To sum up: The explanation of the defamation of the early Christians is a complex one. When the Christians were a small minority, their attitudes, beliefs and behaviour were a denial of the values by which Graeco-Roman society lived and to which it owed its cohesion. Because of this, certain real Christian practices, notably the Eucharist and the Agape, were misinterpreted in the light of traditional stereotypes, so that a dissident religious minority came to look like a revolutionary political conspiracy. More than that — these practices were misinterpreted to such a point that they seemed absolutely anti-human, and those who indulged in them were put outside the bounds of humanity. And this mechanism could sometimes be used to legitimate persecutions, to which other motives, such as avarice and sadism, also contributed.
It is a pattern which was to be repeated many times in later centuries, when the persecutors would be orthodox Christians and the persecuted would be other dissident groups.
2. THE DEMONIZATION OF MEDIEVAL HERETICS (1)
From the beginning of the third century onwards Christians gradually ceased to be regarded, and to regard themselves, as a militant outgroup; the process of integration into, and accommodation with, Graeco-Roman society had begun. But not all Christians adapted themselves to the changing circumstances. In the East, both compromise with the world and institutionalism within the Church were challenged by the religious revival known as Montanism (after its founder, Montanus). Based on the remote depths of Phrygia, in Asia Minor, Montanism embodied above all a revolt against the increasingly easy-going Christianity of the Greek towns. With its consuming thirst for martyrdom and its urgent prophecies of the End and the Millennium, the sect first made itself heard towards the close of the second century. But it survived for several centuries after that; and by the time Christianity had become the official religion of the Empire, this relic of earlier times had come to be viewed with grave suspicion.
Between the middle of the fourth and the middle of the fifth centuries, several representative Christians hinted that these intransigent backwoodsmen practised a sort of cannibalism. Philastrius, bishop of Brescia, has this to tell of them: “People say that at the Easter festival they mix the blood of a child in their offering and send pieces of this offering to their erring and pernicious supporters everywhere.”(1) Epiphanius also has the Montanists in mind when he says that certain sectarians “stick a little child all over with brass needles and so procure blood for the offering”.(2) Even the great Augustine reports of these Phrygians: “People say that they have most lamentable sacraments. It is said that they take the blood of a one-year-old child, drawing it off through tiny cuts all over his body, and at the same time produce their Eucharist, by mixing this blood with meal and making bread out of it. If the boy dies, they treat him as a martyr; but if he lives, they treat him as a great priest.(3) The Montanists themselves of course reacted just as the second-century Christians had done — they rejected these tales as malignant slanders.(4) They knew they were innocent — indeed, this was even admitted by some leaders of the Church.(5)
St Augustine also hinted at strange customs amongst the Manichees. By his time the Manichaean religion, spreading outwards from its Persian homeland, was penetrating deep into the Graeco-Roman world. As it advanced westwards it came more and more under the influence of Christianity. In North Africa in particular it took on the appearance of a more “rational” version of Christianity, unencumbered by the Old Testament; and so became a serious rival to Catholicism amongst the educated. Augustine himselt was a member of the Manichaean church for nine years, before his conversion to Catholicism. But he was only an auditor, or secular Manichee; and the tale he tells concerns the electi, who were religious virtuosi.
According to Augustine, in his Manichaean days a woman once complained to him that at a religious meeting where she was sitting alone with other women, “some of the elect came in; one of them put out the lamp, whereupon another, whom she could not recognize, made to embrace her, and would have forced her into sin if she had not screamed and so escaped. This happened on the night when the feast of the vigils is kept.”(6) Augustine, while admitting that the offender was never traced, comments that such practices must have been very common. One may reasonably ask why, in that case, he himself never witnessed anything of the kind during all the years of his membership. In reality the Manichaean electi or perfecti were famed, even amongst their enemies, for their absolute chastity and rigorous asceticism; and there is no reason to think that this implausible story is anything but a watered-down version of those orgiastic fantasies which the pagan Romans had once woven around the Christian Agape.
Centuries later these tales of erotic debauches, infanticide and cannibalism were revived and applied to various religious outgroups in medieval Christendom. In the process they were integrated more and more firmly into the corpus of Christian demonology. In the eyes of pagan Greeks and Romans, people who indulged in promiscuous orgies and devoured children were enemies of society and of mankind. In the eyes of medieval Christians they were, in addition, enemies of God and servants of Satan; their fearsome deeds were inspired by Satan and his demons, and served their interests. As the centuries passed the powers of darkness loomed larger and larger in these tales, until they came to occupy the very centre of the stage. Erotic debauches, infanticide and cannibalism gradually took on a new meaning, as so many manifestations of a religious cult of Satan, so many expressions of Devil-worship. Finally the whole nocturnal orgy was imagined as taking place under the direct supervision of a demon, who presided in material form.
These transformations can be observed quite clearly if one traces, in chronological order, the accusations brought against certain dissident sects in eastern and western Christendom. We may start with the sect of Paulicians, which in the eighth century was flourishing in southeastern Armenia, outside the frontiers of the Empire and outside the control of the Armenian church. In 719 the head of that church, St John IV of Ojun (Yovhannes Ojneçi), known as the Philosopher, summoned a great synod which condemned these people as “sons of Satan”; and he himself produced a tract which shows quite clearly what was meant by that.(7) The Paulicians, he complains, come together under cover of darkness, and at these hidden meetings they commit incest with their own mothers. If a child is born, they throw it from one to another until it dies; and he in whose hands it dies is promoted to the leadership of the sect. The blood of these infants is mixed with flour to make the Eucharist; and so these people surpass the gluttony of pigs who devour their own brood. In this way John of Ojun brought the two originally independent fantasies of the erotic orgy and the “Thyestean feast” into logical relationships with one another; thereby providing a model for later generations. But that was not all — he also described how the Paulicians worshipped the Devil, bowing low and foaming at the mouth. This idea too was to be absorbed into the traditional stereotype.