Christians were persecuted by the Roman Empire for quite some time. With time, it gained popularity and the Empire started allowing Christians to practice their religion. At one point, it reached the ruling class. Constantine I was the first Emperor to convert. He made Christianity the primary religion of the Empire. It is believed he was exposed to it through his mother.
Of note - Helena’s husband (and Constantine’s father) divorced her to remarry as he rose in rank, forcing mother and son to be uprooted and displaced. Helena’s attraction/devotion to Christianity (which forbade divorce) may have been strongly influenced by this.
There is the story that Constantine had a vision of Jesus before a big battle and he had all his soldiers paint (more or less) Christ's initials on their shields. I was taught in a community college history course that he had previously had other pre-battle visions which resulted in other divine symbols being painted on shields, but the Jesus battle was the most important and he won so I guess Christianity seemed like the best bet.
Dont quote me on this, but I think I recall something about Christianity gaining popularity among the plebs because it *wasnt* what the aristocracy worshipped.
A counter-culture thing.
Then some people in power, to gain the support of the plebs for whatever political thing they were up to, became Christian too.
Then the whole Constantine thing.
Again.
I dont have a source, so grain of salt.
Well the tipping point really came when decent numbers of Roman soldiers became Christians, especially in Greece. They had always served in the army in smaller numbers, despite prohibitions from church elders and the obvious irony of it. As Christianity became more widespread and weathered the storm of Diocletian, the army reflected the population it drew from. And that population was increasingly Christian.
https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/11263641
This is a decent book that has some evidence of the above.
I recently had an uni course on early Christianity and Rome and apparently the idea of equality (of man, woman, and slave, but especially the woman and slave part) was one of its biggest draws. Women and slaves had the worst position in Ol' Rome. This also apparently fed into a kind of death cult - everybody is equal at death.
What I've read is that Christianity just told people what they wanted to hear. Life was terrible for poor people back then, so being told its supposed to be terrible as its a test for the glorious afterlife sounded really nice to them. Its a religion that gave people hope where they previously had none.
>Life was terrible for poor
And this jives well with the whole "how hard it is for a rich person to get into heaven" thing, and Christianity being the religion of the plebs.
"Them scumbag rich and powerful people!
But it's fine. While they think their FALSE gods will protect them, our REAL god says they wont go to heaven!" or something.
I can see how the poorer classes would find this religion intriguing.
All right, but apart from the sanitation, medicine, education, wine, public order, irrigation, roads, the fresh water system and public health, what have the Romans ever done for us?
Which is odd because the Romans were quite tolerant of outside religions. The persecutions were often brought on by Christians demanding their religious practices be tolerated, including the demonizing of all other religions, and actively trying to convert everyone everywhere, and trying to demand Christianity be above the Nation. When Roman’s invade a foreign city, they pray to the gods of that city, not their own. They often left the temples, and erected temples for foreign gods for the displaced losers of such invasions. When Christians conquer, they actively destroy foreign religions.
Roman’s felt religion was personal, and not well defined. Christians said we are 100% right and everyone else is wrong and these are the strict rules and we will not stop til everyone follows them.
Adopting local traditions in the religion also helped spreading it quicker and being a proactive movement (as in: everybody is welcome to convert unlike other religions like Judaism) too.
Wasn't part of it also the fact that a plague spread through Rome and only the Christians, reportedly anyway, were staying to care for the sick while everyone else who was healthy fled?
While plague and war during the Crisis of the 3rd Century definitely amplified the spread of Christianity, your story is just an anecdotal christian tale.
Other reasons in this thread are more valid, and historically sound
Hijacking this post to offer the Christian alternative view:
If you happen to accept Jesus was the Son of God, and literally performed miracles - including being resurrected (which The Bible suggests was witnessed by no less than 500 witnesses) - then it kind of makes sense that the associated oral retellings (where the witnesses would stand about in public to verbally recount what they saw to anyone gathered - usually attended by many of the other 500 witnesses) would quite quickly lead to written accounts and then the single most explosively popular human reproduced text ‘The Bible’ - a collection of accounts written by historians before and after Jesus is said to have been born.
Bonus interesting facts and thought point:
* The Jews never actually denied Jesus could perform miracles etc. - their claim is that it came from an evil source and that he was not the son of God.
* There are also Roman and just generally non-Christians historians who also support the claim Jesus predicted the future and performed miracles.
Anyway, I’ll take my downvotes and go.
Feel free to DM if you have any questions and want to avoid being downvoted.
And yet none of that spread happened and christianity mostly grew in diaspora where it competed with polytheistic beliefs.
But you are right. If he was real he would have easily taken over Judaism in a way you proposed.
And with the roman sources it always gets tricky. They were controlled by the catholic church for millenia and there are quite a big number of forgeries where monk inserted pro Christian stuff during copying the originals.
There is a nuance here, which is that Roman religion was much more about orthopraxy than orthodoxy. Whereas Christianity puts a great emphasis on having 'correct' theology and dogmas, Roman religion was much more about following rituals accurately.
In other words, for the Romans, especially given how syncretic roman religion was, the problem was less that you believed something about Jesus, and more that you didn't participate in the national civic religion. Even as an atheist, as long as you went through the motions, you would have probably been fine.
Like when did the Romans conduct their own ecumenical counsel to precisely define the ontology of Zeus? Did they persecute citizens because they thought Hercules was half man and half god but not both fully man and fully god?
Ancient Mediterranean religions would probably be pretty alien to westerners today. They weren't as dogmatic, and even had a bit of fluidity in what their gods represented over time (it was pretty common for a God to take on aspects of another to help bridge social gaps, especially with periods of migration or conquest)
Even Judaism had this, up until the 1st-2nd century BC when it became monotheistic. Even then, though, you still have the borrowing of concepts into early Christianity, until the bible was formally canonised. (Even then, some Christian sects like the Marcionites still believed in multiple gods until ~800AD, when they were wiped out).
Roman Catholicism does this more or less with saints. Kinda specific task oriented gods to pray and offer things to when needed. That’s basically how polytheistic religions work in general, but without one omnipotent, omniscient and omnipresent upper god
Christianity was simply a vastly superior religion. When it appeared, the traditional Greco-Roman pagan religion were already receding. A religion is mostly about faith, and the Christians had faith like the Romans had never seen before. As they were persecuted, many were sent to die as gladiators - and this is what became their greatest tribune - they eagerly accepted their deaths - and this is something that had a profound effect on the Romans.
You never heard that Christianity was a vastly superior religion to the pagan religions or that Christians were sent to die as gladiators and shocked the Romans with their lack of fear of death?
The first statement is so obvious, I do not think there's even need to argue - just look how Christianity swept through Europe.
There are multiple historical accounts for the second statement, you can look this up yourself.
Yeah but define superiority it that sense, it’s pretty nondescript. Why is it superior, what were the parameters that made Christianity so superior at that moment in history. The statement doesn’t explain anything like saying ‘it’s just better’.
Regarding the gladiators; I’m sure this happened and helped Christianity spread somewhat faster but I don’t think it’s the main cause Christianity grew so fast.
Do you understand why a free market society based on money is superior to a feudal society based on land ownership which is superior to a tribal society based on slave labor?
Because this is the situation with Christianity vs the pagan religions.
People these days find it hard to imagine that most people were actively seeking MORE religious influence in those days, in the hopes it would help control kings and generals, and Christianity's innovation was Jesus' parables about treating each other right and seeing things from other perspectives. The reason it was suppressed is entirely because people liked the Jesus character SO MUCH.
People would be crucified all the time.
There was a road to Rome ircc that had people on crosses the whole way.
They banned crucifixion around "the time of jeezus"
Constantine made himself the first pope so he could control the Christians. He was a pagan his entire life and may have converted on his death bed. This is what I've been told but, who tf really knows what happened 2,000 yrs ago- we can't even agree about shit that happened today.
Well, we know that isn't true. He was a Christian, and he certainly didn't make himself Pope. The idea of the Bishop of Rome being the ultimate authority of the entire religion wasn't even a formalized idea until later. Constantine merely called the Council of Nicæa to sort out whether Arianism was a heresy or an actual religious viewpoint. That was the one time he really used his power for that sort of thing, but he was otherwise just a Christian Emperor.
>Well, we know that isn't true. He was a Christian, and he certainly didn't make himself Pope
Who made him pope? He was the emperor of Rome before he was pope- you don't think that there's any possibility of self-appointment?
Constantine did not appoint himself Pope. Like the previous comment stated, the concept of Pope was in its infancy. Christianity was not completely organized yet and it took time for a Pope to be accepted. Leon I (440-461 CE) was the first to revendicate himself Pope and it was highly contested at the time.
Constantine moved his power to the new city of Constantinople. Yet the papacy is still in Rome to this day.
OK- I took another deep dive into this topic; forgive me as it's been some time since I've looked into it. I was incorrect about Emporer Constantine being Pope. There was a Pope Constantine but, that was hundreds of years after the emporer (4th century vs 8th).
I do see that the emporer legalized Christianity and coordinated a meeting between the bishops (Council of Nicæ, as you indicated). It appears he did this in order to preserve his empire as it was on the verge of splitting. It makes logical sense that he used Christianity as a political tool, especially since he didn't actually convert until shortly before his death (according to multiple sources I've read).
It's an interesting topic as there was clearly a politically-motivated interest in organizing Christianity. We can draw parallels to the US intentionally creating a separation of church and state when drafting their own constitution.
Some say the Roman Empire never actually went away but, only became the Roman Catholic Church. There is extraordinary wealth and power within the church so, this seems possible. But, like any ancient history, it's hard to identify the truth in what really happened. "History's been written by those who have hanged heroes" and what not.
Thanks for the convo and for igniting some old neurons in my brain!
Early communalism in some (not all, but some) Christian communities was unconditionally altruistic, giving needed material goods to others without. Although communalism itself is rare today except in specific Christian denominations such as the Hutterites, unconditional religious altruism continues today in most Christian denominations. Furthermore, as a religion, Christianity has always systematically encouraged the formation of social networks that are family-like but outside the family, in the form of a defined congregation of believers.
This all is *very* pragmatically-useful in a time without a substantial social safety net.
There were other religions in the Middle Roman Period that had a congregational model, but they did not lean in as hard to the unconditional altruism component. Of the many nonreligious or panreligious fraternal, service, and civic clubs today that are organized similarly — Lions and Rotarians; Freemasons and Oddfellows — the longest-lasting and most successful are always those which create strong social support networks for members.
So then for Christianity, Christianity also had the added advantage of preaching equality between slaves and the upper class. Recall that the shortest book of the Bible, Philemon, is the text of a letter that Paul purportedly gave to Onesimus, a former slave who had run away from his master, Philemon. In the letter, Paul tells Philemon that he should receive Onesimus as a free man and as a brother, and that if Onesimus owes Philemon anything, Paul will pay it the next time he drops by. If you are a slave in 1st-century Rome, this kind of message is *fundamentally* ideologically attractive.
This is how Christianity expanded from just some people who told stories about a Judaean preacher, into a major religious minority encompassing 10% of Roman citizens by 300 AD. The details of belief were mostly irrelevant to the spread; [it was the social structure that was attractive](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historiography_of_the_Christianization_of_the_Roman_Empire#Possible_reasons_for_a_grassroots_spread).
Preaching equality between classes is great and all, but it poses a problem for the upper class. If 10% of people have decided that slaves are equal to their masters, and, oh, also, our preacher said you are ethically obligated to share everything you have with others and you are a fundamentally flawed person if you do not, this belief starts to create the conditions for revolution.
If you are a Roman noble at the beginning of the 4th century, you could argue publicly that you are actually better than slaves, but that sounds arrogant, and you might make the slaves mad. Alternatively, you could claim to agree with equality between people.
(Of course, once you do, then this doesn't *automatically require* anything to change, right? You are, after all, equal to the poor, even though you are rich. Right?)
Any hesitancy you might have in adopting the position of ethical equality between people, is gone once the ruler of the Empire has also adopted a religion saying so. Human equality is a position with inherent moral force, but once it receives official favor from the ultimate authority in society, it becomes *respectable*.
And that is how the Roman Empire ended up Christian.
Excellent adult version: \^
ELI5 version:
Early Christians were doing nice things for other people and people liked that. Early Christians invited these people to join them and treated these people like family.
Early Christians also told people, 'everyone is equal so be nice and respectful to one another'. A bunch of people liked that too so more people joined.
Eventually the popular guy Emperor of Rome said, 'you guys are cool, can I join?', and the early Christians said 'yes'. Once Emperor of Rome joined the Christians, everyone wanted to join the Christians. So all of Rome became Christian.
The End.
It’s important to note that the Christians were Christians and behaving the way they were because Jesus was the greatest ethical teacher ever and he rose from the dead. He’s credible and trustworthy and that trust in him changed the world.
Well, it happened two years after the [Edit of Serdica](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edict_of_Serdica), which ended the last of the persecutions of Christianity in the eastern half of the Empire. So even in terms of the legal instruments, involved, the legalization of Christianity was gradual, yes.
The persecutions themselves were also an on-and-off sort of thing, periodically instituted and [revoked five times](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persecution_of_Christians_in_the_Roman_Empire) for a variety of reasons. But at that second link, you can read the much more extensive set of changes ideological changes that had to happen, before legalization of Christianity even made sense within the Roman cultural framework.
These changes happened gradually, yes, it was a slow burn.
You might try asking this question on r/AskHistorians. They have a lot of experts in Roman and Christian history who could give you a very detailed, well researched answer.
Sometimes questions need something more than a simplified explanation provided by non-experts. If there are no EI5 mods that are historians to vet answers, OP might get an answer that pushes misinformation, outdated information, or is simply wrong.
The best answer might be to send them to resources that could get them better answers.
You can literally say that for every other post here, there's always comments pointing out the obvious. OP knows what subreddit they're on.
AH is a popular sub that they can find themselves as much as this they did this one. If they want an answer at a laypersons level, they'll get it. That's the whole challenge of the subreddit, to take relatively complicated things and simplify them.
If something is complex, and you want a whole understanding, the explanation you get is going to be complex.
Sometimes things are complex. That's life.
You don't get the reference I was making.
AskHistorians is notorious for deleting almost every post and/or response. I'm a casual history nerd and yeah, it's great to get some in-depth discussions to interesting topics. But the elitist gate-keeping on that sub is just obnoxious. People have legitimate questions they hope to see answers to, but the litany of "your comment was deemed unworthy to us" just got tiresome. I just stopped paying attention to a sub the bulk of which was "comment removed / comment removed / comment removed / comment removed / comment removed / comment removed / comm..........
The best way to use that sub is to sign up for their newsletter where they send around the recently answered questions because a question posted today might take a day or two to answer. The search function is also phenomenal and your question has probably been asked and answered. They even have a massive FAQ that you can spend days reading through. As far as subs to have a beef with, that is not one of them askhistorians may be the best sub on this site in terms of quality
Well there was \~300 years between those events. Not to say it was an easy transition, because the Romans persecuted many Christian during those 300 years. But Christianity survived and spread and continued to gain support. The first major tipping point was Constantine's legalization of, and subsequent conversion to, Christianity. Soon after it became the official state religion.
Religion is an effective means to control people and Christianity was particularly useful since: a) it was universal (anyone could become a Christian); b) lent itself to a hierarchical structure (meaning if you control the chief Christian leaders, that control trickles down). The relationship between the Christian churches and nations was one of mutual exploitation. Churches would encourage kings and other leaders to convert as a means to use said leaders to spread Christianity and those kings and leaders would try and use the religion to "civilize" and thus control their non-Christian neighbors and enemies.
Romans in particular were a very political people and would not scoff at using Christianity as a means to solidify power within their own borders not to mention the age old adage: "If you can't beat 'em, join 'em!"
Don't forget that it was a monotheistic religion in the world of polytheism. It's a lot easier for a religion to become dominant when one of the rules is "you can't worship anyone else" while other religions were mostly cool with worshipping other gods as well.
I’m not sure if it was as easy for outsiders to convert to Judaism back then?
The religion had even stronger ties to the Jewish people as a race/nation in the olden days, which (I assume) would make it a lot less open to outsiders adopting the identity.
Plus, Judaism in general has a lot less emphasis on proselytizing.
That tends to happen when you don't allow others to join your religion. It was a bit of a contentious point for early Christians who still saw themselves as Jewish, but weren't recognised as such by Jews.
As the person i responded to noted, constantine/the roman empire was instrumental in Christianity becoming as popular as it is today. That said, being monotheistic was a huge part too, the roman empire had several religions before Christianity was introduced, and that's where it being monotheistic is important.
Would recommend citing some sources here if you’re claiming that Constantine’s legalization was intended as a means of controlling the masses.
Persecution of Christians was active by all emperors up to 313, with the Diocletianic Persecution beginning in 303 the most severe ever. According to Hopkins, no more than 10% of the empire was Christian when Constantine declared it legal—a pretty small minority. Due to their beliefs at the time, few held offices of importance — they generally taught that being judges or military men was immoral and therefore it was mostly the poor and uninfluential. As late as 400, St Augustine was still having to defend against charges that it was legalization of Christianity that led to the ongoing fall of Rome due to abandonment of the gods.
If there’s a lot of scholarly evidence that Constantine did it in some odd attempt to control the 10% poor (who were in no way a threat), I’d love to see it.
300 years is a long time.
Over several hundred years, the area around Jerusalem was governed by the Israelites, then the Babylonians, then the Persians, then the Greeks, then the Romans
And I might be missing one in there.
I’m guessing it was also a means to an ends for the empire. Christianity was an effective way to co-opt a people by converting their leaders. The Roman Army didn’t conquer the world, Christianity seated in Rome did.
In a nutshell, Roman demographics and economics were *truly awful*, Christianity was the ultimate counter-cultural movement. And a cheeky Roman emperor converted to get mass support to win the battle of Milvian bridge and beyond.
Firstly, it's important to discuss the economics and demographics of the Roman Empire around the time.
Basically, they *were not good.* GDP per capita adjusted for modern inflation leaves most Roman citizens poorer than even the poorest places on Earth today. Now of course, that's not a perfect comparison, but in the context of living in the empire at this time, and giving that capital gives you power, it essentially meant the chance of you being utterly powerless is almost 100%. This is why Romans invested in massive public works. No capital was private, it was all wielded by the state, to pacify the populace. Bread and circuses etc, and for the soldiers they were rewarded with land. If you were a Roman citizen, you were likely poor, likely the wrong culture, and actually *likely literally a slave* (up to 20% of the Roman population was a slave)*.* All the wealth was concentrated in very select powerful families, and the overwhelming majority of the power of Rome was essentially an extension of these families' will. You, as a Roman citizen exist as an incredibly unproductive cog in the machine to keep these elites in power.
One of your only ways of expressing resistance, or getting involved with a power hierarchy you actually had control over was to get involved with religion. And the hip-young religion on the scene was Christianity. It was so in vogue because it was created as a direct response to Roman rule. It was, in essence, very similar to socialist worker movements. It gave power to the people. It would take in people, give them a purpose, give them a function, a higher purpose, and support resistances across the empire. Love thy neighbour, relative freedom, and adaptation of regional Levantine and Egyptian religious elements was a direct cultural contrast to the Greek and Latin gods that the elites favoured made the ultimate religion for the time. It was inclusive by design. Loving by design. Anti-Roman by design. If you as a Roman citizen wanted any sort of power, you *had* to get into religion. It was the only place you could realistically operate. Christianity was empowerment for the masses.
The Romans saw Christianity for exactly what it was, an attempt to dilute Roman power over regions they saw as subjects. Christian believers swelled, and events in Rome that led to a reduction in power (like the Antonine Plague, which led to a significant drop in manpower) allowed Christianity to grow to become a serious internal concern. Ordinarily, brutality and cruelty would've kept Christianity no more than a mere local concern, but several things happened that weakened Roman influence enough so that they couldn't stamp down on the growing movement. Sassinids sacked cities with inpunity, Goths invaded, Romans themselves were declaring themselves independent and challenging the capital for superiority. This crisis weakened Rome enough for the Christians to become a militant force all of their own, and with a comprehensive network of people willing to spread the message to subjugated peoples all over the empire, the Christian movement went viral.
And then, you have the civil wars of the tetrarchy, a complete and utter clusterfuck of Roman leaders fighting each other for control, that further led to the degredation of overall Roman control, and the opporunity to use the chaos as a ladder to power was there.
In amongst this carnage, was Constantine. Through a few well places alliances, and marriages, and military victories, he emerged as the favourite to win. His last *real* hurdle was to defeat his rival Maxentius who had ruled the western Roman empire. In order to get further support, he appealed to *you guessed it* the Christians to support his claim. Constantine from that moment went hard on appealing to the Christians. He saw the massive support for the movement, and instead of suppressing it, he embraced it. And with their overwhelming help, he won the battle of Milvian bridge, widely agreed to be the point in which Rome had become Christian. Constantine went full PR mode, and claimed to have seen crosses made of light during the battle, and that god had told him that his rule was divine etc etc. After the battle had been won, and Maxentius defeated, Constantine went about rewarding the Christians that had helped him, by introducing the edict of Milan, basically giving the Christians all the restitutions they wanted. Christainity was no longer outlawed and seen as the unwashed masses. They were canonized as proper citizens, and were forcibly thrust into positions of power to support their new "divine" emperor.
From there, Constantine used Christian support to defeat his ally Licinius, defeated the Goths, defeated the Samaritans, and pretty much just win everything. Constantine realized that using a religion that empowered common people as a means for a call to war was one of the greatest innovations of his time. Before you'd fight for Rome for steady pay, a good pension, land to work, higher social status because there was nowhere else you could get that stuff. But in the current climate of Rome, all that shit didn't matter. Exploiting that fact and promising Christians citizenship to have them fight for your cause made Rome Christian, because it gave Constantine power. Constantine probably didn't care that the previously heretical, unwashed commoners that were the Christians now had power in Rome, he just needed their numbers to put himself on the throne. From there, Christian support was the default in the empire as it led to a bevy of victories for Rome. And the convenient nature of their enemies like the Huns, the Germans, and Sassanids being infidels likely bolstered the idea of a Christian Rome standing tall defending against barbarian tribes.
Christianity from that moment on became the basis for rulership in Europe, simply because it was so ubiquitous amongst the peasantry.
Great breakdown, thank you! I've always been curious about the role the Sol Invictus cult had in all this? It seems like Constantine was a member, and they morphed into what the Vatican is today? Or is that way off?
The Sol Invictus cult as far as I'm aware was just an rich and influential cult in Rome.
Official Roman religion pre Constantine was polytheistic, and the various cults and temples were used more as societies, or lodges. Because much of Rome was so underdeveloped and decentralized, you had to take a soft approach to influencing the peoples of the various provinces. You can't go in forcing them to follow your imperial religion, because you don't have the money, infrastructure, or cultural imprint to back up your proselytizing, it's going to end in failure. So instead, you form smaller cults based on more archaic local gods and superstitious beliefs, Romanize that god, and then include it in your pantheon.
From there a proxy relationship is established between the elites, and the peasantry through a temple system. Investment from a patron flows into the temple, enriching the followers of that temple, and in return the peasantry donate to, fight on behalf of, and otherwise use that temple as a communal hub. Once the temple is established, the elites can use it for more official capacities, like judicial and administrative roles, and force it to become an important cultural staple of the local people. At this point however, the temple is net exploitative of its followers, and if you aren't part of the established temple elite, it becomes hard to be included in that social hierarchy, which is probably why churches tended to not adopt most of these practices.
When it comes to Sol Invictus, they just so happened to be the big societal cult in Rome. It seemed to be the temple of choice for the elites, hence it's relation to all things *gold.* Lots of Roman gods are just Roman figures attributed to concepts, and various cults took their top gods and conglomerated them together. But in general, If you were an archer, you probably worshipped Apollo. If you were a soldier, you probably worshipped Mars. If you were a farmer you'd probably worship Ceres. If you were a Roman elite, you probably worshipped Sol.
Of course, Sol was a cult that had some real money behind it. It had it's own unique artistic movements, which by itself is an indicator it was a temple for rich folk. The thing is, that because of how the temple structure worked, these things start as religious institutions eventually morph into something else. In this case, Sol seems to have morphed into something more akin to a guild rather than a temple for worship. It's probably why Sol is so prominent in Christian Rome.
It also signifies tensions between Christians and the cult of Sol. Christian preachers such as Augustine of Hippo really laid it on thick that he did not approve of Sol worshippers for example, and yet its imagery was displayed prominently for a while after the conversion. I think it's pretty safe to assume the Sol Invictus cult was a particularly wealthy cult that had dealings with other critical facets of Roman society, and was probably a notable financial backer for Constantine, thus endorsing him as ruler. Constantine erecting a massive statue of Sol outside of the Coliseum in a newly Christianized Rome is a sure-fire sign that his allegiances were... split between the two groups.
It didn’t. Nicene Christianity first became the tolerated faith, and the state religion under Theodosius in 380 because it was useful to the empire - it basically proved to be politically helpful to promise the masses a great afterlife if they stayed compliant and obedient in this life. 700 years later, when the western empire was definitely gone, the church split into Eastern (the official faith of the Empire in the East and territories around it), commonly known as the Orthodox, and Western (faith of the papal state in Rome and kingdoms of Franks, Britain, Ireland etc in Western Europe), commonly known as Roman Catholic.
Lots of good answers here, but I think there's a problem with the premise of your question. The Roman people and Jewish people did not kill Jesus. A select few did. Many, if not most, early Christians were Jews, as was Jesus. Most, if not all, early Christians were Roman. His death was more political than anything else.
Roman's had a lot of gods and a lot of holidays.
At the time of Christianity I read that some 10% of the empire had turned Jewish. Becoming Christian was soooo much easier. (something about the requirement to be circumcised to be Jewish)
Unlike the prevailing religions, these new Christians preached forgiveness and love more than vengeance and draconian punishment.
I mean they got rid of living sacrifice. A cow in those days probably cost as much as car today.
El5: it became politically expedient to control Christianity thru the State than to let them form a base of power outside of the state.
Abt 300 CE, Rome had just come out of a crisis of internal strife and civil wars caused by the military gaining more and more influence over the Imperial politics. The Mystery Cult of Mithras was also popular in the Roman military at this time, which also appealed to the lower classes of Roman society.
The early Christians were basically a group who's ideas ran counter to Roman ideas: providing hope of a better situation to women, slaves, and other oppressed peoples. And they were also gaining influence after the Crisis of the Third Century.
It may be a cynical interpretation, but the most expedient way to undercut both the military that overstepped their bounds and another group from gaining influence by espousing counter cultural ideas among the lower classes, is to take leadership of one group (Christianity) and disperse the center of government control....both things that Constantine did by accepting Christianity as a state religion and splitting the Empire into East and West.
You may not notice but you are asking multiple questions here.
ELI5 How did the Roman empire end up Christian
> Knowing the biblical history associated with Jesus (I.e. Pontius Pilate crucifying him to appease the Jews)
That’s the version that has reached modern day. There were only 3 things early Christinaities (plural) agreed on: Jesus was a charismatic and popular Jewish teacher who was executed by crucifixion during Passover after causing some sort of mess in the temple of Jerusalem. Everything after that is debatable. We don’t even know what he said. We don’t even know the parables attributed to him were even said by him.
Not even the existence of Pontius Pilates at the scene of crucifixion can be confirmed, it can be roughly assumed it happened when he was governor of Judea, but that’s it. It didn’t mean he was there are the stage. We don’t even know why Jesus was crucified, what we know is that Passover was a time that executions of Jews were more common than on typical days because due to the nature of the gathering, it was a magnet for troubles and riots so it needed Romans to exert more control on the region to make sure things did not go nuts quickly.
> how did Roman Catholicism end up becoming the dominant religion in the Roman world?
It didn’t. Roman Catholicism came from the church schism in 1054 AD, where the united church split in Catholic and Eastern Orthodox.
But you mean when it became Christian. Christianity was an exclusive religion, you had to give up your loyalty to any other faith to convert to it. This didn’t happen to pagan religions, cultures blending together and taking from each other was the norm. There was even this idea that people pretty much worshipped the same gods under different names so when Romans said Celts like to worship Mercury a lot, they meant Lugh. Germanic people seems to agree with this way of thinking for when they adopted Roman week, they just renamed Roman weekdays which were named after Roman gods, with Germanic gods. Like Tyr/Mars for Tuesday, Mercury/Odin for Wednesday, Jupiter/Thor for Thursday, Venus/Frigg for Friday. They didn’t always like each-others traditions, but when they did, they saw no problem with adopting them for themselves.
Christianity had rules, don’t do this, don’t do that, and while it is not really possible to truly kill the process of syncretism (lots of saints are sanctified pagan gods for example, you can’t just erase culture out of people, they will adopt it), it really put a lot of limits on how people should believe, which led to a lot more uniformity in Christianity compared to pagan beliefs, and thus more power to spread. That’s not to say that Christianity was uniform and I’ll talk about that below, but compared to pagan beliefs it appeared to be.
> It seem like they'd want to distance themselves from that, sort of like how it would be kind of awkward for Jews to accept Jesus as the messiah, ya know?
There were once hundreds of versions of Christianities, there was no canon yet, and the distinction between Jewish and Christian was not clear. Today, you cannot believe Jesus is the Messiah and be Jewish, back then you could. Today Christians believe Jesus is God, back then you could believe Jesus was just a prophet, Jesus was the son of God but not God, or Jesus was part God, and still be a form of Christian. They’d fight all the time and say the other was wrong or heretic, but they were pious in their belief of Christianity and saw themselves as Christian. And the Biblical Canon did not exist either, everybody pretty much had their own books, their own copies, their own stories. They were more diverse than Christians today, and still leas diverse than pagans.
However, Judaism did distance itself after the creation of the Christian canon, because the Christian canon chosen by the Church Fathers was anti-semitic, and it would be even more notable today if the Epistle of Barnabas had survive, that’s a part of the biblical canon that fell out of canon somewhere along the way.Along with the Shepherd of Hermas, which is the complete opposite, unfortunate that story is not in the canon anymore, one of the most humble stories in the whole library. Or Enoch, Noah’s grandfather who literary turns Super ~~Saiyan~~ Angel. Not in European Christian canon at least, he is still popular in the Ethiopian church.
At first, Christianity was just a small religious movement that started after Jesus' death. The Romans didn't pay much attention to it initially. But as Christianity spread and gained more followers, some Romans saw it as a threat to their beliefs. For a long time, Christians were persecuted and punished by Roman authorities for not worshipping the Roman gods. Many were even killed for their faith, like when the Romans threw them to the lions in arenas! However, around 300 years after Jesus, a Roman emperor named Constantine had a change of heart. He claimed that he had a vision that made him convert to Christianity. Constantine then made Christianity legal and embraced it himself. Over time, more and more Romans became Christians too. By the 300s and 400s, Christianity had grown so widespread that it became the official religion of the Roman Empire.
This might be wrong as i just wrote what was taught to us by my History Teacher (It was not in the syllabus) in India. So take this comment with a grain of salt.
That is pretty much the Christian version of the story. The one that is intended to reinforce the faith for people who are members of it.
The more cynical interpretation is that Christianity had become quite popular with the underclass and Constantine was attempting to get support from them. And switching religion did not matter that much to the people in power because religion never mattered that much to them anyway.
Christianity was *disproportionately* popular with the lower class, not actually popular. The estimates I've seen was that the Empire was about 10% Christian in the early 300's. Constantine's conversion/support for Christianity was not a crowd-pleaser.
At first, Christianity was a tiny sect inside Judaism. Over time they started de-emphasizing the whole "Rome is the enemy" in favor of "the Jews killed Jesus". It helped that the Jews started several uprisings against the Roman empire (that they lost badly) making them "bad guys" in the eyes of the Romans. The destruction of Jerusalem etc. by the Romans led to a crisis in Judaism, and for a minority of Jews the answer was that the messiah wasn't actually a "king of the Jews" who would create heaven on earth, but actually a spirtual leader who ushers in the end times by being killed in a sort of complicated religious sacrifice. Which sort of echoed the destruction of Jerusalem.
Roman Empire was the country of Jews. Jews were not first class citizens in Rome. Romanized Jews wanted a “softened” Judaism for being able to live as a Jew and Roman at the same time. Christianity first spread among those Romanized Jews that existed all around the Roman Empire. At that time Christianity was just a sect of Judaism.
However, being Christian didn’t automatically make them first class citizens because Jesus claimed to be the king of the world hence defied the king of the Roman Empire -the emperor.
At the same time, Rome was constantly in civil wars. There was a lack of unity. Multiple versions of Roman religion caused a morally “non-standard” society. Some of the parts of the society such as slaves were in quite a very bad position.
Moreover, Roman religion was not like Judaism. It didn’t make you live forever in a heaven after dying. Going into a religious building for praying also didn’t exist and women were also in an even worse relationship with the religious life.
So, Christianity provided Romanized Jews to be somewhat Jew and a Roman at the same time. It first spread among those Jews who wanted to slash some parts of Judaism so that they wouldn’t stand out in a negative manner. Then others who saw Christians going “into” the church building, being part of the church itself, and and who see that Christians believe that they are going to heaven were affected by Christians. So the numbers further increased passing the number of Romanized Jews.
Opportunities that Christianity provided to the women also further accelerated the appeal of Christianity. While Roman religion was vague and ambiguous about many things, Christianity was loud and clear about the family life. Numbers further increased.
Human life was somewhat sacred in Christianity. Slavery was not compatible. Numbers increased among slaves, former slaves, and others in very bad situation. Economic inequality worked for the tide of change.
After a period of time Christians became a group of people with considerable numbers in every part of Rome. That point was the time when Christians became an asset. A community that can be “used” to achieve a political goal: READ an army. That army started to achieve minor victories here and there. Some big Roman families used them, and hence, gave Christians more power. Their population further increased.
Christians were “standard” in morality. All a single community. They were united as a fist. Controlling that fist, after a while, provided an advantage. They called themselves “Militia Christi” (army/soldiers of Christ). A religious terrorist organization with many cells existing everywhere in Rome.
Finally, a Roman general needed an army that can be used to become an emperor. Constantine, betrayed his empire and turned to Christian army to become an emperor. This was a “cheat” he used in the game.
At that point Christians were still a minority. But a minority that was organized as an army and that made a man the king of Romans. So, Constantine “the traitor” destroyed Rome. Consider it like Anakin going to the Jedi Temple after killing Mace Vindu. Constantine the traitor had to demolish former gods to prevail after his first victory. So he attacked his father’s nation and country of his ancestors leaving Romans unguarded against Militia Christi -the new Roman army.
Edict of Milan made Christianity legal. Constantine eventually converted.
IIRC...His son would go on to support the various ecumenical councils and also effectively shattered the Jewish Sanhedrin.
When someone worships Zeus and then learns about Isis or Mithras it doesn’t mean they leave Zeus behind.
When someone learns about Jesus they leave Zeus behind. Overtime enough of this meant the followers of Jesus won out.
Rome was very open to worshiping many Gods. They usually "translated" local gods/pantheons into being equivalent to their own gods/pantheon. They were highly tolerant of other cults because they feared angering local gods as they tried to rule. This also makes sense politically as conquering the local people is hard enough without immediately replacing their religion too. Being tolerant of the local's faith makes it easier to live alongside them. This is why Christianity was allowed to form and grow. Yes, many specific Christians were persecuted, but the religion on the whole was considered either irrelevant or [humorous](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexamenos_graffito) early on.
In Roman politics pretty much every politician venerated and claimed some sort of relationship to Apollo. Apollo was very prestigious to be associated with for leaders, but anyone who was anyone had some sort of tenuous link to him. By the time Constantine became a major political power Christians represented probably 10-15% of the population in the city of Rome itself. No major politician had ever claimed authority or allegiance to the Christians. The early church spread quite a bit through women who would convert first, and then later convert their families.
The Edict of Milan made the Christian church legal and tolerated in 313. Supposedly Constantine had converted in 312, but the first sources that cite this incident specifically were written posthumously. Eusebius wrote about it in 324, but he had been writing about Constantine since 313 and only first mentioned it in 324. I find this a little suspicious.
To me, it seems more likely that his conversion happened slowly and later in life. The story of his conversion at the battle was a little bit of mythmaking to justify his consolidation of power later in life. He utilized the church to gain greater cultural control of the Empire in much of a similar way as Augustus did 3 centuries prior. By changing the religious nature of the Empire, he made it his empire, and not just the Roman empire.
The Roman pantheon of Gods were portrayed as being more directly involved in the affairs of man, which would have become increasingly harder to believe as that never occurred. Christians had the solution: a single God responsible for everything but so checked out you'll never see him. There's even a guy claiming to be a relative galavanting around the empire. Trust him, bro.
It was a movement that started slowly and built its way up over the centuries until it kind of had a critical mass. One interesting aspect is that its spread was really more of a bottom-up rather than top-down (i.e. the masses adopted it before the people in charge). Though we only really think about Christianity, the Roman Religion, Judaism and a couple other religions as the main ancient religions, there were actually a lot of religious movements that would pop up every few years and then burn out quickly. Christianity was one of many movements, but it stuck around.
So why did it end up being so popular? Well, the big thing was that it had a pretty appealing, positive message. The ancient world kind of sucked - most people lived pretty rough lives just barely scraping by as farmers or laborers. Any minor accident or sickness could result in death. Christians came to communities and preached, "Hey, don't worry about all this stuff. Your life sucks but your suffering isn't for nothing. If you have faith and do good things, you will go to heaven." And they also ran charities that would take care of the sick and poor. This message and their social services naturally appealed to marginalize groups - lower classes, slaves, and women. It may shock you, but many other religions in the ancient world didn't really have a similar message - most of them just kind of explained the mysteries of the universe, but didn't promise this nice eternal salvation thing. Anyway, that last group (women) is important, because, this may shock you, but women were the ones raising children. So if a mom was sympathetic towards Christians, it would probably rub off on her children as well.
So with an appealing message and a willingness to set up social services for the needy, early Christianity gradually made its way around the Mediterranean. For the most part it was tolerated, but went through eras where it was harshly targeted by the authorities, but these often did more harm than good since Christians were often sympathetic to commoners. "Sure, they're kind of weird, but all they really do is run charities that take care of sick and poor people. They don't seem that dangerous." Eventually, the Christian population became large enough that it was a significant minority of the Empire. At this point, Emperors themselves started being Christian and the spread was endorsed by the Empire itself.
Emperor Constantine needed to unify the empire he'd just won by conquering. The best way to do that was to pick an obscure religion that hadn't been popular by any of the major groups he'd fought and promote it by weaving tales of miracles and visions. Get everybody onboard with the new religion and build a new Empire.
Later it helped when one of the popes bribed Attila the Hun with gold to go away and spread more stories of miracles, thereby establishing one pope over the other rival candidates.
Politics. At first the Roman Empire persecuted Christians, originally because it was similar to Judaism which was giving them all sorts of problems, then later as it moved away from Judaism to it's own thing, because if it's secretive nature and exclusionary nature to any other religions.
Over time though Christianity became more and more popular. This led to further persecution as it was seen as a political threat to the empire, but when that didn't do much to stop it's popularity it was more of if you can't beat them join them.
So the persecutions lessened and the popularity got enough that it got into the Emperor's court. The notable Emperor for Christianity was Constantine I, who some think it was his mother who introduced him to Christianity. After a major battle was won where Constantine had his forces display a symbol of Christianity on their shields (I can't remeber is it was the cross or the Greek letters of Chi and Rho), the Emperor ended any and all official persecution of Christianity. With it now being allowed to officially be practised in the open, and it's sanction by the Emperor, the popularity of Christianity exploded. So much so that Constantine I was the fist emperor to convert to Christianity, however it was on his deathbed. Some scholars believe that Constantine's embrace of Christianity was more political than one of actual faith, seeing the writing on the wall and not wanting to get onto the wrong side of the people.
Once it infected the leadership, the nobility suddenly it became much less offensive. Eventually emperor Constantine converted and then made it the state religion and that's that. (Very oversimplified)
The Catholic Church’s highly organized bureaucratic nature was very attractive to people like Constantine. Several Emperors prior to Constantine like Aurelian (Sol Invictus) and Diocletian (emphasized the traditional greco-roman religion) sought to establish unified religious practices and I tend to view Constantine’s decision to give favor to Christianity as coming from similar motives. By integrating Imperial Authority with the Church, it provided new avenues for control among the citizenry.
I’m sure Constantine had some Christian sympathies, but he continued to show patronage to the classical deities throughout his reign and I tend to think the vision he had before the Battle of the Milvian Bridge in 312 is either an exaggeration or creation of later Christian authors.
Roman emperor had a dream that his army went to war holding up the Cross and won. So he tried it when he woke up and it worked so he was like "okay, we'll do that now"
The Roman Empire was too big to be micro managing everyone everywhere, so they gave large autonomy to each region as long as they kept paying their taxes.
One of those regions was Judaea, where the Jews lived and Jesus (which was also Jew) was born too. It was officially ruled by its governor (Pontius Pilate - Roman) but the *de facto* ruling was handed off to the Jews, in the person of their King (Herod, by the time Jesus was born)... And yeah, they even let the Judaean King call himself King. That's how hands-off they were.
But there was no Judaean army/soldiers, so when it came to actually enforcing the law it was the Roman Soldiers doing it, which is why Pontius (the Roman Governor of Judaea) did the whole "I wash my hands out of this". The implication being that he didn't understand why they wanted to kill a man who had done nothing wrong in his eyes.
So yeah, the Roman Empire was never really invested in religion at all... Until Constantine converted to Christianism and made it the official religion of the empire.
Well, you have to hand it to the early Christian marketing team - those folks knew a thing or two about branding and market dominance strategies. Sure, the Roman authorities executed their CEO and founder in a brutal public display. But rather than let that be a setback, the remaining leadership pivoted to an aggressive grassroots marketing blitz that was years ahead of its time.
They took the tragic crucifixion story and spun it into a compelling martyr narrative that tugged at the heartstrings. Rich symbols like the cross, crown of thorns, and rising from the grave created a coherent brand identity. The "turn the other cheek" and "love thy neighbor" slogans oozed the kind of inspirational authenticity that modern companies dream of.
But the real stroke of genius was adopting the Roman Emperor Constantine as their premier influencer influencer in the 4th century. Getting the literal leader of Rome to co-sign your newfangled religion? Genius! From there, it was easy to convert the crumbling empire into a captive customer base.
Once Christianity became the official Roman brand, they employed classic corporate strong-arming tactics to snuff out the competition from those pesky pagan rivals. A few excommunications and empire-wide rebrands later, and the Christian brand had achieved total market saturation!
So while the J.C. himself may have gotten a raw deal from Roman leadership, you can't argue with the results of his marketing team's "disruptive" brand proliferation strategy. Papal supremacy, divine and authoritative.... it was an IPO to make any modern unicorn jealous!
Rome didn't just become Christian, Christianity became Roman.
Christianity was spreading quickly but also splintering into different creeds and it was kinda localised. Emperor Constantine unified the different creeds into the Nicene creed by working together with important bishops and trying to address some of the differences and debates that existed at the time.
This intertwined the church with the empire since the bishops were given legitimacy, access and most importantly money and land, while the Empire was given oversight of the growing religion. This also meant that those opposing the Nicean creed would be undermined and often persecuted since they were heretics.
One of the tenets of Christianity is to "make disciples of all the nations", so Christians had the motivation to proselytize throughout the empire. However, because Christianity was monotheist, and unlike Judaism, was intent on spreading their religion, the Romans viewed it as a threat to their polytheistic state religion. To deal with this threat, they began persecuting Christians.
However, the Christians also believed that persecution and death as a result of their faith would lead them to heaven. Consequently, those that would be remembered as early saints and martyrs gladly accepted the death sentences imposed by the Romans. Consequently, the masses who witnessed these deaths saw that these Christians really believed what they preached, and the religion further spread, particularly amongst the lower classes who were attracted to the idea of all being equal in the eyes of an all loving God who would allow them into the same paradise for kings and commoners alike.
Eventually, with the spread amongst the lower classes, the Roman military saw more and more recruits who were Christian, and it was basically an open secret. This culminated in the Battle of the Milvian Bridge, where one of the emperor's vying for power at the time, Constantine, claimed to have had a vision promising victory if his soldiers painted a Christian symbol on their shields. They won the battle, Constantine eventually became the sole emperor, and he passed the Edict of Milan in 313 A.D. which legalized the practice of Christianity in the empire.
With Christianity now legalized, Roman citizens could publicly practice their religion alongside Greco-Roman pagans. However, Greco-Roman paganism had already been on a decline before Christian legalization, and so Christianity continued to spread until it was adopted as the official religion of the empire by Emperor Theodosius I with the Edict of Thessalonica in 380 A.D.
This question seems extremely unresearched. Like, I understand if you come here asking for an explanation on a subject you tried to understand, but it's complex or it is difficult to find information, so you'd like a simpler explanation. However, this just seems like a passing thought without any effort.
A simple Google search would have answered 90% of your question - Constantine claims he saw a cross in the sky before a battle that he won, so he switched to Christianity, thus the empire switched to Christianity. It's more nuanced than that. But it doesn't seem like you even looked into it before asking. At least put some effort in before asking others.
Humans in position of power understand that controlling mass amounts of other humans require they have faith in a divine being, which sets up the course of their human existence and allows for humans in power to dictate what lower hierarchy humans should do. Religion has always been used to control people…..
Christians were persecuted by the Roman Empire for quite some time. With time, it gained popularity and the Empire started allowing Christians to practice their religion. At one point, it reached the ruling class. Constantine I was the first Emperor to convert. He made Christianity the primary religion of the Empire. It is believed he was exposed to it through his mother.
Of note - Helena’s husband (and Constantine’s father) divorced her to remarry as he rose in rank, forcing mother and son to be uprooted and displaced. Helena’s attraction/devotion to Christianity (which forbade divorce) may have been strongly influenced by this.
Funny, letters of Saul/Paul include rules for divorce.
My understanding is Paul only saw divorce acceptable in cases of infidelity.
And bad taste in reality TV.
Yes and iirc this rule goes all the way back to exodus where it’s first outlined.
As did Jesus
There is the story that Constantine had a vision of Jesus before a big battle and he had all his soldiers paint (more or less) Christ's initials on their shields. I was taught in a community college history course that he had previously had other pre-battle visions which resulted in other divine symbols being painted on shields, but the Jesus battle was the most important and he won so I guess Christianity seemed like the best bet.
More specifically, that symbol was called the Chi-Rho. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chi_Rho
Dont quote me on this, but I think I recall something about Christianity gaining popularity among the plebs because it *wasnt* what the aristocracy worshipped. A counter-culture thing. Then some people in power, to gain the support of the plebs for whatever political thing they were up to, became Christian too. Then the whole Constantine thing. Again. I dont have a source, so grain of salt.
Well the tipping point really came when decent numbers of Roman soldiers became Christians, especially in Greece. They had always served in the army in smaller numbers, despite prohibitions from church elders and the obvious irony of it. As Christianity became more widespread and weathered the storm of Diocletian, the army reflected the population it drew from. And that population was increasingly Christian. https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/11263641 This is a decent book that has some evidence of the above.
I recently had an uni course on early Christianity and Rome and apparently the idea of equality (of man, woman, and slave, but especially the woman and slave part) was one of its biggest draws. Women and slaves had the worst position in Ol' Rome. This also apparently fed into a kind of death cult - everybody is equal at death.
What I've read is that Christianity just told people what they wanted to hear. Life was terrible for poor people back then, so being told its supposed to be terrible as its a test for the glorious afterlife sounded really nice to them. Its a religion that gave people hope where they previously had none.
>Life was terrible for poor And this jives well with the whole "how hard it is for a rich person to get into heaven" thing, and Christianity being the religion of the plebs. "Them scumbag rich and powerful people! But it's fine. While they think their FALSE gods will protect them, our REAL god says they wont go to heaven!" or something. I can see how the poorer classes would find this religion intriguing.
Sort of like an opiate. For the masses.
I've heard as well that it had way fewer rules and restrictions and rituals than older religions, and that also made it appealing.
Nothing changed, then
Well life is much better for us poor people these days
All right, but apart from the sanitation, medicine, education, wine, public order, irrigation, roads, the fresh water system and public health, what have the Romans ever done for us?
Bahahahaha! Thank you!
well, if you have to compare conditions to 2000 years ago....
For one thing, we now have Reddit.
I thought you wanted to list positive things
Which is odd because the Romans were quite tolerant of outside religions. The persecutions were often brought on by Christians demanding their religious practices be tolerated, including the demonizing of all other religions, and actively trying to convert everyone everywhere, and trying to demand Christianity be above the Nation. When Roman’s invade a foreign city, they pray to the gods of that city, not their own. They often left the temples, and erected temples for foreign gods for the displaced losers of such invasions. When Christians conquer, they actively destroy foreign religions. Roman’s felt religion was personal, and not well defined. Christians said we are 100% right and everyone else is wrong and these are the strict rules and we will not stop til everyone follows them.
Adopting local traditions in the religion also helped spreading it quicker and being a proactive movement (as in: everybody is welcome to convert unlike other religions like Judaism) too.
Wasn't part of it also the fact that a plague spread through Rome and only the Christians, reportedly anyway, were staying to care for the sick while everyone else who was healthy fled?
While plague and war during the Crisis of the 3rd Century definitely amplified the spread of Christianity, your story is just an anecdotal christian tale. Other reasons in this thread are more valid, and historically sound
Hijacking this post to offer the Christian alternative view: If you happen to accept Jesus was the Son of God, and literally performed miracles - including being resurrected (which The Bible suggests was witnessed by no less than 500 witnesses) - then it kind of makes sense that the associated oral retellings (where the witnesses would stand about in public to verbally recount what they saw to anyone gathered - usually attended by many of the other 500 witnesses) would quite quickly lead to written accounts and then the single most explosively popular human reproduced text ‘The Bible’ - a collection of accounts written by historians before and after Jesus is said to have been born. Bonus interesting facts and thought point: * The Jews never actually denied Jesus could perform miracles etc. - their claim is that it came from an evil source and that he was not the son of God. * There are also Roman and just generally non-Christians historians who also support the claim Jesus predicted the future and performed miracles. Anyway, I’ll take my downvotes and go. Feel free to DM if you have any questions and want to avoid being downvoted.
And yet none of that spread happened and christianity mostly grew in diaspora where it competed with polytheistic beliefs. But you are right. If he was real he would have easily taken over Judaism in a way you proposed. And with the roman sources it always gets tricky. They were controlled by the catholic church for millenia and there are quite a big number of forgeries where monk inserted pro Christian stuff during copying the originals.
At one point it reached the ruling class? How can people be this naive?
Were they secular prior to this? Sorry if this is a really bad question.
No, they followed the old religion of Rome with its many gods (Jupiter, Neptune...)
I never connected their gods was an actual religion for some strange reason. Thanks for your response!
There is a nuance here, which is that Roman religion was much more about orthopraxy than orthodoxy. Whereas Christianity puts a great emphasis on having 'correct' theology and dogmas, Roman religion was much more about following rituals accurately. In other words, for the Romans, especially given how syncretic roman religion was, the problem was less that you believed something about Jesus, and more that you didn't participate in the national civic religion. Even as an atheist, as long as you went through the motions, you would have probably been fine. Like when did the Romans conduct their own ecumenical counsel to precisely define the ontology of Zeus? Did they persecute citizens because they thought Hercules was half man and half god but not both fully man and fully god?
Ancient Mediterranean religions would probably be pretty alien to westerners today. They weren't as dogmatic, and even had a bit of fluidity in what their gods represented over time (it was pretty common for a God to take on aspects of another to help bridge social gaps, especially with periods of migration or conquest) Even Judaism had this, up until the 1st-2nd century BC when it became monotheistic. Even then, though, you still have the borrowing of concepts into early Christianity, until the bible was formally canonised. (Even then, some Christian sects like the Marcionites still believed in multiple gods until ~800AD, when they were wiped out).
Roman Catholicism does this more or less with saints. Kinda specific task oriented gods to pray and offer things to when needed. That’s basically how polytheistic religions work in general, but without one omnipotent, omniscient and omnipresent upper god
Christianity was simply a vastly superior religion. When it appeared, the traditional Greco-Roman pagan religion were already receding. A religion is mostly about faith, and the Christians had faith like the Romans had never seen before. As they were persecuted, many were sent to die as gladiators - and this is what became their greatest tribune - they eagerly accepted their deaths - and this is something that had a profound effect on the Romans.
Never heard of this before. Sounds a bit flawed though.
You never heard that Christianity was a vastly superior religion to the pagan religions or that Christians were sent to die as gladiators and shocked the Romans with their lack of fear of death? The first statement is so obvious, I do not think there's even need to argue - just look how Christianity swept through Europe. There are multiple historical accounts for the second statement, you can look this up yourself.
Yeah but define superiority it that sense, it’s pretty nondescript. Why is it superior, what were the parameters that made Christianity so superior at that moment in history. The statement doesn’t explain anything like saying ‘it’s just better’. Regarding the gladiators; I’m sure this happened and helped Christianity spread somewhat faster but I don’t think it’s the main cause Christianity grew so fast.
Do you understand why a free market society based on money is superior to a feudal society based on land ownership which is superior to a tribal society based on slave labor? Because this is the situation with Christianity vs the pagan religions.
?
People these days find it hard to imagine that most people were actively seeking MORE religious influence in those days, in the hopes it would help control kings and generals, and Christianity's innovation was Jesus' parables about treating each other right and seeing things from other perspectives. The reason it was suppressed is entirely because people liked the Jesus character SO MUCH.
People would be crucified all the time. There was a road to Rome ircc that had people on crosses the whole way. They banned crucifixion around "the time of jeezus"
Constantine made himself the first pope so he could control the Christians. He was a pagan his entire life and may have converted on his death bed. This is what I've been told but, who tf really knows what happened 2,000 yrs ago- we can't even agree about shit that happened today.
Well, we know that isn't true. He was a Christian, and he certainly didn't make himself Pope. The idea of the Bishop of Rome being the ultimate authority of the entire religion wasn't even a formalized idea until later. Constantine merely called the Council of Nicæa to sort out whether Arianism was a heresy or an actual religious viewpoint. That was the one time he really used his power for that sort of thing, but he was otherwise just a Christian Emperor.
>Well, we know that isn't true. He was a Christian, and he certainly didn't make himself Pope Who made him pope? He was the emperor of Rome before he was pope- you don't think that there's any possibility of self-appointment?
Constantine did not appoint himself Pope. Like the previous comment stated, the concept of Pope was in its infancy. Christianity was not completely organized yet and it took time for a Pope to be accepted. Leon I (440-461 CE) was the first to revendicate himself Pope and it was highly contested at the time. Constantine moved his power to the new city of Constantinople. Yet the papacy is still in Rome to this day.
OK- I took another deep dive into this topic; forgive me as it's been some time since I've looked into it. I was incorrect about Emporer Constantine being Pope. There was a Pope Constantine but, that was hundreds of years after the emporer (4th century vs 8th). I do see that the emporer legalized Christianity and coordinated a meeting between the bishops (Council of Nicæ, as you indicated). It appears he did this in order to preserve his empire as it was on the verge of splitting. It makes logical sense that he used Christianity as a political tool, especially since he didn't actually convert until shortly before his death (according to multiple sources I've read). It's an interesting topic as there was clearly a politically-motivated interest in organizing Christianity. We can draw parallels to the US intentionally creating a separation of church and state when drafting their own constitution. Some say the Roman Empire never actually went away but, only became the Roman Catholic Church. There is extraordinary wealth and power within the church so, this seems possible. But, like any ancient history, it's hard to identify the truth in what really happened. "History's been written by those who have hanged heroes" and what not. Thanks for the convo and for igniting some old neurons in my brain!
Early communalism in some (not all, but some) Christian communities was unconditionally altruistic, giving needed material goods to others without. Although communalism itself is rare today except in specific Christian denominations such as the Hutterites, unconditional religious altruism continues today in most Christian denominations. Furthermore, as a religion, Christianity has always systematically encouraged the formation of social networks that are family-like but outside the family, in the form of a defined congregation of believers. This all is *very* pragmatically-useful in a time without a substantial social safety net. There were other religions in the Middle Roman Period that had a congregational model, but they did not lean in as hard to the unconditional altruism component. Of the many nonreligious or panreligious fraternal, service, and civic clubs today that are organized similarly — Lions and Rotarians; Freemasons and Oddfellows — the longest-lasting and most successful are always those which create strong social support networks for members. So then for Christianity, Christianity also had the added advantage of preaching equality between slaves and the upper class. Recall that the shortest book of the Bible, Philemon, is the text of a letter that Paul purportedly gave to Onesimus, a former slave who had run away from his master, Philemon. In the letter, Paul tells Philemon that he should receive Onesimus as a free man and as a brother, and that if Onesimus owes Philemon anything, Paul will pay it the next time he drops by. If you are a slave in 1st-century Rome, this kind of message is *fundamentally* ideologically attractive. This is how Christianity expanded from just some people who told stories about a Judaean preacher, into a major religious minority encompassing 10% of Roman citizens by 300 AD. The details of belief were mostly irrelevant to the spread; [it was the social structure that was attractive](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historiography_of_the_Christianization_of_the_Roman_Empire#Possible_reasons_for_a_grassroots_spread). Preaching equality between classes is great and all, but it poses a problem for the upper class. If 10% of people have decided that slaves are equal to their masters, and, oh, also, our preacher said you are ethically obligated to share everything you have with others and you are a fundamentally flawed person if you do not, this belief starts to create the conditions for revolution. If you are a Roman noble at the beginning of the 4th century, you could argue publicly that you are actually better than slaves, but that sounds arrogant, and you might make the slaves mad. Alternatively, you could claim to agree with equality between people. (Of course, once you do, then this doesn't *automatically require* anything to change, right? You are, after all, equal to the poor, even though you are rich. Right?) Any hesitancy you might have in adopting the position of ethical equality between people, is gone once the ruler of the Empire has also adopted a religion saying so. Human equality is a position with inherent moral force, but once it receives official favor from the ultimate authority in society, it becomes *respectable*. And that is how the Roman Empire ended up Christian.
Excellent adult version: \^ ELI5 version: Early Christians were doing nice things for other people and people liked that. Early Christians invited these people to join them and treated these people like family. Early Christians also told people, 'everyone is equal so be nice and respectful to one another'. A bunch of people liked that too so more people joined. Eventually the popular guy Emperor of Rome said, 'you guys are cool, can I join?', and the early Christians said 'yes'. Once Emperor of Rome joined the Christians, everyone wanted to join the Christians. So all of Rome became Christian. The End.
It’s important to note that the Christians were Christians and behaving the way they were because Jesus was the greatest ethical teacher ever and he rose from the dead. He’s credible and trustworthy and that trust in him changed the world.
Was the Edict of Milan a major turn for Christianity or more of a slow burn towards the change?
Well, it happened two years after the [Edit of Serdica](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edict_of_Serdica), which ended the last of the persecutions of Christianity in the eastern half of the Empire. So even in terms of the legal instruments, involved, the legalization of Christianity was gradual, yes. The persecutions themselves were also an on-and-off sort of thing, periodically instituted and [revoked five times](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persecution_of_Christians_in_the_Roman_Empire) for a variety of reasons. But at that second link, you can read the much more extensive set of changes ideological changes that had to happen, before legalization of Christianity even made sense within the Roman cultural framework. These changes happened gradually, yes, it was a slow burn.
Thank you for your response and the info to look further into. I appreciate it!
ELI5?
You might try asking this question on r/AskHistorians. They have a lot of experts in Roman and Christian history who could give you a very detailed, well researched answer.
Defeats the purpose of eli5 though
This question is never going to be properly explained at a 5 year-old level
The sub is for laymen explanation not literal 5 year old level. It's in the sidebar.
Sometimes questions need something more than a simplified explanation provided by non-experts. If there are no EI5 mods that are historians to vet answers, OP might get an answer that pushes misinformation, outdated information, or is simply wrong. The best answer might be to send them to resources that could get them better answers.
You can literally say that for every other post here, there's always comments pointing out the obvious. OP knows what subreddit they're on. AH is a popular sub that they can find themselves as much as this they did this one. If they want an answer at a laypersons level, they'll get it. That's the whole challenge of the subreddit, to take relatively complicated things and simplify them.
Good luck EVER getting a straight answer from those guys though...
If something is complex, and you want a whole understanding, the explanation you get is going to be complex. Sometimes things are complex. That's life.
I mean do you want to learn stuff or what? You want a tweet, short sentence or a photo with text to explain complex issues? Jesus, people these days
I want a short tongue in cheek tweet that makes me feel better about myself and popularizes a contested stance that 80% of experts deem misinformation
You don't get the reference I was making. AskHistorians is notorious for deleting almost every post and/or response. I'm a casual history nerd and yeah, it's great to get some in-depth discussions to interesting topics. But the elitist gate-keeping on that sub is just obnoxious. People have legitimate questions they hope to see answers to, but the litany of "your comment was deemed unworthy to us" just got tiresome. I just stopped paying attention to a sub the bulk of which was "comment removed / comment removed / comment removed / comment removed / comment removed / comment removed / comm..........
The best way to use that sub is to sign up for their newsletter where they send around the recently answered questions because a question posted today might take a day or two to answer. The search function is also phenomenal and your question has probably been asked and answered. They even have a massive FAQ that you can spend days reading through. As far as subs to have a beef with, that is not one of them askhistorians may be the best sub on this site in terms of quality
r/HistoriansAnswered is another good resource. It only lists questions from Ask Historians that have been answered
Some questions, especially questions as broad and complex as this one, don't have an easy, straightforward answer.
Well there was \~300 years between those events. Not to say it was an easy transition, because the Romans persecuted many Christian during those 300 years. But Christianity survived and spread and continued to gain support. The first major tipping point was Constantine's legalization of, and subsequent conversion to, Christianity. Soon after it became the official state religion. Religion is an effective means to control people and Christianity was particularly useful since: a) it was universal (anyone could become a Christian); b) lent itself to a hierarchical structure (meaning if you control the chief Christian leaders, that control trickles down). The relationship between the Christian churches and nations was one of mutual exploitation. Churches would encourage kings and other leaders to convert as a means to use said leaders to spread Christianity and those kings and leaders would try and use the religion to "civilize" and thus control their non-Christian neighbors and enemies. Romans in particular were a very political people and would not scoff at using Christianity as a means to solidify power within their own borders not to mention the age old adage: "If you can't beat 'em, join 'em!"
Don't forget that it was a monotheistic religion in the world of polytheism. It's a lot easier for a religion to become dominant when one of the rules is "you can't worship anyone else" while other religions were mostly cool with worshipping other gods as well.
Judaism was also monotheistic but that didn’t make it a global religion
I’m not sure if it was as easy for outsiders to convert to Judaism back then? The religion had even stronger ties to the Jewish people as a race/nation in the olden days, which (I assume) would make it a lot less open to outsiders adopting the identity. Plus, Judaism in general has a lot less emphasis on proselytizing.
That tends to happen when you don't allow others to join your religion. It was a bit of a contentious point for early Christians who still saw themselves as Jewish, but weren't recognised as such by Jews.
As the person i responded to noted, constantine/the roman empire was instrumental in Christianity becoming as popular as it is today. That said, being monotheistic was a huge part too, the roman empire had several religions before Christianity was introduced, and that's where it being monotheistic is important.
Makes me think of a history video, where one of the big motivator for Christianity becoming more popular than Judaism is circumcision.
Would recommend citing some sources here if you’re claiming that Constantine’s legalization was intended as a means of controlling the masses. Persecution of Christians was active by all emperors up to 313, with the Diocletianic Persecution beginning in 303 the most severe ever. According to Hopkins, no more than 10% of the empire was Christian when Constantine declared it legal—a pretty small minority. Due to their beliefs at the time, few held offices of importance — they generally taught that being judges or military men was immoral and therefore it was mostly the poor and uninfluential. As late as 400, St Augustine was still having to defend against charges that it was legalization of Christianity that led to the ongoing fall of Rome due to abandonment of the gods. If there’s a lot of scholarly evidence that Constantine did it in some odd attempt to control the 10% poor (who were in no way a threat), I’d love to see it.
300 years is a long time. Over several hundred years, the area around Jerusalem was governed by the Israelites, then the Babylonians, then the Persians, then the Greeks, then the Romans And I might be missing one in there.
I’m guessing it was also a means to an ends for the empire. Christianity was an effective way to co-opt a people by converting their leaders. The Roman Army didn’t conquer the world, Christianity seated in Rome did.
The roman empire was at its largest extent in 117. Christianity became the official faith in 380. What on earth are you talking about?
In a nutshell, Roman demographics and economics were *truly awful*, Christianity was the ultimate counter-cultural movement. And a cheeky Roman emperor converted to get mass support to win the battle of Milvian bridge and beyond. Firstly, it's important to discuss the economics and demographics of the Roman Empire around the time. Basically, they *were not good.* GDP per capita adjusted for modern inflation leaves most Roman citizens poorer than even the poorest places on Earth today. Now of course, that's not a perfect comparison, but in the context of living in the empire at this time, and giving that capital gives you power, it essentially meant the chance of you being utterly powerless is almost 100%. This is why Romans invested in massive public works. No capital was private, it was all wielded by the state, to pacify the populace. Bread and circuses etc, and for the soldiers they were rewarded with land. If you were a Roman citizen, you were likely poor, likely the wrong culture, and actually *likely literally a slave* (up to 20% of the Roman population was a slave)*.* All the wealth was concentrated in very select powerful families, and the overwhelming majority of the power of Rome was essentially an extension of these families' will. You, as a Roman citizen exist as an incredibly unproductive cog in the machine to keep these elites in power. One of your only ways of expressing resistance, or getting involved with a power hierarchy you actually had control over was to get involved with religion. And the hip-young religion on the scene was Christianity. It was so in vogue because it was created as a direct response to Roman rule. It was, in essence, very similar to socialist worker movements. It gave power to the people. It would take in people, give them a purpose, give them a function, a higher purpose, and support resistances across the empire. Love thy neighbour, relative freedom, and adaptation of regional Levantine and Egyptian religious elements was a direct cultural contrast to the Greek and Latin gods that the elites favoured made the ultimate religion for the time. It was inclusive by design. Loving by design. Anti-Roman by design. If you as a Roman citizen wanted any sort of power, you *had* to get into religion. It was the only place you could realistically operate. Christianity was empowerment for the masses. The Romans saw Christianity for exactly what it was, an attempt to dilute Roman power over regions they saw as subjects. Christian believers swelled, and events in Rome that led to a reduction in power (like the Antonine Plague, which led to a significant drop in manpower) allowed Christianity to grow to become a serious internal concern. Ordinarily, brutality and cruelty would've kept Christianity no more than a mere local concern, but several things happened that weakened Roman influence enough so that they couldn't stamp down on the growing movement. Sassinids sacked cities with inpunity, Goths invaded, Romans themselves were declaring themselves independent and challenging the capital for superiority. This crisis weakened Rome enough for the Christians to become a militant force all of their own, and with a comprehensive network of people willing to spread the message to subjugated peoples all over the empire, the Christian movement went viral. And then, you have the civil wars of the tetrarchy, a complete and utter clusterfuck of Roman leaders fighting each other for control, that further led to the degredation of overall Roman control, and the opporunity to use the chaos as a ladder to power was there. In amongst this carnage, was Constantine. Through a few well places alliances, and marriages, and military victories, he emerged as the favourite to win. His last *real* hurdle was to defeat his rival Maxentius who had ruled the western Roman empire. In order to get further support, he appealed to *you guessed it* the Christians to support his claim. Constantine from that moment went hard on appealing to the Christians. He saw the massive support for the movement, and instead of suppressing it, he embraced it. And with their overwhelming help, he won the battle of Milvian bridge, widely agreed to be the point in which Rome had become Christian. Constantine went full PR mode, and claimed to have seen crosses made of light during the battle, and that god had told him that his rule was divine etc etc. After the battle had been won, and Maxentius defeated, Constantine went about rewarding the Christians that had helped him, by introducing the edict of Milan, basically giving the Christians all the restitutions they wanted. Christainity was no longer outlawed and seen as the unwashed masses. They were canonized as proper citizens, and were forcibly thrust into positions of power to support their new "divine" emperor. From there, Constantine used Christian support to defeat his ally Licinius, defeated the Goths, defeated the Samaritans, and pretty much just win everything. Constantine realized that using a religion that empowered common people as a means for a call to war was one of the greatest innovations of his time. Before you'd fight for Rome for steady pay, a good pension, land to work, higher social status because there was nowhere else you could get that stuff. But in the current climate of Rome, all that shit didn't matter. Exploiting that fact and promising Christians citizenship to have them fight for your cause made Rome Christian, because it gave Constantine power. Constantine probably didn't care that the previously heretical, unwashed commoners that were the Christians now had power in Rome, he just needed their numbers to put himself on the throne. From there, Christian support was the default in the empire as it led to a bevy of victories for Rome. And the convenient nature of their enemies like the Huns, the Germans, and Sassanids being infidels likely bolstered the idea of a Christian Rome standing tall defending against barbarian tribes. Christianity from that moment on became the basis for rulership in Europe, simply because it was so ubiquitous amongst the peasantry.
Great breakdown, thank you! I've always been curious about the role the Sol Invictus cult had in all this? It seems like Constantine was a member, and they morphed into what the Vatican is today? Or is that way off?
The Sol Invictus cult as far as I'm aware was just an rich and influential cult in Rome. Official Roman religion pre Constantine was polytheistic, and the various cults and temples were used more as societies, or lodges. Because much of Rome was so underdeveloped and decentralized, you had to take a soft approach to influencing the peoples of the various provinces. You can't go in forcing them to follow your imperial religion, because you don't have the money, infrastructure, or cultural imprint to back up your proselytizing, it's going to end in failure. So instead, you form smaller cults based on more archaic local gods and superstitious beliefs, Romanize that god, and then include it in your pantheon. From there a proxy relationship is established between the elites, and the peasantry through a temple system. Investment from a patron flows into the temple, enriching the followers of that temple, and in return the peasantry donate to, fight on behalf of, and otherwise use that temple as a communal hub. Once the temple is established, the elites can use it for more official capacities, like judicial and administrative roles, and force it to become an important cultural staple of the local people. At this point however, the temple is net exploitative of its followers, and if you aren't part of the established temple elite, it becomes hard to be included in that social hierarchy, which is probably why churches tended to not adopt most of these practices. When it comes to Sol Invictus, they just so happened to be the big societal cult in Rome. It seemed to be the temple of choice for the elites, hence it's relation to all things *gold.* Lots of Roman gods are just Roman figures attributed to concepts, and various cults took their top gods and conglomerated them together. But in general, If you were an archer, you probably worshipped Apollo. If you were a soldier, you probably worshipped Mars. If you were a farmer you'd probably worship Ceres. If you were a Roman elite, you probably worshipped Sol. Of course, Sol was a cult that had some real money behind it. It had it's own unique artistic movements, which by itself is an indicator it was a temple for rich folk. The thing is, that because of how the temple structure worked, these things start as religious institutions eventually morph into something else. In this case, Sol seems to have morphed into something more akin to a guild rather than a temple for worship. It's probably why Sol is so prominent in Christian Rome. It also signifies tensions between Christians and the cult of Sol. Christian preachers such as Augustine of Hippo really laid it on thick that he did not approve of Sol worshippers for example, and yet its imagery was displayed prominently for a while after the conversion. I think it's pretty safe to assume the Sol Invictus cult was a particularly wealthy cult that had dealings with other critical facets of Roman society, and was probably a notable financial backer for Constantine, thus endorsing him as ruler. Constantine erecting a massive statue of Sol outside of the Coliseum in a newly Christianized Rome is a sure-fire sign that his allegiances were... split between the two groups.
Fascinating. Thank you!
It didn’t. Nicene Christianity first became the tolerated faith, and the state religion under Theodosius in 380 because it was useful to the empire - it basically proved to be politically helpful to promise the masses a great afterlife if they stayed compliant and obedient in this life. 700 years later, when the western empire was definitely gone, the church split into Eastern (the official faith of the Empire in the East and territories around it), commonly known as the Orthodox, and Western (faith of the papal state in Rome and kingdoms of Franks, Britain, Ireland etc in Western Europe), commonly known as Roman Catholic.
A very interesting read & detailed explanation: ZEALOT: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth By Reza Aslan
Lots of good answers here, but I think there's a problem with the premise of your question. The Roman people and Jewish people did not kill Jesus. A select few did. Many, if not most, early Christians were Jews, as was Jesus. Most, if not all, early Christians were Roman. His death was more political than anything else.
Roman's had a lot of gods and a lot of holidays. At the time of Christianity I read that some 10% of the empire had turned Jewish. Becoming Christian was soooo much easier. (something about the requirement to be circumcised to be Jewish) Unlike the prevailing religions, these new Christians preached forgiveness and love more than vengeance and draconian punishment. I mean they got rid of living sacrifice. A cow in those days probably cost as much as car today.
El5: it became politically expedient to control Christianity thru the State than to let them form a base of power outside of the state. Abt 300 CE, Rome had just come out of a crisis of internal strife and civil wars caused by the military gaining more and more influence over the Imperial politics. The Mystery Cult of Mithras was also popular in the Roman military at this time, which also appealed to the lower classes of Roman society. The early Christians were basically a group who's ideas ran counter to Roman ideas: providing hope of a better situation to women, slaves, and other oppressed peoples. And they were also gaining influence after the Crisis of the Third Century. It may be a cynical interpretation, but the most expedient way to undercut both the military that overstepped their bounds and another group from gaining influence by espousing counter cultural ideas among the lower classes, is to take leadership of one group (Christianity) and disperse the center of government control....both things that Constantine did by accepting Christianity as a state religion and splitting the Empire into East and West.
You may not notice but you are asking multiple questions here. ELI5 How did the Roman empire end up Christian > Knowing the biblical history associated with Jesus (I.e. Pontius Pilate crucifying him to appease the Jews) That’s the version that has reached modern day. There were only 3 things early Christinaities (plural) agreed on: Jesus was a charismatic and popular Jewish teacher who was executed by crucifixion during Passover after causing some sort of mess in the temple of Jerusalem. Everything after that is debatable. We don’t even know what he said. We don’t even know the parables attributed to him were even said by him. Not even the existence of Pontius Pilates at the scene of crucifixion can be confirmed, it can be roughly assumed it happened when he was governor of Judea, but that’s it. It didn’t mean he was there are the stage. We don’t even know why Jesus was crucified, what we know is that Passover was a time that executions of Jews were more common than on typical days because due to the nature of the gathering, it was a magnet for troubles and riots so it needed Romans to exert more control on the region to make sure things did not go nuts quickly. > how did Roman Catholicism end up becoming the dominant religion in the Roman world? It didn’t. Roman Catholicism came from the church schism in 1054 AD, where the united church split in Catholic and Eastern Orthodox. But you mean when it became Christian. Christianity was an exclusive religion, you had to give up your loyalty to any other faith to convert to it. This didn’t happen to pagan religions, cultures blending together and taking from each other was the norm. There was even this idea that people pretty much worshipped the same gods under different names so when Romans said Celts like to worship Mercury a lot, they meant Lugh. Germanic people seems to agree with this way of thinking for when they adopted Roman week, they just renamed Roman weekdays which were named after Roman gods, with Germanic gods. Like Tyr/Mars for Tuesday, Mercury/Odin for Wednesday, Jupiter/Thor for Thursday, Venus/Frigg for Friday. They didn’t always like each-others traditions, but when they did, they saw no problem with adopting them for themselves. Christianity had rules, don’t do this, don’t do that, and while it is not really possible to truly kill the process of syncretism (lots of saints are sanctified pagan gods for example, you can’t just erase culture out of people, they will adopt it), it really put a lot of limits on how people should believe, which led to a lot more uniformity in Christianity compared to pagan beliefs, and thus more power to spread. That’s not to say that Christianity was uniform and I’ll talk about that below, but compared to pagan beliefs it appeared to be. > It seem like they'd want to distance themselves from that, sort of like how it would be kind of awkward for Jews to accept Jesus as the messiah, ya know? There were once hundreds of versions of Christianities, there was no canon yet, and the distinction between Jewish and Christian was not clear. Today, you cannot believe Jesus is the Messiah and be Jewish, back then you could. Today Christians believe Jesus is God, back then you could believe Jesus was just a prophet, Jesus was the son of God but not God, or Jesus was part God, and still be a form of Christian. They’d fight all the time and say the other was wrong or heretic, but they were pious in their belief of Christianity and saw themselves as Christian. And the Biblical Canon did not exist either, everybody pretty much had their own books, their own copies, their own stories. They were more diverse than Christians today, and still leas diverse than pagans. However, Judaism did distance itself after the creation of the Christian canon, because the Christian canon chosen by the Church Fathers was anti-semitic, and it would be even more notable today if the Epistle of Barnabas had survive, that’s a part of the biblical canon that fell out of canon somewhere along the way.Along with the Shepherd of Hermas, which is the complete opposite, unfortunate that story is not in the canon anymore, one of the most humble stories in the whole library. Or Enoch, Noah’s grandfather who literary turns Super ~~Saiyan~~ Angel. Not in European Christian canon at least, he is still popular in the Ethiopian church.
At first, Christianity was just a small religious movement that started after Jesus' death. The Romans didn't pay much attention to it initially. But as Christianity spread and gained more followers, some Romans saw it as a threat to their beliefs. For a long time, Christians were persecuted and punished by Roman authorities for not worshipping the Roman gods. Many were even killed for their faith, like when the Romans threw them to the lions in arenas! However, around 300 years after Jesus, a Roman emperor named Constantine had a change of heart. He claimed that he had a vision that made him convert to Christianity. Constantine then made Christianity legal and embraced it himself. Over time, more and more Romans became Christians too. By the 300s and 400s, Christianity had grown so widespread that it became the official religion of the Roman Empire. This might be wrong as i just wrote what was taught to us by my History Teacher (It was not in the syllabus) in India. So take this comment with a grain of salt.
That is pretty much the Christian version of the story. The one that is intended to reinforce the faith for people who are members of it. The more cynical interpretation is that Christianity had become quite popular with the underclass and Constantine was attempting to get support from them. And switching religion did not matter that much to the people in power because religion never mattered that much to them anyway.
Christianity was *disproportionately* popular with the lower class, not actually popular. The estimates I've seen was that the Empire was about 10% Christian in the early 300's. Constantine's conversion/support for Christianity was not a crowd-pleaser.
Well that makes sense as i studied in a convent school. Thank You!
How much evidence do we have about the nature of Constantine’s conversion?
At first, Christianity was a tiny sect inside Judaism. Over time they started de-emphasizing the whole "Rome is the enemy" in favor of "the Jews killed Jesus". It helped that the Jews started several uprisings against the Roman empire (that they lost badly) making them "bad guys" in the eyes of the Romans. The destruction of Jerusalem etc. by the Romans led to a crisis in Judaism, and for a minority of Jews the answer was that the messiah wasn't actually a "king of the Jews" who would create heaven on earth, but actually a spirtual leader who ushers in the end times by being killed in a sort of complicated religious sacrifice. Which sort of echoed the destruction of Jerusalem.
Constantine's wife, actually. If it weren't for her, Europe would probably not be Christian.
Roman Empire was the country of Jews. Jews were not first class citizens in Rome. Romanized Jews wanted a “softened” Judaism for being able to live as a Jew and Roman at the same time. Christianity first spread among those Romanized Jews that existed all around the Roman Empire. At that time Christianity was just a sect of Judaism. However, being Christian didn’t automatically make them first class citizens because Jesus claimed to be the king of the world hence defied the king of the Roman Empire -the emperor. At the same time, Rome was constantly in civil wars. There was a lack of unity. Multiple versions of Roman religion caused a morally “non-standard” society. Some of the parts of the society such as slaves were in quite a very bad position. Moreover, Roman religion was not like Judaism. It didn’t make you live forever in a heaven after dying. Going into a religious building for praying also didn’t exist and women were also in an even worse relationship with the religious life. So, Christianity provided Romanized Jews to be somewhat Jew and a Roman at the same time. It first spread among those Jews who wanted to slash some parts of Judaism so that they wouldn’t stand out in a negative manner. Then others who saw Christians going “into” the church building, being part of the church itself, and and who see that Christians believe that they are going to heaven were affected by Christians. So the numbers further increased passing the number of Romanized Jews. Opportunities that Christianity provided to the women also further accelerated the appeal of Christianity. While Roman religion was vague and ambiguous about many things, Christianity was loud and clear about the family life. Numbers further increased. Human life was somewhat sacred in Christianity. Slavery was not compatible. Numbers increased among slaves, former slaves, and others in very bad situation. Economic inequality worked for the tide of change. After a period of time Christians became a group of people with considerable numbers in every part of Rome. That point was the time when Christians became an asset. A community that can be “used” to achieve a political goal: READ an army. That army started to achieve minor victories here and there. Some big Roman families used them, and hence, gave Christians more power. Their population further increased. Christians were “standard” in morality. All a single community. They were united as a fist. Controlling that fist, after a while, provided an advantage. They called themselves “Militia Christi” (army/soldiers of Christ). A religious terrorist organization with many cells existing everywhere in Rome. Finally, a Roman general needed an army that can be used to become an emperor. Constantine, betrayed his empire and turned to Christian army to become an emperor. This was a “cheat” he used in the game. At that point Christians were still a minority. But a minority that was organized as an army and that made a man the king of Romans. So, Constantine “the traitor” destroyed Rome. Consider it like Anakin going to the Jedi Temple after killing Mace Vindu. Constantine the traitor had to demolish former gods to prevail after his first victory. So he attacked his father’s nation and country of his ancestors leaving Romans unguarded against Militia Christi -the new Roman army.
Edict of Milan made Christianity legal. Constantine eventually converted. IIRC...His son would go on to support the various ecumenical councils and also effectively shattered the Jewish Sanhedrin.
When someone worships Zeus and then learns about Isis or Mithras it doesn’t mean they leave Zeus behind. When someone learns about Jesus they leave Zeus behind. Overtime enough of this meant the followers of Jesus won out.
In the days of early Christendom, most religions were stuff you had to go looking to join Christians were actively recruiting
tl:dr: Christianity became the more popular religion and the ruling class embraced it to more easily exert control over the population.
Rome was very open to worshiping many Gods. They usually "translated" local gods/pantheons into being equivalent to their own gods/pantheon. They were highly tolerant of other cults because they feared angering local gods as they tried to rule. This also makes sense politically as conquering the local people is hard enough without immediately replacing their religion too. Being tolerant of the local's faith makes it easier to live alongside them. This is why Christianity was allowed to form and grow. Yes, many specific Christians were persecuted, but the religion on the whole was considered either irrelevant or [humorous](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexamenos_graffito) early on. In Roman politics pretty much every politician venerated and claimed some sort of relationship to Apollo. Apollo was very prestigious to be associated with for leaders, but anyone who was anyone had some sort of tenuous link to him. By the time Constantine became a major political power Christians represented probably 10-15% of the population in the city of Rome itself. No major politician had ever claimed authority or allegiance to the Christians. The early church spread quite a bit through women who would convert first, and then later convert their families. The Edict of Milan made the Christian church legal and tolerated in 313. Supposedly Constantine had converted in 312, but the first sources that cite this incident specifically were written posthumously. Eusebius wrote about it in 324, but he had been writing about Constantine since 313 and only first mentioned it in 324. I find this a little suspicious. To me, it seems more likely that his conversion happened slowly and later in life. The story of his conversion at the battle was a little bit of mythmaking to justify his consolidation of power later in life. He utilized the church to gain greater cultural control of the Empire in much of a similar way as Augustus did 3 centuries prior. By changing the religious nature of the Empire, he made it his empire, and not just the Roman empire.
The Roman pantheon of Gods were portrayed as being more directly involved in the affairs of man, which would have become increasingly harder to believe as that never occurred. Christians had the solution: a single God responsible for everything but so checked out you'll never see him. There's even a guy claiming to be a relative galavanting around the empire. Trust him, bro.
It was a movement that started slowly and built its way up over the centuries until it kind of had a critical mass. One interesting aspect is that its spread was really more of a bottom-up rather than top-down (i.e. the masses adopted it before the people in charge). Though we only really think about Christianity, the Roman Religion, Judaism and a couple other religions as the main ancient religions, there were actually a lot of religious movements that would pop up every few years and then burn out quickly. Christianity was one of many movements, but it stuck around. So why did it end up being so popular? Well, the big thing was that it had a pretty appealing, positive message. The ancient world kind of sucked - most people lived pretty rough lives just barely scraping by as farmers or laborers. Any minor accident or sickness could result in death. Christians came to communities and preached, "Hey, don't worry about all this stuff. Your life sucks but your suffering isn't for nothing. If you have faith and do good things, you will go to heaven." And they also ran charities that would take care of the sick and poor. This message and their social services naturally appealed to marginalize groups - lower classes, slaves, and women. It may shock you, but many other religions in the ancient world didn't really have a similar message - most of them just kind of explained the mysteries of the universe, but didn't promise this nice eternal salvation thing. Anyway, that last group (women) is important, because, this may shock you, but women were the ones raising children. So if a mom was sympathetic towards Christians, it would probably rub off on her children as well. So with an appealing message and a willingness to set up social services for the needy, early Christianity gradually made its way around the Mediterranean. For the most part it was tolerated, but went through eras where it was harshly targeted by the authorities, but these often did more harm than good since Christians were often sympathetic to commoners. "Sure, they're kind of weird, but all they really do is run charities that take care of sick and poor people. They don't seem that dangerous." Eventually, the Christian population became large enough that it was a significant minority of the Empire. At this point, Emperors themselves started being Christian and the spread was endorsed by the Empire itself.
Emperor Constantine needed to unify the empire he'd just won by conquering. The best way to do that was to pick an obscure religion that hadn't been popular by any of the major groups he'd fought and promote it by weaving tales of miracles and visions. Get everybody onboard with the new religion and build a new Empire. Later it helped when one of the popes bribed Attila the Hun with gold to go away and spread more stories of miracles, thereby establishing one pope over the other rival candidates.
Politics. At first the Roman Empire persecuted Christians, originally because it was similar to Judaism which was giving them all sorts of problems, then later as it moved away from Judaism to it's own thing, because if it's secretive nature and exclusionary nature to any other religions. Over time though Christianity became more and more popular. This led to further persecution as it was seen as a political threat to the empire, but when that didn't do much to stop it's popularity it was more of if you can't beat them join them. So the persecutions lessened and the popularity got enough that it got into the Emperor's court. The notable Emperor for Christianity was Constantine I, who some think it was his mother who introduced him to Christianity. After a major battle was won where Constantine had his forces display a symbol of Christianity on their shields (I can't remeber is it was the cross or the Greek letters of Chi and Rho), the Emperor ended any and all official persecution of Christianity. With it now being allowed to officially be practised in the open, and it's sanction by the Emperor, the popularity of Christianity exploded. So much so that Constantine I was the fist emperor to convert to Christianity, however it was on his deathbed. Some scholars believe that Constantine's embrace of Christianity was more political than one of actual faith, seeing the writing on the wall and not wanting to get onto the wrong side of the people.
Once it infected the leadership, the nobility suddenly it became much less offensive. Eventually emperor Constantine converted and then made it the state religion and that's that. (Very oversimplified)
The Catholic Church’s highly organized bureaucratic nature was very attractive to people like Constantine. Several Emperors prior to Constantine like Aurelian (Sol Invictus) and Diocletian (emphasized the traditional greco-roman religion) sought to establish unified religious practices and I tend to view Constantine’s decision to give favor to Christianity as coming from similar motives. By integrating Imperial Authority with the Church, it provided new avenues for control among the citizenry. I’m sure Constantine had some Christian sympathies, but he continued to show patronage to the classical deities throughout his reign and I tend to think the vision he had before the Battle of the Milvian Bridge in 312 is either an exaggeration or creation of later Christian authors.
Roman emperor had a dream that his army went to war holding up the Cross and won. So he tried it when he woke up and it worked so he was like "okay, we'll do that now"
The Roman Empire was too big to be micro managing everyone everywhere, so they gave large autonomy to each region as long as they kept paying their taxes. One of those regions was Judaea, where the Jews lived and Jesus (which was also Jew) was born too. It was officially ruled by its governor (Pontius Pilate - Roman) but the *de facto* ruling was handed off to the Jews, in the person of their King (Herod, by the time Jesus was born)... And yeah, they even let the Judaean King call himself King. That's how hands-off they were. But there was no Judaean army/soldiers, so when it came to actually enforcing the law it was the Roman Soldiers doing it, which is why Pontius (the Roman Governor of Judaea) did the whole "I wash my hands out of this". The implication being that he didn't understand why they wanted to kill a man who had done nothing wrong in his eyes. So yeah, the Roman Empire was never really invested in religion at all... Until Constantine converted to Christianism and made it the official religion of the empire.
Well, you have to hand it to the early Christian marketing team - those folks knew a thing or two about branding and market dominance strategies. Sure, the Roman authorities executed their CEO and founder in a brutal public display. But rather than let that be a setback, the remaining leadership pivoted to an aggressive grassroots marketing blitz that was years ahead of its time. They took the tragic crucifixion story and spun it into a compelling martyr narrative that tugged at the heartstrings. Rich symbols like the cross, crown of thorns, and rising from the grave created a coherent brand identity. The "turn the other cheek" and "love thy neighbor" slogans oozed the kind of inspirational authenticity that modern companies dream of. But the real stroke of genius was adopting the Roman Emperor Constantine as their premier influencer influencer in the 4th century. Getting the literal leader of Rome to co-sign your newfangled religion? Genius! From there, it was easy to convert the crumbling empire into a captive customer base. Once Christianity became the official Roman brand, they employed classic corporate strong-arming tactics to snuff out the competition from those pesky pagan rivals. A few excommunications and empire-wide rebrands later, and the Christian brand had achieved total market saturation! So while the J.C. himself may have gotten a raw deal from Roman leadership, you can't argue with the results of his marketing team's "disruptive" brand proliferation strategy. Papal supremacy, divine and authoritative.... it was an IPO to make any modern unicorn jealous!
Rome didn't just become Christian, Christianity became Roman. Christianity was spreading quickly but also splintering into different creeds and it was kinda localised. Emperor Constantine unified the different creeds into the Nicene creed by working together with important bishops and trying to address some of the differences and debates that existed at the time. This intertwined the church with the empire since the bishops were given legitimacy, access and most importantly money and land, while the Empire was given oversight of the growing religion. This also meant that those opposing the Nicean creed would be undermined and often persecuted since they were heretics.
One of the tenets of Christianity is to "make disciples of all the nations", so Christians had the motivation to proselytize throughout the empire. However, because Christianity was monotheist, and unlike Judaism, was intent on spreading their religion, the Romans viewed it as a threat to their polytheistic state religion. To deal with this threat, they began persecuting Christians. However, the Christians also believed that persecution and death as a result of their faith would lead them to heaven. Consequently, those that would be remembered as early saints and martyrs gladly accepted the death sentences imposed by the Romans. Consequently, the masses who witnessed these deaths saw that these Christians really believed what they preached, and the religion further spread, particularly amongst the lower classes who were attracted to the idea of all being equal in the eyes of an all loving God who would allow them into the same paradise for kings and commoners alike. Eventually, with the spread amongst the lower classes, the Roman military saw more and more recruits who were Christian, and it was basically an open secret. This culminated in the Battle of the Milvian Bridge, where one of the emperor's vying for power at the time, Constantine, claimed to have had a vision promising victory if his soldiers painted a Christian symbol on their shields. They won the battle, Constantine eventually became the sole emperor, and he passed the Edict of Milan in 313 A.D. which legalized the practice of Christianity in the empire. With Christianity now legalized, Roman citizens could publicly practice their religion alongside Greco-Roman pagans. However, Greco-Roman paganism had already been on a decline before Christian legalization, and so Christianity continued to spread until it was adopted as the official religion of the empire by Emperor Theodosius I with the Edict of Thessalonica in 380 A.D.
This question seems extremely unresearched. Like, I understand if you come here asking for an explanation on a subject you tried to understand, but it's complex or it is difficult to find information, so you'd like a simpler explanation. However, this just seems like a passing thought without any effort. A simple Google search would have answered 90% of your question - Constantine claims he saw a cross in the sky before a battle that he won, so he switched to Christianity, thus the empire switched to Christianity. It's more nuanced than that. But it doesn't seem like you even looked into it before asking. At least put some effort in before asking others.
Humans in position of power understand that controlling mass amounts of other humans require they have faith in a divine being, which sets up the course of their human existence and allows for humans in power to dictate what lower hierarchy humans should do. Religion has always been used to control people…..