/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.4698334]

Can someone please tell me exactly how Christianity became the dominant religion of the Roman Empire?

[Anonymous No.4698338]

There's lots of peasants.

[Feminister !!F9QVQ82MjmE No.4698337]

Constantine converted.

[Blood Rainbow !!6ueS4TJTaQw No.4698342]

god said so

[Anonymous No.4698343]

>>4698337
But didn't he only convert of his deathbed, and some of the Roman Emperors were pagan after him.

[Anonymous No.4698348]

'This common body,
Like to a vagabond flag upon the stream,
Goes to and back, lackeying the varying tide,
To rot itself with motion.'

-Octavius Caesar, Antony and Cleopatra

Pretentious to quote I know but I think this had something to do with it

[Anonymous No.4698359]

Conversion of Constantine. Christianity brought a lot of comfort to people especially in those harsh times. The Christians also possessed a lot of organization and spread their religion they also often impressed local people by giving food to the poor. Another big thing is that emperor Theodosius made Catholicism over dissenting Christianity sects and Hellenistic religion the official religion of the empire.

[Anonymous No.4698362]

>>4698343
>But didn't Wikipedia have an article on this?

[Anonymous No.4698363]

Whoever was playing Rome TW BarBar Invasion set it up that way

[Anonymous No.4698367]

Why did Constantine convert?

[Anonymous No.4698368]

>>4698337
this

wow, a tripfag with a real answer and not trolling. Mark the calendar, it'll never happen again.

[Anonymous No.4698373]

how do people wind up here yet can't use google?

[Anonymous No.4698374]

>>4698359
>>4698337
Estos dos.

[Anonymous No.4698377]

Patronage by Roman emperors. Constantine may very well have had pretty cynical reasons for supporting Christians. They were being persecuted in the east if unwilling to sacrifice to the state religion, so Constantine, based in the west at the time, might have seen Christians as a power base with which to eventually oppose rulers in the east. (Genuine sympathy or belief by Constantine can't be ruled out, of course; Eusebius says his father treated Christians well too.) Basically the religion was patronized and supported by rulers, but even at the end of the fourth century, it was likely practised by only a very small majority of the empire's population. What was significant was that members of the aristocracy or those with power became Christians, partly due to an attempt to find favour with Constantine through a mutual faith, it is thought.

[Anonymous No.4698397]

>>4698377
This is a good response. Props anon

[Anonymous No.4698403]

>>4698337
>>4698359
Constantine only converted at the end of his life, says Eusebius. Christianity found support under Constantine earlier during his reign.

[Anonymous No.4698411]

because

>Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and unto God the things that are God's

with this declaration christ usurped rome as the most supreme sovereign entity in the world. but rome did one better when it re-integrated christ into its own fold. once again people had to render everything to ceasar, but now god also lived in rome.

tl;dr don't see it as the religious victory of christiantiy, but the political victory of rome in re-establishing its authority after the empire collapsed.

[Anonymous No.4698415]

The evangelizing and theology from Saint Paul and early Church Doctors and saints played a big hand in it. The Roman faith was syncretic and didn't have any serious theology or thought put into it and led to things like the Imperial Cult. Christianity had a lot stronger position to argue from and could present theological reasons and support for their faith, as opposed to the Romans who, in general, did not question their religion much at all.

Almost all the other religions at the time where either esoteric (Greco-Roman mystery cults, imperial cult, etc.) or segregated by ethnicity (Judaism was Jews only, etc.) and Christianity was one of the first, if not the first, fully exoteric religion that was open to everyone.

[Anonymous No.4698424]

>>4698397
happy to help

[Anonymous No.4698429]

>>4698415
Christianity was definitely more advanced than other religions at the time. Other religions had a shit afterlife no matter what you did, gods that were just something to be appeased, and lacked the theological weight that made christians produce works like The City of God.

[Anonymous No.4698455]

Anyone who thinks he just "converted" and started believing in it is an idiot. It is the same logic of the one who thinks presidents hold any ideology other than money.

[Anonymous No.4698469]

>>4698334
the pagan religions that existed within the Roman Empire were from a more primitive time. A lot of the elites could see that they were just fairy stories; I think Cicero is said to have privately not believed in Jupiter et. al., but discussed the possibility of a higher power who created the universe. In other words, the Roman Empire was just begging for a monotheistic religion like Christianity to come along.

[Anonymous No.4698470]

>>4698429
It wasn't that other religions had a shit afterlife, it was that they were concerned with the harmonious balance of the world, opposed to the monotheistic emphasis on personal morality. Entry into the afterlife wasn't the kind of goal that one strives for during his or her life like in Christianity, not to the same extent anyway; rather one spent his or her life appeasing the gods in order for them to maintain a pleasant and stable present on earth. That was a big factor in the persecution of Christians. Their refusal to sacrifice to the state religion was seen as a dishounoring of the gods and the Imperial cult, and thus a threat to peace on earth. The empire was experiencing a time of crises, with simultaneous pressure by military incursions on multiple fronts; one reason given by contemporaries was that the gods were not being appeased enough, hence the effort to make sure Christians sacrificed.

[Anonymous No.4698471]

>>4698455
naive cynicism

[Anonymous No.4698473]

There was some war where one side put a bunch of Crosses Onto their Shields and they were the side that won.

[Anonymous No.4698494]

>>4698473
ya....... that really sums it up

[Anonymous No.4698517]

>>4698334
Averil Cameron is a good author to check out.

[Ƹ̵̡Ӝ̵̨̄Ʒ No.4698529]

>>4698473
Yes, this cross.

[Anonymous No.4698548]

Well...
>Constantine the Great saw a vision of the Cross in the sky before a battle, seeing it as an omen
>After winning the battle, follows the Roman military tradition of worshiping whatever god grants you victory, or at least tolerating it.
>Christianity appealed to the masses, as it was a religion of the poor and downtrodden, the majority in Rome
>Christianity also had unity, something the political crises were causing to lack in Roman Politics
>After Constantine "converted", it was essentially a shoo in to have Chrisitanity take the helm of the Eastern Roman Empire (later the Byzantine) and remain in the seat of power of the West after it's collapse

Despite people claiming that Rome fell because of the conversion to Christianity, I feel a great debt is owed considering the monks and secular communities managed to preserve as many Roman and Greek Works as possible, and unite Europe under one language for several hundreds of years, otherwise most people in the west would probably would be speaking Arabic and Turkish.

[Anonymous No.4698618]

>>4698548
>Christianity appealed to the masses, as it was a religion of the poor and downtrodden, the majority in Rome
The majority under Roman rule, you mean. Christianity was underground in Rome up to when it became tolerated.
>Christianity also had unity
Lol, no.
>After Constantine "converted", it was essentially a shoo in to have Chrisitanity take the helm of the Eastern Roman Empire (later the Byzantine) and remain in the seat of power of the West after it's collapse
Not sure any of that really follows.
> I feel a great debt is owed considering the monks and secular communities managed to preserve as many Roman and Greek Works as possible ... otherwise most people in the west would probably would be speaking Arabic and Turkish.
>Stating Turks were a major political force at this time
>Europeans didn't rediscover (or simply discover) Greek knowledge from the Arabic and Persian preservations.
Moving on...

[Anonymous No.4698625]

>>4698471
As the other guy putted, Christianity was the only exoteric religion, perfect for the empire. One may or may not believe in this or that thing (religious or otherwise), but when it comes to politics, that doesn't matter. If Christianity was not in tune with the people of that particular time and place, an emperor converting himself would be of no value, it would cause the whole thing to collapse and Christianity would be just a thing from that past. People would hold on to their own beliefs, or fight to sustain them. Even though we are not talking about a democracy, the principle is the same. Hitler wouldn't have grown if Germany wasn't in need of that nationalism, in the same way that a nazi in midwest America won't get to be president even though he believes in it with all his might. Whether Constantine believed in Christianity or not is absolutely irrelevant to explain how it became the dominant religion, it is merely a document of how something that was already there was institutionalized. If Constantine were a zen buddhist with scientologist inclinations, it wouldn't matter. To say "christianity is the official religion" is a political statement, not a theological one.

[Anonymous No.4698628]

Christianity borrowed much from Stoicism and a bit from Cynicism, both of which were in vogue at the time in the Roman Empire, so when Constantine converted and made it the state religion, it was already ripe for spreading. I've read a few different reasons for his conversion, in order of which I think is most likely to least likely: He was introduced to it as a child but and was kind of a de facto Christian for his whole life, but for whatever (probably political) reasons didn't actually convert until later; that he did it to appease the military, whose ranks were full of Christians (makes sense since stoicism and thus Christianity would be especially attractive to soldiers) and on whom the emperor's grasp was slipping; to appease an increasingly more Christian population; he had some kind of "come to Jesus" moment where he saw the light and had a revelation.

[Anonymous No.4698663]

>>4698618
>>Stating Turks were a major political force at this time
>>Europeans didn't rediscover (or simply discover) Greek knowledge from the Arabic and Persian preservations.
>Moving on...
It would make sense, considering the Muslim caliphates were invading Europe from both sides, and it was only a common hatred through religion that prevented the flow of Islam into the West.
>>4698618
>The majority under Roman rule, you mean. Christianity was underground in Rome up to when it became tolerated.
That's whats implied by "the poor and downtrodden, the majority people of Rome" ya goofball

>>Christianity also had unity
>Lol, no
Christfags had only each other, if they "came out", they'd be either tortured into renouncing their God, and if that didn't work they'd maybe be sentenced to Damnatio ad bestias. Sure, christianity splintered in a few hundred years, but it was pretty uniform, albeit with language barriers.

Read into context you silly goose

[Anonymous No.4698720]

>>4698663
>It would make sense, considering the Muslim caliphates were invading Europe from both sides, and it was only a common hatred through religion that prevented the flow of Islam into the West.

That and getting their shit rekt when they ventured in European regions that weren't mired in disorder.

[Anonymous No.4698806]

>>4698663
>actually has no idea that Christianity needed a series of Ecumenical councils to decide what "Christianity" even meant since dozens of ancient Christianities were in teaching distinct interpretations of the gospels delivered by the disciples and apostles, and that the first EC one didn't take place until some time after Constantine tolerated Christian religion.
>actually doesn't know that Aquinas, the Doctor of the Western Church, learned his Aristotle through ibn Sina and the other Muslim Peripatetics
>actually thinks Rome the city and the Roman Empire are identifcal
>actually doesn't know that the Latin translations of the 12th century were all from Arabic
>Actually has to samefag to put on appearances when he knows he's being outclassed

Wow.