Paganism to Christianity in the Roman Empire
Walter Woodburn Hyde
Number of quotes: 43
Book ID: 172 Page: 4/5
Section: 1B
But patriotism outlived these momentous changes and was still strong to the end of the fourth century as we see from the verses of the last of the classical Latin poets, Claudian of Alexandria, who dies under Honorius (ca. 408):Rome, Rome alone has found the spell to charm
The tribes that bowed beneath her conquering arm;
Has given one name to the whole human race,
And clasped and sheltered them in fond embrace;
Mother, not mistress; called her foe her son;
And by soft ties made distant countries one.
This to her peaceful scepter all men owe—
That through the nations, whereso’er we go
Strangers, we find a fatherland. Our home
We change at will; we count it sport to roam
Through distant Thule, or with sails unfurled
Seek the most drear recesses of the world.
Though we may tread Rhone’s or Orontes’ shore,
Yet are we all one nation evermore. {4}
Quote ID: 8400
Time Periods: ?
Book ID: 172 Page: 184
Section: 4B
Their secret meetings were illegal, but the Church had become the largest secret society in the Empire where secret religious assemblies, hetaeriae, as Trajan called them in his letter to Pliny (X:43, 1), were banned on political grounds. Pliny said “their worst crime was their meeting at stated times for religious service,” merely because such meetings were secret. Curiously, the Roman Church has inherited this characteristic from the Empire, for it still frowns on all secret societies.
Quote ID: 3781
Time Periods: 23
Book ID: 172 Page: 185
Section: 1A,3C,4B
The Spanish Christian poet Prudentius in the second half of the fourth century said:"God willed peoples of discord and tongues, kingdoms of conflicting laws, to be brought together under an empire, because concord alone knows God. Hence He taught all nations to bow their necks under the same laws and to become Romans. Common rights made all men equal and bound the vanquished with the bonds of fraternity. The City is the fatherland of all humanity, our very blood is mingled, and one stock is woven out of many races. This is the fruit of the triumphs of Rome; they opened the doors for Christ to enter." {82}
Quote ID: 3782
Time Periods: 4
Book ID: 172 Page: 193
Section: 3C
Constantine’s favor was three-fold: the extension of privileges to the Christian clergy that had long been enjoyed by the priests of the civil cult, i.e., exemptions from economic and military burdens; legalization of ecclesiastical courts as part of Roman law, i.e., giving them equal validity with the imperial ones so that litigants might be tried in either; and corporate rights to the Church, i.e., permission to receive and to hold property, which gradually made it a wealthy institution.
Quote ID: 3783
Time Periods: 4
Book ID: 172 Page: 194
Section: 2C,3C
For nearly three hundred and fifty years it had been the duty of Roman emperors to support the idea that the favor of the gods had caused the greatness of Rome, a fact which makes it understandable why Constantine and his successors down to Gratian kept the ancient title Pontifex maximus as heads of the State-cult, and also why Constantine, until the middle of his life, kept emblems of the pagan gods on his coinage.
Quote ID: 3784
Time Periods: 04
Book ID: 172 Page: 195
Section: 2E4
He introduced the Mithraic Sunday, “the day of the Lord,” in 321, {10}
Quote ID: 3785
Time Periods: 4
Book ID: 172 Page: 196
Section: 3C
His conversion, assuming that he experienced one, was gradual rather than the result of any single event such as his seeing the Cross in the heavens in 312 or his baptism in 337. Perhaps a fair statement of the problem of Constantine’s religion is that his interest in Christianity was first aroused by political motives since he saw in the Church a heretofore unused means to unify the State and on it to found a dynasty and that only gradually did he lean toward it as a religion.
Quote ID: 3786
Time Periods: 4
Book ID: 172 Page: 197
Section: 2B2,3C
He is, perhaps, unique as the one human being to have enjoyed the distinction of being deified as a pagan god while, at the same time, he was popularly venerated as a Christian saint.{20}
Quote ID: 3787
Time Periods: 4
Book ID: 172 Page: 197
Section: 3C,3A1,4B
By aligning itself with the imperial trend, the Church caused essential changes in its inner life. As soon as a mere profession of Christianity was enough to lead to political and social preferment, the pristine virtues of simplicity and sincerity yielded to hypocrisy. Many professed Christians were pagans at heart.
Quote ID: 3788
Time Periods: 45
Book ID: 172 Page: 197
Section: 1A
Footnote 21 E.g. Dean Farrar of Canterbury (1895-1903) has said: “The apparent triumph of Christianity was in some sense and for a time a real defeat, the corruption of its simplicity, the defacement of its purest and loftiest beauty.”
Quote ID: 3789
Time Periods: 4
Book ID: 172 Page: 197/198
Section: 2D3B,3A2A
To the time of Constantine, Christians had displayed a moral purity seldom, if ever, surpassed. They had held themselves aloof from affairs of the Empire, showed little interest in politics and, in short, had been uncontaminated by their surroundings. The spirit of intolerance which has marked Christianity ever since was now accelerated. Tertullian in the first years of the third century had said it was “a fundamental human right, a privilege of nature, that every man should worship according to his own convictions; it is assuredly no part of religion forcibly to impose religion, to which free will and not force should lead us.” {22} A century later Lactantius, then tutor of Crispus in Gaul (ca. 313), expressed a similar thought: “Religion cannot be imposed by force; if you wish to defend religion by bloodshed and by torture and by guilt, it will no longer be defended, but will be polluted and profaned.” {23} But this excellent spirit now largely disappeared.
Quote ID: 3790
Time Periods: 234
Book ID: 172 Page: 198
Section: 3A2A
But, after Theodosius had made Christianity the sole faith of the State, St. Augustine became reconciled to forced conformity with Catholicism though saying it was “better that men should be brought to serve God by instruction than by fear of punishment,” adding, however, that the latter method must not be neglected.{25} Pope Leo the Great (440-461), according to Bishop Greighton, “accepted as a duty the suppression of heresy and raised no objection to legislation which treated heresy as a crime against civil society, and declared it punishable with death.”{26}
Quote ID: 3791
Time Periods: 45
Book ID: 172 Page: 200
Section: 3A1
One of the worst evils to grow out of Constantine’s protection of the Church remains to be mentioned: the persecution of paganism. In the process, Christians quite forgot Jesus’ admonition and used violence, destroying temples and statues, closing pagan schools, trampling on pagan sensibilities and even killing adherents of opposing faiths. Indeed Roman history from Constantine’s death to the close of the fourth century and even later is filled with the story of Christian reprisals. And when a half century later it was officially over and all rivals were banished, the struggle proved to have been only a forerunner of worse persecutions within the ranks of the Church itself-persecutions which dwarfed those of Rome.
Quote ID: 3792
Time Periods: 456
Book ID: 172 Page: 201
Section: 3A1
Constantine regarded religious dissension as a menace to State unity and felt that it should be suppressed with the aid of secular authority, and this he did.
Quote ID: 3793
Time Periods: 4
Book ID: 172 Page: 203
Section: 2D3B
The leader of the former school at first was Theodotus, the tanner of Byzantium who went to Rome near the close of the second century and taught a small circle of converts-only to be excommunicated by Pope Victor I (between ?192 and 202). To him Jesus was a man, born miraculously of a virgin through the operation of the Holy Spirit but without divine essence until the latter descended on him at his baptism when he became Christ, but not God.
Quote ID: 3794
Time Periods: 2
Book ID: 172 Page: 204
Section: 2D3B
The Greek word which was chosen to express the mysterious resemblance bears so close an affinity to the orthodox symbol that the profane of every age have derided the furious contests which the differences of a single diphthong excited between the Homoousians and Homoiousians. Metaphysical opinions of Athanasius and Arius could not influence their moral character; and they were alike actuated by the intolerant spirit which has been extracted from the pure and simple maxims of the Gospel.{40}
Quote ID: 3795
Time Periods: 4
Book ID: 172 Page: 205
Section: 3C1
Athanasius, through his eloquence and the favor of the Emperor, won, the Arians were banished as heretics, and the Nicene creed, based on the baptismal one of Caesarea in Palestine, was presented by Eusebius and signed by all present except five bishops who objected to the word homoousios.
Quote ID: 3796
Time Periods: 4
Book ID: 172 Page: 205
Section: 3C,3A1
Constantine confirmed the action and all who refused to accept it were anathematized.{44} It became law, with the Church thus becoming a division of government.
Quote ID: 3797
Time Periods: 4
Book ID: 172 Page: 211
Section: 3D
After Theodosius recovered from a severe illness at Thessalonica in 380 he was baptized by an Athanasian bishop {72} and on February twenty-seventh of that year the three Augusti issued the famous edict which imposed Catholicism on the basis of the Nicene creed on all subjects of the Empire. This edict marks the end of Roman official tolerance by making Christianity the sole religion.It is our will that all the peoples whom the government of our clemency rules shall follow that religion which a pious belief from Peter to the present declares the holy Peter delivered to the Romans....that is, according to the apostolic discipline and evangelical doctrine, we believe in the deity of the Father and the Son and the Holy Ghost of equal majesty in a holy trinity. Those who follow this law we command shall be comprised under the name of Catholic Christians; but others, indeed, we require, as insane and raving, to bear the infamy of heretical teaching; their gatherings shall not receive the name of churches, they are to be smitten first with the divine punishment and after that by the vengeance of our indignation, which has the divine approval.{72}
In January 381, further edicts forbade all assemblies of heretics and ordered that the name of the Christian God alone should be used and the Nicene creed be maintained.
Quote ID: 3798
Time Periods: 4
Book ID: 172 Page: 212
Section: 3C1
Whatever its origin it was accepted as “the perfect expression of orthodoxy” by the Greek, Roman, and heretical churches of the East - Syrian Jacobite, Chaldean Nestorian, Egyptian Coptic, and others. Its essential paragraph runs:I believe in one God, the Father Almighty, maker of heaven and earth, and of all things visible and invisible. And in one Lord Jesus Christ, the only begotten Son of God, begotten of his Father before all worlds [God of God,], Light of Light, very God of very God, begotten, not made, being of one substance with the Father, by whom all things were made....And I believe in the Holy Ghost, the Lord and giver of life, who proceedeth from the Father [and the Son]; who with the Father and the Son together is worshiped and glorified...and I believe in one holy Catholic and Apostolic Church.....{75}
Quote ID: 3799
Time Periods: ?
Book ID: 172 Page: 213
Section: 3C1
As to the value of the idea of the Trinity to the Church, opinions will always vary. While a recent writer calls:One divine nature representing itself simultaneously in three persons...each fully God, and yet...not three natures, not three Gods, but one nature and one God, a perfect meaningless paradox,{78}
Quote ID: 3800
Time Periods: ?
Book ID: 172 Page: 214
Section: 3C1
At the Council of Constantinople, Arian bishops were exiled as they had been at Nicaea which now meant the “official” death but not the extinction of Arianism in the Empire. Most of the Germanic tribes above the Lower Danube, already converted by Ulfilas (Gothic Wulfila), “Little Wolf” bishop of the Visigoths (341-383), {83} remained Arian Christian for another century and a half.
Quote ID: 3801
Time Periods: 4
Book ID: 172 Page: 217
Section: 3D
Theodosius in his zeal for Catholicism, a zeal in suppressing paganism likened by St. Ambrose {102} to that of Josiah king of Judah in destroying all forms of idolatrous worship, despite some redeeming qualities such as mercy and clemency to defeated enemies, had shown himself a bigoted Christian. He never questioned his religious beliefs, but regarded divergences from them as wicked.
Quote ID: 3802
Time Periods: 4
Book ID: 172 Page: 218
Section: 3D
That he prized earthly honors is amply shown by his increasing the Oriental forms which had surrounded the emperor since Diocletian for under him everything became sacred: sacrum palatium, urbs sanctissima, divinae epulae (State banquets), caelestia statuta (edicts), and he allowed only a few “to touch the purple” and “adore his serenity.”{104}
Quote ID: 3803
Time Periods: 4
Book ID: 172 Page: 218
Section: 3D
Much of the blame for his intolerant spirit should be laid on St. Ambrose, the master-mind behind his policies, whose narrow but strong personality dominated both Theodosius and Gratian.
Quote ID: 3804
Time Periods: 4
Book ID: 172 Page: 223
Section: 1A
…the causes of Rome’s fall form the greatest puzzle of history….
Quote ID: 8401
Time Periods: 1
Book ID: 172 Page: 224
Section: 1A
And Christianity must take its place as one of the major causes of Rome’s decline. Religion was always the basis of the Roman State....
Quote ID: 3805
Time Periods: 14
Book ID: 172 Page: 225
Section: 1A
But Christianity played a more subtle role as a factor in the dissolution of Rome. As prosperity waned and national vigor declined men naturally turned to religion for solace and paid greater attention to the vision of another world of peace than to the turbulent affairs of this, which many believed was doomed. Thus an unconscious change from political allegiance to the State to spiritual allegiance to the Church with its promise of future happiness was gradually wrought. In this way Christianity first weakened and then undermined the Roman State.A recent writer has remarked: “As the Church never saw the value of paganism and the greatness of Rome was due to the belief in polytheism, it could easily destroy it and Rome with it.” {147} If then, as Dean Inge has said, “the Christian Church was the last great creative achievement of classical culture,”{148} it unfortunately proved to be one of the contributing causes to the latter’s downfall.
That Christianity was already the conqueror at the close of the fourth century is shown by Theodosius yielding to the rebuke of a churchman. It was left only for Justinian to close the pagan schools of philosophy and rhetoric in Athens and, in the words of Salomon Reinach, “the world was ripe for the Middle Ages.”
Pastor John’s note: footnote 147 = Edward Lucas White, Why Rome Fell but no page #.
footnote 148 = W. R. Inge, essay in Legacy of Greece, ed. by Sir R. W. Livingstone (Oxford, 1921). p. 30.
Quote ID: 3806
Time Periods: 4
Book ID: 172 Page: 225
Section: 3A1,3A4C
Tertullian affirmed that a Christian and a Caesar were contradictions in terms and that Christ had refused an earthly kingdom since it was impossible to serve two masters.{145} It was for this reason that he also said of his fellow-Christians that “for us nothing is more foreign than the commonwealth. We recognize but one universal commonwealth, the world.”{146}
Quote ID: 7759
Time Periods: 23
Book ID: 172 Page: 249
Section: 2E4
all branches of the Church agree that no data exist for determining the day, month, or year of the event, nor was such a festival celebrated in Apostolic or early post-Apostolic times. It does not appear in the festival lists of Tertullian or Irenaeus who both died in the early third century.
Quote ID: 3807
Time Periods: 2345
Book ID: 172 Page: 249
Section: 2E4
There is evidence, however, that in the West December twenty-fifth was not accepted by the Church until the middle of the fourth century when it borrowed the dies natalis invicti solis, “birthday of the unconquered Sun,” a festival long known to the ancient world from Mithraism.
Quote ID: 3808
Time Periods: 4
Book ID: 172 Page: 250
Section: 2E4
Origen at that time in a sermon {5} denounced the idea of keeping Jesus’ birthday like that of a Pharaoh and said that only sinners such as Herod were so honored. Arnobius later similarly ridiculed giving birthdays to “gods.” {6} A Latin treatise, De pascha computus {7} (of ca. 243) placed Jesus’ birth on March twenty-first since that was the supposed day on which God created the Sun (Gen. 1:14-19), thus typifying the “Sun of righteousness” as Malachi (4:2) called the expected Messiah. A century before, Polycarp, martyred in Smyrna in 155, gave the same date for the birth and baptism placing it on a Wednesday because of the creation of the Sun on that day. {8}
Quote ID: 3809
Time Periods: 23
Book ID: 172 Page: 250
Section: 2D3B
The widely-held belief of the early Church that Jesus’ baptism marked his spiritual birth when he was adopted as “Son of God” magnified Epiphany and caused indifference about his physical birth.{9}
Quote ID: 3810
Time Periods: 23
Book ID: 172 Page: 250
Section: 2E4
The first authentic record of December twenty-fifth as the “Festival of the Nativity” is found in the Roman Church calendar of Furius Dionysius Philocalus compiled in 353-354, though probably a rewriting of an older one of about 336.
Quote ID: 3811
Time Periods: 4
Book ID: 172 Page: 252
Section: 2E4
The Christian adoption of the date is only one of many examples of the Church custom already noted of tolerating and absorbing pagan customs as it spread over pagan lands.Pastor John’s note: RE - the date for Christmas
Quote ID: 3812
Time Periods: 345
Book ID: 172 Page: 252
Section: 2E4
Without doubt Christmas inherited its spirit of mirth and jollity from the great Roman festival of the Saturnalia.
Quote ID: 3813
Time Periods: 345
Book ID: 172 Page: 261
Section: 2E4
Charlemagne at Aquisgranum (Aachen) in 788 decreed that all ordinary labor on the Lord’s Day be forbidden since it was against the Fourth Commandment, especially labor in the field or vineyard which Constantine had exempted.
Quote ID: 3814
Time Periods: 7
Book ID: 172 Page: 261
Section: 2E4
In 813 as emperor he decreed that “all servile labor must be abstained from.” From his time onward, then, the idea of substituting Sunday for the Sabbath began, for all his decrees were based on the Old Testament command to keep the Sabbath day holy, and throughout the succeeding Middle Ages the Old Testament became the basis for Sunday observance.
Quote ID: 3815
Time Periods: 7
Book ID: 172 Page: 265
Section: 2E
The first certain mention of it is by Dionysius, Bishop of Corinth (ca. 170). In a letter addressed to the Roman Church in the time of Bishop Soter (166-174) thanking it for aid, he says: “You bound together the foundations of the Romans and Corinthians by Peter and Paul, for both of them taught together in our Corinth and were our founders, and together also taught in Italy in the same place Rome and were martyred at the same time.”{3}
Quote ID: 3816
Time Periods: 2
Book ID: 172 Page: 268
Section: 2D1
The silence of various writers and especially of those of the earlier period speaks against the tradition just outlined. Paul in his Epistle to the Romans composed ca. 59 says nothing of Peter in Rome nor of his supervision of the church there but speaks of the faith of the Roman church (1:8) as already “proclaimed throughout the whole world.” None of the later letters which he is supposed to have written during his Roman imprisonment 61-63 mentions Peter, neither Philippians, probably written there (1:13 and 4:22), Philemon, nor II Timothy, the latter expressly dated at Rome (1:8, 16 f. and 2:9).
Quote ID: 3817
Time Periods: 3
Book ID: 172 Page: 270
Section: 2D1
Moreover, as Bishop Lightfoot long ago remarked: {26} “If there was any primacy at the time it was the primacy not of Peter but of Paul, for Paul was the foremost figure of the Apostolic Age.” Peter is first definitely named as first Roman bishop, in letters of St. Cyprian {27} who was beheaded in Carthage in 258, and officially in Liberius’ catalogue of 353-354.
Quote ID: 3818
Time Periods: 34
Book ID: 172 Page: 271
Section: 2D1
Thus the claim of the Roman Church to universal authority based on the fulfillment of the words of Jesus to Peter (Matt. 16:18-19; cf. John 21:15-17) has little historical basis.
Quote ID: 3819
Time Periods: 37
Book ID: 172 Page: 271
Section: 2D1
If all this be idle tradition, it is tradition too solidified in the Catholic heart ever to be destroyed. For nowhere has the spirit of the Greek proverb “Opinions are stronger than the works of the hands” been more potent than in Rome.
Quote ID: 3820
Time Periods: 37
End of quotes