How Christianity Helped Rome.

[Primus Pilus]

I think it might be something I find when I start reorganizing the forum

 

I also agree with you regarding the impact of Christianity on the Empire, but I feel it was one of many contributing factors, and was a symptom of various political and social problems.

[pompeius magnus]

Yeah it was my 2nd post or something like that. I have reformulated it since then. I post on a lot of controversial topics sometimes.

[Guest spartacus]

I have a sister who lectures at Universities all over Europe and after a long debate with her I got her to agree mosts wars started because of religious differences!

[pompeius magnus]

They do thats why religion needs to be out of government affairs, but that leads down a long road which will lead to the controversial topic this forum so much wants.

[Guest spartacus]

Why dont you start a topic then PM?

[pompeius magnus]

I am the master of controversy but its too late tonight, tomorrow maybe.

[Marcus Regulus]

There is one significant thing I can think of when it comes to the Empire and Christianity. When Constantine took over and started letting Christianity in, the one thing he did was get rid of the hole Roman legal system which was completely corrupt to the Christians which actually, at the time, was far better. It might be worth a thesis to find out more about this in some way, but by this time the Empire was on its last legs as it was known before.

 

I think the whole idea that Christianity was the cause of the fall of the Roman Empire may be little overblown. It had a factor to be sure, but there does seem to be a new movement out there pointing to other factors such as slavery, the Empire being to dependent on foreign mercenaries rather than their legions for defence, the legions themselve being diminished in quality, etc. I think the fact that the Romans seemed to shift in their mentality from building an Empire to just enjoying their empire without considering external threats seems to be the largest factor to me.

 

Empires by their nature make to many enemies from without and within -- The fact is that the Empire was built on the ashes of the Republic, which did more to build Rome than the Empire. I don't think some forgot that.

 

if you look back through history you will find the root cause of wars originated from religion!

 

 

I don't know about that, I think greed and desire for power has more to do with wars than religion. Religion often gets used by the power hungry to justify their cause, but the real motive for wars seems to be more along the lines of I want this peace of land these people's money. It goes something like this -- "I want to invade Egypt because I want to control the grain supply and make a fat profit, because I want to be the middle man -- Hmmmm. Which preist of Mars can I get to justify this religiously" Sorry the root cause of wars seems to be more the desire to have something that somebody else has than religion.

[Fatboy]

I agree with marcus regulus. Athough the soldier on the ground is often motivated by religion ( and almost always by some sort of belief - in their nation, city state, ideology, etc ), the people who call the shots generally precipitate wars over more practical reasons - land, resources......oil.(ahem)

Religion does have a unique ability to prolong wars into messy ongoing conflicts that lose touch with whatever reasons set them off in the first place.

No doubt, religion has had a very devisive influence on the world - but I would say specifically the monoathiesms whos claims of sole devine authourity and aggression towards unbelievers has caused no end of problems.

The people of the ancient world on the other hand would happily swap and borrow gods from each other.

Ramesses the Great and the Hittite King Whassisname famously signed an oath to BOTH peoples gods on a peace treaty - they were entirely comfortable with the idea that the other guys gods existed too.

This brings me to one of my favourite subjects. Monoathiesms; sure, Christianity hurt the Roman empire but I think monoathiesm in general is one of the worst things to happen to the world.The intolerence and cruelty of those who believe they are the only ones with God on their side has no equal.

Religious wars/persecution didn't really happen before except when monoathiesm was involved.

Obviously the early Christians were persecuted themselves

by the Romans but this was due to Christianities confrontational attitude more than Roman intolerance. The Romans happily absorbed peoples af all sorts of religions into their Empire - but Christianity assertion that all other Gods are false was a fundamental attack on Roman Culture, they couldn't let it go.

[Marcus Regulus]

fatboy,

This brings me to one of my favourite subjects. Monoathiesms; sure, Christianity hurt the Roman empire but I think monoathiesm in general is one of the worst things to happen to the world.The intolerence and cruelty of those who believe they are the only ones with God on their side has no equal.

Religious wars/persecution didn't really happen before except when monoathiesm was involved.

 

 

I don't think that can be proven given Roman history itself. The Roman Republic and Empire justified all of its conquests with the gods. In fact every empire of the ancient world that was agressive was pagan. they absorbed many of the gods they conquered mostly for political reasons, not so much religious. It should be noted that they didn't absorb many from Carthage.

 

but this was due to Christianities confrontational attitude more than Roman intolerance

 

 

Quite untrue. The Roman empire was tolerant of all religions except those that weren't tolerant of other religions. The issue with Christianity and Judism for that matter was the fact that their beleif system did not allow them to worship any other God. This came into contrast with worship of Caeser as a god. The Christians and Jews refused to worship Caeser and the 'tolerant' Romans killed them for it. It is no different than liberals in our society that preach toleration but oppose any viewpoint that is against their own that has religious conotations. The fact any people being tolerant, be they pagan or monotheist, is tolerant at all is false. Tolerance is the greatest myth of all.

 

they couldn't let it go.

 

 

You said it yourself -- they couldn't tolerate a view different from their own. Guess they weren't so tolerant after all.

[Silentium]

I am still studying latin so will do my best and I am not familar with the noun barbari but will translate the other words

 

What barbarians have not accomplished Barberini accomplished. I think its pretty close to that.

That is perfectly correct, and anyway I'm not that good at latin myself so it's not up to me to judge I only have the advantage of speaking a language with a wide range of words and verbs deriving from latin.

 

it is "(the) Barberini (family) did (to Rome) what the barbarians didn't do"

 

Basically with Barberini we indicate Maffeo Barberini, Pont. Max. Urbano VIII, who stole bronzes from the Pantheon to "decorate" the Vatican, build cannons and such lovely things..I was just being sarcastic anyway =)

 

I don't think Christianity helped the roman empire in any way..if anything it paved the way to the HOLY roman empire, which had really few "roman" elements =| despite making an effort to think of something looks like the only one neuron wandering in my cranium won't come up with anything in favour of this thesis..=/ so sorry. actually I believe it's the opposite

[Fatboy]

Hmmnn... as usual I've made a lot of sweeping generalisations which are hard to defend, but sure I'll have a go anyway.

 

You say "The Roman Republic and Empire justified all of its conquests with the Gods. In fact every Empire in the ancient world that was aggressive was pagan "

 

The Romans may have justified its conquests with the Gods but it was never really a motivational factor for their wars. Their wars were for very temporal reasons - there was no equivilent of a crusade or a jihad in the pagan world.

As for aggressive pagan empires, damn right they were - aggressive expansionism is pretty much a pre-requisite to have an empire in the first place. Its the idea of religious war I'm talking about, people are always going to have wars but truly religious wars are something that came with the monoatheisms and its something we are still suffering the effects from today - all over the world are conflicts which have degenerated into religious killing matches with hardly any resemblance to the original dispute and little signs ( or prospect ) of resolution.

Just the mention of Carthage though makes me want to soften on my position on what I said was the unequalled cruelty and intolerance of monoatheisms - after all the Roman treatment of defeated Carthage was not exactly tolerant and more than a bit cruel - to a degree any religious fanatic would find hard to match

 

You say " The Roman Empire was tolerant of all Religions except those who weren't tolerant of other religions "

 

Erm.... thats presicely what I was saying, it was Christianity's ( and Judaisms ) intolerance of the co-existence of their and other peoples gods which left Rome with a direct threat on its belief system which would never have come from any of the pagan religions.I never tried to make out the Romans as tolerant, its the intolerence of monoatheist dogma I'm talking about - the Romans never had "thought police" in the manner of Christianity or Islam.Rome would have had to be outrageously tolerant indeed to not take issue with a religion which specifically stated their gods were fake.

 

You say " they couldn't tolerate a view different than their own "

 

You say yourself earlier that they tolerated all religions except those who didn't tolerate other religions.

So they could tolerate different points of view , just not ones which actually attacked their own beliefs.

Compared to the likes of Christianity or Islam thats pretty tolerant.

[pompeius magnus]

Caesar did not justify his conquering of gaul as the gods mission, he planned on it all along, but was waiting for an excuse and a Gallic tribe aristocrat Vercingetorix stirred up a rebellion so Caesar must conquer him.

[Marcus Regulus]

Fatboy,

So all we have really proven is that paganism and monotheistic cultures don't get along. Big surprise because their belief systems are incompatable.

 

I don't think you can find in the first three centuries of Christianity that they used anything they beleived to justify a war. Christianity never went to war with anyone (other than Rome's enemies as part of the legions) until Constantine corrupted it by intermingiling it with paganism. He was the first 'Chrsitian' to do so. Sorry, I beleive that it was this intermingling of beleifs that cause Christianity to be changed, along with the corrupt doctrines and teachings of Augustine.

 

I don't think primitive Christianity, when it was persecuted by Rome, ever went to war with anyone. If anything the pagan Rome butchered them like cattle because they wouldn't bow down to Caeser and worship him -- sounds like a religious motivation to me. What Rome was intolerant of was that Christians would not worship them in a religious sense. The irony is this is one aspect of Christianity bringing down Rome, because Rome got rid of them they got rid of faithful taxpayers, incorrupt judges, brave soldiers (yes Christians were in the army), politicians that actually practice civil service. etc, etc.

 

There is a topic for a thesis. Why doesn't someone write a paper on how much Rome lost in terms of talent, skills and brains by putting Chrsitians to death because they wouldn't worship Caeser (once again religious)?

 

'Thought police' -- where was this the case in the time of Rome. How about Caesar worship itself -- if you didn't beleive in it or do it you were killed. Seems like thought police to me. In paganism you can justify anything based on feelings about the gods alone. In monotheism there are absolute standards of right and wrong -- law. Paganism has laws, but they are convieniently set aside to justify anything or debated.

 

Islam is a different matter all together. They started out coming up to villages saying -- 'Koran or the sword'. Terrorism from the word go.

 

But this is not true of Christianity or Judism -- they never forced someone to believe as they do they just shared a message. But Caeser after Caeser tried to force Caeser worship down the Christians.

Tolerence -- its a myth altogether, but I would say the Christians tolerated pagan Rome far better than pagan Rome tolerated them.

[Jimbow]

Well, maybe for a more contemporary view of Christianity, here are some criticisms by the Greek writer Celsus written in the 2nd Century, responded to by Origen a century later:

 

Celsus' view of Christians and Christianity

[Ursus]

Those of who want to argue Christianity as the cause of Rome's downfall have to read two sources:

 

Decline and fall of the Roman Empire by Gibbons

The Discourses on Livy by Machiavelli

 

They both view, in different ways, Christianity as diluting the Pagan valor and spirit that infused old Rome. I don't totally agree with it, but they are both interesting reading.

 

I'm not saying the conversion to Christianity didn't have some effect. But the spread of Christianity is probably more of a symptom of cultural upheaval than a cause.

 

Honestly, the educated Roman elite