But Constantine also continued the ancient Roman practice of giving money to support traditional religion. He paid for the construction of monumental churches such as the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem, but he also put images of the old gods on his coins well into the s.
He tore down some pagan temples and ordered his subjects to stop sacrificing, but he also permitted cities to build new pagan temples and reiterated the legal obligation to perform sacrifices when public buildings were struck by lightning. Constantine summoned the Council of Nicaea — the first Christian ecumenical council — but he also retained the title of Pontifex Maximus, the chief priest in the Roman civic cult. Pagans could worship as many gods as they wished, in nearly whatever form they felt appropriate.
Many pagans even worshipped Jesus, though in a fashion that sometimes included him among other gods to whom they also prayed. C onstantine died in the year , just as the oldest people born after his conversion were beginning their professional lives.
Constantius II, the longest surviving of the brothers, proved the most aggressive. He issued a series of laws banning sacrifices, closed some temples, transferred others to bishops who converted them into churches, and did his best to encourage Christianity in public life. All of the surviving monuments, temples, statues and festivals dedicated to the old gods reassured pagans such as Libanius and his peers. They had no interest in endangering their prominence and wealth by speaking out against objectionable policies that could amount to nothing.
And these men promptly recast their complacency as prudence when Constantius died unexpectedly at the age of He was replaced by his cousin Julian — who immediately announced that he was a pagan. Powerful critiques of the injustice and religious fanaticism of Constantius poured from the mouths of the middle-aged men who had voiced no public criticism while that emperor lived. They also praised Julian as nothing less than a philosopher-king superintending a revival of traditional religious life.
The inertia of the Roman administrative system had preserved the old rhythms of Roman religious life under the Christian emperors. Now a pagan emperor could repair what damage they had done. Julian had grand plans for what this pagan restoration would look like. He envisioned an integrated, hierarchical pagan priesthood that organised religious life across the empire and performed charitable activities, much like the Christian church did.
He restored property to the temples, sponsored reconstruction projects and started work on a third Jewish temple in Jerusalem. In an action that alarmed nearly everyone in the empire, Julian even tried redesigning the Roman education system. Under his direction, the schools that served as the entry point to the imperial elite would focus their curricula on teaching about the old gods.
The reforms had only just begun when Julian died in the summer of , killed by Persian troops in a skirmish near what is now the Iraqi city of Samarra. For most of the next two decades, his successors focused on matters other than the Christianisation of the empire.
The emperors were Christian, but they devoted little time or energy to destroying paganism or eliminating its practice. Pagans such as Libanius then slipped back into their old, oleaginous ways.
They praised the emperors in public, muttered about their autocratic tendencies in private, and happily collected their public salaries. It was in the s only, when Libanius and his peers reached old age, that the bill for a lifetime of sycophancy and complacency came due. Theodosius came to power in , promising to crush an army of barbarian Goths that had killed the emperor Valens, his immediate predecessor.
Instead, Theodosius first lost to the Goths in humiliating fashion in before concluding a peace treaty with them in that seemed like a surrender. He desperately needed to change the perception that he was a failing emperor.
Libanius probably understood that it was already too late to save the world he treasured. This is why, soon after his retreat from the Gothic forces in , Theodosius energetically embraced the idea that he would lead Rome to a new, Christian future by attacking pagan practices.
He first issued a series of laws that restricted pagan activities. Sacrifices would be punished with the death penalty, temples would be closed and imperial officials who neglected to enforce these laws would be severely punished. Many of these early laws reinstated prohibitions that Constantius first put in place in the s, but Theodosius ruled over a different empire than the majority-pagan one of Constantius.
The emperor knew that these eager Christians could help him accelerate the pace of Christianisation if they were allowed to work outside the constraints of an imperial administrative system designed to move slowly and deliberately.
This is why Cynegius rampaged across the Roman east with his band of soldiers and monks. Cynegius was an imperial official, but many of those who travelled alongside him had no place in government.
They were Christian militants who accompanied the prefect precisely so that they could violently attack pagan shrines in a fashion that allowed Theodosius to avoid taking direct responsibility for their actions. They had spent their entire lives learning how to compete and thrive in a geographically and religiously diverse imperial system that rewarded loyalty and buffered the worst effects of radical changes in imperial policy.
They were unaccustomed to operating outside of its rules and they struggled to respond to an emperor willing to empower paramilitaries to destroy pagan property and lives that the Roman state was supposed to protect. This is why Libanius addressed his speech to Theodosius in He could think of no better course of action than to appeal to the emperor who sat atop the administrative apparatus through which Libanius had been conditioned to work. But what, at first glance, looks like a defiant condemnation of an unjust political order, now appears to be the desperate pleading of an old man who finally recognised the true import of the transformational events that had been going on for his entire life.
Despite his powerful call for reform, Libanius probably understood that it was already too late to save the world he treasured. Many temples were still there, though the disinterest of worshippers and the decay of the buildings meant that the number of useable ones dropped steadily.
Statues of the gods remained in public places and people still prayed to them in private homes, but fewer did this each year. Humans cannot control whether it rains or an epidemic destroys the community or a natural disasters hits; but the gods can.
They can provide for humans what mere mortals cannot do for themselves. This stood at the root of all ancient religion. And it became the chief selling point of the Christian message. Christians declared that their God was more powerful than any other god—in fact, more powerful than all the supposed other gods combined. God alone was God, and he alone could provide what people need.
The power struggle between the Christian and pagan gods is on full display in a wide range of ancient texts. At one point in the narrative, John visits the city of Ephesus and its renowned temple to the goddess Athena. Entering the sacred site, John ascends a platform and issues a challenge to a large crowd of pagans: They are to pray to their divine protectoress to strike him dead. If she fails to respond, he in turn will ask his God to kill all of them.
The crowd is terrified—they have already seen John raise people from the dead, and they know his God means business. Although obviously legendary, the tale conveys an important truth. Jesus himself, the son of God, had performed one miracle after the other. He was born of a virgin; he fulfilled prophecies spoken centuries earlier by ancient seers; he healed the sick; he cast out demons; he raised the dead. His disciples also did miracles—amazing miracles—all recorded for posterity in writings widely available.
And the miracles continued to the present day. People became convinced by these stories. Not en masse, but one person at a time. Christ and Doubting Thomas, painted by Paolo Cavazzola Christianity did not initially succeed by taking its message to the great and the powerful, the mighty Roman elite.
It succeeded at first as a grassroots movement. The original followers of Jesus told those close to them what they believed: that the great miracle worker Jesus had been raised from the dead, and that his wonders continued to be performed among those who believed in him. They convinced others. Not most of those they talked with, but some.
And as it turns out, small but steady growth from the ground up is all it took. If you chart the necessary rate of growth along an exponential curve, the Christian movement needed to increase at a rate of around 3 percent annually.
If that happens year after year after year, the numbers eventually pile up. Later in the history of the movement, when there are , Christians, the same annual growth rate will yield 3, converts; when there are 1 million Christians, 30, converts. In one year. The key was to reach people one at a time. If you were a poor family, during the time of the collapsing Roman Empire, you were most likely a Christian family, because the Church is where poor people went to get food, clothing and shelter.
Unlike Paganism, which relied heavily on superstition and belief in magic, Christianity appealed heavily to reason and natural law. To those who were interested in reason, however, the case for Christianity was strong. The Jewish concept of God, put into a universal framework, that could be easily accessed by the Gentile masses, without having to perform any acts of physical mortification circumcision , drew converts in by the millions.
Christianity dispelled the fear and darkness of magic and superstition. Under Christianity, the Jewish God Yahweh, who is the Creator beyond time and space, not only made the universe and everything in it, but loved it so much as to redeem it through his incarnation — Jesus Christ — providing a way for mankind to share in his redemptive process.
Ancient Paganism dealt heavily in fate. In other words, human beings have very little control of their destinies. They are subject to fate, and the gods are really in charge of our future. This created a type of caste system, making it difficult for people to break out into higher social classes. If you fell onto hard times, forcing you to steal, you were a thief, and it was because the gods wanted you to be one.
Perhaps you might be able to work yourself out of hard times, but you would always be a thief and you would know it. Thus the gods will see to it that you returned to that state eventually.
The same could be said of anything: adultery, prostitution, homosexuality, drunkenness, etc. It was so depressing, actually, that even modern Neo-Pagans just gloss over that aspect of their religious heritage, preferring instead to borrow the Christian worldview on personal destiny.
Christianity offered a different take on things. There is no fate except what we make, and all things are possible in Jesus Christ who strengthens us. While some social castes might be beyond our immediate control though they can be changed in time , personal sins can be forgiven, and once forgiven the sinner can be changed.
Through acts of personal sanctification and piety, a man can be lifted up from the despair of sin and made a new creation, leaving behind his former life forever. It is possible, in Christianity, for one to become an ex-thief, and ex-adulterer, and ex-prostitute, and ex-homosexual, and an ex-drunkard, no longer practicing these things, and no longer held by their power.
There is no fate in Christianity, except what we make, and all things are possible in Christ who strengthens us. This creates hope in people, and it gives them a chance to start over.
Unlike Judaism, Christianity did not require the erasure of ethnic cultures. As I explained above, Paganism was not an organized religion per se. It was rather a conglomeration of multiple geographical sects, tied to various ethnicities. Religion was ethnicity, and ethnicity was religion.
This is why Judaism, while highly missionary in the ancient world, had such difficulty bringing in new converts, especially men. Converting to Judaism required the total erasure of ones religious-ethnic identity, in exchange for adopting the Jewish religious-ethnic identity. Jews were actually well respected in the ancient world, and their monotheist religion, along with its moral expectations, was considered highly virtuous.
Still, to admire is one thing, to convert is another. Pagans were content to admire Jews from afar. Converting to Judaism, however, would require a total erasure of their whole religious-ethnic makeup.
They would have to give up not only their religious beliefs, but also their ethnic identity, and that includes culture. Local culture is virtually erased, in exchange for Arabic culture. For the men in the ancient world, conversion to Judaism was especially harsh, because it required a painful act of physical mutilation, otherwise known as circumcision.
For the ancient Pagan, there was really no incentive to become a Jew, but there were a whole lot of disincentives. This is why Jewish missionary activity was relegated to sending out young unmarried men into Pagan regions, for the purpose of converting Pagan maidens to Judaism. There would be no circumcision requirement for them, and they had the incentive of gaining a husband once converted.
In contrast, Christianity would require no cultural erasure, and this was decided early on Acts Circumcision would not be required of male converts to Christianity, and in addition to that, no Jewish expectations would be required of them.
The Apostles would decide what is necessary for Gentile conversion and what is not. This would allow Gentile converts to continue to identify with their ethnic culture, while at the same time become members of the Christian Church.
This is what turned Christianity from a Jewish sect into a Catholic universal religion. Christianity found its roots and context within Judaism, but grew beyond that into a global religion, consisting of all ethnicities and cultures.
Likewise, this allowed many customs, terms, food and dance, once associated with Paganism, to be united with Christianity, just so long as such things did not interfere with Christian doctrine. This is why Germanic Christianity looks a bit different from Mediterranean Christianity, which looks different from Middle Eastern Christianity, which looks different from Latin American Christianity, and so on. Pagans could convert to Christianity and still remain both ethnically and culturally the same people.
The rise of Christian kings went a long way toward turning Christianity from a minority cult to a mainstream religion. While it suffered a minor setback with Emperor Julian the Apostate in AD — , it quickly rebounded. Paganism was still tolerated, of course, but there was now no political incentive to remain Pagan, and without a political incentive, Paganism would slowly die out.
Henceforth, a major strategy for converting Pagans became the attempted conversion of Pagan kings in Pagan lands. This was to remove any political incentive to remaining Pagan, and lesson the likelihood of a Pagan persecution of Christians in the region. However, when the empire collapsed, Germanic Heathens Angles, Saxons and Jutes invaded the British isles from the southeast, bringing their Pagan cults with them. British Celtic Christians were immediately persecuted by these Germanic Heathens, and a great many of them fled to Wales and Ireland.
His success led to the gradual re-Christianization of England. What Christianity offered families and communities, in the waning years of the Roman Empire and after, proved to be essential in the centuries to follow. We have learned that like Islam, Paganism and Heathenism needs a political advantage to maintain dominance in the wake of Christianity.
Without such a political advantage, it remains a second-class religion. This is because Christianity can offer believers far more than Paganism ever could, and the disparity is so great that modern Neo-Pagans and Neo-Heathens must adopt a Christian worldview on destiny just to remain appealing to modern people. Even in places where Islam has conquered by the sword, Christianity remains a viable sub-culture religion in spite of great persecution.
Left on its own, without government favoritism, Christianity remains the dominant religion in the Americas, as well as both Western and Eastern Europe.
Even though Neo-Paganism and Neo-Heathenism are on the rise in the West, they do not compare to the remnant of Christianity, nor can they compete with the monolith that is Islam.
For the only thing standing between the West and Islam now, is a healthy and robust Christian society. The pagan mindset carried over into European Catholicism. In Sicily, where my parents were born, each town has its favorite patron saint or Madonna. They recognize the patron of the other town, but they are loyal to their own.
There would also be patrons of wider areas in Italy. The church in my Italian neighborhood had statutes and pictures from all parts of Italy. Each Italian group would have its annual feast day for its patron.
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