ASIA MINOR. (Ἀσία ἡ ἐλάττων, ἡ μικρά Ἀσία). — A rather late designation (4th century A.D.: cf. Orosius, I, 2), which in learned usage preceded the Byzantine-medieval Anatolia (or “Land of the East,” ἀνατολή, as it must have appeared to the Greeks of the Aegean; hence our Natolia and the Turkish Anatola; or also Rumili, with reference to the ancient Roman dominion); both toponyms, however, had an oscillating territorial meaning and were in any case different from the more precise modern sense.
SUMMARY:
I. Geography
II. The religions of A. M. — III. Christianity in A. M. — IV. The Apostolic Vicariate of A. M. — V. Archaeology.I. GEOGRAPHY
A. M. is, after Arabia and India, the largest peninsula of the Asian continent, of which it forms the western extremity. Bounded on three sides by the sea (the Euxine or Black Sea to the N., the Aegean to the W., and the Mediterranean to the S.), it is joined to the continental mass in the east by the Armenian plateau, where any dividing line would evidently have only conventional value: one may be drawn from the mouth of the Phasis (Rion) to the head of the Gulf of Alexandretta. Beyond the former boundary, the ancients placed Colchis (Georgia); by the latter, Cilicia was separated from Mesopotamia (Iraq).The area of the peninsula proper slightly exceeds 500,000 sq. km and is today entirely included, politically, within that of Turkey (v. TURCHIA), which is, however, somewhat larger, since it also includes part of the adjacent regions. In historical times, A. M. has undergone considerable changes, more in the ethnic composition of its inhabitants than in its natural landscape (the alluviation of rivers, especially those flowing into the Aegean, which has enlarged the small coastal plains; changes in the level of inland lakes, etc.). Following the exodus of the Greeks from the western coastal regions and the almost total suppression of the Armenians, who were concentrated chiefly in the eastern interior areas, the population of A. M. today consists overwhelmingly of Muslim Turks.
For further geographical information, V. TURCHIA.
The Hellenistic kings of Asia and Egypt, successors of Alessandro Magno, sought to unite the various Asian peoples, whether Greek or Macedonian, through the bonds of a single civil, social, and religious culture, seeing in this an advantage for the durability of their rule. To achieve this in the religious sphere, they could not place too much reliance on the Greek religion, which, even before Alessandro’s expedition, had embarked upon an unstoppable decline. With the exception of Dioniso, who enjoyed widespread
That, despite its pantheism, this conception was capable of arousing genuine religious sentiments in the hearts of its adherents can be seen from the famous hymn of Cleanthes, one of the first Stoics, and later at Rome from the writings of Marcus Aurelius and Epictetus. Moreover, through a felicitous illogicality, although determinism was admitted in all things, great emphasis was placed on voluntary effort and the practice of virtue. The ideal of morality consisted above all in the complete and absolute conformity of the soul with the law of the cosmos, in the tranquil and unshakable certainty that, despite every external appearance, it led everything toward the best possible end.
It goes without saying that, in a philosophical doctrine, only a few spirits inclined to meditation could find satisfaction. The mass of the people followed the ancient paths and turned to their divinities. Stoicism tolerated these, interpreting them, in accordance with its system, as naïve and childish personifications of physical phenomena.
Astrology (v.) had universal diffusion, not only among the educated classes but also among the people. Since it had been discovered that the motion of the stars followed fixed laws, it was taught that whatever happened on earth was determined and inevitable, whether it concerned physical phenomena or social and moral phenomena. This doctrine admitted fatalism and once again denied human freedom: a person’s events, fortunes, and the end of his life were written in the stars. It was enough to know how to read this celestial writing in order to draw up an accurate horoscope (v.) of the course of every person’s life. It was only necessary to know the precise moment of birth or conception. From that moment, in fact, he became engaged in the vast organism of the universe and had to follow its movements and repercussions inevitably. Once this was known, the position of the stars at that given moment was investigated, and the future was predicted in every smallest detail.
The doctrine was well received by the Stoic teachers—with the exception of Panaetius—and their adherents, since it accorded with their idea of the divine force that governs the world through fixed and inexorable laws; but it also spread widely among all classes of society. Astrology, however, by reducing man to a mere wheel in a gigantic organism that invariably followed its own paths, gradually made its oppressive weight felt. And people sought escape from fate.
As a reaction against fatalism, the Hellenistic period witnessed a revival and broad diffusion of magic. It was thought that there existed formulas and practices by which the hand of the gods could be forced and adverse fate changed.
If the divine stars, as a result of the unitary connection of all parts of the universe, could exert their influence upon the earth and man, then, by virtue of the same principle, there had to be means of countering their action in one way or another. It was a matter of discovering these means and knowing how to use them. The only good aspect of magic was man’s reaction against a doctrine that reduced him to a mere puppet in the hands of the puppeteer. But religion cannot be spoken of in connection with magical practices. The religious act, in fact, aims to dispose the divinity favorably in order to obtain its help; magical action, on the other hand, seeks to force II. In the first case, man’s inner attitude is one of humble submission to the divinity; in the second, it is one of presumptuous superiority, or, as it has been called, selfish arrogance. In any event, the belief became extremely widespread that through such practices one could change one’s adverse destiny and be freed from one’s star.
But the people also resorted to it for other particular purposes. A quantity of magical papyri have come down to us, containing the most diverse and strange formulas: to obtain deliverance from an illness, to ensure the successful outcome of a love affair, to bring a business deal to a happy conclusion, and so forth. In such cases, the magician compelled the spirits to appear, and through spells forced them to render service and reveal the cause of an illness or the nature of its remedy. Then it was necessary to drive them away and prevent them from taking revenge, and magical practices were again employed to achieve this.
Astrology and magic, joined together, spread throughout every region of Asia Minor and Egypt, and from there passed to Rome, where they took firm root and extended into the other parts of Europe, resisting every assault until the Middle Ages.
If astrology came from Babylonia and magic chiefly from Egypt, a cult that achieved universal diffusion was the work of the Hellenistic kings: this was the cult of the kings.
After the victories that carried him as far as the lands of the Indus, Alexander had himself recognized as a god by the Greeks. The purpose was political: all the peoples composing the new empire—Macedonians, Greeks, and Asians—were to be placed on the same level and feel themselves equal before a god-king. At the same time, the intention was to confer absolute power upon the ruler by elevating him to divinity. For the same reasons, after the empire was divided following his death, the successors in Asia and Egypt, the Seleucids and the Ptolemies, set about establishing their own cult. They proceeded in stages: first deceased monarchs were deified, and then the cult of the living king was instituted. This institution constituted the platform upon which the ruler’s absolutism was raised. Participation in this cult was demanded of all the subjects of the Hellenistic kingdoms and became a symbol of loyalty. But it contained very little spiritual substance; and among the thousands of inscriptions with religious content, not one is found showing that anyone turned to the king, living or dead, for aid in his religious needs. To obtain this, people turned to the ancient gods.
These local divinities were numerous, but, as we said at the outset, they followed a unifying tendency. Protectors of a particular state and of the people composing it, now that the various states had been absorbed by the great Hellenistic kingdoms, they could no longer regard themselves as guardians of a particular nonexistent state: they had to lose their local characteristics and sever their ethnic or state connections in order to acquire more universal characteristics. Under these new conditions they could address all peoples, even beyond the ancient borders, wherever their cult flourished. People now formed part of an empire and had lost their particular state; they therefore no longer felt bound to the divinity of the ancient state, but could also freely turn, in their religious needs, to divinities who had previously been foreign to them.
To respond more adequately to the broader needs of humankind, the propagators of a divinity extended its sphere of activity, attributing to it properties and qualities drawn from others. Moreover, the adherents of one religious form did not exclude other forms or other divinities, but regarded them as different aspects and various names of the same divinity. And one could freely follow one or more different cults. In this movement one cannot speak of monotheism, but rather of a tendency toward a unity of beliefs, or better, of worship; this tendency, however, did not reach its goal even shortly before the various religions disappeared, when Christianity triumphed. The development described is more clearly observable during the Roman period, at the decline of Hellenism, but its beginnings belong to this earlier period.
The aspirations of Greeks and Orientals in the decades before our era turned toward salvation. And since people felt themselves powerless to attain it by their own strength, they turned their gaze toward help from above. Liberation, however, was not conceived by everyone in the same way. The wars that ravaged the various regions of Asia and the disturbance of the internal order made people long for peace and the restoration of an orderly civil coexistence. This was regarded as salvation; and when Augustus bestowed it, he was exalted with the most divine titles and regarded as a savior. Others groaned under belief in fate, and for them salvation meant being freed from their ill-starred destiny. The Persians, on the other hand, possessed a doctrine that represented life as a continual struggle between good and evil, with humanity divided into two opposing camps perpetually at war with one another. And since they saw that evil and falsehood prevailed, they awaited a divine messenger who would come to make the kingdom of justice and truth triumph and restore a new order with a transformed humanity united in goodness. The deliverer they awaited had, as they believed, been foretold by the founder of their religion, Zoroastro himself; and they lived in expectation of him. More than the cults themselves, it was humanity’s noble longing for salvation that would open hearts to the Christian message.
A. M., whose many cities heard the preaching of St. Paul and subsequently of St. John toward the end of the first century, is one of the imperial regions where the word of Jesus was preached most extensively. The Church of Ephesus, the richest city of A. M., owes its foundation to St. Paul and, according to a generally accepted tradition, the apostle John governed it for many years. The Churches of Alexandria Troas, Laodicea, and Hierapolis, where dwelt-