How did Christianity change the Roman Empire? | Hacker News Reader

How did Christianity change the Roman Empire?

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86 pointsdiodorus107 comments

There's a really good Yale lecture on this, kind of long but interesting nonetheless https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tcIuAJ-jaSg&t=0

He makes an interesting point in a subsequent lecture on Islam. Because Christianity was persecuted early on and was a distinct entity from the Roman government at first, this is reflected in the beliefs themselves (e.g. "Render unto Caeser what is his" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Render_unto_Caesar), which later contributed to the modern concept of separation of church and state

On the other hand, Muhammad was not only a religious leader but a political one as well The religious framework and political framework were more tightly coupled, giving us the slightly different overlap you can see in Muslim countries even today

That separation of church and state was always a factor in middle ages Europe - it meant that power was fragmented between the church and state and was broadly a liability once disasters of the middle ages unfolded. After the rise of Liberalism and the rise of the nation-states that separation became an advantage for European states and a huge competitive disadvantage to theocratic states.

I'm not downvoting you, but I do disagree with your hypothesis.

In Europe religious power was heavily conflated with political power. Rome, through Catholisism, remained the symbol of political legitimacy well into the Middle ages, and into the modern day.

Especially in England where the Catholic / Protestant battle raged one way and other for hundreds of years, determining who should be king/queen, who the aristocracy were, who were worshiping in secret and so on.

In our time we see this playing out in Northern Ireland, where issues of nationalism (English, Irish) are proxied into issues of religion (Catholic and Protestant).

The concept of separation of church and state would happen in the US specifically because most immigrants there were fleeing state-sponsored religious persecution. They wished to create a place of religious tolerance, which alas has been somewhat imperfect in execution.

While there's some truth to this, I think separation of church and state is stronger in the western tradition simply because the western empire had no political successor. Had, for example, the Carolingian empire persisted as the new Rome I believe separation of church and state would have been weaker in the west. As another example, the eastern empire did become more of a theocracy as mentioned in the first passage. I think separation of church and state is simply more likely among a constellation of petty kingdoms than it is within an empire.

> which later contributed to the modern concept of separation of church and state

I call this "jumping to conclusions". And I find this idea quite uneducated in history, frankly.

There's a time lapse of almost 1200 years between the fall of Rome and the formulation of separation of church and state.

More to the point, prior to this concept there was the Reformation and the savage and brutal religious wars in Europe during 16th and 17th century.

Separation of church and state came to solve a practical political problem: insane wars.

Yes, there were wars in the Muslim world too. Even some religious ones (Shia vs. Sunis). But, unlike the Europeans, Muslins never cared to create a philosophical theory of the state (perhaps because Gutenberg wasn't Muslim).

> And I find this idea quite uneducated in history, frankly.

He literally linked you to a lecture by a professor teaching his history course at Yale. Disagreeing is interesting, but “uneducated”?

> And I find this idea quite uneducated in history, frankly.

You can write a letter to:

Paul Freedman, Chester D. Tripp Professor of History, Yale University.

    Freedman earned his BA at the University of California at Santa Cruz and an MLS from the School of Library and Information Studies at the University of California at Berkeley. He received a Ph.D. in History at Berkeley in 1978. His doctoral work focused on medieval Catalonia and how the bishop and canons interacted with the powerful and weak elements of lay society in Vic, north of Barcelona. This resulted in the publication of The Diocese of Vic: Tradition and Regeneration in Medieval Catalonia (1983).

    Freedman taught for eighteen years at Vanderbilt University before joining the Yale faculty in 1997. At Vanderbilt, he focused on the history of Catalan peasantry, papal correspondence with Catalonia and a comparative history of European seigneurial regimes. He was awarded Vanderbilt’s Nordhaus Teaching Prize in 1989 and was the Robert Penn Warren Humanities Center Fellow there in 1991-1992. During that time, he published his second book, Origins of Peasant Servitude in Medieval Catalonia (1991).

    Since coming to Yale, Professor Freedman has served as Director of Undergraduate Studies in History, Director of the Medieval Studies Program, Chair of the History Department, and Chair of the Program in the History of Science and Medicine He has offered graduate seminars on the social history of the Middle Ages, church, society and politics, and agrarian studies (as part of a team-taught course).

https://history.yale.edu/people/paul-freedman

You might disagree, of course, he appears to be educated in history .. and detailed aspects of christian church history for what it's worth.

It is more than a slight difference. It is a radical one and separation of church and state tends to be a lot more successful in countries that are historically Christian than others. Sometimes it may be a matter of law and constitution, sometimes the reality of politics (e.g. the rise of Hindutva in India). Even a lot of secular states (albeit undemocratic ones such as China) control religious beliefs. The one non-western country whose politics I know (Sri Lanka) gives the government a constitutional duty to promote the majority religion (Buddhism). That would be unthinkable here in the UK despite there being an established religion.

This article is very brief. For a more detailed accounts I recommend Dominion by Tom Holland. One of the two non-fiction books I read this year that I learned the most from (the other being Caste by Isabel Wilkerson, but that was narrower in that it helped me understand the US).

I have the feeling that we who've grown up in Western countries with ideas of separation of church and state tend to accept the status quo we've seen at face value, and not question so much whether it really is a separation of church and state.

I'm also from the UK where I think we're fairly proud of our separation of church and state. Then I moved to Germany and found it really weird - the state, to me, is bound to Christianity in a way that I found quite uncomfortable. For example:

    * The state collects a church tax. You only have to pay it if you're a registered Christian (and you can be a Christian without registering) but essentially a portion of your paycheck automatically goes to the church via the state.
    * To become a pastor or priest, or one of certain other religious roles in one of the official churches in Germany, you have to complete an exam set and managed by the state (a Staatsexamen).
    * In schools, Christian children get taught a special Christian course. In fairness, this is again opt-in, but it's again a state-set course taught by state-approved religious educators.

To me, this all feels wildly inappropriate for a nation that claims to have a separation of church and state. But to my wife, this is perfectly normal and a healthy separation between the two organisations. Meanwhile, she's horrified by the ties between church and state in the UK:

    * Many state schools are run by Christian organisations, or have explicitly religious board members. Moreover, state schools are expected to have a certain amount of Christian "collective worship" - typically, this means a children's hymn once a week during an assembly.
    * The state chooses bishops. Typically a shortlist is organised by the church, but the Prime Minister can (and has once in living memory) veto a candidate for political reasons. They are also involved in the selection of candidates, but less so.
    * The state still makes laws directly involving the church. One of the outcomes from the discussion on gay marriage was that, while gay marriage was legalised, the Church of England specifically was banned from performing those marriages, to make prevent issues where people might sue the CoE for discrimination. There are plenty of other more historical laws but this is probably one of the more egregious examples in modern times of the state legislating to control the church.

I think sometimes, growing up in the West, we accept the dogma of separation of state and religion without really asking how true that really is. In reality, Christianity is deeply intertwined with most European constitutions and state apparatuses. We just have a consistent blind spot for these cases, where they're a lot easier to see when viewing from afar.

It’s very simple. Neither Germany nor the UK have complete separation of church and state.

Nor does Finland. Finnish citizens default to having a small church tax deducted from their pay.

Canceling this tax is very easy. I thought the statement to sign might be something like "I don't want to pay church tax because I worship Satan and drink the blood of baby goats", but it is not like that at all. It is very neutral.

To me the point is that very few countries - if any - have true separation of religion and state, because religion is usually culturally embedded in a huge variety of ways. But it's easier to see the ways that the state upholds certain religious practices from the outside, because when you're inside the system, you don't notice that embedding fully.

The US is another good example of this: there is a constitutionally enshrined separation of church and state, but religion figures heavily in everything from money to the processes of Congress. From the outside, the US is a fundamentally Christian nation, but it seems like there are lot of people on the inside who see that differently.

Even in the US, at the time of the constitution, many states had state churches. It was just prevented at the federal level. So it’s entirely possible for Florida to reinstate a state church over Florida and be within it’s constitutional bounds.

The religious status of the people running the state is often enough evidence that the state and the church are unavoidably, mutually overlapping concepts.

> I think sometimes, growing up in the West, we accept the dogma of separation of state and religion without really asking how true that really is. In reality, Christianity is deeply intertwined with most European constitutions and state apparatuses.

I disagree. It is not complete, nor does anyone pretend it is, but it is far greater and fairer than in western countries than in the rest of the world (such as the examples I gave). Can you imagine the reaction if a British Prime Minister said that the Prime Minister should be a Christian? Or if we started arresting people for belonging to a non-state approved religion? Or parliament passed laws banning religious conversion? Or turned a bling eye to mod attacks on religious minorities?

The first and third in Germany would not bother me as they are opt-in. The second seems entirely wrong.

In the UK I do not find state schools being run by Christian organisations a problem, because it is not discriminatory - there are state schools run by other religions too. Collective worship is a weird law but compliance is not monitored and most schools do not actually do it, singing is not really a act of worship, parents can opt children out, older children can opt themselves out, and in religious schools it is their religion (actually, these are the ones which will have an actual act of worship).

I do agree we should have greater separation between the state and the church of England. On the other hand there are benefits to it. I think C of E bishops in the House of Lords broadens representation in politics beyond the political class (they have a good track record of speaking up for the poor), and even more so as representatives of other denominations religions are included (e.g. two of the last three Chief Rabbis) although not enough IMO.

You seem to have gotten it backwards. "Render unto Caesar" is a passage in Scripture (which the wikipedia article you've linked to mentions), and so it came before the Roman persecution of Christians occurred. From its founding, Christianity made the distinction between secular and religious authority/institution. (There is nothing that says a pope or a bishop cannot also be a king or a prince. They simply have authority in both, analogous perhaps to how one can be a king in one country, and a prince in another, or whatever. But they are two distinct forms of authority, and one is technically subject to the other.)

This separation of the institutions of Church and State is indeed only comprehensible in the prior distinction, but separation is, strictly speaking, a heretical notion. Liberalism (which is a Christian heresy) is merely tolerated by the Church, provided it does not encroach on the authority of the Church and the practice of the faith. If that ends, the modus vivendi is violated, and the truce is broken, and war has effectively been declared on the Church.

With respect to Islam, it isn't that Muhammad was both a political and a religious leader, but that there is simply no distinction between the two in Islam. That's why it makes no sense to speak of the separation of Mosque and State. The only reason you can distinguish between Church and State is because they're both institutions. A mosque is not an institution. It's just a building used for prayer and such. This distinction between Church and State is utterly foreign to Islam and the rest of the non-Christian world.

You should check out "The Darkening Age" by Catherine Nixey. Once Christians became the majority, and especially after Constantine, the direction of persecutions reversed, and was then by Christians towards the remaining pagans. Many of the broken statues we now see were vandalized by zealous Christians eager to remove the vestigial influence of the pagan Rome:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Darkening_Age

The "Dark Ages" view of history is mostly rejected by classicists and middle age scholars.

The book the person above you linked is basically “backlash against the backlash” on this topic.

Rome was in significant moral, cultural, and economic decline and those that chose to hold on to that failing and disturbed culture are not the ones you should be sympathetic to. They willfully and knowingly drove themselves into ruins. Christianity and it's doctrines (as they are understood in the mostly conventional, trinitarian, organized fashion) are very clearly formulated in direct opposition to late Roman culture and it's vestigial but pernicious influence throughout history.

Yes, it is true that the Christians destroyed Rome. That clearly the intent.

Your comment has merit. Even at it's peak Roman culture was marbled with cruelty and violence. During its decline, these aspects only got worse and became coupled with corruption and decadence. But I think we should see them relative to their historic peers (Gauls, Carthaginians, Parthians), not relative to modern societies to truly see what their contributions were, of which there were many, including in law, engineering, and medicine.

Also, there's this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Xad5Rl0N2E

> You should check out "The Darkening Age" by Catherine Nixey.

Please do not waste your time:

> Her publisher’s blurb informs us that Nixey’s book tells “the largely unknown – and deeply shocking – story” of how a militant Christianity “extinguished the teachings of the Classical world” and was “violent, ruthless and intolerant” in an orgy of destruction and oppression that was “an annihilation”. On the other hand, no less an authority than the esteemed historian of Late Antiquity, Dame Averil Cameron, calls Nixey’s book “a travesty”, roundly condemning it as “overstated and unbalanced”. And Dame Averil is correct – this is a book of biased polemic masquerading as historical analysis and easily the worst book I have read in years.

* https://historyforatheists.com/2017/11/review-catherine-nixe...

It is all sorts of wrong on various topics:

> For basic facts that Nixey lies about—she states that Aristotle was erased by Christian monks. Clearly, she has no knowledge of how Aristotle was incorporated into Catholic thinking from the first centuries of the church, visibly in St. Gregory’s Pastoral Rule (or the fact that it was monks in France who preserved copies of Aristotle in the Latin West long before he was “reintroduced” by Muslims either). […]

> Nixey also cherry picks her facts concerning supposed Christian iconoclasm and militancy. It was the Roman military, rather than Christian mobs, who were responsible for the destruction of the library at Antioch which Nixey paints as evidence of Christian iconoclastic and anti-intellectual mob violence. The Roman military was also one of the last institutions in the post-Constantinian settlement that was Christianized. […]

> Likewise, Nixey’s claim that Latin literature and literacy collapsed after the Christianization of the Roman Empire is the most egregious of cherry-picked examples. Barbarization and the internal moral decline of Roman society on its own accord were the more guilty culprits—especially considering the Gothic and Frankish tribes that settled into an already decadent Roman Empire didn’t speak Latin, didn’t write, and didn’t produce the same litany of great works preserved by Christianity that were already in decline by the 2nd century A.D. long before the rise of Christianity. […]

* https://minervawisdom.com/2019/03/04/edward-gibbons-daughter...

This article touches on humility. Today, we see humility as a virtue, thanks to Christianity, and secularization of Christianity. That's why we see so many people say "in my humble opinion". To the pagans of Antiquity, humility was a vice, and pride was a virtue. And there is a difference between modesty and humility. Modesty doesn't involve dissimulation. When it comes to humility, there is some kind of hiding--that's dissimulation.

Read this interesting article 'How Christian humility upended the world': https://www.abc.net.au/religion/how-christian-humility-upend...

Humility was a major factor in most pre-Christian religions and similar efforts, featuring prominently in Patanjali’s yoga sutra, Taoism, Confucianism, Judaism, Buddhism, and so on.

The position reiterated in your article is based on a comparison of the New Testament to a naive reading of the Greek philosophers. Christianity did not uniquely bring humility into culture.

What's that sanskrit word for humility in Yoga Sutra? Don't cite 'vinaya', as it means modesty.

Well, humility is inverse of pride; pride is one of virtues in Aristotle's principia nicomachea.

'Christianity (to some extent Judaism), presented an idea, unknown to the world in which it grew, namely the Pagan world of Rome. The idea was that human beings are creatures of God and that they belonged to His domain. He was the dominus or the Lord of the domain. As a result, human beings should not be arrogant, but must be humble instead. (As the ‘Book of Job’ in the Old Testament makes it clear, there is a very heavy price to be paid for arrogance.) Here, it belonged to the opposite spectrum in Ancient thought, which saw arrogance as a moral virtue and humility as a despicable vice. Protestant Christianity, especially Luther and Calvin, very forcefully propagated this idea: Man was a sinner, worse than the lowest worm, because of which God’s Grace becomes unfathomable and ungraspable.' [1]

https://www.hipkapi.com/2017/01/13/humility-is-a-vice/

Pranidhana — in 2.45 for example.

There is no such thing as a monolithic “Ancient thought” — this is a boogeyman created by Christian apologists.

edit: Is that your site? You’ve put a lot of work in.

Well, it is pra-ni-dhAna. Of course, people can say it is humility. ni-dhAna is just deliberation, holding, slowing down. Even the root word dhA/धा is about holding, keeping, etc.

It doesn't matter how you call it, whether "Ancient thought" or "blah blah", what matters is that what is being referred to. It is about how people thought about human actions before Christianity took over.

I’m not clear how you’ve countered my point. It describes humility before god without any stretch of the imagination, and is variously translated because like much of sanskrit it does not map directly.

My second point is that attempting to reason about, or exclude topics from, something as practically diverse and unknown as “Ancient thought” in order to support the primacy of a specific religion is essentially folly.

not really, stoicism was a thing and also humility was in the spirit of delphic maxims: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delphic_maxims

I m no expert but i think what christianity brought was forgiveness, and the inclusion of women, the poor and the meek

Why stop there-- they popularized the babylonian slave morality, took mental illness's apparitions as genuine theophanies, brought the classic christian cognitive dissonance to the masses, enshrined platonic and priestly neet nonsense as law, and basically destroyed the west as a civilization (which augustine blamed the pagans on in 410, very humble)-- lots of stuff really

    John Casey, Alasdair MacIntyre, and others famously claim that “pagan” classical Greek ethical thought recognises no virtue of humility.

    The claim is true in the lexical sense that the pagan Greeks’ lists of virtues did not include a single virtue whose name is correctly translatable by the English word “humility”.

    However, their ethical world was richly charged with what we today have no difficulty recognising as humility-thoughts and humility-motivations, even if these were not collected together under a single virtue, but distributed instead among at least three other virtues—sophrosyne, dikaiosyne, and hosiotes.

Humility among the ancient Greeks in The Routledge Handbook of Philosophy of Humility

https://www.taylorfrancis.com/chapters/edit/10.4324/97813511...

    Our two most important sources for pagan Greek ethics are of course Plato and Aristotle.

    But we can and should look beyond them, to Homer, Aeschylus, and Sophocles for example, to get the full picture of the importance to the pagan Greeks of ethical thoughts about the smallness of humans like us in a big and alien world, and the consequent need for restraint and pity, and for the avoidance of hybris (outrage against the natural order of the world).

Pagans / polytheists would respect other people’s gods. They would even worship them at times. They saw gods everywhere and in everything. One reason the Jews were seen as so weird was that they had one god, and refused to worship any others, but their culture was recognized as very old so the Romans respected their god as very powerful.

The Christians had the baptism ceremony, and part of being baptized is to forsake all other gods from this point forwards. Barbarians / pagans knew the Christian world as quite rich - the Vikings called Constantinople “the big city” and knew it as the place where they could sell all the cool stuff they stole during raids. A missionary would go to the barbarian leaders and tell them about their powerful Christian god, which was why the Roman empire(s) they fought were so grand and powerful. It was like a mind virus where one chieftain or leader would convert, win some battles, then assume the reason they won was their baptism. Because Christianity required ending worship of all other gods, they would aggressively convert the people under their control, and their nobles under them.

This conception unduly desecrates the dignity of any leaders who genuinely converted and falls into the category of a "hot take" by my estimation.

I’m a practicing Catholic but I am a passionate consumer of history in many different forms. I agree there is genuine belief but it’s unlikely to me that a Jarl in Norway woke up one morning and thought “today I shall be baptized!” and suddenly renounced all of their ancestors and prior beliefs. There is a path from A to Z and I believe it always included tangible benefits in their reality. Things they can feel and see. This is why I believe in Christ so deeply - I know it to be true with what I have felt and experienced.

Conversion can happen slowly but it is not uncommon for it to happen suddenly.

It is almost cliche to cite him at this point, but William James wrote on the topic:

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/belief/2010/nov/08...

I see what you are saying, but if arbitrary religious conversion was the way, then there would be no need for missionaries

There really isn't a need for missionaries today. The Catholic church recognizes the concept of the virtuous pagan, which is really their attempt to handwave away some really deeply troubling implications. But they chose their poison, and they have drank it, and now catholics must deal with the consequences.

The concept of the virtuous pagan is thus: what if someone never hears the word of God, but is otherwise moral in their conduct? They will be judged as a Christian, whereas someone who rejects the word of God is destined for damnation.

Hypothetical: Gerald is a virtuous pagan. A missionary tells him the word of God. He rejects the word of God but continues to live his moral life. He is now going to hell because of that missionary.

I maintain that missionaries do not save the damned, they damn the moral. Please stop trying to recruit for your cult, just be happy meeting in your congregations, stop spreading the fucking gospels to people who are just sick of hearing that shit already. Goddamn. It's not special or important, it's just spiritual opium for unhappy people, to give them something to look forward to in death while they turn their noses up at people in life and act superior.

What a disgusting and astonishingly ignorant response. You're distorting things and your vulgarity betrays your hateful bias.

First of all, it is essential to Christianity to spread the truth of the Gospels. It is not optional. Christians have been commanded to do so by someone they take to be the Lord of the Universe. If you accept that, then it is necessary. It becomes an act of selfless love, to bring light to the darkness so that people may be saved from the darkness of sin. It isn't just missionaries, but every Christian has this duty. That's nonnegotiable. Your dislike of evangelism cannot change that.

Now, how it is done is a matter of judgement. Usually, it's a matter of demonstration, of living one's life according to the moral and divine law, and through outward signs that make known one's beliefs to other people. When someone lives a good life, this example inspires other people to learn more about the person in question, to better understand where this goodness comes from. Thus, the message of the Gospels can come out in a natural way during normal conversation, and when inspired by example, tends to carry more weight with people. If you genuinely accept the propositions of Christianity as true, then your speech and actions will reflect that. You don't need to strain and look for artificial ways to breach the subject.

Second, you speak of the Church like it has been composed of a succession of idiots who just recently realized the "implications" you propose. Yes, we had to wait two millennia before some guy on the internet or some pamphleteer finally realized there's an elephant in the room (never mind that Christianity started small in a backwater of the Roman Empire). Talk about cringe.

The Church still holds, as it always has, that baptism is necessary for salvation. Now, just because the sacraments are supposed to furnish us with certain graces doesn't mean God Himself is bound by the sacraments. Imagine our pagan forefathers who lived and died a thousand years before the Incarnation. They could not have possibly come to know Christ in the way the Gospels make evident. However, they could still have recognized and lived according to the moral law. Christ is the Incarnate Logos, so if you accept the moral law, you have, to some degree at least, accepted the Logos. Thus, if you come to know Christ through the Gospels, and you recognize in Christ the Incarnation of Reason Itself (that's what John 1 is about[0], though anything but the Greek do it justice), of this moral order, then why would you reject Christ? It makes no sense. The only answer is either a failure of recognition, or that one consciously rejects the Logos, of reason and morality, as evil people do (and all sin is a minor or major rejection of Logos). And if some form of invincible ignorance is indeed responsible, then there is no fault. Here's a bit more on the subject [0].

[0] https://esv.org/verses/John1:1–5

[1] https://www.catholic.com/qa/is-baptism-necessary-for-salvati...

Cringe is trying to push your beliefs on other people because sky daddy commands you to. I'm not reading anything more on Christianity or catholicism, not after my early youth was squandered by moralizing hypocrites. Religious trauma is a very real phenomenon, and I'd argue that it's on the rise. Christians need to take a serious look inward and try to figure out why it is their religion of peace leaves such a wake of devastated souls and relationships. I actually saw two Christian parents, wholly bought into the fertility cult aspect, encourage their daughter to not seek cancer treatment because it might render her infertile. This is not an isolated attitude.

Also, why should it matter to me if they're doing it because they think they're commanded to by some omnipotent figure? I regularly disregard the rantings of schizophrenics, why should I buy into one delusion and not another? Why should I respect Christian beliefs more than other delusions?

I don't know why anyone is reluctant to believe in your assessment. While not Catholic now, I recall all the saint-worship in catholic school, which, as you probably noticed too, consisted almost solely of those that converted their own tribe of pagan barbarians for the period between Rome's fall and the Spanish Inquisition. Saint Boniface, Saint Patrick, etc. They pretty much declared people anointed demigods to be worshipped forever as reward for convincing barbarians that all their problems can be solved by the cross.

This is profoundly simplistic and overgeneralized. Religious tolerance was rarely strong anywhere in the pre-reformation (really pre-Liberal) periods. The Greeks and Romans have a long history of purging undesirable populations based on religion or ethnicity. Some pagan groups were famous for their tendency to massacre other pagan groups based on different god-worship, and Japan, China/Thailand's histories share this trait. To say nothing about the Assyrians, Babylonians, Scythians, etc.

The second part is also simplistic - The conversion of Rome into a "Catholic" country has more twists and turns and varied greatly across Europe and Asia. There was no true single church. The reasons for individual conversions were varied - some truly believed, some saw the tactical or strategic advantage, and some reflected their own population's beliefs. Some where given power if they converted. Much of the early conversion to Christianity was driven by women, not men and was household based. Even at a macro level it's instructive to look at the Germanic tribes, the Huns, and the British. All of whom had very different paths to eventual membership in Christendom.

Dan Carlin has a easily approachable set of podcasts about this, that I highly recommend.

It is very hard to give details in a brief comment. It is certain that many converted out of genuine belief in the Christian god. That does not change the fact that converting from one religion to another was not without reasoning. There is myriad reasons but the general take on my comment is accurate. And it was quite common when visiting other cities to pay respect to the god(s) of that city in the pagan world. This is why many victories would involve desecrating or stealing the religious idols contained in the defeated city’s temples. Even if that city’s god was not your god, seizing the physical nature of the god was seen as a good thing as it enhanced your power and hurt your enemy.

They stole the other parties' gods to prove that their gods were superior or true and the other gods were inferior or nonexistent. For example, see Sennacherib's destruction of Babylon's temples and the replacement of Marduk with Ashur as the spiritual backbone of the neo-asyrian dynasty. Liekwise the babylonian destruction of the first temple, or the Roman destruction fo the second temple.

The trade routes in ancient times were advanced, as well as communication channels. As Egypt traded with other kingdoms and also intermarried, they respected each others’ gods. I reiterate that the Christian attitude towards other gods was different than the pagan attitude, where even within the same religion many gods existed.

IMO, Rome saw an advantage in adhering to a -version- of the religion ... and in overcoming what it termed the 'pagan empire' (Greek in part). At Nicaea in 325, the religion was overhauled.

Stamping out the Eleusinian mysteries was part of that process. In the 380s, Theodosius helped that along by beginning the destruction of sites and the persecutions (tactics far from Christ-like), as did Theophilus, then Cyril. All designed to consolidate the takeover.

Early Christianity and the phenomenon of martyrdom is discussed in a very nice episode of In Our Time:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0016ptt

If I recall correctly, the panelists express the idea that it might have been the feature that impressed the Romans most and served as a powerful ad for this new religion.

The concern of the central government for the poor owes a lot to Christianity, as this article states. Same with equality in marriage.

Highly recommend Time is the Ally of Deceit [1] to get a better understanding of how paganism influenced and was weaved into what we know as modern Christianity. Much of what people identify as Christianity today (Catholicism and Protestantism) is antithetical to what's proposed/commanded by God and Christ in the Bible (and what was observed by early Christians).

[1] https://www.amazon.com/Time-Ally-Deceit-Richard-Rives/dp/098...

>Much of what people identify as Christianity today (Catholicism and Protestantism) is antithetical to what's proposed/commanded by God and Christ in the Bible

Interestingly that's also a claim made in the Quran, that Christianity had changed and become corrupted by pagan practices over time. Like the whole idea of Trinity; there's much more scriptural support for God being greater than Jesus than there is for God and Jesus being equals.

> Interestingly that's also a claim made in the Quran, that Christianity had changed and become corrupted by pagan practices over time.

The most basic evidence is ignorance of the 4th commandment (all counter-arguments toward Christ "nailing Mosaic law to the cross" are eliminated by Matthew 5:17-18). There is no Biblical evidence for the Sabbath being moved to Sunday and recognized as "The Lord's Day" or a commemoration of Christ's resurrection. That "move" was an edict of the Roman Emperor Constantine.

> There is no Biblical evidence for the Sabbath being moved to Sunday and recognized as "The Lord's Day" or a commemoration of Christ's resurrection. That "move" was an edict of the Roman Emperor Constantine.

Fist: just because it is not in Bible does not make it an invalid practice. The canonical form of the (Christian) Bible wasn't 'officially' established until some time into the history of Christianity (Council of Rome), and to a certain extent it was formalizing what was already accepted practice since the beginning of the faith (as mentioned in the Didache). And if you want to argue sola scriptura, good luck.

Second: we have records for Sunday worship from First Apology of Justin Martyr (100-165 AD), amongst others. A few centuries before Constantine.

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lord%27s_Day

> Fist: just because it is not in Bible does not make it an invalid practice.

In terms of it being a part of Christianity as devised by God and Christ, yes, it does.

People rationalize away the contortions of the last 2000+ years to fit their cognitive biases and that truth makes them deeply uncomfortable. Sola scriptura isn't some radical idea—it's quite dumb: "what did God say in the Bible? Okay, do that." Everything man has added beyond that is, by definition, unbiblical [1].

[1] Deuteronomy 4:2 (https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Deuteronomy+4%3...)

See also most Christian holidays

> A theologian and historian committed to discovering the original practices of Christianity, Richard Rives wrote the book “Time Is the Ally of Deceit.”

Unfortunately not a particularly unbiased author. I’d recommend reading the writings from the earliest Christians, and Roman references: https://www.ccel.org/fathers

The bias here is that the sources were largely preserved by traditional Christianity. It excludes gnostics, manicheans, arians or the like. However even for topics like the divinity of Jesus the Romans noted the Christians “worshipped him like a God”. They also thought they were cannibalism seemingly due to the sacrament of communion.

The only bias I found reading his work was toward what the Bible says. It's worth the read instead of a preemptive dismissal.

Perhaps his work is unbiased as you say. However having read many books with similar claims, presentation, and general background like this book I'd say it's rather more likely that he's interpreting the Bible according to a modern American evangelical context.

It's also probable he's from a less mainstream American religious strain like Seventh Day Adventists as they eschew many mainstream Christian practices as pagan.

So yes, without further other indicators of academic rigor, I would decline. Though I did initially check the link curious to see if it had indicators of any academic rigor as I do find the topic interesting.

> It's also probable he's from a less mainstream American religious strain like Seventh Day Adventists

He's not. He identifies as a Christian, as prescribed in the Bible—not of any denomination. Seventh Day Adventists believe in recognizing the Sabbath, but they also believe (and are baptized swearing in that belief) in the prophetess Ellen G. White.

Would be fascinating historical fiction if in an alternate timeline Romans advance glass making good enough to invent microscopes and telescopes 1500 years before this timeline, so instead of embracing made-up stories to explain things and suppress people, they double-down on science instead.

That was an interesting read and some details I’d not heard before. Thank you.

“The Holy Roman Empire was neither holy, nor Roman, nor an empire, discuss”

- Linda Richman

I don’t know who she is, but she’s quoting Voltaire.

Linda Richman was a character played by Mike Myers on SNL, who hosted a local access TV show called Coffee Talk. I don't get the connection to the topic.

It’s only connected insofar as the HRE was one of many claimants to the legacy of Rome, which is to say not at all connected.

Declining religious tolerance was another effect - though what the practical effect of that was? hard to say.

> Declining religious tolerance was another effect

Pagan Rome had centuries of persecution of Christianity not always and everywhere proactive but often brutal and widespread. The early Christians didn’t gather in the catacombs for the aesthetic! Whereas Christian Rome was highly tolerant of Pagans for centuries while Paganism naturally declined.

But what other sects was it tolerant of?

Being intolerant of an insurgent monotheistic faith doesn't mean that it was not broadly tolerant of other faiths.

Have you ever read any classical period histories?

Anything by the Persian Empire, the Assyrian Empire, etc., the Peloponnesian Wars, Carthage, The Mithrandatic Wars, The Galic Wars, and the Wu Hu in China. These were genocides/gendercides that had religious elements and were situations where all where non-monotheistic powers. Think about the Egyptian empires.

And that's just genocides. Polythestic tolerance is mostly a noble savage style myth.

I dont believe it to be an outrageous statement that late polytheistic roman empire was more tolerant than early christian monotheistic roman empire.

As a parallel commenter noted however, the level of official tolerance varied by era, who was in charge and where. Another parallel commenter noted that the rituals of the official roman religion were considered ritual first, and religion second.

The goalposts have moved a lot from the original argument, but the only way that you can make an argument about tolerance within the historical record is simply by ignoring intolerance to Jews, Persians, Christians (generally all non-Italians) and the various barbarians that Rome contended with.

In fact, the intolerance of Germans and migrants, in particular, by both "pagan" and "Christian" (neither label really fits), was a key reason for the eventual fall of the empire. That was not necessarily religious, but arguing that the martyrdom period, as well as the German wars, were somehow more religiously tolerant the late empire, is ... dubious in my point of view.

You can make arguments that the Middle Ages crusading church (i.e., the Catholic Christendom church 500 years later) was less tolerant, but few things in the Middle or late Roman empire (or anywhere in the world) could ever be described as tolerant.

The persecutions were caused by two conflicting views of religion. Christians saw religion a matter of belief, and they refused to participate in rituals that they considered incompatible with Christianity. To Romans, religion was all about rituals, while belief was more in the domain of philosophy. By rejecting Roman rituals, Christians were rejecting the ties that bound the society together. They were therefore rejecting Rome itself. When Christians were persecuted, they were persecuted less because of their religion and more because of their sedition.

One of the common charges that Christians were prosecuted for was atheism.

It's also worth noting that these rituals included worship of the Caesars themselves. The rejection of an imposed faith then, necessarily, also included a rejection of empire.

Imposed religion, not imposed faith. That difference between religion as a civic duty and religion as a matter of faith was the core issue.

I think that's a fair comment. Christianity being a matter of personal faith rather than government mandate was a core issue. Like many empires, Rome could not survive a world where the state itself was not the deity.

> Rome could not survive a world where the state itself was not the deity.

Except it could, and did for a thousand years depending on how you measure it.

> The rejection of an imposed faith then, necessarily, also included a rejection of empire

The issue of being a good Roman citizen apart from worship of the Emperor was a key issue for early Christians. The answer was that they most certainly could do so, including serving in the army. It was obviously possible as after Rome became Christian it carried on for centuries.

The successors to the classical Roman Empire shaped the surviving narrative, from the linked article:

    By putting a stop to its use as a quarry for building materials, Benedict’s intervention rescued the Colosseum, as Edward Gibbon recognised.

    Gibbon was somewhat sceptical about the centrality of the Colosseum, ‘a spot which persecution and fable had stained with the blood of so many Christian martyrs’, to early Christian history.

    Despite the stories of Christians thrown to the lions so often repeated there is no solid evidence that any Christian martyr actually died in Rome’s Colosseum.

Or, putting it another way, there's a lot of writing from Roman times and not much evidence that Christians as a group were specifically singled out for persecution any more than any other group that was not the ruling elite.

Gibbon's writings are really not taken as gospel (hah!) truth anymore and are not really supported by any historical research more modern than the late 1800s.

Gibbon's core thesis is that Christianity caused the downfall of the Roman Empire leads him to reject quite a lot of evidence that the Roman Empire was a nasty, nasty place well before the Huns sacked Rome.

There is a good coherent argument that the conversion to Christianity added additional instability to a system that was already very unstable. It may not have been fatal, but it probably contributed to a process that was already happening.

The Roman empire was already both politically and economically unstable by 150 AD - and was shrinking.

I think attributing to Christianity as the sole cause of the downfall of the empire shows a lack of the complex (mostly, but not entirely) economic factors involved.

It certainly did add instability. The Roman Empire depended on god worship (Caeser's power as a religious leader in particular), depended on slavery, and was very ethnocentric - all anathema to early Christianity.

Gibbon, on the other hand, had a thesis and let the thesis shape the facts, rather than the other way around.

Mike Duncan's Roman history podcast is still an awesome way to see all of the forces involved.

> there's a lot of writing from Roman times and not much evidence that Christians as a group were specifically singled out

Especially if you arbitrarily exclude Christian sources. This is just bigoted historical revisionism.

> The successors to the classical Roman Empire shaped the surviving narrative

The cynicism is unwarranted as it was never a commonly held Christian view that the Colosseum was a significant site of Christian martyrdom. The article reads:

"In 1749, Pope Benedict XIV consecrated the Colosseum, ancient Rome’s most recognisable monument, as a shrine to Christian martyrs."

That's quite recent and was contested by, e.g., clergy and scholars in the Church at the time. Here's more information about the Colosseum in the context of Christian martyrdom[0].

[0] https://www.newadvent.org/cathen/04101b.htm

As someone who somewhat agrees with what you said, your one sentence makes it look like a terrible argument.

Rome was fine with you worshiping pretty much any god, so long as you put them under Jupiter. In a way that's religious tolerance, yet it also led to them going terrible things to the Jews and later the Christians, plus many now largely forgotten cults.

Christianity was actually somewhat similar for a while, they were fairly fine with you worshiping your pagan god if you could call them a saint and you accepted Jesus. And their acceptance of pagan rituals led to much of what we consider Christmas.

Neither were truly tolerant, but both could be fairly lax if you dressed things up correctly. Plus both had periods of greater tolerance and intolerance.

No disagreement - my point was that the adoption of Christianity all at once as the state faith, reduced religious tolerance, particularly in the early years.

But yeah that was part of what I was getting at - but I kinda just responded with my first thoughts off the cuff.

My broader point was that its very hard to have a multi-language, multi-ethnic, continent spanning empire - while also having a nascent single religion that ignores local customs.

Eventually tolerance under the new faith evolved to be similar to the old, but it was a process.

Constantine declared Rome Christian after the profound success of the jewish adopted family structure was opened to gentiles and had converted nearly half the population.

The insight has profoundly shaped billions of families since.

> "Jewish adopted family structure"

What? I don't think that had anything to do with Christianity becoming a political force. Citation, please.

Could you expand on what you mean by "jewish adopted family" structure? Is there something special about the way Jewish families were organized that led to rapid conversions to Christianity?

It is true that Christianity was growing exponentially within Rome during the 3rd and 4th centuries, and that Constantine was, in classic politician form, simply acknowledging events on the ground that had long been happening. Likewise Theodosius established Christianity as the state religion as Christians became a supermajority. The story that Constantine's conversion somehow enabled the spread of Christianity is a myth.

However, I have never heard anything about a Jewish family structure being an attraction of Christianity. If anything after the first century Christianity was much more a Greek-influenced religion.

Can you describe this family structure? I honestly don’t know what you’re talking about.

Christianity didn’t do anything that article states.

People did.

It is safe to say that what the Christians of Rome did to the pagans was not Christianity and was not an act of Christ.

How else do you judge a religion/philosophy/way of life except by the people, societies and actions it produces?

I am homeless. America didn’t cause my homelessness, people did. You didn’t cause my homelessness, well, maybe you didn’t or probably you didn’t.

You see, I judge people, not religions, or philosophies or ways of life. Because a religion can hold a varying type of people, even people who can act in ways that are 180° Different from what a religion states.

Christians follow Christ. To follow Christ to act like Christ. It’s that simple.

America was created, is composed of, and run by people. Religions are as well. Looking at the products of the system people take part in is a measure of the underlying people who run it. It's the same as people looking at financial reports to gauge the health of the economy.

Thank you for agreeing with me?

Not really, I'm saying the religion and it's outputs are an indicator of the sort of people it contains. An aggregation, a heuristic, or whatever you want to call it. I can't judge every single person in Christianity individually, but I can look at what it has produced as a whole and not like the majority of what I see.

You are conflating Christianity the religion (in a theoretical context) with Christianity the actions of those professing to be Christian.

In the context of "did Christ advocate for this" your answer may be valid (although biblical text has often been creatively warped to justify anything.)

However this article is in the context of "how did people, professing to be Christian, influence and alter the government and culture of the Roman state.

Clearly the collective beliefs of large religious groups permeate governments to this day. And yes the behaviour of some Christians causes profound embarrassments shame to the wider Christian body.

Ultimately when some group of Christians behaves in an intolerant, hypocritical, self-serving, shameful way, and does it while claiming Christian principles, then all Christians are tarred with that brush. And while I can argue that its people, not Christ, that acts that way, that argument will fall on deaf ears.

I'll conclude by pointing out thus is not limited to Christianity. Muslims suffer the same effect. Most in the west tar all Muslims based on the actions of a few. That's worth remembering when either you, or they, are lumped with extreme fundamentalists who profess the "same religion."

I’m not confusing anything. I’m clarifying because statements like this article make it seem like Christianity is the problem and not the people.

When Saint Francis was told by God to “rebuild the church“ the message was that the church was decaying from within.

my point is that the article states that Christianity did so-and-so. My rebuke is that to say that it was Christianity was like saying that it was a teachings of Christ that led to the persecution.

All I’m doing is adding clarification because the church right now has enough evil in it to go around and not focusing on the good but focusing on the evil only destroys the goodness of the church.

I didn't say confusing, I said conflating :)

I do agree that saying "christianity" in the context of the headline is ambiguous. It could be taken to mean "the teachings of Christ", or "the actions of people who profess to follow Christ", or perhaps "the outcomes of the teaching of Christ, as interpreted by fallible, misguided, or manipulated flocks. "

And I would suggest, as I think you are suggesting, that reconciling some of the behaviour of todays Christians, with the teachings of Christ, can be, well, challenging.

> reconciling some of the behaviour of todays Christians, with the teachings of Christ

'twas always so and ever will be.

eg: the Albigensian Crusade of 1209–1229 saw followers of Christ slaughter followers of Christ in large numbers;

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albigensian_Crusade

which included the Massacre at Béziers that gave rise to that snappy quip Caedite eos. Novit enim Dominus qui sunt eius (aka: Kill them. The Lord knows those that are his own | Kill them all; let God sort them out)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Massacre_at_B%C3%A9ziers

That’s not how history works.

I have a bachelors of science in history. Have you ever read Howard Zinn’s of peoples history of the United States? You should.

What I said is plainly true.

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