too long in the past

For more than a year I’ve been more and more immersed in the 4th century. I wanted to find out for my own satisfaction how it came about that at the beginning of that century the Christians were a persecuted minority and at the end of that century Orthodox Christianity was the one and only authorised religion in the whole of the Roman Empire. All other religions – including other kinds of Christianity – were condemned as witchcraft and the work of the Devil.

By the late autumn of last year, when the university term had just begun, I had enough information and explanation to satisfy myself that my outline was justified. Diocletian persecuted the Christians because they did not fully support the fabric of his Empire. Constantine, after a very successful military coup, became joint signatory to the Edict of Milan  which allowed freedom of expression to all religions, including Christianity in its varied forms. This really was religious toleration. But, by the end of the century, when Theodosius was the Emperor and Ambrose was the Bishop of Milan, toleration was proscribed, outlawed, in fact. Only one religion was officially permitted and that was the Orthodox (Trinitarian) form of Christianity. For reasons which I cannot yet explain, the Emperor, who should have been all-powerful, had given way to the bishop of his capital city Milan (Mediolanum).

As the term went by and my studies continued I found myself more and more immersed, immired almost, in the last decades of that 4th century. Only now, months later, has it become apparent to me that by sinking so deeply into the past I had begun to take on some of the attributes of that past. I had come to being part of the official belief that there is only one version of the truth. All else being false. It’s not a good state to be in.

At the turn of the year, as the sun began to begin its apparent swing in our northerly direction, a little of the darkness surrounding me began to disburse, to thin out. Black gave way to a slightly greyer shade. And as the days went by that grey grew lighter and lighter. With Imbolc – which my Catholic friends continue to celebrate as the Feast of the Purification of the Blesswed Virgin Mary, also known as Candlemass – the first green intimations of spring began on the edges of my perception.

It was a hard job to shake off the illusion perpetrated in our educational systems : that there is only one right answer to any question, only one version of the truth. Life becomes so much more joyful when that particular burden is dropped at the wayside. And so mote it be.

francis cameron, oxford, 6 february 2011

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