Chapter IX
The Roman Empire in Asia Minor has a long a lucid history of mythic and imperial cults, indeed, at the crossroads of many world religions; Asia Minor has been the nexus for the battleground, death, and survival or religions. Zoroastrianism was among the first great monotheisms to emerge from the region, followed, likely independently by the Canaanite religions which were less polytheistic and more henotheistic. When the Roman Empire had conquered much of the Hellenized East, the nexus of the imperial cult of the emperor wasn’t in Italy, but in Asia Minor.
The ancient fertility of cults of the Greco-Roman world were only popular in certain regions, for example, the Cult of Persephone, the Greek goddess of Fertility who dies and is held in bondage by Hades until her return to life, is not a religious story to be taken in any literal sense. The cult practitioners understood the meaning of myth – not that something is “untrue,” but rather that such traditional stories actually do convey a very powerful truth. The Cult of Persephone was popular among agrarians, naturally, who depended upon a good spring season in order to sustain their lifestyles come the grain harvest. Persephone is taken captive by Hades (death) after the harvest as summer turns to fall and the natural world begins to “die” in preparation for the cold, dark and desolate winter. When winter comes, death ravages the natural world of the farmers, thus Persephone has “died.” Come spring, Persephone has been restored to life as the natural world is filled with new fertility after the passing of winter to Spring. Such naturalistic truisms of cult religions were the main cause of their staying power. However, the Cult of Persephone has no importance to desert travelers or peoples who do not farm for a living, like fishermen or stonemasons. Thus, each demographic group in the empire had their “mythic cult.”
Naturally, this posed a problem for the Roman Empire, who quickly remedied this situation through the Imperial Cult of the deified emperor. With a divine emperor, who protects all and keeps the peace, all persons within the empire have reason to pay homage to the emperor of Rome and therefore keep all populations and ethnicities under some semblance of Roman authority (as they are bondage to the Imperial Cult). In many ways, the Imperial Cult was the glue and fabric of a richly diverse and often brutal Roman Empire.
Hades captures Persephone and drags her to the underworld. The Fertility Cult of Persephone understood this as the naturalistic cycles of weather.
While the Renaissance flourished in Greece before it made headway into Italy and later to the rest of Western Europe, the foundation of the Greek Renaissance that would come to its height under the reigns of Emperors Theodorus I and John X, was laid under the brief reign of Constantine XI. Less than a year after keeping the fragile empire together, Constantine passed away in 1473 on August 29 and his cousin John IX became emperor. Yet, the very of the succession of the empire was very much in doubt as the Roman and Mohammedan armies met at the fields of Adrianople which could have ended any further attempt at Imperial restoration had the battle been a reversal of what transpired. Although the Romans had lost more than half of their army in their heroic stand, it was heroic and successful enough to expel another Mohammedan assault on the city of Constantine.
Yet, in an ironic moment during the war – and with the foundation of the Greek Renaissance itself, the flourishing of the arts, science, and theology, can be found in the anti-Christian Pagan philosopher Eirenaios Tornikes, whom I had mentioned before in Chapter Four of my work. Since then, he had taken a softer tone in the promotion of his Greek Paganism. However, as the imminent doom seemed ready to befall the city of Constantinople when the battle of Adrianople raged on – he had gathered a delegation of Roman elites, both from the nobility, members of the emperor’s family, and a few scientists and philosophers from the academy and led them edge of the city walls on the famous “Dry Hill” of Constantinople. There, he venerated the body of the deceased Emperor John VIII and brought about the restoration of the Imperial Cult – the idea that emperor himself was a god had returned to presumably serve as the new nexus of unity for a fragile empire.
Tornikes had just finished his epic mythic poem – The Epic of John the Savior, in which the main character, John, cast as a heroic Greek pagan, like Jason, slays a dragon and saves the Hellene people from their destruction. The general theme was that John the Savior was the Emperor John VIII, and that his romantic attachment to past Pagan heroes of the Greek people conjured up memories of a glorious past that John VIII had come to defend and partially restore during his long imperial reign. In the climax of the story, John the Savior battles a serpent-like creature from the east (supposedly representing the Mohammedans) who strangles him to death, but he is resurrected by the gods and slays the creature and is later assumed into the heavens. Tornikes maintained that this figure John, like Hercules, was an ancient Greek who would once again return to save the Greeks in their darkest hour! In his defense of the deification of the Roman emperor, Tornikes asserted that the titles like “Son of God” and “Savior” – terminology generally associated with Jesus the Christ, were co-opted by Christians as mockery to the emperors of Rome! Thus, Tornikes saw himself as properly restoring the labels and true Greco-Roman religion.
Naturally, such radical claims had to keep a low profile, but he managed to gain a devoted faithful – primarily among the Roman elite, who subscribed to these claims. The epic poem of John Savior marked the beginning of a new wave of Greco-Roman literature and myth that was written during the flourishing of the Greek Renaissance in later years. The Imperial Cult always, until the final collapse of the Roman Empire, had a small, faithful, and devoted band of elitist followers who saw the world in the classical Western religious dichotomy of good and evil – but infused visions of Christianity with Greek Polytheism and heroic epics in place of the traditional cosmological worldview of the Christian Church.
John the Savior slays the dragon and saves the Hellenic peoples in the process from impending doom. The Epic of John the Savior is generally understood as an epic myth about John VIII Palaiologos.
Despite the Cult’s restoration, it remains unknown to what extent the imperial spy network working for the emperor knew of its existence. None of the succeeding emperors ever persecuted the cult or attempted to drive it away – this could be from the result of their lack of knowledge of its existence or perhaps their closet support of it. Empress Sophia, the beautiful young wife of Emperor John X certainly knew of the cult’s existence. After her husband’s death, her spy ring reported of a “mock” deification ceremony occurring at the Seventh Hill. She naturally dismissed it and never did anything about it – either thinking it was a frivolous claim or more than likely, just not caring about the prospective controversy.
The progenitor of the Greek Renaissance, and the official restorer of the Imperial Cult, Eirenaios Tornikes would later die in 1478 from bad health. Most of his work remained unpublished until the middle of the nineteenth century, to which we now give him credit for the Greek Renaissance and the massive growth of philosophy and the sciences that took off in the 1490s and continued into the 1500s. It was during this time too, that the Western World saw the greatest influx of new knowledge and thought of the past 500 years – and it is nothing but ironic that while the great thinking and new knowledge came from religious theology and philosophy that its true foundation, that which gave birth to this explosion of new knowledge and metaphysical inquiry began with a man who had little love for Christianity.
Yet, in almost a cruel irony, the foundations of the Greek Renaissance rooted in skepticism and classicism would give birth to a rise in new religious art, architecture, and theology. While some have suggested this to be the Eastern equivalent to the Reformation in Western Europe, this renaissance of religious thought did not splinter the Eastern churches, rather, it rekindled a flame of theological inquiry that had largely been absent since the end of the Patristic Golden Era that dominated the East from the second through fifth centuries A.D. Remarkable would not be the correct word to describe this blossoming renaissance before it made its way over to Italy, as it still would not be seen in the same grandeur of the High Renaissance in Italy – partially because of financial constraints, the Greek renaissance itself was truly groundbreaking. The extent of the renaissance itself will be part of a greater attention to detail when it reaches maturity during the reign of John X, whom I shall cover entirely in the second volume of this work.
However, it seems as if the Imperial Cult’s underground status was well-intended, and well-concealed. Naturally, with the recent events of Roman history over the past several decades – the survival of the empire was evidence enough that the Almighty was on their side, and therefore to be openly hostile to Christian doctrine and dogma – as the Cult was, risked severe ramifications if it was brought forth to ecclesiastical authorities. Archbishop Michael IV of Athens [1], a staunch defender of Church orthodoxy, apparently knew of this partial Cult revival which prompted him to emerge as a staunch orator against those who might be engaged in “idol worship.” He suspected members of the Kantakouzenos family as being supporters of the Cult, and even went as far as denying Duke Alexandros communion following his invasion of the Morea in the years after Constantine’s death – soliciting blame on him for his actions taken against fellow Christians – but also, in vague language, implying him as a pagan idolater who deified the deceased emperors of Rome. I shall cover in greater detail the rising power given to the Church following the death of Constantine XI in the coming chapters.
[1] Fictional character, loosely based upon Saint Ambrose of Milan of the Fourth Century.
The Re-Emergence of the Roman Cults in the Late Empire
The Roman Empire in Asia Minor has a long a lucid history of mythic and imperial cults, indeed, at the crossroads of many world religions; Asia Minor has been the nexus for the battleground, death, and survival or religions. Zoroastrianism was among the first great monotheisms to emerge from the region, followed, likely independently by the Canaanite religions which were less polytheistic and more henotheistic. When the Roman Empire had conquered much of the Hellenized East, the nexus of the imperial cult of the emperor wasn’t in Italy, but in Asia Minor.
The ancient fertility of cults of the Greco-Roman world were only popular in certain regions, for example, the Cult of Persephone, the Greek goddess of Fertility who dies and is held in bondage by Hades until her return to life, is not a religious story to be taken in any literal sense. The cult practitioners understood the meaning of myth – not that something is “untrue,” but rather that such traditional stories actually do convey a very powerful truth. The Cult of Persephone was popular among agrarians, naturally, who depended upon a good spring season in order to sustain their lifestyles come the grain harvest. Persephone is taken captive by Hades (death) after the harvest as summer turns to fall and the natural world begins to “die” in preparation for the cold, dark and desolate winter. When winter comes, death ravages the natural world of the farmers, thus Persephone has “died.” Come spring, Persephone has been restored to life as the natural world is filled with new fertility after the passing of winter to Spring. Such naturalistic truisms of cult religions were the main cause of their staying power. However, the Cult of Persephone has no importance to desert travelers or peoples who do not farm for a living, like fishermen or stonemasons. Thus, each demographic group in the empire had their “mythic cult.”
Naturally, this posed a problem for the Roman Empire, who quickly remedied this situation through the Imperial Cult of the deified emperor. With a divine emperor, who protects all and keeps the peace, all persons within the empire have reason to pay homage to the emperor of Rome and therefore keep all populations and ethnicities under some semblance of Roman authority (as they are bondage to the Imperial Cult). In many ways, the Imperial Cult was the glue and fabric of a richly diverse and often brutal Roman Empire.
Hades captures Persephone and drags her to the underworld. The Fertility Cult of Persephone understood this as the naturalistic cycles of weather.
While the Renaissance flourished in Greece before it made headway into Italy and later to the rest of Western Europe, the foundation of the Greek Renaissance that would come to its height under the reigns of Emperors Theodorus I and John X, was laid under the brief reign of Constantine XI. Less than a year after keeping the fragile empire together, Constantine passed away in 1473 on August 29 and his cousin John IX became emperor. Yet, the very of the succession of the empire was very much in doubt as the Roman and Mohammedan armies met at the fields of Adrianople which could have ended any further attempt at Imperial restoration had the battle been a reversal of what transpired. Although the Romans had lost more than half of their army in their heroic stand, it was heroic and successful enough to expel another Mohammedan assault on the city of Constantine.
Yet, in an ironic moment during the war – and with the foundation of the Greek Renaissance itself, the flourishing of the arts, science, and theology, can be found in the anti-Christian Pagan philosopher Eirenaios Tornikes, whom I had mentioned before in Chapter Four of my work. Since then, he had taken a softer tone in the promotion of his Greek Paganism. However, as the imminent doom seemed ready to befall the city of Constantinople when the battle of Adrianople raged on – he had gathered a delegation of Roman elites, both from the nobility, members of the emperor’s family, and a few scientists and philosophers from the academy and led them edge of the city walls on the famous “Dry Hill” of Constantinople. There, he venerated the body of the deceased Emperor John VIII and brought about the restoration of the Imperial Cult – the idea that emperor himself was a god had returned to presumably serve as the new nexus of unity for a fragile empire.
Tornikes had just finished his epic mythic poem – The Epic of John the Savior, in which the main character, John, cast as a heroic Greek pagan, like Jason, slays a dragon and saves the Hellene people from their destruction. The general theme was that John the Savior was the Emperor John VIII, and that his romantic attachment to past Pagan heroes of the Greek people conjured up memories of a glorious past that John VIII had come to defend and partially restore during his long imperial reign. In the climax of the story, John the Savior battles a serpent-like creature from the east (supposedly representing the Mohammedans) who strangles him to death, but he is resurrected by the gods and slays the creature and is later assumed into the heavens. Tornikes maintained that this figure John, like Hercules, was an ancient Greek who would once again return to save the Greeks in their darkest hour! In his defense of the deification of the Roman emperor, Tornikes asserted that the titles like “Son of God” and “Savior” – terminology generally associated with Jesus the Christ, were co-opted by Christians as mockery to the emperors of Rome! Thus, Tornikes saw himself as properly restoring the labels and true Greco-Roman religion.
Naturally, such radical claims had to keep a low profile, but he managed to gain a devoted faithful – primarily among the Roman elite, who subscribed to these claims. The epic poem of John Savior marked the beginning of a new wave of Greco-Roman literature and myth that was written during the flourishing of the Greek Renaissance in later years. The Imperial Cult always, until the final collapse of the Roman Empire, had a small, faithful, and devoted band of elitist followers who saw the world in the classical Western religious dichotomy of good and evil – but infused visions of Christianity with Greek Polytheism and heroic epics in place of the traditional cosmological worldview of the Christian Church.
John the Savior slays the dragon and saves the Hellenic peoples in the process from impending doom. The Epic of John the Savior is generally understood as an epic myth about John VIII Palaiologos.
Despite the Cult’s restoration, it remains unknown to what extent the imperial spy network working for the emperor knew of its existence. None of the succeeding emperors ever persecuted the cult or attempted to drive it away – this could be from the result of their lack of knowledge of its existence or perhaps their closet support of it. Empress Sophia, the beautiful young wife of Emperor John X certainly knew of the cult’s existence. After her husband’s death, her spy ring reported of a “mock” deification ceremony occurring at the Seventh Hill. She naturally dismissed it and never did anything about it – either thinking it was a frivolous claim or more than likely, just not caring about the prospective controversy.
The progenitor of the Greek Renaissance, and the official restorer of the Imperial Cult, Eirenaios Tornikes would later die in 1478 from bad health. Most of his work remained unpublished until the middle of the nineteenth century, to which we now give him credit for the Greek Renaissance and the massive growth of philosophy and the sciences that took off in the 1490s and continued into the 1500s. It was during this time too, that the Western World saw the greatest influx of new knowledge and thought of the past 500 years – and it is nothing but ironic that while the great thinking and new knowledge came from religious theology and philosophy that its true foundation, that which gave birth to this explosion of new knowledge and metaphysical inquiry began with a man who had little love for Christianity.
Yet, in almost a cruel irony, the foundations of the Greek Renaissance rooted in skepticism and classicism would give birth to a rise in new religious art, architecture, and theology. While some have suggested this to be the Eastern equivalent to the Reformation in Western Europe, this renaissance of religious thought did not splinter the Eastern churches, rather, it rekindled a flame of theological inquiry that had largely been absent since the end of the Patristic Golden Era that dominated the East from the second through fifth centuries A.D. Remarkable would not be the correct word to describe this blossoming renaissance before it made its way over to Italy, as it still would not be seen in the same grandeur of the High Renaissance in Italy – partially because of financial constraints, the Greek renaissance itself was truly groundbreaking. The extent of the renaissance itself will be part of a greater attention to detail when it reaches maturity during the reign of John X, whom I shall cover entirely in the second volume of this work.
However, it seems as if the Imperial Cult’s underground status was well-intended, and well-concealed. Naturally, with the recent events of Roman history over the past several decades – the survival of the empire was evidence enough that the Almighty was on their side, and therefore to be openly hostile to Christian doctrine and dogma – as the Cult was, risked severe ramifications if it was brought forth to ecclesiastical authorities. Archbishop Michael IV of Athens [1], a staunch defender of Church orthodoxy, apparently knew of this partial Cult revival which prompted him to emerge as a staunch orator against those who might be engaged in “idol worship.” He suspected members of the Kantakouzenos family as being supporters of the Cult, and even went as far as denying Duke Alexandros communion following his invasion of the Morea in the years after Constantine’s death – soliciting blame on him for his actions taken against fellow Christians – but also, in vague language, implying him as a pagan idolater who deified the deceased emperors of Rome. I shall cover in greater detail the rising power given to the Church following the death of Constantine XI in the coming chapters.
[1] Fictional character, loosely based upon Saint Ambrose of Milan of the Fourth Century.
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