Augustine, Ambrose, Jerome Rev the Rigid Hierarchy

Augustine, Ambrose, Jerome REV

The rigid hierarchy that governed the Roman Empire -- in which a Roman Emperor like Tiberius would have imperial governors like Pontius Pilate stationed locally in subject provinces -- is reflected to this day in the "rigidly hierarchical structure" of the Roman Catholic Church, which has a Pope in Rome who has Cardinals, Bishops and Archbishops that oversee smaller geographical regions (Babcock 142). This social structure is no accident: historically speaking as the Roman empire declined, the early Christian church grew in influence and reach. To some extent, then, the early Church would take over the functions of the Empire, if only to fill the vacuum. It is important to recognize, however, that the Roman Empire covered a vast amount of territory: it encompassed North Africa and Egypt, the Middle East, and the vast majority of continental Europe, including England. (The Romans did not take much interest in Ireland, Scotland, or Scandinavia, nor did they venture eastward into Russia or India.) As Christianity was spread throughout communities of the Roman Empire, this made it possible -- after the Emperor Constantine made Christianity the official religion of the empire in 313 -- for Christians to come from all corners of this vast territory. This was the case with three of the most important early church fathers: Augustine was from North Africa, Jerome was from Palestine, and Ambrose was from Italy.

As the growing structures of the church replaced the collapsing structures of the empire, the Church Fathers largely provided an intellectual structure and rationale for the new religion that would replace the collapsing political system. Jerome translated the Old and New Testaments into the official language of the Roman Empire, which was Latin: this made the text available to anyone who was within the geographical and political reach of Rome, and thus radically democratized scripture -- in Babcock's words, "to bring the Bible into the language…of the street, the language spoken in the fish market" (141). Augustine provided the intellectual framework for understanding scripture, by offering an interpretation of history in his work City of God, which justified the fall of the empire as being necessary to make way for Christ, and offered "a sweeping look at history and biblical teaching on eschatology" (Babcock 140). And Ambrose provided his "organizational ability" to the way in which scripture should be interpreted, by clarifying when a text should be understood literally or figuratively (Babcock 141). These three Church Fathers were essentially providing an intellectual and theological (rather than institutional) structure to Christian thought, and defending it against the attacks leveled by the moribund but still vociferous "pagan philosophers and pagan politicians" (Babcock 140).