The History Channel original podcast. History This Week, August 24th, 394.
I'm Sally Helm. A priest named Esmet Akam approaches the walls of Philae, a massive Egyptian temple on the southern edge of the once powerful kingdom. it's said that the god Osiris himself was buried here.
And Esme Ockham wants to leave a mark. to engrave a name so that in one form or another, if only in written form, The worshiper can be in the presence worshiping the deity eternally.
That is Solange Ashby, Associate Professor of Egyptology at UCLA.
The Temple of Philae is unique in that it was still operating as a traditional temple hundreds of years after The majority of other temples elsewhere in Egypt had been forced to close or been repurposed as Christian churches.
Rome controls Egypt now. And just a few years ago, Theodosius, the Roman emperor, banned the practice of the ancient Egyptian religion. what he calls paganism.
And he made Christianity the faith of the realms.
Even before that, the Egyptian religion had been in decline for decades, perhaps centuries.
There are only a handful of people left who can even write in the traditional Egyptian language of hieroglyphics.
Luckily, Esmond Ockham is one of them. but he's not very good.
If you look at The hieroglyphs, they're really ugly.
They're not well done. The person is struggling to compose intelligible sentences.
The inscription is meant to be a tribute to the god Maundalus, worshipped both in Egypt and the Nubian kingdom to the south. definitely not worshipped by Christians.
Esmet Akam is defying the emperor, But he likely knows that his act of defiance is, in the end, futile.
He would have had a bad feeling that Their way of worshiping traditional gods and practicing temple religion was really coming to a close.
What Esmond Ockham probably does not know is that he is etching the last known hieroglyph ever composed in ancient Egypt.
It's kind of heartbreaking to me. I see it as the sort of the end of a glorious era.
Culture has now stumbled and we see it fall with this final hieroglyphic inscription. the Egyptian language and religion are nearly extinct.
Nearly. Hundreds of miles to the north, at the very same time this hieroglyph is written, a bishop is fighting what he sees as a holy battle. to eradicate this paganism and bring Christianity to the Egyptian masses.
Today, Theophilus rises to power. What drives the Patriarch of Alexandria to crush his enemies?
And is it actually possible to erase an entire religion?
The fourth century, the 300s, is a dramatic era of upheaval in the Roman Empire.
Before that time, Christians in the empire were persecuted for their beliefs, often executed. the state religion was still polytheistic, the pantheon of gods largely inherited from the Greeks.
But in the year 312, the Roman Emperor Constantine converts to Christianity, abandoning Jupiter for Jesus.
In 380, the emperor Theodosius makes Christianity the official state religion.
Rome at this time controls Egypt, which had its own religion.
Egyptians have been worshipping deities like Osiris and Anubis, for thousands of years.
In 391, Theodosius explicitly bans the practice of this faith. by the end of the fourth century, like, yeah, paganism is out, Christianity is in, and Theophilus sort of takes that and runs with it.
Christine Lukritz-Marquis is Associate Professor of Church History at Union Presbyterian Seminary.
She reminds us this is still relatively early in the history of the church.
In the late 300s, Five different cities are vying to be the so-called seat of Christianity.
Alexandria, Antioch, Constantinople, and Jerusalem in the east. and Rome in the West.
Each of these cities has an archbishop, the Christian leader of that city.
Other than Rome, which has the Pope. But if one of these cities can rival Rome, then that archbishop would have an awful lot of power.
And the Archbishop Theophilus of Alexandria thinks, Why not me?
He's a good talker. He's a real presence.
And he's fiery. He's kind of that intense person in the room who catches your attention.
But also, if he's your friend, that's great.
And if you're on the wrong side of them, that's not going to be so much fun.
Theophilus is in a good position. Alexandria has a deep connection with Christianity.
The first church was established there in the 40s. and it's a major city in the Roman Empire.
Arriving in Alexandria by ship, you'd first pass the lighthouse of Pharos, the second tallest structure in the ancient world, just behind the pyramid at Giza.
It shoots a beam of light into the sky, a flame magnified by a series of mirrors.
As you drew closer, you might have glimpsed the Library of Alexandria.
Long past its prime, but still a major center of knowledge.
But you also have on this sort of higher prominent point, the Serapaeum.
The Serapaeum. a temple named for Serapis, a hybrid Egyptian Greek god derived from Osiris.
A huge statue of Serapis sits in the middle of the temple.
Imagine a rectangular, columned building with a massive courtyard. the temples designed for you to move in and out and into the streets of Alexandria so that traffic could like flow through in these big processions and out into the city.
It was a a really important locus for power.
To the ruling Christians, it is also a symbol of the past, dedicated to an Egyptian deity, not to their god.
A few months after Emperor Theodosius makes Christianity the official state religion, Archbishop Theophilus begins renovating an abandoned Egyptian temple some distance from the Serapion.
It's part of his effort to Christianize Alexandria. by physically converting buildings throughout the city.
Stephen Davis, professor of religious studies and history at Yale, told us, Theophilus justifies these actions by drawing on Christianity.
The story of Jesus Christ himself. When Jesus comes to town in Egypt, the Egyptian temple falls down.
It collapses basically under its own weight due to his presence.
And similarly, for a bishop like Theophilus, literally occupying a space, re-sacralizing a space in the name of Christianity, That's a public gesture.
That's one that is meant to demonstrate that Christianity is where it's at now.
During the renovation of this particular temple, Theophilus uncovers a shrine filled with Egyptian religious relics.
And rather than treat these objects with respect, he has them paraded through the streets in a way that's meant to mock this ancient fate.
And then, chaos. The Christians and the followers of the ancient Egyptian religion, they melee in the streets.
There are deaths on both sides. How many?
We don't know. Eventually, sensing that they're outmatched, the practitioners of the Egyptian faith retreat to safety in the Serapeum.
The Egyptians want their temple back, the one that Theophilus pulled those relics from.
Theophilus obviously disagrees, So they consult a higher power, Theodosius, the emperor.
Each side writes a letter making their case.
So it's actually like a it's a property dispute, which is a little anachronistic.
But like, this is my sacred site or it's yours.
Then they wait. Probably Theophilus stops constructing on this other site for a little bit to just like keep things calm in the city.
And so there's like this lull. But like this lull that probably has like, I like to imagine with like a lot of charge energy in the air, like what's going to happen.
Finally, they hear back. They all agree to meet at the Serapam because it's a site big enough to hold them.
And so what happens is like that sort of charge space over at this other site, all of that charge gets transferred to the Serapion when this letter gets read out.
And the letter says the pagans would be granted amnesty. but also that the Christians should eliminate the causes of the evils and the roots of the discord. which they interpret as destroy the Egyptian temples.
These Egyptian believers, they lock themselves in the inner sanctum where the statue is.
And then Theophilus and his rowdy Christian crew break in and decimate the statue.
A Christian soldier takes an axe to the statue of Serapis.
This is the beginning of a well-established Roman ritual, Demnatio Moriae. damning of memory.
So you see like defacing of statues, drag around the head and the hands and the feet.
Then you take them to different parts of the city and you like publicly sort of shame Serapis and anybody who believe in Serapis.
And then you dump him in the sewer. Lucret's Marquis isn't sure that's exactly how this particular damnatio moriae played out.
But undoubtedly, this is a desecration of the Egyptian faith.
The statue of Serapis is vandalized. and the Serapeum is left in a state of ruins.
Theophilus handles the fallout, and he seems to be a master of optics and public relations.
What's interesting is he doesn't build a church in the Serapion proper.
He leaves that partially ruined temple as a visual reminder of, hey, we beat you and I don't want you to forget it.
Theophilus has asserted his power over the believers in the old Egyptian gods.
Three years later, Esmond Ockham will etch that final known ancient hieroglyph.
But Theophilus' next major opponent has nothing to do with the Egyptian religion.
The threat will come from outside the city walls, and from within his own faith.
At Capella University, learning online doesn't mean learning alone.
You'll get support from people who care about your success, like your enrollment specialist. who gets to know you and the goals you'd like to achieve.
You'll also get a designated academic coach who's with you throughout your entire program.
Plus, career coaches are available to help you navigate your professional goals.
A different future is closer than you think with Capella University.
Learn more at capella.edu. Hey, it's Jill Schlesinger, CBS News business analyst, certified financial planner, and host of the podcast Money Watch. with Jill Schlesinger.
It's a show where we answer your questions about your money from investing to retirement and completing your taxes.
I'll be your financial coach and help take the stress out of managing your money.
Plus we might even have a little fun along the way.
Follow and listen to Money Watch with Jill Schlesinger on the free Odyssey app or wherever you get your podcasts.
It's easy to look at a historical figure like Theophilus and think, he's embracing violence just to gain power.
But Christine Lukritz-Marquis says it's more complicated than that.
I don't think he's like monstrous and just building for his own gain.
I think he probably doesn't strongly distinguish between his own gain as a powerful archbishop and the gain of the church.
The more power he has, the more power the church has.
He wants both things. And within the church, it is not just bishops like Theophilus who have power.
At this time, Christian monks, especially in Egypt, are seen as real religious authorities.
Some are living way out in the desert, which has a certain mystique.
It's seen by many people as a special place that allowed these monks to achieve a higher state of spirituality. retreating to the desert for a kind of enlightenment, that is a practice in Egypt that predates Christianity.
In particular, There is a monastic community out in Nitria, roughly 40 miles into the desert south of Alexandria.
These Nitrian monks are led by a group known as the Four Tall Brothers, or just the Tall Brothers.
Dioscorus, Ammonius, Eusebius, and Euthymius.
Tall for the time might have been like five foot five.
I don't know. Stephen Davis again. Human beings have gotten larger over the next couple of millennia.
The Tall Brothers, however tall they were, had once been friends with Theophilus.
And as Theophilus moves up the ranks of the church, he wants the tall brothers to come along for the ride. to get ordained as priests and work for Theophilus in the Alexandrian church.
And the monks were like, no. We want to be monks, right?
Like that's not what we're doing. It's not a damnation of Theophilus, right?
It's not like they're like, oh, I'm not coming to work with you.
They're just like, that's not what we're doing.
But Theophilus feels shunned because, well, if you don't want to do what I'm doing, you think you're better than me.
Right. And it like sort of exacerbates that tension between ecclesial power and monastic power.
Like who's holier? Theophilus has a right-hand man, Isidore. a high ranking priest who's been at his side for many years.
Theophilus trusts him enough to send him on diplomatic missions. he has Isidore represent him at talks with those five other cities that dominate the Christian world.
But By the late 390s, Theophilus and Isidor have some kind of falling out.
It might be over the fact that Isidor hid some church donations from Theophilus, The donor wanted her money spent on clothing for the poor, not on Theophilus' Egyptian temple conversion projects.
Then, Theophilus accuses Isidor of some kind of sexual impropriety.
And basically, they stop being friends. Sex and money accusations, just like today, always often come together, and so that was true in late antiquity too. what was going on there.
We can't know for sure, but obviously he did actually do something not so great.
Theophilus has Isidor excommunicated. And the question is, what was it about Theophilus' intensity that he clamped down so hard?
For Theophilus, it's about keeping his power consolidated.
And it's not because he's power hungry, it's because If he doesn't keep his power consolidated, then he must be on the wrong side of God.
Isidore is an influential priest. In Theophilus' mind, Isidore is now undermining his authority, and that is a threat to him and to the church.
Isidor flees to the desert, to Nitria, to the Tall Brothers.
Isidor trained as a monk there, and he's allied with the Tall Brothers.
And this makes relations between the Tall Brothers and Theophilus even worse.
Theophilus was sort of already pissed that they weren't, like, gonna be...
His, like, crew? So they were already sort of mad at each other, but he wasn't doing anything about it until they supported Isidor and protected him.
One of the Tall Brothers, Ammonius, travels with some fellow monks from the desert to Alexandria to plead with Theophilus.
Take Isidore back. forgive him. They come in and they're like, what's going on here?
Why don't you resolve this? The office is like, don't tell me what to do.
I'm the bishop. And so you get this sort of like back and forth and they're like, but you know, we're holy men.
We're just trying to like help you. Theophilus becomes enraged.
He, quote, choked and punched the old monk Ammonius until his nose bled.
And yes, Ammonius is an old monk. All of the Tall Brothers are pretty old, as is Isidor.
It's like these older decrepit monks like Theophilus is sort of picking on.
But the monk he just punched, Ammonius, he traveled to Alexandria with a group of younger monks. this is not an uncommon thing in the Roman Empire is to get some like young men to sort of be your muscle.
That's how you get things done in the empire.
And Ammonius, with a bloody nose, reportedly decides to stir up some trouble in the streets as a sort of revenge against Theophilus.
They like riled up some of the others and told the pagans, hey, we didn't we didn't have anything to do with what just happened to the Serapeum.
We didn't. But Theophilus did. It's a call to action.
Remember the Serapeum. And some Alexandrians begin rioting in the streets.
Then, Ammonius and the monks return to the desert.
Now, Theophilus wants revenge on these monks, for sowing chaos and for sheltering Isidore.
He reaches out to the imperial government and asks permission to lead a force into the desert.
The government agrees. Theophilus gathers some soldiers.
They arrive in Nitria and begin their attack.
The soldiers set fire to the monks' cells, burning their possessions, even their Bibles.
One version of the story even says that they burn someone alive.
But the Tall Brothers and Isidore are nowhere to be found.
They hide purportedly in a well. So they're like deep down in this well hiding.
Apparently nobody knows where they are. So Theophilus doesn't capture his enemies.
But he does feel like he's doing the right thing.
He absolutely feels justified when he's standing in the desert and this is happening.
He doesn't think like, oh, I'm some megalomaniac.
I'm a monster. Look how powerful I am. He has... government support right like so he's within the law but as we know you can have bad laws that are unjust And people can do stuff within the laws that are horrible.
And for Theophilus, it's not just the power of the Roman Empire behind him.
It's also divine power. This is something like when I'm teaching students, it's a challenge for them because they come in and they want to like maybe like be a minister and They've been given this lovely sort of nostalgic, if we can just get it right, like the first four centuries at their church.
And then I have to be like, actually. Christians were like as bad as any other human.
And so that's what I would say back to this, right?
Like Theophilus is being violent But these struggles, like orthodoxy was at stake for them.
And that felt crucial because if you didn't get it right, then God wouldn't save you.
And in a world where safety and health were still very precarious, this promise of salvation in an afterlife... was like far more powerful than we can sometimes appreciate.
So like Theophilus thinks he's saving And if a few monks have to die in a cell in order to save everybody else, it's worth the cost to him. but he knows that not everyone will agree.
This attack against these old holy men won't necessarily be well-received by people throughout the empire.
So he starts a PR campaign. sends out letters to other Christian leaders justifying his actions, refers to himself as the second Moses.
When he calls himself the second Moses, he's trying to be like, look, I'm clearly within the law.
And that legal piece is why Moses is so helpful.
Moses gets to judge his community because they don't follow the Ten Commandments, right?
They don't follow the law. And Theophilus is going, what?
I'm just fulfilling the law here. Like, I just did what I was supposed to, right?
Why am I the bad guy? Meanwhile... Isidore and the Tall Brothers have emerged from their well and fled to Constantinople, one of those five centers of power in the Christian world.
It's also home to the Emperor of Eastern Rome.
And the religious leader of Constantinople, the equivalent of Theophilus in Alexandria, is a man named John Chrysostom.
And he is a formidable opponent. Chrysostom means golden mouth.
Stephen Davis. It's not his given name. It's like a description of him because he was so eloquent as a preacher.
He would give these sermons and hundreds and hundreds of people would attend because he was so good at it.
Theophilus goes after John Chrysostom, calls him a heretic to anyone who will listen, Look, he's harboring these fugitives, the Tall Brothers and Isidor, people who I should be allowed to deal with myself.
But Chrysostom, like Theophilus, wants to be the most powerful archbishop of all.
And he has the ear of the emperor. Soon enough, Theophilus is charged with various crimes, mainly involving his violent attack against the monks at Nitria.
A synod, a council, is convened. It'll be known as the Synod of the Oak.
But Theophilus won't come quietly. Rather than taking the quick maritime approach across the Mediterranean, Theophilus takes the long land route to get to Constantinople, So he's like doing his like world tour and he's gathering support as he goes.
I like to think about this as like a band or a comedian's tour in some ways, right?
By the time he gets to Constantinople, Theophilus has built up a great deal of support across the region.
He arrives with 29 friendly bishops. When he steps off the boat, he's met with cheers.
He's engineered it all beautifully. He has force behind him.
And in a world where imperial power wants to stabilize as much as possible, if you have this huge crew of people who are ready to cause riotous violence, Suddenly, Theophilus is not on trial because that's not good for the empire.
By the time Theophilus arrives at the Synod of the Oak, he is the one calling the shots.
The Synod of the Oak begins in July of 403, and Theophilus' political maneuverings have worked perfectly. the accusations against him are dropped.
And it's John Chrysostom, his rival, the Patriarch of Constantinople, who ends up charged with 29 different crimes.
I just want you to envision one of the best lawyers you've ever seen who's charismatic and really good at the details.
Like he just like stacks fact on fact on fact.
Chrysostom is summoned three times to attend the synod, but he refuses.
He's tried in absentia. for all of these things that Theophilus says he did.
He's accusing John of having acted outside of canonical law by harboring people that he wasn't supposed to.
That is the Tall Brothers and Isidore. So he's like, you're outside the law.
You're the bad guy. Theophilus' basic argument is, I'm in charge of Alexandria, so these men are mine to deal with.
You, John Chrysostom, had no authority to offer them refuge.
Every bishop is for himself. And so if somebody is in your diocese, they're your responsibility as the bishop.
John Chrysostom is found guilty. He's deposed from his Episcopal office.
He appeals to the Pope directly, but ultimately he is forced into exile.
As for Isidor and the Tall Brothers, they were quite old.
Isidor and two of the four Tall Brothers had died before the Synod even began.
And as for the remaining two? As best we can tell, the monks sort of wander back to Palestine.
So they just sort of like go off and do their thing in the desert.
And as long as they're not causing trouble anymore, they're allowed there.
Thank you. Theophilus is welcomed back to Alexandria with open arms.
He does go back as the hero. He goes back to doing his job, sort of stable.
Everything's good with the monks in the desert, more or less.
But this whole saga, starting with the Serapam, through the attack on Nitria, it does give Theophilus kind of a bad name on the world stage.
He's popular in Alexandria and he's allowed to remain as archbishop, but the Pope basically cuts them off.
Theophilus dies in 412, never having established the power he sought for himself or his city in the ancient world.
Today, however, Theophilus is a saint in the Eastern Orthodox, Coptic Orthodox, and Syriac Orthodox churches.
He has a feast day dedicated to him. It's observed every year in October.
Stephen Davis says his legacy is tough to pull apart.
I think it depends on your audience, right?
I think in Egypt, amongst Egyptian Christians, his reputation is the bishop that fought the pagans and won.
I think amongst historians, it ends up being a mixed bag as to whether he was a political operator and that kind of thing.
Theophilus definitely expanded the power of the church within Egypt, largely by suppressing so-called paganism.
After all, the last ancient hieroglyph is written in the middle of his reign.
But even though that etching is a very specific date that we can point to, it's not like all of these customs disappeared overnight. local citizens could maintain shrines within their houses.
It's just not as visible. homes or private spaces and therefore not as subject to scrutiny, surveillance, etc.
Egyptians continued to practice their religion privately.
And it lived on in another way too, through Christianity.
Others have used the word syncretism. Another word that is thrown around is hybridity.
You have hybrid forms of religion. The monastic tradition, a practice that predated the arrival of Christianity in Egypt, still continues throughout the world today.
The Coptic Church still uses a variant of the Christian cross that looks suspiciously like the Egyptian Ankh.
The image of Isis nursing Horus has often been compared to that of Mary nursing Jesus.
So the very traditions that Theophilus sought to crush arguably live on in his very own church.
Thanks for listening to History This Week, a Backpocket Studios production in partnership with the History Channel.
To stay updated on all things History This Week, sign up at historythisweekpodcast.com.
And if you have any thoughts or questions, send us an email at historythisweek at history.com.
Special thanks to our guests, Solange Ashby, Assistant Professor of Egyptology and Nubian Studies at UCLA in Los Angeles, and author of Calling Out to ISIS. the enduring Nubian presence at Philae.
Also thanks to Stephen Davis, Woolsey Professor of Religious Studies and Professor of History at Yale University, And Christine Lukritz Marquis, Associate Professor of Church History at Union Presbyterian Seminary and author of Death of the Desert, monastic memory, and the loss of Egypt's golden age.
This episode was produced and sound designed by Ben Dickstein.
It was also produced by me, Sally Helm. For Back Pocket Studios, our executive producer is Ben Dickstein.
From the History Channel, our executive producers are Eli Lehrer and Liv Fidler.
Don't forget to follow, rate, and review History This Week wherever you get your podcasts.
And we'll see you next week.
