SOME ROMAN HISTORY FOR YOU ALL......................When a governor was sent to a province, he was charged with the task of keeping it pacata atque quieta—settled and orderly.[20] His primary interest would be to keep the populace happy; thus when unrest against the Christians arose in his jurisdiction, he would be inclined to placate it with appeasement lest the populace vent itself in riots and lynching.[21] Political leaders in the Roman Empire were also public cult leaders. Roman religion revolved around public ceremonies and sacrifices; personal belief was not as central an element as it is in many modern faiths. Thus while the private beliefs of Christians may have been largely immaterial to many Roman elites, this public religious practice was in their estimation critical to the social and political well-being of both the local community and the empire as a whole. Honoring tradition in the right way — pietas — was key to stability and success.[22] Hence the Romans protected the integrity of cults practiced by communities under their rule, seeing it as inherently correct to honor ones ancestral traditions; for this reason the Romans for a long time tolerated the highly exclusive Jewish sect, even though some Romans despised it.[23] Historian H. H. Ben-Sasson has proposed that the Crisis under Caligula (37-41) was the first open break between Rome and the Jews.[24] After the First Jewish–Roman War (66-73), Jews were officially allowed to practice their religion as long as they paid the Jewish tax. There is debate among historians over whether the Roman government simply saw Christians as a sect of Judaism prior to Nervas modification of the tax in 96. From then on, practicing Jews paid the tax while Christians did not, providing hard evidence of an official distinction.[25] Part of the Roman disdain for Christianity, then, arose in large part from the sense that it was bad for society. In the 3rd century, the Neoplatonist philosopher Porphyry wrote: How can people not be in every way impious and atheistic who have apostatized from the customs of our ancestors through which every nation and city is sustained? ... What else are they than fighters against God?[26] Once distinguished from Judaism, Christianity was no longer seen as simply a bizarre sect of an old and venerable religion; it was a superstitio (a superstition).[23] Superstition had for the Romans a much more powerful and dangerous connotation than it does for much of the Western world today: to them, this term meant a set of religious practices that were not only different, but corrosive to society, disturbing a mans mind in such a way that he is really going insane and causing him to lose humanitas (humanity).[27] The persecution of superstitious sects was hardly unheard-of in Roman history: an unnamed foreign cult was persecuted during a drought in 428 BCE, some initiates of the Bacchic cult were executed when deemed out-of-hand in 186 BCE, and measures were taken against the Druids during the early Principate.[28] Even so, the level of persecution experienced by any given community of Christians still depended upon how threatening the local official deemed this new superstitio to be. Christians beliefs would not have endeared them to many government officials: they worshipped a convicted criminal, refused to swear by the emperors genius, harshly criticized Rome in their holy books, and suspiciously conducted their rites in private. In the early third century one magistrate told Christians I cannot bring myself so much as to listen to people who speak ill of the Roman way of religion.[29] History of the imperial persecutions[edit] Overview[edit] By the mid-2nd century, mobs were willing to throw stones at Christians, and they might be mobilized by rival sects. The Persecution in Lyon was preceded by mob violence, including assaults, robberies and stonings.[30] Lucian tells of an elaborate and successful hoax perpetrated by a prophet of Asclepius, using a tame snake, in Pontus and Paphlygonia. When rumor seemed about to expose his fraud, the witty essayist reports in his scathing essay ... he issued a promulgation designed to scare them, saying that Pontus was full of atheists and Christians who had the hardihood to utter the vilest abuse of him; these he bade them drive away with stones if they wanted to have the god gracious. Tertullians Apologeticus of 197 was ostensibly written in defense of persecuted Christians and addressed to Roman governors.[31] Prior to 64 AD, there is no evidence for action taken by the Roman government against Christians, and after that episode under Nero, no further evidence for state persecution of Christians until 250 AD. In 250 AD, the emperor Decius issued a decree requiring public sacrifice, a formality equivalent to a testimonial of allegiance to the emperor and the established order. There is no evidence that the decree was intended to target Christians but was intended as a form of loyalty oath. Decius authorized roving commissions visiting the cities and villages to supervise the execution of the sacrifices and to deliver written certificates to all citizens who performed them. Christians were often given opportunities to avoid further punishment by publicly offering sacrifices or burning incense to Roman gods, and were accused by the Romans of impiety when they refused. Refusal was punished by arrest, imprisonment, torture, and executions. Christians fled to safe havens in the countryside and some purchased their certificates, called libelli. Several councils held at Carthage debated the extent to which the community should accept these lapsed Christians. The persecutions culminated with Diocletian and Galerius at the end of the third and beginning of the 4th century. Their persecution, considered the largest, was to be the last major Roman Pagan persecution, as Constantine the Great soon came into power and in 313 legalized Christianity. It was not until Theodosius I in the latter 4th century, however, that Christianity would become the official religion of the Roman Empire.
Posted on: Sat, 05 Apr 2014 06:23:00 +0000
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