Religious Toleration And Persecution In Ancient Rome
Simeon L. Guterman
Number of quotes: 18
Book ID: 187 Page: 12
Section: 3A1
And further on: “Even more categorically than the God of the Jews, the God of the Christians had no nation and did not suffer any other divinity at his side; the community of the Christians has never been a political community and the Christian was necessarily an apostate from polytheism.”{5}
Quote ID: 4114
Time Periods: ?
Book ID: 187 Page: 15
Section: 3A2,4B
Whereas the intolerance of the Middle Ages was religious, that is, based directly on the pretensions of the Church or of the State to regulate the religious conscience of the individuals, the intolerance of the Roman State was political and practical.
Quote ID: 4116
Time Periods: 234
Book ID: 187 Page: 15
Section: 3A2A,4B
Minucius Felix express the difference between the ancient and the medieval view when he said to pagans: “You punish crimes actually committed; among us even a thought may be a sin.”{11}
Quote ID: 4117
Time Periods: 3
Book ID: 187 Page: 25
Section: 4B
To speak of the gods was to speak of “the gods of Rome, a sort of highest class of Roman citizens. As such they had, one might almost say, their duties toward the state while the state, for its part, was obliged to provide them with their proper offerings and honours. There is a total lack in the early Roman cult of that often unmanly humility in the presence of objects of adoration which meets us in Semitic worship; the Romans and their gods are rather in the position of free contracting parties.”{30} It is little wonder that the Romans up to the latest times ascribed their success as a people to the fidelity with which they observed the conditions of this contract with the gods.{31}
Quote ID: 4118
Time Periods: 123
Book ID: 187 Page: 27
Section: 2B2
Various causes impelled the Roman state to admit new gods. Sometimes conquest resulted in the transfer of the deity of a conquered city to the Pantheon.. . . .
At other times new deities were adopted to keep pace with the increasing concerns of a developing culture, as when Neptune was identified with Poseidon as a form of “marine insurance,” ...
. . . .
But more often it was public disaster that brought about the incorporation, as was true of Cybele during the second Punic War. {47}
Quote ID: 4120
Time Periods: 0123
Book ID: 187 Page: 28
Section: 2B2
As regards the process, it should be clear that there existed a body within the state which dealt with the claims of divinities for recognition. This organ was the senate.
Quote ID: 4121
Time Periods: 01
Book ID: 187 Page: 29/30
Section: 4B
Was the Roman citizen permitted to worship gods other than those approved by the state, provided that this worship was carried on in private?. . . .
A passage of Cicero seems to establish that it was no more permitted to raise an altar to them on one’s own home than to dedicate to them a temple on a street or a public place. Livy, on the other hand, confines the interdict to sacred or public lands; it was there only, according to him, that the citizen was forbidden to sacrifice according to foreign rites.
Quote ID: 4122
Time Periods: 01
Book ID: 187 Page: 31
Section: 3A2A,4B
Quite definite on this question are the words Dio puts into the mouth of Maecenas. The latter was haranguing Augustus on his duties, in the year 29 B.C.. . . .
Those who introduce strange ideas about it you should both hate and punish, not only for the sake of the gods, but because such persons, by bringing in new divinities persuade many to adopt foreign principles of law from which spring up conspiracies . . . “{62}
Quote ID: 4123
Time Periods: 01
Book ID: 187 Page: 33
Section: 2A4
...the priest and priestess of their goddess are Phrygians. These carry her image in procession about the city...
Quote ID: 4124
Time Periods: 012
Book ID: 187 Page: 43
Section: 4B
The words of the governor, Gallio, at one of Paul’s hearings probably reflect the Roman government’s attitude, “I am here to execute Roman law, settle for yourselves points of doctrine.”{123}
Quote ID: 4125
Time Periods: 1
Book ID: 187 Page: 48
Section: 3A2A,4B
It must be remembered, however, that the criminal law was comparatively jejeune in Rome until the time of Augustus and that as a consequence the religious offence might not have been penalized as a crime in the proper sense of the word.
Quote ID: 4126
Time Periods: 01
Book ID: 187 Page: 75
Section: 3A1,4B
A good deal of misunderstanding has come from regarding Judaism exclusively as a religion. {1} It was more than a religion in Judaea. It was, as students have described it, a “way of life.” It comprehended not only a fundamental law but a collection of regulations and practices that could only express themselves in a political sphere.
Quote ID: 4130
Time Periods: 01
Book ID: 187 Page: 76
Section: 3A1,4B
Not that the Jews did not retain part of their national system in the Greek cities of Asia Minor and in Egypt, for several of the Hellenistic monarchs guaranteed them an extensive autonomy in community affairs. {4} Even this, however, was impossible when the Diaspora reached Italy. For though Rome consented to maintain the status quo in the East,{5} she, nevertheless, demanded that the Judaism practiced by Roman citizens in Italy be shorn of national features.
Quote ID: 4131
Time Periods: 01
Book ID: 187 Page: 79
Section: 3B
It is true that Herod, playing his stakes well, managed to conciliate Caesar and Augustus in his favour so that he elicited from the former and had confirmed by the latter a set of privileges for the Jews that were to constitute a sort of Magna Carta for the members of this religion for a long time to come. {19} But in return for these and other favours, the Herod dynasty undertook to deliver as a quid pro quo the submission of the Jew to the Roman yoke. There was little national about the Herodians. They were Idumeans, of an alien race, and thoroughly detested by the people they ruled. {20}
Quote ID: 4132
Time Periods: 01
Book ID: 187 Page: 122
Section: 4A
Juster also brings into line the manoeuvres of the Christian apologist who were ever trying to prove that Christians were the true Jews, Christianity the true Judaism. According to him they were trying to obtain for themselves the protection accorded to the Jewish nation. But it was the protection of the religio licita, as well as the natio, for which the Christians were striving.
Quote ID: 4133
Time Periods: 2
Book ID: 187 Page: 149
Section: 3A1,4B
It was probably because the synagogues had become illicita in the sense of disorderly that Tiberius and Claudius adopted restrictive measures against them. In the case of Tiberius, the measure reveals itself clearly as an administrative or police matter when taken together with other measures of a similar nature. Riots and agitation among the colleges led Tiberius to suppress the collegia.
Quote ID: 4134
Time Periods: 1
Book ID: 187 Page: 158/159
Section: 3A1,4B
The end of the ancient state coincides with the triumph of Christianity. The triumph of Christianity marks the close of the political and religious development of the classical civilization. The dichotomy between church and state which characterizes society since the fourth century makes its appearance in the last age of the Roman Empire. “Render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s and unto God what is God’s,” is a rule which the ancient state knew not and could hardly acknowledge.. . . .
The close integration of the ancient gods with the classical community was of the essence of the life of the ancient civilization. When this link disappeared the vital part of the classical culture went with it.
Quote ID: 4135
Time Periods: 45
Book ID: 187 Page: 159/160
Section: 3A2A
On the whole, Roman persecution of religious groups where it existed was essentially political. The medieval opposition to dissenting groups or individuals was avowedly religious.
Quote ID: 4136
Time Periods: 237
End of quotes