Timeline for Preventing the spread of Christianity in the Roman Empire
Current License: CC BY-SA 4.0
9 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
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| Dec 20, 2022 at 2:03 | comment | added | Mary | It was a common practice for Romans, at war, to have rituals to lure the tutelary god of a city to Rome with promises of a better temple, more sacrifices, greater rites. They were not that exclusive | |
| Aug 13, 2018 at 16:27 | comment | added | Mark Olson | It's critical to understand that what the Romans called religion was not much like what we understand the term to mean. It particular, there was no moral/ethical component. The Roman gods didn't care how people behaved as long as they performed certain rituals. (In modern terms, it was an organized set of superstitions.) There were non-religious moral and ethical philosophies (e.g., Stoicism) and the last and greatest attempt to save paganism was by melding the formal religion with various Greek philosophies in the hopes of creating a more religious (in our sense of the term) religion. | |
| Aug 11, 2018 at 20:57 | comment | added | Nolonar | I think one way to reduce Roman tolerance would be to keep their pantheon relatively small. It's much easier to smuggle a new god (and then build up your religion around him) when most people don't even know half of their original pantheon. | |
| Aug 11, 2018 at 20:52 | comment | added | JBH | +1 for pointing out that Constantine was but a single note in the symphony that is the Roman history of Christianity. | |
| Aug 11, 2018 at 19:12 | comment | added | Cadence | A little fiddling, and you could have a charismatic barbarian leader make a go at converting the Romans to a form of paganism. That's not technically Roman polytheism, but it sure isn't Christianity. | |
| Aug 11, 2018 at 16:07 | comment | added | Upper_Case | @elemtilas Didn't Mithraism already contributed as one of the major bridges from Roman polytheism to adopting Christianity? As I recall there was a lot of "blending" onto Christianity, which made it much more acceptable to Roman soldiers in the end. | |
| Aug 11, 2018 at 12:28 | comment | added | elemtilas | Perhaps also increase the openness & publicity of Mithraism. It was already widespread within the military. | |
| Aug 11, 2018 at 12:27 | history | edited | elemtilas | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
Couple typos; also, I really hope you didn't actually mean wars within the Romans' bowels!
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| Aug 11, 2018 at 7:29 | history | answered | L.Dutch♦ | CC BY-SA 4.0 |