Christians: a threat to the roman empire

[Karel de Stoute]

I had a little discussion about this on the EB subforum and this is basicly my statement:
Roman state religion and the deification of the emperor were a form of ideology with the purpose of uniting the empire through a common pantheon and establishing the autority of the emperor as a God/King/pharaoh(they got the idea in the east) with a statue in every town and his head on every coin. Decius for example ordered the whole empire to make sacrifice to the gods of which he is one for this reason(officialy for the safety of the empire). Because most people were polytheistic in that time, they didn't have a problem to erect another shrine for the emperor or to make an extra sacrifice. But then you have your jews and christians. They refuse to acknowledge the existance of any other god than their own. This was a serious threat to the ideology wich kept the whole empire together. After Decius, Diocletianus banned the whole religion because he to favored the old roman gods. Apart from that, the first christians were also very fixated on the afterlife. Why serve the emperor in this life if the only thing that mattered were God and the next life? These problems were fixed by Theodosius by adopting christianty as the new statereligion and portraying himself as the most important servant of Christ. In the west, this idea was adopted at the same time by the other emperors(edict of thessalonica). However, in the West other factors made the collapse inevitable. But the barbarian kings who established their kingdoms on the remains of the empire and the pope who also became a major political factor adopted the idea of a christian emperor. I find this very ironic: first on of the reasons for decay, later the biggest heritage of the roman empire.

what your opinion on this subject?

[Brandy Blue]

Interesting and complicated question. I would say that the Christians posed little threat at first. They simply were not numerous enough to be significant, and besides they believed in obedience to the authorities (in almost all things) and that it was important to live a moral life (including hard work) to avoid bringing the gospel into disrepute. Possibly they were better subjects than most. Sure the Romans heard rumors about Christians practicing cannibalism etc. but the Romans were generally suspicious about new ideologies anyway.

Later Christians became numerous enough to undermine pagan Roman ideology, but as you pointed out the Empire simply co-opted Christian ideology for its own political ends. Threat neutralized.

The real problem came because the Empire added something to Christianity that came out of Roman Imperial paganism – the idea of heresy. If you don’t believe what you are told to believe (Caesar is a god), or at least go through the motions, you are a bad subject of Caesar and deserve to be killed. Ironically, it has been suggested that the practice of martyring Christians actually helped Christianity to spread. Later the official Imperial version of Christianity started martyring other Christians who they considered “heretics.” This contributed to the loss of Egypt to the Arabs in Byzantine times, and of course led to much later developments such as the Spanish inquisition, and may have contributed to the ideology behind the Wars of Religion in 16th and 17th century Europe.

Yes, very ironic and very sad. Its amazing what political leaders will do to a religion which says “blessed are the peace makers,” and “love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.”

[Vladimir]

That's interesting. I've never heard that Christian views on heresy were a result of Roman imperial policy. Forgotten by history perhaps?

[Brandy Blue]

Well, I admit I overstated my case. After all, the writings of St Paul indicate that he considered certain groups to not be true Christians because they held beliefs he considered false. He didn't use the word heresy, but clearly he had the idea well before Christianity became the state religion.

However, all of the first seven ecumenical councils were called by order of the current emperor, except one which was called by the Emperess acting as regent. A major purpose of these councils was to define what true doctrine is and reject false doctrine. I cannot prove that emperors called these councils to try to get the empire united under a single theology, but it seems a reasonable assessment. Groups who lost out at these councils were sometimes persecuted by the state. Once again, I cannot prove what motivated the emperors, but logically a uniform theology (if it could exclude rival theologies) could solve the same purpose as an emperor cult, unity within the empire. AFAIK, this was the first experience that Christians had of using official pogroms against each other.

[OvidiusNasso]

I would say that is just false, and based entirely on a stereotype.

The Empreror in the Principate was not a God. Every "God Emperor" from the Principate happens to be a "Bad Emperor" you know the ones who recieved nothing but hatred from both the common people and governing class, ruled for a time by dominating the military, got assasinated, had their acts declared invalid, and had Damnatio Memoriae declared on them by decree of the Senate.

The Principate was based around the fiction that it was actually a reborn Republic with the Emperor being the first amongst equals. Also Decius was never considered a god by others, never declared himself a God, and was never declared one.

You also misunderstoof deification. Deification happened after death and was usually a reflection of how the Senate judged the Emperor. It was not taken very seriously as a religion, and it only meant the deceased Emperor would be revered on his birthday, and if one deified emperor shared a birthday with another deified emperor the more recent one was revered so for example Claudius stopped being revered because he shared a birthday with Pertinax.

It isn't that the Christians were a tiny minority (they were) it is that they weren't a threat to any part of the Principate ideology.

If the Christians threatened the ideology of the Dominate which did exalt Emperors as larger then life Aurelian woudl have moved against it, instead Diocletian did.

[Brandy Blue]

I don't see the relevance of your agrument. OK, it was normal procedure not to deify a living emperor, although some "bad" emperors wanted to be considered gods while alive. OK the emperor cult was not taken too seriously as a religion. Vespasian even joked about it on his death bed. However, the cult was taken seriously enough to kill people who didn't go through the motions of revering the emperor (dead or alive). Why? Because it was an issue of unity. Those who did not go along with it were obviously not loyal to Rome and (from the establishment's point of view) got what they deserved. Exceptions could be made, like the Jews. However, that was not because their loyalty was not in question. It was because they could cause too much trouble if the Romans bothered them too much. Obviously, the attitudes and policies of individual emperors varied. Some pagan emperors themselves were not much concerned with cracking down on the Christians and left governors to do it, if they could be bothered. Diocletian saw things differently. OK, Diocleian was not demanding that he personally receive worship, but that is not really relevant to my point. Christians were a threat, so he gave them the choice to either fall in with official religious policy or suffer.

Later Christian emperors followed a similar track, modified to take into account the changed political climate. Acceptable theology replaced the emperor cult, and persecution remained the means for enforcing it.