3 ms·

I've always been fascinated by the transition from paganism to Christianity in ancient times and how it was even possible. It's hard to imagine a society as con

I've always been fascinated by the transition from paganism to Christianity in ancient times and how it was even possible. It's hard to imagine a society as conservative and honor-bound as Rome abandoning their ancient traditions for some upstart religious cult. I understand a lot of it was a top-down change driven by converted emperors like Constantine, but even then you'd think there would have been a greater resistance to shuttering old temples and tossing out household shrines, especially when they were so tied to the glory and power of Rome. I wonder what the mood and discourse was like on the ground when Christianity was clearly on the upswing but not yet in a position to displace paganism. Did it feel like a modern culture war, or even like the specter of religious fascism? Or were most people indifferent and just going with whatever religion the emperor mandated for pragmatic reasons?

petralithic 1y ago
> I understand a lot of it was a top-down change driven by converted emperors like Constantine No, it was actually driven from the bottom up, as many people converted due to the appeal of a universal savior regardless social class. Christianity however was just one of the many death cults around during that time (meaning they are concerned with offering salvation when you die) such as Mithras or Isis worship. Constantine legalized it because it was already so popular, especially among the upper classes, that would've been strange to continue to pretend it doesn't exist. The story of his conversion where he saw a cross in the sky and painted the (chi rho, first two letters of Christ in Greek) symbol is likely untrue and just a form of state propaganda.
- nimithryn 1y ago
  Also Christianity was a Levantine religion, growing fast in Greece, Asia Minor, Egypt, Syria, and the Levant. The Eastern Roman Empire at the time was far richer, more urbanized, closer to the grain supply, and closer to Silk Road and Black Sea trade access. Based on some of his other actions (like moving the capital), I'd speculate Constantine's conversion was part of a deliberate pivot to focus on the East (which paid off, as the centralized Byzantine state went on to survive much longer than its Western counterpart). I'm speculating because inferring his intentions has no historical evidence afaik.
svat 1y ago
The 2009 film Agora, starring Rachel Weisz, has a portrayal of the period. Of course it's not a historical document and subject to interpretation, but it is one perspective at least. Also there's a novel about Julian by Gore Vidal — I haven't read it but Julian was the last pagan emperor who unsuccessfully tried to receive Hellenic religion and stem the tide of Christianity.
icegreentea2 1y ago
To build on sibling's points about how Constantine was simply throwing official weight behind a true grass-roots movement, you can look at what happened to Elagabalus for an example of top down religious change that blew up: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elagabalus#Religious_controversy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elagabalus#Religious_controver...
ralfd 1y ago
It was bottom-up driven in the urban city centers, in the rural villages it was top-down (“pagan” means provincial villager). https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/book-review-the-rise-of-christianity https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/book-review-the-rise-of-chr... > The rise of Christianity is a great puzzle. In 40 AD, there were maybe a thousand Christians. Their Messiah had just been executed, and they were on the wrong side of an intercontinental empire that had crushed all previous foes. By 400, there were forty million, and they were set to dominate the next millennium of Western history. > Imagine taking a time machine to the year 2300 AD, and everyone is Scientologist. The United States is >99% Scientologist. So is Latin America and most of Europe. The Middle East follows some heretical pseudo-Scientology that thinks L Ron Hubbard was a great prophet, but maybe not the greatest prophet. > This can only begin to capture how surprised the early Imperial Romans would be to learn of the triumph of Christianity. At least Scientology has a lot of money and a cut-throat recruitment arm! At least they fight back when you persecute them! At least they seem to be in the game! How did Christianity win? Pro-natalism won over generations against the Roman elite: > By the Imperial era, Roman fertility was plummeting. Partly this was because the Romans practiced sex-selective infanticide, there were 130 men for every 100 women, and so many men would never be able to find a wife. But partly this was because the men who could find wives dragged their feet. (Male) Roman culture took it as a given that women were terrible, that you couldn’t possibly enjoy interacting with them, and that there was no reason besides duty that you would ever marry one. > but no amount of love or money could make them have children. Dense cities discouraged large families, Roman children were expensive … Nor did the sex drive force the matter. Horny Roman men had their choice of a wide variety of male and female slaves and prostitutes - despite Augustus and his spiritual heirs’ fuming about monogamy, this was never really enforced on the male half of the population. When men did have sex with women, it was usually oral or anal sex, specifically to avoid procreation. When they did have vaginal sex, they had a wide variety of birth control methods available, including the famous silphium but also proto-condoms and spermicidal ointments. If a child was conceived despite these efforts, abortion was common albeit unsanitary (maternal death rates were extremely high, but this was not really a deal-breaker for the Roman men making the decision). If a baby was born in spite of all this, infanticide was legal and extremely common. > Christians followed the opposite of all these practices. > They recommended that men love their wives, and held this as a plausible and expected outcome. This was not exactly unprecedented, but it was a dramatic reversal of Roman custom. The Christians banned adultery (and, unlike the Roman bans, gave it teeth), meaning that married men who wanted sex had no choice but to go to their wives. They held that sex had to be procreative, banning anal sex, oral sex, homosexual sex, and birth control. And obviously they banned infanticide > The end result is that while pagans delayed marriage, cheated, had nonprocreative sex, used birth control, performed abortions, and committed infanticide, Christians did none of these things. > This section gave me a new appreciation for conservative Christian purity culture: it was obviously suited for the environment in which it evolved, and it’s also obvious why its founders would etch it so deeply into its memetic DNA that it’s still going strong millennia later.

petralithic 1y ago

> I understand a lot of it was a top-down change driven by converted emperors like Constantine No, it was actually driven from the bottom up, as many people converted due to the appeal of a universal savior regardless social class. Christianity however was just one of the many death cults around during that time (meaning they are concerned with offering salvation when you die) such as Mithras or Isis worship. Constantine legalized it because it was already so popular, especially among the upper classes, that would've been strange to continue to pretend it doesn't exist. The story of his conversion where he saw a cross in the sky and painted the (chi rho, first two letters of Christ in Greek) symbol is likely untrue and just a form of state propaganda.

nimithryn 1y ago
Also Christianity was a Levantine religion, growing fast in Greece, Asia Minor, Egypt, Syria, and the Levant. The Eastern Roman Empire at the time was far richer, more urbanized, closer to the grain supply, and closer to Silk Road and Black Sea trade access. Based on some of his other actions (like moving the capital), I'd speculate Constantine's conversion was part of a deliberate pivot to focus on the East (which paid off, as the centralized Byzantine state went on to survive much longer than its Western counterpart). I'm speculating because inferring his intentions has no historical evidence afaik.

svat 1y ago

The 2009 film Agora, starring Rachel Weisz, has a portrayal of the period. Of course it's not a historical document and subject to interpretation, but it is one perspective at least. Also there's a novel about Julian by Gore Vidal — I haven't read it but Julian was the last pagan emperor who unsuccessfully tried to receive Hellenic religion and stem the tide of Christianity.

icegreentea2 1y ago

To build on sibling's points about how Constantine was simply throwing official weight behind a true grass-roots movement, you can look at what happened to Elagabalus for an example of top down religious change that blew up: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elagabalus#Religious_controversy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elagabalus#Religious_controver...

ralfd 1y ago

It was bottom-up driven in the urban city centers, in the rural villages it was top-down (“pagan” means provincial villager). https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/book-review-the-rise-of-christianity https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/book-review-the-rise-of-chr... > The rise of Christianity is a great puzzle. In 40 AD, there were maybe a thousand Christians. Their Messiah had just been executed, and they were on the wrong side of an intercontinental empire that had crushed all previous foes. By 400, there were forty million, and they were set to dominate the next millennium of Western history. > Imagine taking a time machine to the year 2300 AD, and everyone is Scientologist. The United States is >99% Scientologist. So is Latin America and most of Europe. The Middle East follows some heretical pseudo-Scientology that thinks L Ron Hubbard was a great prophet, but maybe not the greatest prophet. > This can only begin to capture how surprised the early Imperial Romans would be to learn of the triumph of Christianity. At least Scientology has a lot of money and a cut-throat recruitment arm! At least they fight back when you persecute them! At least they seem to be in the game! How did Christianity win? Pro-natalism won over generations against the Roman elite: > By the Imperial era, Roman fertility was plummeting. Partly this was because the Romans practiced sex-selective infanticide, there were 130 men for every 100 women, and so many men would never be able to find a wife. But partly this was because the men who could find wives dragged their feet. (Male) Roman culture took it as a given that women were terrible, that you couldn’t possibly enjoy interacting with them, and that there was no reason besides duty that you would ever marry one. > but no amount of love or money could make them have children. Dense cities discouraged large families, Roman children were expensive … Nor did the sex drive force the matter. Horny Roman men had their choice of a wide variety of male and female slaves and prostitutes - despite Augustus and his spiritual heirs’ fuming about monogamy, this was never really enforced on the male half of the population. When men did have sex with women, it was usually oral or anal sex, specifically to avoid procreation. When they did have vaginal sex, they had a wide variety of birth control methods available, including the famous silphium but also proto-condoms and spermicidal ointments. If a child was conceived despite these efforts, abortion was common albeit unsanitary (maternal death rates were extremely high, but this was not really a deal-breaker for the Roman men making the decision). If a baby was born in spite of all this, infanticide was legal and extremely common. > Christians followed the opposite of all these practices. > They recommended that men love their wives, and held this as a plausible and expected outcome. This was not exactly unprecedented, but it was a dramatic reversal of Roman custom. The Christians banned adultery (and, unlike the Roman bans, gave it teeth), meaning that married men who wanted sex had no choice but to go to their wives. They held that sex had to be procreative, banning anal sex, oral sex, homosexual sex, and birth control. And obviously they banned infanticide > The end result is that while pagans delayed marriage, cheated, had nonprocreative sex, used birth control, performed abortions, and committed infanticide, Christians did none of these things. > This section gave me a new appreciation for conservative Christian purity culture: it was obviously suited for the environment in which it evolved, and it’s also obvious why its founders would etch it so deeply into its memetic DNA that it’s still going strong millennia later.