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Sport at the beginning of christianity

 

Doctor Honoris causa in Iberoamerican Education.

Theologian, posgraduate in Information System.

Professor on Sport History in Politécnico Colombiano “Jaime Isaza Cadavid”, Medellín

Tomás Emilio Bolaño Mercado

trosime@une.net.co

(Colombia)

 

 

 


Abstract

          The aim herein is to set out how literature at earliest Christianity faced Greek athletic games and Roman circus games. Here is it held that earliest Christian writers, based on Pauline writings, made use of athletic and war language to draw a comparison with the fight of Christian spirituality and forbid new believers from attending them.

Besides it is shown that, although forbidding believers from attending athletic and circus spectacles, Christianity from the outset allowed and furthered the same under its own perspective: education.

          Keywords: Spirituality of sport. Theology of sport.


Presentado en el Congreso Internacional sobre espiritualidad del deporte organizado por
la St. John Of York University, en la ciudad de York en el año 2006


  
http://www.efdeportes.com/ Revista Digital - Buenos Aires - Año 13 - Nº 127 - Diciembre de 2008

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1.     Introduction

    To understand the meaning that sport has taken on in Christian writings, it is of the essence to trace its sources and thereby to throw light upon aspects that lead sport lecturers, teachers and chroniclers to state that Christianity under Catholicism has been hostile to sport and to all forms under which it has been practised throughout history until current practices.

    By reading earliest Christian writings, after Saint Paul’s and up to Isidore of Seville’s, it is feasible to make a report of how earliest Christians dealt with Greek athletic games and Roman circus games. This work’s sources are from Christian canon writers of the earliest centuries, who considerably influenced the attitude toward them.

2.     Faith champions

    In the First Letter to the Corinthians written in 96 by Peter’s fourth successor as Rome Bishop, as Saint Irenaeus bears witness to, Saint Clement offers some important allusions not only to Peter and Paul as “the champions1 that have most recently lived” ( Saint Clement 1 Cor 4), but also to Perpetua and Felicitas who “immersed themselves in the firm career of faith” (1 Clem 5), when they were executed in the Roman “spectacle”2 of the amphitheatre, Clement makes use of athletic language of its time to say that they also were “faith champions”.

    The reference to the games as the appropriate language to refer to martyr’s greatness of strength employed by the first Fathers of the Church is found also in Saint Ignatius of Antioch. The triumphal entrance of the emperor Trajan into the city of Rome, after having conquered Dacia, current Rumania, was marked with one hundred and twenty three days of spectacles, where nearly ten thousand gladiators fought and died in circus games.

    In these celebrations many Christians were forced to fight against wild animals, among them Ignatius Bishop of Antioch, who was arrested and judged. These Christians had to leave the great metropolis of Syria chained and escorted by ten soldiers. In all likelihood in the year 106 or 107 the Bishop had to travel from Syria to Rome and by Smyrna he was received by Bishop Saint Polycarp. When in Troade, Saint Ignatius sends him a letter that among other matters dealt with martyrdom and contained an analogy with the virtues of Hellenic athletics.

    Saint Ignatius asks Polycarp to “increase the pace of the career” (Polycarp 1, 3), to busy himself with the unity with his community (Polycarp 1, 3), and exhorts him to bear with everyone’s illness as a courageous and – perfect – athlete (Polycarp 1, 3), then he makes the analogy complete with this expression: “Be sober, as an athlete of God. The prize is incorruptibleness and eternal life, whereof you also are convinced.... athletes are wont to be skinned and yet to be victorious... fight together, run you all at the same pace”,3 in the story of Saint Ignatius’ martyrdom, made by Sura and Senecio as “eyewitnesses”, Ignatius is referred to as a “generous athlete and martyr that trod the devil down and ended his career of his pious wish in Jesus Christ”4

3.     Athletes and martyrs

    Another source allowing us to examine the use of athletic expressions in the Christian discourse of the first Fathers is Tertulian, who in 197 in a message to the Christians imprisoned in the city of Cartage exhort them to remain faithful in confession and strong in martyrdom. “Martyrs Exhortation” describes how a soldier is trained in time of peace: The soldier, writes he, “should learn to suffer war by marching with all his weapons, running about the camp, digging trenches and bearing the burden of the turtle 42. Everything is done with effort so that later his body and energy do not break down: from shadow to sun, from hotness to coldness, from tunic to armour, from silence to roar, from rest to din”,5 and then offers the analogy with martyrdom: ““Thus, you all ¡O beloved by God! Everything that on earth is to your harm take it as training as much for the soul as for the body. Since the fight to come is harsh”.

    To his imprisoned Christian brothers awaiting their turn for the circus arena Tertulian offers a comparison between the athlete’s training and the martyr’s. He writes that the agonothete,6 that is, who presided over Greek games and bestowed the prize “is God Himself”; the Xystarch, who played the role of judge, is the Holy Spirit; the spectators are the angels and the trainer Jesus Christ. As athletes are anointed for the fight, those who pursuit the career of martyrdom are anointed by Christ with the Holy Spirit; and since during the days prior to the fight the athlete was kept away from comfort and sensual pleasures, from delicate food and from enervating drinks and is harassed, tortured and strained to secure victory; so are Christians kept away from everything, so that their strength should be “great enough for the test”.

    Quoting Paul’s First Letter to the Corinthians, Tertulian urges further on the Pauline analogy between athletics and Christian life: “And these –according to the Apostle- do it to gain a perishable garland, while you to gain an eternal one (1 Cor 9, 25), he exhorts them to think of imprisonment as an Arena, (where boxers and fighters trained for the contest), and to feel that after leaving prison to the tribunal, they had left a stage behind. Tertulian referred to the recreational ritual contests of the Greeks.

4.     Earthly tournament and heavenly tournament

    Another Father of the Church, Saint Cyprian, in a letter that can be placed little after the Easter of the year 252 7 to the “Faithful of Thibaris”, with the aim to encourage them before an imminent persecution, resorts to the analogy between “agonem secularem” and “agonem sublimis”.8

    Cyprian refers to earthly tournament to talk to Christians of the spectacular games that gladiators carried out before the emperor and the Roman public, after having trained motivated by the high esteem that would ensue “as a great glory of prestige to be garlanded before the people and the emperor”.

    Besides, when he uses the expression “noble and glorious heavenly tournament”, he refers to the athletic fight of the faithful that “have acknowledged being His sons and daughters and fighters of faith; where the prize is the celestial garland, the overseer and spectator is God, the angles are also spectators and Christ is the judge that grants the garland.

    Cartage’s Bishop advises “let us prepare the agon with an uncorrupted soul” and bases his advice on Saint Paul’s letter to the Ephesians to project the spirit of sublime agonism towards the fight against evil in this world (Cfr. Ef 6, 12 – 17)

5.     Prohibition of spectacles

    Due to the prohibition by the Fathers of the Church to Christians from attending, witnessing and taking part in recreational spectacles, it is to be noticed that earliest Christians enjoyed taking part as spectators in these festivals; Saint John Crysostom in his “Homily against spectacles” regrets that Christians preferred “willingly” horse races and misliked “angrily” the “sermons and instructions” wherein their attendance was forbidden.

    In this same homily John Chrysostom writes: “they disobeyed by attending and applauding the aurigas” 9, he also regrets that horse races had taken place on Good Friday and for this reason he asks himself insistently: “Is this to be tolerated? Is this to be suffered? Finally, decrees the segregation from the community for disobedient ones and invites them to convert.

    In the second century the Fathers apologists include in their writings, now more vigorously, the prohibition of attendance at spectacles of recreational gladiator fight in order to defend the accusation of anthropophagi that was then against Christianity, Theophilus of Antioch in “The Three Books to Autolycum” ( III, 15) writes:

    “Consider so if those who such teachings receive can live indifferently and walk away in legitimate gatherings and, what is outrageously impious, feed on human flesh. The truth is that it is forbidden for us to witness gladiator contests, not to be accomplices and promoters of those deaths. Neither should we watch other such spectacles so that our eyes and ears become impure by being involved in what is done there. For if it is a matter anthropophagi, there are the children of Thyestes and Tereus devoured; if it is about adultery, there are tragedies wherein not only men but also the gods commit it, that are sung in melodious lines, not without honours and prizes. Far from the minds of Christians to perform such deeds, they, among whom restraint abides, abstinence is exercised, monogamy is observed, chastity is kept, injustice is annihilated, the law is followed, religion is practised, confession to God is practised, truth is arbitrator, grace guards, peace protects, holy words guide, wisdom teaches, life decides; God reigns! A great deal more can be said about the manners among us and about God’s justifications, all creatures’ artificer; but for now what has been said is enough, you have become aware of the truth mostly by what you have read so far and until now you have been industrious in study and shall always be so.10

    As for Tertullian, in the treatise “De spectaculis” meant to the catechumens, written probably in 200, more likely in 197, he condemns irrevocably the attendance by Christians at circus, stadium and amphitheatre spectacles, demonstrating that these recreational practices contained a form of idolatry, exhibited violently the passions and were incompatible with the Saviour’s religion11

    In some texts by the Fathers wherein the attendance at public spectacles is also forbidden with comments and quotations from the bible, among them Saint Cyprian’s text titled “De Spectaculis” acknowledged under the authorship of Novatian12 and in that of Tertullian with the same title and also in Ad Donatum by Saint Cyprian, Novatian establishes idolatry as the mother of all diversions and confirms the prohibition for all Christians to attend the spectacles that promote gladiator games where “cruelty, vices and brutalities” are shown.

    The reasons are but evident in that Roman gladiator practice has as origin the idolatry Christians give up by the grace of christening. In exchange, a delight in “nobler spectacles” is put forward, “truthful and profiting pleasures” under the condition that Christians “withdraw into themselves”, whose equivalent in modern language would be “interiorise” what furthers spiritual growth. Novatian’s proposal can be seen as somehow fitting in with contemporaneous environmental tendencies as a proposal of contemplative leisure appropriate for walks and open air nature-friendly sports.

6.     Pauline analogy

    Novatian proposes that from sacred scriptures to the outward world Christians have the possibility of contemplating the beauty of nature and thereby can enter a spirituality of leisure closer to the creation. This is expressed thus: “...that faithful Christians immerse themselves in Holy Scriptures. There shall they find spectacles worthy of their faith. They shall see God making their world, making not only other animals but also that wonderful and superior work: man”13

    The Pauline pericope, wherein three Hellenic games are mentioned: races, wrestling and boxing, to compare them with Christian life, ends up being a quotation most preferred by the Fathers of the Church to exhort earliest Christians to remain firm in persecutions, imprisonment and martyrdom, but above all else when they seek to teach that the aim of the Christian is set beyond the finishing line of the races in the stadium, of the boxing stage and of the arena. On the same matter Saint Ireneus adding to 1 Cor 9, 24 ” 14 tells that the contest, wherein Hellenic athletes trained in the palaestra and then competed before the public, constituted an extreme effort in search of a garland that soon, as Saint Paul puts it, “withers”, but that Christian life inspires a new way of thinking life as a contest.

    The incorruptible garland’s image is retaken, in a rather fruitful way, by Cyprian in his letter to the Martyrs 15 when he refers to Mappalicus who in the eve of his Martyrdom said to the proconsul: “Tomorrow you shall see a contest”, in fact, Cyprian retakes the Pauline allegory of athletics likened to Christian fight to underline that Christians seek the highest aim: an incorruptible garland16

    Since racing was one of the most cherished athletic events among Greeks in their recreational ritual competitiveness and the first competition that gave rise to this kind of ritual practice, it is the image most employed by the Fathers to exhort Christians to run in a life exercised with restraint and towards an aim beyond the finishing line17, a race, as expressed by the Pseudo Cyprian,18 already run and won by Jesus, who as Theonas Bishop of Alexandria said: “.....had been trained for perfection” 19

    In the controversy with Celsus, Origen draws a comparison between those who run in the temples as if sacred with those who build on the ground of Jesus’ teachings with faith and confidence until they can say they have fought their fight and have run the race to deserve a garland of Justice. In this sense, the Pauline analogy followed by the Fathers allow to understand modern sports as empty human actions (punching the air) (running aimlessly) if there is no higher aim than medals (corruptible garland) and further allows to put forward a sport with the sense introduced by the attainment of that incorruptible garland.

7.     Sport teaching value

    Most sport historians trod the old path of spotting and quoting patrician sources to show a purportedly traditional hostile attitude from earliest Christian writers and so from the whole tradition of the Church to come towards games, sports and physical activity. As a response to this, we shall base our work on a thesis by Alois Koch in 1968 in Germany to whom the magazine Citus, Altius, Fortius published a summary in an article titled “About the Problem of Christianity and Physical Exercises”. 20

    In that report Koch holds that the Fathers of the Church state clearly enough the prohibition to Christians from taking part in spectacles and games because by indulging in them they become accomplices of offences and of idolatry so spread in Roman games and in Hellenic ritual agonism. In exchange, they propose the practice of physical exercises without the pagan content.

    In the work Paidagogos (3, 0 – 11) Clement of Alexandria supports this conduct, he furthers physical exercises in gymnasia, attendance at public toilets and recommends ball play as a practice fit for Christian children’s education; on this matter writes Koch: “He knows that a good body disposition is generally the base for a good physical and spiritual quality”.

    Clement of Alexandria rejects the practice of games as an artistic representation shown as spectacle; that is, the game practised as lucrative profession, rejection that from certain contemporaneous European academic environments is made against the current industrialisation reached by sports in our time.

    Another testimony offered by Koch in the article we have taken as reference is contained in the Letter to Diogneto, cap 5. about which writes Koch, “it contains an emphatic approval of that environment and, although not an open approval of physical culture, the letter states that daily vital manifestations, according to such paternal customs, are kept after conversion and that Christians go often to gymnasia, public toilets, seeing yet in them pictures of old divinities but the pagan manners have already vanished.

    Koch quotes Isidore of Seville’s instruction in the text “Historia de los godos”, written to guide the education that German knights, who according to him, ought to receive if the “hidalgo is to be educated as a prince”. After having given the rules of how wet nurses and teachers should educate children and after advising for these an adequate formation of body expressions, he advises so that youngsters acquire “a more vigorous and stronger spirit than body itself…. To exercise yourselves at full through mountains, through sea and you shall see with wonder how good and healthy the body feels with the work and development that the limbs acquire with exercise. Since for the first task not only horses and darts are to be used but also should you overcome distances running and jumping (riding horses, throwing darts and open yourselves to danger), put your strength to the test in wrestling against your matches, travel through woods, scare wild animals off their lairs and be the first to hurt them, reach the steepest mountain and descend by awful abysses: compete in speed against fast wild animals, in courage against the boldest and in cleverness against the cleverest".

8.     Conclusion

    So far it is evident that in Christian writings from the earliest centuries of the life of the Church the attitude from the Fathers as to spectacles of Hellenic agonism and of Roman recreation expressly forbids attendance by Christians as spectators. Now it is also clear that earliest Christians understood that these athletic practices kept the content of pagan religions already superseded by Christian spirituality and that besides promoted manners against the new way of understanding the body and the relations with others, in exchange they promoted the practice of physical exercises and likened them to the exercises of Christian spiritual life.

Notes

  1. This word is also found translated as “fighter”

  2. According to Tácito, en Ann., 15, 38 y s. Quoted by Daniel Ruiz Bueno. Cartas camino del martirio. México: Librería Parroquial, 1946 p 78.

  3. Cfr. San Ignacio de Antioquía. Carta A San Policarpo. En. San Ignacio de Antioquía: Cartas camino del martirio. Ruiz Bueno, Daniel. México: Librería Parroquial, 1947

  4. “Martirio Colbertino de San Ignacio, Obispo de Antioquía”. En: Ruiz Bueno, Daniel. Cartas camino del martirio. México: Librería Parroquial, 1947. p. 180

  5. Tertuliano. Exhortación a los mártires No 3.

  6. Who presides over the games.

  7. Campos, Julio. Obras de San Cipriano. Madrid: BAC, 1964. p 45.

  8. Cfr. San Cirilo. Carta a los fieles de Thibaris, No 6. En: Campos, Julio. Obras de San Cipriano. Madrid: BAC, 1964, p. 560 – 561.

  9. San Juan Crisóstomo. “Homilía contra los espectáculos” I. En, Homilías selectas, Volumen I. Serie, Los Santos Padres. No 26. Sevilla: Apostolado Mariano, 1991. p 39 – 40.

  10. Teófilo de Antioquía. Los Tres Libros a Autólico. III, 15. En Padres Apologetas Griegos del siglo II. Madrid: BAC, 1954. p854 - 855

  11. Véase Los espectáculos (De spectaculis) . En Quasten, Johanes. Patrología. Tomo I. Hasta el Concilio de Nicea. Madrid: Biblioteca de autores cristianos, 1968. P 590 - 591

  12. Novaciano. De espectaculis. En: Johannen, Quasten. Patrología. I. Hasta el concilio de Nicea, Madrid: BAC. P 509 – 510.

  13. Novaciano. De Spectaculis. En: Johannen, Quasten. Op, cit. P 510

  14. San Ireneo. Irenaeus Against Heresies Book IV No 7. en http://ccel.org/fathers2/ANF-01/anf01-62.htm#P8811_2507018 27 de noviembre de 2006.

  15. San Cipriano. Cyprian Treatise XI. Exhortation to Martyrdom, Addressed to Fortunatus. En http://ccel.org/fathers2/ANF-05/anf05-121.htm#P7766_2610984 27 de septiembre de 2005

  16. San Cipriano. Sitio web citado. Tertulian. Ad Martyras http://ccel.org/fathers2/ANF-03/anf03-52.htm#P12071_3363511. visitado el 27 de septiembre de 2005. Cyprian. Treatise XII. Three Books of Testimonies Against the Jews.en http://ccel.org/fathers2/ANF-05/anf05-122.htm#P8544_2777276 27 de septiembre de 2005. Clement of Alexandria Stromata Book III Caput XVI.-Jeremiah 20:14; Job 14:3; Psalms 50:5; 1 Corinthians 9:27, Exponit. En http://ccel.org/fathers2/ANF-02/anf02-61.htm#P6454_1977111 27 septiembre de 2005

  17. San Cipriano.. Cyprian . Epistle VIII. http://ccel.org/fathers2/ANF-05/anf05-33.htm#P4898_1482943 27 septiembre 2005

  18. Pseudocyprian. On the Glory of Martyrdom. http://ccel.org/fathers2/ANF-05/anf05-128.htm#P9694_2999060, visitado el 27 de septiemre de 2005.

  19. The Epistle of Theonas, Bishop of Alexandria, to Lucianus, the Chief Chamberlain en http://ccel.org/fathers2/ANF-06/anf06-72.htm 27 septiembre de 2005

  20. Kosch, Alois. “Sobre el problema “Cristianismo y ejercicios físicos”. Citus, Altius, Fortius. Tomo X, Fasc 3 – 4, p 333 ss.

Bibliography

  • Campos, Julio. Obras de San Cipriano. Madrid: BAC, 1964. p 45.

  • Kosch, Alois. “Sobre el problema “Cristianismo y ejercicios físicos”. Citus, Altius, Fortius. Tomo X, Fasc 3 – 4, p 333 ss.

  • Quasten, Johones. Los espectáculos (De spectaculis) . Patrología. Tomo I. Hasta el Concilio de Nicea. Madrid: Biblioteca de autores cristianos, 1968. P 590 - 591

  • Novaciano. De espectaculis. En: Johannen, Quasten. Patrología. I. Hasta el concilio de Nicea, Madrid: BAC. P 509 – 510.

  • Ruíz, Bueno. D. Cartas camino del martirio. México: Librería Parroquial, 1946 p 78.

  • San Cirilo. Carta a los fieles de Thibaris, No 6. En: Campos, Julio. Obras de San Cipriano. Madrid: BAC, 1964, p. 560 – 561.

  • San Ignacio de Antioquía. Carta A San Policarpo. En. San Ignacio de Antioquía: Cartas camino del martirio. Ruiz Bueno, Daniel. México: Librería Parroquial, 1947

  • San Juan Crisóstomo. “Homilía contra los espectáculos” I. En, Homilías selectas, Volumen I. Serie, Los Santos Padres. No 26. Sevilla: Apostolado Mariano, 1991. p 39 – 40

  • Teófilo de Antioquía. Los Tres Libros a Autólico. III, 15. En Padres Apologetas Griegos del siglo II. Madrid: BAC, 1954. p854 - 855

  • Tertuliano. Exhortación a los mártires No 3.

Cybergraphy

  • San Ireneo. Irenaeus Against Heresies Book IV No 7. en http://ccel.org/fathers2/ANF-01/anf01-62.htm#P8811_2507018 27 de noviembre de 2006.

  • San Cipriano. Cyprian Treatise XI. Exhortation to Martyrdom, Addressed to Fortunatus. En http://ccel.org/fathers2/ANF-05/anf05-121.htm#P7766_2610984 27 de septiembre de 2005

  • Tertulian. Ad Martyras http://ccel.org/fathers2/ANF-03/anf03-52.htm#P12071_3363511. visitado el 27 de septiembre de 2005

  • Cyprian. Treatise XII. Three Books of Testimonies Against the Jews.en http://ccel.org/fathers2/ANF-05/anf05-122.htm#P8544_2777276 27 de septiembre de 2005.

  • Clement of Alexandria. Stromata Book III Caput XVI.-Jeremiah 20:14; Job 14:3; Psalms 50:5; 1 Corinthians 9:27, Exponit. En http://ccel.org/fathers2/ANF-02/anf02-61.htm#P6454_1977111 27 septiembre de 2005

  • San Cipriano. Cyprian . Epistle VIII. http://ccel.org/fathers2/ANF-05/anf05-33.htm#P4898_1482943 27 septiembre 2005.

  • Pseudocyprian. On the Glory of Martyrdom. http://ccel.org/fathers2/ANF-05/anf05-128.htm#P9694_2999060, visitado el 27 de septiemre de 2005.

  • The Epistle of Theonas, Bishop of Alexandria, to Lucianus, the Chief Chamberlain en http://ccel.org/fathers2/ANF-06/anf06-72.htm 27 septiembre de 2005

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