Was there then no Altar of Victory? I mourn over my downfall, my old age is tinged with that shameful bloodshed. I do not blush to be converted with the whole world in my old age. The Altar was not restored; indeed, measures against pagans became more repressive. Ambrose also exerted extraordinary dominance over Theodosius I AD , to whom he threatened excommunication for having ordered the massacre of thousands in the circus at Thessalonica.
The chastened emperor presented himself, bareheaded and in sackcloth at the cathedral in Milan. The next year, in AD , he issued the first in a series of edicts that prohibited all pagan cult worship and effectively made Christianity the official religion in the empire. They are preserved in the Codex Theodosianus , a codification of legislative enactments constitutiones from the time of Constantine, issued by Theodosius II in AD Divided into titles and arranged chronologically, it is comprised of sixteen books, the last of which deals with pagans, sacrifices, and temples.
Addressed to the prefect of Rome and issued on February 24, AD , the rescript stated that. Following bloody riots in Alexandria, the Temple of Serapis was destroyed by a Christian mob. As Prudentius confessed a decade or so later: "I love a temple of the heart, not one of marble" Against Symmachus , II. There was no official proscription of paganism, however, until AD , when, in a long decree, Theodosius forbade, not only the offering of blood sacrifice, but all forms of pagan worship, including private religious rites.
No sacrifice in any place or any city was permitted. But is it actually true? Theodosius I did issue a series of edicts against pagan sacrifice in the years A. These have been preserved in a collection of laws known as the Theodosian Code , which was compiled in the fifth century A. An excerpt from one of these edicts states:.
No person at all … shall sacrifice an innocent victim to senseless images in any place at all or in any city. He shall not, by more secret wickedness, venerate his lar with fire, his genius with wine, his penates with fragrant odours; he shall not burn lights to them, place incense before them, or suspend wreaths for them.
Neither this passage, nor any of the other edicts in the Theodosian Code, actually mentions the abolition of the Olympic Games, as the historian Ingomar Weiler has pointed out.
Sacrifices and libations to the gods had long been a part of the ancient Olympics, as with other Greek festivals. But the evidence suggests that sacrifices had largely ceased to take place at these events by the mid-fourth century as a result of changes in religious practices. The games at Olympia remained popular throughout the Roman period , with athletes competing both for their personal fame and for glory for their home city.
The court poet Claudian then refers to the Olympics in A. He states that the Olympics ceased to be held in the fifth century A. The fire spread quickly and for six days consumed much of the city, including Emperor Nero's palace.
Immediately, the rumor spread that Nero himself had caused the great fire to clear space for a new palace. He was also accused of playing the lyre a stringed instrument like a small harp while watching the spectacular conflagration. Although he probably did play the lyre at some point while watching the fire, he was almost certainly not responsible for it.
Nevertheless, the suffering people of Rome believed him guilty. Fearful that Roman mobs would turn on him, Nero cast about for a scapegoat to blame for the fire. He pointed to an unpopular small religious minority, the Christians. Christians made an easy target for scapegoating. The common people of Rome believed rumors about Christians. Some thought Christians practiced cannibalism because the sacrament of the Eucharist called for believers to symbolically eat the flesh and blood of Christ.
Others believed that Christians practiced incest because they preached loving their brothers and sisters. Many believed Christians hated humanity because they kept secrets and withdrew from normal social life. Many pagans feared that the gods would become angry and punish the Roman people since Christians refused to participate in the old religious rituals. These fears and rumors helped Nero shift public opinion to blaming the Christians rather than him for the great fire. Since the Christian religion was still illegal, it was easy to order mass arrests, trials, and executions.
The Christian martyrs suffered horrible deaths. Roman historian Tacitus described Nero's methods of execution:. Dressed in wild animal skins, they were torn to pieces by dogs, or crucified, or made into torches to be ignited after dark as substitutes for daylight.
Nero provided his Gardens for the spectacle, and exhibited displays in the Circus, at which he mingled with the crowd—or stood in a chariot dressed as a charioteer. For many years, Christians lived with the uncertainty that another persecution could erupt at any time. In , Emperor Trajan attempted to reach a compromise between the growing Christian minority and Roman pagans who demanded that the illegal religious sect be destroyed.
Although Trajan authorized arresting Christians, he prohibited general searches to seek them out and ordered Roman officials not to actively interfere with Christian gatherings. For more than years, Christians preached and practiced their faith openly with little obstruction from Roman officials anywhere in the empire.
Rome's excellent system of roads helped Christians spread the gospel throughout the empire. And the Christians' openness to people from all groups and classes helped them gain many converts. But in , Emperor Decius attempted to revive the Roman pagan religion and persecute Christians. Many Christians perished, but when Gallienus became emperor, he halted the persecution.
Gallienus then went one step further by recognizing Christianity as a legal religion for the first time. By stopping the oppression of this minority religion, Gallienus hoped to bring religious peace to the empire.
For almost 40 years, the legalized Christian Church flourished in the Roman empire. Then, in , Emperor Diocletian initiated one last terrible Christian persecution. Diocletian had come to power at a time of crisis. Prices of goods were climbing rapidly, German tribes threatened the western part of the empire, and the Persian empire was attacking in the east.
Diocletian moved boldly. He set price controls. He doubled the size of the army. To govern the empire more easily, he broke it into two parts—the Greek-speaking east and the Latin-speaking west. Suspicious of the loyalty of Christians to the Roman state, Diocletian started persecuting them.
He demanded that all Christian soldiers resign from the Roman army. He forbade gatherings for Christian worship and ordered the destruction of churches and sacred writings. In the s, Theodosius I reiterated Constantine's ban on Pagan sacrifice, prohibited haruspicy on pain of death, pioneered the criminalization of Magistrates who did not enforce anti-Pagan laws, broke up some pagan associations and destroyed Pagan temples.
Between he emanated the infamous "Theodosian decrees," which established a practical ban on paganism; [ 31 ] visits to the temples were forbidden, [ 30 ] [ 32 ] remaining Pagan holidays abolished, the eternal fire in the Temple of Vesta in the Roman Forum extinguished, the Vestal Virgins disbanded, auspices and witchcraft punished.
In he became emperor of the whole empire the last to do so. From this moment till the end of his reign in , while Pagans remained outspoken in their demands for toleration, [ 33 ] [ 34 ] he authorized or participated in the destruction of many temples, holy sites, images and objects of reverence throughout the empire.
Christian persecution of paganism after Theodosius I until the fall of the Roman Empire involved a long series of emperors, from both the Eastern and Western parts of the Empire, and ranged from till Anti-Pagan laws were instated throughout this period, by emperors including Arcadius , [ 43 ] [ 44 ] [ 45 ] [ 46 ] [ 47 ] Honorius , [ 48 ] [ 49 ] [ 50 ] Theodosius II , [ 51 ] [ 52 ] Marcian [ 53 ] and Leo I the Thracian. The reiterations of the bans, especially on Pagan religious rites and sacrifices, and the increases in the penalties, indicated that the "Pagan" religion had still many followers.
Christians destroyed almost all such Pagan political literature, and threatened to cut off the hands of any copyist who dared to make new copies of the offending writings. Laws declared that buildings belonging to known Pagans and heretics were to be appropriated by the churches. Augustine exhorted his congregation in Carthage to smash all tangible symbols of paganism they could lay their hands on.
Shortly thereafter, in , the last emperor of Rome, Romulus Augustulus, was deposed by Odoacer , who became the first " barbarian " king of Italy. In spite of this disaster, the Pagans made one last attempt to revive the Pagan rites. In , the Magister militum per Orientem, Illus , revolted against Eastern Emperor Zeno and raised his own candidate, Leontius, to the throne.
Leontius hoped to reopen the temples and restore the ancient ceremonies; as such, many Pagans joined in his revolt against Zeno. Zeno finally captured them in and promptly had them executed. Following the revolt, Zeno instituted a harsh persecution of Pagan intellectuals. With the failure of the revolt of Leontius, some Pagans became disillusioned and many became Christian, or pretended to do so, in order to avoid persecution.
The caverns, grottoes, crags and glens that had once been used for the worship of the Pagan gods were now appropriated by Christianity: "Let altars be built and relics be placed there" wrote Pope Gregory I , "so that [the pagans] have to change from the worship of the daemones to that of the true God.
Except for the most recent literature, for at least the last years historical scholarship has followed a conceptual scheme in which the persecution of those Mediterranean religions that we now label "paganism" was seen as the result of the religious intolerance inherent in the monotheistic Christian faith. By the very nature of their belief in a single almighty God, so it is concluded, Christians were unable to tolerate the existing beliefs in a variety of Gods.
The classic expression of this view occurs in the work of Edward Gibbon , who, in his Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire , equated Christianity with intolerance and paganism with tolerance. However, "while there is obviously some truth in the proposition that intolerance follows from the rejection of other gods that lies at the core of monotheistic belief," this alone could neither explain why pagans had previously persecuted Christians, nor why there were "important voices for moderation in the early Christian community.
Drake writes: "Gibbon skirts a serious problem: for three centuries prior to Constantine, the tolerant pagans who people the Decline and Fall were the authors of several major persecutions, in which Christians were the victims.
Gibbon covered this embarrassing hole in his argument with an elegant demur. Rather than deny the obvious, he adroitly masked the question by transforming his Roman magistrates into models of Enlightenment rulers — reluctant persecutors, too sophisticated to be themselves religious zealots. Peter Garnsey strongly disagrees with those who describe the attitude of the "plethora of cults" that are labelled 'Paganism' as "tolerant" or "inclusive.
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