“Christianity brought much greater intolerance”
Peter Sarris is Professor of Late Antique, Medieval and Byzantine Studies at Trinity College, Cambridge and author of Justinian: Emperor, Soldier, Saint (Basic Books, 2023)
During the 5th century, the Western Roman Empire fragmented into a series of post-Roman kingdoms largely dominated by “barbarian” rulers. Accordingly, in order to come to terms with the long-term impact of Christianity on the Roman Empire, we must shift our attention to the East, to the so-called Eastern Roman Empire ruled from Constantinople and the world of Byzantium.
Around the year 312, Emperor Constantine had adopted Christianity as his favorite religion. It was not until 380 that Theodosius I declared Christianity the official religion of the Roman state – Constantine’s instincts had been largely tolerant in matters of religion. The fusion of Christian faith and Roman political identity did not truly culminate in Constantinople until the 6th and 7th centuries, between the accession of the emperor Justinian (527) and the death of Heraclius (641). Christianity introduced into the religious life of the Roman Empire a much greater intolerance of what was considered religious error (“heresy”) and deviance. Justinian, in particular, transformed the Roman Empire into a much more persecutory state. While previous emperors had attempted to ban pagan sacrificial acts, for example, Justinian made it illegal to be a pagan and introduced the death penalty for those caught making false conversions. Under his reign, constant downward pressure was placed on the legal status and civil rights of heretics, Samaritans, and Jews, and for the first time men were persecuted by the Roman state for their homosexual acts. Anti-Jewish measures were further intensified under Heraclius, whose court presented the Christian Roman Empire as a “New Israel”.
At the same time, Christianization also led to a far greater concern for the poor and needy than had characterized traditional Roman ideology, with emperors helping to fund hospitals and orphanages. Justinian’s legislation revealed an unprecedented concern for the interests of vulnerable women, children and disabled people. The Christianization of the Roman Empire therefore ultimately served to make Roman political culture both much more cohesive and socially integrated, but also ever more exclusive and persecutory.
“In the Last Empire, things changed – but only a little”
Kate Cooper East Professor of History at Royal Holloway, University of London and author of Queens of a Fallen World: The Lost Women of Augustine’s Confessions (Basic Books, 2023)
At first glance, one might expect that Christianity would have brought immediate changes to the social landscape of the Roman Empire in the 4th century. Given the Apostle Paul’s view that “all are equal in Christ,” this seems like a natural move. But things didn’t turn out that way. When it came to slavery, for example, early Christians were less interested in abolishing it than in viewing slaves as a model of dedicated service that Christians should emulate as “slaves of Christ.” Under the later Empire, things changed – but only a little. Christian bishops worked to free captives sold into slavery by pirates and barbarians, but Christian clergy continued to own slaves.
On other fronts, however, change was on the horizon. During the time of Constantine, the great popularity of the ascetic movement began to produce
a new type of house: the monastery. Inhabited by monks or professed virgins, this new type of household could endure for generations by slowly co-opting new members and appointing new rulers, thereby avoiding the complicated divisions of property that accompanied generational transitions in biological families. These households were far more durable than their biological counterparts – a few have even survived to the present day. The Sainte-Catherine monastery of Mount Sinai, for example, dates from the reign of Justinian.
By the end of the 4th century, ascetic bishops such as Augustine of Hippo and John Chrysostom in Constantinople began to question the more dubious customary privileges of the Roman paterfamilias, suggesting, for example, in their sermons that men who expected their women who are faithful to the marriage bed should itself do the same. We also see sermons criticizing domestic violence or sexual exploitation of the poor and slaves. When it comes to domestic violence, the papyri demonstrate that at least some bishops did not stop at criticism, but did what they could to help women take their abusive husbands to court. Men and women who lived outside the institution of marriage were perhaps sometimes freer to criticize its injustices.
“Demonstrations of humility have become a new form of imperial ritual”
Richard Flower is Associate Professor of Classics and Late Antiquity at the University of Exeter
Christianity brought significant long-term changes, but its impact was more limited in the few centuries after imperial support began around 312. There is no strong evidence that it led to the fall of the Western Empire by draining resources, personnel or human resources. fighting spirit, as was once thought, and also did little to end the institution of slavery. The growth of Christianity and the Church certainly contributed to the decline of traditional paganism, including public rites such as animal sacrifice, but it was a gradual process. Episodes of religious violence, whether state-sanctioned or spontaneous, such as the destruction of the great Serapeum temple in Alexandria in the early 390s, were relatively rare.
Nevertheless, the physical landscape changed, with the construction of large churches, sometimes on the outskirts of cities rather than in their old centers, and the development of monasteries and places of pilgrimage. Individual churches gained wealth and the growing institution also created a new elite or provided new opportunities for existing elites. Bishops became influential figures in their regions, and sometimes even
at the imperial court. Their leadership roles increased as the Empire disintegrated.
Pagan emperors were always closely associated with the divine and this continued with the Christian God, although displays of humility became a new form of imperial ritual. Emperors were also expected to show deference to saints, support the Church, especially through legislation, and help resolve its divisions. While rulers were previously celebrated for caring for the Roman people, Christianity spread targeted charity and almsgiving, with the “poor” seen as a distinct group in need of support.
The rise of religious asceticism—fasting, sexual abstinence, and withdrawal from communities—challenged the expectations of Roman society and offered women new options beyond marriage and childbearing, although probably only for a small minority. This respect for chastity reinforced existing male expectations of female behavior, but the promotion of the same values for men challenged the ancient Roman double standard in sexual ethics.
“The Church asserts itself as the successor of the pagan Empire”
Catharine Edwards is Professor of Classics and Ancient History at Birkbeck, University of London
In 1749, Pope Benedict XIV dedicated the Colosseum, ancient Rome’s most recognizable monument, as a shrine to Christian martyrs. An inscription specifies its role in Christian history: “The Flavian amphitheater, famous for its triumphs and its spectacles, dedicated to the gods of the pagans in their impious worship, redeemed by the blood of the martyrs of filthy superstition.” A central crucifix was added, surrounded by stations of the cross. Visitors should be in no doubt about the true significance of the Colosseum.
Without the Roman Empire, Christianity would surely have developed very differently. But later perspectives on the Roman Empire were themselves profoundly informed by how Christians understood their own origins. Benedict XVI’s Colosseum is a stark reminder of the persecution of the first Christians and the contrast between pagan and Christian values. This initiative marked a renewed attempt by the Catholic Church to assert its position as successor to the pagan Roman Empire by appropriating the material remains of Roman antiquity for its own history. The temporal domination of the old empire was only a prelude to the morally superior spiritual domination of the new Rome.
By ending its use as a quarry for building materials, Benedict XVI’s intervention saved the Colosseum, as Edward Gibbon acknowledged. Gibbon was somewhat skeptical of the central role of the Colosseum, “a place which persecution and fable had stained with the blood of so many Christian martyrs”, in early Christian history. Despite the oft-repeated stories of Christians thrown to the lions, there is no solid evidence that a Christian martyr actually died at the Colosseum in Rome.
Yet the ruined amphitheater (where countless gladiators and animals had certainly met violent deaths) provided an ideal place for visitors to Rome, Protestants and Catholics alike, to reflect on the contrast between pagan and Christian values. In the 19th century, tourists relished the feeling of moral superiority brought about by the ruins of the Colosseum. In Photos of Italy (1846) Charles Dickens cried: “A ruin, thank God, a ruin!” But it was a ruin preserved thanks, at least in part, to Christian myth.
