Christianity In The Roman Empire Essay

Christianity started off with only a few followers, but has grown into the most practiced religion in the world. About 2,000 years ago a man by the name of Jesus was born into the Roman ruled city of Jerusalem. Jesus was raised in a community of Jewish followers, and followed the Jewish law himself. Jesus believed that he was the messiah, the savior whom profits predicted would one day bring peace to the people of Israel. The Romans and and Jewish leaders felt threatened by Jesus because he thought he was the messiah. Jesus would then be crucified by the Romans. Christianity was able to take hold in the ancient world and flourish because of Christianity 's belief in equality, Rome’s biased

Justinian chose to enforce Christianity as the official religion of the Byzantine Empire, hence unifying society through the belief in Jesus Christ. This differs from ancient Rome where there was no official religion enforced. Justinian built the Hagia Sophia, an incredible and “exceedingly beautiful” (Document 4) church in Constantinople. This helped enforce the religion into people’s daily lives because everybody who walked into the church believed in God because it was universally understood “[that] by the influence of God...this work has been perfected” (Document 4). Because the architecture and vibes inside the church were so strong, people began to believe in the religion and create a different culture than ancient Rome. In building

Soon more will follow and with the beginning of this holy war Leo the third created a movement called Iconoclasm which has the meaning of smashing images. This was used to destroy all religious symbols from the empire and began to ban worship and also veneration. However this is stopped when the emperor Michael the third is placed in power, and he discontinued the tradition. As the byzantine empire grew more stable with less land to protect this lead to more time for arts, which, lead to more trade control and the restoration of the churches. Many byzantine missionaries also converted the slavs to christianity. Soon after this they switched to greek as the official language and supporting greek studies. The downfall of the byzantine empire is solely because of the involvement in the Crusades, also known as the holy war. This holy war was against the Turks mounted in central Asia, however, the Pope had started the Crusade even though politically they should have not created them. The first crusade was a mild success with Alexios asking Pope Urban II for help to expand eastward to stifle the muslim rule. Of course Urban had seen this as a two birds with one stone kind of deal by knocking out

The views on Christianity throughout Rome changed immensely from the early years of the empire through the fourth century. For a while, Christians were looked at as a threat to many because of their belief in monotheism. Nero and his followers persecuted and punished the lower class and women who followed Christianity as well as use them as political scapegoats. As time went on, the tolerance for Christianity in Rome grew and Christianity gained acceptance. By the fourth century, Christianity was the official religion in Rome. Christianity in Rome, illegal during the early years of the empire, gained appeal to the women and lower class of Rome eventually gaining favor due to Flavius Theodosius and Constantine’s beliefs and sympathy (Lunn-Rockliffe).

Christianity is arguably one of the the most influential and important aspects that originated in western civilization. The religion started out as a small sect of Judaism and a man named Jesus spreading his word with a few followers. For centuries, Christians in Rome endured persecution and secret worship. With the appeal of eternal salvation and the hierarchy of the church, Christianity gradually spread, began to rise, and eventually became the prominent religion in Rome. Today, Christianity is the most widely practiced religion in the world.

Within the Christian church, the conflict over the final authority on contemporary issues was between the bishops and the emperor. The conflict was never a competition to hold authority but instead was confusion on who should hold it and what should come out of any actions. Two prime examples of the problems that originated from the conflict are Constantine and the bishops dealing with Christianity 's first crises and Charlemagne 's sharing governance with Pope Leo III.

During the early Pax Romana, Christianity, emerged and it spread rapidly in the Roman Empire. The founder of Christianity was Jesus who used parables with moral lessons to communicate his ideas. Jesus emphasized mercy, sympathy for the poor and helpless, morality, forgiveness, and service to others. Christianity eventually became the official religion of Rome because of its unifying force and the fact that it appealed to all classes in society. The humble, poor and oppressed found comfort in his message of love, equality, human dignity, and promise for a better life. It can be seen that Christianity had the most significant changes in Roman society compared to the other religions. Christianity improved the social, cultural and political way

The final piece to Christianity becoming the major religion it is today was Constantine. Constantine was one of four co-emperors in the tetrarch that Diocletian set up, but when Diocletian retired, Constantine was passed over for succession. Constantine would lead and army to take Rome. Before the Battle of the Milvian Bridge in 312 C.E. it is believed that Constantine had a vision of winning the battle with the symbol of Christianity, the “Chi Rho”, painted on the shields of his army:

Diocletian ruled the Roman Empire from 248 to 305. He believed that the Roman Empire was too large for a single ruler so he divided the empire into four units know as the prefectures. The entire Roman Empire was divided into two parts the Eastern Roman Empire and the Western Roman Empire. Each side was divided into two prefectures that were ruled by two leaders. This new system was called tetrarchy. Dividing the empire into four sections left Diocletian's military power to hold ultimate authority. During his rule as emperor he persecuted Christians because he wanted the people to follow and perform traditional Roman religious practices. When Christians did not obey this edict that the emperors had passed, they persecuted them.

Christianity adopted effectively throughout the ages. Early missionaries were able to developed their ideas of teaching by reinterpreted early Greek and Roman philosophy from pagan gods, Augustine of Hippo influence, and fashioning up practices that were meaningful to people. Christian priests traveled all over Europe to spread their message. Priests were

When the Roman Empire started, Christianity never existed. In the 1st century C.E., Herod executed their founder Jesus for treasonous behavior. It took his followers a few centuries to gain enough power that they were able to win over imperial support. This began in the early 4th century with the

One of the most widespread religions known today started to spread throughout the Roman Empire. That religion is Christianity. Many different people had many different opinions of it. One person who had a very strongly negative opinion of Christianity was Pliny the Younger. Pliny was the governor of Pontus/Bithynia from the years 111-113 AD (Tristano). In contrast to that, Licinius and Constantine helped the Christians gain more freedom and they were not opposed to Christianity. Finally, Eusebius, the Bishop of Caesarea had an opinion on this matter, and on Constantine (Tristano). All of them had different opinions and different reasons for believing what they did about Christianity at the time.

Ancient Rome and Ancient Greece were very powerful and influential forces around the time that Christianity had began to spread. In Rome’s society, people followed under an emperor, who had strict rules about religion and the type of beliefs one should have. At the time, Rome’s official religion was pagan, but later converted to Christian. Ancient Greece had different religious beliefs than those that Christianity consisted of, but these countries were both powerful and helpful in spreading this new religion. Greece and Rome were impactful on Christian doctrine as well as helping this religion thrive and continue to expand to new areas. With these type of factors in mind, this paper will answer the question “How did Ancient Greece and Ancient Rome impact Christianity?”.

“Miltiades, Saint, POPE. The year of his birth is not known; he was elected pope in either 310 or 311; died 10 or January 11, 314. ” Miltiades (the name is also written Melchiades), a “native of Africa”, was elevated to the papacy.” (The Original Catholic Encyclopedia).

The Edict of Milan (313) was a milestone document promising “to give both to Christians and to all others free facility to follow the religion which each may desire”. Although on the surface it appears that the Edict of Milan was a genuine attempt to give equality before the law to Christians, who were severely persecuted under the previous Emperor Diocletian (r. 284- 305), in reality, a number of political, social and ideological influences on Emperors Constantine (r. 306- 337) and Licinius (r. 308- 324) reveal further motivations for the creation of the edict; primarily among these factors- their political cunning.