The Roman Empire's Shift to Christianity

All right, people, Lecture 3 in Module Week 5 on the Romans, how the Roman Empire became Christian. So we talked about how the Republic had lasted, well, 400 years pretty well. Then it ran into problems that muddled through another 100 years and then civil wars. dogs and cats living together, mass hysteria. Augustus Caesar comes out of that, basically almost single-handedly creates the empire institutionally. So the empire goes along pretty well for a couple of centuries, and then the two problems resurface with a vengeance, because the problems are even worse for the empire than they were for the republic, because Now you have even worse imperial overstretch. That is, you have an empire that's enormously large for the time frame vis-a-vis the modes of communication and transportation. And plus, the larger you get, the more enemies you have on your borders, which is sort of a subset of imperial overstretch. And then the issue arises or gets worse, I should say. Imperial succession. Again, with the Republic, it's an elective system. You had a system set up where you knew how your rulers were going to be chosen. In the Empire, it's hit or miss because, again, unlike most of the world, which just goes with hereditary monarchy in the pre-modern period, most of the world, not all, but most, the Romans, for some reason, and I've never read a satisfactory explanation of this, the Romans seem constitutionally unconstitutional. no pun intended, unable to stomach a hereditary monarchy. And I talked about this. They try brief periods of letting emperors either make their biological son or adopt its son heir, but they always found they were never happy with this for very long. So there'd be other reasons, other ways. I mean, again, I think what's amazing about the empire as a whole, because remember, we're going to talk about... a little bit today is how it splits in half part of as well as becoming christian it also splits into two halves but the empire as a whole lasts as long as it does and then the western empire lasts as long as it does despite this sort of like untenable system where basically guys just start seizing power or they're put into power by the army or the praetorian guard or something like that so as we get into the second and third century you the political problems becoming the worse. There are some historians that describe the empire under the Severan dynasty from no one 93 to two 35 was a military monarchy. Basically the military is choosing the emperors between, and then much of the third century is just a civil war. Two 35 to two 84, 27 emperors and 23 of them were killed in power, either killed, poisoned, defenestrated. which is a very fancy word for throwing someone out of a window. Lots of barbarians and others invading, barbarians from the north. Remember the top of the top. The northern border of the empire was basically the Danube and Rhine rivers, people from the other side of that, Germans, if you will, and other barbarians. And then to the east, you had the enormous rival state that was probably as powerful as Rome. If not, it was close. called the Sasanian Empire. They had replaced the Parthians in the 3rd century. Rome got hit by a nasty plague in the 3rd century called probably smallpox, based on the descriptions in the records. Monetary collapse because they kept debasing the coinage. And overall, however, as I am here, strategic overstretch. And simply, again, that's a word in geopolitics that means that your state is too big. It's a bit off more than it can chew. It's too big to handle all of its issues, particularly on the borders. So then there's a chart of how everybody died in this period. Natural causes, assassinated, suspected assassination, died in battle, suicide, or executed. So what happens is Diocletian, who becomes emperor, and I'm sorry, I've got a typo here. Diocletian, oh gosh darn, I didn't mean to do that. Anyway, go back to that screen with Diocletian because I can't go back on here. Diocletian was emperor from 282 to 305, not 382. Sorry about that. Diocletian was actually a good emperor. He hated Christians, however, which we'll get back to in a minute. But he identified the main problem of the army, excuse me, with the empire as being administrative, basically. So he thought it's too big for one guy to rule. So he splits it in half. And there's the map of how it was split in half. The line kind of ran, I just realized the other day, I keep doing this thing where I'm using the cursor on my computer, but you don't see that cursor, do you? Anyway, the line sort of ran, if you look here, you see that it was split into East and West, and the West consisted of Italy, Africa, what is now Spain, what is now France, and England. Didn't include Scotland. That's a bad map. Scotland was not included because they built the wall here, Hadrian, and built the wall here because those guys in kilts were too drunk and could not be trusted. And then the eastern half of the empire consisted of basically the Balkans, Greece, Egypt, the Middle Eastern provinces, and then what is now Turkey, all right? And then Diocletian also, it was called the Tetrarchy because what Diocletian did, I think I'm getting ahead of myself. was he had an emperor and assistant emperor in each half. And Constantine, we'll come back to, because Constantine is extremely important. He is the guy, I'll come back to him in a minute, extremely important emperor. So that's how the empire was divided under Diocletian. And it was called the Tetrarchy because not only did you have an emperor in each half of the empire, whom they called an Augustus, you had an assistant emperor in each half of the empire, whom they called a Caesar. these guys names so an emperor in the east and a vice emperor or assistant emperor the plan was that two senior emperors would retire and name their assistant emperors as emperors who would then replace their assistants and so on thus creating a stable succession system and it didn't work out that well why because he had four guys all of whom thought well i can be the sole emperor Rome remained the overall capital, but you had four functional capitals move closer to the borders, which if you look back in that map, it has them. Nicomedia or Nicomedia was the secondary capital in the east, closer to the Sasanian Persians. Sirmium in modern Serbia, Mediolanum later becomes Milan in Italy, and Augusta Trevorrowrum, which is modern Trier in Germany. So Sirmium, Mediolanum, and... Augusta, Trevorrow were basically, you would have generals there with legions and their job was to, particularly those three guys, was to protect against barbarian invasions. Whereas the assistant emperor or the general in Nicomedia, he had a large army he was in control of in the east because the only state actor that the other, only other major empire that the Romans had to worry about were the Sassanians. The others were what we call today like non-state actors. like state actors are like China or Russia. Non-state actors are like terrorist groups. So barbarian groups were the non-state actors they had to worry about, mainly in Europe. So as I said, the big advantage is now you have, well, as I said on the bed, disadvantage is you have four guys with command of troops, each of whom hopes or thinks he can be the sole ruler. But you also had four guys to command armies on the borders. Because again, you know, previous lecture, I think it was, I had that chart up. go into it and you could, that map where you could go in and see how long it took to travel from one part of the empire to another. And you could plug in your mode of transportation and such. So, I mean, assume that you're sitting in Rome and you're the emperor and the Sasanians attack. Okay. So that's way over in the Middle East. That is like what is now Iraq. So if you're going to wait for the emperor to tell you what to do, you got to wait for somebody to send a horse and then go get on a ship and then get to Rome. And it's going to take, I don't know, a week at least. All right, and then the emperor has to sign and send a message back. In two weeks, the war or the battle is probably over. Whereas if you place somebody there for replacement, garrisons of troops, and you have a general or an assistant emperor that you can trust to take command, then you can do that. But again, the danger is the Chinese did much the same thing. I don't think I went into it that much, but the Chinese dynasties did much the same thing with placing generals out. in their case, of course, to the West, where they had to worry about barbarians and nomads coming from. And of course, what happens? They ran into much the same problem, which is that then guys come to the center and try to seize power. So the Tetrarchy was supposed to work like this. This is a statue that was discovered, I think, in Ravenna or Venice, where it's supposed to be like buds. They're like hugging each other, but notice they're hugging each other, but they each also have a hand on their sword. So Diocletian was right, but he wasn't right enough. He was right that there were political and administrative problems in Rome. But what he didn't identify, which was the deeper problem, which was that The old ideology that had held Romans together and made Romans what they were, which was basically not just loyalty to the Roman state and to the Roman traditions and law, but also, you know, respect for the old Roman gods, that was all dissolving. That was all falling apart. And what they need is a new sort of societal glue to hold them together. And they do find that, but it's not from the Tetrarchy. It happens to be from this guy. So I don't want to recreate the wheel. Look, I know not everyone is, but most people that take this class are Christian and you know something about it. And even if you aren't Christian practicing, you know, this country is 75% Christian. So it's kind of, you know, it is the world's largest religion. It is by far the largest religion in this country, although it's divided into Catholic and Protestant mainly. So. Well, even if you're Muslim, you learn something about Jesus, although it's not the same as what Christians teach. But anyway, a couple of things. Again, a little bit of background. The Romans were polytheistic, just like the, not just like, but very much like the Greeks. Christianity was seen to them when it first showed up like the mystery religions, which I discussed. Jesus was initially seen as one of these Roman, excuse me, as one of these Jewish people. Guys who claim to be the Messiah who was violent, right? Which was most of what they were because what was the role? I talked about this the other day with Islam. No, I didn't talk about it in here. See, I'm confusing. That's my other class. Anyway, have we done Islam? No, I haven't done it in here yet. I'm getting ahead of myself. But we did talk about Judaism and the idea of the Mashiach, the Jewish Messiah. And the Jewish Messiah is not the Christian suffering and dying and being resurrected Messiah. The Jewish Messiah. whom Jews are still expecting to come, at least Orthodox Jews, maybe some conservative, but probably not Reformed. The Jewish concept of the Messiah is of a guy who basically will restore the political kingdom of Israel. So he will basically be a warrior leader. He won't be, you know, a turn-the-other-cheek kind of guy. So again, when Jesus had showed up, and when Jesus showed up, The Romans had occupied the Holy Land in 63 BC, I think it was, yeah, 63 BC. And so, you know, Jesus comes along 60, 70 years later. And the Romans had put up with a number of people claiming to be the Jewish Messiah, and they were all violent. They were all basically guys that tried to, they were revolutionaries that were trying to kill and kick out the Romans. So when Jesus shows up, that's initially what they think he is too. It turns out he's not, but... But anyway, so by the way, I think I mentioned this the other class, not this class, but one of my sons who goes to Reinhardt was telling me in English class the other day, they were talking about sources. And for some reason, the professor got on this thing and got on this thing where, you know, there aren't sources that prove Jesus existed. And I just, you know, facepalm. I'm like, yes, actually, there are. There's a link. to the Roman historians, who were not Christians, by the way. This link is, what is the historical evidence that Jesus Christ lived and died? Suetonius, Tacitus, and Josephus, at least. At least three Roman historians who say that there was a guy named Jesus, and that he did certain things, and that the Christians say that. And that he was crucified when Pontius Pilate was the governor of Judea, which we know historically from Roman. records was indeed the roman governor of judea in that same time frame so you can say a lot of things about jesus but what you can't say is he's not a real historical figure because he is so anyway jesus ran afoul of both the mosaic excuse me of both the jewish and the romans he ran afoul of the jews because he taught things that seemed to be undermining the law like he basically said the law can be boiled down to two things you don't need to keep all the ten commandments And all of them, all of the ritual law about food and that sort of stuff, it boils down to love God with all your heart and soul of mind, love your neighbor as yourself. So, he was seen as undermining the law if you're Jewish. And then the fanatical sects of the Jews, particularly the Zealots, wanted a Messiah who would lop off Roman heads and lead to the liberation of the Holy Land, and Jesus wasn't that. The Romans, again, hear somebody called Messiah, and they'd been in the Holy Land, they'd been in the Judea area for now for seven or eight decades. Almost 100 years by the time we get toward the end of Jesus's life, and they see a guy, they hear the word Messiah, and any of the Messiahs they dealt with before were guys who, again, were violent revolutionaries. And so that's what they expected. That's not what he was, but that's what they expected. And of course, Jesus is ultimately put to death by the Romans, not the Jews, by the Romans. For what? The charge is what? Treason. Although Jesus is brought before Pilate and Pontius Pilate and brought before Pilate in the famous passage, Pilate says, are you a king? And Jesus says, yes, but, but what? But my kingdom is not of this world. So, and then if you read the accounts, I mean, actually, if you've ever seen the movie, it's really hard to watch. The famous movie that Mel Gibson directed, The Passion of the Christ. It actually does a really good job with a lot of this stuff, and particularly the scenes where Jesus is brought before, again, the Roman governor Pontius Pilate are very interesting. So, anyway, the Christian belief, of course, is that Jesus ultimately reveals himself to be not simply a prophet, but the Son of God, the second person of the Trinity. He allows himself to be crucified in order to atone for humanity's sins, and then he's resurrected. Of course, that's the Christian belief. Kind of hard to prove that historically, but we can prove historically that Jesus existed. Christianity is spread by the original apostles. They replaced the guy that betrayed Jesus with another guy. There's 12, and then St. Paul shows up, and he becomes one of the preeminent evangelists, writes much of the New Testament, the Gospels. The epistles are the letters. The gospels are the four, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, that give the account of Jesus'life. There were the 12 apostles. Again, Judas betrayed him, so Judas was gone. He was replaced with Matthias. And then eventually you get St. Paul, who was Saul, the Pharisee, who persecuted Christians but then had a conversion experience, said that Jesus appeared to him, and he became a Christian. And then various and sundry other evangelists. Christians were initially part of, basically they were Messianic Jews initially, but there was sort of a mutual parting of ways. Most Jews refused to accept Jesus as the Messiah, so Christians became a separate movement. The Romans continued to have problems with the Jews, particularly in terms of Roman administration and lots of violent revolutionary movements. Jewish point of view, they were, you know, liberation movements. From the Roman point of view, they were, you know, terrorists. So eventually, between 66 and 70 AD, the Romans decided that in order to quell the constant Jewish uprisings, they would destroy the temple, which they had the temple destroyed. Remember, the temple, the first temple had been built way back in Solomon's time, you know, in 900 or so BC. That survived. Anyway, so it was destroyed by the Babylonians. And then the temple that the Romans destroyed had been the temple that was rebuilt starting in the first century B.C. under King Herod. And that had been finished in Jesus'time. That's the one where Jesus talks. There are several accounts in the Gospels where Jesus goes to the temple. And there's a famous account where Jesus goes in and runs out the moneylenders with a whip. So anyway, the Romans destroyed the temple. And then they... perpetrate what's called the diaspora where they spread the jews out so they're not concentrated in one area and they brought the different parts of the empire this diluted the ranks of jews in the region and increased the ranks of greek and roman gentiles many of whom excuse me some of became christian the romans for their part disliked christianity for a number of reasons you The chief of which was that Christianity was seen as atheism. How can it be atheism? Well, because the Christians denied the Roman gods. They said the Roman gods are fictions. They said, well, at best, they're fictions of your imagination. At worst, they're demons, which needless to say, did not go over well with Roman polytheists. So Christianity was illegal. But in the first and second centuries, it was only sporadically persecuted. There was never really in the... I mean, Nero persecuted Christians in Rome famously, as we know. But it never, emperors didn't put out edicts demanding that Christians be persecuted throughout the whole empire. That started to change in the third century. But Decius, Decius was emperor from like 250 to 252 or three, right in the middle of the third century. And he probably was reacting to Philip. Now, it turns out, as we'll see in a minute. You probably heard this, that the first Christian emperor was Constantine. If you go back, I had this bust on a previous screen, which I went past too fast. Constantine was the first Christian emperor that did something about Christianity in the public arena, which we'll talk about. However, there's very, very, very good evidence, and I'm thinking about writing a book on this guy, that a guy named Philip the Arab, who was the only Roman emperor from an Arab province, Syria, was actually the first Christian, and this was about 50 years earlier. Philip was emperor from 244 to 249 AD. But Philip, however, we have very solid indications that he himself was a Christian, but he never tried to change the laws or public policy or do anything as emperor to further Christianity, unlike Constantine. So Decius, who had Philip killed and replaced him as emperor, probably one of the reasons he then went on to persecute Christians was because he was trying to get rid of the... He didn't like Philip, and thus he didn't like Christians. And then Diocletian, again, the emperor I mentioned earlier, who came to power in 284, wound up resigning from power in 305 because he got very sick, which, by the way, Christians saw as a miracle. He ordered an empire-wide persecution of Christians. They were to be jailed. Some of them were killed. This was, but, you know, this was, this was the, these two guys were really the first times that we had an emperor saying, throughout the empire, put out a law, put out a law, put out an edict that says you're supposed to go after Christians. But again, he resigned, he got sick in 305 and resigned, and he was replaced by Constantine, which we'll get to. Christianity, there are a lot of reasons why Christianity eventually takes over the empire, despite the fact that for 300 years it was illegal. It provided the promise. according to christian teaching of salvation to become a christian you can gain eternal life it sounds like the mystery religions that i talked about earlier if you remember on that lecture if not you need to review it but but mystery religions which came from places like persia and egypt promised eternal life but their founders they're the people that you were joining the cult of whether it's isis or osiris or mithras were mythical figures christians could go look hey uh the guy that started our religion is, you know, he's not just the son of God who can give you eternal life. He is a real historical figure. And they would point to those earlier Roman historians have talked about. You know, things were sort of fraying, as I said earlier, there really wasn't a sort of ideological glue, nationalist glue to hold things together anymore. And Christianity created smaller communities within the larger empire. By the way, Well, talking about the Christian church in this period, there were literally no churches because Christianity was illegal. There were no churches allowed until Constantine comes to power. So when you say church, we mean body of Christians, and they would meet out in the woods or in a cave or in the catacombs in Rome or privately in somebody's house. So when you say church, you mean body of believers, not literally a church building because they weren't allowed. So. Demographically, there's a very good book on this that I used to sign for class, but I don't know it anymore, talking about the demographic growth of Christians vis-a-vis the rest of the empire. Christians had different moral principles than pagan Romans did. Again, this is not a value judgment. This is just telling you about in terms of how one group of people increases in numbers more than another group, which is basically what demographics is about, splitting people into different groups. within a larger society and looking at them. We know from the teachings of the early church that abortion was outlawed. Christians did not practice infanticide. Romans, for the most part, didn't, but it could be done. I mean, we talked about the Spartans doing this. The Spartans were very hardcore about this. The Romans were less hardcore. But if you remember, I said that in the Republic and into the early empire, fathers in Rome could get rid of their children if they wanted to. Now, most of them didn't, but some did. And some of them would get rid of their children if they had some sort of birth defect or something. Christians didn't do that. Homosexuality is considered a sin in the literal reading of the Christian, not just the Old Testament, but in the New Testament, too. The early church enforced that. Were there gay folks in church? I'm sure there were. But they were instructed that you couldn't live like that. And whatever else one wishes to say about being gay or lesbian, it intrinsically does not produce children. You need a man and a woman for that. And also care for the sick because there was a Christian injunction to care for people that were sick. And so, for instance, when you had plagues hit Rome, you would probably, you've got, well, this has actually been documented. There would be, when a plague came through, after the plague, there would be slightly higher percentages of Christians because Christians... got care whereas romans tended a lot of the pagan romans tended to you know literally head for the hills to avoid getting sick now again not making value judgments on this just pointing out that these things taken together wind up in larger christian families and over the centuries larger christian families means more adult christians and you know it adds on so the christian population which started out very small starts growing very rapidly although it's an illegal religion Also, you had people that converted, and although Christians were put into the gladiatorial games in Rome and elsewhere, some of them were literally eaten by animals and stuff. There are examples of Roman historians writing about how impressive that was, although the Christians are weirdos who believe a weird religion that some crucified criminal is their god. But the Christians, man, they died pretty well. So it kind of made for some respect. So people were looking into it. What's interesting, too, is despite the fact that for 300 years, Christians were a persecuted religion, there are no examples in the early empire of Christians ever resorting to guerrilla warfare against Rome. So it's kind of interesting. All of that said, all of these things went together. I mean, people converted. Christians had larger families. Again, this all happened despite the fact that it was illegal. But ultimately. What really frees up Christians to be Christians and ultimately makes the Roman Empire Christian is the Emperor Constantine. So Constantine was an assistant emperor. His father had been before him a general also up in Gaul, what is now France. And Constantine decided, again, like I said, a lot of these guys tended to do. Constantine decided that he was not happy with being an assistant emperor in half the empire. First, he thought, I'm going to take over the western half. I'm going to be the sole emperor. So he took his army from France down into Italy to attack Rome. Now, on the way, according to his biographer, a guy named Eusebius, on the way, Constantine had a dream. Now, Constantine had a dream. I guess I should finish my sentence. Constantine, and I mentioned this earlier, I think, a little bit when I was talking about mystery religions, that interestingly enough, mystery religions make great inroads into the Roman army. You know, the legions would rotate. Part of it was... The mystery religions are mainly in the eastern part of the empire, you know, the old Hellenistic area that Alexander the Great had conquered, Persia, the Near East, Egypt. But the legions rotated, so you would spend, it's like today, you know, the army, if you join the army, you'll spend part of your life in Fort Campbell or Fort Bragg, North Carolina, or whatever they renamed it now, Fort Unicorn or whatever. And, you know, then you rotate to spend some time in Europe, and then you'll go to the Middle East, and then you'll go. come back. And so the Roman legions did much the same. So sometimes they would serve in the east fighting against the Persians, and sometimes they would be sent all the way to like what is now France or Germany. So we have documented records of lots of people and lots of soldiers joining these mystery religions. Why? Because again, as I talked about with these mystery religions, they provided some hope of life after death. And if you're a Roman soldier, that looks pretty good, right? Christianity, however, Sure. Not just, again, was a mystery religion an uber mystery religion, because it had a real historical figure at its center. So there's data from the Roman Empire that shows that a considerable number of Roman soldiers had become Christian. So it seems like Constantine had a lot of Christian soldiers, although he was up in France. Now, marching on Rome, Eusebius, again, his church historian, says that Constantine, according to Constantine himself, He had a vision. It was either a vision or a dream. It's a little fuzzy. And this appeared to him. Okay, this is a Cairo cross. It's got an X and what looks like a P for us coming through. Those are the first two letters in Greek of Christos, of Christ. He and Ra, Cai and Ro. So this is, again, you know, most, if you're Protestant, you probably haven't seen this, but this is used particularly in the Catholic Church as a form of cross. So Constantine had this vision, and he heard the voice, he believed to be God or Jesus speaking to him, that said, in this sign you will conquer. And so he had banners made up with this cross on it, and he had all of his soldiers put this cross on their shields. They went into battle the next day, or a couple days later, at the Milvian Bridge outside of Rome, and he was fighting against who was then the emperor in Rome, Maxentius, and his forces defeated him. Constantine becomes then the sole emperor in the West. There's also an emperor in the East, a guy named Licinius. Licinius was not a Christian, he was a pagan, but they agreed to get along for a while. And Constantine said, I want Christians to stop, to no longer be persecuted. Now, he and Licinius then signed something called the Edict of Milan in 313 AD, which made Christianity legal. Okay, it did not make Christianity the religion of the empire. You could still practice paganism. You could still worship, you know, Zeus, Jupiter, and all these gods. But it made Christianity legal, right? It's not until about 80 years later that Christianity has made the official religion of the empire, but it's made legal. Big change, because now, there it is, Emperor Theodosius in 395 made it the official religion and banned paganism. But for almost a century, you had... that you had now Christianity and paganism sort of existing side by side. Although it really wasn't fair anymore because Constantine and then all the emperors from Constantine to Theodosian, every Roman emperor, east, west, whatever part of the empire surviving until the end of the empire, the last bit of the Eastern empire in 1453, every subsequent Roman emperor after Constantine is a Christian, except for a guy named Julian. Julian comes to power in 361. He's in power for not quite two years, 361 to 363. He tries to bring back the practice of the old gods and do away with Christianity. But by then, it's too late. Too many Christians. It's too powerful. Also, what Constantine did was he basically redirected a lot of the treasury money in the Roman state from the pagan temples to the churches. And now Christians are allowed to build churches. The state supports Christianity now and decreasingly supports paganism. So, big difference. Would Christianity have become the world's biggest religion without Roman adoption? I don't think so. I mean, you get a lot of people, particularly in the evangelical Protestant world, that would say this is where Christianity went wrong. It, you know, it made a pact with power. Well, Christianity making, Christianity becoming the official religion of the world's most powerful empire at the time has great repercussions, because then how is Christianity spread to Europe, to Russia and to Europe, particularly to Europe, by the Roman Empire? by missionaries from the Roman Empire. And then eventually what happens later, through all the centuries, it is the Western Christianity, particularly Catholic and then Protestant brands, that gets spread around the world by European expansion, starting in the 1400s, you know, with Columbus and people like that, Henry the Navigator of Portugal. So then Christianity is spread across the oceans to other places. Would that have happened without the Roman Empire becoming Christian? I don't think so. So, the Western Empire fell in 476, you know, not that long, I mean, historically not that long after Constantine. The Eastern Empire keeps going for 977 more years as the Eastern or Byzantine Empire, which I will talk about on the next lecture. Lecture.

So the empire goes along pretty well for a couple of centuries, and then the two problems resurface with a vengeance, because the problems are even worse for the empire than they were for the republic, because Now you have even worse imperial overstretch. That is, you have an empire that's enormously large for the time frame vis-a-vis the modes of communication and transportation. And plus, the larger you get, the more enemies you have on your borders, which is sort of a subset of imperial overstretch.

And then the issue arises or gets worse, I should say. Imperial succession. Again, with the Republic, it's an elective system. You had a system set up where you knew how your rulers were going to be chosen.

In the Empire, it's hit or miss because, again, unlike most of the world, which just goes with hereditary monarchy in the pre-modern period, most of the world, not all, but most, the Romans, for some reason, and I've never read a satisfactory explanation of this, the Romans seem constitutionally unconstitutional. no pun intended, unable to stomach a hereditary monarchy. And I talked about this.

They try brief periods of letting emperors either make their biological son or adopt its son heir, but they always found they were never happy with this for very long. So there'd be other reasons, other ways. I mean, again, I think what's amazing about the empire as a whole, because remember, we're going to talk about... a little bit today is how it splits in half part of as well as becoming christian it also splits into two halves but the empire as a whole lasts as long as it does and then the western empire lasts as long as it does despite this sort of like untenable system where basically guys just start seizing power or they're put into power by the army or the praetorian guard or something like that so as we get into the second and third century you the political problems becoming the worse.

There are some historians that describe the empire under the Severan dynasty from no one 93 to two 35 was a military monarchy. Basically the military is choosing the emperors between, and then much of the third century is just a civil war. Two 35 to two 84, 27 emperors and 23 of them were killed in power, either killed, poisoned, defenestrated.

which is a very fancy word for throwing someone out of a window. Lots of barbarians and others invading, barbarians from the north. Remember the top of the top. The northern border of the empire was basically the Danube and Rhine rivers, people from the other side of that, Germans, if you will, and other barbarians.

And then to the east, you had the enormous rival state that was probably as powerful as Rome. If not, it was close. called the Sasanian Empire.

They had replaced the Parthians in the 3rd century. Rome got hit by a nasty plague in the 3rd century called probably smallpox, based on the descriptions in the records. Monetary collapse because they kept debasing the coinage.

And overall, however, as I am here, strategic overstretch. And simply, again, that's a word in geopolitics that means that your state is too big. It's a bit off more than it can chew.

It's too big to handle all of its issues, particularly on the borders. So then there's a chart of how everybody died in this period. Natural causes, assassinated, suspected assassination, died in battle, suicide, or executed. So what happens is Diocletian, who becomes emperor, and I'm sorry, I've got a typo here. Diocletian, oh gosh darn, I didn't mean to do that.

Anyway, go back to that screen with Diocletian because I can't go back on here. Diocletian was emperor from 282 to 305, not 382. Sorry about that. Diocletian was actually a good emperor. He hated Christians, however, which we'll get back to in a minute. But he identified the main problem of the army, excuse me, with the empire as being administrative, basically.

So he thought it's too big for one guy to rule. So he splits it in half. And there's the map of how it was split in half.

The line kind of ran, I just realized the other day, I keep doing this thing where I'm using the cursor on my computer, but you don't see that cursor, do you? Anyway, the line sort of ran, if you look here, you see that it was split into East and West, and the West consisted of Italy, Africa, what is now Spain, what is now France, and England. Didn't include Scotland. That's a bad map.

Scotland was not included because they built the wall here, Hadrian, and built the wall here because those guys in kilts were too drunk and could not be trusted. And then the eastern half of the empire consisted of basically the Balkans, Greece, Egypt, the Middle Eastern provinces, and then what is now Turkey, all right? And then Diocletian also, it was called the Tetrarchy because what Diocletian did, I think I'm getting ahead of myself.

was he had an emperor and assistant emperor in each half. And Constantine, we'll come back to, because Constantine is extremely important. He is the guy, I'll come back to him in a minute, extremely important emperor. So that's how the empire was divided under Diocletian.

And it was called the Tetrarchy because not only did you have an emperor in each half of the empire, whom they called an Augustus, you had an assistant emperor in each half of the empire, whom they called a Caesar. these guys names so an emperor in the east and a vice emperor or assistant emperor the plan was that two senior emperors would retire and name their assistant emperors as emperors who would then replace their assistants and so on thus creating a stable succession system and it didn't work out that well why because he had four guys all of whom thought well i can be the sole emperor Rome remained the overall capital, but you had four functional capitals move closer to the borders, which if you look back in that map, it has them. Nicomedia or Nicomedia was the secondary capital in the east, closer to the Sasanian Persians. Sirmium in modern Serbia, Mediolanum later becomes Milan in Italy, and Augusta Trevorrowrum, which is modern Trier in Germany.

So Sirmium, Mediolanum, and... Augusta, Trevorrow were basically, you would have generals there with legions and their job was to, particularly those three guys, was to protect against barbarian invasions. Whereas the assistant emperor or the general in Nicomedia, he had a large army he was in control of in the east because the only state actor that the other, only other major empire that the Romans had to worry about were the Sassanians.

The others were what we call today like non-state actors. like state actors are like China or Russia. Non-state actors are like terrorist groups. So barbarian groups were the non-state actors they had to worry about, mainly in Europe. So as I said, the big advantage is now you have, well, as I said on the bed, disadvantage is you have four guys with command of troops, each of whom hopes or thinks he can be the sole ruler.

But you also had four guys to command armies on the borders. Because again, you know, previous lecture, I think it was, I had that chart up. go into it and you could, that map where you could go in and see how long it took to travel from one part of the empire to another. And you could plug in your mode of transportation and such. So, I mean, assume that you're sitting in Rome and you're the emperor and the Sasanians attack.

Okay. So that's way over in the Middle East. That is like what is now Iraq. So if you're going to wait for the emperor to tell you what to do, you got to wait for somebody to send a horse and then go get on a ship and then get to Rome. And it's going to take, I don't know, a week at least.

All right, and then the emperor has to sign and send a message back. In two weeks, the war or the battle is probably over. Whereas if you place somebody there for replacement, garrisons of troops, and you have a general or an assistant emperor that you can trust to take command, then you can do that.

But again, the danger is the Chinese did much the same thing. I don't think I went into it that much, but the Chinese dynasties did much the same thing with placing generals out. in their case, of course, to the West, where they had to worry about barbarians and nomads coming from.

And of course, what happens? They ran into much the same problem, which is that then guys come to the center and try to seize power. So the Tetrarchy was supposed to work like this.

This is a statue that was discovered, I think, in Ravenna or Venice, where it's supposed to be like buds. They're like hugging each other, but notice they're hugging each other, but they each also have a hand on their sword. So Diocletian was right, but he wasn't right enough.

He was right that there were political and administrative problems in Rome. But what he didn't identify, which was the deeper problem, which was that The old ideology that had held Romans together and made Romans what they were, which was basically not just loyalty to the Roman state and to the Roman traditions and law, but also, you know, respect for the old Roman gods, that was all dissolving. That was all falling apart.

And what they need is a new sort of societal glue to hold them together. And they do find that, but it's not from the Tetrarchy. It happens to be from this guy.

So I don't want to recreate the wheel. Look, I know not everyone is, but most people that take this class are Christian and you know something about it. And even if you aren't Christian practicing, you know, this country is 75% Christian.

So it's kind of, you know, it is the world's largest religion. It is by far the largest religion in this country, although it's divided into Catholic and Protestant mainly. So. Well, even if you're Muslim, you learn something about Jesus, although it's not the same as what Christians teach. But anyway, a couple of things.

Again, a little bit of background. The Romans were polytheistic, just like the, not just like, but very much like the Greeks. Christianity was seen to them when it first showed up like the mystery religions, which I discussed.

Jesus was initially seen as one of these Roman, excuse me, as one of these Jewish people. Guys who claim to be the Messiah who was violent, right? Which was most of what they were because what was the role? I talked about this the other day with Islam. No, I didn't talk about it in here.

See, I'm confusing. That's my other class. Anyway, have we done Islam? No, I haven't done it in here yet. I'm getting ahead of myself.

But we did talk about Judaism and the idea of the Mashiach, the Jewish Messiah. And the Jewish Messiah is not the Christian suffering and dying and being resurrected Messiah. The Jewish Messiah.

whom Jews are still expecting to come, at least Orthodox Jews, maybe some conservative, but probably not Reformed. The Jewish concept of the Messiah is of a guy who basically will restore the political kingdom of Israel. So he will basically be a warrior leader.

He won't be, you know, a turn-the-other-cheek kind of guy. So again, when Jesus had showed up, and when Jesus showed up, The Romans had occupied the Holy Land in 63 BC, I think it was, yeah, 63 BC. And so, you know, Jesus comes along 60, 70 years later.

And the Romans had put up with a number of people claiming to be the Jewish Messiah, and they were all violent. They were all basically guys that tried to, they were revolutionaries that were trying to kill and kick out the Romans. So when Jesus shows up, that's initially what they think he is too.

It turns out he's not, but... But anyway, so by the way, I think I mentioned this the other class, not this class, but one of my sons who goes to Reinhardt was telling me in English class the other day, they were talking about sources. And for some reason, the professor got on this thing and got on this thing where, you know, there aren't sources that prove Jesus existed. And I just, you know, facepalm. I'm like, yes, actually, there are.

There's a link. to the Roman historians, who were not Christians, by the way. This link is, what is the historical evidence that Jesus Christ lived and died?

Suetonius, Tacitus, and Josephus, at least. At least three Roman historians who say that there was a guy named Jesus, and that he did certain things, and that the Christians say that. And that he was crucified when Pontius Pilate was the governor of Judea, which we know historically from Roman.

records was indeed the roman governor of judea in that same time frame so you can say a lot of things about jesus but what you can't say is he's not a real historical figure because he is so anyway jesus ran afoul of both the mosaic excuse me of both the jewish and the romans he ran afoul of the jews because he taught things that seemed to be undermining the law like he basically said the law can be boiled down to two things you don't need to keep all the ten commandments And all of them, all of the ritual law about food and that sort of stuff, it boils down to love God with all your heart and soul of mind, love your neighbor as yourself. So, he was seen as undermining the law if you're Jewish. And then the fanatical sects of the Jews, particularly the Zealots, wanted a Messiah who would lop off Roman heads and lead to the liberation of the Holy Land, and Jesus wasn't that.

The Romans, again, hear somebody called Messiah, and they'd been in the Holy Land, they'd been in the Judea area for now for seven or eight decades. Almost 100 years by the time we get toward the end of Jesus's life, and they see a guy, they hear the word Messiah, and any of the Messiahs they dealt with before were guys who, again, were violent revolutionaries. And so that's what they expected. That's not what he was, but that's what they expected. And of course, Jesus is ultimately put to death by the Romans, not the Jews, by the Romans.

For what? The charge is what? Treason. Although Jesus is brought before Pilate and Pontius Pilate and brought before Pilate in the famous passage, Pilate says, are you a king?

And Jesus says, yes, but, but what? But my kingdom is not of this world. So, and then if you read the accounts, I mean, actually, if you've ever seen the movie, it's really hard to watch. The famous movie that Mel Gibson directed, The Passion of the Christ.

It actually does a really good job with a lot of this stuff, and particularly the scenes where Jesus is brought before, again, the Roman governor Pontius Pilate are very interesting. So, anyway, the Christian belief, of course, is that Jesus ultimately reveals himself to be not simply a prophet, but the Son of God, the second person of the Trinity. He allows himself to be crucified in order to atone for humanity's sins, and then he's resurrected. Of course, that's the Christian belief. Kind of hard to prove that historically, but we can prove historically that Jesus existed.

Christianity is spread by the original apostles. They replaced the guy that betrayed Jesus with another guy. There's 12, and then St. Paul shows up, and he becomes one of the preeminent evangelists, writes much of the New Testament, the Gospels. The epistles are the letters.

The gospels are the four, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, that give the account of Jesus'life. There were the 12 apostles. Again, Judas betrayed him, so Judas was gone. He was replaced with Matthias. And then eventually you get St. Paul, who was Saul, the Pharisee, who persecuted Christians but then had a conversion experience, said that Jesus appeared to him, and he became a Christian.

And then various and sundry other evangelists. Christians were initially part of, basically they were Messianic Jews initially, but there was sort of a mutual parting of ways. Most Jews refused to accept Jesus as the Messiah, so Christians became a separate movement.

The Romans continued to have problems with the Jews, particularly in terms of Roman administration and lots of violent revolutionary movements. Jewish point of view, they were, you know, liberation movements. From the Roman point of view, they were, you know, terrorists. So eventually, between 66 and 70 AD, the Romans decided that in order to quell the constant Jewish uprisings, they would destroy the temple, which they had the temple destroyed. Remember, the temple, the first temple had been built way back in Solomon's time, you know, in 900 or so BC.

That survived. Anyway, so it was destroyed by the Babylonians. And then the temple that the Romans destroyed had been the temple that was rebuilt starting in the first century B.C.

under King Herod. And that had been finished in Jesus'time. That's the one where Jesus talks. There are several accounts in the Gospels where Jesus goes to the temple. And there's a famous account where Jesus goes in and runs out the moneylenders with a whip.

So anyway, the Romans destroyed the temple. And then they... perpetrate what's called the diaspora where they spread the jews out so they're not concentrated in one area and they brought the different parts of the empire this diluted the ranks of jews in the region and increased the ranks of greek and roman gentiles many of whom excuse me some of became christian the romans for their part disliked christianity for a number of reasons you The chief of which was that Christianity was seen as atheism.

How can it be atheism? Well, because the Christians denied the Roman gods. They said the Roman gods are fictions.

They said, well, at best, they're fictions of your imagination. At worst, they're demons, which needless to say, did not go over well with Roman polytheists. So Christianity was illegal.

But in the first and second centuries, it was only sporadically persecuted. There was never really in the... I mean, Nero persecuted Christians in Rome famously, as we know.

But it never, emperors didn't put out edicts demanding that Christians be persecuted throughout the whole empire. That started to change in the third century. But Decius, Decius was emperor from like 250 to 252 or three, right in the middle of the third century. And he probably was reacting to Philip. Now, it turns out, as we'll see in a minute.

You probably heard this, that the first Christian emperor was Constantine. If you go back, I had this bust on a previous screen, which I went past too fast. Constantine was the first Christian emperor that did something about Christianity in the public arena, which we'll talk about.

However, there's very, very, very good evidence, and I'm thinking about writing a book on this guy, that a guy named Philip the Arab, who was the only Roman emperor from an Arab province, Syria, was actually the first Christian, and this was about 50 years earlier. Philip was emperor from 244 to 249 AD. But Philip, however, we have very solid indications that he himself was a Christian, but he never tried to change the laws or public policy or do anything as emperor to further Christianity, unlike Constantine. So Decius, who had Philip killed and replaced him as emperor, probably one of the reasons he then went on to persecute Christians was because he was trying to get rid of the... He didn't like Philip, and thus he didn't like Christians.

And then Diocletian, again, the emperor I mentioned earlier, who came to power in 284, wound up resigning from power in 305 because he got very sick, which, by the way, Christians saw as a miracle. He ordered an empire-wide persecution of Christians. They were to be jailed. Some of them were killed. This was, but, you know, this was, this was the, these two guys were really the first times that we had an emperor saying, throughout the empire, put out a law, put out a law, put out an edict that says you're supposed to go after Christians.

But again, he resigned, he got sick in 305 and resigned, and he was replaced by Constantine, which we'll get to. Christianity, there are a lot of reasons why Christianity eventually takes over the empire, despite the fact that for 300 years it was illegal. It provided the promise. according to christian teaching of salvation to become a christian you can gain eternal life it sounds like the mystery religions that i talked about earlier if you remember on that lecture if not you need to review it but but mystery religions which came from places like persia and egypt promised eternal life but their founders they're the people that you were joining the cult of whether it's isis or osiris or mithras were mythical figures christians could go look hey uh the guy that started our religion is, you know, he's not just the son of God who can give you eternal life. He is a real historical figure.

And they would point to those earlier Roman historians have talked about. You know, things were sort of fraying, as I said earlier, there really wasn't a sort of ideological glue, nationalist glue to hold things together anymore. And Christianity created smaller communities within the larger empire. By the way, Well, talking about the Christian church in this period, there were literally no churches because Christianity was illegal. There were no churches allowed until Constantine comes to power.

So when you say church, we mean body of Christians, and they would meet out in the woods or in a cave or in the catacombs in Rome or privately in somebody's house. So when you say church, you mean body of believers, not literally a church building because they weren't allowed. So. Demographically, there's a very good book on this that I used to sign for class, but I don't know it anymore, talking about the demographic growth of Christians vis-a-vis the rest of the empire. Christians had different moral principles than pagan Romans did.

Again, this is not a value judgment. This is just telling you about in terms of how one group of people increases in numbers more than another group, which is basically what demographics is about, splitting people into different groups. within a larger society and looking at them. We know from the teachings of the early church that abortion was outlawed.

Christians did not practice infanticide. Romans, for the most part, didn't, but it could be done. I mean, we talked about the Spartans doing this.

The Spartans were very hardcore about this. The Romans were less hardcore. But if you remember, I said that in the Republic and into the early empire, fathers in Rome could get rid of their children if they wanted to.

Now, most of them didn't, but some did. And some of them would get rid of their children if they had some sort of birth defect or something. Christians didn't do that. Homosexuality is considered a sin in the literal reading of the Christian, not just the Old Testament, but in the New Testament, too. The early church enforced that.

Were there gay folks in church? I'm sure there were. But they were instructed that you couldn't live like that. And whatever else one wishes to say about being gay or lesbian, it intrinsically does not produce children.

You need a man and a woman for that. And also care for the sick because there was a Christian injunction to care for people that were sick. And so, for instance, when you had plagues hit Rome, you would probably, you've got, well, this has actually been documented.

There would be, when a plague came through, after the plague, there would be slightly higher percentages of Christians because Christians... got care whereas romans tended a lot of the pagan romans tended to you know literally head for the hills to avoid getting sick now again not making value judgments on this just pointing out that these things taken together wind up in larger christian families and over the centuries larger christian families means more adult christians and you know it adds on so the christian population which started out very small starts growing very rapidly although it's an illegal religion Also, you had people that converted, and although Christians were put into the gladiatorial games in Rome and elsewhere, some of them were literally eaten by animals and stuff. There are examples of Roman historians writing about how impressive that was, although the Christians are weirdos who believe a weird religion that some crucified criminal is their god. But the Christians, man, they died pretty well. So it kind of made for some respect.

So people were looking into it. What's interesting, too, is despite the fact that for 300 years, Christians were a persecuted religion, there are no examples in the early empire of Christians ever resorting to guerrilla warfare against Rome. So it's kind of interesting.

All of that said, all of these things went together. I mean, people converted. Christians had larger families.

Again, this all happened despite the fact that it was illegal. But ultimately. What really frees up Christians to be Christians and ultimately makes the Roman Empire Christian is the Emperor Constantine.

So Constantine was an assistant emperor. His father had been before him a general also up in Gaul, what is now France. And Constantine decided, again, like I said, a lot of these guys tended to do. Constantine decided that he was not happy with being an assistant emperor in half the empire. First, he thought, I'm going to take over the western half.

I'm going to be the sole emperor. So he took his army from France down into Italy to attack Rome. Now, on the way, according to his biographer, a guy named Eusebius, on the way, Constantine had a dream.

Now, Constantine had a dream. I guess I should finish my sentence. Constantine, and I mentioned this earlier, I think, a little bit when I was talking about mystery religions, that interestingly enough, mystery religions make great inroads into the Roman army. You know, the legions would rotate. Part of it was...

The mystery religions are mainly in the eastern part of the empire, you know, the old Hellenistic area that Alexander the Great had conquered, Persia, the Near East, Egypt. But the legions rotated, so you would spend, it's like today, you know, the army, if you join the army, you'll spend part of your life in Fort Campbell or Fort Bragg, North Carolina, or whatever they renamed it now, Fort Unicorn or whatever. And, you know, then you rotate to spend some time in Europe, and then you'll go to the Middle East, and then you'll go. come back. And so the Roman legions did much the same.

So sometimes they would serve in the east fighting against the Persians, and sometimes they would be sent all the way to like what is now France or Germany. So we have documented records of lots of people and lots of soldiers joining these mystery religions. Why? Because again, as I talked about with these mystery religions, they provided some hope of life after death.

And if you're a Roman soldier, that looks pretty good, right? Christianity, however, Sure. Not just, again, was a mystery religion an uber mystery religion, because it had a real historical figure at its center. So there's data from the Roman Empire that shows that a considerable number of Roman soldiers had become Christian. So it seems like Constantine had a lot of Christian soldiers, although he was up in France.

Now, marching on Rome, Eusebius, again, his church historian, says that Constantine, according to Constantine himself, He had a vision. It was either a vision or a dream. It's a little fuzzy.

And this appeared to him. Okay, this is a Cairo cross. It's got an X and what looks like a P for us coming through.

Those are the first two letters in Greek of Christos, of Christ. He and Ra, Cai and Ro. So this is, again, you know, most, if you're Protestant, you probably haven't seen this, but this is used particularly in the Catholic Church as a form of cross.

So Constantine had this vision, and he heard the voice, he believed to be God or Jesus speaking to him, that said, in this sign you will conquer. And so he had banners made up with this cross on it, and he had all of his soldiers put this cross on their shields. They went into battle the next day, or a couple days later, at the Milvian Bridge outside of Rome, and he was fighting against who was then the emperor in Rome, Maxentius, and his forces defeated him. Constantine becomes then the sole emperor in the West.

There's also an emperor in the East, a guy named Licinius. Licinius was not a Christian, he was a pagan, but they agreed to get along for a while. And Constantine said, I want Christians to stop, to no longer be persecuted. Now, he and Licinius then signed something called the Edict of Milan in 313 AD, which made Christianity legal. Okay, it did not make Christianity the religion of the empire.

You could still practice paganism. You could still worship, you know, Zeus, Jupiter, and all these gods. But it made Christianity legal, right?

It's not until about 80 years later that Christianity has made the official religion of the empire, but it's made legal. Big change, because now, there it is, Emperor Theodosius in 395 made it the official religion and banned paganism. But for almost a century, you had...

that you had now Christianity and paganism sort of existing side by side. Although it really wasn't fair anymore because Constantine and then all the emperors from Constantine to Theodosian, every Roman emperor, east, west, whatever part of the empire surviving until the end of the empire, the last bit of the Eastern empire in 1453, every subsequent Roman emperor after Constantine is a Christian, except for a guy named Julian. Julian comes to power in 361. He's in power for not quite two years, 361 to 363. He tries to bring back the practice of the old gods and do away with Christianity. But by then, it's too late. Too many Christians.

It's too powerful. Also, what Constantine did was he basically redirected a lot of the treasury money in the Roman state from the pagan temples to the churches. And now Christians are allowed to build churches.

The state supports Christianity now and decreasingly supports paganism. So, big difference. Would Christianity have become the world's biggest religion without Roman adoption?

I don't think so. I mean, you get a lot of people, particularly in the evangelical Protestant world, that would say this is where Christianity went wrong. It, you know, it made a pact with power.

Well, Christianity making, Christianity becoming the official religion of the world's most powerful empire at the time has great repercussions, because then how is Christianity spread to Europe, to Russia and to Europe, particularly to Europe, by the Roman Empire? by missionaries from the Roman Empire. And then eventually what happens later, through all the centuries, it is the Western Christianity, particularly Catholic and then Protestant brands, that gets spread around the world by European expansion, starting in the 1400s, you know, with Columbus and people like that, Henry the Navigator of Portugal. So then Christianity is spread across the oceans to other places. Would that have happened without the Roman Empire becoming Christian?

I don't think so. So, the Western Empire fell in 476, you know, not that long, I mean, historically not that long after Constantine. The Eastern Empire keeps going for 977 more years as the Eastern or Byzantine Empire, which I will talk about on the next lecture. Lecture.

Transcript for:The Roman Empire's Shift to Christianity

Transcript for:
The Roman Empire's Shift to Christianity