Agora: Religious Troubles in Alexandria

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Agora, Alejandro Amenábar, Alexandria, Ancient Egypt, Ancient Rome, Christianity, Hypatia of Alexandria, Movies I Love, Parabalani, Rachel Weisz, Roman Empire, St Cyril of Alexandria

One of the central themes in Agora (2009, dir. Alejandro Amenábar) is religious conflict. The film’s prologue text tells us “The Library [of Alexandria] was not only a cultural symbol, but also a religious one, a place where the pagans worshipped their ancestral gods. The city’s long-established pagan cult was now challenged by the Jewish faith and a rapidly spreading religion until recently banned: Christianity.”

One of the very early scenes in the film takes place in the agora, the marketplace/public square that was the center of any Greek city. We see a Christian monk, Ammonius (Ashraf Barhom) debating with a pagan philosopher over a bed of burning coals. Ammonius demonstrates his faith in Jesus by walking across the bed without getting burned, and then he grabs the philosopher and throws him into the fire, where he is badly burned. This ‘miracle’ plants a seed of faith in the mind of Davus (Max Minghella) that will gradually blossom into a full-blown and violent conversion.

The religious upheaval in Alexandria remains front and center throughout the film. In 391, we see the pagan scholars of the Library attack the Christians for the assault on the philosopher, which turns into a siege when the Christians counter-attack, trapping Hypatia (Rachel Weisz) and Orestes (Oscar Isaac) in the Library. Eventually Emperor Theodosius resolves the problem by ordering the pagans to evacuate the Library and letting the Christians ransack it, destroying all the books in it and tearing down the statue of Serapis. Eventually, it is turned into a Christian church.

The second act opens in 415 and explores the rising tensions between Christians and Jews. Ammonius and Davus sneak into a musical performance that many Jews are attending and break it up by throwing stones. The Jews retaliate by raising a false alarm that one of the churches is on fire, and then trapping a bunch of monks in the church and stoning them to death. This leads to the expulsion of the Jews from Alexandria.

In the third act, Hypatia becomes the focus of the tensions, as Christians begin to suspect that she is the driving force behind Orestes’ conflicts with Patriarch Cyril (Sami Samir). They pressure Orestes to cut off all contact with her, and eventually she is attacked by a mob of Christians and murdered. Her death is presented as a sort of martyrdom to the cause of freedom of thought and intellectual inquiry.

When the film came out, there were complaints by Christian organizations that the film was propagating stereotypes about Catholics as narrowminded, irrational anti-science bigots. It’s easy to see why the critics felt this way—the Christians certainly come off as intolerant, violent thugs with no interest in understanding the physical world.

The Religious Situation in Alexandria

4^th century Alexandria was an extremely complex place. It was one of the largest cities in the ancient Mediterranean. It was one of the major centers of pagan worship, and it also housed one of the largest Jewish communities anywhere in the world after the Jewish diaspora. It occupied two of the city’s five quarters (although that doesn’t mean that 40% of the population was Jewish).

Alexandria was also a major center of Christianity from the 1^st century AD onward. Legend claims that the Evangelist Mark was one of the founders of the Christian community there, and by the 3^rd century the bishop of Alexandria was considered to be one of the five patriarchs of the Christian world (alongside those of Jerusalem, Antioch, Rome, and later one Constantinople). Other bishops looked to the Patriarch of Alexandria for leadership, although the patriarchs had little formal power over other bishops. (The patriarchs were essentially ‘first among equals’, rather than hierarchically above other bishops).

By the end of the 4^th century, the Christian community was extremely large, although it’s hard to say if it was the majority of the population or not. In the later 4^th century, the shifting religious balance of the Roman Empire created all sorts of religious conflicts in many cities. Christians who had up until the early 4^th century been the targets of state persecution began to attack pagans and to a lesser extent Jews, but pagans were still strong enough to fight back. Pagans were unused to having to share political and social power with Christians, and Christians increasingly expressed a sense that pagan temples and festivals were inherent threats to them, temptations to sin, and the like. In that situation, both Christians and pagans could easily become targets of religious aggression. Religious riots were a frequent problem in larger cities. While Christians did not always win the fights, the fact that the emperors were now Christian meant that they usually triumphed at the end of the dispute.

But the Christian community was not a monolithic group. Early Christianity saw many debates over Christology (basically, the theological issue of who exactly Jesus was and is). In the 3^rd century, the Alexandrian theologian Origen emphasized the Unity of God in a way that tended to downplay Jesus and treat him as ‘the image of God’, like light radiating from the sun. In the 4^th century the most heated controversy was over the question of whether Jesus was an original part of God or whether the Father had created the Son as his first act of creation. This debate first erupted in Alexandria in the early 4^th century when Arius of Alexandria (the proponent of the latter position) got into a heated dispute with Athanasius, the Patriarch of Alexandria. In 325, Emperor Constantine convened the Synod of Nicaea, which ultimately sided with Athanasius and declared Arianism a heresy. But it took close to a century for the issue to finally get resolved, because Arius had many supporters, and Arianism continued to find periodic political support in various parts of the Empire.

St Athanasius

Arianism wasn’t the only issue of controversy. 4^th century Christians carried about theology the way that modern Americans care about things like the economy, racial issues, gun control, whose football team is better, and whether Batman could defeat Superman. Alexandria was home to the Catechetical School, a theological school that also taught logic, literature, and natural philosophy (the sort of proto-science that Hypatia taught at the Serapeum). This ensured that there was a substantial number of men who cared deeply about learned matters from a Christian perspective and who were willing to engage in theological debate. In fact in the 2^nd and 3^rd centuries, the leading scholars of the Catechetical School were arguably more important than the Patriarchs of Alexandria in terms of their influence. The Novatianists rejected the idea that mortal sins (such as murder or worshipping of pagan gods) could be absolved, a doctrinal stance that put them at odds with most Christian theologians.

The New monasticism

In the 3^rd century, Egypt saw the emergence of perhaps the first Christian monastic communities. These earliest monks and nuns were seeking to reject the temptations of their bodies by indulging in acts of extreme asceticism (things like prolonged fasting, sleep deprivation, doing without property, permanent chastity, and so on), through which they hoped to learn to ‘turn off’ the physical desires of their bodies so that they could gain a clearer sense of God’s will.

But few of these men were ready to simply go out into the desert all on their own. They recognized that there were a lot of ways that novices could get into spiritual danger. So they tended to gather in communities where the more experienced among them could mentor the novices. One of the major centers of this early monasticism formed at Nitria, quite near to Alexandria. By the 390s, it was a community of thousands, large enough to support merchants and bankers who served the needs of the Nitrian monks. Other major communities developed just slightly further away, at Kellia and Scetis.

Because these monastic communities were so close to Alexandria, it was easy for tourists to come to watch them. And it was easy for the Nitrian monks to get involved in Alexandrian politics. So when controversy was brewing in Alexandria, the Nitrian monks sometimes participated in mob actions.

Alexandria was also home to a group of men called the Parabalani (literally, ‘those who risk their lives as nurses’). This group is very poorly documented but it seems to have been a quasi-monastic organization of men who devoted themselves to caring for the sick and burying the dead. This meant they were exposed to things like infectious diseases, especially during epidemics, and were thus risking their lives as an expression of Christian charity (especially since caring for the sick is one of the 7 Works of Mercy that Christ ordered his followers to perform). They were considered to be members of the clergy, and enjoyed some legal benefits that meant that people sometimes falsely claimed to be members of the group and the wealthy sometimes bought their way into them.

The group seems to have been notoriously disruptive in Alexandria. A law issued probably around 416 declared that there should not be more than 500 Parabalani, that their members should all be poor, and that they not attend public theatrical events or law courts. This was issued “on account of the terror of those who are called ‘parabalani’. “ This suggests that the Parabalani had a tendency to cause trouble at theaters and law courts. In 449, they were accused of bursting into a church and threatening a priest who was quarrelling with the patriarch of Alexandria. So it seems that the patriarchs of Alexandria (or at least the less scrupulous ones) had a tendency to use the Parabalani to bully their opponents into submission.

Turbulence in Alexandria

In 379, the Emperor Theodosius I decided to impose Nicene (Athanasian) Christianity on the entirety of the Empire. He expelled all the Arian clergy from their churches (including in Constantinople, a heavily Arian city). He ordered Demophilus, the Arian Patriarch of Constantinople, to embrace Nicene Christianity or give up his seat; Demophilus chose the latter. Theodosius appointed Gregory of Nazianzus, but another faction tried to sneak in Maximus the Cynic. This group appealed to Patriarch Peter of Alexandria, promising him that Maximus would admit that his patriarchate was inferior to that of Alexandria. But the Constantinopolitan populace was outraged and forced Maximus to retreat from the city. Two years later, Theodosius convened the First Council of Constantinople in an effort to resolve these controversies. After a great deal of wrangling over the question of whether Gregory was qualified to be patriarch, he stepped down, but the Council decreed that the patriarchs of Constantinople had precedence over those of Alexandria, because Constantinople was the New Rome. This ruling so outraged the Alexandrian population that a massive riot engulfed the city, during which the Catechecal School was completely destroyed, never to be rebuilt.

A decade later, in 391, Theodosius issued an order forbidding the public performance of any religious rituals that were not Christian. Patriarch Theophilus of Alexandria took control of a temple of Dionysius and when a subterranean worship space was discovered in it, he mockingly displayed the religious paraphernalia that were found therein. This provoked the pagans of Alexandria to riot over this insult. The Christians eventually counter-attacked, probably with the aid of either the Parabalani or the Nitrian monks, and forced the pagans to retreat into the Serapeum. Theophilus apparently appealed to Emperor Theodosius, who responded by pardoning all the pagans for the riot but giving Theophilus permission to destroy the temple.

Theophilus standing on the temple of Dionysius

But Theophilus was not just hostile to the pagans. He also persecuted the remaining Origenists, reportedly massacring 10,000 Origenist monks (the number is probably exaggerated). In 403, he also helped orchestrate the removal of the patriarch of Constantinople, John Chrysostom, because John was protecting some Origenists and because Theophilus was hoping to reverse the subordination of Alexandria to Constantinople.

When Theophilus died in 412, a riot broke out over the question of who should succeed him, his nephew Cyril or his rival, the archdeacon Timothy. When Cyril’s supporters won, Cyril quickly began persecuting the Novatianists, evicting them from their churches.

More significantly, Cyril began to quarrel with the Christian governor of Egypt, Orestes, who perceived Cyril as trying to encroach on his political authority. In 415, Orestes issued an edict regulating mime shows, which were extremely popular in Alexandria and were frequently the occasion of violence (remember that law dealing with the Parabalani?). Cyril sent Hierax to find out what the edict involved. Hierax approved of the edict and read it aloud in a theater, which provoked the Jewish population, who considered Hierax a troublemaker and suspected him of trying to incite violence. The Jews rioted and to mollify them, Orestes had Hierax publicly tortured, intending to send Cyril a signal about who was really in charge.

Cyril threatened to retaliate against the Jews, which infuriated them even further. They organized a scheme in which they spread word that a Christian church was on fire. When the Christians turned out to save the church, the Jews attacked them, killing many. Cyril responded by expelling a reported 50,000 Jews from the city and allowing the Christians to plunder them as they left.

St Cyril of Alexandria

Both Cyril and Orestes complained about the other to the emperor and Cyril reportedly tried to broker a peace between them, but he seems to have expected Orestes to acknowledge that as a religious leader, Cyril had the superior authority, which Orestes refused to accept. A group of monks (either Parabalani or Nitrians) attacked Orestes and one of them, Ammonius, hit the governor on the head with a rock. In the ensuing brawl, Orestes’ bodyguard fled, but the Alexandrian population intervened to rescue him.

Orestes had Ammonius tortured to death, but Cyril promptly confiscated the corpse and declared the monk a martyr. The Christian population wasn’t convinced, and Cyril eventually had to abandon his attempts to canonize Ammonius. Popular pressure forced the two leaders to reconcile, but both seem to have attempted to get the upper hand. Orestes sought support from Hypatia, who was influential with what remained of the city’s pagan community, while Cyril began claiming that Orestes was abandoning his faith and that Hypatia was seducing him either sexually or with magic.

Eventually, a mob of Christians attacked Hypatia and either dragged her out of her chariot, took her to a church, stripped her naked and then stoned her to death or else dragged her through the streets until she died. Neither of the two descriptions of her death says exactly who did this, saying only that they were Christians led by Peter, who is variously described as a ‘reader’ (a church official) or a ‘magistrate’ (a secular official). Given the violent tendencies of the Parabalani, modern suspicion has tended to fall on them, and since we know that Cyril’s successor as patriarch used them to violently intimidate his opponents, it’s usually suggested that Cyril was behind the killing, either directly or indirectly. It’s certainly a plausible reconstruction from what we know, but it’s going beyond the sources to say either that Cyril ordered it or that the Parabalani were the ones who did it.

Hypatia (Weisz) about to be stoned by the Parabalani

Agora

Agora does a pretty good job of capturing the turbulent nature of Alexandrian politics in the period from 391 to 415. Historically, pagans, Jews, and Christians all took their turns both as instigators and victims of violence, and the film shows this. The sequence it offers of Christians harassing pagans in the marketplace, which grows into an anti-Christian riot until the Parabalani get involved and siege the pagan scholars inside the Serapeum until the emperor orders the destruction of the temple is essentially factual. Where the film takes a liberty is that it emphasizes the destruction of the Serapeum’s library, which is not mentioned in the surviving sources, which instead dwell on the destruction of the pagan idols.

Orestes (Oscar Isaac) rioting against the Christians

Later, the film shows the Parabalani throwing rocks at a theatrical performance, which triggers first a Jewish protest to Orestes, then a Jewish scheme to lure the Parabalani into a church and stone them. That triggers the expulsion of the Jews. Hierax is omitted, as are a few other small details, but the sequence of events is basically true.

Cyril’s attempt to reconcile with Orestes is presented as a power play in which the patriarch puts Orestes on the spot during a church service, reading out 2 Timothy 2: 9-12 (“I also want the women to dress modestly, with decency and propriety, adorning themselves, not with elaborate hairstyles or gold or pearls or expensive clothes, but with good deeds, appropriate for women who profess to worship God. A woman should learn in quietness and full submission.  I do not permit a woman to teach or to assume authority over a man; she must be quiet.”). It’s a blatant attack on Hypatia, and when Orestes refuses to kneel before the Bible, he appears to be defying not just Cyril but God. This incident happened, but we don’t know what verses Cyril read out in the church, or that the incident was an attack on Hypatia. Nor do we have any specific reason to think that Cyril was a misogynist, although it would not be surprising if he was.

After that, people mob Orestes as he leaves the church, Ammonius hits Orestes with a rock, and Ammonius is executed. Cyril proclaims him a martyr, and his fellow Parabalani plot to murder Hypatia, despite Davus’ efforts to save her. Davus stabs her to death out of mercy before she can be stoned, but beyond that, Hypatia’s death happens roughly the way one of the sources says it did.

Patriarch Cyril (Sami Samir)

So the film’s narrative is based around a pretty solid core of fact. Some details are left out or simplified, and a few (such as Cyril’s attack on Hypatia during the church service and Davus’ mercy killing) are invented. The parts of the film that focus on the political and religious strife in the city are about 80% accurate and much of what is not accurate is reasonable invention.

However, the film does oversimplify the conflicts. As I noted, the Christians of Alexandria were not a unified group. Theophilius and Cyril orchestrated violence against the Origenist and Novatianists and other Christians whom they felt were religiously in error. In the film, the Christians seem mostly united behind Cyril. Orestes seems to be almost the lone Christian opposed to him. One of Hypatia’s other former students, Bishop Synesius (Rupert Evans) attempts to support Orestes, but ultimately feels compelled to side with Cyril. The incident that starts all the violence, the throwing of a pagan philosopher into bed of burning coals by a group of Parabalani, actually involved two different groups of Christians.

The film also oversimplifies things by making the pagans, including Hypatia, the only people genuinely interested in ‘science’, while making the Christians almost entirely disinterested in the physical world. The one time the Parabalani discuss the issue of astronomy, Davus (who understands the heliocentric theory because he’s heard Hypatia explain it) says that only God knows the answer. That essentially puts the Christians in the situation of believing that the physical world is just a mystery of faith that cannot be understood through reason. But that’s a caricature of what late ancient Christians actually thought. While they wrestled with the question of how to use traditional (that is, pagan) knowledge, they did not necessarily deny the many accomplishments of natural philosophy. The Catechecal School taught many of the same things that would have been taught at the Serapeum. Christian authors were hostile to the parts of ancient learning that seemed to them explicitly polytheistic, but not necessarily to subjects like mathematics and natural philosophy.

I don’t think the film is actively anti-Christian, although it seems likely that Amenábar’s atheism influenced his treatment of the story. But I can understand why some have seen the film as hostile to Christianity. The problem is that historically, the Alexandrian Christians were in fact pretty violent during this period. Cyril is one of the most unpleasant men ever to have been accorded sainthood, and if anything the film goes a little easy on him by omitting some of his machinations against his fellow Christians.

However, the casting decisions do perhaps unintentionally make the Christians seem more villainous than the pagans. Hypatia and Theon are played by two light-skinned British actors (Rachel Weisz and Michael Lonsdale, although Weisz’s family is Jewish), whereas the two main villains of the piece, Ammonius and Cyril are played by more swarthy-skinned Israeli and Israeli-Arab actors (Ashraf Barhom and Sami Samir). Since American audiences are accustomed to seeing Middle Eastern actors in roles like terrorists, this casting choice tends to encourage the audience to read Ammonius and Cyril as villainous even before we understand what they want.

Ammonius (Barhom) and Davus (Minghella)

The depiction of the Parabalani is also probably unfair to them. In one scene, Ammonius shows Davus the pleasure of feeding the poor, and in another scene they are show disposing of the dead (victims of the riots the Parabalani were involved in), but overall the film offers minimal awareness that this group was devoted to charity. Instead, they tend to be shown lounging about waiting for an excuse to be violent, and many of them are shown carrying swords. We have little information about how this group was organized, how they lived, or how much of their time was devoted to charity, but the film draws them in broad strokes and never tries to give the audience an understanding of who the Parabalani were other than violent extremists.

Agora is not a perfect film. As noted, it simplifies and at times oversimplifies things. Its depiction of Hypatia’s research into the heliocentric theory is pure conjecture (although given what we know of her actual interests, it’s not implausible conjecture). It conflates the Serapeum with the Great Library and depicts a single catastrophic destruction of that library when in reality it was more a slow death by many cuts. Its narrative of peaceful pagan science vs violent Christian faith is more simple and tidy than things were in reality. Its depiction of 1^st century Roman soldiers in 5^th century Alexandria is nonsensical.

But overall, the film approaches its subject with far more respect for the historical facts than most movies. Of its two plotlines, one is basically true while the other is at least respectful of the facts. It delves into a poorly known figure and a moment in time that cinema has rarely (if ever) attempted to depict and manages to provide a reasonable depiction of the events. It treats its audience with respect and manages to explain a complex intellectual puzzle in ways the audience can understand, and it takes as its centerpiece the joy of intellectual inquiry and makes the joy intelligible to non-scholars. I’d rank it as one of the better films on ancient Rome.

This review was paid for by Jerise, who made a donation to my Paypal account. Thanks, Jerise! If there’s a film you would like me to review, please make a generous donation via Paypal and let me know what you’d like me to review. If I can track it down and if I think it’s appropriate, I’ll review it.

Want to Know More?

Agora is available through Amazon.

St Cyril, despite being a rather unpleasant man, was extremely important in the development of early Christianity, and there’s a good deal written about him. Norman Russell’s Cyril of Alexandria would be a good place to start. Russell has also written about Theophilus of Alexandria, Cyril’s predecessor. Taken together, these books would be a good look into the turbulent religious world of Late Roman Alexandria.

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The Little Hours: Nuns Behaving Badly

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Alison Brie, Aubrey Plaza, Christianity, Dave Franco, Jeff Baena, Kate Micucci, Medieval Europe, Medieval Italy, Monks and Nuns, Religious Stuff, The Little Hours

The Little Hours (2017, dir. Jeff Baena) is, as the name suggests, a modest little film dealing with some immodest nuns. The film is set at a convent in 14^th century Italy and is strongly inspired by two genuine medieval tales, the 1^st and 2^nd stories from the 3^rd day of Boccaccio’s Decameron.

Spoiler Alert: If you’re planning to see this film in the theater, you might want to wait to read this until after youv’e done so, since I discuss plot points, including the resolution of the film.

The Decameron, for those unfamiliar with it, is a medieval collection of stories with a loose frame-tale, sort of like the Canterbury Tales you might have read in your high school English class. Instead of a group of pilgrims telling stories as they head for Canterbury, Boccaccio’s ten story-tellers have fled Florence to escape the Bubonic Plague and have holed up in a villa outside the city for two weeks. To amuse themselves and to distract from the death outside, each day they take turns telling stories on a proposed theme (with two days off each week for chores and holy days), so they tell ten stories on each of ten days (hence the work’s title, ‘the Ten-Day Event’). That structure allows Boccaccio to tell a whole range of stories from the comic to the tragic to the morally instructional. The third day’s tales have as a theme something acquired or lost and regained with great difficulty.

The first tale deals with Masetto, a handsome young man who passes himself off as a deaf-mute in order to take work at a monastery of 8 nuns (in medieval usage, ‘monastery’ can refer to a house of either monks or nuns). Since they think he can’t speak, the nuns decide to explore the pleasures of the flesh with him, which he’s only too willing to allow. So he becomes their stud bull, servicing the nuns (including the mother superior) so frequently that he’s exhausted. Eventually he breaks down and demands that the nuns give him a set schedule, which they agree to because they don’t want to lose him or risk him spilling their secret. So he lives there the rest of his life, keeping the nuns happy and fathering a lot of children in the process.

The second tale deals with King Agilulf and Queen Theodolinda, Theodelinda has a servant who flirts with her and eventually he beds her by deceiving her into thinking he is the king. Theodolinda is fooled, but Agilulf realizes he has been cuckolded. He follows the servant back to the chamber where all the servants sleep and manages to figure out which one of the sleeping men in the darkened room is the guilty party. He cuts off a lock of the man’s hair to identify the man the next day. But after he leaves, the clever servant uses the scissors to cut off hair from each of the sleeping servants, so that in the morning the king cannot figure out which man to punish. He warns all the servants that he knows what is going on, but does it without harming his wife’s reputation.

 

The Film

About two-thirds of the Little Hours is drawn from these two stories. Masetto (Dave Franco) is the horny servant not of King Agilulf, but of Lord Bruno (Nick Offerman), an obnoxious blowhard whose wife loathes him. Masetto sleeps with her, but Bruno discovers it, leading to the whole hair-cutting sequence. Realizing that Bruno is on to him, Masetto flees and runs into Father Tommaso (John C. Reilly), a drunkard priest who befriends him (leading to a very funny drunken confessional sequence).

Tommasso is the priest for a small convent filled with unhappy and rather unspiritual nuns. Alessandra (Alison Brie), Ginevra (Kate Micucci), and Fernanda (Aubrey Plaza) take out their boredom and frustration by physically and verbally abusing the convent’s male worker so much that the man quits. Tommasso introduces Masetto to Mother Marea (Molly Shannon), telling her that Masetto is a deaf-mute.

Three unruly nuns

This leads Alessandra and Fernanda into having sex with Masetto, while a rather confused Ginevra (who’s probably a lesbian anyway) thinks she’s had sex with him but doesn’t really understand what sex actually involves.

Then the film leaves its source material completely. Fernanda’s friend Marta (Jemima Kirke) is part of a witch’s coven, and the two of them decide to sacrifice Masetto in a fertility ritual. But Ginevra, tripping balls on belladonna, unintentionally breaks the ritual up, thus saving Masetto and accidentally exposing the whole shenanigans at the convent to Bishop Bartolemeo (Fred Armisen), leading to a rather amusing episcopal visitation of the house in which all is revealed.

Masetto gets sent back to Lord Bruno, but the three nuns help him escape back to the convent, where everything ends happily with the assurance that all the principal characters other than Bruno will be getting a lot of sex.

The humor of the film is rather broad, in keeping with its ribald source material. Baena, who is also the screenwriter of the film, has made the amusing choice to write the characters as anachronistically 21^st century in their dialog and outlook on life. Apart from Franco and Micucci, who do a lot of mugging for the camera, all the actors give rather understated performances. If, like me, you’re not a fan of hipster comedy, you’ll probably find Offerman and Armisen more grating than funny, but Franco and the nuns are well-cast for this story. Fernanda has a lot of anger and violence roiling within, Alessandra is sexually and romantically frustrated, and Ginevra is a follower rather than a leader, at least until her repressed desires explode out of her.

The film largely captures the spirit and much of the substance of medieval farces, which are often at least as bawdy as some modern comedies. If anything, the film down-plays and avoids some elements of medieval farce, which is frequently far more violent, scatological, and misogynistic than its modern descendants. In the film, Masetto only sleeps with two of the nuns a total of three times, whereas in the original, every nun in the house has her way with him non-stop. So whereas modern audiences might assume the film is exaggerating medieval humor, it’s actually downplaying it a little.

Franco’s Masetto pretending to be deaf

Despite its comedy, which milks the contrast between its medieval setting and the contemporary-minded characters for all its worth, the film actually has a lot to say about the 14^th century Italy. Late medieval authors loved mocking unspiritual clergy, and with the exception of one elderly nun, none of the women at the convent are actually following the rules (although Marea does seem to take her job seriously, apart from her affair with Tommasso). To modern audiences, the comedy is simply the contrast of supposedly pious nuns doing things such as swearing like sailors, threatening to assault people, and fornicating, but these are in fact exactly the sorts of things that many 14^th century people suspected nuns actually did. Alessandra is so unspiritual, she can’t even reflect on her own sins during confession; instead she steals Ginevra’s confession by eavesdropping on it. Tommasso the drunken, bumbling priest is another staple of medieval literature; one gets the sense that he would happily gossip about the confessions he hears.

The three young nuns are not in the convent because they feel a calling to the spiritual life, but because their families have put them there. Alessandra’s father is a merchant, and she thinks she’s there simply to be educated before getting married, at least until a visit from her father makes her realize that he’s probably planning on dumping her there permanently so that he doesn’t have to shell out for her dowry. Fernanda and Ginevra’s backstories are never clarified, other than a throw-away joke that Ginevra is actually Jewish, but Fernanda is played as a bored rich girl stuck at a boarding school when she’d rather be out partying with her friends (complete with a scene in which Marta sneaks into the convent and all the girls get drunk on sacramental wine and start making out with each other). To me, these characters ring true (apart from Ginevra’s Jewish ancestry) because that’s how many young women actually wound up as nuns. Alessandra’s story is played for laughs, but I’m certain more than a few young women tragically lived out exactly that story.

Similarly, the bishop’s visitation, a sort of trial in which the moral failings of the nuns are revealed and punished, is played for laughs, but records of dozens of such visitations still exist for both male and female houses, and they reveal large numbers of monks and nuns who evidently found life in a monastery not to their taste. Cases of run-away nuns abound, and fornication was a regular problem, as both actual events and moralizing tales make clear. Even the lesbianism in the film can be documented in period sources. To us, The Little Hours is funny because it’s absurd, but to 14^th century Italians, Boccaccio’s story is funny because it’s true.

A genuine medieval image of nuns harvesting a penis-tree

The nuns here are bored, and take out their frustrations on those around them. They live lives of dull manual labor, although the upper-class Alessandra cheerfully dumps her laundry onto Ginevra because the latter girl is “good at it.” Alessandra is apparently good at needle-work, which gets her out of some of the drudgery, but partway through the film Marea orders her to double her production, so even her social class can’t protect her from unpleasant work. The nuns abuse their male servants for no reason other than that they can; Fernanda has a habit of pulling weapons on people. Ginevra is a tattle-tale, constantly running to Marea to reveal every minor offense her sisters make. Underneath the humor is a revealing portrait of the way many monks and nuns actually responded to their living situation. By the 14^th century, most monks were likely to have actively chosen the life they were living, and were frequently permitted to leave their houses, but many nuns were there against their will, and the rule of enclosure (which stated that nuns were not supposed to leave their convents for any reason at all) meant that many of these women struggled with the mind-number sameness of their daily routine and chafed at the constant close contact with other nuns.

The film also has a sub-plot dealing with finance. The convent needs an income to support its residents. Alessandra’s father is supposed to be paying money to the convent for her, but he’s either stingy or business is going badly (as Tommasso gossips), so he’s not giving what he’s supposed to. The convent makes money by selling the embroidery of the sisters, using Tommasso as their business agent, but he drunkenly ruins one shipment by letting his cart tip into a stream. In addition to being the spiritual leader of the house, something she seems to have some interest in (to judge from the readings she delivers at meals), Marea’s also responsible for managing the finances of the convent, something she seems to have no talent for. Bartholemeo audits her books and apparently finds serious problems.

These were genuine issues at convents, because the rules about keeping nuns separate from men often meant that women with no business experience wound up having to make major financial decisions. In some cases, the abbesses rose to the challenge, either making good choices themselves or finding other nuns who had a head for business and thereby building their house into a financial power, but in others, poor choices produced fiscal crises that led to impoverishment.

Plaza’s Fernanda WILL cut you

The only truly false note in the plot (as opposed to the anachronistic attitudes) is the witchcraft element that brings the film to its climax. Although the 14^th century did see the beginnings of a concern about groups of witches engaging in abominable activities, what the film shows us is straight out of a 16^th century panic about witches’ covens, naked orgies, and human sacrifice (although instead of sacrificing adult men like Masetto, these post-medieval fantasies focused on the murder and cannibalism of babies). The film’s depiction of the witches also draws off of 20^th century neo-pagan ideas of witches as engaging in an alternate religious system. These witches seem to be housewives and young women who are performing a “fertility ritual” of some sort, and it’s not entirely clear that they plan to actually kill Masetto. Fernanda, at least, is not the malevolent baby-killer of early modern anxiety, and Marta doesn’t seem to be either, although her motives are not developed at all. Both women are like naughty college students looking for something the conventional religion of their society does not offer them. Boccaccio does not tell stories about witches, although in one story a character describes a supposed secret society of revelers that uses some of the stock charges about witches, but which are eventually revealed to all be a prank on a gullible doctor. Far from being a believer in witches, Boccaccio seems to be a skeptic, something that is true of far more medieval people than popular imagination would allow.

The Little Hours isn’t trying to recreate a story from the Decameron. Instead, in the phrasing so loved by Hollywood, it’s ‘inspired by’ the stories. It takes whatever pieces it wants from two tales and plays with them freely, which is exactly what medieval authors like Boccaccio and Chaucer did with their source material, and what Shakespeare was going to do a few centuries later. In that sense. Jeff Baena is true to the spirit of Boccaccio, and he manages, perhaps unintentionally, to give a reasonable lesson in what life in a 14^th century convent might have looked like.

 

Want to Know More?

The Little Hours is still in the theater, so it’s not available for purchase or streaming yet.

Boccaccio’s Decameron has more than a little in common with the somewhat more-famous Canterbury Tales, and it’s actually complete! Give it a read.

Graciela Diachman’s Wayward Nuns in Medieval Literature looks at medieval stories of bad nuns and the historical evidence for them. Similarly, Judith Brown’s Immodest Acts: The Life of a Lesbian Nun in Renassance Italy looks at one particularly scandalous abbess, Benedetta Carlini, who not only had a sexual relationship with another nun but also faked visions and stigmata. She is perhaps the first well-documented lesbian in Western history.

The Robe: My Own Personal Non-Denominational Jesus

Tags

Betta St. John, Caligula, Christianity, Classic Hollywood, Jay Robinson, Jean Simmons, Lloyd Douglas, Marcellus Gallio, Religious Issues, Richard Burton, Roman Empire, St Peter, The Robe, Tiberius

It’s Holy Week, so I figured I would take a break from Salem’s witch trials and tackle one of those old Hollywood Biblical epics. I settled on The Robe (1953, dir. Howard Koster), mostly because I’d never seen it before. It’s based on former Lutheran minister Lloyd Douglas’ 1942 bestseller of the same name; he wrote the novel after receiving a fan letter asking him what he thought had become of Christ’s seamless robe after the crucifixion.

The film tells the story of Marcellus Gallio (Richard Burton), a libertine Roman tribune who crosses Caligula (Jay Robinson, chewing the scenery like he hasn’t eaten in a week) and gets sent to Jerusalem just in time to preside over the crucifixion of Jesus. He’s accompanied by a Greek slave, Demetrius (Victor Mature), who witnesses Christ’s entry into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday and immediately finds himself drawn to Jesus, despite not knowing anything about him. During the crucifixion, Marcellus wins Jesus’ robe in a gambling match but finds himself becoming increasingly distressed about what’s happening right above him. During a rainstorm, he tries to put the robe on to keep dry, but finds himself tormented by it. Demetrius takes the robe off him, denounces him and the Roman empire, and flees.

Victor Mature as Demetrius, having just seen Jesus’ entering Jerusalem

Back in Rome, Marcellus remains tormented, and the Emperor Tiberius concludes that he has been bewitched. He commissions Marcellus to return to Judea as a spy and find both the robe and the followers of Jesus, because he senses that these people will destroy the empire (apparently he’s read Gibbon’s Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire in galley proofs). Marcellus eventually makes contact with the Christians and finds them to be wonderful, loving people. He hears a crippled woman Miriam (Betta St. John) sing a song about Christ’s resurrection (basically, the Gospel narrative of Mary Magdalene at the tomb). When he points out that the so-called healer Jesus didn’t heal Miriam, she explains that he healed her of her hatred and malice, which she considers a far greater gift. Marcellus find Demetrius and demands that he burn the robe, but then he accidentally touches it and finds his sense of fear disappearing. He meets St. Peter (Michael Rennie). But then Marcellus and the Christians are betrayed to the Romans. Marcellus defeats the Roman centurion in combat (because apparently that’s how Romans resolve disputes), but refuses to kill him. At this point, Peter and the now-Christian Demetrius invite him to become a missionary with them and he accepts.

In the last act, Marcellus’ true love, Diana (Jean Simmons) learns from the now-emperor Caligula that Marcellus has returned to Rome to spread sedition. She learns that Demetrius has been captured and is being tortured, and she is able to find Marcellus and Peter hiding in a cave with a large crowd of Christians. Marcellus and the Christians bravely rescue Demetrius, but as they are trying to smuggle him out of Rome, Marcellus is captured. He stands trial before Caligula and the Roman people. He explains that he is a Christian now, but not a traitor, but Caligula refuses to hear it. He offers Caligula the robe, but Caligula panics and instead Diana takes it. When Marcellus is sentenced to death, Diana announces that she wishes to die with him and go to his kingdom. As they are escorted out, the Roman palace fades into clouds and a chorus sings “Alleluia!”, signifying that they are going to Heaven.

The Robe is a typical 1950s sword-and-sandal epic, with a religious twist. There are lots of people wandering around in generic Olde Timey robes, lots of fearful slaves and oppressed Christians, and lots of the slightly histrionic acting that was fashionable before Method acting became the standard. Burton is Burton, stalwart, moral, and troubled, and Jean Simmons is the female lead whose only purpose is to mirror the righteousness of Burton’s cause by converting. Every moment of drama is underscored with swelling music. But if you like that sort of thing, it’s a decent film, although Douglas was quite disappointed in it, and refused to allow his sequel, The Big Fisherman, to be adapted as a sequel to the film. (It was eventually adapted after his death.)

The film basically weaves its story around the Gospel narratives of the Crucifixion. We see Jesus’ entry on Palm Sunday, and watch as Demetrius frantically tries to warn the Christians that the Romans plan to arrest Jesus, only to learn that he’s too late. The guilt-stricken man he hears the news from turns out to be Judas (cue thunderclap). Pilate is a haunted man, obsessed with washing his hands. We see Jesus trying to carry the cross and then being crucified, and watch Marcellus’ sense of guilt sink in as he goes from drinking and gambling to looking up at the cross as Jesus bleeds on him and says “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.” It’s a surprisingly powerful moment even if it’s a little over-determined and lacking in subtlety.

This is probably the smartest part of the film, taking a story that most viewers of the day would have been familiar with and showing it from a fresh, unusual vantage point. Jesus is never clearly shown, as befitting a man who, in this film, is a powerful enough presence to convert people without even speaking to them.

After that, however, the film slowly goes wrong. The film opens in 33 AD, and perhaps a year passes between Marcellus’ conversion and his confrontation with Caligula at Rome, at which point Caligula has become emperor. But Caligula didn’t become emperor until 37 AD, so the film is compressing the facts because it wants Caligula to be the chief bad guy.

Simmons as Diana and Robinson as Caligula, during the trial

That’s a small issue, and I suppose one that can be forgiven. However, the film paints a picture of the Roman authorities as being instantly hostile to the Christians. The moment Tiberius learns about the Christians he orders Marcellus to root them out and destroy the robe. A year later, the Christians have already arrived in Rome in substantial numbers and are in hiding, because Caligula considers them traitors, and he orders the execution of Marcellus and Diana. In order for that to be true, Christianity would have to have enjoyed pretty much overnight expansion halfway across the Mediterranean, when the evidence suggests that in 40 AD there might have been a total of perhaps 1,000 Christians anywhere. Acts 1:14-15 says that in the months after the Crucifixion, there were only 120 Christians. So the idea of an underground community of several dozen Christians operating at Rome a year after the Crucifixion is pretty much an impossibility. Nor had Peter gotten there by that point; St. Paul’s Letter to the Romans was written around 56 AD, given or take a year, and he makes no mention of Peter despite greeting many people he knew of at Rome.

Just as unlikely is the film’s picture of Christians as immediately falling under imperial disapproval. Whereas popular imagination views early Christianity as being illegal the way that drug-dealing is illegal and therefore forcing Christians to live in hiding all the time, the reality is that in the first century AD, Christians were mostly seen as Jews, and Judaism was a legally tolerated religion, albeit one with a rocky relationship to the Empire. The earliest evidence of a Roman persecution against Christians comes from an early 2^nd century author Suetonius, who says that Claudius expelled the Jews from Rome because they were making disturbances “at the instigation of Chrestus” (Iudaeos impulsore Chresto assidue tumultuantis Roma expulit). Most historians take this to a slightly confused reference to Christ’s Jewish followers being expelled (although there are other ways to understand the passage); this would have happened around 49 AD. The fact that Suetonius garbled “Christ’ and thought he was still alive during Claudius’ reign demonstrates that even half a century later, well-educated Romans could be completely ignorant of what Christianity was. Later, Suetonius tells us that Nero punished Christians, and the Roman historian Tacitus links this to the Great Fire of Rome in 64 AD. The late 2^nd century Christian author Tertullian seems fairly clear that Nero was the first emperor to execute Christians.

For some reason, Jerusalem is already in ruins. That’s a defensive wall behind them

The whole confrontation with Caligula is Douglas’ fabrication, apparently to give the ending of his novel some dramatic tension. While it is not impossible that Caligula executed Christians, it is highly unlikely, because it’s improbable there were enough Christians at any point during his rule for him to take serious notice of them, much less become obsessed that they are a threat to his rule.

Rather what Douglas is doing is imitating later accounts of Christian martyrdom and projecting that idea back to a period before the first martyrs. He’s essentially making Marcellus and Diana the first martyrs. Later accounts of martyrdom emphasize a confrontation between the martyrs and Roman legal authorities, and then typically go on to describe the manner of the martyr’s execution. Here we get the legal confrontation but the execution itself has been euphemized as an almost literal walk in the clouds.

The Part of The Robe that Doesn’t Play Very Well Today

As noted, the film avoids showing Jesus directly (or even calling him ‘Christ’), which focuses the camera on Demetrius and Marcellus and their reactions to what is happening to Jesus during his execution.But it might also have been intended to avoid having to cast a specific actor in the role and make a statement about what Jesus looked like. American imagination at the time liked to depict Jesus as basically Caucasian, but most of the Jews and Jewish Christians are played by white actors wearing swarthy make-up. The exception here is Betta St. John’s Miriam, who is lovely and fair-skinned and gets to sing a song about the Resurrection. (And now I’m suddenly haunted by the idea of a 1950s Hollywood musical number in which a crippled woman sings about the Resurrection, complete with a chorus line. God help me.) The tendency to put white actors in swarthy make-up when they play Middle Eastern characters looks rather awkward to audiences today, but it was standard practice in the 1950s.

Betta St John as Miriam

Somewhat harder to justify is casting Jewish actor Leon Askin as a money-grubbing servant who attempts to blackmail Marcellus and betrays him to the Romans, and then putting him in swarthy make-up and a curly beard. While the film calls him a Syrian in one line, it’s hard to escape the conclusion that he’s supposed to be a stereotypical greedy Jew. Given that all the good Jewish Christians are played by Caucasians like Michael Rennie, Dean Jagger, and Betta St. John, the contrast is rather striking. (Askin, incidentally, later went on to play the Nazi General Burkhalter in Hogan’s Heroes. He also played Martin Luther and Karl Marx. Now that’s a career with range.)

Askin as Agidor, with Burton. Note how differently he is portrayed than Jewish Christian Miriam

It’s also noteworthy that Jesus’ followers are always called Christians, never Jews, even though the term ‘Christian’ only developed somewhat later than the period of this film. There is no hint of Jewish rituals or the existence of a Jewish priesthood in Jerusalem and there’s barely any actual mention of Jews, except when a centurion comments that no one really knows what this ‘messiah’ of theirs is. Jews were still widely stigmatized in the 1950s, so the film is clearly trying to gloss over the Jewish origins of Christianity for a Christian audience that still looks down on Jews somewhat.

The Robe’s Version of Christianity

The Robe was made a time when the overwhelming majority of Americans were Christian but explicit discussion of religious belief was considered inappropriate in many parts of the country. Secularism was the dominant mode of public culture. So the film does a balancing act of presenting Christianity as something special and unique while not getting too specific about what Christianity is actually about.

Demetrius looking up at Jesus and holding the robe

Just as the film avoids showing us what Jesus looked like, it also avoids showing us what he had to say. Jesus gets only one line, spoken from the cross, and there’s no discussion of his sermons or parables. There’s a passing references to Jesus as the Messiah, but the centurion who mentions it doesn’t know what that means, except that it might be a king of some sort. He’s also called the Son of God once or twice, without any explanation. During his confrontation with Caligula, Marcellus says that Jesus “reigns in the hearts and minds of men in the name of justice and charity,” which is about as close to a statement of faith as the film ever gets.

Jesus’ followers are very honest, decent people. When Marcellus pretends to be a foolish cloth merchant in his effort to locate the robe, the Christian Justus (“justice,” get it?) shames the other Christians who let Marcellus over-pay them for their old clothes, and they all return the money. Marcellus gives Justus’ son a donkey, and gets angry when the boy gives the donkey away the next day so that his friend can have fun riding it. Miriam has somehow learned not to hate people after meeting Jesus on the way to the wedding at Cana. St. Peter is unwilling to let Justus claim that Peter stood by Jesus the whole time, instead admitting to Marcellus that he denied Jesus three times.

Dean Jagger as Justus, watching Marcellus break down from guilt

While Miriam sings a song about Jesus’ Resurrection, the film avoids saying that the Christians take it as literally true. Jesus is alive with his father and in the hearts of his followers, but there’s no sense of the Resurrection as a factual truth, or that Christ was seen later on by his followers, or that he will return someday. Nor is there any mention of key Christian doctrines like Substitutionary Atonement or Original Sin (although in 33 AD it’s unlikely that Christians would have used terms like that). The film ends with a symbolic journey of Marcellus and Diana to Heaven, without actually saying that’s where they’re going, and there’s no mention of the concept of Salvation or the Christian notion of the afterlife. So basically, the film’s version of Christianity is that it’s a moral code in which people are just really nice to each other and practice a vaguely-defined “justice” that stands in contrast to the tyranny of Caligula and Rome in general.

While it’s vague about what being Christian involves, The Robe is certain that it’s better than being pagan. The film opens with a surprisingly long voice-over by Burton in which Marcellus describes Rome. As he puts it,

“Some say that we are only looters of what others have created, that we create nothing ourselves, but we have made gods, fine gods and goddesses, who make love, war, huntresses, and drunkenness. For their power lies not in their hands of marble, but in ours of flesh. We the nobles of Rome are free to live only for our own pleasure. Could any god offer us more? Today we traffic in human souls.”

As he says this, the film shows us statues of the Roman gods, and finishes with a sculptor carving a new statue of Bacchus. The message here is clear; the gods of the Romans are merely human creations designed to justify humanity’s baser urges. The film contrasts this with the higher moral calling of Christianity, which gradually wins over first Demetrius, then Marcellus, and finally Diana. First Marcellus and then Diana are confused by Christianity’s message of being nice to people; they insist that real people aren’t like that, but gradually have a change of heart. That the film ends with the conversion of a woman named after a Roman goddess seems more than a coincidence, especially since the film’s opening includes a statue of Diana the Huntress to remind the audience of that goddess.

The film also walks a fine line in regard to its supernatural elements. Christ’s execution is accompanied by a storm, rather than the Biblical darkness and earthquake. The Resurrection is mentioned only in a song, suggesting that it might be metaphorical. Miriam’s healing is spiritual rather than physical, and when Peter comes to heal the wounded Demetrius after his rescue, the scene shifts to outside the room, where a pagan physician is insisting that Demetrius will die, so his recovery is surprising but not explicitly a miracle. The closest thing to a formal miracle happens when Justus says that his young boy was born with a deformed foot but that Jesus healed him; we see the boy running and playing like a normal boy.

Jesus’ seamless robe is likewise ambiguous. When Marcellus first touches it, he is overcome with agony, and the second time he touches it he is healed of his fear, but the film presents these as more psychological than literal, the manifestation of a guilty conscience that later heals. Caligula’s fear of the robe is a sign of the inferiority of Roman society to Christianity, and Diana’s taking of the robe is a sign that she has converted, not the cause of it. So the film allows the viewer room to see the robe as a miraculous relic, but formally presents it only as a symbol of Jesus’ love and acceptance.

Marcellus fighting the centurion

Although St. Peter appears numerous times during the second half of the film, he gets only one scene of importance, in which he invites Marcellus to come with him and Demetrius. Justus claims that he was Jesus’ closest companion, but Peter later corrects the statement by admitting his denial of Jesus. He is repeatedly called ‘the big fisherman’, a term that implies leadership without actually saying it. There is a suggestion that Peter is responsible for Christianity coming to Rome, but nothing more than that. Catholics can view this Peter as the first bishop of Rome and Prince of the Apostles while Protestants can view him simply as an important Biblical figure. So the film can be watched with equal comfort by a secular American, a Protestant, or a Catholic, and thus represents a compromise meant to satisfy everyone. The only people likely to be offended by it are conservative Protestants like my Lutheran minister father, who would have been irritated by the film’s refusal to take a firm stance on what Christianity involves.

The film establishes a moral hierarchy in which Christianity is clearly superior to paganism, and implicitly superior to Judaism by virtue of its near-total removal from the context. But the film avoids anything that would mark it out as committed to a particular view of Christianity as anything more than a powerful but vaguely-defined moral system. In that sense, it’s the perfect Hollywood Biblical epic, religious without being religious.

Want to Know More? 

The Robe is available in multiple formats through Amazon.

If you want to know more about the first generation of Christians, a good place to start would be Wayne Meeks’ The First Urban Christians: The Social World of the Apostle Paul, which seeks to reconstruct the early Christian community from clues in the writings of St. Paul. Another way to approach the subject is Early Christian Writings: The Apostolic Fathers (Classics), which collects the earliest extra-Biblical Christian texts, such as Clement’s Letter, the Shepherd of Hermas, and The Didache, the first summary of Christian doctrine and practice.