Writing about Violence in a Realm of Peace and Piety - A study on Violence in Sozomen's and Socrates Scholasticus' Ecclesiastical Histories

在他的教会史的第四本书中，索佐曼报告了殉道者和马西亚努斯的故事。被判谋杀一名罗马将军并煽动叛乱以罢免君士坦丁堡异端主教的罪名成立，两人均被处决。虽然Sozomen知道这一行为的邪恶之处，但他并没有试图证明其理由或澄清任何指控，而是承认他们作为烈士的地位，并继续描述在他们的坟墓发生的奇迹(IV，3)。通过讲述个人对正义的争取与叛国法的冲突，Sozomen似乎将宗教义勇军置于国家理由之上。这与一位努力在罗马帝国内宣传教会与国家之间的和平与统一的作家的普遍形象很难相称。相反，这则轶事向我们介绍了一幅暴力和合法性的复杂图景，进一步研究的时机已经成熟。由于缺乏一个完整的现存史学的4世纪和5世纪初的Sozomen教会史和同名的工作，他的当代苏格拉底学者提供了重要的信息来源的历史事件，更不用说研究暴力在晚期古代，这是最近蓬勃发展。无论是分析宗教狂热分子暴力行为背后的原因，还是分析异教邪教场所的破坏和皈依过程，几乎每一次对这一时期暴力的审查都必须利用教会历史学家的著作。尽管如此，他们的作品很少成为任何持续调查的主要对象。关于苏佐曼和苏格拉底的有限书目的很大一部分致力于他们对单一皇帝的刻画或他们对正统的立场，而教会历史学家对暴力的处理尚未得到任何长期的关注。这一研究项目的目的是分析索佐曼和苏格拉底的教会史中对暴力的处理。考虑到上述轶事，指导问题将是两位作者将暴力的有争议的合法性在罗马教会和国家内部相互冲突的法律、传统和魅力权威的形成和分解中扮演什么角色。要解决的暴力类型主要源于宗教争议，包括基督徒和异教门外汉之间的流血冲突，主教在会议上的口头对抗，以及皇帝和官员在信仰问题上使用的强制性措施。教会历史学家选择性地汇编了许多资料，特别是圣徒传记、信件和律法，要么逐字引用，要么重新措辞。将原始文献对暴力的态度与教会历史学家新的、被操纵的叙述进行对比，将使我能够确定、比较两位作者对暴力的态度，并将其联系起来。我的项目的成果不仅将对当前的研究大有裨益，梳理出两位作家的个人文学议程，这对于我们理解这一时期的两个关键的历史“守门人”至关重要。它还将有助于正在进行的关于古代晚期权力形成模式转变的讨论，当时的方向是一种新的基督教暴力和合法性概念，只有在革命时代才会受到挑战，从而形成现代社会被塑造的背景。

In the fourth book of his Ecclesiastical History Sozomen reports the story of Martyrius and Marcianus. Found guilty of having murdered a Roman general and instigating a revolt in order to get rid of the heretic bishop of Constantinople, both were executed. Although Sozomen is aware of the wickedness of this deed he does not try to justify its rationale or to clear the accused of any charges, but rather acknowledges their status as martyrs and proceeds to describe the miracles that occurred at their grave (IV, 3). By narrating a story in which the personal strive for justice clashes with laws on treason, Sozomen seems to put religious vigilantism above the reason of state. This hardly fits the prevalent picture of an author who endeavoured to propagate peace and unity between church and state within the Roman Empire. Instead this anecdote introduces us to a complex landscape of violence and legitimacy ripe for further study. Due to a lack of a complete extant historiography for the 4th and early 5th centuries the Ecclesiastical History of Sozomen and the same-titled work of his contemporary Socrates Scholasticus form crucial sources of information for historical events, not to mention for the study of violence in Late Antiquity, which has recently flourished. Whether one analyses the rationale behind violent acts of religious zealots or the destruction and conversion processes of pagan cult sites, almost every examination of violence in this time-period has to make use of the church historians' works. Despite this, their writings have rarely been the primary subject of any sustained investigation. The greater part of the limited bibliography on Sozomen and Socrates is devoted to their portrayal of single emperors or their stance on orthodoxy, while the church historians' treatment of violence has not yet received any prolonged attention. The aim of this research project is to analyse the handling of violence within the Ecclesiastical Histories of Sozomen and Socrates. With the above anecdote in mind, the guiding question will be what role both authors ascribed the contested legitimacy of violence in the formation and decomposition of conflicting legal, traditional and charismatic authority within the Roman church and state.The types of violence to be addressed mainly emanate from religious controversies and cover bloody clashes between Christian and pagan laymen, verbal confrontations between bishops at synods and coercive measures used by emperors and officials in matters of faith. Church historians selectively compiled numerous sources, especially hagiographies, letters and laws, either quoted verbatim or rephrased. Contrasting the original documents' approach to violence with the new, manipulated narrative of the church historians will allow me to pin down, compare and contextualise both authors' attitude towards violence. The outcomes of my project will not only be of great benefit to current research teasing out the individual literary agenda of both authors, which is crucial for our understanding of the two key historical "gatekeepers" of this period. It will also contribute to the ongoing discussion on shifting patterns of authority formation in Late Antiquity, during a time when the course was set for a new, Christian concept of violence and legitimacy, only challenged in the Age of Revolutions and thus forming the background against which modern society has been shaped.