Evagrius Scholasticus on the Jews

Evagrius Scholasticus is the name of a Christian historian from Syria who wrote a particularly useful chronicle of Christian history in the late sixth century, which was one of several works that he penned but unfortunately is the only one to come down to us. Evagrius Scholasticus is interesting to us primarily because he relates two interesting anecdotes about the jews. (1)

The first concerns the rescinding of a degree by the Emperor Theodosius about the confiscation of the synagogues of Antioch.

To wit:

'In so great a measure had the power of divine grace taken possession of him, that, when Theodosius had issued a mandate, that the synagogues of which they had been previously deprived by the Christians, should be restored to the Jews of Antioch, he wrote to the emperor with so much freedom and vehement rebuke, as standing in awe of none but his own immediate sovereign, that Theodosius re-called his commands, and in every respect favoured the Christians, even superseding the prefect who had suggested the measure.' (2)

Now if we read between the lines the above passage we can quickly see that Theodosius - the arch-Christian Emperor (as it was he who made it all but illegal to practice paganism) - has had a change of heart in relation to the city of Antioch (which had a very large jewish community) and has decided on the advice of a prefect to kick the Christians out of their newly consecrated churches and allow them to be used by the jews as synagogues again.

This prompts Simeon the Stylite to write to the Emperor to argue the case for keeping the former synagogues as churches rather than handing them back over to the jews. Simeon's letter succeeds and the Christians of Antioch see it is a sign of God's favour on them and disfavour on the jews that this decision went their way.

This is all well and good, but there are two issues here that don't make sense unless we fill in some necessary context. In so far as why would a Roman prefect be able to influence a fanatical Christian who was bent on persecuting non-Christians into not doing so?

The other is why the jews of Antioch weren't simply offered some new buildings to convert into synagogues by so fervent a Christian as opposed to acceding to the request from the prefect to kick his fellow Christians out of their new churches so that the jews could repossess them.

It presents us with something of a conundrum: doesn't it?

Solving this isn't as quite as difficult as it might at first appear given that the key here is who the prefect referred to by Evagrius Scholasticus was. That prefect has to have a specific reason for wanting to support the jews over the Christians and also sufficient influence with Theodosius in order to temporarily sway him towards such a policy.

One candidate in particular stands out in the form of Flavius Dexter who was Theodosius' High Chamberlain (i.e., he ran the Imperial Household) and who became a praetorian prefect under Theodosius' son the Emperor Honorius (i.e., the commanding of Honorius' bodyguard). Further Dexter was a friend of Saint Jerome (a leading Christian intellectual in his day) and the son of another leading Churchman: Saint Pacian.

It further just so happens that Pacian advocated tolerance and kindliness to the jews as well as routinely championing the jews as possessors of 'imperfect revelation' and thus far superior to the pagans that Theodosius was busy persecuting. (3)

Pacian also happens to suggestively mention that he at the very least considered himself jewish and - as I have discussed elsewhere - (4) there are good reasons for suggesting that Pacian himself was a jewish convert to Christianity or knew of some jewish ancestry in his family tree.

In Flavius Dexter we can find a specific candidate for reversing Theodosius' policy on the synagogues in Antioch in that he was very close to the Emperor, was close to major Christian figures such as Saint Pacian and Saint Jerome, was (albeit later) a prefect (5) and was the son of a major advocate of Christian tolerance of the jews as well as potentially from a family of jewish converts to Christianity.

This suggests that Flavius Dexter is very likely to be the prefect referred to by Evagrius Scholasticus in relation the reversal of Theodosius' policy on the conversion of the synagogues of the jews of Antioch into churches for Antioch's Christian population. In essence Dexter - if he was as I suspect of jewish origin - was acting as a deliberate mediating influence on Theodosius' policy on the jews and acted as proverbial stool pigeon in Theodosius' court: helping prevent the excesses of the Christians against the pagans (which he seems to have egged on) spreading to the jews in-line with Saint Pacian's - i.e., his father's - ideas.

Or in other words Flavius Dexter can be seen as an archetypal Israel Lobbyist in the classical world and a figure who suggests the presence of others like him in the courts of the Roman Emperors. The idea that jews helped fan the Christian brutality against the Empire's pagan population - who had after all been a major foe of the jews for centuries - in order both to revenge themselves for perceived slights and also to focus the Christian hatred on to the still numerous pagans: so that it would be less likely to spread to the jews. Is also a useful explanatory tool as it helps to locate the jewish policy as a short term measure to by themselves peace in their lifetime while mortgaging their future descendants on the logic that they would always maintain a significant hold over policy-making on the jews (which they didn't and resulted in both Christian and pagan attacks on the jews for just such reasons).

In essence we can see here an ancient Israel Lobby in action and in looking at it we can see also see the problem with such usage of influence in that groups don't tend to hold onto it forever and as time goes on the abuses mount up and previously policies come back to haunt the next generation of lobbyists until such a time as the lobby becomes the enemy of the state and is systematically eliminated.

The second mention of jews in Evagrius Scholasticus' 'Ecclesiastical History' is as follows:

'It is an old custom in the imperial city, that, when there remains over a considerable quantity of the holy fragments of the immaculate body of Christ our God, boys of tender age should be fetched from among those who attend the schools, to eat them. On one occasion of this kind, there was included among them the son of a glass-worker, a Jew by faith; who, in reply to the inquiries of his parents respecting the cause of his delay, told them what had taken place, and what he had eaten in company with the other boys. The father, in his indignation and fury, places the boy in the furnace where he used to mould the glass.' (6)

Now the above is far more obvious than the first mention of the jews by Evagrius Scholasticus in so far as it is a straight forward miracle tale: whereby a jewish boy accidentally receives some of the consecrated Eucharistic wafer, which has been been donated by the Christian authorities of Antioch for schoolchildren to eat. This causes the jewish child to be late home, which causes his parents to demand to know where he has been: only for the child to disclose the fact that he has been at a Christian service and consumed the Eucharistic wafer.

This causes the jewish father to go into an uncontrollable homicidal rage and throw his son into his own glass oven - as he is a glass-blower by trade - with the stated goal of murdering him, because he had betrayed the jews by attending such a service.

Of course a miracle then occurs; the boy is somehow unharmed by the flames and is taken with his mother into the care of the Christian Church while his father is executed by the city authorities for attempted murder.

What is important to bring out here is mainly that in this story we can see the ugly side of the historical jewish community, which is so often suppressed and censored from orthodox works on the subject precisely because to suggest that the jews can do horrific things - as this jew tried to do - opens up the door to a lot of other historic charges against the jews, which orthodox scholars frequently dismiss without reasonable cause - such as ritual murder, host desecration, religious fanaticism, child murder etc - being potentially genuine (if not necessarily widespread) phenomena.

As such then we can point out that the jews of history need to be seen less as the 'perfect beings' that so often typifies analyses today, but rather as a people like any other: warts and all. Evagrius Scholasticus' account is good vehicle for doing just that as he doesn't obsessively condemn or attack the jews, but rather calmly mentions them on two occasions and as such we have to be inclined to take what he says very seriously given he has little motive for lying about the jews or the things that they had done.

References

(1) I am here ignoring the pejorative reference that Evagrius Scholasticus makes to the followers of Nestorian Christianity as 'jewish' (Evag. Sch. 1:2) as I would argue it has little relevance to the jews other than to point out that Christians frequently called opposing sects 'jewish'.

(2) Evag. Sch. 1:13

(3) I have discussed Saint Pacian's ideas on the jews in the following article: https://karlradl14.substack.com/p/saint-pacian-on-the-jews

(4) Ibid.

(5) I would suggest that Evagrius Scholasticus was confused and used Dexter's later title under Honorius as opposed to this title under Theodosius.

(6) Evag. Sch. 4:36