Petts, David. Pagan and Christian: Religious Change in Early Medieval Europe. Bristol Classical Press, 2011.
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